Its ffxiv combat really so slow and boring?

[kikix12]

Not a misunderstanding, I know you're not asking for it, but you are defending it. What I was saying is I believe that SE made a bad decision. One that contributes to the hamstringing the game currently suffers from. No right or wrong answer here really. Merely discussing the weight of the pros/cons.

There is a "business practice". Either they continue on doing what they did or they start again doing things differently. It's not me defending the notion. It's me stating that from a business perspective, telling players that they're no longer allowed to play in the way that they advertised because they changed their opinion is the worst possible thing to do. If they want to "fix" that issue, they should say goodbye to FFXIV and start a new MMO with a different approach. Seeing as FFXIV earns tons of money...it's clear which they'll choose, right?! Especially since the slower combat is actually something that many people LIKE, and not because of PING. If my PING was 30-50, I'd enjoy it EVEN MORE. That's why I actually like turn-based games which are even "slower".

Using the word playable is a tricky as it's highly subjective.

Not really. Playable is strictly technical term. If you can do every content in the game provided you have a reasonable amount of skills, without the game preventing you from playing the game too much (frequent lag spikes, freezes, crashes), it's playable. It does not need to be fully enjoyable to be playable. Those are two completely different terms and different scales. That's why FIFA is playable even though I wouldn't want to play it...because it sucks in my opinion. At 200 PING you can do every content in the game if you have the skills. You must be that few percent better than others to clear it, but it's
still within reason. So it is playable.

Not quite a direct parallel. Because the combat can be offset by other mitigating factors (i.e. I like the raids, the nostalgia, the job identities, msq, gfx, music, etc.). A netcode decision (200ms buffer) does what exactly?

I already said what the long cooldown does. It makes the time needed for server and client to communicate a smaller percentage of the "inactivity time", therefore the severity of it is lowered. Look at it like this.
Let's assume that a player adds exactly 200ms to every action they take when playing two games. One with 200ms cooldowns and one with 2000ms cooldowns.

0,2sec cooldown gives you a skill every 0,4sec. This actually depends slightly on game, seeing as what's relevant is how the synchronization works, but the concept stays the same, just %'s change. So let's simplify it. It's simply important for both to be counted the same way.
In 22sec you get to use your skill 55 times, while a person with 0 PING...110 times. That's doing half as many actions, dealing half as much damage. And that may be the difference between an easy fight and an impossible fight. And this doesn't even take into consideration the defensive side, like dodging, which would be tuned around 0,2 cooldown. If you are half as effective in attack, it's very likely that you are unable to do any dodging, otherwise a person with low PING would have no challenge.

2sec cooldown gives you a skill every 2,2sec. That's 10 skills. A person with 0 PING will do...11. That's only one skill more. That's a smaller difference than between someone bad and someone average. That means that you are also able to dodge attacks, since they need to give leeway for some of the poorer players.


Can you become a "top-dog"?! Not really. Unless you're one of those super-geniuses that are so far ahead that even elites can't compete with you. But you CAN be one of those elites.