DevTalk: Correlate Cooperation Strongly to DPS to Encourage Teamwork!(SkillChains2.0)

Update: Battle Regimens are gone, self combos are in. Looks like progress to me:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/10...oshida-part-2/

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Good news! In version 1.20, we have major adjustments planned for every class, adjustments that will change a lot of specs on abilities and weapon skills. For example, when it comes to damage dealing, we're planning on introducing what we're tentatively calling a self-combo, whereby solo players can tie together a bunch of different weaponskills or attacks to deal extra damage. These things will help make even defensive players more powerful in addition to helping straight attackers like Archers. We have all of these changes planned for 1.20, but we're going to make sure to get all of that information out to players beforehand so they can see all of the changes we're planning and then give us feedback about any further changes we need to make before the patch releases.

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Original post:

It's time for another episode of devtalk to see what we can do to fix our beloved FF14.

This time, we'll address the poorly-designed Battle Regimen system, it's flaws, and how we can fix it in the short term and then in the long term.

One of the goals of the battle reform is to encourage more skillful play and cooperation between players. To understand player behavior during a battle, you must understand the underlying reason why everyone does the things they do. The answer boils down to one simple goal: DPS (Damage per Second). This is the only thing that players ultimately strive for. The faster your DPS, the faster your kill speed, and the faster you gain SP. It's pretty simple, really.


[SIZE=5]Design your battle system so that cooperation/teamwork and DPS is strongly related. That way, players naturally want to cooperate since it has a direct and meaningful impact on their overall DPS.

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And this doesn't just mean simple partying. Of course partying in and of itself increases DPS just because of another person there. The goal is to not only have players party, but to also have them work together in a meaningful fashion so that the whole party is greater than the sum of its parts.

In other words, if Player A is able to achieve 300 damage per second, and Player B is able to achieve 400 damage per second, in a party, they should be able to achieve at least 700 damage per second at minimum. However, if they work together in a skillful fashion, they can boost their combined DPS to 1000 or 1200, something they would never be able to achieve solo.

Final Fantasy 11's skill chain system works this way to an extent, but for a while it has been largely ignored since "TP Burns" end up doing more DPS overall. If we can adjust it so that the DPS of proper skill chains outweighs the DPS of TP burns, then we can get everyone back to cooperating once again.

link to info: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Category:Skillchains

So this is what we can do in the short term while we get the main battle reforms done, and then in the long term, when the devs finally have time to sit down and seriously discuss how to make the battle regimen system better.

Basic Outline:

Short Term fix: Just make it so that stacking skills while in Battle Regimen mode doesn't freeze your character and lock them out from doing anything else. This would solve 80% of what is wrong with the BR system right there.


Long Term fix: Scrap the Battle Regimen System completely and bring back skill chains from FF11. This time, have it so that the damage done by using skill chains is large enough to make it worthwhile to do (so that by using teamwork, a skillful party would have close to 40-50% of their damage come from good skillchain usage and combo bonus damage). Also incorporate different skill chain bonuses to not only do damage, but also proc buffs, proc debuffs, initiate damage mitigation, provide crowd control, or provide healing. Skill Chains 2.0 (With possible Chrono Trigger-esque combo techs! See below)


This is the current state of Battle Regimen reform according to Matsui's Blueprint:

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• Battle Regimens

  We are afraid to inform you that work on the Battle Regimen system has been postponed, as adjustments and additions alone will not suffice to address problems. There is a need to rework the system from the ground up, and we will lay the foundation stones after other changes have been seen to completion.

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Let's take a moment to list the problems of Battle Regimens to see why they're such a badly designed game mechanic.


Battle Regimens were intended as an easier and newbie-friendly alternative to skill chains, but in reality, they turn out to be just the opposite.

Battle Regimens are anything but newbie friendly. This is the reason why you only see highly experienced players ever participate in Battle Regimens. It takes far too long to explain the convoluted way in which you stack skills and how to enter BR mode. It then takes a lot of practice so that the newbie learns how to do it fast enough so that the entire party doesn't have to wait on them. The fact that everyone else CAN'T DO ANYTHING while they're stuck in BR mode is just ridiculous.


If you take too long stacking a Battle Regimen, your DPS suffers, making the usage of Battle Regimens detrimental to your overall battle performance.

