Community improvements and tweaks to the battle system 5.0

In my personal opinion, most battle content preview to Shadowbringers has become very dull with this battle system, since some skills, availably for example at lvl 50, now you have to wait until lvl 71, or have simple disappear with this simplified versions of the jobs

My suggestion is than instead of just simple removing the ability’s, make available lower version of the skills, we already have at full lvl, and make then automatically upgrade at each tear of content, for example a warrior (marauder) at lvl 15 you get skull sunder then at 50 becomes Butcher-block, at 60 Heavy Swing etc.

This way the battle system can continue with the current line than is in place, and don’t smash 3 buttons from level 50 to 80. Or worst form 0 to 80.

You can also make available to chain longer combos, with different results, using the same principle than we have with the PVP battle system, that way it can be solved the problem of need 30 cross bars, and make a little more challenging the mastering of jobs.

Which are your thoughts and suggestions with this battle system?

I'm gonna keep it short and sweet.

If there's anything i hope for, if they ain't gonna remove more skills/stuff for the sake of simplicity.

I gave up long ago expecting them to make anything more complicated than a toddlers toy.

The amount of buttons doesn't really matter. What generally matters is what those buttons do and how they affect the game.

An example of this would be oGCDs for DPS classes. Generally speaking these do nothing for game play they exist only to make busy work for players. You could easily remove samurais Shinten for example and bake its potency into its regular gcd abilities and it really wouldn't make any difference at all to encounters within the game.

I personally for example find Opera Omnias battle system to be much more engaging than XIVs and typically there you have at most 5 buttons to press. but they all have varying effects or consequences on combat.

Final Fantasy 15 had a fairly engaging combat system and there you had like 4-5..

The problem XIV has then is not in how many buttons it has, It's in the way that virtually none of those buttons have any actual impact on combat itself. A boss won't react any differently if you press 1 1 1 1 1, or 1 2 3 4 5, or even 1 3 5 7 9. It makes absolutely no difference to how the fight plays out...

There are some rare examples where you might actually have an impact on a fight by utilizing a stun or silence but those cases are few and far between.

If you want to fix combat instead of giving players more buttons to press just to create busy work. Why not make the buttons they do have more engaging and actually meaningful to the encounters

Combat would be much more fun if it wasn't just the same old rotation over and over and over again.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The amount of buttons doesn't really matter. what generally matters is what they do and how they affect the game.

An example of this would generally be oGCDs for DPS classes. generally speaking these do nothing for game play they're just they're to make busy work for players. you could easily remove samurais shinten for example and bake its potency into regular gcd abilities and generally it wouldnt make any difference at all to encounters within the game.

I personally for example find Opera Omnias battle system to be much more engaging than XIVs and typically there you have at most 5 buttons to press.

final fantasy 15 had a fairly engaging combat system and there you had like 4-5..

the problem xiv has isnt in how many buttons it has it's in the way that virtually none of those buttons have any impact on combat itself. a boss won't react any differently if you press 1 1 1 1 1 or 1 2 3 4 5 or 1 3 5 7 9. it makes absolutely no difference to how the fight plays out...

there are some rareeeeee examples where you might actually have an impact a fight by utilizaing a stun or silence but those cases are few and far between.

if you want to fix combat instead ofgiving players more buttons to press. why not make the buttons they have more engaging and actually meaningful.

combat would be muchmore fun if it wasnt just the same old rotation over and over and over again

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What you are describing is an entirely different genre of MMO called "action combat".

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Originally Posted by YojimboM

What you are describing is an entirely different genre of MMO called "action combat".

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Trading button count for depth of effect per button does not add or subtract overall depth available -- it merely makes reaching the keys a bit easier. Such allows for a higher expectation of player responsiveness, but does not demand that the pace of the game is suddenly increased. Nor does it suddenly change the genre to "action combat" (which, by the way, is not a genre).

Neither "tab-target" nor "action" are genres. They're just levels of a particular quality, which then imply certain priorities.

