Auto attack: A complete battle system

[MariyaShidou]

so everyone on this post do me a favor equip a bow and spam attack keeping in mind the actual time it takes for each arrow to shoot and hit he enemy... now start a stop watch and use raging strike then eagle eye then pucture 2 or barrage..... the time is 90% the same dps wise so spamming attack just about does the same as waiting for 2 buffs and a special to go off. SOOOOO there FOR THE WHOLE SYSTEM IS SPAMMYYY. god.... reading these forums with no evidence behind what anybody says is just ridiculas....

You haven't played ARC. Who the heck would want to Raging Strike and Hawk's Eye on Puncture 2? Multishot/Trifurcate + RS + HE = 6 times the damage of a normal shot, or 9 times if they all crit. This goes to show how ridiculous your post is.

[AmyRae]

No Auto Attack and learn how to manage Stamina.. how can you multi shot or ferocity raging strike with auto attack.. What this game needs is either haste or lower the amount of stamina.. Stamina bars define Play style either you spam actions and deplete your stamina bar or you play wisely and do more damage while the other person is waiting on stamina.. It's not difficult in fact after a while you develop a timing of actions and are unaffected by stamina

TBH I'm not sure Multi-shot has much of a future, anyway. It's a tad overpowered considering its use as a seriously damaging first strike that produces a heap of follow-up TP. It's reminiscent of how Pentathrust used to work back in early FFXI.

I'm not saying I want it gone, but I can't see a future where it doesn't get nerfed at some point and in some way.

[Spudrik]

Battle regimen would probably be used a lot more if we gained auto-attack as it would allow time for tactical descision as well as communication. Would make a battle more immersive than the current spam fest

[weeble]

there is nothing wrong with not having auto attack ..for the love of God please don't add auto attack se. it's not really a huge spam like some have said. and u still need to pay attention to u'r gage less u'r that mele that didn't have enough for provoke or to add a battle regimen quick enough cause u'r a one button smashing. besides this the part i love about it, it removes all the leechers, the half afk'ers, the duel botters, and anyone that does these are brought to light in seconds. fact i was one that liked where the very first sp system was going, they should of fixed that one not brought us a version of ffxi exp system again. please se don't bring back all the bad things of ffxi without the good and taking out the good of ffxiv and leavign the bad stuff. again no thanks please for auto attack, this game has already aloud players to watch a majillion hours of tv while playing with u'r crafting don't do it to the battle system too lol.

[Alcide]

there is nothing wrong with not having auto attack ..for the love of God please don't add auto attack se. it's not really a huge spam like some have said. and u still need to pay attention to u'r gage less u'r that mele that didn't have enough for provoke or to add a battle regimen quick enough cause u'r a one button smashing. besides this the part i love about it, it removes all the leechers, the half afk'ers, the duel botters, and anyone that does these are brought to light in seconds.

THIS^

The whole battle system penalizes spammers, how the hell can people not see that???

[kukurumei]

there is nothing wrong with not having auto attack ..for the love of God please don't add auto attack se. it's not really a huge spam like some have said. and u still need to pay attention to u'r gage less u'r that mele that didn't have enough for provoke or to add a battle regimen quick enough cause u'r a one button smashing. besides this the part i love about it, it removes all the leechers, the half afk'ers, the duel botters, and anyone that does these are brought to light in seconds. fact i was one that liked where the very first sp system was going, they should of fixed that one not brought us a version of ffxi exp system again. please se don't bring back all the bad things of ffxi without the good and taking out the good of ffxiv and leavign the bad stuff. again no thanks please for auto attack, this game has already aloud players to watch a majillion hours of tv while playing with u'r crafting don't do it to the battle system too lol.

There are actually more of them out there you know..assuming they didn't slowly leave with everyone else.

and 1111231111 it does work quite well. Just because you want to do 1234512345 doesn't make the first any less effective.

It was very easy to realize that speed of getting an attack in out weights the the benefits of actually thinking. Spam that attack, heal if it hurts to much, do a few TP attacks, repeat.

[Leonesaurus]

I agree.

Add the "option"for the player to go into auto-attack mode (FF XI) spam an attack routine until the enemy is dead is perfect for players looking to farm for hours for materials, or who are just not in the mood for fancy fighting for particular reasons. But, as soon as they want to get serious and start doing more complex actions, they can turn off auto-attack with the press of a button and be able to enter commands again.

In the end, you have a WIN-WIN situation where FF XI and FF XIV players are both happy and have more gameplay choices to choose from. I hope they implement a feature like this for us in the near future!

[Dargoth_Draconia]

In the letters it said they are working on an Auto-attack feature so it will make it more like FFXI, so we just may see the stamina bar going out the door, that or normal attacks won't use the stamina bar.
Taken from another one of my post but has to do with this one as well.

[ChiefCurrahee]

There are actually more of them out there you know..assuming they didn't slowly leave with everyone else.

and 1111231111 it does work quite well. Just because you want to do 1234512345 doesn't make the first any less effective.
It was very easy to realize that speed of getting an attack in out weights the the benefits of actually thinking. Spam that attack, heal if it hurts to much, do a few TP attacks, repeat.

i'll say it again

With the current UI, I feel that it's too cumbersome NOT have some sort of auto attack.
especially with a game pad, and when the PS3 version is released this is what people will complain about.

as of now this is how battle goes:

Basic attack --> --> --> --> --> TP SKILL <-- <-- <-- <-- <-- Basic attack <up> --> --> --> JOB ABILLITY <down> <-- <-- <-- BASIC ATTACK BASIC ATTACK BASIC ATTACK --> --> --> TP SKILL

Thats 8 actions which takes 29 button presses.

Most of that can be avoided by using strictly a keyboard and 8 actions only take as many button presses.

Adding Auto attack won't necessarily reduce the amount of button presses it takes to navigate the current battle UI but allow a less frantic pace to navigation.
you can rely on Auto attack to build your TP while you navigate the tabs for your next skill.

back in alpha the pace of battle was much slower, where attacks took 5-10 seconds (no lag) this allowed time to choose your next attack the battle UI was much more manageable. When they updated the combat system in Beta they didn't touch the battle UI. It's time for a change.

[Saberlily]

Here's some thoughts from a level 10 Pugilist in his first week of play. Maybe I just happened to choose the right class, but after I gained my first couple skills this game stopped being a 1,1,1 spamfest. It's strange to me that some people mention that the system works once you reach the twenties, but I haven't tried any other classes yet and right now what I'm playing doesn't feel terrible. Right now my combat revolves around using Light and Heavy strikes as my main attacks and using context sensitive skills and larger TP consuming skills as they become available. I'd really like to see a greater emphasis on a wider variety of basic attacks that consume varying amounts of stamina and/or TP. The combat then becomes more of a 1, 4, 2, 2, 3 type of system where the basic attack you choose to execute is actually important in the grand scheme of things. Use the wrong basic attacks and you'll have to wait longer to deal that high damage WS.

Pretty much any other MMO's I've tried use an auto attack system where the focus is only on your skill management. Basic combat actions should be just as important as the powerful skills you execute. Also I think it's of note that eventual PS3 players will be playing with only a controller and headset. I don't think that implementing auto-attack just so PC players can text chat is a good argument. If the system is designed with PC text chatting in mind then PS3 players will be dropping their controller, typing on a keyboard, picking their controller back up, rinse and repeat. Yes, they'll likely be able to play on the keyboard, but they own a PS3 and not a high end gaming computer probably in part because they like their controllers. The game's combat system should be made intuitive enough that players are able to adjust tactics on the fly. It's 2011, voice chat should be the standard by now.

I agree with this^