Comments from the Devs

[Tidane]

The English general discussion section is just so bad. Is this how the gamer kids are nowadays? (Yes that's rhetorical) It's so sad to see how bad it has gotten. They can't spell, form a coherent thought, or process logical arguments. This deserves a "shut. everything. down." meme.

The vast majority seem to be incapable or unwilling to make any amount of effort to consider that their viewpoint is an opinion and not a factual analysis of the situation. They have a real "my way or shit" attitude, which is really depressing. I can understand having concerns and wanting to voice them, but 90% of them seem to believe this means "lol game will flop if we don't have to grind 12 hours for half a level".

[Jamison]

The English general discussion section is just so bad. Is this how the gamer kids are nowadays? (Yes that's rhetorical) It's so sad to see how bad it has gotten. They can't spell, form a coherent thought, or process logical arguments. This deserves a "shut. everything. down." meme.

I much preferred the old days of the internet when it was more obscure, took a bit of smarts to even get online, and "MMO" ment playing a text-based MUD.

Actually, I'm serious.

[Grey Jorildyn]

MUDs were amazing for their time. I was hooked on online gaming with that before EQ was even a thing really. Those were the days for sure.

[Enkidu]

Out of curiosity, what do people like about global cool-downs in ARR? Personally I see the system as sort of convoluted. You get a certain amount of TP for weaponskills, yet it's basically bottlenecked by the GCD so you never use it all anyways. In longer fights if you're bottlenecked by TP regen, then the only thing the GCD's accomplish is making short fights take longer, which is absolutely unnecessary in my opinion.

Are there any good reasons to have both GCD and TP? Maybe I'm missing something...

[Churchill]

youre not

[Stanislaw]

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/blog/post/242

Sound-track II: The Wrath of Knee-SoKHAN
March 08, 2013

Hey! Hey!

Masayoshi Soken here. Known by innocent passersby as that guy whose eyes are constantly fixed on their be-knickered calves, but known by the world as Solemn Seeker of Knee Socks, Knee-Soken! You may remember me from such roles as “FINAL FANTASY XIV Sound Director,” and “that disembodied arm in the 5th Producer Letter Live.”

Where is Fernehalwes? The last time I saw him, he was staring glassy-eyed into a text-filled monitor mumbling incoherently about a new lore forum and PC naming conventions. Which is why I was so easily able to jack the Developers’ Blog once again! Mwahahahaha!

But why jack the blog unless…I have something to leak to you all? Exactly! I’ve whipped up a mix of several tracks from Gridania and the Black Shroud to go with the last batch of music from Limsa Lominsa. Take a listen!



Now I know what you’re thinking, and before you flood my Twitter account with tweets like...

“Wait a minute! This music sounds suspiciously familiar… Yeah! These are the tracks used in the walkthrough video released more than a month ago! There’s nothing new here! I want my money back!”

...I want you to listen again closely. Tucked between some of the more familiar tracks is a version of the Gridania theme…that will only play during the evening hours!

Now take a look above your head. You see that light bulb there? It’s there because you just realized the magnitude of that statement—if there are separate variations on themes for both day and night…it could mean there are different variations based on other factors as well…for example, even the weather!

That’s GREAT, you say? Of COURSE it’s great…for YOU! But who do you think has to CREATE all those different variations? There are only so many hours in a day! Now, I suppose I could cut back on sleep by getting my assistant to nap for me…and if I got an IV, I could forego all meal plans…and then I reckon I could get a catheter to help cut back on all those pesky trips to the— GAH! What am I doing here on the Developers’ Blog!? I should be composing!

[Sephiroth]

Out of curiosity, what do people like about global cool-downs in ARR? Personally I see the system as sort of convoluted. You get a certain amount of TP for weaponskills, yet it's basically bottlenecked by the GCD so you never use it all anyways. In longer fights if you're bottlenecked by TP regen, then the only thing the GCD's accomplish is making short fights take longer, which is absolutely unnecessary in my opinion.

Are there any good reasons to have both GCD and TP? Maybe I'm missing something...

You may be bottlenecked at lower levels but that is because the fights are short and you have fewer abilities. The complexity comes later on and you will find you aren't bottlenecked. The mouth breathers in the BFs are judging the entire game based on level 1-10. Don't be one of them. You'll not find any game where the battle system is complex below level 20, because it won't attract new players and will die as a result.


In regards to the quote above, music variation based on time of day and weather sounds awesome.

[Stanislaw]

Out of curiosity, what do people like about global cool-downs in ARR? Personally I see the system as sort of convoluted. You get a certain amount of TP for weaponskills, yet it's basically bottlenecked by the GCD so you never use it all anyways. In longer fights if you're bottlenecked by TP regen, then the only thing the GCD's accomplish is making short fights take longer, which is absolutely unnecessary in my opinion.

Are there any good reasons to have both GCD and TP? Maybe I'm missing something...

From a purely graphical perspective, GCD has the advantage of letting animations play out fully. If GCD doesn't exist, if you used a series of abilities only the last one played out in its fullest form because all others were cut short.

One thing people seem to miss is that even FFXI fell victim to GCD (albeit much shorter), hence the reason why you couldn't go through a series of abilities/weaponskills all in a span of a second by hitting the macros to trigger abilities in succession. They actually had to let (some of) the animation play out before they could perform another action.

The way I see it, GCD is the substitute for animation lock, except that this time you can actually move around after you perform an ability/skill.

