Auto attack: A complete battle system

[Eldaena]

I can't speak for others but for me this will fix many things. I can go afk between fights, can take my time using actions, can read them, talk, check who is online, search for a friend, look to see who is seeking for party and perhaps build one while still soloing. I mean it's endless things this can help with. That's one that they can do, doesn't mean it's only solution. It's no longer what people think is best for them but what's best for the game to be kept alive before it becomes little to late.

1) Why are you going afk between fights? That is poor dedication to your party. At least wait until a leve, behest, quest, or nm fight is complete.

2) I certainly hope if you have a skill or something ready to go you aren't leisurely deciding when to use an ability regardless if it's auto attack or manual combat. And why would you be reading what your ability does in the middle of a fight? Don't you already know?

3) Trying to party build, chit-chat, or browse information while fighting is completely unengaging. You might as well just be botting your way through your ranks if you just plan to auto-attack in this manner.

Using auto attack as some cure-all for the issues with the battle system will not fix the problems.

I will now entertain the thought of auto attack. Here are some problems I am seeing:

First and for most, people like this gentleman I quoted going afk on me in some important fight. Sure he'll be auto attacking, but what about battle regimen? What about tactics? This is completely unacceptable. (And I'm not saying emergency afks are a problem with me, but come on. At least now if someone goes afk they are autofollowing someone else and basically out of harm's way. I can't be accountable for someone autoattacking and then dying in combat.)

Another point is just the pure sluggishness of people that will be caused by an attack happening on its own with any of their other abilities or spells. (When you are forced to make an attack without an auto feature it puts the person in a position where they can see everything going on. Click, attack, check damage being dealt, click, attack, look at tp, click, attack, check hp, click, attack, cue up spell or skill. It keeps the battle flowing with no down time with what your hands should be doing. It is more engaging contrary to some people's beliefs because you are there, and you are in it. However, it also allows for more freedom. You have control of what your character is doing. If you are spamming attacks that is just poor playing. You yourself cause your own lag and delay of a spell or skill because you have several attacks cued up.)

The delay of starting or fishing an attack will still occur. You will still go to click a skill and you will have to wait until the current animation of you attack completes before that skill will start. It will not make combat faster because the same issues that are making it slow without the auto attack will still be present. It would literally be the same as it is now, but you don't have to click on the attack for it to happen.

Halting attacks in order to: do tactics, avoid ruining crowd control, put away your weapon (like if the wrong ability is stacked during BR), unengaging a mob, etc. would be difficult. I don't see how this would be sped up at all in comparison to a manual attack. If anything I could see it being worse than manual.

The skill of players is very important in this battle system we currently have and giving them an easier mode of combat I fear will on degrade that skill. Right now when you fight with someone you can tell who is on the ball and who isn't, and it would be the same with auto attack in some stances. But I do not want the argument of 'well I was auto attacking' as a reasoning for contributing to battle.

If auto attack is put into the combat system, I can see how it could be a tiny bit useful in very specific situations, but overall I think it will be abused more than used appropriately, as well as a 'quick' fix that doesn't really solve major issues. It seems almost obsessive how so many people are craving this tiny little feature rather than some more major changes to the combat that could assist it more than this.

[Eldaena]

Now before I go ahead and talk about AA, let's bring up a couple of concerns that can directly be related to Stamina. As we all know, this current system is based on Stamina. I would feel that if AA were to be brought into the mix, then we'd have to get rid of Stamina in it's current form by not having stamina drained from normal AA's. If not then it would automatically take away Stamina from other abilities you would like to use Stamina on. This also leads me to assume that weapons would have to revert back to it's old DPS phase.

Right now I don't like seeing every weapon attacking at one second intervals or whatever with the same damage no matter what weapon you're wielding. I loved the previous system in which turn it would take longer to swing a longsword relative to a short sword but the longsword had much more power behind it's swing. It just seemed realistic. Oh, and I know this is a fantasy based game so don't cry when I said it. Even though this is a Fantasy, you don't see everyone with wings that grow magically and they all fly away. It still uses realistic ties, just drastically flaunted at certain places.

Now with the auto-attack function. As ChiefCurrahee stated, there is only one simple function to a normal attack. Normal Damage, and TP Gain. Easily entertained by an Auto-Attack feature. Reika I don't see how keeping today's standard of manually pressing one would somehow keep people more engaged? The only time you seen people not engaged during FFXI was when they fell asleep. At least their character was still swinging after they fell asleep for a certain time. Manually pressing a normal attack is boring and repetative. TP Gain is way way way too much for a standard attack, and some abilities that base their action on TP usage, like Second Wind, should only be based on a cooldown timer. This isn't a big issue, just my own opinion. TP should be for weaponskills. How about they use the Stamina Bar for using certain abilities after their cooldown time wears off? There's a viable solution.

