Abilities can't be used till animation ends.

[Roris]

Except some people keep taking it so personal for whatever reason and thinking it's a direct attack to the mechanics and the way the combat system works. I mean sure some people would rather have a much faster GCD or just faster or slower combat or more action or more tactical or whatever, but that's not the case that's being argued here.

The main issue here is responsiveness and input feedback, an instant skill or pretty much any action should fire off or start casting the exact moment a key is pressed, no excuses and no delay, if they don't want it to be instant and fire off exactly when it's used then put a cast bar and timer on it, problem solved. It's also silly how some keep repeating how skillful it is to predict stuff when there are a couple of things you can't predict like crits and Awareness only lasts for so long, spike damage, or even something like the tank accidentally getting hit by an AoE for whatever reason even if some people would rather go "well maybe that baddie shouldn't get hit, I'm not going to do my job and waste my emergency heal on him, it's his job to dodge stuff" or "well maybe that baddie should have healed me faster, I'm not going to do my job and waste my emergency cooldowns, it's his job to heal me" than get the underlying issue with responsiveness fixed in the first place.

[Riv]

I think it's fine.

[Stormblossom]

I think Roris kinda nailed it on the head here. Is it a 'twitch action based game'? Of course not, and I don't expect it to be. Everquest 1 wasn't a twitch action based game either, yet the controls were more responsive than FFXIV: ARR's are, because if a skill wasn't allowed to be used, it was greyed out and you couldn't use it, and if you were allowed to use it, you could push the key and it would either start casting without spontaneously interrupting itself because the client and server got into some kind of cooldown disagreement, or go off instantly if it were a zero-cast-time ability.

Am I referencing a different game? Yes. Am I saying "I want it because that game had it!" not so much. I want it because it's counter-intuitive to have abilities that say they have a casting time of 'instant' that are not on the global cool down still be locked out by other abilities, full stop. The problem with GCD abilities screwing up when the client and server disagree about your ability to use said ability (instead of say just queuing the ability and firing it when it actually becomes available) is not me wanting something because another game had it, it's me commenting that the gameplay doesn't feel smooth because it isn't. On many intense battles I'm fighting as hard against the UI (Mashing skills repeatedly to ensure they actually DO go off and not start casting and then self-interrupt, trying to get my 'instant' cast abilities to trigger when an animation or invisible cooldown is preventing their activation) as I am fighting the actual encounter.

As I posted before, these are not game-breaking for me. I actually DO enjoy the game in its current design, so it is not a "needed" change in terms of it being possible to have fun with the game, but it is an example of the game lacking polish in places where it should be easy to put it on. Add a visible indicator of the 1 second skill lockout on my non GCD abilities so I know when they are unavailable, and make damn sure it's tied to a fixed timer and not the animation of the skill I threw previously and do likewise with off-cooldown abilities, add ability queuing to GCD skills so the server and client having a brief communication hiccup doesn't result in screwing up my attack rotations if I fail to notice it. These are tiny tiny quality of life adjustments that don't seriously impact the game balance as it currently stands, but immensely improve how the gameplay feels, which will attract and hold more customers.

[Luso]

This is a very annoying aspect of the game. Animation locks really can wipe a group sometimes and I've seen it happen before. I don't think square is planning on changing this.

[Sikkun]

Thank you stormblossom I think people fail to read what we are saying before they /rant. While Hallowed Ground being an instant cast would be great im not demanding make it instant. We are saying if its 3 seconds have a cast bar then, do not call it instant cast. I should NEVER EVER have an ability on my hotbar that is not GRAYED out that I cant click. If you want to give everything a cast time fine...gray the bar out. I hear over and over on fights like ADS and turn 2 "i hit silence" and I believe they hit it. I may have hit it 6 times myself at no point should my silence be non grayed out and not be able to be hit. That is not intuitive at all. Its just frustrating.

[Davionx]

It's an intended feature of this game to be less responsive than an mmo from 1999

[Fayto]

Thank you stormblossom I think people fail to read what we are saying before they /rant. While Hallowed Ground being an instant cast would be great im not demanding make it instant. We are saying if its 3 seconds have a cast bar then, do not call it instant cast. I should NEVER EVER have an ability on my hotbar that is not GRAYED out that I cant click. If you want to give everything a cast time fine...gray the bar out. I hear over and over on fights like ADS and turn 2 "i hit silence" and I believe they hit it. I may have hit it 6 times myself at no point should my silence be non grayed out and not be able to be hit. That is not intuitive at all. Its just frustrating.

You are confusing not being able to cast with a cast time. The ability casts instantly, the effect(in the case of Hallowed Ground)may not be instant but the cast itself is. Only way you can interrupt Hallowed Ground is if you die.

[Davionx]

This game does not respond on par with mmo's made over 10 years ago.

You can argue semantics all you like, but the game does not respond to abilities being used as it should.

[Sikkun]

You are confusing not being able to cast with a cast time. The ability casts instantly, the effect(in the case of Hallowed Ground)may not be instant but the cast itself is. Only way you can interrupt Hallowed Ground is if you die.

No, both are possible. Many times I have had to click hallowed ground or any of my other abilities off gcd multiple times because the game will not let it start until a previouse animation is finished.

Then I'm indicating that ability descriptions do not match there cast time. Instant cast should equal instant effect, if not why bother calling it instant? Its really fast cast time. That just gets confusing, I spent a good chunk of the game repeatedly hitting keys thinking the game was broke because they won't go off while lit up. Simply changing descriptions and adding a action bar would keep the game exacly the same but stop you from mashing stuff the game is indicating you can use.

[Atma_Weapon]

I think there should be special exceptions for certain abilities off the GCD, to override animation locking, such as Elusive jump which is made useless 90% of the time because of animation locking. But other than those few exceptions, it's not a real concern outside of pvp.