Everyone who has ever done a Battle Regimen knows that there are times when you have to wait longer than you would like for everyone to stack their skills into the Battle Regimen. The time spent waiting is time spent not attacking. It is time that is also counting down on your attack buffs like Raging Strike and Ferocity. Having your buffs wear off because you waited too long for your other party members to stack their Weapon Skills is very frustrating. If you are in charge of initiating the Battle Regimen, you are torn between risking your buffs wearing off (as that would decrease damage) or risking initiating the BR before everyone is stacked (as that would also decrease damage). You're pretty much stuck with two undesirable choices.


Battle Regimens do more damage the more players are in a party. Therefore, in a small party of 2-4 players, it is usually better to not use Battle Regimens at all.

When I have a party of 2 or 3 I never use battle regimens since that noticeably slows our kill time. We can kill dodore in a trio in 6 minutes, but if we forced ourselves to use battle regimens, that 6 minute kill time turns into 9 or more. Only in a large party does battle regimens make the most sense, because the damage bonuses for a stack of 8 skills is huuuuuuge.


There is no structure to the Battle Regimens, and the order of stacked skills doesn't matter at all.

The difficulty in BRs arises not from complex strategy, but rather from the cumbersome nature of putting them together. There are, of course, different effects you can generate by using particular orders of skills together, but there is no time to bother since the main priority is stacking the skills as fast as possible. You just end up with your skills in a random order since it would take to long for each person to put their skill in the proper order. The closest you can come to any kind of organization without taking forever is to say "archers stack last". That's pretty much it. No strategy. Just mindless stacking of skills.


The Battle Regimen animations are exceedingly boring and uninspired.

Red glowing hands, and "schwing schwing" sound effects? Really? Really???? You can do better than this.



So, why would skill chains work better than Battle Regimens?


As long as there is at least one player in the party who knows how to skill chain properly, you can do it quickly and easily.

Whereas in a BR, everyone must know how to enter BR mode and stack skills quickly, with a skill chain, this is not necessary. The newbie can just go ahead and use any WS he wants to use. A skilled player would then know exactly which WS can combo with the newbie's moves, and can complete the combos himself naturally and organically. No waiting around, no loss of DPS, no hassle.

The newbie gets to do whatever he wants, and the veteran uses his skills to combo the newbie's weaponskills automatically.


There's enough time to have a skill chain order that matters.

Instead of one large dogpile of skill stacking in a Battle Regimen, skill chains have a methodical and deliberate pattern of usage that allows for emergent strategy and adaptive gameplay. Order matters, and skilled players can use various combos to initiate different effects and utilize different strategies. Due to the one-at-a-time order of skill chains, you don't have to cram all of your decision-making into the one second skill stack frenzy, like you have to do with battle regimens. Skill chains start up faster than battle regimens, and they even allow more players to have more time to execute them as well.



Now, let's get into the details of how we can implement this into FF14.


Firstly, assign each weapon skill an elemental affinity. For example, Skull Sunder (fire), Trammel (lightning), Concussive Blow (wind), and Moonrise (fire).

Now, let's take a look at the FF14 elemental chart: http://i.imgur.com/LJ1IT.jpg

If you know your FF14 elements like good little girls an boys, you know that

Fire + Wind + Lightning = the Astral family elements (the top three)

Water + Ice + Earth = the Umbral family elements (the bottom three)

(The THM spell "Banish" is equal parts fire wind lightning, and the spell "Scourge" is equal parts ice earth water)

(Continued on the next post since I hit the character limit)

Basic rules:

You cannot self-skill chain. You need at least one other person.

Any one of the astral elements can form a combo with any other astral element except itself.

Any one of the umbral elements can form a combo with any other umbral element except itself.

Therefore, you can do Skull Sunder (fire) > Trammel (lightning) > Skull Sunder (fire), but not Skull Sunder (fire) > Moonrise (fire)

When each successful link in the skill chain is performed, an additional after-effect takes place that deals more damage. So, it would go something like:

Skull Sunder (fire),
wait a second,
Trammel (lightning),
[small after-effect for additional damage],
wait a second,
Skull Sunder (fire)
[small after-effect for additional damage]
... and so on.


