Is Battle Meant To Be This Fast?

[AniCelestine]

If the game didn't still have so much delay, you would be able to dodge all the aoe attacks: landslide, weight of lands, alot easier. Somedays, the instance server for titan is so laggy that I don't see the places where the weight of lands hits, until the castbar is full, then I see the places and see that I have 3 weights, under me and I know I'm dead. And on somedays, they don't lag at all, and I can dodge everything. And I don't remember the attack pattern for phase 5.

So the feeling of you being too slow to react is entirely because of server's delay (especially for EU, for the servers/datacenters are in canada, which increases the delay even more.)

[ruinedmirage]

MMOs in general cannot work in anything except an action/real time setting. It might have worked back in the old days, but today, everyone's a griefer unless proven otherwise. What if you were with a party and one person goes AFK in a turn based system? In MMORPG parties, you either play with a select few to avoid ....... unfaithful acquaintances (defeating the purpose of interacting with thousands of other player, except to extort money from them), or you take your chances with PUGs (usually done for bragging rights and/or degrading others).

As for fights like Titan, it's not necessarily about reacting, but rather anticipating. Memorizing Titan (or other bosses, for that matter) is like memorizing a multiplication table and just as exciting and predictable. That's why you see videos of people beating HM in bikinis.

And not every "old school" FF was about grinding to overcome enemies. FFVIII, for example, scaled monster levels with the characters, FFVI only required two spells (Vanish+X-Zone or Doom), and FF on the NES was more about conserving your magic since you couldn't recover the limited usages on spells except with Tents (definitely the most strategy heavy and unforgiving the first time with no walkthroughs).

Haha, I'd like to see the look on a WHM and tank's face if told, "You can only use Cure ten times, Cure 2 five times, and Cure 3 three times until you reach the checkpoint at the final boss about 3 hours away. By the way, all monster fights will be randomly generated and if your party wipes once, you have to start all over again." Maybe game devs need to be less forgiving these days, so that gamers will be more humble and helpful to others when they play. It sure would weed out the potential unsubs and create a dedicated niche fanbase again, instead of caving to every want of every MMO gamer currently playing ............ but this is where I digress into a rant.....

[Dyne_Fellpool]

Combat in this game is already really slow for an MMO, other than the "move out of the stuff on the ground" thing (which has been pointed out is more of a memorization than a reaction thing).
2.5 sec GCD is loooooooooong though, and already slows combat down quite a bit. I prefer EQ2's 0.5 sec GCD (which can be reduced to 0.25 via stats).

I love strategy/tactical RPGs, but that kind of gameplay doesnt always do well in an MMO environment.