"Action" games require better poll rates, better prediction, appropriate hitbox geometries, and more in-depth physics systems, and tend to make use of these by reducing the button count required in favor of more intuitive and reactive combat, often while maintaining the same overall depth in any given fight (though often also trading depth in personal toolkits for their interactions with party members, enemies, and the environment of play).

"Tab-target" games are what you get when the game can't afford to make appropriate hitbox geometries or more in-depth physics systems. Because the player cannot then make reasonably convenient and precise use of skillshotting when lacking these core qualities, additional keys must be sacrificed specifically for the purpose of targeting particular enemies, though that targeting is still usually less precise or convenient than in any decently-made "action combat" system. In turn, however, this frees up the camera and to a lesser extent the mouse/aim-stick hand, allowing for a slightly different perspective on battle if the game chooses to build around that opportunity. So button depth and player control are sacrificed and, somewhere down the line, replacing these lost capacities grants a couple unique opportunities during static/stationary play (which would be virtually absent in action-combat which has the means and reason to make constant use of the player camera and will thus tend to make it central to its gameplay).


On topic:

Personally, I hated FFXV combat. There's hardly a single element from that game I'd suggest using here, even if only tangentially and with only the very best aspects of its concepts cherry-picked for adapted use. But, I'd agree that our skills (and, each individual combat key) should have more depth. Personally, I think that would best come from making our core skills more modular and each individually compelling, able to be 'combo-ed' in a variety of ways that could together form rotations, but never the same one--or series thereof--over time, given a larger range of interactions with our enemies and environment.

I'd prefer that each skill strike where it appears to, against however many enemies it would appear to. I'd prefer that each does as their animation would appear to do: Vorpal Thrust could push enemies to the side, Full Thrust would either gut the enemy from groin to throat or --if too armored-- 'launch' it into the air, while Fang and Claw could provide an exceptional flanking second strike and Whirling Thrust could disperse enemies as it focuses a core one (alongside a falling vertical cleave). I'd prefer preferential targeting (or, "soft-targeting" if you prefer) over pure tab-targeting. I'd prefer conditional selection, especially for healing, whereby you can pre-queue an ability and select its target at any time before its queue actuates or start casting a spell immediately and select its target at any time before the cast completes, etc., etc. And while I would indeed prefer to see a more active, intuitive, deep, and responsive form of gameplay, those system preferences, at least, I see less as a particular taste in gameplay as simply greater quality in undermechanics and the larger number of possibilities that would be unlocked by those better undermechanics.

If I had to provide a rule of thumb, though -- If the combat system can't keep a player new to a given role but not to the game feeling like they very frequently have new things to learn or improve upon and (mostly intrinsically) compelled to do so over the course of leveling, it probably isn't deep enough. That's the same standard we hold single-player games to. I don't understand why MMOs should suddenly get a pass when they waste obvious opportunities for the gameplay experience over time.

While I agree that low level content often feels bad, and I’d love to have back the abilities that were removed from my classes, even at lower levels, this could have the adverse effect of making levelling up feel like a downgrade, since there are many people who prefer an older version of their jobs. From a healer perspective, I’d love to get the dps abilities that we lost back, even just for low level dungeons where the healing required is a snooze, but this would mean that as I level up doing solo content as my class will start feeling worse (since there’s really no use for that big a healing kit in solo content). On the other hand, if they just replace early dps moves with weaker versions of the heals we get at higher levels, the content will just feel even worse, since it’s already incredibly easy to heal with our current skills.

Think they've left behind a lot of content behind with the strict trickle of a new skill or trait ever second level after level 50 and that jobs only feel complete at what is currently max level for the expansion. I used to find the game engaging on two fronts: what I need to react to in fights and the playstyle of the job. If the fights demand a lot of attention (Extreme, Savage, Higher floors of PotD/HoH) then that can carry it on it's own as I need to work to find oppertunities while dodging. Playstyle is what I could fall back on when the I was overtuned or very familiar for a fight or Duty, something simple that would be enjoyable through sheer catharsis.

