Way to implement Auto-attack

[Shadowskill]

Taking what we have, making the most out of it, as well implementing Auto- attack/involved battle system.

Battle system

Dividing Stamina bar, MP bar, TP bar

All moves relating to normal attacks, (Heavy Slash, Pummel, Heavy Stab etc.) use the stamina bar only.

All moves relating to WS's (Concussive Blow II, Red Lotus II, etc) use the TP bar.

All Spells in need of MP (Fire, Cure, etc) draw from the MP bar.

<Abilities that require TP as well as MP will use MP/TP as needed by the ability>

As for Abilities regarding enhancing (Still Precision, Blindside, etc) they have their own timers. so no need to place them on any bar.

Stances

The old Dev team had an interesting look at the battle system regarding stances, would like to see this idea come to life. Can add the 3 stances (Aggressive, Neutral, Defensive) Allowing each stance a noticable look,

With each stance, lets look at Pugilist for an example.

Aggressive stance: Arms up, with legs positioning weight on rear foot, ready to unload an attack. leaving themself open for an attack

Ability: Flurry

Neutral stance: Arms at waist height, ready to block/strike, standing on the balls of feet, transfering weight back and forth, allowing for evasive counters and striking.

Ability: Pummel

Defensive stance: Arms up in defensive position guarding face. weight being transfered between the legs almost bouncing back and forth ready to dodge/evade an attack.

Ability: Light Strike

Now with each stance comes different traits, Allowing the player to jump between the stances to maximize Damage or Defense. this would add a more involved battle system with jumping from say a DD to Tank all depending on how the battle evolves, or gaining TP in a Defensive stance while soloing, then jumping through to the Aggressive stance to preform a WS then back to the Defensive stance to resume, taking in the timing of the monsters attacks. to limit any damage that may be taken to a minimal.

Aggressive stance: High attack power, Low evasion, Low defense.

Neutral stance: Moderate attack power/evasion/defense.

Defensive stance: Low attack power, High evasion/defense

Auto-attack

With this idea in place, now SE can add a toggle for Auto-attack on/off in the menu. with Auto-attack on. the Game would maximize the stamina depending on the stance the player is in (useing the stamina gauge and amounts for each move already in place) All the attacks would need to be added to the action bar in order to be used, regardless if auto-attack is on or off. For the game to know what abilities would be used per stance, (Attack stance: Flurry would need be in the action bar, as would Light Strike for Defensive etc) SE can also just add them like they do with the basic attack (Light strike, Light stab etc).

As for those who would like to take full control of their character, they will have the ability to toggle Auto-attack off, allowing them to use the attacks when they see fit.

Would be very helpful to allow use of templates (FF11 had macro books, allowing you to create macros for multiple jobs) should work same fashion for say Action bars. to switch between a Tank/DD/Healer role per class, just make a "Book, Template" that you can load for when you switch between roles/classes.

This brings an interesting idea I got from reading the Pugilist forums. now Monk from FF11 had a kick attack, SE could add a copy move (kick attacks) for each move from Pugilist (Pummel, Flurry, as well as the WS's) add a slider to determine the % between kick attacks or punching. to help create ones playing style alittle farther while useing the auto-attack. This would not apply while auto-attack is off due to player being in full control.

Ability points/Cross class abilities

One method I could think of for this, would be to have abilities for the class in question cost 0 points (Pugilist abilities on Pugilist class, etc for all classes), also seperate the Tiers to their own timers (Jarring Strike I, II. Cure I, II). As for cross class abilities, can just increase the cost and or lowering the total amount of points one would have to use for cross class abilities. incouraging players to stick to their own class abilities as well giving them some freedom to experiment. Also adjust the affinity between abilities for cross class, limit some abilities from being cross classed (if required), as well as a limiting factor of the "required rank" to use an ability.

Stats/points

Keep both Physical level and Job rank.

Only change would be to add more stats, MP/HP (separate from MND/VIT), AGI, allowing more freedom for players to place points (tweak) their main role (much like say Merits in FF11).

The classes would rank up with a base stat per job per rank (kind of like FF11) Each rank would have a cap on the stats being displayed in blue when reached (adding in the physical points).

This would help players build a class more to their liking aswell keep the class within a set "role"

An example would be.. lets say GLA. the player would like a more Mage style (DRK style) so their physical points would be placed in INT, MP, PIETY. this would allow the player to cast some spells and play more of a mage style.

Limiting factors would be amount of INT, MP, PIETY, as well the affinity of spells/points cost to set them on a cross class.

Same Class, GLA that would like increase a DD role, or Tank role. can increase stats towards STR or DEF as well HP.

The Class "base" stats will not be capped, allowing the players the freedom to play and design their own with in that class through physical level and points.

These are just a few ideas I can think of that would take what we currently have and adjusting them... to allow for options such as auto-attack. Hopefuly it makes sense (I'm very bad at putting ideas to pen)

Thank you for reading.

[viion]

This is getting way too deep into something very simple, all you need to do is not let normal attack use up stamina and thats it lol.

[OmegaNovaios]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...cussion/page10

Please read this for changing the battle system. It's simple and involves auto attack. Maybe you can work your idea around this/change to this so it can have an actual thread.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

i like everything minus auto attack. Sorry I like playing my games not watching them. :3 no matter how fast it is.

I love the stances very much and i congradulate your details.

even simple features need to be deeply explained.

