The Ability to Ready a Spell While Casting - Why Was It Removed?

Hi,

I'm sorry for my English it's not my native language.

I'm sure it's not as big problem for most of you as it is for me and mostly mage classes, but since I play Conjurer mainly, and the removal of this feature affected me greatly, I decided to make a post about it.

The feature which lets you ready the next spell while casting another, was removed in patch 1.19.
Being able to "register" a spell let me react fast during raids and commit party plans with much more precise timing.

Since my connection and how far I live from the server, I have some delays commiting actions. The ability to ready spells beforehand, help me bypass slow latency issues like those.

Let me explain in actual details: When I cast a spell, my casting bar gets to 100% and stay there for 4 seconds (because of lag issue) before the spell happens. Of course that's a latency issue on my side, but the point is that Pre 1.19, I was able to bypass that issue because my next spell would register and start it's cast while I see that 100% full casting bar delay on my screen, and then the animations would catch up.
Right now I have to wait the 4 second 100% casting bar on each spell I cast, making buffing alone take much longer!

tl, dr: The big question is why was this feature removed? I never saw anyone annoyed by this and can't think of anything that would make SE remove this... This feature was very useful for me and made my gameplay much more fluid even in lag times. Is it possible to put back? What are the plans about it?

I hope the developer can reply about it,
Thank you.

I agree this feature should not have been removed; combat was smooth and fluent and now it's clunky again.

I agree. Being able to queue my next spell while casting another was EXTREMELY helpful as a caster, and made the combat a much smoother experience. I was shocked that they took it out, and really hope they reconsider.

If they could increase client-side responsiveness a bunch, it would be less of an issue, but I'd still prefer just to have the pre-casting method back simply because it made spell-casting flow so well.

i hope they put it back for 1.19a ¬_¬ the lack of spell queue SUCKS :/

I think something in Rein's thread said they have no interest in making the queueing of spells/skills or bringing it back, but that only the lag between casting would be fixed. Personally this seems like a ridiculous move. I agree with the OP it helped me combat my own personal lag spikes and react faster to sudden damage to the Tank.

I haven't played as my Con yet, but I feel like at least half of the time I'll be watching the damage tick down on our party while my casting emote plays out, waiting for the extra 4 seconds bug to cast another spell. At least by that time my Cure should be ready, as it does have a 5 second cool down.

it is frustrating, especially when you don't know what kind of of group you're playing with, or even when you know your tank has a temper. It's stressful. D:

I prefer it without it. That's spell queueing. It will be much easier once latency goes down, and you aren't able to try and cast a spell until the first one completes.

I liked it better with the queuing, to be honest. It compensates for lag.

English isn't your native language?

You type better than half the people on the internet :P

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Originally Posted by Payneszankio

English isn't your native language?

You type better than half the people on the internet :P

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While it wasn't 100% perfect, I cannot argue this. There's a large number of posts on these boards I can't even read.


On topic, Spell queuing was a nice bandaid fix to a lag issue. This game is still basically in a new beta, so we'll see how it ends up once they're finished with this "Server revamp" they're doing.

I have to concur with the OP.

This is an international game. Unless something magically changes, someone will always be having some form or other of lag issues, be it related to the servers being in distant Japan or their own service being somewhat less reliable.

Being able to queue the next spell ensured that players (myself included) were not disadvantaged as a consequence of the lag. But now, it seems I'm relying on a guess as to whether or not I'm ready to cast a spell or not.

The worst bit is, you can still make the input and without any form of error message. So you may think it was ok to start your next spell, but you don't find out it wasn't until you're realizing that nothing is happening. Things start clogging up, and you get frustrated because that was valuable combat time you could have been making use of to not die in the now harder content.

Something needs to be done. If the queuing is not to be reinstated, then the ability to input in such scenarios needs to at least be visually restricted to make it 100% clear what position your caster is in, regardless of latency. Ironically, the easiest solution to this in my opinion would be to allow a spell queue.

im playing my CON in a leve right now and its rediculous.
while in passive mode, you have to wait for your arm to go back down to your characters side in order to cast your next ability. this is very unnecessary.
maybe we dont need a que, but we should be able to start our next spell right after the charge bar completes for your previous spell. we shouldnt have to wait for the entire animation from start to finish to start our next spell... then on top of it theres that damned server lag.

I would love to know the reason they took it out. It might be a very good/valid reason, or not.

I agree.
It's really frustrating and feels clunky.

I did not like the removal of this feature, I'm still getting used to it and find myself going "wait what, oh yeah I didn't cast a spell, because the game doesn't register the cast if I hit it before I'm done casting the previous spell".....lame.

I fully support the OP on this.

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Originally Posted by Catapult

I have to concur with the OP.