There is no reason why SE can't mold the two systems together into a new hybrid form. I'm sure at least one of my idea's sounds appealing. The fact is that there really isn't a counter-argument to auto-attack. The only thing I could say in your defense is that they should at least give you the option to turn AA on or off. Just like there are now two different methods to targeting.

1) The fact that you want a stamina bar removed is a bit contradictory to your realism statement. It takes stamina to do ALL things. Hell, an entire auto attack system is contrary to your realism statement. I think regular attack lengths based on weapons and damage and such would be an interesting idea but I don't think auto attack will implement that in any way. (Also, it is not true that you deal the same amount of damage regardless of the weapon you use. That is fully false.)

2) Regular attacks have two functions, not one. Dealing damage and gaining TP. This is realistic as well for you have to get a feel of a fight before going all crazy and doing skills and battle regimens. Manually selecting an attack maybe repetitive, but battle is repetitive. It's only as boring as you make it, however. And personally, watching my character automatically attack while I just sit and watch my TP build up seems boring and repetitive to me, as well as unengaging. I don't have a direct effect on all my character's actions at that point, which makes it less interactive.

3) Why is it hard for you to grasp the concept of second wind taking TP? It's called 'second wind.' As if, while you are in a fight, you get to a climatic point where you are re-energized. You don't think that should take effort? That's generally what TP is. The effort gained by your actions. I feel you need to build up to something like that.

Please stop trying to patronize people into thinking you are the sole proprietor of truth in this argument. People are posting here out of concern for the game that YOU are playing. It's not a sole person's effort to make this game happen, but everyone, including the players. If there wasn't an argument against auto attack then why didn't they have it in the beginning? I'm going to go with Reika on this and tell you that the doors to XI are still open. This is not XI-2 with improved graphics and a better crafting system. It's Final Fantasy XIV.

[Bayohne]

Greetings everyone. We have some comments for you regarding auto-attack, straight from FFXIV battle lead, Akihiko Matsui.

Hello adventurers of FFXIV! This is battle lead Akihiko Matsui.

I would like to take this moment to explain the current plans we have in place.

First off, once the future battle balance and battle system adjustments take place, we feel that the implementation of auto-attack is quite necessary. Please embrace this as just one of the many necessary revamps needed to create more interesting and strategy rich battles as well as solve the tediousness of having to spam a button.

With this said, I do not feel that the implementation of auto-attack will solve everything. In other threads there have been many topics coming up about what is going to happen to the stamina gauge and claim system, how classes should have unique qualities and stats, what’s going to happen with monsters, raid dungeons, equipment, etc. I have looked over all of the great number of elements and at the current stage feel that without implementing auto-attack that the future battle system would be impossible.

Compared to the FFXI auto-attack system, we are thinking about making the auto-attack system for FFXIV have a shorter attack delay. (This has been a heated debate on the forum, and having been lead of FFXI please forgive me for bringing it up as a point of comparison. There is no "better" or "worse" system.)

The objective here is not to lower the battle difficulty. The main objective here, when thinking about battles rich in strategy, pace, and exhilaration, is instead of having to time regular attacks, we will be preparing situations that require proper timing of abilities, magic, and weapon skills. Following this, weaker enemies are a different story, but we will make sure it’s balanced so you can’t win a fight just by using auto-attack.

Due to the fact we still have a lot of elements that need to be tested and looked into, it is difficult for me to tell you any more info in great detail, but if you give me some time I will do my best to share the information with you. Thank you!

[Delmontyb]

Wow, that's some excellent info, at least we know some new things, auto attack yes, but after then XI which is good, and that you can't just win with auto attack. I'm also happy to see some strategy come back into play.
But what will really make me excited is to see some video of the new system. I'm OK with them getting it right, and thus don't need to see it now, but hopefully we'll start to not just hear more, but see more as well.

[ChiefCurrahee]

1)
Please stop trying to patronize people into thinking you are the sole proprietor of truth in this argument. People are posting here out of concern for the game that YOU are playing. It's not a sole person's effort to make this game happen, but everyone, including the players. If there wasn't an argument against auto attack then why didn't they have it in the beginning? I'm going to go with Reika on this and tell you that the doors to XI are still open. This is not XI-2 with improved graphics and a better crafting system. It's Final Fantasy XIV.

