[dev1022] Auto-attack system questions and discussion

[Skeeter]

I would welcome auto attack. They would have to rework other things to make it work. Spamming light attack to build up TP is not exactly exciting, gets kinda tedious.

[Harly]

I totally agree with Nephera. Guild marks to get skills only through leves is very difficult. Couples with the cost, it's almost not worth trying to get them, especially for a casual player.

[SydeBeheln]

Auto battle might not be such a bad thing if you consider the outcome. By having auto battle, stamina would continuously refill, rather than being reset(like it does with the current system) every time you use standard attack. With that in mind, rapid Weapon skilling, and more occasional MANUAL input on other abilities would make up for the lack of "active combat".

Another solution I thought about, was to increase the stamina cost for "standard attack". Doing this would allow more free time for player communication, and reduce "spamming". Increase the AP rewarded per standard attack, and relatively you have the same system with more free time.

Either one of two before-mentioned ideas would work if you consider all of the variables.

[Amsai]

I too would really like an auto-attack, but what I really want to get acoss is how I would like the battles to feel.

Battle needs 2 things imo:
1. Depth.
2. Weight.

Depth creates immersion and involvement, and weight gives meaning to your decisions in battle. FFXIV does a really good job with the current battle system with depth, and FFXI did a good job with weight. FFXIV has a fairly involved system that keeps you occupied. I can definately see the appeal of that, and I hope they keep it. FFXI while in most cases was not as involved due to that game's auto-attack and long recasts; did provide me with a sense of weight. Sure FFXI's combat was slower paced, but when you did finally use a spell/WS/abillity it mattered. Most other MMOs have little or no sense of weight, because the abilities/spells are all instant gratification. And to me its the same complaint that people are making about FFXIV's basic attacks. Only with other games its more like 1, 2, 3, 4 repeat instead of 1, 1, 1, 1.

I would like auto-attack, but would want it to be implemented in a battle system that is a cross between FFXI and FFXIV like a couple of others in the thread have suggested. The current battle system does feel some what spammy to me so an auto-attack could definately help that. The bigger issue in my opinion is that its harder to communicate. I've seen a few people in this thread brush it off as lame, but this is an MMO and it revolves around interaction. If SE intended the battle system to be so involving, then they should have included a built in voice chat.

I'd like to elaborate more on most MMOs on the market having their entire battle system be a spam-fest. WoW, EQ, GW and LOTRO all feel like one big spam-fest. They even have auto-attack, but it still feels like your just rushing through a rotation. So while I would like the battle system to be changed to include auto-attack, I would not want it at the expense of depth, or the exclusion of adding more weight. Because while FFXIV's battle system is not lacking at all in depth, it could use a bit more punch in the weight department (though its lack of weight is nothing compared to most other MMOs excluding FFXI). I want battle to be involving like it currently is in FFXIV, but I want my WS/abillities/spells to feel like they matter (especially higher level ones). When I cast a buff/debuff, I don't want to recast it a second later. When I cast a powerful nuke, it should take time to cast it (I'm a mage not an archer). And when I use a really powerful special ability, I should not be able to use it 15 seconds later.

I am not much of an idea man, but I can spot what I like and dislike about the battle system. So I am not really sure how to accomplish an auto-attack system that has depth and weight, but I know thats what is missing. Borrowing from one of the other posters: I like the idea of turning the base attacks into different types of auto-attacks, and that they could be toggled off or on. I also like that classes would attack at different strengths and speeds depending on their weapon and auto-attack type. This would go towards making things less spammy and making communication easier.

