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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Global Cool Down
consultant
Member
Well this post will be short and sweet. The lower the gcd the more fast paced the game will be and the longer the gcd the more fluid it will. One of the problems with the one second GCD is all your animations have to be in one second. But for like Ultimate abilities well animation most likely will be longer than one second.
Well I just want to point out is hat you do not have to choose. Some abilities could cause a one second GCD and a more powerful abiltiy with longer animation could have a 1.5 to 2 GCD. Globa Cycle would have to be regulated. For example not point in casting a long gcd ability cause takes to long and is actaully less dps.
But in all actuallity Even differtent classes could have different GCD as part of their class. For example a rogue that uses daggers could have a GCD of one second denoting thier speed. While other classes may differ. So the point is you have a choice and not tied down to a certain number as far as Global Cooldowns.
Well I just want to point out is hat you do not have to choose. Some abilities could cause a one second GCD and a more powerful abiltiy with longer animation could have a 1.5 to 2 GCD. Globa Cycle would have to be regulated. For example not point in casting a long gcd ability cause takes to long and is actaully less dps.
But in all actuallity Even differtent classes could have different GCD as part of their class. For example a rogue that uses daggers could have a GCD of one second denoting thier speed. While other classes may differ. So the point is you have a choice and not tied down to a certain number as far as Global Cooldowns.
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I'm not quite sure you understand the concept of GLOBAL cool-down.
(I am a big fan of using all cooldowns at once and then just burst xD)
The delay between each cast a player was able to do meant that if their latency was anything under the duration of the GCD, they would have no effective lag in terms of casting effectiveness.
To me, a 0.5 second GCD should be enough. This means anyone with a 499ms ping or lower shouldn't really notice a casting delay - and I think the only major(ish) group of people with a serious risk of breaking that are Australians.
To the OP, a more powerful ability is better regulated via it's cast time and it's individual recast timer - not by how long of a GCD it triggers.
With a 0.5 Second GCD, you'd feel the difference between 10 ms / 180 ms / 230 ms/ and higher
We see this all the time in Archeage with Archers and Endless Arrows.
Ability works fine in Korea, but works like shit for some people.
Plus, good thing Australians are getting their own server.
Depending on what era you are talking about, Archeages Endless Arrows worked without the GCD. The reason people with high latency had issues with it is because their subsequent casts of the ability wouldn't reach the server in time. Those subsequent casts of Endless Arrows were not subject to the GCD. The GCD would trigger, but you could still cast Endless Arrows during that time.
Essentially, Archeages Endless Arrows - past the first cast of it - is what any MMORPG would be like if it had no GCD. It didn't help that XL were constantly "tweaking" (read, fucking) it, and were literally unable to implement a simple skill queue to ease the issue of sub 50 ms ping.
With 0.5 second GCD that is actually global, the only thing a player with 499 ms ping will notice is issues with positioning - especially in regards to other players.
An Australian server will help over there with lag, but from what I have seen of the NBN, there will still be a lot of players that suffer.
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What?
I've never played FFXIV, but if it had a 2.5 second GCD, I doubt I would have made it past an hour if I tried it.
To me, nothing in an MMO is more important than an enjoyable combat system, and while I am not in to reflex based gameplay (I'll play an online FPS if I want that kind of thing), 2.5 seconds between spells or abilities just sounds painfully boring.
But yeah, the combat is slow and boring af at early levels, until you get more oGCD abilities.
So say you have an ability called “Mighty Slash” and another called “Spinning Cut”. The Slash might have a one second activation time, which means that from the moment you activate the skill you can’t activate another skill for one second, until it’s done. It then goes on a three second CD and can’t be activated again for 3 seconds.
The Cut has you spinning around, slashing all enemies in a circle, and has a two second activation time. You then have a 5 second CD before it can be used again.
Sometimes “activation time” is called “animation time” but that implies that the ability’s animation is for that duration, but that doesn’t have to be the case. A move might have an activation time shorter or longer than the actual on-screen animation of the move.
If all abilities have a minimum activation time, that’s a de facto GCD, but it doesn’t have to be a formal thing. And some classes/specializations may be faster or slower than others and have faster or slower ability activations.
So again, my point is that a GCD seems like something I don’t see often in modern MMOs. And many older ones didn’t have it either. It’s not something all MMOs have, I’m not sure if AoC will have one.
Ice Prison? Shure, but with a 10-15sec cd on it.
Backstab? Of course, but a 6sec cd on it.
That would give these abilities more importance and people would have to think about their usage more.
Do i backstab now or do i wait for the rest of my abilities and fill with autoattacks.
Do i use my hard cc on the add now or do i wait for the next pull with this really annoying add?
What @atama said about activation time is also really cool. Make the fighter use a channel for a heavy bash, the longer he charges the stronger the damage or the ability gains another effect (like a daze effector a cripple).
Most MMO's (all I have ever played) have a combination of cast time (activation time as you put it), recast time (CD) and global cooldown.
An activation time isn't a de-facto GCD, as the idea of a GCD is to give the client time to send a signal to the server so the server can then initiate the ability. Without a GCD, the server initiates the GCD as soon as it gets the signal, rather than holding on to that command until the GCD has expired.
