Melee while casting?

[Economizer]

Stuff like spikes spells and additional effects activating are not the same. If anything is close to remotely proving Saevel wrong, it would be that you can swap gear while casting, but I'm not sure that is really all that damning to his statements.

Moving from that, I think that more abilities like Occult Acumen would be more likely then melee while casting. I suppose the question is, why don't Red Mages have it, and why isn't there a variant for Ninjitsu, Blue Magic, Divine Magic?

[Shadowsong]

Like i said, i understand limitations in an engine, but the fact we see constant exceptions, made to classify as something other than a regular action, prove it can be done, spike spells and additional effects (enspells, en-doom on monsters) are examples of these, and ignoring them is just plain stupid. As ive stated, the player doesnt technically perform another action when spikes/enspells are triggered, they are added atop, with the scripted attack event triggering them, but like a counter, or like a parry/guard/evade/block, there can simply be a check to see if the character is in range, in attack mode during a spell cast, and if it checks as yes, then it could perform some damage. Sure its complicated, time consuming, and expensive to impliment something like this, but so was retaliation, the code can be made, but dont mistake me, i am not persay for this, nor am i saying it will be done, But it can be done.

You are really not getting it? Everything you just said is STILL not even related to this discussion. Nothing has ever been "added" to this mechanic of one action / one target, ever. Retaliation has the same code as counter, and both are not "actions", they are responses to actions Monster-side.

Ever notice how when you cast a spell, or activate a ranged attack, or hit engage/disengage, how sometimes you character waits a second to actually do it? Like someone said earlier, the game works in "heartbeats". As you tell your character to "change modes" (casting + auto-attacking + WS + Ranged Attack + whatever) the game waits until it can change your character to that mode before it actually does it.
You wouldn't be able to add auto-attacking to any other action, because it is itself an action. Everything else described in this thread as proof of the opposite are all responses to actions, not actions, and there is no way to ghetto-code auto-attacking in the same way parry/evade/counter works

[ManaKing]

Each "Object" can only perform one action at a time.

Players can perform one action.

Monsters can perform one action.

Who these actions are performed on is irrelevant. If multiple monsters couldn't attack a player, then multiple players couldn't attack a monster.

Each action is run with respect to the Object that generated it. Each monster is able to perform their own action, one at a time, on any other Object.

Your player character does not react when guarding a monster's attack.

The monster attacks, and is met with your player's guard skill activation. That's their action, and that's how it's processed. Your character doesn't actually act at all.

I don't know how to make this any clearer for you, but it almost seems like you are intentionally failing to grasp the concept because it conflicts with what you want.

PS: Being able to throw some code into lolPython does not a programmer make. FFXI is and always will be constricted to the built-in limitations of the game's core combat engine. It was designed in such a way that no object, player or otherwise, could perform more than one action at a time - for very good reason from a development/troubleshooting standpoint.

This is not something that the Developers could change even if they wanted to. It is not something they could throw money or manpower at short of building a brand new game (hi FFXIV). That is the reality of this.

You continue to speak with conviction instead of facts that can actually disagree with how programming actually works. At this point I have to assume that you have nothing but pessimism for a self-prophesied grim future for this game, but it's just you sitting in a dark corner not willing to come out of your own preconceptions. Coding is not as set in stone as you make it sound and you are just straight wrong on this.

Could FFXI be written on such bad code that it can't be altered at all without the entire game locking up and ceasing to function? I guess that could technically be a possibility, but it't not realistic at all. SE has been making games for years, this one for over a decade. Your lack of faith in your developers is only matched by your conviction that this game can't be improved at this point. There don't need to be any miracles to continue improving this game. Just some intelligent men and women who are willing to toil over code for several months at a time.

[Shadowsong]

Could FFXI be written on such bad code that it can't be altered at all without the entire game locking up and ceasing to function?

*Yes*

How many PS2 coded games have the ability to evolve in the way you want it to? (note: this is not me saying "ps2 limitations" before anyone says that -_-)
GG (and my) lack of faith in the developers!? We have both played the game the better part of a decade, almost longer than I've been with my wife. Please, we know these people better than our families.

ITT:
An Average OF Thread-
Person 1- Tells everyone their awesome idea
Person 2-5- Tells OP they are a visionary and god's gift to FFXI
Person 6 (usually GG or Karbunkle)- Explains why idea is either A) Not physically possible or B) Brings about other problems / wouldnt solve original problem
Person 7-3456347853694- Complain about how person 6 is elitist, antisocial, and retarded (among more graphic terms)

End Result - FFXI's IQ level goes down another peg (have we hit rock bottom yet? Probably not, though with 900 RDM and SMN melee threads, we have to be pretty close)

[Seriha]

The only thing the user end would have to handle with this is processing the log and animation data, making even the slightest implication the PS2 is a factor null. Ever start using a spell or JA and attack at the same time? Last time I did it, my PC didn't explode. I saw the sparkles and heard the sound effects of the spell, then quite suddenly went into the swing animation. Was it the prettiest of game happenings? Not really. However, it's not like the game isn't equipped to handle animation overflow.