In order to reach Extreme, Savage and Higher floors of PotD/HoH I find myself spending a lot of time where the first front isn't applicable: Low-level Duties or lower floors that any group in Duty Finder easily gets through. With many skills and cornerstone abilities locked away at higher end of the max level spectrum these daily grinds turn into more of a chore than I already find them. Would very much like to see them rebalance the whole thing so cornerstone abilities are learned much earlier, like before Sastasha. It would be even easier and one might've gotten both daily tomestones and endorphin release of blasting packs of mobs.

That they haven't I find particularly aggravating for my former favorite job, Scholar, that I could take to any solo quest or low-level Duty and the least I'd be able to play with several dots, go more offensive with Cleric stance and see how much healing I could get away with not doing on Eos' part. Then when it was time to be serious Extreme, Savage or deep in Deep Dungeons or suddent triage in low-level content I'd still have the full healing and support set suite of skills to perform the role. Job still comes alive in absolute emergencies and during some pulls, yet I'd much rather see every job be fun in the majority of the content the game has to offer rather than a tiny portion found a max level.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The amount of buttons doesn't really matter. what generally matters is what they do and how they affect the game.

An example of this would generally be oGCDs for DPS classes. generally speaking these do nothing for game play they're just they're to make busy work for players. you could easily remove samurais shinten for example and bake its potency into regular gcd abilities and generally it wouldnt make any difference at all to encounters within the game.

I personally for example find Opera Omnias battle system to be much more engaging than XIVs and typically there you have at most 5 buttons to press.

final fantasy 15 had a fairly engaging combat system and there you had like 4-5..

the problem xiv has isnt in how many buttons it has it's in the way that virtually none of those buttons have any impact on combat itself. a boss won't react any differently if you press 1 1 1 1 1 or 1 2 3 4 5 or 1 3 5 7 9. it makes absolutely no difference to how the fight plays out...

there are some rareeeeee examples where you might actually have an impact a fight by utilizaing a stun or silence but those cases are few and far between.

if you want to fix combat instead ofgiving players more buttons to press. why not make the buttons they have more engaging and actually meaningful.

combat would be muchmore fun if it wasnt just the same old rotation over and over and over again

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Each button doesn't necessarily have to impact on the fight, and FFXIV's combat can't really work like that or you would have bosses getting stun locked... I do agree though, and one of the reasons I love BLM is that while every button only does damage to the target most have a secondary effect on the BLM themselves; this gives each button a distinct purpose and gives BLM (somewhat) flexible and deep gameplay despite having a relatively low button count.

Conversely, one of the reasons I am disliking GNB is that you could halve their number of 'damage' buttons and change almost nothing about their gameplay, in fact you may just improve it. The same could be said for RDM with their 'Dual Mana' system, which doesn't actually offer any flexibility and so feels more like an excuse to give RDM a bunch of duplicate buttons than it does any real attempt at giving them engaging gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Personally, I think that would best come from making our core skills more modular and each individually compelling, able to be 'combo-ed' in a variety of ways that could together form rotations, but never the same one--or series thereof--over time, given a larger range of interactions with our enemies and environment.

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I really like to see this :)

Keep posting your thoughts, you never know who might be reading, and which improvements we can get from it.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

An example of this would be oGCDs for DPS classes. Generally speaking these do nothing for game play they exist only to make busy work for players. You could easily remove samurais Shinten for example and bake its potency into its regular gcd abilities and it really wouldn't make any difference at all to encounters within the game.

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Removing Shinten would literally remove the entire reason for the Kenki resource to exist, removing the entire reason Samurai has to land positionals. I don't think it's a very good example of a skill you could "easily remove".

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Originally Posted by YojimboM

What you are describing is an entirely different genre of MMO called "action combat".

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this right here. people are asking FFxiv to scrap everything and start over from the ground up, combat wise. that would be a balancing nightmare and make longtime players lose interest. if you dont care about optimizing to your skill level, im sure pressing 11111 vs 12345 is very boring to you.