You are correct this isn't FFXI-2.
Adding auto attack doesn't make this FFXI-2 either.
There is a lot of unrest with the current battle system. Proven by the fact that the dev team is making it one of their top priorities in turning the game around. Further proven by the player polls, the players 2nd biggest issue with the battle system is the "spamming of abilities".

How do you go about reducing the spamming of abilities (pressing buttons) ?

I can think of 4 things:
1)Make attacks more powerful so less input is needed per battle.
2)increase stamina use per attack to slow down rate of attack
3)slow down stamina regen rate again to slow down rate of attack
4) implement basic auto attack reduce the input load of building TP

Now you just can't slap in Auto attack and call it a day. It has to be balanced. It can't be an option as your main DD source (unless you are farming mobs way under level) It needs to serve a main purpose of automated TP gain, and low DoT. As not to distract from the other skills and abilities you acquire through ranking up. Battle will be just as involving, it will be just as fast. It just won't be as tedious.

Of all the people that are against Auto Attack, have you taken into consideration of how the console gamers (PS3) will receive this current battle system? I've pointed out several times that the input needed to navigate and select attacks takes at least twice as many inputs on a gamepad than does on a keyboard? Simply adding in AA can reduce the needed input.

I've seen ideas such as an extended battle cue instead of basic AA. This still does not reduce the required inputs. You are just front loading your strategy. What if you miss an attack? Your cue is worthless. What if you're shield arm falls half way through the cue? What about all the conditional abilities and skills? Plus this type of system falls more in line with AUTO BATTLE than AUTO ATTACK.

Thats another thing. AUTO ATTACK doesn't mean AUTO BATTLE. You are still behind all the other actions your character makes. You are just not reconfirming mid fight yes attack the monster it's not dead yet, yes attack again please. Yes once more I'd like a little more TP. Yep I know, attack again my WS missed I need more TP...

Now there was an estimated ~300k+ players at launch, now there is an estimated ~30k players left playing. If a huge portion of those 30k players feel that the spamming of abilities (pressing buttons) is the #2 issue with battle, I think it's safe to say then other 270k players that left probably feel the say way. If Auto Attack can reduce the need of required inputs (pressing buttons) and bring back people I think it's worth it, regardless of the few people who feel taking one attack and automating TP gain will ruin involvement/immersion/freedom/the game.

But the main point I really want to drive home is. AUTO ATTACK does not mean AUTO BATTLE. The fundamental system doesn't allow for a person to simply get by w/o other inputs.

[ChiefCurrahee]

WOOT! FFXIV lives to fight another day!

[Griss]

Baoyhne, please send on our thanks on to Matsui San for taking the time to give us a heads up on whats going on.

I really like the fact that the there sleeves have been rolled up and there back tinkering with the nuts and bolts of the battle system again.

[Kimahri]

The main objective here, when thinking about battles rich in strategy, pace, and exhilaration, is instead of having to time regular attacks, we will be preparing situations that require proper timing of abilities, magic, and weapon skills. Following this, weaker enemies are a different story, but we will make sure it’s balanced so you can’t win a fight just by using auto-attack.

Is it just me, or does this sound something like them going to change the current BR system in some way?

As for the rest of the post. +1!!!!!! Hahahahaha! Now please be quiet about how prestigious you think this game is right now. This is yet another victory for us; The real players looking for corrections and challenges.

[Shikyo]

Is it just me, or does this sound something like them going to change the current BR system in some way?

As for the rest of the post. +1!!!!!! Hahahahaha! Now please be quiet about how prestigious you think this game is right now. This is yet another victory for us; The real players looking for corrections and challenges.

WOOOOHOOOO this like when a fighter you think is down for the count, but bounces up at 8 keep on jabbing SE this is definetly a step in the right direction, i was starting to get worried

[Malakhim]

Is it just me, or does this sound something like them going to change the current BR system in some way?

As for the rest of the post. +1!!!!!! Hahahahaha! Now please be quiet about how prestigious you think this game is right now. This is yet another victory for us; The real players looking for corrections and challenges.

...This type of attitude doesn't do much to help your position.

At any rate, looks like that debate is over. I'm glad he realizes that just adding an auto-attack isn't going to be the saving grace of the battle system and is going to be making sure to spruce up all the aspects. Here's to hoping things work out.

Thanks a bunch for bringing up the info, Bayohne. Very much appreciated, and thank you Matsui-san for providing it.

Now if only we could steal some more information from the devs' tight grip.