[Lordender]

Out of curiosity, what do people like about global cool-downs in ARR? Personally I see the system as sort of convoluted. You get a certain amount of TP for weaponskills, yet it's basically bottlenecked by the GCD so you never use it all anyways. In longer fights if you're bottlenecked by TP regen, then the only thing the GCD's accomplish is making short fights take longer, which is absolutely unnecessary in my opinion.

Are there any good reasons to have both GCD and TP? Maybe I'm missing something...

TP regen> Building TP, makes the battle flow better, especially when you start doing ws combos. I don't understand why so many people have a problem with GCD, whats the difference? You couldn't spam 20 WS's back to back in XI, You had ungodly cooldowns to wait for in XI, waiting 5 minutes for an ability that only lasted for 30 seconds.

[Churchill]

You may be bottlenecked at lower levels but that is because the fights are short and you have fewer abilities. The complexity comes later on and you will find you aren't bottlenecked. The mouth breathers in the BFs are judging the entire game based on level 1-10. Don't be one of them. You'll not find any game where the battle system is complex below level 20, because it won't attract new players and will die as a result.


In regards to the quote above, music variation based on time of day and weather sounds awesome.

>>mouth breathers
lol

GCD/TP is going to slow the whole system down from tank to dps and then to healing. I don't need to be level 50 to understand this. Having abilities on demand for every class makes them (potentially) all equal in terms of group comp, but eliminates elements of complexity in certain instances.

From a tanking perspective, unless enmity or dps is completely changed I see a very broken system ahead. Flash is already useless as fuck, maybe constant enmity combo spam will make up for that, who knows. Heals give almost no enmity so you won't make it up there.

[Agito]

Post expired.

[Churchill]

If you're comparing battle speed to XI you're already starting from a terrible vantage point.

[Draylo]

All the negative feedback? A few idiots are whining because they're too short sighted to see what the system is fully about. Derps gonna derp. It's funny that people think GCD is evil, what would you rather, individual CDs? Because that's SO much better (hint: It isn't).

God your posts are so awful.

[Takiwaki]

Hopefully there will be limit breaks that allows you to combo party members starting from two players to the entire party, Also I didnt have issues with hate with the GCD at all, instead of relying on spamming hate generating abilities to keep hate, or to regain hate instantly, it kinda now comes down to timing of combos and not blowing through tp, which does happen easily on longer fights. Since you can see the hate generation on all mobs as a tank in the UI, it should be pretty easy to know when you need to push more enmity no? Also I hear that major balancing will be happening in phase 2 anyways. The GCD is a good way to pace the game, and also keep gamplay smooth in terms of server communication I think.

It does feel a bit restricting, but after a while you get used to it and it kinda gives you that atb feeling in the old single player games.

[Kipling]

God your posts are so awful.

At least he isn't Lucavi. Could be much worse.

[Tidane]

GCD/TP is going to slow the whole system down from tank to dps and then to healing.

The GCD will slow the pace, but no where near as much as TP has the potential to. The GCD isn't a flaw in the system that will be impossible to change (animation lock), but a decision that was made by the team to (in their eyes) improve the game. That may or may not be the case and, if it isn't, they can fix it. Having a one second cooldown between abilities isn't a huge issue for me. I start to have problems when all my abilities are on CD and I'm just waiting.

Which is why I'm more worried about TP being the bottleneck. Being stuck with no TP and slow TP regen in long fights would be incredibly boring. I'll have to see what the regeneration rates are like, but sitting there auto attacking while waiting for TP is not fun.

[Churchill]

Playing with Lv20 derps is not the same as raiding at 50. The single most overpowered buff in most games is crit/crit damage - 1.0 had DR on crit damage vs. dLvl so it wasn't too bad, but crit rate was pretty potent (as was crit scaling itself if you had enough or were fighting certain bosses).

At any rate, if I had the ability to spam Impulse Drive -> Chaos Thrust and hit a buffed Doom Spike whenever it was up, not only would no one ever be able to hold hate off of me but no one would ever be able to hold hate off of me even if I was terrible and the tank was amazing. Considering that I've seen this occur rather easily already and it would take me 10s to do Flash>Provoke>Enmity combo>whatever and in the same time I could have done 4 weapon skills, the system is slowing people down to be successful. Managing hate as a DPS is a skill for sure, but not when your entire playstyle is based around a system that is broken for tanking.

Sure, we need to see it at 50. It takes a lot of gymnastics to look at it from a logical perspective and say "it'll be fine" considering the system is already looking to be slow for the sake of being slow. I don't know if this is because SE knows their playerbase (seriously, the animations will look better? lol) and wants the system to be more accessible to the type of person who plays their games, or if it's a matter of just fine tuning it or bad ideas to solve the issue of group comp.

I think the GCD would be more tolerable with a higher TP regen and a 1s cooldown (and no stat to reduce it further, eg haste).

[Agito]

Removing post, sorry for the voided spot.

[Churchill]

oh is that how you tank

fuck me

[Stanislaw]

I think the GCD would be more tolerable with a higher TP regen and a 1s cooldown (and no stat to reduce it further, eg haste).

A trend that I've been beginning to notice is that people who are, well, I don't really want to say this (but just to put in into perspective), on the 'higher end' of the spectrum want faster GCD/higher TP Regen for the sake of being able to perform actions faster since they feel combat is a little slow. On the other end, you have people who are complaining that combat is already too fast and spammy and "hit 1111 and kill enemy, this sux" crowd who are extremely vocal on the OF/Beta Forums.

Man, the Devs just cannot please the NA crowd, can they? XD