Global Cooldown.

It's so lame. I hope the battle changes in the new expansion make it more action oriented or something. I feel like this is a deliberate decision to aid console players.

How is it to aid console players? They can access 32+ actions probably faster than most who use a keyboard.

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Originally Posted by MetatronPrime

It's so lame. I hope the battle changes in the new expansion make it more action oriented or something. I feel like this is a deliberate decision to aid console players.

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I think if they were aiding us: there would be way less actions and a move to cut down the number of offensive actions by 60%.

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Originally Posted by Genaxx

How is it to aid console players? They can access 32+ actions probably faster than most who use a keyboard.

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Actually, problems with latency or lag ae much worse for console players, which does have an effect of slowing down both actions and animations, which can make inputs or actions have an invalid. At least that's what it looks like, but I'm pretty sure it's something else. Mouse and keyboards also have way better up-time and certain actions can be made unavailable to players while moving. Like, the entire d-pad. I'm sorry, but the mouse and keyboard has way more advantages than the controller outside of maybe walking.

From what they've said, the battle changes won't be this drastic. Don't expect a fundamentally different style of play.

I'm a console player and it feels super slow too so don't worry. It's not here to help us.
If they touch it, it would be a reduction of 0.5sec at most

Back in the early steps of 2.0, the developers released the Beta, and its the only real hint we have towards why they decided what they did.

The GCD was 3.5s instead of 2.5s
They were debating on 4.0, 4.5, and 5.0 seconds between attacks.

They mentioned needing to "Quicken" the animations of attacks, in order to fit their animation within just 3.5 seconds.
A lot of attacks that carried over from 1.x were just too long and flashy.

They also had attacks that could take nearly 5 seconds, and back when you pressed the button, the enemy would die, or take dmg. Which makes things weird, to see an enemy fall over dead, then see your character build up power, start their dance, and a big explosion, all on the corpse of an enemy.

So players complained the dmg and effects need to trigger AFTER the animation (Hello benediction/Hallowed Ground) to avoid this constant awkwardness (it really was awkward to be honest)

American Players complained 3.5s was just way too slow, and boring.
Japanese Players complained it was just too fast, as useing chat was impossible between attacks, like they were used to in FFXI for on the fly strategy changes.

So THey felt the GCD was almost a perfect in the middle.
Just long enough to type somewhat, but just quick enough not to bore the NA players.

Eventually they said they would lower the GCD to 3s instead, due to constant complaints.

So they made Weaponskills have a 2.5 GCD and spells have a 3.5 GCD. (PLD spamming flash was soooo slow, you always lost hate by the time u could use flash again)

At some point, i think 2.1 or 2.2 they changed it so spells only took 2.5 to finish the GCD, and yet again, at another later date (no idea when, maybe in the 3.1+ patches) they made most spells finish casting in 2s, rather than 2.5, helping with things like BLM procs, and using oGCDs before the GCD was ready. (Minimizing clipping)

The current system is something thats meant to please as many people as possible, while actually pleasing no one.

But to be honest, I grew to like it, and it has created some gameplay you cant really find in other MMOs, such as the over complicated rotations for some DPS. (Not that I like the rotations, just saying it is different) but for the GCD< i can like it, as its easier on my hands for more than 30mins of play. Any other MMO, my carpal tunnel kicks in too bad (Which i got from 1.5s GCD MMOs needing a button pressed so darn much.)

EDIT: (Forgot to mention i play every MMO with a controller, regardless if it was intended or not, and when it comes to FFXIV, only targeting is nice, the actual way they handle modifier buttons, etc, is actually worse than most. I find WoW easier to use the controller than FFXIV. And playing a class with a GCD of 1s, and a means to lower it, I found no issue using a controller to activate abilities with a controller. (Only issue being tab targetting sucks in all games outside of FFXIV and FFXI)

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

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Most combos in 1.2 took less time to complete than in ARR, let alone the beta. Though the animations were longer than their ARR versions, 1.x had no GCD delay thereafter—just the animation times back to back.

Additionally, during 1.x each strike in the animation dealt damage individually. While it was awkward for the remaining strikes to go off in thin air, this is largely a carry over from 1.0 (not 1.2) where many now-single-target attacks cleaved, which would have reduced player damage if the animation was cancelled early just because the main target died.