This is an international game. Unless something magically changes, someone will always be having some form or other of lag issues, be it related to the servers being in distant Japan or their own service being somewhat less reliable.

Being able to queue the next spell ensured that players (myself included) were not disadvantaged as a consequence of the lag. But now, it seems I'm relying on a guess as to whether or not I'm ready to cast a spell or not.

The worst bit is, you can still make the input and without any form of error message. So you may think it was ok to start your next spell, but you don't find out it wasn't until you're realizing that nothing is happening. Things start clogging up, and you get frustrated because that was valuable combat time you could have been making use of to not die in the now harder content.

Something needs to be done. If the queuing is not to be reinstated, then the ability to input in such scenarios needs to at least be visually restricted to make it 100% clear what position your caster is in, regardless of latency. Ironically, the easiest solution to this in my opinion would be to allow a spell queue.

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Thank you, this is what I mean, you explain it better than me XD

Got to agree, it feels so much slower. Getting used to it though but still not enjoyable.

This bothers me as well, and not just for magic but for all actions. It's more difficult to get into the rhythm of a combat now. It just doesn't flow smoothly anymore. Instead, I now have to wait until after my "turn" comes up, then try to hit the button as fast as I can; but not too soon... Maybe this is somebody's answer to the complaint that FFXIV isn't a "twitch" game like "modern" MMOs (in fact that it *can't* be, ostensibly because of lag.)

The fact is, FFXIV will never be a "twitch" game because Final Fantasy is not a "twitch" game. Lag doesn't enter into it.

Also, it's kind of funny to hear people now saying the ability to "Ready" the next action helped compensate for lag when previously, people were quoting it as a brazen demonstration of lag...
The ever sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach suggests they removed it for just this reason, but that can't be true... The developers would never rewrite game mechanics just to pander to some whiner... right?

Not "ha ha" funny, but... you know... </sigh>

This change makes it very difficult to excel at playing on the Gamepad... On the keyboard it's not so hard to slam the same number key multiple times until it lets the action through, but with the gamepad you have to manage the cursor. I would say that before 1.19 removed this queue, the gamepad and keyboard were more comparable, now it really feels like I am at a huge disadvantage on the game pad. :/

This is VERY irritating, quite a lot of the time I try to cast then it says I can't, so then I have to attempt it again. It's so clunky and I can't smoothly move from casting Scourge to Banish for example, I have to wait for a few seconds in between. It's ridiculous. And my castbar fills up then I seem to have another few seconds of waiting before it actually does anything.

There is only two things we need.

Something to tell us "Hey you can cast your next spell" and a cast bar that does not have a mind of it's own and has nothing at all to do with what you are casting.

I NEVER take note of the cast bar anymore, there is no need for it since it does not tell you how long a spell is going to take to cast because of a number of bugs nor does it say correctly when a spell is finished casting.

I noticed this and am finding it rather annoying that I have to wait for a spell to completely finish before I can do anything else.

It is also quite annoying that the casting bar doesn't work half the time.

Please add command queuing back into the game. Its removal makes combat more frustrating as you have to time your next action perfectly if you want to perform them as quickly as possible. If you are too early you have to wait a moment to find out or suffer cancellation of the spell.

The old way was certainly better. It was easier for a player to use, and compensated for the lag inherent in the game.

I have to disagree. I play using a controller and I like the feel of battle better without command queuing of any sort. I like it that my actions and spells begin as soon as I enter the command. It makes combat feel much smoother to me. I don't get locked into spell or ability chains; everything I do is an immediate reaction to the current state of the battle.

Rather than a return to queuing, I think it would be better if abilities were temporarily grayed out while performing an action or spell animation. That way it would be easier to know when you can cast, and you would know if you had entered a command too early. Maybe they can't do that right now, since you have to hit the spell button twice to cancel casting. Once they implement ESC key and jump button spell canceling, however, they would probably be able to make that kind of a change.

Optimally, lag in battle needs to be reduced. I feel like the dev team has made progress, but there's still a ways to go. I have faith in this dev team, though. The force is strong in young Yoshida.

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I play using a controller and I like the feel of battle better without command queuing of any sort.

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Either with a controller or without, you'd have to be crazy not to like queuing up actions. By not having queuing, the effective delay between actions is increased, because you can't do another action until the client knows the first one is finished, then you have to send it to the server, so at a minimum, there is a <your ping>ms gap between the last action and the next, and the delay usually ends up being longer because you are incapable of anticipating the end of an action perfectly.

To the layperson: The removal of this feature slows down combat, making it an ironic move considering they want combat to be more fast paced.

This is just more proof that SE doesn't know what the hell they're doing.

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Originally Posted by Maiandra

The fact is, FFXIV will never be a "twitch" game because Final Fantasy is not a "twitch" game. Lag doesn't enter into it.