K so here is my attempt at an idea:
To keep depth and add weight maybe have every class have three seperate ability categories: magic (yes even melee based "spells"), tactics and weapon skills. Magic would be on global cooldowns and use up MPs (and still making MP management be important and adding some refresh abilities to certain classes). Tactics would be what are currently called abillties and would use stamina. Stamina would start at zero and drop down as it was used, but would build up based on points you'd get from the use of both magic and WSs. Weapon Skills would still use TP of course, and would be built up from your auto-attack. TP gain would depend on weapon and auto-attack type, but could also be augmented with haste. Tactics would be the center piece of this system, as youd wand to build it up to get access to more potent abilites and effects. Consequently it would be harder to get stamina points, and it would be neccessary to put the "weaker" melee abilities under the "melee spells" (or we could call it something else if thats too weird) category. In addition to this, mages would need to get a lot of Tactics abilities added to them that would greatly augment the power or efffect of their spells and thus make getting stamina points important for them as well.

Good? Bad? I should be executed for crimes against FFXIV?

So in summary: Yes to auto-attack, but keep the depth of the battle system, and add in more weight to my decisions.

[AmyRae]

Battle needs 2 things imo:
1. Depth.
2. Weight.

So... we should release FFXIV on the Nintendo 3DS?

[OmegaNovaios]

K so here is my attempt at an idea:
To keep depth and add weight maybe have every class have three seperate ability categories: magic (yes even melee based "spells"), tactics and weapon skills. Magic would be on global cooldowns and use up MPs (and still making MP management be important and adding some refresh abilities to certain classes). Tactics would be what are currently called abillties and would use stamina. Stamina would start at zero and drop down as it was used, but would build up based on points you'd get from the use of both magic and WSs. Weapon Skills would still use TP of course, and would be built up from your auto-attack. TP gain would depend on weapon and auto-attack type, but could also be augmented with haste. Tactics would be the center piece of this system, as youd wand to build it up to get access to more potent abilites and effects. Consequently it would be harder to get stamina points, and it would be neccessary to put the "weaker" melee abilities under the "melee spells" (or we could call it something else if thats too weird) category. In addition to this, mages would need to get a lot of Tactics abilities added to them that would greatly augment the power or efffect of their spells and thus make getting stamina points important for them as well.

Good? Bad? I should be executed for crimes against FFXIV?

So in summary: Yes to auto-attack, but keep the depth of the battle system, and add in more weight to my decisions.

The 3 categories seems weird to me or perhaps I don't quite understand the concept all that well since it's so different, but I think its similar to what already exists. Now I'm not 100% sure on this, but I know some melee actions have elemental attributes to them, I'm pretty sure that using some magical actions as a DoW gives those actions melee properties and can't be used at range, and as for all damaging spells I'm not sure but perhaps they are also give melee properties. I know buffs, debuffs, and cures as DoW can be used at range and isn't affected by elemental properties. Now nuke tiers don't affect the same nuke's cool down on any tier and a global cool down does not exist. Now the melee actions with elemental attributes does use MP but there aren't many of those actions. You can cross class any spell to use MP which can deplete you MP quite fast as DoW. However using spells as DoW does require magical stats to be effective but this is all part of your class setup and how you tactically want to play the game. So I don't see much change here from what you proposed.

Not entirely sure what you mean by tactics, but I'm assuming melee buffs, (Featherfoot, Raging Strike, Ferocity) crowd control (Shadowbind), or enmity actions (Provoke, Taunt, Wardrum). We have these also. Personally I think stamina could stay the way it is even with an auto attack and it would behave the same way (auto attack would still deplete the stamina gauge each hit and if you don't want to use stamina you can simply toggle it off). If you changed stamina to only be used by tactics (melee classes only unless you cross class) then tactical action cool downs must be directly linked with the progression of stamina. This way it gives weight/opportunity cost to your actions (which preferably wouldn't be too fast IMO).

Now the balance issue here is how many tactical actions does SE expect to to generally be used. In the current setup some people use no tactical actions and some people use very many tactical actions. For example I could have 2 enmity, 1 crowd control, 2 accuracy buffs, and 2 attack buffs. Now I would consider this a lot of actions and way too many for SE to consider allowing a player to use w/o some heavy opportunity cost or direct tactical play based on battle situations. Personally I would code the game to allow 2-3 tactics be used around every 15-30 seconds to keep up with the battle pace of FFXIV. The thing I like the most about your proposal is that this greatly encourages those who don't use any tactics to equip at around 2-3 tactical actions and those who only equip 1-3 attack actions and 4+ buff tactical actions to use on 1 single attack to use fewer tactical actions or force weight on the situation rather using back to back tactical actions because everything is based on stamina (which is built up fast enough to spam many tactical actions) and you are only restricted on cool downs for each action individually (not globally). So I really like this idea.