In a game as you describe, someone with a high ping will have noticable delays in when they think they are activating a skill and when the server thinks they are activating a skill.
I'd be interested if you could name the MMO you are thinking about here, as I'd like to have a look.
Neverwinter Online seems to not have one.
Star Wars Galaxies didn’t have one. (But SWTOR does.)
I thought Secret World Legends didn’t, but it does.
I’m just looking up random MMOs and it seems 50/50. GCDs are definitely not universal, or needed.
If one cannot use a skill for an amount of time after using a skill, then the game has a global cooldown. It's just called animation time et al.
If Ashes does not have any global cooldowns then initial skill activation will be limited by how quickly one can press their keybind and by hardware constraints. This would make for ridiculous combat so of course Ashes will have global cooldowns.
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Neverwinter Online had one last I played it, though I believe it wasn't actually displayed on screen in any manner.
While there are some games out there that don't have what players call a GCD, they ALL (in my experience) have a mechanic that performs the same function.
That function is - specifically - having a server -side buffer that is enforced after the completion of one skill and the initiating of the next to account for differences in latency between the server and multitude of clients. A game simply can't function in a balanced manner without it.
I might look at CoH at some stage, as I've never played it. That said, even with a somewhat different combat system to most MMO's, I would be shocked if it didn't have a mechanic in place to fulfill the same role as a GCD, as it is an essential component of MMO combat. My assumption is there would be a hidden server-side ability queue allowing players to activate one ability before the previous one has finished, and the server simply holds on to that command until it is needed. This wouldn't be a GCD by name, but even though players don't see it, it is a GCD by function.
The point is that not all games have them and not all games need them. Not because games let you spam your skills as fast as you can press a button, but because other mechanics make a GCD unnecessary.
Again, a discussion assuming a GCD as if every game has one is meaningless because many games don’t.
You are just repeating what I said earlier. You don’t need a GCD, which is a GLOBAL COOL DOWN. (That’s what the letters stand for.) A global cool down is a set, static wait time between abilities. If you have other mechanics forcing a wait time, you neither have nor need a GCD. Sheesh.
And yes, in CoH you have an explicit (not hidden) ability queue. Your next ability won’t execute until the current one completes. It’s almost like I already wrote all of this.
...I feel like I’m in a discussion talking about cars, and everyone acts like all cars have manual transmissions, and when I mention the existence of automatic transmissions people argue with me that I’m wrong because a car can’t change gears without a transmission.
Using your analogy of cars, it's more like we are all saying that all internal combustion based cars have different gears, and you are trying to argue that some cars are automatic and so don't have gears at all...
In both cases (games that don't appear to have a GCD, and automatic cars) there are systems in place to simplify things for the user - but when you look under the hood of both, the thing that you are saying isn't there really is, because they are crucial elements of a larger system.
What you are really doing is arguing semantics. Every MMO in existence has a system by which there is a delay after one skill is used before the next ability can be used. This delay is handled on the server, rather than on the client, and is generally called a GCD (to everyone but yourself, it would seem).
There are a small number of different ways this system can be implemented, but if a game were to not implement it, it would limit the effectiveness of every player to purely that of their latency to the games server.
A GCD is handled on the server, because it's purpose is to allow for variances in latency between the server and a multitude of clients. As such, it needs to be a buffer at the end of that specific chain.
A skill queue is handled on the client, as it is designed to allow for variances in latency between the client and the player. As such, it needs to be a buffer at the end of that specific chain.
Because of this, a GCD and a skill queue are kind of the same thing, but for different positions in the chain between the player and the server. While it would be possible to have a game combine these two systems in to one, that would increase the work the servers need to do in combat, and so if a developer is able to offload some of that workload to the client, it is in their best interests to do so. While it doesn't seem like it would be a lot of extra work, it adds up very quickly over a large number of characters.
The little shading of your ability icons that is supposed to give you a visual depiction of your GCD is not actually the GCD. That is just dummy animation, your client knows how long the GCD should be, and so displays that animation for that long.
Most games don't even have the server send any information back to the client about the GCD.
The client essentially say "ok, just used ability X, now I need to tell the server that ability Y is next, play the GCD animation and wait to see what gets put in my ability queue next so that when ability Y has finished it's cast time and ready to start the next GCD, I can tell the server what to use next".
While all this is happening, the server is sitting there going "cool, received instruction to use ability X, now I'm waiting for it to cast... right, it has finished so now so I will start the GCD timer while I am waiting for the next ability signal from the client, cool, got ability Y next, wait for the GCD to finish then use ability Y".
So sure, not every game has that little icon animation. I'm more than happy to concede that point if you want. However, every MMO has a system client side to standardize the timing of abilities, a system that is universally referred to as a GCD.
Some MMOs just have one global cool down for every ability. Not best for fluid animations in my opinion.
Basically the whole jist of the post.
No animation cancelling? Have they spoken to how they plan to raise the skill ceiling for combat?
I believe their plan is for the skill to come from aiming and dodging skillshots. However, I've said this before and I'll say it again, I don't know a single game that has been coded to make it impossible to do animation cancelling. There will always be a way and the players will find it given enough time.