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Hate to nitpick, but there was an example of having to be twitchy to play: Getting Lulu's ultimate weapon in FF10. I failed that so many times I simply gave up because I didn't have the mental patience to do that 100+ times in a row.

Twitch in a Square game: Getting the 100 Super Jump hits in a single use of the ability in Super Mario RPG- Now THAT's twitch. The timing of the button presses change midway through, so it's really hard to pull it off...

SE. Please let us queue only onr ability. Magic or not. I dont ask for a big queue but one will be great for jobs for sure.

When actvate an action, magic or ability, the animation start and you start to thng what to use imediatly before... So just let us queue one ability, jusT select the next ability while casting or provokng or makng a ws.

Ths a "must"!!!

the problem is mostly the lag between server and character and having to wait for the animations to complete.
if those two things were fixed itd be perfect.

also lets get rid of that pesky sub target... its a bit dated and not very instant.

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Originally Posted by Evenstar

I would love to know the reason they took it out. It might be a very good/valid reason, or not.

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I'm guessing this was messing up animations since you would start a new one before the last one finished and this was a quick way to fix it. I'm really hating it too but i think i got somewhat used it now, just makes combat a lot slower.

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Originally Posted by lenn1

I'm guessing this was messing up animations since you would start a new one before the last one finished and this was a quick way to fix it. I'm really hating it too but i think i got somewhat used it now, just makes combat a lot slower.

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If that indeed is the reason I hope this is a "quick fix" and they will fix it properly at a later date so we can have the queue back.

I can play without it and it is not really a game breaking factor for me personally, but it really makes the battles feel a bit more clunky and slow. They improved the battle speed and reduced the lag problems by a lot, but with this decision they took a step in the wrong direction.

O well, we will see.

Sorry in advance if someone already mentioned this, but: I find it particularily troublesome when it comes to casting Siphon MP on a dead target. As it were, I could queue it after my final attack, but now it's quite hard to get it timed correctly. If I am too fast, the spell doesn't get activated. If I am too slow, the target is no longer available. :/

I am hoping it was only removed because it was glitching something else they added (e.g. the ability to use some actions while in passive mode.) Maybe they just didn't have enough time to debug it for 1.19, so they just took it out in favor of a requested mechanic. I do hope the developers understand that, while not essential (people *will* adapt), it is quite beneficial; and they will attempt to reinstate it, if possible.

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Originally Posted by Leowilde

Sorry in advance if someone already mentioned this, but: I find it particularily troublesome when it comes to casting Siphon MP on a dead target. As it were, I could queue it after my final attack, but now it's quite hard to get it timed correctly. If I am too fast, the spell doesn't get activated. If I am too slow, the target is no longer available. :/

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You can always just press the button (or click on) to use Siphon MP, then tab through targets until you can target the dead body and then hit enter/confirm. That's how I generally use Siphon MP, anyways. I rarely tried to queue up the spell after my last one because sometimes my spells would resist which would annoy me. D:

Unless you were just saying it's annoying because you have to do this extra step now in which, ignore this post. :P

But yeah, overall, I want the queuing option back. It's incredibly annoying now. :(

There is no longer any rhythm to combat. It is sputtered button mashing without the promise that the action you intend to trigger will actually go off. Even when my character has completed the previous action and that actions button was no longer grayed out the next intended action wasn't registering when I first pushed it, it took 2-3 clicks to get it to go.

HOW THE HELL does that improve combat? It's ridiculous, between it and SE elevating crafts to the status of the makers of the best gear in game what's the point in doing either raid? What's the point of doing and combat right now, people may as well all just work on crafting jobs because it's the only thing that matters right now.

um...ya... this is BS right now.
Awesome way Dev team to piss off mages and players in general
by making us completly frustarted trying to heal / cast magic etc.

two words... idiotic change!

- Noomy

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Originally Posted by naaros

You can always just press the button (or click on) to use Siphon MP, then tab through targets until you can target the dead body and then hit enter/confirm. That's how I generally use Siphon MP, anyways. I rarely tried to queue up the spell after my last one because sometimes my spells would resist which would annoy me. D:

Unless you were just saying it's annoying because you have to do this extra step now in which, ignore this post. :P

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Well actually, I haven't tried that. It is indeed more cumbersome than to queue it, but since that's no longer an option anyway, and trying to time the spell often fails, I might well try it. Thanks! :)

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Originally Posted by Leowilde

Well actually, I haven't tried that. It is indeed more cumbersome than to queue it, but since that's no longer an option anyway, and trying to time the spell often fails, I might well try it. Thanks! :)

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Some fool I am. ^^ It was actually easier. Can't believe I haven't done it before.

I'm thinking it may have something to do with the removal of the battle regimen, since it too was a queing system the two may have been tied together. So taking out one meant taking out the other.