If you incorporate all 3 elements from a single astral or umbral family into one skill chain, you get a large after-effect for bigger damage.

example:

Skull Sunder (fire),
wait a second,
Trammel (lightning),
[small after-effect for additional damage],
wait a second,
Concussive Blow as a "closer" (wind) (fire+lightning+wind completes the astral family)
[LARGE after-effect for additional damage]
... and so on.

Additional options:

Depending on which weapon skill you use to "close" the skill chain, you will also see additional effects. For example, closing with Concussive Blow recovers 20% HP/MP for everyone, closing with Skull Sunder increases the power of the Skull Sunder DoT, closing with Damnation gives the party magic defense up, closing with Red Lotus increases enmity 10%, closing with Barrage decreases enmity 10%, closing with Moonrise gives each party member a "Decoy" shadow as if they had just used the Lancer skill "Decoy", Closing with Twisting Vice gives everyone a TP buff, Close with Victimize for AOE Sleep, etc....



Skill Chain After-Effects (Chrono Trigger Combo Techs?)

In FF11 the skill chain after effects were little bursts of elemental magic that happened after every valid skill chain link. We could do the same here, but I think we can do something even more interesting.

I had always hoped that we could have had something akin to the duo and triple combo techs from Chrono Trigger in this game, and this might be a way to make that happen.

Let's say that three melee characters just completed an Astral elemental skill chain. The "Large after-effect" could be this: Something cool like the triple cross-slash animation that would look flashy enough, but not take up too much time (no more than 1.5 seconds).

Cross Slash from Chrono Trigger (warning, last boss spoilers): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCmXL9uiEKc&#t=00m12s

The animations could vary depending on what mix of classes participated in the skill chain, but I think it could work if implemented correctly.

If that doesn't work, then I guess we can just fall back on the FF11 way of having a large ball of elemental magic appear to represent the additional damage from the combo after effects.


Role of Mages in Skill Chains:

Of course we can do magic bursts like in FF11 too. I'm not sure if that would be practical if we have the "after-effects" take the form of combos, but that can be figured out later.

What I want to touch on is what we could possibly do different than FF11 to make magic use in skill chains cooler and more useful.

One of the things that always bummed be out was that in the intro movie to FF14, the archer did a combo move with the mage where the mage imbued the archer's bow with fire and then shot it into the Morbols mouth for "massive damage". There is no way to do that in the actual game.

Portion of Opening Cinematic that I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzC510DpbU0#t=03m02s

Taking another cue from Chrono Trigger, we should make that kind of action a real possibility.

(Warning Last Boss Spoilers) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icfi1satUd8#t=00m35s


I propose that mages have the option to cast offensive magic on a party member instead of a mob to imbue that party member's weapon with magic. Once that party member is imbued, his next weaponskill will take on the properties of that magic.

That way, I can customize my skill chain even further to fill in gaps that I might have.

For example, say I need to close an astral skill chain with fire, but I want to use Concussive Blow (wind) to get the HP recovery bonus. I have a mage cast fire on the pugilist, and now the pugilist is eligible to close out the skill chain with a Fire-enhanced Concussive Blow, and I can also get the additional effect that I wanted (HP recovery).

We can probably build upon this concept more, but that was the basic idea. If we can somehow incorporate defensive magic into skill chains to enhance the party's defensive capabilities, that would be a cool concept to explore, too.



Anyway, what do you all think? The concept of skill chains in FF11 is a very novel idea, and I think it would be in FF14's best interest to re-examine that idea and make it even better. I believe the inherent cooperation and strategy involved in skill chains can make it an enjoyable and exciting experience for both newbies and veterans. The skill chain can be as simple as you want it to be, or as complex as you want it to be, so it can fit any kind of casual or hardcore mindset, as well as accommodate both simultaneously.


More ways to fix FF14 LINK: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/s...vBForum_Thread

Didn't read it all because it is extensive and I am at work, but I am happy to see more constructive ideas (rather than complaint threads). Not sure if you mentioned this, but even non-skillful party play should be rewarded IMHO. Think about it, if I have a PUG beating the hell out of something, and then on top of that, I have a LNC stabbing it with a 8 foot spear, I think they each should do more damage as an effect of the combined attacks (rather than if just the PUG was to beat on something itself, etc). Gestalt, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, etc. Perhaps that has been somewhat captured by the boost to stats by 'Light Party' and 'Heavy Party.' Anyway, good work.

