Global Countdown Timer - My big concern for the future on FFXIV.

[Zezlar]

Hello everyone, something i've been pondering on for awhile now is something that I find truly troubling for the future of this game and that is Global Countdown Timers (GCT). This is an issue that I haven't seen spoken about in a really long time due to the flood of grass, jumping, and alpha invite threads. Let me start off by saying I am NOT in the Alpha, and everything I speak about here will be based off what I have seen in the Letter from the Producer videos.

So what exactly is the GCT? Essentially as it currently stands there is a 3 second cool down on every single weapon-skill and spell that you have. Say you cast Cure, you can't do anything else besides auto attack or use an ability for 3 seconds.

That doesn't seem so alarming right? Yeah, it really is as it currently stands. In the videos you roughly can see that outside of battle you can gain TP relatively quickly upwards of over 150-200 a tick (approx. 3 seconds like in XIV) it seemed. That's not alarming considering that they do want every battle to start with max TP. I'm alright with that.

However what I find concerning is that when in battle you gather roughly 50 or so TP a tick (again approx. 3 seconds). So after you blow all of your TP from the start of battle (if the mob is even still alive) it would take 1 minute to regain full 1,000 TP points. Considering that all spells and weapon skills are on the same exact timer what is there to do besides maybe start off with a debuff, and then spam your best weapon skill over and over again. Auto attacks are essentially worthless besides little hits of damage. They do not generate TP since that now is done automatically.

Certain abilities like Keen Flurry become useless because the GCD is low already.
One can make the argument that we do this currently in 1.0 which is true to some extent. However everything we did in 1.0 has basically become 100x faster, and it all comes back down to when Final Fantasy XIV released. Do you remember the good old days when we did this? 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 6 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 and so on? It's going to become that again with different numbers due to lower TP numbers on weapon-skills/spells.

Everything is too fast, and the high level of TP Regen combined with the low GCD will turn this into a nightmare. 1.0 at least forced you to use different rotations, but with this system it will boil down to spamming the fastest combo with dmg/time it takes to build TP ratio. This will also put pressure on mages that have to heal tanks quicker. In 1.0 one healing spell may have been down, but they could dish out another type of spell to heal if they had the MP. Now you have to wait 3 seconds and pray your tank doesn't die.

Everything of course is still in development, and there is a lot of time left for change. Algorithms will not doubt go under drastic changes between new builds. Alpha combat could even be a placeholder for all I know. I just wanted to make my opinion known that if this is the true nature of 2.0 combat. I am really concerned.

I think we can all agree that the new landscapes look marvelous, the music is lovely to the ears, and that the attention to detail is very high. However this issue truly alarms me, and I would be highly disappointed too see the battle system be the downfall of ARR.

Please SE. Look into this system once more. What was the point in a GCD? What was wrong with individual timers? Why would you increase battle speed when people have stressed time and time again that they want longer battles?

Any thoughts or concerns on my take on the issue? I would be really happy to hear other thoughts on this. Sorry for the long post, and I no doubt could have even went into more depth about it x.x

[yukikaze_yanagi]

i think you're on the wrong forum.

[Zezlar]

i think you're on the wrong forum.

True, I should have posted it in the Battle mechanics section, but no one looks there remember? :P

[Hulan]

This is fairly easily side-stepped by making a few other tweeks to abilities and core systems. Most notably, make the benefit of chaining [combos] a larger percent of the beneficial effects from skills. Let's say you are a DD; if only 20% of your damage came from raw WS damage, but 60% came from comboing several WSs together, that means you have to plan ahead, ration your TP, and skillfully execute WSs and abilities in the right order at the right time (so as to not end up loosing your combo).

I will admit I am a little worried about the implied down-time. Especially on DRG which was a WS machine in 1.x. With this system, the dW (rate of WS) is quite low.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

True, I should have posted it in the Battle mechanics section, but no one looks there remember? :P

no, this should belong to the alpha forum. Don't be surprised if get canceled

[Reika]

Because of the TP changes and addition of GCD with shorter/non-exsistant WS cooldowns, they are changing a lot of skills and combos. Keen Flurry is most definitely going to do something different than remove the cooldown of then next weaponskill.

[Reika]

no, this should belong to the alpha forum. Don't be surprised if get canceled

You don't need to be in alpha to know that WS's will be on GCD and TP will be full from the start... that was already shown to us.

[Zezlar]

no, this should belong to the alpha forum. Don't be surprised if get canceled

Did you read the first paragraph? I'm not in the alpha. I would love to be actually, since their forums probably mean a lot more than this one. I could also get more accurate information on the system i'm describing.

[syntaxlies]

Sure skills cost less tp but we have less too.

[Alerith]

So after you blow all of your TP from the start of battle (if the mob is even still alive) it would take 1 minute to regain full 1,000 TP points.

If you do this, you're doing it wrong. If it's not something you can outright kill outright and that regen is a concern, it's probably not something you should be burning all your TP away on at the start.

Especially if you want your tank to actually tank and not watch helplessly as you get your face caved in.