Either way, I crudely broke down the process earlier. Flow Charts are something programmers should be familiar with, and with that a concept of how code is interpreted in an order designated by the programmers. Is it true no one object can do more than a single thing at the same time? Sure. Does it mean that can never change? Nope. After all, if things in this game never changed, we'd still have the old two-hander formula, no new spells/abilities, AGI's relation to TP feed, and so on.

Overall, this isn't a new idea. I called it Combat Caster because it's been a name for the ability tossed around in past discussion. It's something I imagine only RDM, PLD, DRK, and BLU jobs would have. Could mobs get it? Sure. End of the world? Hardly. If you want to get ants in your pissy anal about when the attack occurs, I doubt people would mind it being executed exactly at the conclusion of the spell's casting, either. Know what something like that reminds me of? Zanshin, an ability that triggers an attack after a condition is met. Replace "missed attack" with "cast spell" and... well, profit.

[saevel]

Casting a spell works like this,

Client sends command to server, server process's command and records event start, sends client confirmation of event start. Client starts the animation. Server also records event completion pending at a certain time. Clock goes on. Eventually the heartbeat will hit the prerecorded event time and the pending event will execute. In this case the actual spell calculation will be made and results computed / applied to persistent world. Server will send the client an event notification that the event completed successfully and what it's results were (damage / status messages, pretty graphics, or failure). Even attack rounds are like this although their invisible to the client, when you initiate an attack round the server records the action and when the action complete time is hit (your delay) then it'll process the event and send you the message that you just swung your sword. Certain client initiated actions can interrupt this timer, most noticeably are job abilities which the server then places approx 60 delay units worth of wait into your future pending event.

Client initiates attack round -> record start
Client initiates provoke -> process provoke -> insert wait
Server process's attack round

In the case of auto-attack that just means the server will automatically create a new event starting your next attack round following your previous attack rounds finish.

Theoretically there is nothing stopping the server from having multiple initiates and event completions intermixed.

Client start attack round -> process event start
Client start spell cast -> process event start
Complete attack round -> process attack round
Complete spell -> process spell event

It would seem that SE's server is programmed in such a way that an actor (any object capable of independently processed events) can only have one pending action. This limits what the programmers can do but saves memory space and guarantees a responsive server. Having multiple pending actions would create a much larger processing load as each action would have to be calculated during every heartbeat. When we're talking less then 32 players, this isn't an issue, but as the number of players and AI controlled monsters goes up, so does the amount of required memory and processing power. It's a cost decision done by them, kinda archaic by today's standards though.

Also things like evades / guards / parry's and other reaction events are not generated by the client, their in response to an event generated by another actor (the monster) and are thus calculated during that monsters action.

What may seem an easy solution to a player can often be very complex from the servers point of view. Having multiple events pending for a single actor isn't impossible, it's not even really that hard, BUT the server's event engine needs to be programmed for it. This wouldn't be a small programing effort, it's not just changing a few action scripts, recompiling the module then restarting the server.

In short, SE's not going to do it just for RDM, maybe for BLU WAR or SAM, but not RDM.

[Crimson_Slasher]

I understand server limitations, but just like you keep saying, counter doesnt count as an attack, and while it may not be auto-attacks, something can be implemented via a trait that would grant something else, a counter can go off during a spell cast, as can a shield block, why cant something else that looks like an auto-attack and functions similar (granting tp and inflicting damage?) All youve said is it cant be an attack. But heck what if it was a spell that functioned more similar to a refresh/regen/regain with ticbased damage/tp generation, independant of spell casting, but unable to function during regular melee and ws?

Not to mention you commenting about people slinging insults, then insulting someone who dissagrees with you. One person's hopeful idealistic comment is no more damaging than a condesending comment. If one lowers the populace's inteligence levels, then so does the other.

Id rather hear positive, creative, and unrealistic ideas than someone sauntering in, dropping their pants, and taking a figurative dump all over the idea in the middle of the forum. I wanna hear more new, inventive ideas, not more naysaying. If its not to be implemented, let the devs/mods/reps say it to us.

Sorry for the rant, and sorry for the frustration, but its getting tiresome to see the "Dynamic duo" of buzzkill coming in and smothering all creative thought like some sort of neo-gestapo. "NO, YOU ARE WRONG TO PUBLICLY SAY THIS AND CONTINUING TO DO THIS WILL RESULT IN EXECUTION OF YOUR CREDABILITY!"

