The problem with "Instant OFF GCD" abilities makes combat feel less rewarding.

[Silverwalk]

Figures. We are playing the finished game

[Benjamen]

Wasn't even worth rebuilding ARR when its going to end up with similar numbers to 1.0.

I think people are over exaggerating o.O

[thenewzero]

I think they should just ditch the gcd altogether. I don't recall FFXI having it and I loved how things worked. Different spells had different cast times and that was it. I remember using things like chainspell which would basically be impossible in the current system.

Just because the "GCD" didn't display doesn't mean there wasn't one. There were animation times that basically functioned as variable GCDs. You couldn't activate an ability, weapon skill, *and* start casting a spell all at the same time., or if you were a SAM under Meikyo Shisui you couldn't activate 3 weapon skills at exactly the same time even though you had the TP for it. Some stuff, like Sneak Attack, could be activated at *almost* the same time as a Weapon Skill, basically functioning as "off the GCD" abilities. You also had to wait a few seconds after finishing one spellcast to begin another.

Just because there were no icons that greyed out doesn't mean there wasn't a global cooldown. It just wasn't static and depended on what you were doing. A GCD is just something that prevents you from using multiple actions at the exact same moment.

Can you imagine how completely impossible this game would be to balance, especially PvP, if an Archer or a Lancer could activate 4 or 5 Weapon Skills at the same time? Not only would that pretty much void all the awesome animations they put in the game, but it would absolutely insane burst damage. It would also be really stupid if an optimal rotation required you to activate multiple Weapon Skills at the exact same time.

[Silverwalk]

It just seems like they didn't finish working out how GCD, animations and instant abilities would work together. During beta there was a ton of feedback on this but nothing changed in the release and now it's "working as intended".

This along with the 300ms built-in lag seems to me like something that should have been worked out in the first year of development. Yoshi is a hard-core PvP'er, I wonder how happy he is with the result as a player himself.

[Meimei]

Why am I getting flashbacks to the responses the FFXI forums get...?

[Kraggy]

If other MMO's can do it right i don't see why this one can't

Because all games have to work like WOW, right?

[Snorgrind]

i like animation lockdowns much more than doing 6 skills instantly with bugged animations like in rift where you could as melee use 6 off GCD skills at once, melee combat looked and felt so bad for me there that i played mage because of that.

[Fenwick]

Fighting against the controls is never a good way to instill difficulty, it's just annoying.

[Dano]

Hello,

Based on the way the game was designed, and also taking into account the current level of difficulty, the development team has no plans to change the timing in which non-global cool down actions can be used, and would like players to take this into consideration when forming strategies.

generic respond is generic :/

[Ricky]

You have a lot of good points but the Chimera example is funny, you have 90-120 minutes to kill him don't you? So when it's your turn to interrupt, don't use long animation abilities