This slow shift to having buffs and damage trigger on execution instead of during the animation is... weird. It was one of the things that made the combat in FFXIV so fluid and believable early on, and it looks like they're moving away from that to make rotations more forgiving. I'm not a fan.

But then I also initially held the opinion that the 2.4 DRG changes made the job too easy and lowered the skill floor immensely, but I see why they did that, so hey.

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Originally Posted by MPNZ

Mouse and keyboards also have way better up-time and certain actions can be made unavailable to players while moving. Like, the entire d-pad. I'm sorry, but the mouse and keyboard has way more advantages than the controller outside of maybe walking.

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Curious why does moving suddenly render the dpad unusable. I've been using a controller since 1.0 and I have never found moving to be restrictive in any way. I can cycle targets while I move hit lustrate on a tan while running which is a skill I have on dpad left.

My ninja can stun/silence while moving and that's dpad up.

The only thing I'd say controllers suckling at is targeting alliance members in 24 man

And that'd be fixed if you could macro /target a# or b# to make raising another alliances healer easier

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Curious why does moving suddenly render the dpad unusable. I've been using a controller since 1.0 and I have never found moving to be restrictive in any way. I can cycle targets while I move hit lustrate on a tan while running which is a skill I have on dpad left.

My ninja can stun/silence while moving and that's dpad up.

The only thing I'd say controllers suckling at is targeting alliance members in 24 man

And that'd be fixed if you could macro /target a# or b# to make raising another alliances healer easier

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Same. I dunno, maybe I have big hands, but I regularly use my right thumb to operate the D-pad when moving about, or I just use my index finger to move the thumbstick so I still have my thumb free for the D-pad. That's something that's much harder on a keyboard, because you only have your left hand for walking and hotkeys, and the only way around it is an MMO mouse.

Controllers offer 32 hotbar slots that are immediately accessible without contorting my hands in all sorts of ways to reach that one skill while I'm beelining out of an AoE. They offer 96 more that are accessible with the exact same hand motions, just by hardswitching bars which takes 0.2 seconds once you've got that motion nailed in muscle memory. They offer much finer motion control thanks to the thumbsticks, though I suppose that's arguably not very useful outside of a few situations.

Targeting alliance members, targeting that particular person in a crowd in Idyllshire, and placing waymarks/ground AoEs are just about the only things I can think of where controllers do in fact have a clear disadvantage.

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Originally Posted by seekified

Same. I dunno, maybe I have big hands, but I regularly use my right thumb to operate the D-pad when moving about, or I just use my index finger to move the thumbstick so I still have my thumb free for the D-pad. That's something that's much harder on a keyboard, because you only have your left hand for walking and hotkeys, and the only way around it is an MMO mouse.

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Not really.. Unless you need to be strafing for some reason you can just use the mouse to turn and run forward.

Actually the biggest problem I run into using keyboard and mouse is that modifier keys while moving tend to do wacky things. Specifically Shift will tend to cause me to halt right in my tracks if combined with a movement button. I have absolutely no idea why this happens but it does. I've learned to play around it so that I can still do things like heal people while running, I just have to double move every time I'm going to do something like that (my heals are all on shift-modified keys).

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Originally Posted by Callinon

Actually the biggest problem I run into using keyboard and mouse is that modifier keys while moving tend to do wacky things. Specifically Shift will tend to cause me to halt right in my tracks if combined with a movement button. I have absolutely no idea why this happens but it does. I've learned to play around it so that I can still do things like heal people while running, I just have to double move every time I'm going to do something like that (my heals are all on shift-modified keys).

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You probably have a keyboard that doesn't have full n-key rollover. Pressing certain keys together causes the keyboard to simply not register any other keypresses. N-key rollover is a big selling point on fancier gaming keyboards.

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Originally Posted by seekified

You probably have a keyboard that doesn't have full n-key rollover. Pressing certain keys together causes the keyboard to simply not register any other keypresses. N-key rollover is a big selling point on fancier gaming keyboards.

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Maybe, though it doesn't happen in any other game. This tends to cause me to blame the game rather than the keyboard.