GCD Timers WTH!

So, up all night waiting for the patch to be implemented, and "YAY! Gears of Change!"... Log into the game and OH... MY... GOD!

Don't get me wrong the timers are a good idea... But seriously, what on earth is that hideous white circle crap in every action key pretty much... So, after smacking on a target dummy for 5-10 minutes to see if I could possibly get used to it... Turns out, its so god damn hideous I want to revert back the normal pre-patch settings. looking through all the options to find its a hard-implementation. GG thank you for 1 hideous GCD timer!

Next time when you implement something massively changing in the way of action bars/action keys may be a good idea to actually add the option for not having a disgusting and hideous timer scattered all the way through the action keys.

http://imgur.com/BUj7RPV (ps. thats on a relatively low level character as well, god knows what it would be like on higher character... I didnt wait to find out)

Agreed, the timers should only be for abilities with 30s+ cooldowns.

Do. Not. Want. I haven't even been in game yet & I already have concerns. Reminds me of Dragon Age.

I like them? /shrug

I actually came to the forums hoping someone knew what setting to toggle to change this. If there's not a toggle, it seriously needs to be added. The circle thing makes it almost impossible to tell when my conditional skills have proc'd. That, and they're... pretty ugly. I wonder what the reasoning was for adding this...

After having tested it out on a few jobs I can say that the most painful of all jobs to play with the hotbar change is MNK. Dear Devs, please add a toggle to remove the bright white circle.

I haven't get into the game to test this yet but I'd imagine by the screenshots that the newly introduced timer number are increasingly hard to read against such bright background? They really need to make that optional as much as the numbers, because for any use having them both on must be suffering.

Indeed, while the timers in the bottom corners of abilities are okay-ish (still would prefer the number to be bigger and centered on the icon), the semi-transparent white circles are obnoxious. Suddenly, all my hotbars are a mass of white circles and I can hardly see the icons of the abilities underneath. For me, it's not only confusing, at least for now, but also plain ugly-looking. And the worst part is that there's no option to turn this new feature off :( Hopefully, SE will hear our complaints and at least give us an option to disable the circles. They already added the option to disable timers, so why not the circles? :(

It's not too bad on certain jobs (like SCH & WHM) but for others it will be hellish. I know that my PVP bar annoys me with slowly building skills so dark that it's not that easy to decipher them.

I don't like those circles too....why have you changed that SE? :s

I would really, really like an option to turn the cooldown display back to the way it was. If I came across cooldown displays like this in a new game I was trying out, I wouldn't play it. I'm heavily invested in FFXIV because I've been playing since ARR's launch, so I'm very torn. I cannot see my skills as well, its hard to tell if there has been a proc'd Cure 2 on my WHM, plus its very "frantic" feeling and visually unappealing to me. I hope they give us an option to turn it off.

Please, let us remove the circle, I hate how it looks and it makes it hard for me to see what abilities are on cooldown.

I came here to make this exact thread lol. Yea, I would love an option to disable this.

omg we can't disable the circle? WTH

That ugly white circle makes it hard to see the icon. It makes it hard to see procs. It's icky. Make it go away.

We'd asked for giving us the actual countdown for non-GCD skills, (just like they already do within the tooltips we get from the Actions and Traits window, where it's useless as we won't have that window up during combat). Instead they give us big white circles around the existing clock-swipe. Why?

And why, when they finally (sort of) put the countdown there, do they deliberately make it useless and unreadable. Display it like they already do in Actions & Traits, over the entire icon so we can actually see what it says (but just for off-GCD skills, leave GCD skills the way they were before).

But the thing is, adding an option to disable the timers is a dick move. Like you would want to disable the timers? The timers is a nice feature, the white horrible and hideous circle which are scattered all over the screen which makes it hard to notice combos, proc's, and well, pretty much impossible to actually see any of your actions bars. Until this is sorted, I will refuse to even play this game... A game which was 11/10 in rating in my opinion just went to 1/10 in a matter of seconds! Every other MMO in history added the option to alter the cooldown system when they implemented a new change. WOW, Rift, SW:TOR, EQ2 etc etc etc!

