Thread: So... Why IS the GCD 2.5 seconds?

Originally Posted by Gilraen

It was deemed the best time in the Beta and it beat the old way (in 1.#) where you could burn all your TP then be stuck auto-attacking for a few minutes while your TP recovered. That or a Bard could use the TP song. In fact, Bards were more useful as Bards in 1.#. Would I want that back, hell no.

If that was the case with a 1.x GCD that was just poor skill cost balance. To me, even the ~2 second GCD of a monk feels like an eternity, but its not as bad since I have to move into position for my next attack during that 2 seconds. I can't stand playing any of the other classes simply because of the 2.5 second GCD.

Originally Posted by dejavutwo

If that was the case with a 1.x GCD that was just poor skill cost balance.

Oh, in 1.x was no GCD. Every skill had it's own CD. Between some seconds to 15 minutes.
You started the battle with 0 TP and each hit gave you around 100 TP (max TP was 3000). That mean that at the beginning of a battle you fought with only auto-attack until the TP was high enough to start with some weapon skills. Then with auto-attack again until TP was high enough again.
But in return only the first skill in a combo chain used TP.

Originally Posted by Felis

Oh, in 1.x was no GCD. Every skill had it's own CD. Between some seconds to 15 minutes.
You started the battle with 0 TP and each hit gave you around 100 TP (max TP was 3000). That mean that at the beginning of a battle you fought with only auto-attack until the TP was high enough to start with some weapon skills. Then with auto-attack again until TP was high enough again.
But in return only the first skill in a combo chain used TP.

I misread that and thought by 1.x you meant a GCD that lasted between 1.0-1.9 seconds.

Because the Papa Bear said 2.6 was too much
And the Mama Bear said 2.4 was too little
But Baby Bear said 2.5 was juuuusst right ^_^

I still prefer the combat system from 1.23. It was a lot more strategic because you could get 3000 TP and use three combos (9 weaponskills) in a row for burst damage or a combo every 1000 TP for more sustained damage. It also had the added element of missing out on a lot of potential damage if you some how didn't get to use your 2nd or 3rd weaponskill in the combo because you couldn't just start the combo over without spending another 1000 TP.

Lots of good things about ARR, but lots of good things lost from 1.23.

so controller players aren't as gimped i guess? it was argued a lot during beta, but i recall yoshi or some dev saying it "gave you time to think about what to use" or something

make of that what you will

Probably to accommodate console players.

Oh... how I wish Shield Bash weren't on a GCD.

This was argued to death on the Alpha and Beta forums. It's not changing - Yoshi made that clear back then. I actually quite like the system - it's not the snore fest that FFXI and 1.0's sloooow systems were - here you have to be on your toes or else things could turn out pretty badly.

And if it's such a bad thing, an analogy to use would be to juxtapose it with the old ATB system from earlier FF games pre FFX. It's pretty much the same thing - having to wait for a timer to cooldown before you can enter commands. This isn't a button-mashing action game, it's an RPG. Management of time has always been a part of that.