[Suggestion] Remove Stamina Bar

agreed.

the stamina system seems utterly pointless, as if they added it in just because it sounded like it would reinvent their game. It didn't.

Hello

Can always change the usage of the stamina bar. maybe to control basic attacks, kind of like the delay system they had in FF11?

Had this idea posted in the general forum, http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...nt-Auto-attack

Might work well with your idea

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Limiting Factors

- Each move in the game currently requires the use of a resource:

HP, MP, and TP.

- In addition to these resources we have extra limiters on skills and abilities:

cooldown times, casting times, and animation times.

All of the above mentioned are acceptable and make sense. These are typical with any MMO. The stamina bar adds an additional threshold on abilities and actions that is cumbersome.

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casting times and animation times are basically the same thing, so there are really 3 main limits currently. The recast time, the animation time, and the stamina bar. The issue with the stamina bar is that is acts as a universal cool-down timer, which is redundant since the animation times also act as a universal cool-down. Every ability has a recast time, minimum being the animation time, as well as a universal cool-down time, being the animation time. Removing the stamina bar would change little in the current gameplay, but would remove a cumbersome element.

As for auto-attack, there are both pros and cons to an auto-attack system. The biggest issue I see is what happens when people want to use a higher level ability as their base attack. As for meshing with the stamina system, auto-attack would be much easier to implement without the stamina bar, but the removal is not necessary.

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Originally Posted by Aldarin

casting times and animation times are basically the same thing, so there are really 3 main limits currently. The recast time, the animation time, and the stamina bar. The issue with the stamina bar is that is acts as a universal cool-down timer, which is redundant since the animation times also act as a universal cool-down. Every ability has a recast time, minimum being the animation time, as well as a universal cool-down time, being the animation time. Removing the stamina bar would change little in the current gameplay, but would remove a cumbersome element.

As for auto-attack, there are both pros and cons to an auto-attack system. The biggest issue I see is what happens when people want to use a higher level ability as their base attack. As for meshing with the stamina system, auto-attack would be much easier to implement without the stamina bar, but the removal is not necessary.

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That's because they spam stack BR, so the stamina bar takes little roll in that.

It is redundant though in the fact that you have attacks, skills and debuffs all stacked on the same bar. TP plays a stupidly small roll in this, as TP skills themselves becomes the odd man out.

It's a really weird system when you dissect it to its theories, as you'll realized so many opposing figures are really stepping on each other's toes from MP, stamina, cool downs, and TPs glooping into one.

Why have cool down if you have stamina, why have TP if you have stamina, why have MP if you have stamina? We don't really know anymore, besides very minor niches. I spam light attack, to get TP, which isn't really worth using due to the lag time, and stamina, while magic is always useful because they take almost no stamina with long casting times to replenish them, then we have to play with cool downs, it's irrelevant when you think about why we have so many "bars".

Basically it's a mess, that'll get magically cleaner if stamina was removed.

Something needs to be done like make skills exclusively auto attack, exclusively stamina and exclusively TP. When you start mixing and matching it really goes haywire.

Instead of removing the whole thing, i would say an adjustment/balance is in need. Say those basic attacks should consume little stamina comparing to a WS. Magic should use the same minimal stamina and still depletes MP.

And they should add more cool animation in it.

I like the stamina system, it's a thinker's battle system. It forces the player to think about thier next move and how to manage thier damage and skill usage. In some ways, it's like the heat gauge in the Mechwarrior series, you built a mech around ballistic weapons, (low heat) missiles, (mid heat) and energy weapons. (high to very high heat) You could group your weapons to fire in various ways, but you were always limited by the heat they generate, with penalties for overheating, ranging from reduced movement, to shutting down and becoming a helpless target, or my personal favorite, suicide from engine/ammunition explosion.

My point is that both systems force the player to plan a strategy: For a certain target, do they use lo-stamina attacks for constant damage over time, and risk not doing enough damage? Do they use stronger skills that use more stamina, generate massive spike damage, and risk tiring? Or do they choose a middle path, mixing hi and lo stamina skills for optimal damage and stamina use?

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Originally Posted by Seirra_Lanzce

Instead of removing the whole thing, i would say an adjustment/balance is in need. Say those basic attacks should consume little stamina comparing to a WS. Magic should use the same minimal stamina and still depletes MP.

And they should add more cool animation in it.

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That's more or less pointless. IF you make costs of stamina minimal, then why have a stamina requirement at all.

It's like having HP if every enemy does 1 damage to you. Eventually you'll be like, why watch the HP bar, ever.

If you're going to balance the stamina bar, it's going to be much much much harder then that.

Reason it's a complex and redundant mess. Not going to say removing it will solve all our problems, but it'll certainly make things tidy to balance.

