Its ffxiv combat really so slow and boring?

[Marxam]

I think a better way to describe the combat is "disconnected". My hits have no physics to them and attacks happen after the aoe circles disappear so you can actually stand in the attack animation as long as you were out of the aoe before it disappeared. Other than that, the combat is decently fast and with certain buffs and certain classes you will be pressing buttons all the time. DRK, NIN, MCH, BRD and AST come to mind.

[MicahZerrshia]

The slowness of combat has a lot to do with the combat itself, how static it is and how my artificial difficulty they put in. And by that I mean things like dps checks, this is not difficulty, this is artificial difficulty and it is used heavily in ffxiv. So, it does feel slow compared to other mmos and esp slow compared to single players.

Even ESO and GW2 feel super fast in comparison since they also incorporate roll dodging, blocking and what not. I find myself using only my mouse to battle sometimes unless I have to side step a red circle on the ground. And even then I can often eat chips with one hand because I know "Boss A just did this, I can now play using only my mouse til he does this is 2 minutes or he doesn't do anything that hurts bad enough to constitute a dodge" Can't do that in ESO or GW2, nor can I just sit and watch Netflix while only paying 25% of my attn to the game because of muscle memory and because I know there is nothing important to watch for. Even overworld mobs in other games have more dynamic combat systems than some bosses in ffxiv.

SE makes combat feel more difficult with procs, dmg buffs you need to upkeep and sometimes positioning, but these are all forms of artificial difficulty, esp when they are as excessive as they are in ffxiv. You should never spend a fight managing procs, you should spend it engaging an enemy. The more you need to stare at your hotbars the less complex combat is and the less engaging it feels. Again, the combat feels slower due to the way combat is designed moreso than actual time.

tldr
It feels slow because most the time you stand still, there is very little need for movement, too much time spent managing blinking lights and the GCD is a little longer so you add both these things up and you get combat that at least feels slower than it is.

[TalithaSolarien]

Even ESO and GW2 feel super fast in comparison since they also incorporate roll dodging, blocking and what not. I find myself using only my mouse to battle sometimes unless I have to side step a red circle on the ground. And even then I can often eat chips with one hand because I know "Boss A just did this, I can now play using only my mouse til he does this is 2 minutes or he doesn't do anything that hurts bad enough to constitute a dodge" Can't do that in ESO or GW2, nor can I just sit and watch Netflix while only paying 25% of my attn to the game because of muscle memory and because I know there is nothing important to watch for. Even overworld mobs in other games have more dynamic combat systems than some bosses in ffxiv.

I don't know about GW2 but ESOs boss fights are as scripted as they are in our game. They just appear more dynamics as the GCD and telegraph/cast/reaction times are way shorter then in FF14. These short reaction times (which were implemented more often in later content) were one of the reasons why I went over to this game.

Adding dynamic/random mechanics is very difficult to do if you want the game to be fair. Just consider the tank cooldown which are short lived, limited and on a long cooldown. If you have a boss encounter where the boss suddenly (RNG) throws 5 tank busters in a row at a tank most players will consider this a very unfair fight.

[kikix12]

Adding dynamic/random mechanics is very difficult to do if you want the game to be fair. Just consider the tank cooldown which are short lived, limited and on a long cooldown. If you have a boss encounter where the boss suddenly (RNG) throws 5 tank busters in a row at a tank most players will consider this a very unfair fight.

It's actually easier than you think. Final Fantasy single player games are an example of where it is done.

Instead of random "do any of these actions at % of chance" you have rounds. Every round there is % chance of doing one of selected few actions. That means that their POWER will not go overboard (no consecutive tank busters or consecutive hard-hitting room-wide AoE's), while the way to deal with them will vary.

Alternatively a fully random skill use CAN be used...by giving the monster skills a cooldown. Used a tank buster?! It's out of the equation for the next minute and a half, but it may be used then or a minute later.

Those two can be combined too.

Right now I think there are some battles where the first option is available and I think that full-on random with cooldowns is utilized for the Stone Vigil (Hard) boss (or whatever dungeon have that overgrown lizard that clones himself). At least I've never seen him use two of the harder hitters consecutively...I may be wrong though (either in its randomness or the cooldowns being there).

[Risvertasashi]

Alternatively a fully random skill use CAN be used...by giving the monster skills a cooldown. Used a tank buster?! It's out of the equation for the next minute and a half, but it may be used then or a minute later.

More or less how T5 worked. Same guy designed Ramuh EX and Mog EX. And apparently he'll be designing a few more fights for FF14 at some point so maybe we'll get a bit more of this.

[Kirsten_Rev]

I don't know about GW2 but ESOs boss fights are as scripted as they are in our game. They just appear more dynamics as the GCD and telegraph/cast/reaction times are way shorter then in FF14. These short reaction times (which were implemented more often in later content) were one of the reasons why I went over to this game.