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Originally Posted by Gidonoidon_Sur

Not sure if you mentioned this, but even non-skillful party play should be rewarded IMHO. Think about it, if I have a PUG beating the hell out of something, and then on top of that, I have a LNC stabbing it with a 8 foot spear, I think they each should do more damage as an effect of the combined attacks (rather than if just the PUG was to beat on something itself, etc). Gestalt, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, etc. Perhaps that has been somewhat captured by the boost to stats by 'Light Party' and 'Heavy Party.' Anyway, good work.

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Or have mobs slowly build a resistance to one sort of attack. If you keep doing blunt damage the mob starts to roll with the punches and you do less, unless someone comes and stabs it. This could also keep various burn parties down as well, and make sure there is some point to having a diverse party.

ehhh... i like the short term fix, combined with chrono cross type special combos for certain skill orders, and just special effects animations for most combinations. having the system be about cueing the skills without locking your actions, allow it to be a little longer that 1.5 seconds for the combos, as long as they balance the damage with increase in time, and longer locking you in place risk.

The SC system while interesting will require at least one person to do their animation, and no one else to interfere during WS, in this way the damage would have to be balanced for losing WS from the total PT for the duration.
the damage of an SC boosting two players damage for 5 seconds, but lowering other players damage/options for that same time period.


like you said the BR system needs more of a carrot, the effect is not enough to reward players, hence the cool effects for any combinations, and special team up skill for certain ones.

they should add BRs that arent just based off damage, link some BRs to abilities, and cures.

i think cross BRs, would be really good, but the mechanism for linking different players for different BRs at the same time would probably confuse people, and make it even slower.

The br stacking system does need a learning curve, but i assure you SCs were much harder to teach, it often took quite awhile for people to get the timing, and then they had to learn the rules, some people never learned.

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Originally Posted by Physic

The br stacking system does need a learning curve, but i assure you SCs were much harder to teach, it often took quite awhile for people to get the timing, and then they had to learn the rules, some people never learned.

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You think so? I played FF11 back in 2003 when people still actually did them, and it seemed like they were pretty newb-friendly. In the worst-case scenario, if I was with someone who didn't know how to skillchain and didn't want to learn I'd just tell him to do anything, and then I'd follow it up with a valid weaponskill to combo.

I think before implementing more sophisticated co-op attacks, they should clear some of the mess in battle screens.

With too many effects going on and a messy chat window it is very difficult to track who is doing what. there should be a visual user interface, something like a pop-up window which shows timers and info about the chains and party members.

Maybe a veritcal bar like in FFX where it shows the queue of pt members but instead it shows queued WSs from pt members. Just like in battle regiment attacks but more detailed and informative.

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Originally Posted by Rentahamster

You think so? I played FF11 back in 2003 when people still actually did them, and it seemed like they were pretty newb-friendly. In the worst-case scenario, if I was with someone who didn't know how to skillchain and didn't want to learn I'd just tell him to do anything, and then I'd follow it up with a valid weaponskill to combo.

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i rem people taking awhile to learn, then i remember when i came back later, and people got used to WS spam it was REEEALLLY hard to get them to do it right.

But really the issue also becomes the fact that other people will have to wait for your SCs to do dmg, in ffxi, in the old days there was usually only 3 DD, and 1 was a tank, so the fact that the tank might have to wait for yall to SC to use WS wasnt a big deal, but in 8 man parties, with 3 or 4 DD, your really going to have to do alot of dmg to make up for no one being able to use a WS for 6 seconds. not to mention TP is faster, and the main form of dmg/skill use in this game.

You don't need to do away with BRs to encourage teamwork. I also made a post that addresses the lack of teamwork in the game during battle: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...e-Regimen-Idea.

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Originally Posted by Eccocid

With too many effects going on and a messy chat window it is very difficult to track who is doing what. there should be a visual user interface, something like a pop-up window which shows timers and info about the chains and party members

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Having better visual indicators, with occasional text popups would go a long way to helping players process battle information a lot easier/faster, yes.

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Originally Posted by Eccocid

Maybe a vertical bar like in FFX where it shows the queue of pt members but instead it shows queued WSs from pt members. Just like in battle regiment attacks but more detailed and informative.

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That may be tricky since FFX is a turn based game and this is not.