I just plain don't like the current battle system...

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Originally Posted by Mack

Oh it was, it was at a snail's pace trust me....I'll try and dig up a video of it on youtube.

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRiu49mOKFI

Skip to the 3 minute mark of this video and obviously ignore the lag but the cooldown was fairly long at that time...I guess they could've sped it up, I don't think it would've saved the battle system. I think for solo the battle system is decent, they need to give us better attacks but it needs touching up for party play.

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The reaction time is painfully slow, but the benchmark for improvement here isn't the earlier versions of XIV but other MMOs like Aion and WoW, MMOs where when I push a button, my character immediately freakin' DOES SOMETHING!

I also hate to say it but I like that interface much better than the current one...

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Originally Posted by konnichiwa

I feel the stam gauge is fine with auto-attack because you will be doing damage aside from abilities; now you don't have to "spam" away your stamina to progress in battle.
I do run out of stam, but it's only because while you're not using an ability your progress stops.

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And thus we come around to my point. Who really wants to stop using abilities? Is anything more boring than standing around waiting for stamina to get high enough to use another ability? Even with auto-attack, which I am in favor of, I could still burn up my stamina, just with more weapon skills and less basic attacks. Auto-attack does not reduce my stamina usage, it just diverts it to something else. For example, as PUG, Heavy Strike is my #1 ability. If that gets removed and translated over to an auto-attack, I still have Light Strike and Pummel to use as TP building abilities.

But I'll concede this much. Perhaps the stamina gauge would be fine if only abilities cost less stamina to use. Having a barrier in place that causes me to physically stop doing anything for seconds at a time is a bad idea. Whatever happens, we need the freedom to continue to use our abilities.

Ok, I just thought of another scenario that might work. If auto-attack restored some stamina relative to the frequency of strikes, then that might also help reduce the number of times I have to sit around waiting for stamina to refill. Another idea would be to have stamina act like MP, where it doesn't cost much to use an ability, and it doesn't refresh while in active mode without some item/ability designed for that purpose.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

I also hate to say it but I like that interface much better than the current one...

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I kinda agree. Speed up the GCD and it would be fine.

That is just the latency issue. In WoW if you were lagging you could still have a couple of seconds wait for your skill or spell to start doing anything after you pushed the button. Experienced that constantly while under Iraqi internet. Man that was horrible... Since the servers are in Japan, basically anyone not in Japan is going to have that issue unless they come up with some other way of reporting actions and loading menus and windows.
I guarantee no one in japan has any of that lag with menus or actions. I have seen it, because they can walk up to a battlewarden after the fights over and already be teleporting back to camp, and I will still be at the reward window. All the window loading, actions, etc, its based on our latency to the servers in japan.

I can say that in WoW, at least opening our own menus for bags and character and whatnot and such did not depend on the latency. I hate this about FFXIV and I hope they change it soon.l

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Originally Posted by BlaiseLallaise

And thus we come around to my point. Who really wants to stop using abilities? Is anything more boring than standing around waiting for stamina to get high enough to use another ability? Even with auto-attack, which I am in favor of, I could still burn up my stamina, just with more weapon skills and less basic attacks. Auto-attack does not reduce my stamina usage, it just diverts it to something else. For example, as PUG, Heavy Strike is my #1 ability. If that gets removed and translated over to an auto-attack, I still have Light Strike and Pummel to use as TP building abilities.

But I'll concede this much. Perhaps the stamina gauge would be fine if only abilities cost less stamina to use. Having a barrier in place that causes me to physically stop doing anything for seconds at a time is a bad idea. Whatever happens, we need the freedom to continue to use our abilities.

Ok, I just thought of another scenario that might work. If auto-attack restored some stamina relative to the frequency of strikes, then that might also help reduce the number of times I have to sit around waiting for stamina to refill. Another idea would be to have stamina act like MP, where it doesn't cost much to use an ability, and it doesn't refresh while in active mode without some item/ability designed for that purpose.

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If we're going to have a stamina gauge, it should do something to enhance the battle system, not simply limit the amount of stuff you can do, as cooldowns do that for us already.

For example, make it so stamina isn't used by normal attacks, but:

-Hold the attack button (of whatever attack it is) to allot more stamina to the attack. More stamina = more damage, but less chance to hit (like DnD's classic "power attack").

-Use an ability to turn stamina into MP in the middle of a fight.

-Ability that allows you to burn stamina to run at 2X speed until you run out of stamina.

-Ability that burns your stamina down but multiplies your evasion rate by 4X while doing so.

-Ability that doubles your magic potency and your casting speed while burning your stamina down.

-Ability that doubles your damage output while burning stamina.

All of these would make for very strategic choices the player would get to make, and more choices is what makes a game fun.