They should set up this system like either marrowwind esk or dcuo esk.

morrowwinds/oblivions attack was "light slashing" was repeatitive button pressing. consumed less fatigue per swipe but also did less dmg. But holding the button till a stronger attack is issued. This will use more fatigue. Abd have it off the action bar and on an attack button. Like controler is the r2 button. Idk what would be a good keyboard button.
this will allow more fluidness in selecting your different weapon skills, spells, and abilities.
I think what will fix the combat is have the attacks off the action bar.
idk how well this will be on keyboard though. but controler will see more fluid action imo.

I just really don't wanna go back to auto attack. I got so bored in a few mmo watching my character.

[Linnear]

Playing Drk heavily in XI was actually a lot of fun, everyone said they were just auto attack bots and up until the 60s that was pretty true, but that was because interesting ailities didn't beome available till later. Drain II, Dreadspikes, Seighan, Hasso, third eye, Stun, Souleater,Aspir, Weapon Bash, Bio and the various absorbes that could be done were actually time conuming. Unfortunantly there were not enough mobs that could be easily aspird and keeping your drk skill capped to use them was rough and convincing RDMs for refresh was intollerabe. As such a lot of Drks did not get to fully enjoy their class while leveling becuase they were always hampered by others not palying with them and lack of mana. If you got these abilities much much much earlier in the game , like say most of them by level 40 and better mana conversions it would not have felt as much of an auto attack bot.

Granted the blaance of the class would of been off, but it was not designed to be played using all your abilites all the time. In FFXIV I was hoping for a similar mechanic but where you got your abilities sooner, smaller CDs different resources such as CDs opposed to hard mana caps, (still have mana but let me last longer than 10 spells before I run out.) IN such a system, auto attacks still work and still add something to the game play, my auto attacks are more important than a whms auto attack, makes sence, therefore I can gear appropiatly and make decissions on it.

No idea if I am making my point here or not but basically what I am trying to say is that faster combat is possible with auto attacks, while not just making autoattacks a DoT but you have to design around it and SE isnt'. Should they? mabey, but I don't think you can say that auto attack will kill the flow of combat, and reult in you just watching your character, like you did in the first 40 ish levels of FFXI.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

Auto attack can be fast and I still hate it. Why? I'm not the one pressing the kill button. I'm watching the game do it. Plus with Auto attack heavy cookie cutting will happen because of trying to get the most out of it. Auto attack relies too much on weapon delay. Or is just some low damage animation between your abilities (WoW ish). What got old was all dd doing /nin because of having 2 weapons or shadows cux their single weapon was to fast due to haste staking.

I always refreshed the drk if they used their spells most don't. The reason, is because it took away from dd. Only spell i seen drk use mostly is stun. And only on boss fights.

[Linnear]

Auto attack can be fast and I still hate it. Why? I'm not the one pressing the kill button. I'm watching the game do it. Plus with Auto attack heavy cookie cutting will happen because of trying to get the most out of it. Auto attack relies too much on weapon delay. Or is just some low damage animation between your abilities (WoW ish). What got old was all dd doing /nin because of having 2 weapons or shadows cux their single weapon was to fast due to haste staking.

I always refreshed the drk if they used their spells most don't. The reason, is because it took away from dd. Only spell i seen drk use mostly is stun. And only on boss fights.

Bad drks and the peopel /nin were nurfing their damage, most people in XI had no idea how much damage they were actually doing. I was part of the community that parsed and used windower, and spell cast mods and all that fun stuff. As such, I had more information to optimize my character, by casting the right spells at the right times, you increased your damage, it was not a novelty to do it, it actually helped, but people don't noticethings like that cause there wasnt' enough information to make decissions on. /nin was easly a 20-30% damage cut for most classes with the except of a few like war when rampage was broken and dnc. Anyway, the point is, the problem wasn't auto attacking, it was people making uninformed decissions, and SE not giving them the tools to collect the inforation easily or effectly.

Damage meters and such are a big help to an MMO community, SE hasnt' asknowledged this yet, I suspect it is becuse they know their game is for casuals and like it that way, but all this doens't defeat the fact that you lose something by taking out auto attack and noone has addressed that yet.

If you "feel" that it disrupts your game play then you are free to think that as it is personl and opinionated but you can't say that auto attack takes away from game varieties becuase the lower end of the pyramid thinks /nin helps their damage.

[OmegaNovaios]

Auto attack can be fast and I still hate it. Why? I'm not the one pressing the kill button. I'm watching the game do it. Plus with Auto attack heavy cookie cutting will happen because of trying to get the most out of it. Auto attack relies too much on weapon delay. Or is just some low damage animation between your abilities (WoW ish). What got old was all dd doing /nin because of having 2 weapons or shadows cux their single weapon was to fast due to haste staking.

I always refreshed the drk if they used their spells most don't. The reason, is because it took away from dd. Only spell i seen drk use mostly is stun. And only on boss fights.

It's not the speed of the auto attack it's the speed of combat. In FFXI it took about 45 seconds to build TP up to use a WS. In FFXIV it takes about 5 seconds to build TP up to use a WS. In the meantime you can use any action you want that doesn't require TP.

Also, you can equip any action now unlike FFXI and it's effective because it isn't based on skills (Elemental, Enhancing, Enfeebling, etc.) so you could use Cure or Refresh yourself as DRK essentially.

[Chardrizard]

make auto attack optional, win win.

[Kira75]

make auto attack optional, win win.

While I know many probably want auto-attack, I know some like myself would prefer to have control over ones actions. More specifically on a class like Archer where your attacks aren't free. Making this optional seems like the best option, turn it on when u need or want it, turn it off when you don't. Preferably I would never turn it on myself though, as I like to control my character continuously, more to do, less staring and watching.