I'd just be happy if they took a page from a few other MMOs and let combo abilities morph into the next ability in the chain with a preferred setting in case it's a branching skill. That and removed macro input delay/lag, I guess.

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Originally Posted by Auron_Wolf

I really like to see this :)

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The easiest ways to pull off these "intrinsic" (as opposed to "arbitrary") combos would be to give each a position each on a couple spectrums that naturally necessitate some interaction.

Let's spitball one such spectrum -- Pierce.

Context 1:

• Enemies now have Defense. This is both a way to increase depth of gameplay through new playflow concerns and to squish exponentially escalating damage values without reducing the relative value of each further gear (item level) step.
• A player's nominal Accuracy is now called "Precision". This is important for delineations below.
• Note: Accuracy still is not a gearable or visible stat. It remains a hidden stat determined only by player level. The only changes here are that certain abilities or procs, like Hawkeye, Straighter Shot, or Lance Charge, may provide increased Accuracy, while enemy base Evasion (see below) may vary, thus offering a wider spread of viable ability choices in varying situations.
• Certain modes of mitigation (such as Dodge, Parry, and Block, in descending significance) now reduce enemy accuracy. This penalty to enemy accuracy is called Evasion. The term Accuracy now refers to Precision (the attacker's nominal accuracy) minus the enemy's Evasion. Precision - Evasion = Accuracy. Thus, Accuracy remains the final, encompassing term. E.g. Heavensward-era Hawkeye would give perfect precision, while ARR's Perfect Dodge would give perfect evasion, such that +100% Precision - +100% Evasion = normal damage.
• Accuracy now affects damage in a granular manner. 100% deals damage as normal, but with the added layer of enemy Defense. Accuracy in excess of 100% proportionately decreases the effect of enemy Defense. Accuracy less than 100% proportionately reduces enemy raw damage. Thus, the most an attacker can be rewarded with is to ignore all their opponent's Defense (at most a mere 40% damage bonus against a typical mob) while the most a defender can be rewarded with is to ignore the attacker's entire attack, dodging it fully.
• Combo steps are still rewarded at 50% or more damage dealt (attacker accuracy > 50%), while Parry/Block/Dodge procs are still generated if 50% or more of their mitigation is applied (attacker accuracy <150%). Obviously, the difference in damage between 0 and 100% is greater than between 100 and 200%, but that is intentional.
• The standard deviation of damage (whereby every attack deals +/- 5% damage) has been replaced by a standard deviation in Accuracy. This functions almost identically, but removes one additional and otherwise disparate calculation step.

Context 2:

• The GCD/oGCD system has been repalced with the Stamina system, with three significant net benefits:

• The Stamina system allows more flexibility in rotation and activity.

While average APM at optimal play will be nearly identical between the GCD system and the Stamina system, the Stamina system allows for more banking and bursting of action, which better allows players to meet tight windows, to respond to newly manipulable situations and interactions, to vary their rotational play in ways that would otherwise depend upon strict breakpoints in Skill Speed or Spell Speed, and better make use of forced downtime.

That is not to say gameplay will suddenly become hectic or hard to time into muscle memory. Throughput stats increase with % Stamina while Stamina costs decrease with % Stamina missing. This means that players are encouraged to play near peak Stamina, but may burst activity at low cost and can never actually starve themselves of Stamina and thereby be forcibly slowed. As, with few exceptions, Stamina costs closely match animation times, this allows for a feedback loop easily attachable to muscle memory; it just requires the player to look at their character and their animations rather than at their hotbars and its spinning GCD wheel.

• The Stamina system allows more flexibility in casting and movement between casts.

