Option to Remove the Circle Image on Skill CD

[Reinha]

The perfect solution has been suggested back in 2013. It boggles my mind that they still don't get the hint. Here is the opening post to a great thread. The third bar shown combines clockswipe motion and big numbers, making it look intuitive and accurate at the same time. They could even put a clockswipe behind the countdown. Please fix it SE. I'll give up idle camera, autoattack marker and group pose to free up memory for this.

I would like the option to have numbers displayed for all abilities on the hotbar to make it easier to know when the ability will actually become available. As it is right now, the clockswipe doesn't actually tell me when a skill will be ready, only that it isn't available and it'll eventually be ready.

Another issue with the clockswipe is that on certain abilities, Raging Strikes being the prime suspect, whenever the ability is close to becoming available, the clockswipe becomes indistinguishable and the ability looks like it's actually ready when in fact it still has 10 secs or left to go. The numbers for cooldowns already exist ingame as we can see when we hover our mouse over the skill:



I would like something similar to the below picture. Top hotbar is how it is currently, middle hotbar is the option I would like to see implemented. The third hotbar shows how GCD skills keep the clockswipe while long cooldown skills use numbers.



FFXIV 1.0 had the numerical cooldowns along with clockswipe as well.


Edit: Adjusted the image a bit.
Edit2: Added 1.0 image

Personally, I find the circles raaather obnoxious.

I don't know about you guys, but my attention tends to be instinctively drawn towards things that move and things that are bright, something I'm probably not all alone with, considering modern age advertisements like to use bright flashing lights to draw attention and most games darken skills on cooldown.

That said, I'm okay with circles on principle - but make them dark circles. As it is, skills on cooldown draw more innate attention than skills that aren't and that is, uh...a little bittle counterintuitive.

You are not alone with it, but the reason we are drawn to bright moving things isn't because of advertising. It's vice versa: the reason why advertisements have bright moving things are because we are naturally drawn to it. Test with any baby. To draw our attention with 20 white circles when we can't use them is stupid. Just look at the hotbar in the picture I quoted. What do you look at first? I would expect the brighter colorful icons, which is good because they are the ones available.

[Zojha]

You are not alone with it, but the reason we are drawn to bright moving things isn't because of advertising.

I didn't mean to imply that, but thanks for clarifying either way :P

[Mykll]

I'll give up idle camera, autoattack marker and group pose to free up memory for this.

Yeah who exactly needed that auto-attack marker? Is the enemy in combat? What extremely rare circumstances do we need to know that an enemy fighting us is currently NOT auto-attacking?

Who exactly needed the extra clutter of "Market Prohibited" on the bottom of item specs, when up top we already have UNTRADABLE"? 100% of Untradable items should be Market Prohibited. And if you can trade it, you should be able to market it. otherwise, individual items need to be updated.

Yeah seems like some wasted memory by the way they programmed the UI and things added we don't really need or ever asked for.

You can revert back to the old hotbar cool down timer graphic by simply unchecking the following...

That only changes the little number counting down, not the circles.

[Rowyne]

Who exactly needed the extra clutter of "Market Prohibited" on the bottom of item specs, when up top we already have UNTRADABLE"? 100% of Untradable items should be Market Prohibited. And if you can trade it, you should be able to market it. otherwise, individual items need to be updated.

^I can't like this enough! When I read the prelim patch notes, I definitely had WTF-face. Is 'Untradeable' not enough clarification that it can't be sold on the market board? Please, make sure my coffee lid says, "Caution, contents HOT"!

[Bebekurenai]

Yeah who exactly needed that auto-attack marker? Is the enemy in combat? What extremely rare circumstances do we need to know that an enemy fighting us is currently NOT auto-attacking?

Actually, that new autoattack marker is for when WE are engaged. Not like we already have a big circle marker on the target to tell us we are autoattacking... And to make things less useful, one would think this new addition works when soft-targetting other monsters, but nope. So it's just a dupicated marking which is occupying a memory slot they could use for what they say they can't o_O

Edit:
I've tested it today cause I was curious if it really was something useless or if I misunderstood it. I was doing the level 15 archer quest on my alt kitty (where you have to fight a load of ixali together with that elf npc in north shroud) and I had a bunch of them hitting me. It only marked the one I was hitting with that marker, the rest had none. And yes, all of them were autoattacking me.

[Mykll]

I've tested it today cause I was curious if it really was something useless or if I misunderstood it. I was doing the level 15 archer quest on my alt kitty (where you have to fight a load of ixali together with that elf npc in north shroud) and I had a bunch of them hitting me. It only marked the one I was hitting with that marker, the rest had none. And yes, all of them were autoattacking me.

Well, ok. That is a little different. But, eh, still seems duplicated especially if you are in range and are able to auto-attack (unlike the BRD and MCH stances which don't auto-attack). Next time I am out I am going to have to get on one of those jobs, turn on the stance, and see if it changes that little indicator.

But aside from that, if you are in range (be it melee or BRD/MCH) and are in a stance that allows auto-attack, I don't see the situational times you need to know that. Yeah there are times when you tab through targets and you do not want to auto-attack the wrong one (non-aggroed group behind what you are fighting, something that is rooted, or asleep) but by the time you tab to those targets, the auto-attack already did its thing. And yeah I wish they would properly fix tab targeting.

So while that is interesting testing, and nice clarification, and I may do more later on, I am still failing to see why they gave very strict resources to this seemingly useless UI piece.

[Bebekurenai]

Well, ok. That is a little different. But, eh, still seems duplicated especially if you are in range and are able to auto-attack (unlike the BRD and MCH stances which don't auto-attack). Next time I am out I am going to have to get on one of those jobs, turn on the stance, and see if it changes that little indicator.

But aside from that, if you are in range (be it melee or BRD/MCH) and are in a stance that allows auto-attack, I don't see the situational times you need to know that. Yeah there are times when you tab through targets and you do not want to auto-attack the wrong one (non-aggroed group behind what you are fighting, something that is rooted, or asleep) but by the time you tab to those targets, the auto-attack already did its thing. And yeah I wish they would properly fix tab targeting.

So while that is interesting testing, and nice clarification, and I may do more later on, I am still failing to see why they gave very strict resources to this seemingly useless UI piece.

Yeah exactly, why add something that we already have (which coincidentally already worked better anyways and didn't need a "fix") and clutter the target bar even more? And then they give excuses on how they cant implement what we ask for cause the ui memory is already full.