Change AFK Check on Ultimate

I know this has long since been changed but is there any chance this can be increased from 5 to around 10 for QoL? I understand disincentivizing AFK/multi-client cheesing but as an I/L I've proc'd this quite a few times trying to fight against spawns for small platform positions on Oblivion 5 to more safely attack Lyka out of seduce range then continue grinding the map normally. I'm not an expert on the 'AFK check' but it definitely still procs even when you're actively making finer movements. I've been knocked away, teleported twice to get back to regain position and it cancelled my attack after having done all of that before as well. In that instance my character barely 'walked' so maybe the teleports didn't count as active movement to prevent the check and I repositioned in relatively the same spot but that's just a guess since I have no idea how the system works.

Fighting for those platforms is like a warzone because 2/3 of them have spawns directly on top of them and the other has a spawn covering the left side of the platform so only the right side is safe and it's even not safe when the mob spawns immediately moving right so it makes you make fine movements a decent bit but for some reason these movements aren't picked up by the AFK check system. It's also a very strange decision to make it this low since if I get only 3 safe spawns in a row (2-hit ko) where the guardian doesn't come towards me it means after the 5th attack, I should be cognizant I have to actively mitigate this check and give up good timing on the spawns (they spawn shortly after 2-hits, so I have less time to brace for the next spawn if I have to actively mitigate this check this frequently).

To also give an idea how involved the gameplay is I often use mysterious candy since there's a lot of movement going on and it lets me jump to platforms with 1 instead of 2 jumps. 5 casts feels extremely overbearing in what I would definitely consider enjoyable and active gameplay so I figured addressing this was important. I can make a guess what types of gameplays this is trying to prevent/incentivize granted I don't know all of them, but they're going to play that way anyway and just work around this system regardless of if the check is every 1 cast or 100 casts so I'd definitely say there should be a different solution for that, that doesn't break the flow of normal gameplay loops like this.

This is my only experience with it but I could imagine some other gameplay scenarios like if you're a lower level 4th job mage and you 3-hit ko, you could even proc the afk check clearing 1 wave, getting a good respawn of many enemies on top of you (even in unsafe positions), and trying to 3-hit ko them only a 2nd time.

 

that was exactly what I thought of when I said "I can make a guess" since I've passed by the helm dex farms before lol

 

I completely agree and I'm guessing that was one of the points of the change to 5 casts but I think it's a bad change if fairly regular gameplay is affected as well.

Good to know for the time being but if regular gameplay sees mitigation of AFK checks as necessary that is awful design. I'm sure this was an easy solution to whatever issue they were addressing compared to creating a new system or whatever the alternatives would be, but I think they've severely underestimated how little 5 casts is and have made anti-AFK movements a part of non-AFK gameplay on accident.

 

It might not be difficult to avoid but it does force a change the flow to the gameplay that should not exist. It shouldn't matter how small of a territory you're trying to cast on, if you're moving around dodging enemies, engaged in gameplay, the amount of times you run into this should approximately be 0.

In GMS some people don't use spawn boosters and actively lower their epm because they believe most skill cooldowns were designed around KMS spawn times (non-boosted spawns). They do this solely because that flow of gameplay is more engaging and enjoyable to them. With this the grind is mostly unaffected though, it's just not fun dealing with it and feeling like I should have to guess how many casts I have left before I have to jump off the platform and jump back on since my intention is to maintain that position until an enemy spawn takes it back from me.

 

I'd rather not look at this from a balancing multiclienters perspective as much as possible, I understand it's an aspect but so is farming by only having a single button held down on a single client and that's the most abuse other players should have to commit to see this. Balancing multiclienters is a dumb discussion point when it comes to "I'd be able to do 2 more clients, it lowers the skill ceiling and makes multiclienting more accessible," Multiclienting is setup dependent, if you have more computers and keyboards it's easier and mitigates half the nerfs they do to multiclienters anyway, there's bigger fish to fry on that discussion but that's up to how the staff wants to run that show.

I look at this more like a bug/QoL perspective for regular gameplay, not intentional AFK check mitigating, multiclienter gameplay. Like I said I didn't even know how to mitigate AFK checks and I don't think that should be an aspect of gameplay shoehorned in as fallout of nerfing/increasing the skill ceiling of multiclienters for people experiencing the game normally, nothing is so overpowered you should hinder gameplay because of it and if it is maybe it should be hardcapped at a set amount of clients or removed. I do think it's an alright idea but it's apparent 5 is very low, holding in triple throw for 100 casts takes much longer (irrelevant skill just fastest cast time I could think of). There's very obvious ways to fix multiclient ultimate AFK, I think this one seemed like the easiest fix using a system already in the game but gone wrong. My argument is 10 seems like a reasonable number to mitigate regular AFK cast attempts.

And before someone says it yes I know 100 casts isn't that hard to reach on regular attack skills but at that point it's actually doing it's job, you haven't moved in like almost a minute at that point, this is like 15 seconds or something. In a perfect world it also doesn't eat your casts even when you're actively making fine movements in a small space too because giving up position over that can be frustrating.