Global Countdown Timer - My big concern for the future on FFXIV.

[Zezlar]

Hello everyone, something i've been pondering on for awhile now is something that I find truly troubling for the future of this game and that is Global Countdown Timers (GCT). This is an issue that I haven't seen spoken about in a really long time due to the flood of grass, jumping, and alpha invite threads. Let me start off by saying I am NOT in the Alpha, and everything I speak about here will be based off what I have seen in the Letter from the Producer videos.

So what exactly is the GCT? Essentially as it currently stands there is a 3 second cool down on every single weapon-skill and spell that you have. Say you cast Cure, you can't do anything else besides auto attack or use an ability for 3 seconds.

That doesn't seem so alarming right? Yeah, it really is as it currently stands. In the videos you roughly can see that outside of battle you can gain TP relatively quickly upwards of over 150-200 a tick (approx. 3 seconds like in XIV) it seemed. That's not alarming considering that they do want every battle to start with max TP. I'm alright with that.

However what I find concerning is that when in battle you gather roughly 50 or so TP a tick (again approx. 3 seconds). So after you blow all of your TP from the start of battle (if the mob is even still alive) it would take 1 minute to regain full 1,000 TP points. Considering that all spells and weapon skills are on the same exact timer what is there to do besides maybe start off with a debuff, and then spam your best weapon skill over and over again. Auto attacks are essentially worthless besides little hits of damage. They do not generate TP since that now is done automatically.

Certain abilities like Keen Flurry become useless because the GCD is low already.
One can make the argument that we do this currently in 1.0 which is true to some extent. However everything we did in 1.0 has basically become 100x faster, and it all comes back down to when Final Fantasy XIV released. Do you remember the good old days when we did this? 1 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 6 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 and so on? It's going to become that again with different numbers due to lower TP numbers on weapon-skills/spells.

Everything is too fast, and the high level of TP Regen combined with the low GCD will turn this into a nightmare. 1.0 at least forced you to use different rotations, but with this system it will boil down to spamming the fastest combo with dmg/time it takes to build TP ratio. This will also put pressure on mages that have to heal tanks quicker. In 1.0 one healing spell may have been down, but they could dish out another type of spell to heal if they had the MP. Now you have to wait 3 seconds and pray your tank doesn't die.

Everything of course is still in development, and there is a lot of time left for change. Algorithms will not doubt go under drastic changes between new builds. Alpha combat could even be a placeholder for all I know. I just wanted to make my opinion known that if this is the true nature of 2.0 combat. I am really concerned.

I think we can all agree that the new landscapes look marvelous, the music is lovely to the ears, and that the attention to detail is very high. However this issue truly alarms me, and I would be highly disappointed too see the battle system be the downfall of ARR.

Please SE. Look into this system once more. What was the point in a GCD? What was wrong with individual timers? Why would you increase battle speed when people have stressed time and time again that they want longer battles?

Any thoughts or concerns on my take on the issue? I would be really happy to hear other thoughts on this. Sorry for the long post, and I no doubt could have even went into more depth about it x.x

[yukikaze_yanagi]

i think you're on the wrong forum.

[Zezlar]

i think you're on the wrong forum.

True, I should have posted it in the Battle mechanics section, but no one looks there remember? :P

[yukikaze_yanagi]

True, I should have posted it in the Battle mechanics section, but no one looks there remember? :P

no, this should belong to the alpha forum. Don't be surprised if get canceled

[Reika]

no, this should belong to the alpha forum. Don't be surprised if get canceled

You don't need to be in alpha to know that WS's will be on GCD and TP will be full from the start... that was already shown to us.

[Zezlar]

no, this should belong to the alpha forum. Don't be surprised if get canceled

Did you read the first paragraph? I'm not in the alpha. I would love to be actually, since their forums probably mean a lot more than this one. I could also get more accurate information on the system i'm describing.

[Shurrikhan]

True, I should have posted it in the Battle mechanics section, but no one looks there remember? :P

I look there, specifically, about every time I come on for exactly stuff like this.

To be honest, a 3-second GCD really sounds a bit long to me. Without the actual time-costly animations we had before, we'll basically be jogging in place or super-breathing while we wait for our next high-speed attack to be available. It's not a long delay, but it certainly doesn't feel fluid either.

The reason I bring this up is because it's about the only thing that seems close to set about the combat system thus far-- high-reaction, while still running about the same speed of attack as 1.x. (When tp-dumping/chaining, movement for combos aside, you're attacking roughly once per 3 seconds already, and as fast as per 2 seconds with certain attacks [Pounce, Demolish, Howling Fist is probably the fastest I regularly use, along with some Lancer strings].)

Even if there are no solid individual ability cooldowns, there are numerous alternatives that can be implemented to carry the same idea of sparse usage without a hard number being given to it. Gliding TP costs for example, would cause an ability to cost more tp when reused immediately. Gliding damage/effect modifiers -- takes a (likely stat-factored) amount of time to reach 100% damage/effect potential again. Conditions can be added, such as these costs being wavered or reduced when a status effect fails to afflict the target, the attack misses, crits, whatever makes sense for that particular attack, attack stratum/string/niche.

I can only hope that something of this sort will find its way into the combat system so we aren't merely spamming abilities conditionally. (Blunt bonus damage taken ailment -- Simian Thrash x 99...)

I prefer things to be less exact, less preset. Having the idea of combos carry through without the 'hit the next highlighted ability' (do not stray from order!) system sounds refreshing to say the least. This can help with that, if done right.

It's a bit annoying that they went through all the 'trouble' to remove the stamina bar only to re-implement it under TP, but hopefully they'll find what they're looking for soon.

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My vague hopes:
- Start off with a fair amount of TP, but rise with successful combat, and not just auto-attacks.
- Various categories also build up with combat
- While using the same system, its feel varies from resource-managing to opportunistically oppressive to chain-complementary, etc, depending naturally (rather than through ruleset changes) on class and/or role.
- Applies personal and group long-term and short-term strategy.

If anyone has any ideas of their own imagined system that gets those points ^, I would really, really love to hear it. : )

[Hulan]

This is fairly easily side-stepped by making a few other tweeks to abilities and core systems. Most notably, make the benefit of chaining [combos] a larger percent of the beneficial effects from skills. Let's say you are a DD; if only 20% of your damage came from raw WS damage, but 60% came from comboing several WSs together, that means you have to plan ahead, ration your TP, and skillfully execute WSs and abilities in the right order at the right time (so as to not end up loosing your combo).

I will admit I am a little worried about the implied down-time. Especially on DRG which was a WS machine in 1.x. With this system, the dW (rate of WS) is quite low.

[Reika]

Because of the TP changes and addition of GCD with shorter/non-exsistant WS cooldowns, they are changing a lot of skills and combos. Keen Flurry is most definitely going to do something different than remove the cooldown of then next weaponskill.

[syntaxlies]

Sure skills cost less tp but we have less too.