Adding dynamic/random mechanics is very difficult to do if you want the game to be fair. Just consider the tank cooldown which are short lived, limited and on a long cooldown. If you have a boss encounter where the boss suddenly (RNG) throws 5 tank busters in a row at a tank most players will consider this a very unfair fight.

As others have pointed out, there are ways this can be done. The vast majority of RPGs - including all the single-player FF titles that I've played - do not operate on 100% predetermine scripts. FFXI, for that matter, also featured unscripted monster attacks. Did that mean you sometimes had a Goblin dropping a suicide bomb at 90% HP, or a bee deciding to Final Sting at high HP? Sure. Them's the breaks. It lent value to Stun, and smart mages would keep a very close eye on the monster until it dropped below the 'danger zone' HP, just to make sure the move was interrupted.

I'd also point out that the goal of combat isn't so much to be fair or unfair - it's to be interesting. If interesting and dynamic combat comes at the expense of occasionally-nasty move sequences, it's still a trade worth making. Diablo 3 is a good example of this: because 'boss' packs of monsters are randomly generated, it's perfectly possible to run into 3-4 in a small space of time, and get ganged up on by multiple groups with nasty base monster types and horrific attributes. Were this to be eliminated, though, the game would become terribly predictable, and vastly less entertaining than it is now. Sometimes good experiences require events that make most players scream profanities into their monitor - and then pick up the controller and try again.

[Rhysati]

Higher global cooldown is also to alleviate PING issues, thus making the game more accessible across the world. To give an example...

There is an action MMORPG where cooldown is virtually non-existent. It's literally in tenths of a second. A person that is close to the servers can do up to 30 strikes when a person further away can do only...20. Seeing as that game is rather heavy on combat control with short but numerous stuns, knockbacks, airlocks etc, but also on immunity frames, it makes it literally impossible, regardless of skill level, for a very large part of the community to have any actual success in the game. Not only is it nearly impossible to use immunity frames when they are half-second long AT BEST (or less) in PvE (and you're never going to be able to choose what you gain immunity against in PvP since by the time it'll trigger the opponent may be able to use three or so attacks), but it's also virtually impossible to do any damage when you are stun-locked simply because by the time the previous stun goes down, you are stunned twice again since that's the time it took for your client to recognize the stun ended...and the server already did ban any further skills due to a new stun already in place.

When the global cooldown is 2-2,5sec, the difference in PING is far lower. As a result the TECHNICAL ceiling is no more than 10% different. That means that mostly everyone have a CHANCE at every piece of content, even if some have advantages due to PING. Since the floor is set at 2,5sec, the PvE enemies don't need to be so punishing either. As a result a player with high ping can still do them with similar efficiency. Really, the bigger problem is with instances that have too many players (Eureka, the Rising event zone) which is largely on the servers and game engines side (poor culling where enemies and/or their AoEs are not visible while random out of party players are plastered on the screen, anyone?!).

I'm sorry, but I don't buy this at all. Other games without super long GCDs like this operate just fine. Hell, there is a game like Planetside 2 where you have mass-pvp with hundreds of players in one spot and they can manage bullet fire and projectile spam. You mean to tell me that an MMORPG in 2018 needs 2.5 seconds to figure out that someone pressed a single keystroke while other games out there have people flying around on jetpacks, dropping bombs, firing at people on the move, etc? Come on now.

Even if you don't use that example you can just look at WoW. Been around for a decade and a half and has never had problems like that. It's nonsense.

[Aerlana]

*snip*

It stay a gameplay question and not aesthetic.

I dont give my opinion about the boringness of the gameplay. Because yes i feel it. I dont want to be the number 23723 to say "boriiiing" but i also dont want the easy way "look at wow with 1 second less on GCD, and the hast (spell/skillspeed) growing faster (so even more GCD reduction). Mainly because i dont thing it is the only way to solve this "boring" matter.

I love wow, as i love BDO, as i love BNS gameplay also. I am globally an easy customer not hard to make me happy in fact. (and FFXIV, a game i have so much hope in fail to it ^^" ) I want FFXIV to define his own way to be a MMORPG with tab targetting system.

A way (close to what you say) would be to insist more to an important "decision making" : choosing the right skill at the good time. Where BNS/BDO are action RPG, and wow get a faster gameplay (with priority system) we could have FFXIV getting a slower gameplay (without going a turn system like dofus) where the matter is clearly "not mistaking the skill you choose".

It is a way, there are probably man others. I prefer for this Say "hey dev team, there is a problem here" and let the professionnal they are find the solution they prefer work on. they are a really heavy team to do brainstorming... Ideas are not the matter i think.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I'd just like to ask people who play other MMOs how "build-based" systems are better than this. Because, from what I've heard of these "build-based" MMOs like WoW (which you get one class per character and from what I've heard you have to uproot everything to re-build), if you are not the optimal build people refuse to play with you essentially.