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Originally Posted by Vanguard319

I like the stamina system, it's a thinker's battle system. It forces the player to think about thier next move and how to manage thier damage and skill usage. In some ways, it's like the heat gauge in the Mechwarrior series, you built a mech around ballistic weapons, (low heat) missiles, (mid heat) and energy weapons. (high to very high heat) You could group your weapons to fire in various ways, but you were always limited by the heat they generate, with penalties for overheating, ranging from reduced movement, to shutting down and becoming a helpless target, or my personal favorite, suicide from engine/ammunition explosion.

My point is that both systems force the player to plan a strategy: For a certain target, do they use lo-stamina attacks for constant damage over time, and risk not doing enough damage? Do they use stronger skills that use more stamina, generate massive spike damage, and risk tiring? Or do they choose a middle path, mixing hi and lo stamina skills for optimal damage and stamina use?

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That's when the overriding strategy gets implemented. Speed is king, SPAM! That's what happens when you realized that quantity can make up for quality.

tactical combat through micro management = 400damage
Spaming = 380 damage

Speed is, and will always will be an effective tactic, when it comes to these types of battle systems. It's not wrong, just boring.

While it can be balanced, it's just a horrible mess to balance it with.

You're going to have a super tough time balancing that. Do you make light attacks weaker? do you make healers most costly, do you make defend stronger, do you make TP more powerful?

It's even more convoluted when you have every flexible skill setups.

A choice between doing an attack or not doing attack? Brute force is mightily elegant.

Ever seen the commercial where a guy is sinking in a sand trap, and his 3 friends are conducting a strategy meeting to properly save him? While the 4th guy grabs vine and throws it to him.

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Originally Posted by Bloody

They could at least reduce the cost of all actions' stamina usage, since it is so easily depleted. One spell using a third of the bar is kinda silly, and four or five attacks can wipe it out.

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yeah, there are good reasons to keep the stamina gauge, tweaking it by adjusting the rate it recovers, or adjusting the stamina cost of each ability wuld be easier than trying to redesign the battle system from scratch. In addition, if SE adds spells like haste, that would also directly affect the rate at which the gauge would recover

Except that the limiting factor in many cases is the animation time, so unless haste affects both stamina regeneration and animation time it will be semi-useless.

anyways the system would not be redesigned from scratch. the current system works fine except for the redundant stamina bar. the only change would be the removal of the stamina bar, which would take little to no work on the part of the programmers.

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Originally Posted by kukurumei

Speed is, and will always will be an effective tactic, when it comes to these types of battle systems. It's not wrong, just boring.

While it can be balanced, it's just a horrible mess to balance it with.

You're going to have a super tough time balancing that. Do you make light attacks weaker? do you make healers most costly, do you make defend stronger, do you make TP more powerful?

It's even more convoluted when you have every flexible skill setups.

A choice between doing an attack or not doing attack? Brute force is mightily elegant.

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sorry, but you have it backwards, brute force only gets you so far, and speed is absolutely worthless without the skill to stay alive long enough to close in and use it, therefore, skill has been and always will be more important than speed, and even brute strength.

Case in point: the zerg strategy for the Seed Crystal fight in ffxi was all-or-nothing and more often than not resulted in failure, the arrowburn strategy took longer, but had a better success rate, since you could recover after a partial wipe as long as your tank survived. Of the two the former was all about brute force (in the form of the best gear) and speed, while the latter required skill.

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Originally Posted by Vanguard319

sorry, but you have it backwards, brute force only gets you so far, and speed is absolutely worthless without the skill to stay alive long enough to close in and use it, therefore, skill has been and always will be more important than speed, and even brute strength.

Case in point: the zerg strategy for the Seed Crystal fight in ffxi was all-or-nothing and more often than not resulted in failure, the arrowburn strategy took longer, but had a better success rate, since you could recover after a partial wipe as long as your tank survived. Of the two the former was all about brute force (in the form of the best gear) and speed, while the latter required skill.

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Unfortunately FF14, speed makes up 90% of the regiment. That's why people want FF11-2. It's just elegant in how they approached the battle system.

And thus the controversy of stamina bar. to use it for attack or defense, when attack is overwhelmingly effective, due to it's animation and damage estimations.

I saw some arguments that the stamina bar adds an extra level of strategy to the game. While I used to think the same way I feel that is laughable now. Seeing as the same effects can be achieved by using the restrictions already placed in game.

Regardless,
Responses seem to be about 50/50. I think a compromise is in order:

Limit the stamina bar to effect certain abilities only.
- power-up type abilities: taunts, second wind, speed surge, ferocity, spiritbind, etc. (even some of these I am reluctant on)

This leaves out:
- spells, weapons skills, normal attacks, bought attacks.

So how do we make a difference between big/small weapons and big/small attacks with no stamina bar!? ohnoes!
- weapon delay is a clever idea: doesn't have to be like ffxi and could be universal for that type of weapon, is tied straight to the swinging animation. As for attacks; my bought attacks, seeing as they are much more powerful... *cough* would simply have a longer animation time on them, in the exact same way as some weapon skills take longer to pull off than others.
- If they add auto-attack, something similar to weapon delay would probably be implemented anyways. If they didn't add auto-attack you would just spam your attack every time the universal cooldown was up. Which honestly isn't much different than what we do now. Also no different than what rangers had to do in ffxi to spam range attacks, there was no auto-arrow. Although a visual this time would help.

How do we make a difference between Blizzaga 19 and Fire 1 with no stamina bar!? o_0
- Obviously simple: longer/shorter casting times, longer/shorter animation times (spell ending lag), cost more/less mp.

@Aldarin
I see what you mean about casting time and animation time being the same thing. I still see them as separate though because I can increase/decrease a spells casting time in addition to its animation time. Example: Chainspell from ffxi allowed the mage to cast with no cast or recast timers, but the animation of the spell leaving the mages hands was still a limiting factor. They could only fire off spells as fast as the animation would allow.

*Maybe I'll get around to updating the OP over the weekend.

I personally love the combat system's goal. It isn't perfect and requires some tweaking, but removing the stamina bar isn't something I would like to see happen. Honestly as a CON it's one of the only things keeping me from nuking like crazy and finishing a fight in three seconds. It does prevent spamming, you can't sit there and press 11121112111211121112 otherwise you will run out. You have to time all of your attacks, but not to an extent that it is frustrating. It requires you to actively engage and not watch everybody loves Raymond in between starting and stopping a fight. That's my two cents anyways..

I actually prefer the Stamina Bar. It gives the developers an additional balancing tool for future abilities and it gives the game tempo.

I think a queue system would be nice though, especially if you can macro up attack sequences (which would negate the need for Auto-attack)

This has potential to be a much better game than FFXI, rather than a simple clone.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

I actually prefer the Stamina Bar. It gives the developers an additional balancing tool for future abilities and it gives the game tempo.

I think a queue system would be nice though, especially if you can macro up attack sequences (which would negate the need for Auto-attack)

This has potential to be a much better game than FFXI, rather than a simple clone.

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That was the plan with stamina bar, as oppose to it's predecessor, atb bar. But reality is a biach isn't it. It only serves to complicate the system with more micromanagement, and thus also made it harder to balance the unbalance. You now have 3-4 variables instead of 1-2 variables to account for in every single skills.

So that means if you have 200 possible skills(not counting future expansions) you have that many multipled by the stupid stamina bar to audit.

It's simple math, at some point, it's simply not worth to deal with it. It's like saying what happens if I want to put in HP, defense-HP, wound-HP, and body part HP. Fun right? so many things you can play with. Not fun, if you want something that just works.

A queue system is likely not very good. There are several possible flaws with it, all of which involves the above only multiplied again. In fact we already have a hidden queue system currently, or more a buffer system. You can buffer upto 2 skills.

with any queue system it doesn't solve the underlining problem of over complexity, it just make it more complex. You have to still balance every skill's stamina usage, and TP check, and cool-down checks, cast check, MP check, and animation checks, and now you got to consider, cancel checks and order checks.

The system isn't broken because its unbalanced, that's half the problem, the system is broken because it's overly complex to the point of redundancy.

Limiting certain skills to stamina only and non stamina would be a good start for "middle ground". But then that's just stealing WoW's energy bar, rage bar, etc.

Ideas go in circle, and what seems original...really isn't. Hindsight is a baich as they say.

Trying to throw in complexity to hide problems will always be the devil's playground. Its bad for the makers, because they have a bigger job of getting it right, and it's bad for the users because they have a longer wait for it to be gotten right.

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Originally Posted by Celtodeno

....remove stamina, add auto-attack, tweak and balance HP/MP/TP useage, remove BR and add Skillchain/magicburst, delete armory system, add some sort of sub-job system..

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<-- FFXI is that way. Please go play it. Some of us don't FFXI-2. There is zero reason why the current battle system can't work with some minor tweaks. You don't need to clone another game's battle setup in order to fix it.

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Originally Posted by Lyndria

I see a lot of good suggestions, but I feel that some of conversation has gotten slightly off topic.
The scope of this is to examine the benefits/hindrances of the stamina bar.

Auto Attack:
- If auto attack is added it could work fine with or without the stamina bar.
- If auto attack is not added, it could also work fine with or without the stamina bar.

So my concern is that the additional threshold, bottleneck, etc. of the stamina bar in its current form is useless. The desired effects for limiting actions can be achieved using the other limitations already placed in the game.

- We could use longer/shorter animation times to differentiate between abilities like bloodbath and rampart. Or, use the stamina bar for buff actions only. (Featherfoot, Fercocity, Blood Rite, etc.)
- Does my Warmonger really need to take up half my stamina bar or could we just give it a longer animation time? Or could we just limit those types of actions to stamina without spells, WS's, attacks, ect. also taking away from the same bar?

examples:

Casting Sacrifice takes - mp, hp, stamina, casting time, animation time, and also has a cooldown.
Using Seismic Shock takes - mp, tp, stamina, animation time and also has a cooldown.

- in each case there is enough there to limit the actions of the player sufficiently in a variety of ways without using stamina.

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It boggles my mind that people are so hung up on adding a lazy auto-damage feature to the game that adds nothing tactically in and of itself to the game. It's an outdated feature that needs to go the way of the dodo. People already can't seem to keep themselves from spamming melee attacks; this will only exacerbate that.

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Originally Posted by Zantetsuken

I actually prefer the Stamina Bar. It gives the developers an additional balancing tool for future abilities and it gives the game tempo.

I think a queue system would be nice though, especially if you can macro up attack sequences (which would negate the need for Auto-attack)

This has potential to be a much better game than FFXI, rather than a simple clone.

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LotRO has some minor queuing in its battle system. It didn't seem terribly effective. Granted, it was only one attack, so additional queuing may fix that. But my gut feeling is that being able to queue a bunch of skills would make it feel like the game is playing itself.

@kukurumei

agreed.

Right now the only queuing that really happens is when you have depleted stamina. You can queue a spell once you are "letting go" of your current cast and slightly queue up the next, or queue the cast-bar portion of a spell during a WS animation.

Currently the "cast interrupt" mechanic is almost impossible to trigger when you truly need it, and most often, triggers when you think a spell is not queued or cast (or lag) and you go to cast the spell again. You wind up, then cancel, then have to recognize this and recast again.... hard to believe that portion is working as intended... something wrong with the Esc key?

Stamina, IMHO, is in place to limit physical dps rate ... so it isn't a spam-fest. Its the 4th limiting factor to disciples of magic though ... and I find it quite cumbersome. Even the idea is .. really. Might be better if that rank one spell at rank 50 didn't take the same amount of stamina ... but honestly I'd like stam completely removed. I cast 2-3 self-buffs and I'm practically tapped out >.> I have to stagger them to allow stam regen in-between, which slows down the pace of combat even more.

please keep stamina bar!!! it's allright, I like it

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Originally Posted by Taokii

I personally love the combat system's goal. It isn't perfect and requires some tweaking, but removing the stamina bar isn't something I would like to see happen. Honestly as a CON it's one of the only things keeping me from nuking like crazy and finishing a fight in three seconds. It does prevent spamming, you can't sit there and press 11121112111211121112 otherwise you will run out. You have to time all of your attacks, but not to an extent that it is frustrating. It requires you to actively engage and not watch everybody loves Raymond in between starting and stopping a fight. That's my two cents anyways..

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This. Stamina adds balance to ability use and prevents complete spamming of basic attacks.

/signed. It's stupid that i have to wait for the stamina bar long after the timer on the weapon skill i want to use is up and ready for use.

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Originally Posted by Mort

signed!

remove stamina, add auto-attack, tweak and balance HP/MP/TP useage, remove BR and add Skillchain/magicburst, delete armory system, add some sort of sub-job system, add traits, remove alot of abilitys, remove action points. probably missed something.

/wave

edit: yeah forgot.. DONT make my character jump back and forth when attacking, its annoying as hell, and destroys future plans for positioning tactics!

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Also, all of this^ /like

Stamina bar would be reasonable if there was no cooldown time for each ability. It would prevent spamming one action over and over. But since there are cooldown times for every action, all that stamina bar is doing, is prevent using regular attack too frequently. When we will get auto-attack, such a limitation will be no longer needed. Im pretty sure, SE will get rid of stamina when they'll finally implement auto-attack.

I still think there will be a place for stamina even after auto attack in implemented. just in a reduced capacity, its currently far to pervasive and is attached to things that it does not need to be.

ATB bar would work better than a stamina bar since people are so set into anti spam.
There are many ways to prevent spam , and none of them includes a half assed function such as the stamina bar.
Stamina does not work well especially with latency issues.

Why you hate stamina gauge so much?
Is it because of that you cant spam "atackatackatackatackatack"? It's implemented ingame for tactic creation. As Thaum i chose wise which skill i will cast next because they easy can ruin my stamina in few actions. And same for DoW. You should choose what you should do next...
It's all about tactics and strtegy