Option to Remove the Circle Image on Skill CD

[Zojha]

Personally, I find the circles raaather obnoxious.

I don't know about you guys, but my attention tends to be instinctively drawn towards things that move and things that are bright, something I'm probably not all alone with, considering modern age advertisements like to use bright flashing lights to draw attention and most games darken skills on cooldown.

That said, I'm okay with circles on principle - but make them dark circles. As it is, skills on cooldown draw more innate attention than skills that aren't and that is, uh...a little bittle counterintuitive.

[DisappointedMan]

I don't find it annoying personally but I find it's not necessary. More than the circle countdown, the numeric timer on the skill icons themselves is a massive improvement. The skills already used to turn grey when on cooldown and the image would cycle back around until usable again. I don't know why they didn't just keep that and make the number for the timer bigger.

I thought the issue in the first place was that anything apart from a numeric value was not accurate enough to be useful. Why did they make the number so small? That's the most odd thing to me.

[FallenArisen0990]

I would like the option to change the color of the Circle. The new Recast Timers are awesome and makes it very easy to know when an ability is almost up. I would've been fine with 1.0's recast timers but this is good enough for me.

[Reinha]

The perfect solution has been suggested back in 2013. It boggles my mind that they still don't get the hint. Here is the opening post to a great thread. The third bar shown combines clockswipe motion and big numbers, making it look intuitive and accurate at the same time. They could even put a clockswipe behind the countdown. Please fix it SE. I'll give up idle camera, autoattack marker and group pose to free up memory for this.

I would like the option to have numbers displayed for all abilities on the hotbar to make it easier to know when the ability will actually become available. As it is right now, the clockswipe doesn't actually tell me when a skill will be ready, only that it isn't available and it'll eventually be ready.

Another issue with the clockswipe is that on certain abilities, Raging Strikes being the prime suspect, whenever the ability is close to becoming available, the clockswipe becomes indistinguishable and the ability looks like it's actually ready when in fact it still has 10 secs or left to go. The numbers for cooldowns already exist ingame as we can see when we hover our mouse over the skill:



I would like something similar to the below picture. Top hotbar is how it is currently, middle hotbar is the option I would like to see implemented. The third hotbar shows how GCD skills keep the clockswipe while long cooldown skills use numbers.



FFXIV 1.0 had the numerical cooldowns along with clockswipe as well.


Edit: Adjusted the image a bit.
Edit2: Added 1.0 image

Personally, I find the circles raaather obnoxious.

I don't know about you guys, but my attention tends to be instinctively drawn towards things that move and things that are bright, something I'm probably not all alone with, considering modern age advertisements like to use bright flashing lights to draw attention and most games darken skills on cooldown.

That said, I'm okay with circles on principle - but make them dark circles. As it is, skills on cooldown draw more innate attention than skills that aren't and that is, uh...a little bittle counterintuitive.

You are not alone with it, but the reason we are drawn to bright moving things isn't because of advertising. It's vice versa: the reason why advertisements have bright moving things are because we are naturally drawn to it. Test with any baby. To draw our attention with 20 white circles when we can't use them is stupid. Just look at the hotbar in the picture I quoted. What do you look at first? I would expect the brighter colorful icons, which is good because they are the ones available.

[WhiteWings]

Main reason why people find it distracting is because it's new and unfamiliar. Like the first time you see a white mage cast holy, RIP eyeballs.

I can get behind toning down the circles a little by fading them further. But it upsets me to see the overeaction towards something that will very likely feel like a natural upgrade if you give it a chance. Like some are saying this new method allows you to scan the status of long cooldown skills with a glance or from your peripheral vision.

And if you think the general opinion is that this new feature is bad just by reading this thread keep in mind that people against something are always the most vocal. If you think my opinion is harsh consider it the coinflip to those who say "It's bad! Burn it".

Edit: I can get behind what Reinha is showing. Though it seems centering the numbers is a no go, but maybe increasing the current fontsize would be ok. Still, I find the current change better than nothing.

[whereismymind86]

I see no reason to not have it be a toggle in the menus like the rainbow sound bar things for the deaf. I love the addition of the numerical timers for cooldowns but agree the circles are a bit annoying.

[Shiin]

I like new circle animations. Made much easier to keep track of ready to use skills.
WHM and SHC from my FC like them too..

[Zojha]

You are not alone with it, but the reason we are drawn to bright moving things isn't because of advertising.

I didn't mean to imply that, but thanks for clarifying either way :P

[Toguro]

+1 for hope...

[Aura_Shurifon]

There are 12 battle classes, 8 crafting classes, and 3 gathering classes in this game. Do you have all their abilities committed to muscle memory?

Anything that makes elements of the UI harder to see is not an improvement.

And I don't see how having a big number above a grayed out icon make it easier to read either.

I like it the way it is now, but if I would want a change, it would be to make the white circle a little less bright (as proposed by the dev) and bigger, so the circle is nearly tangent to the icon border.
This way, we could have a better vision of the skill "behind" the circle.

EDIT : missed the quote.