Personally I don't think the magic idea is so good if you mean to change actions and give DoW new magical skills. However your proposal states to build stamina through using magic and TP abilities while building TP stays the same. Now there are 3 options here.

1. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build both TP and Stamina.
2. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build TP and using TP converts into Stamina.
3. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build TP and using TP/MP converts into Stamina.

Personally option 3 looks best to me, option 1 works, and option 2 just fails IMO. Here are the reasons why:

1. Both DoW and DoM can gain stamina, fairly more difficult for DoM because it's generally not best tactic to just spam regular attacks since spell casting is much more effective. Thus making the use of tactical actions very inconvenient however with an auto attack this is a much more viable option.
2. This limits DoM to either using melee actions or relying Radiance/(forgot name of THM action equivalent to Radiance) with the same TP issue as 1.
3. Now both DoW and DoM can build both TP (if needed by DoM) and stamina efficiently.

Overall, I think this (especially combined with auto attacks for convenience whether this system is implemented or we keep the current system) makes combat much more engaging, adds tactical elements, and just more fun IMO. It reduces the constant need of using everything as soon as cool down wears off (which is horrible IMO it's just a big twitchy spam fast that doesn't involve any thinking and thus tedious repeated actions that doesn't require any effort other than how long you can keep it up before you need a break).

Great idea. Hope my version helps and explains for all to understand.

Edit: As for the DoW magical melee actions this gives DoW more emphasis to use these actions (which are very weak and quite useless IMO) since it would build slightly more stamina since it uses both TP and MP.

Edit: This also helps to define roles. Not a huge impact, but the issue right now is too much freedom (I like the sandbox idea overall just needs cross crass penalties) which allow players to do basically everything on every class. This proposal limits the tactical actions greatly thus keeping someone from let's say trying to DPS while tanking at the same (2 accuracy + 2 attack + 2 enmity buffs with only 1-2 DPS actions, cures, and damage mitigation actions equipped). This is just 1 example.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

I played FFXI off and on for around 8 years and I personally never had that problem. I had very active parties all co-operating on creating Skillchains and sometimes even having Magic Bursts.

If there was any MMO with true action combat like Zelda or even an official Zelda MMO it would probably overpopulate WOW's highest peak within a week of launch. Either this is beyond any technology we have to incorporate into an MMO considering the overhaul to server as well as PC performance or it takes too much work to implement and balance into an MMO. However, I would love to see this in an MMO.

or ppl just 2 boxed with a pl.....

actually DCUO has a good manual action based combat working from combo system. And you not just button mashing And you need to rotate everything each boos fight. Like 1 style of fighting don't work on certain bosses. Its not bad and the only thing I like in dcuo. Also everyone is a hybrid and made my monk fire kitty.

[Amsai]

I think your trying to be funny, but I don't get the joke.................. although I have been up for almost 24 hrs.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

but again auto attack is for pansies... sorry play a real game there you gotta manually attack. Its alot funner then watching the AI do it. FFxi got pretty dull once ppl just dd zerged everything with /nin. Even monk had to /nin.....heack first it was you must do /war... then it was you must do /nin

Auto attack allowes cookie cutting which od epically boring.

I say no to auto attack, its a cheap concept, and makesa for brain dead gamers. It also is do reliant of cookie cutting builds.

[Kilta_Firelotus]

I think your trying to be funny, but I don't get the joke.................. although I have been up for almost 24 hrs.

who me? and My dislike of auto attack?
Sorry I play real games that actually makes you play. Not making you sit and watch the action.

heck I much rather play the ps1 harvrest moon game then dragon age origians., and infact I am.