Personally I can only think of three reasons why they would have needed the poll.

 

1. They didn't bother reading the previous threads, which strongly showed that most people on the forums dislike the change. (In which case a forum poll only provides the same information).

 

2. They want to be able to show numbers in case they reverse it and the people that like the change complain.

 

3. The guy who designed/authorized the change (without making it optional) was still stupid enough after all the complaining to think it was good and they had to start to poll to show him what an idiot he was.

 

Seeing how if #2 were true they would have done a rollback already (given how long we are waiting they must be developing a compromise solution) I can only assume that they did the poll for #1 or #3.

Sorry just thought of another reason.

4. To pacify us into thinking they are actually doing something about it and taking it seriously to buy themselves more time.

Aside from the physical illness that some players are suffering as a result of the new GCD animation, I just want to reiterate, for those who don't feel that a rollback of the changes or further improvements to the system are necessary, what the biggest problem is with the current display:

At the moment, it is impossible to discern which of your skills are off cooldown while the GCD animation is in effect.

Regardless of whether you're a skilled player who can keep a mental count of every one of your skills or a clicker whose eyes are glued to the quickslot bars, do you feel that this "feature" is acceptable? Call it arrogance or confidence, but as someone who feels that he is God's gift to MMOs, I for one cannot countenance the behavior of the GCD in its current state.

You might be of the opinion that the new GCD animation is great, and that's fine with me because I'm not bothered by the brightness of it. Nevertheless, it is still fundamentally broken because it obscures the cooldown display of your other skills, and therefore it needs to be fixed ASAP.

I post since the poll is locked even though it was started just yesterday. I guess you didn't want to see the "They're terrible" choice skyrocket into like 90%?

No, we had more than enough votes to understand the general feeling on this issue early on. In fact, after this post I'm going to close this thread for now - the feedback's been excellent and we're taking that into account, but the purpose of this thread has run its course.

Since late Tuesday the development team has worked on some new code to allow you to select from a variety of new options for the global cooldown. I saw a preview of the changes today and while I know everyone's UI choices are individual, I think most people will like the options presented to them. They're very flexible, and the 'flashing' most have described is now able to be turned off, along with many other optional choices. The team has spent today cleaning up and finalizing the code, and after that it'll go into our QA process.

As this code change has come in 'hot' it was unfortunately too late for us to add it to the build being readied for next week's planned patch (1.1.3, which is now available on the Public Test Server - here are the notes). We also want to ensure it's got some solid QA testing on it, as it's a change that will be seen by everyone playing the game. With all that in mind, we're currently expecting the changes to be rolled out with patch 1.1.4, which is tentatively scheduled for deployment in the week beginning Monday 20th. As always, the patch should be on the Public Test Server before that, and when it's available, we encourage everyone to try it out and see the changes made.

Before all that, as we know many of you are interested to see the changes, we're going to give you a sneak preview of those options when the code is finalized and ready to show off. We're working on that now and, fingers crossed, we'll be able to show you something tomorrow.