Coming Back Over a Year Later (Impression)

(1/3) I stopped playing a couple months after launch...got a Warrior and a Paladin to 50...got them to about 64 ilvl. Then I quit because I found something a little more exciting to play.

Yeah I guess it's a dead horse, but combat was pretty boring...really slow...slower than a lot of other games out there. Rolling a gladiator/paladin the second time around was a pretty brutal grind. Having only FATEs to grind, a small handful of side quests to do, and the limited levequests to get exp from made it pretty excruciating. The combination of slow combat and the exp grind just ended it for me.

So I come back about a year and 7 months later, and you know what?

Nothing has changed.

(2/3) I rolled a rogue this time. Got a pugilist to 15 and got Ninja to 50. From level 1 to 35 was a lot worse than before. It was rare to have anyone around to help with FATEs so it was about impossible to do it yourself as a squishy dps, so since I was capped out on levequests, that got me to about 25. Talk about brutal. Then from then on it was dungeons (with its 30+ minute queue times) and FATEs. My eyes were bleeding. I'm trying to level pugilist/MNK, but I just can't bring myself to do it all over again.

(3/3) Combat is still slow as mud with the 2.50 second GCD. And I see why now...it's because of the spell animations. Most of the animations take about 2+ seconds to finish. If they changed the GCD to 1 second, they would have to speed up the spell animations and cut the damage in half, I suppose. I would honestly be happy with that, though. I remember in the offline FF games you could change the speed of the battles from Active Time Battles to Wait...or something to that effect...for players who wanted a faster play style. That would be a pretty nice feature to have...let players choose the speed of the combat.

I guess the ability to roll multiple classes on a single toon are really for those that can't afford the standard subscription and can only have one toon on a server. Oh well. Other than that, the game looks like it has a lot of potential...I just need a faster pace of combat.

Thanks for reading!

You can get around the 1000 character per post restriction by simply going back and editing your first post (and thus not have to waste your posts).

I presume you've never played a FF game before this because FF combat is not traditionally action-based. And ARR is actually far faster than how combat was in the original version of FFXIV (version 1.0, or rather, 1.0's battle system post 1.21 patch) and it's MMO predecessor, FFXI, both of which you basically just sat there on auto-attack trading punches with the enemy while slowly watching the TP gauge build up so that you could occasionally let rip with a weapon skill.

The GCD isn't actually that bad, as it's a nice balance between a full-on action-based system and the more turn-based battle systems of earlier games in the FF series. If you're expecting FFXIV's combat to be arcade-style button-mashing, then I'm afraid you will be sadly disappointed, as that is not how this game is designed, and perhaps this game is not for you.

One of the first things I noticed when servers came online for 2.0 was how much faster combat was compared to 1.0. Its perfect IMO, with skill/spell speed on higher tier gear it shaves off some CD time as well. But did you really suggest having active time wait? Hold on bahamut.. Pause... I need to find that ether in my inventory. Enkidoh said it best, that's not how this game is designed and this game might not be for you.

Sorry to read about your disappointment OP. Take care and good luck in your search for your perfect MMO.

I can afford the subscription for having alts I just don't *want* alts. To insinuate its because I'm poor is stupid.

As for "faster combat", games with lower gcds have spells with stupid long cast times.

I'm surprised you still had a problem with the GCD when playing Ninja as they actually get a GCD closer to 2s through use of Houton. Same goes for Monk with three stacks of Greased Lightning. They each get a 15% skillspeed increase which, when coupled with the skillspeed stat, is more or less a half-second off their GCD and puts their combat speed at something much closer to typical MMOs.

Having said that it seems you've taken issue with many of the fundamental concepts of the game and have resorted to baseless insult as criticism. I guess the game just isn't for you.

Ninja is very fast with their Huton 2 second GCD. Are you spamming huton? You should be.
Also this game has very little reason for alts, unless you're extremely crazy about your RPing or something like that, I guess. So why would I pay for something I'm not going to use?

And the ATB, the "wait" function stops all actions that are going on while you are in a menu, deciding what to do which is honestly the opposite of a fast battle. There is the option to turn wait off, of course, but it sounds like you got it backwards.

OP wants an Action Adventure from an MMO game.