The stamina system is paired with two others. One of these is Generative Potency, a system which causes skills and spells to generate their potency over the course of their animation or cast. The latter is relevant here in that casts may now be 'rushed', dealing effect proportionate to their percent cast time but consuming their full Stamina cost. This ability to 'rush' spells gives strong flexibility, especially in the context of utility functions by allowing players to more precisely inflict what and only what effect they need as to minimize uptime costs where unnecessary. Finally, Stamina costs, when 'rushed' spells are made frequent use of, encourage periods of downtime movement by recovering Stamina (which in turn recovers %Damage) over said downtime.

Proper cast completion is still rewarded, of course, but game design no longer has to play so tightly around common global recast intervals and their multiples, prefacing gameplay instead around a new sort of genre of caster with far greater manipulation of their movement, which in turn allows for further freedom in fight design enjoyable by all jobs. And as a byproduct, Generative Potency also offers a further host of nuance and quality of life improvements to casters.

• The Stamina system allows for far greater interaction with enemies.

There two parts to this: (1) Stamina is lost upon damage taken, and (2) just as players use Stamina, so, too, do enemy mobs.

Enemies may be beaten into exhaustion or -- paired with deepened AI -- be baited into exhausting themselves, while enemy attacks likewise become increasingly dangerous to tanks as their Stamina depletes. In the latter case, it's worth noting that while Stamina costs decrease with % missing Stamina, and tanks -- taking less damage generally -- lose less Stamina than most, damage can reduce Stamina far lower than burst activity, and --just as importantly-- throughput stats do include those responsible for Attack Power and Precision, both of which will now play a huge part in mitigation. This makes damage a vital part of the game of survival. No longer do tanks "meat-shield" enemy attacks. Though the tanks are obviously still the most central to it, proper "tanking" revolves instead around deception and counter-play, at a party-wide level, while damage in turn is capable of suppressing key enemies or both creating and exploiting weaknesses among them. Though gameplay has given far, far more tools by which to allow skillful party coordination, the need has increased in almost as great a proportion. Hit-and-run tactics, kiting, focused burns, pincers -- all of these and so much more come into significant use with these changes.

The Mechanic Itself: Pierce

[Note edited for clarity] Pierce determines the steepness of the Accuracy-Damage curve, i.e. how far damage and defense-penetration can vary when going from 0% to 200% Accuracy. Positive piece means the domain has tightened; it takes less than +/- 100% Accuracy, starting from the center of 100%, to reach +/- 100% Damage or Defense. When it's negative (called Spread), it means that neither a full miss nor full defense-penetration is possible. Pierce 50, for instance, would mean that you already miss at anything less than 50% Accuracy and already fully penetrate enemy defenses at just 150% Accuracy. Spread-50 would mean that even at 0% Accuracy, you'd still do 50% damage, but even at 200% Accuracy, you'd only penetrate 50% of the enemy's defense. Thus, Pierce and Spread become a matter of risk-reward mitigation/exploitation. Pierce-75, for instance, will penetrate all enemy Defense with just an Accuracy of 125%, but would also miss entirely with an Accuracy of 75%. Thus, it is most useful when an enemy has set itself up as to be unable to dodge or has become exhausted. A skill with high Spread, on the other hand, could allow you to recoup some damage potential after being completely Blinded. Spread Shot enough and you're bound to hit something (making it pretty situationally useful so long as friendly fire doesn't exist...).

So let's apply this mechanic to two skills: Between the Eyes (MCH), a former PvP skill whose name fits well for how we'll use it below, and Disembowel (DRG), which has a rather unique animation that should offer a good segue to another concept (though one that comes largely free, consequent to the above Accuracy stuff).

Between the Eyes in generally considered an execution skill. You either weary the enemy until its stats are so low it can't possibly contribute significant any net Evasion (a resultant Accuracy of less than 100), so you only have your bonus damage to think about, or you stun it and immediately blast it, to nearly the same effect.

Now, let's say we make more use of our more peculiar animations. Disembowel is more of a 'hybrid' skill; it includes in its animation a sort of forced parry and counterattack, and this sees use in its new effects. For just as an attack has Precision, Evasion within a counterattack not only affects the incoming attack, but also the counterattack's own Precision. In short, the more damage you avoided as a result of Disembowel's Evasion, the more damage Disembowel itself would do.

