Thread: DEV REQUEST: Reduce the GCD to 1.5 in 4.0

Originally Posted by Dzian

I personally think combat is a bit quick. there's so little weight or power to anything it kinda feels like I'm pressing buttons just to auto attack...

I kinda find it amusing how some people get bored if they don't have a button to press every nano second.

i'd much prefer a slower system that put some weight behind its skills. 1.23 had a pretty good system. was much more popular than this one in beta

No thanks, and no, it wasn't much more popular lol.
Waiting around doing nothing was way less fun.

Personally, I think a 2.0s GCD is about as far as it ought be reduced at base. Competing MMOs with such short GCDs also rarely take around a half second to complete their skill animations -- ours, on the other hand, are quite a bit more complex.

That said, even if you scaled animation times with attack speed, at 2.0s you're already risking removing double-weaves for many, many players. Which then leaves you the question, do you want to remove the only unique thing XIV gameflow has, double-weaves and the apm (actions/keystrokes/presses per minute) dynamics of double-weaved openers to the slower lull of having everything on cooldown -- likely decreasing the apm ceiling, in the process -- in order to increase the apm floor?

Removing animation locks entirely would only give us a flurry of disjointed limbs as animations clip wildly into each other. That would look fairly awful, and would defeat the point of having our more detailed animations in the first palce. Certain animations made to have multiple clipping points and starting points as to more quickly and smoothly clip into each other, alternatively, would be great, but there's a reason that oGCDs in most games without animation locks... also have no animations (at best surrounding visuals, rather than manipulating the character model). Some of our animations could probably still look good as mere surrounding visuals, requiring no animation lock, or similar animations for different abilities could combine the animation while carrying both effects, but that would of course add complexity to memorizing what you can and can't double-weave, with all others having already been removed...

:: I have heard plenty of complaints about the relatively long GCD by players who haven't hit 50+ yet, and therefore (1) haven't filled out their hotbars yet, and thus lack the oGCDs to fill up a lot of those gaps, and (2) haven't seen enough fight complexity to ever make them glad they have that extra second to look around, check their CD syncs, etc.

Originally Posted by KitingGenbu

Personally, until they fix skill speed and make it influence tp regain in combat, a lower gcd will only hinder tp classes vs help. Lower gcds in a game such as WoW work because the haste stat increases how fast main resources are restored naturally in combat, such as energy and focus. Its pretty funny how important the haste stat is in most mmorpgs that have it (FFXI included) but pretty much treated like cancer in this game for physical dps.

Natural TP generation and effects that generate bonus TP have been reduced by 20% but now tick at a rate equal to the (affected) player's GCD. Additionally, animation times now scale with attack speed. Done.

(50 per 2.5 = 60 per 3.0; only buffs attack speed regen after that, keeping it level with others.
TP dynamics (e.g. the difference between AoEing and standard ST dps) affect high-speed players more than others, but they also recover faster when under TP-refreshing effects.

(Fine detail fix: Abilities that give a set duration of extra TP generation (Spire, Goad) will now also supply the a remainder portion at the end of duration based duration before or after the first or final tick.)

There is only ONE type of people I ever saw complaining about this: people who came from WoW and were pretty much used to the keyboard mashing a 1s GCD combat is, then came here and found the combat "slow and clunky".

Thing is, they LIKED to mash buttons non-stop during combat, I figured it gave them a sense they were playing an action game instead of an RPG. Well, to each it's own, but after playing (and raiding in) WoW for 8 years, I don't miss AT ALL the 1s GCD.

You people just like doing this

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

...

I would just say that the numbers they picked seem a bit low to even scale properly. The amount of skill speed that the average physical dps can have before it turns into a negative is really low tbh (like 600-700 on drg before it becomes negative? idk the exact numbers) and should be adjusted. It also does not help that our gear does not have any 'extra stats' to compensate for excessive stat builds or set bonuses. I'll utilize WoW as an example. There are trinkets (legendary items as well) or certain set bonuses that allow the player to generate extra resources like energy/focus or have a chance to get refunded a certain amount up on using skills. Such things kind of balance out the gearing system since honestly people dont care about BiS until their ilvl is at a certain point. If you're sitting at i200 and trying to gear up to 230, you're gonna take the piece that has acc/ss at 230 over the crit/det piece that is 215.

No thanks. Playing Nin, Mch, Brd, or even DRK with a shorter GCD would be nightmare fuel on par with Sister Location.

Ugh, thanks but no thanks. With 1,5 GCD, a 1-2-3 rotation is still doable, but doing your regular rotation and weaving in OGCDs? That's not even fun anymore. Raiton already clips into the GCD, I'd rather not shave off another 0,5 seconds by default so Fuma does the same.

So in other words, what you're saying is you want Monks to never have TP again.