If you could just give us an option to toggle off the white circles, that would be great. It's hard to see the icon underneath.

Another vote for terrible. My crossbar just looks like a mass of white circle crap.

Just give us the option to change it back and everyone can be happy.

I'll be honest and say they work for identifying when a skill is or isn't available. The problem is that it completly blocks out the skill and makes it difficult to identify. At least give us the option to adjust the transparency. I can see me using it but good luck playing on a job that isn't muscle memory

Would be great to have the choice of:

1. Just numbers
2. Numbers (on CDs) and circles on CDs (anything with a recast separate from GCD).
3. Numbers (on CDs) and circles on all recasts.

+ Number text size
+ Adjustable transparency
+ Adjustable color
^ Separately for CDs and weaponskills

The numbers are good, the stupid white circle thing is annoying as hell.

I haven't had a chance to bother w/ 3.2 yet. But the old timer display made it increasingly difficult to tell when timers w/ long cool downs we're still cooling down. A fix was needed. A long time ago.

I'm going to wrap this up under "not really an issue" since the patch just came out and people always complain about any change once it's first implemented. Give it a while.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Laraul

I haven't had a chance to bother w/ 3.2 yet. But the old timer display made it increasingly difficult to tell when timers w/ long cool downs we're still cooling down. A fix was needed. A long time ago.

I'm going to wrap this up under "not really an issue" since the patch just came out and people always complain about any change once it's first implemented. Give it a while.

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Glad I'm not the only one who doesn't care about this kind of thing...

Sometimes visibility adjustments don't go as well as intended. Remember the new ground target images they introduced some few patches back, sharper lines with nearly no area color. While the edge was easy to identify it was hard to tell if you were inside or outside if you didn't see the total whole graph. They reworked that later to give back the area coloring so now they are usable again.

I agree with other posters here. As it is now, the timers are detrimental to visibility. They do show the cooldown marvelously but actually do cover the skill icon. Also people see brightness differently. I had no any trouble to see the old CD style, the brightness difference was more than sufficient to show it to me. But blob of white actually looks like blob of white because it's too bright and bleeds around.


Suggested fixes:
Be able to adjust the transparency of the new CD graphic, even to invisibile if preferred. I would propably use it somewhere about 30% of the transparency now.

Give us a way to adjust the minimum time that incurs the CD graphic. My preference would be 5 seconds, For skill bar with a lot of skills that are on GCD, simply the big white blob coming up and down to whole bar on each GCD makes it blinking like christmas lights.

People see differently, and one person's improvement can be another's detriment. That's why especially acts towards improving visibility should have ways to adjust them.

I still really hate this, it ironically makes it harder for me to see what's on cooldown and cooldown status. I don't care what you have to do to make it toggleable. Please make it toggleable.

Ideally, give us two configurable options: which cooldown indicator we want on GCD skills and which cooldown indicator we want on off-GCD skills. (This new version wouldn't be so bad if it were limited to the later, which were the only ones that had a visibility issue before.)

The circles make abilities on cool down much easier to see so I like the option. That said, they are kind of pointless on GCD abilities since we know those abilities will be free every global.

Due to this, the only suggestion I would make is that the new circle + timer animation only be used on oGCD abilities (since these are the only ones with separate timers anyway) and revert GCD abilities to their pre-3.2 animation.

The reason for making a change in the first place was the difficultly in making out the difference between "available" and "soon to be available" on some of the longer cooldowns. With GCD skills, however, by the time the pre-3.2 cooldown indicator became just a thin dark sliver, the global cooldown was already close enough to allow for advance queuing of your next skill anyway.

In fact, the new version, which is specifically designed to point out when it's *really* done rather than almost done, may tend to discourage clicking skills before the GCD finishes, so people may lose that advance queuing advantage. Whereas before our main skills would be 2.5 seconds apart (modified for Skill/Spell Speed), now that may become 2.5 seconds + reaction time + lag time apart for a lot of players.

Please give us option to toggle this on/off. Thank you.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Atomisk

The numbers are good, the stupid white circle thing is annoying as hell.

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qft , OPTIONS please ! bigger CD numers w/o circle is what i wanted D: