If you wanna test me, I'm sure you'll find -
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I'm fine with it like this.
Action combat is good for games designed for it. This game wasn't.
I'm with Molly here. What you seem to forget is that the servers are in Japan, and thus there's a lag between what happens ingame and what we see onscreen. It may only be a second or two, but it'd be enough to wipe a tank/party/ally under the Tera system.
On top of the server lag, there's also good, old fashioned crappy ISP lag. Imagine how many people would die and respond with, "Sorry guys, didn't see the attack. Lag."
I agree with you. But we may be better off playing Demon's Souls or Dark Souls. FFXIV isn't programmed well enough, nor is the latency situation one such that this kind of combat would be possible. When an enemy attacks the attack lands based on where you were the second it was initiated, giving you no chance to react with a dodge. Their game engine is really loose when it comes to this. It's not really like an action game engine at all unfortunately. I don't expect them to throw away 100% of their battle work but I would be happier with a Demon's Souls type of situation.
NA players who play on the Korea-only servers for Tera have little issues with lag (relative to what one might expect at first). It operates a lot like a FPS, and being based on the Unreal Engine 3, I assume it is optimized in a lot of ways for responsiveness. The main problem with FF14's lag lies not in the server distance, but rather the unopitmized game itself that relies to heavily on server-side checks.
Whenever the FF14 devs mention "fixing the server issues" it is always in the context of repairing the netcode, optimizing the servers, etc, and not about implementing regional servers.
I still have yet to see a good, action game style battle system that works for an MMO. The first was probably Phantasy Star Online. That worked great for the time being, but the latest Phantasy Star outing didn't fare as well. The problem is that MMO's are very rooted in repetition and grind. From what I've been able to understand, the combat system needs to be something that feels fun and rewarding. Take some action game, ignore any and all story or cut-scenes, and then play it a few hours a day, for several months. I don't think any action game on the market has that kind of longevity.
There might be one exception. And that game is Demon's Souls or Dark Souls. But what makes that combat system so great, isn't the fact that you can attack, dodge, block, and parry. What makes it so great are the enemy routines. There are so many different enemies, all with their own styles of fighting. Some are predictable, some are random, some just go balls crazy on you. But if you give any enemy an inch, they'll take a mile. The fact that most things you face (providing you're not super high level) can drop you in a few hits, makes defeating them very rewarding. And each time I died in that game, I never felt like I was cheated. It was always, "Yeah, I got a bit frazzled and didn't react correctly."
Long story short, a good battle system with longevity is a lot more than just dipping, ducking, diving, and dodging.
While true, there is still a noticeable difference in performance from people outside of korea playing versus those in korea playing. It's not horrible to the point of unplayable, you'll just have to deal with and get used to being less accurate and responsive than your korean others.
http://steparu.com/news/close-beta/3...osed-beta 3:20
Around 4:00, you'll see the lancers making a wall of shields with mages right behind them, shooting fire balls up.