Sprint Ability

[Neptune]

This may be a little premature to post but hopefully enough of us have experience with this feature, either through FFXIV alpha or a similar MMO.

The ability in question is called Sprint and activating it gives your character a boost in running speed. This ability instantly drains your TP and gives you TP / 50 per second of speed boost, up to 20 seconds @ full TP. It can be used in battle and has a cooldown. What do you think of this ability? Let's have a discussion.



I hate this ability. I used it when I tried Star Wars: The Old Republic and its implementation is identical similar to that (at least in SWTOR it's simply a toggle with not as much repetition). I feel like it can be done better. Let me explain why.



-It's awkward to place on your action bar. It's an ability you use constantly, and yet placing it on your action bar means it competes with other abilities you need to place.

-It dislocates a combat ability. What it means is that a combat ability you need to use will be relocated to another bar, when it probably should be on your first bar for convenience's sake.

-Prioritizing its placement is awkward. When you have to run distances of 10+ meters (which you will constantly need to do in town) it's very convenient for it to be in slots 1-5, which you can easily hit with your left hand. However placing it there interferes with the ease of using your combat abilities. So it's likely that you'll place it in the middle or the end of your action bar as in the above screenshot. Which means:

-You either have to move your hand out of position or move the mouse cursor to use it.

-All of the above means that using this ability will get old quick, since you need to reuse it every single time you move. It's just not convenient to use as a combat ability and it will keep nagging at you as you make customization decisions.

-In addition, since it is such a necessary skill to use when walking, like around town, the game design will force your hand to Sprint in a supersaiyan burst of blue every which way in town. So if it stays as is, get used to seeing darting blue flashes everywhere. You will also be pressing a button and aiming yourself like a bullet each and every time you go between the mailbox, AH, and from point A to point B in town. If you thought the cannons were fun in Mario 64 you are going to love this.

Summary:

It's obviously nice to have a time-saving run speed feature in the game, but it would be nice if it wasn't a total pain in the ass to use. It's unfortunate that this is going to be a "combat ability" since it falls squarely in the domain of play control.

Suggestions for improvement:

I'm thinking: moving this ability off the action bar is the first step to an improved game experience. Allowing it to be mapped to the entire keyboard would be much better.

Even better: making run speed automatically accelerate after a given number of seconds. This will save millions of unneeded keypresses.

Even more better: Once a "Sprint" ability is learned, how about a simple interface to accumulate passive speed bonuses in? It could even be toggled off so RPers could slowly walk around. That way your speed is consistent with no repetitive mechanic to mess with. In addition, a special Battle Flee could be introduced, which would be more consistent with FF games.

So am I the only one that is annoyed with this feature? Are the rest of you liking it just fine? Share your thoughts below.

EDIT: Updated as the conversation has evolved.