:: Simply put, we can take that simple underlying mechanic, Accuracy, and draw another mechanic from it (counter-attacks) with ease. Take that meme of, "Don't dodge, just Midare (the animation may go off, but they'll die before the damage can trigger)," and milk it for all its worth. You could then take that further to give obvious reason to use skills with such chunky animations as Power Slash, bringing them back into the arsenal of animations (and matching effects) available to players.

Meanwhile, both Disembowel and Between the Eyes could be horrible choices against a highly-evasive opponent, such that would be better served by using Grenado Shot, Spread Shot, or Split Shot, at ascending risk vs. reward, or Chaos Thrust, Sonic Thrust, Wheeling Thrust, Vorpal Thrust/Fang and Claw, or True Thrust/Full Thrust, again at ascending risk vs. reward.

You can have strong but inaccurate skills, weaker but more accurate skills, and any manner of precise skills (a further advantage when advantaged, and a further disadvantage when disadvantaged), which would fit right in alongside manipulations of enemies and the idea of risk from enemy attacks (including their strong ones that you could usually evade, but not when already exhausted).

Now, all that, of course, would be just a beginning. It's literally one additional effect or element mentioned in a tooltip. But now it involves so much more that's all hugely manipulable, offering huge room for tactics and often even strategy.

How do we deal with this pack of three charging armored lizardkin? We've got a shit party of a WHM, two PLDs, two DRGs, a Bard, a Ninja, and a Machinist. Let them bleed us, getting them worked into a frenzy from bloodlust aggravated by Foe Requiem, get the healer to undo their work all at once so they all -- incredibly pissed -- focus on him, then put a tank wall and our two DRGs in the way at the last second, deflect two and impale the third, and finish him off with our NIN and MCH while he's still stuck there. Now, does that all come down to Accuracy, Stamina, and Pierce? No. But what you'd see on your tooltips would be that last bit, and its gameplay transects the way all interactions would now work (Accuracy) and the core basis of gameplay pace (Stamina), such that its exploitation ends up very, very satisfying.

Add to this a further system within AI, like "Focus", and a Armor-break system (let's just call it "Break") and you can give each skill a place that is created by its surrounding skills and situations. Disembowel doesn't need to arbitrarily nested between True Thrust and Chaos Thrust (accessed, really, only to do the CT-WT-F&C line as a whole); it can have things that inherently feed into and from it, and multiple of them at that.

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Originally Posted by LauraAdalena

This sounds a lot like the Heaven's Eye/accuracy melds issue that was around in HW that made healer DPS a pain in the butt, and some DPS a pain to keep just enough on them to be able to hit the boss 100% of the time, but instead it would be to hit that point where you're ignoring the defense.

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Why? You still can't meld Accuracy and you still have the same base Accuracy as since Stormblood. There is absolutely nothing here about making Accuracy a stat again. You're writing in your own fear into something irrelevant to it.

The suggestion only asks that there should be interaction between skills that goes beyond merely sequencing them into rigid combos, i.e. you just have some riskier skills (ones which require more setup and are therefore more rarely used) and some less risky skills (ones which are more frequently usable, including to set up those riskier skills), and everything above, beyond, beside, and between.

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However, that's not the only thing that's odd about your post. You are implying that accuracy is a stat/we should have a stat that affects the chance to be hit by an attack. The problem is, every cooldown that's done that in FFXIV's history has either had a major flaw (perfect dodge either always worked or never worked and it was all dependant on what kind of damage it was) or were never used because the community favored consistent and reliable cooldowns (Anticipation, Featherfoot, Dark Dance, Bulwark). So you're just asking for something people disliked to come back.

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1. I've never asked that Accuracy return as a visible stat. And let's keep in mind here, Accuracy still is a stat in game, even now. It's just hidden and adjusted solely by one's job level, and interacts with enemies' similarly hidden Evasion (or whatever we call negative Accuracy) level. Neither Accuracy nor Evasion would be new additions; they are used presently. I merely threw out a spitball mechanic that would require simply that Accuracy and its interactions would have granular, rather than bimodal, effects.