Build based systems are superior (IMO) if they're well designed/thought out, but if they aren't there are issues that muddy the waters.

Your WoW example is nothing more than a hyperbole though. I pick whatever talents I want and I do some of the hardest content in the game, successfully. No one kicks me, I get invited to pugs no problem, and do organized events with no one telling me how to play.

WoW does have less freedom to switch around roles/class than FF14 does, and that is a strength in FF14s column for sure, but it's not completely uproot. A lot of content is account bound in that if you unlock XYZ on your main, it's automatically unlocked for any and all alts and each class has multiple specs you can switch between on a single character. Again, still more restricting than FF14, but not some crime people make it out to be.

FFXIV is meant to be the pace its at so you can think about your rotation and avoid mechanics instead of mashing attacks out every half second. Plus, they already stated that the faster they made GCD the more they'd need to curtail the beautiful animations of the spells and effects. WoW's animations are crap because they need to dissipate before the next GCD. FFXIV prides itself on being a visually stunning experience. But yeah, mashing out hotkeys while dodging attacks would make FFXIV almost feel like a fighting game or an action game than an RPG.

Think about your rotation? I don't understand why people always cite this as a reason for the 2.5s GCD. If you're "thinking" about your rotation you're already playing sub-optimally. It should be muscle memory ESPECIALLY with how binary 99% of the rotations are.

While FF14 has absolutely beautiful animations, better than WoWs for sure (which are not nearly as awful as the game has gotten older), I'm not sure it has to do with the GCD TBH.

Quicken the GCD and it makes each individual GCD feel less impactful. When you're casting Flare/Deathflare or whatever [insert huge damge GCD] much faster than you are currently, they feel less important than "ive been building up to this huge attack for 30 seconds, time to unleash it!" vs "i can do this move every 10 seconds, no biggie".

So by this statement if you were to increase GCD to 5s would it make them MORE impactful?

That's absolute hogwash. None of these GCDs feel impactful in this game because they're binary. They don't do anything fancy, they just do damage. They don't have much if any synergy. They're simply mash on CD with next to no decision process elements.

I'm talking about PING, not a specific persons point of view.

And I'm sorry. You are objectively, factually incorrect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qwaz_aAih-A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meDtc3QqQeI

Say that when you start playing on the high-ping side (like, 300-400 PING). You most likely never tried that. Go ahead and try playing the likes of Titan (it's Weight of the Land is particularly nasty) on a Japanese or European server. Can you do it?! Yes, absolutely. But you'll see how much worse you will do simply because of PING difference. In a game that is made to minimize that.

And don't tell me that I could just play on European servers. I could, but if I would, I'd never even start playing. I came here upon a friends invite and that friend was playing on NA servers...starting early on in 2.0 I believe. It's simply not a choice.

It is a choice. You made the decision to sacrifice significant performance to play with friends (and I get and respect that). I'm going to say something that might ruffle some feathers, but with all due respect, you shouldn't be catered too. I don't think anyone should be designing systems with the idea of having people from the other side of the planet into account until infrastructure is there to support it. It's a stupid limitation to put on yourself. It's why every major game puts servers in major areas to mitigate this. If you have 300ms to an NA server you don't belong there. Simply put.

Your BNS examples are hardly what I consider egregious btw (20% slower speed fro 8ms to 160ms). Again, if you had 300-400MS on BNS NA you don't belong on that server. Simple as that. Find one closer.

[Aerlana]

Think about your rotation? I don't understand why people always cite this as a reason for the 2.5s GCD. If you're "thinking" about your rotation you're already playing sub-optimally. It should be muscle memory ESPECIALLY with how binary 99% of the rotations are.

Missed this non-sense when i did answer... ty ^^'
Also, we could have a gameplay where we really have to think about the next skill. But yes you are right, the rotations on FFXIV are so simple and obvious (reading clearly each skill and you already understand the rotation without any guide...)

While FF14 has absolutely beautiful animations, better than WoWs for sure (which are not nearly as awful as the game has gotten older), I'm not sure it has to do with the GCD TBH.

WoW melee animation are mainly basic hit. not long work. For cast animation, on the last years they did work on all classes, and i really like most of new work (mainly the healing spell of the priests <3)
And casting animation are more worked than the melee (instant) mainly because large part are really limited by 1,5 sec or more (depending of cast time)

if you shorten the GCD of FF from 2.5 to 1.5, you have to do animation staying in those 1,5 seconds... It is a real reason, but... When you fill the game is boring, it can be as beautiful as the most beautiful thing in the world... it stays boring (at least... we have time to see those animation :-° )
Prefer "crap" animation and not sleeping while pushing buttons personnaly (and... FF as nice animation, with some of them making really strange moves to character... so not so wonderfull...)