Animation Lock: Why don't you like it?

[Kikosho]

It's not forced lag, it's you committing to a skill and getting punished for it if you choose incorrectly. The problem with it in 1.0 was that you essentially locked yourself in position for a long time due to animation length + combo length. All they needed to do was add something that allows you to cancel the current animation should you need to, but on a cooldown, so you can choose whether to continue your skill for damage or move out for survival.

[Shougun]

. . .cancel the current animation should you need to, . . .

Exactly, you should be able to cancel your action. Perhaps if you get over 75% your spells go on cooldown and your mana cost is taken - the follow through you were talking of (but I think wasting your channel casting time is punishment enough, like in Ifirit if you dont time your spells right you are wasting valuable DPS time and pressuring your tank and healer more). But being required to stop and basically "stunned" is unnecessary, and you can argue it adds difficulty but I argue not. The devs must design content around this issue, and JUST like Yoshida said - this is a problem, he wants more responsive combat but he cant make it with the system at hand. So yes with what we have it can be an extra challange, but without we can have MORE challenge. (not all my points are directed towards you :P, just so you dont think "but i didnt say that... lol")

With animation blending (which wont be ready until later beta, so we havent seen it yet) the aesthetic issue should be no problem, since the animations will be pulled together to look meaningful.

I think the biggest issue, at least the one I gave the most merit to is aesthetics and that should all be but history with the animation blending system in place.

Animation lock must die.