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Originally Posted by Reika

That is just the latency issue. In WoW if you were lagging you could still have a couple of seconds wait for your skill or spell to start doing anything after you pushed the button. Experienced that constantly while under Iraqi internet. Man that was horrible... Since the servers are in Japan, basically anyone not in Japan is going to have that issue unless they come up with some other way of reporting actions and loading menus and windows.
I guarantee no one in japan has any of that lag with menus or actions. I have seen it, because they can walk up to a battlewarden after the fights over and already be teleporting back to camp, and I will still be at the reward window. All the window loading, actions, etc, its based on our latency to the servers in japan.

I can say that in WoW, at least opening our own menus for bags and character and whatnot and such did not depend on the latency. I hate this about FFXIV and I hope they change it soon.l

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Ah, I didn't realize that...

I think it's time SE invested in improving client-side reaction time to better give the illusion of instant responses. It's like how in Team Fortress 2 lag compensation allows players with high pings to play, even though this often results in it seeming like you were shot AFTER you made it behind a wall.

Also, sorry if I seemed snarky earlier in the thread. I wasn't sure if you were trolling but you clearly aren't so I apologize.

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Originally Posted by Dras6fin

Not really much of a battler myself but I've thought of something when reading about #5 in your post RichardButte, Couldn't both work if SE devs adjusts both to work together?. Like for example: ( every time the stamina is used from the bar it drains a little more and then the energy is transferred to actions/abilities to lessen the cool-downs count or something else. players would have to think fast and distribute wisely to whichever action/ability because the stamina bar stops regenerating after too long a battle.) what do you think?

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I could see this working as well, as the real goal is to ensure that stamina is the flavoring on the battle system, not the main course.

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Originally Posted by BlaiseLallaise

And thus we come around to my point. Who really wants to stop using abilities? Is anything more boring than standing around waiting for stamina to get high enough to use another ability? Even with auto-attack, which I am in favor of, I could still burn up my stamina, just with more weapon skills and less basic attacks. Auto-attack does not reduce my stamina usage, it just diverts it to something else. For example, as PUG, Heavy Strike is my #1 ability. If that gets removed and translated over to an auto-attack, I still have Light Strike and Pummel to use as TP building abilities.

But I'll concede this much. Perhaps the stamina gauge would be fine if only abilities cost less stamina to use. Having a barrier in place that causes me to physically stop doing anything for seconds at a time is a bad idea. Whatever happens, we need the freedom to continue to use our abilities.

Ok, I just thought of another scenario that might work. If auto-attack restored some stamina relative to the frequency of strikes, then that might also help reduce the number of times I have to sit around waiting for stamina to refill. Another idea would be to have stamina act like MP, where it doesn't cost much to use an ability, and it doesn't refresh while in active mode without some item/ability designed for that purpose.

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Let's use World of Warcraft as an example since it's a pretty popular reference. If they give us auto-attack, stamina would act as energy to a rogue or feral druid. They would play very similar, stamina regen is decent.
I've never played an rpg where I was button-mashing until the target monster was dead. Long endurance encounters might become tiresome quick in this scenario.
Anyway, I'm just suggesting that they add auto-attack, keep stam gauge for ability limitation, and tp abilities (finishers in WoW).
Stam regen abilities is a great idea (on a cd of course).

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Originally Posted by konnichiwa

Let's use World of Warcraft as an example since it's a pretty popular reference. If they give us auto-attack, stamina would act as energy to a rogue or feral druid. They would play very similar, stamina regen is decent.
I've never played an rpg where I was button-mashing until the target monster was dead. Long endurance encounters might become tiresome quick in this scenario.
Anyway, I'm just suggesting that they add auto-attack, keep stam gauge for ability limitation, and tp abilities (finishers in WoW).
Stam regen abilities is a great idea (on a cd of course).

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I see where you are coming from. However, when I played a rogue and I ran out of energy, I never felt that I was waiting a long time before I had the energy to hit my next ability. It regenerated quick enough to keep me doing things. On top of that, I had abilities to enhance my energy regeneration. Here, when I run out of stamina, I'm just dead in the water for way too long and I have no quick way to get some back to get back in the fight. Hence why they at least need to either reduce the stamina cost to activate, give a skill or trait to get stamina back quicker, or speed up base stamina regeneration. Another point to note is that stamina currently also affects casters. If stamina is to be used similar to a rogue in WoW, then casters should not be limited by it. They already have MP and cast timers limiting them.

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Originally Posted by BlaiseLallaise

I see where you are coming from. However, when I played a rogue and I ran out of energy, I never felt that I was waiting a long time before I had the energy to hit my next ability. It regenerated quick enough to keep me doing things. On top of that, I had abilities to enhance my energy regeneration. Here, when I run out of stamina, I'm just dead in the water for way too long and I have no quick way to get some back to get back in the fight. Hence why they at least need to either reduce the stamina cost to activate, give a skill or trait to get stamina back quicker, or speed up base stamina regeneration. Another point to note is that stamina currently also affects casters. If stamina is to be used similar to a rogue in WoW, then casters should not be limited by it. They already have MP and cast timers limiting them.

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I agree with all of this.