OP is going to need to look at single player games for that.

So you leave the game due to how its fundamentally designed, come back, and expect all of that to have changed? Um....ok.

And if you think letting players adjust the speed of combat in an MMO is a good idea, well i dont quite know what to say other than "game balance in an MMO".

I find the pace of combat to be perfectly acceptable at end game as it is. In raids, its leads to more strategic thinking, planning and execution. But this is just a personal opinion.

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Originally Posted by elemental10

OP wants an Action Adventure from an MMO game.

OP is going to need to look at single player games for that.

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It sounds like OP is making no effort to make friends and play with them! "exp grind" is another word for soloing.

Anyways, fast paced action in an mmorpg only recently became an option. I believe you are looking for an Action Online RPG. Fast paced combat, activated dodge systems that require precise timing with a slight online social interaction. The earliest mmorpgs that defined what the genre originally meant, were merely auto-attacks + pushing a button as soon as it came off cd, the fun was the adventure with friends and the people you meet online. Going so far together then looking back and saying "damn fun times"

Anyways if you are looking for a JP Action Online RPG i highly recommend PSO2. It was my online game of choice for nearly a year, then i moved onto FFXIV. Heres a random video of a feature called PSE burst in pso2 if you've never heard of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecnaXpzBXnE Boss encounters are common and usually dodge intense.

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Originally Posted by SixSixSix

Having only FATEs to grind, a small handful of side quests to do, and the limited levequests to get exp from made it pretty excruciating.

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Main story, side quests, dungeons are all your primary source of experience. FATES are something you do while waiting on duty finder. As a tank you already get a huge exp boost for doing dungeons. Also using the challange log(you need to unlock via quest at lvl15 in Limsa) - gives you weekly challenges that give you chunks of experience as well. Doing Duty Roulette: Low once per day gives you bonus experience as well.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

The GCD isn't actually that bad

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No it is that bad.

I can definately see it being a major minus for anyone used to faster combat.


When tanking half the time I cant use my abilities for fear I'll be locked in a global cooldown when I need to interupt/stun.
If people prefer a slower pace of combat then give each ability its own longer cooldown, not a massive global one.

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Anyways, fast paced action in an mmorpg only recently became an option.

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Not quite sure where that idea comes from. I havent played any mmo that felt this slow (thats by mmo standards). A long global cooldown is really no fun.

Something like that works in ff singleplayer games because you have a party. You dont play a party here, you play one character.

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Originally Posted by Aeyis

No it is that bad.

I can definately see it being a major minus for anyone used to faster combat.


When tanking half the time I cant use my abilities for fear I'll be locked in a global cooldown when I need to interupt/stun.
If people prefer a slower pace of combat then give each ability its own longer cooldown, not a massive global one.

Not quite sure where that idea comes from. I havent played any mmo that felt this slow (thats by mmo standards). A long global cooldown is really no fun.

Something like that works in ff singleplayer games because you have a party. You dont play a party here, you play one character.

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You do realize that speeding up player GCDs will have fundamental changes to your class and to bosses. Namely, they'll speed up boss casts so your in exactly the same position that you are in now. Because thats kinda the point.

On EQ2, the GCD is effected by Recovery Speed. Move cooldowns are pretty long to compensate for this. Current stat bloat in the game leans towards Ability Recast Speed/Spell Recast Speed/Recovery Speed. Recovery speed essentially eliminated the GCD for most classes, I don't even notice it on Swashbuckler anymore but it is definitely there -- just something like ~0.5/s. You can also kill just about every mob in the game with simple auto attack spam now, because to try and balance this they added stats that increase Auto-Attack damage, which just shifted the stat bloat in another horrible direction.

Conversely, RIFT has very few ways to effect GCD, and base GCD is dependent on your archetype (with a few exceptions*) Rogues generally had 1.5/s, Mage, Warrior, and Cleric had 2/s. There are VERY few ways to effect the GCD at all, which leads to a system like ours where OGCD is a boon and planned into managing very specific situations. I enjoyed raids in RIFT far more than EQ2, because I actually had to pay some level of attention to my character's actions and movements, much like FF14, but there were still problems.

Long/short of it: 2.5/s GCD feels fine with me, makes things more manageable in the long run XD.