"Hidden" GCDs need to GO...

[Kazrah]

This comes down to animation frames/locking and how slow the server is to respond.

Yeah, I think what he's referring to in this case is ani-lock, which is not only a means of server regulation, but also a handy means of forcing people to actually look up and off their bars for a second.

[RichardButte]

Yeah, I think what he's referring to in this case is ani-lock, which is not only a means of server regulation, but also a handy means of forcing people to actually look up and off their bars for a second.

...Except that I can't always even SEE my character to observe animations when I'm in a 24 man raid (and a lalafell).

I'm sorry, but there's no excuse for having a situation in which abilities appear to be usable, yet secretly aren't, especially when there's no clear indicator as to exactly how long one ability will lock you up vs. another (again, you can't expect to always see yourself to observe animations, either).

Consistency is king when it comes to controls. All I want is for skills/abilities to be consistent across the board.

[MatthiasS]

...Except that I can't always even SEE my character to observe animations when I'm in a 24 man raid (and a lalafell).

I'm sorry, but there's no excuse for having a situation in which abilities appear to be usable, yet secretly aren't, especially when there's no clear indicator as to exactly how long one ability will lock you up vs. another (again, you can't expect to always see yourself to observe animations, either).
(snip)

This kind of thing has been around since 2.0, and its always annoying, and still sometimes kills longtime players. I'm sure we've all seen a white mage hit Benediction and then their target dies anyhow, or a PLD hit hallowed ground, the graphics show it, and the Paladin dies to the next auto-attack. I don't think its working as intended, but I bet the fix is either really hard to program, or just can't be done without causing other issues.

[Deceptus]

This kind of thing has been around since 2.0, and its always annoying, and still sometimes kills longtime players. I'm sure we've all seen a white mage hit Benediction and then their target dies anyhow, or a PLD hit hallowed ground, the graphics show it, and the Paladin dies to the next auto-attack. I don't think its working as intended, but I bet the fix is either really hard to program, or just can't be done without causing other issues.

This is honestly why Rescue as a skill is terribly designed. Moving a player from one spot to another before an ability is about to hit just won't happen. It has to check if you've used the ability, the players initial position, the new position and if they got hit by the skill in the middle there somewheres.

[Canadane]

I'm sure we've all seen a white mage hit Benediction and then their target dies anyhow, or a PLD hit hallowed ground, the graphics show it, and the Paladin dies to the next auto-attack. I don't think its working as intended,

Considering how long these have been the case, I'm fairly confident these are working as intended.
They aren't designed to be abilities to use in case of emergency, as handy as they would be. They are for planned use.

[LeeraSorlan]

Considering how long these have been the case, I'm fairly confident these are working as intended.
They aren't designed to be abilities to use in case of emergency, as handy as they would be. They are for planned use.

there are work arounds for stuff like this tho, not specifically bene and HG, but go on war, use butchers block..takes pretty long for aggro to set and dmg number to register, right? now use that same BB, but throw in a random OGCD, it will entirely skip the BB animation, and the dmg numbers will show immediately and aggro will be applied immediately, its not entirely the same with OGCD vs OGCD, but i dont feel like this is working as intended as much as its "working as much as the server allows" theres alot of cases, animations are simply (outside of obvious animation locks like DRGs jumps and so on) aesthetic, what really matters is the programming, which is why u can step out of an aoe after the cast goes off and still get hit before the animation, or u can run back in during the animation when the cast bar goes off and the skill isnt finished. With bene, the animation has very little to do with the skill hitting sooner or faster, its simply set to hit when it hits, most likely intentionally by design, but also most likely due to some server constraint and coding to make it where it CANT be appplied immeidately for whatever reason, its seen in alot of other cases, festering immediately after applying a dot and the fester will do nothing (or half of what its sposta do if u have the first dot up already) because your fester registered BEFORE the full dot actually took place. same with bards dots and that one skill etc

[SomeRandomHuman]

This kind of thing has been around since 2.0, and its always annoying, and still sometimes kills longtime players. I'm sure we've all seen a white mage hit Benediction and then their target dies anyhow, or a PLD hit hallowed ground, the graphics show it, and the Paladin dies to the next auto-attack. I don't think its working as intended, but I bet the fix is either really hard to program, or just can't be done without causing other issues.

Its not a hard fix. Just hasten the animation like they did with dragoon jumps or make the effect happen at the start of the animation rather than the end. Just an edit to pre-existing code.

[Darrcyphfeid]

...Except that I can't always even SEE my character to observe animations when I'm in a 24 man raid (and a lalafell).

Go into the settings and turn off as many non-relevant battle effects as possible. Alliance raids and things like hunts are just bad. Hydalen have mercy if someone pops a caster LB while something important is happening!

The lock between most oGCDs is ~1 second though, so recast and error displays really aren't going to help you. In fact, they'd probably hurt you - you'd wait for the timer to finish, then pop the second oGCD, and adding in your reaction time would cause you to frequently clip your GCD.

Viable workaround: Pop the first oGCD, mash the button for the second the moment the first one's icon dims out.

Oh man, this a big problem when I play as Red Mage. It is so annoying when trying to cast fast only to have to hard cast, because the quick cast ability didn't activate quick enough.

This sounds like an actual latency problem.

[RichardButte]

Viable workaround: Pop the first oGCD, mash the button for the second the moment the first one's icon dims out.

Better idea: the game could function as it implies it does, where a skill on your hotbar that is lit up activates when you press it, and when it's unable to be activated at that moment, it won't be lit up.

And latency is no excuse: MMOs have had buffer mechanics to deal with latency for decades now.

Seriously, why do people insist upon defending things that obviously aren't working as intended...? There has been NOTHING said or indicated that we're supposed to "watch our characters" when using oGCD abilities, especially when that means the UI would be violating its own rules by not applying some kind of timer over these abilities on our hotbar when they're not actually available for use.

[Darrcyphfeid]

Better idea: the game could function as it implies it does, where a skill on your hotbar that is lit up activates when you press it, and when it's unable to be activated at that moment, it won't be lit up.

So your stance is that you should be able to pop every single oGCD in your arsenal immediately, between 2 GCDs, so long as you push the buttons quickly enough?

Seriously, why do people insist upon defending things that obviously aren't working as intended...?

I'm not defending anything. I'm trying to explain to you how the game operates, how it is intended to operate, and you're disagreeing with it. Which is fine.

It's not going to change, though. They'd have to rebuild this game from the ground up to correct some of the issues with this game's server resolution/ticks - many of which are actual problems and not minor inconveniences like double-weave timing.