Yes im being overly dramatic, and i hope some get a chuckle out of it. Once again, i dont know im persay for melee while casting, but i am entirely confident with my programing knowledge to say it is a potential option to be implimented, even if done in a cobbled together manner. Im just one red mage tired of my own peers and their inability to co-exist and grant eachother respect. Admittedly im no saint, but we cant even separate our discussions without someone coming in and telling us how its morally wrong to want to do/have something on rdm. I almost wish they would split the job in half at this point into a Red Knight and Red Wizard.

[saevel]

Stuff like spikes spells and additional effects activating are not the same. If anything is close to remotely proving Saevel wrong, it would be that you can swap gear while casting, but I'm not sure that is really all that damning to his statements.

Moving from that, I think that more abilities like Occult Acumen would be more likely then melee while casting. I suppose the question is, why don't Red Mages have it, and why isn't there a variant for Ninjitsu, Blue Magic, Divine Magic?

Again people are thinking what you see on your client is what's happening, it's not. Your animation has ZERO to do with whats going on server side, only how your client process's actions. Casting a spell is at least two actions, the start and the stop, as is your auto-attacking (although attack round starts are invisibly processed by the server). Only thing your client controls is movement, and even that is sometimes controlled by the server.

[Greatguardian]

Saevel is pretty much spot on, the only issue I see is in the motivation for why they would do this.

To be sure, limiting each actor/Object to one pending action greatly reduces potential server load, but it also reduces the propensity towards abuse of the system. If anyone remembers extremely old-day FFXI, there were plenty of issues regarding item duplication and combat system abuse that spawned from more relaxed action delays and action rules (We could NEVER do more than one thing at once, but we were able to do things more closely together).

People were able to check their delivery boxes multiple times in rapid succession and duplicate whatever items were being sent to them. Trades > Disconnects were used to duplicate items, and even the old Disengage/Engage trick worked back then.

The combat engine limits players to one action at a time for both practical and preventative reasons. And no, I don't need access to FFXI's server source code to know that. What, do you think Astronomers go and put the sun on a scale to figure out how much it weighs? "Hurr Durr you don't have the code in front of you so you can't make experimentally sound assertions based on experience with other game code bases" is like saying that the sun could be made of cheese because we haven't been there and tasted it.

Mana seems to be talking about "Coding" in a vaccuum. Sure, I could go write some random pseudo-code to emulate FFXI's combat system and then add in a few lines that would make it work this way. But that's not how large-scale server-client processed MMOs work. Games run on engines. Engines determine what can and can't be done. This is not a matter of PS2 limitations, this is a matter of "The Engine was designed to do this. It can't do that. We would need a new engine and a completely new combat code base in order to account for that."

Why a new combat base? Because once certain, immutable rules are put into place, they are assumed when writing any other piece of code. All good programmers are lazy. If there is an innate limitation placed on the combat engine that prevents actors/objects from performing more than one action simultaneously, then programmers will not need to account for multiple simultaneous actions in any subsequent code. They can safely assume that everything will work one action at a time, because any multiple action commands are already tossed out by the server.

This means that removing that assumption will essentially break any code that was written with the assumption in mind. This would affect not only player characters, but monsters as well. Hell, monsters in particular. At least players have TP limitations. Monsters with regain/infini-TP could theoretically use an infinite number of TP moves simultaneously if they were to suddenly replace FFXI's engine.

Honestly, I don't really give a damn if I seem like I'm stifling creativity. When you ask for the impossible, someone is going to have to step in and tell you it's impossible at some point lest you all cream yourselves in some self-appreciating circle-jerk of ignorance and bliss only to rage and moan that much harder when SE either never responds to such a blatantly impossible request or tells you that they won't/can't do it.

I'd rather tell you up front that you shouldn't get your hopes up than have to deal with the river of tears that will ensue if this thread were to continue and be either ignored or answered (it's a lose-lose).

If you want to be creative? Fine. Just don't waste your infinite creative juices on ideas that will never, ever see the light of day in this game. You're better off coming up with shit that will actually work.

[Crimson_Slasher]

While that response was much more agreeable, not everyone wants to be reminded santa isnt real. Final "Fantasy" is a fantasy realm, so as far as im concerned. While im sure devs would be unlikely to support this even if it were easy to do, i say, dare to dream big.

Temper possibly came from these boards (i recall someone mentioning a spell to double-attack back before temper made it into the game) and i think promoting, not restricting these creative ideas will get more potential ideas that are worth implementing into the hands of the ones that have the power to introduce them.

Im a pro melee player, but i also like my magey functions on rdm so while a bit favorable to melee, im not totally biast. Id like this, but at the same time id settle for an Occult accumen or some sorta trait/spell that makes spellcasting more favorable while not tieing us to any one playstyle.

Again while auto attacking cant occur persay, there are other ways to get the effects that would be granted, all im trying to say.