2. So, we didn't like when dodge was bimodal so we therefore must hate when dodge applies percentile mitigation. How does that work exactly?

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Is this... TP again? Oh wait, no GCD or oGCD? Wait, are you suggesting they take apart this whole game just for this? The game is already a mess in terms of coding as it is.

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It is, as stated, a spitball example of how a single point on a spectral mechanic (one with a granular range, such as from 0 to 100) can integrally involve a tremendous amount of gameplay. It is merely example. It is not suggestion.

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This is the reason I wanted to respond to this post. What does this mean? Like... Is this an attack? Is this a status? Is this a stat? You've not made this clear. You've only said it's "a mechanic" and then went on to completely reconstruct a completely new system that isn't explained very well and just, to me, word spaghetti and using big words to sound technical without really saying much.

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You have domain Accuracy and range Damage. X, Y. Normally, X=Y; when Accuracy = 100%, Damage = 100% and Defense = 100%. When Accuracy = 0%, Damage = 0% and Defense remains capped at 100%. When Accuracy = 200%, Defense = 0% and Damage remains capped at 100%. It is not an attack. It is not a status. It is not a stat. It is a function, just like damage itself, which computes from a universal scalar, Attack Power or Spell Power, and Weapon Damage. Inputs go in; outputs come out. That's it. In total, it would require no further computational step than we have now, seeing as we still roll for hit/miss with every attack (that has not gone away -- it's merely become superfluous except vs. mobs of 3+ higher levels than us) and damage would no longer have a separate standard deviation roll.

By default, the slope is 1, as above. "Pierce", here, is anything which increases that slope. Let's take a slope of... 2, for example. At a slope of 2, it takes only 50% Accuracy to reach 0% Damage and 150% Accuracy to reach 0% Defense. You had a 1:1 curve. It becomes a 2:1 curve. (In the random example above, Pierce-75 would be a 4:1 curve, since 100% of the range occurs over 25% of the domain, having 'pierced' 75% of Accuracy's domain.)

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what? uh... I don't think I understand. Like, what do you mean "forced parry counterattack." Do you mean if a Dragoon parries they'll automatically do it?

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Disembowel is a powerless double-strike that gets converted into a parry before spinning beneath into a strong underthrust. The only idea here is that whatever an animation appears to do, it should make use of. That's not to say that if something includes some situational component, it should only ever see use in that niche situation, but it should be worth noting. It seemed a decent example of how one could easily create a second meaningful mechanic (counters) directly off the back of another (Accuracy). That's all it was meant for.

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"if the combat system doesn't engage new players" DOES NOT MEAN IT SHOULD BE MORE DEEP.

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Read what you're quoting. It specifically said for someone not new to the game -- a veteran or someone already invested in the style of play of the game -- but simply playing some new facet of it (e.g. leveling a second or further job or role in XIV). If the "depth" of a system is almost solely a matter of picking up its idiosyncrasies (animation/duration detachment, server tick manipulation, early/late weaves) and therefore only really lasts until you get familiar with the non-intuitive parts of the game, rather than feeling relatively fresh or compelling with each new job due to distinct interactions with the game's underlying mechanics, it's lacking.

I've said absolutely nothing about trying to attract new players to a game style by changing the game style or at the expense of those who already like it. I've also suggested nothing for the game itself. I only gave one spitball example of how a two words in a tooltip could be some 20 times more meaningful to gameplay than all that bloated text we spend on Earthen Star combined if there were just some further undermechanical depth to support ability interactions.

I've not said that something being unfun is due always to its lack of depth, but simply that deep undermechanics can make what would appear to a player very simple additions to complexity have vastly more room for player engagement.

Rather than relying on unintuitive or clumsy systems to pretend at complexity through bloated or outright wrong tooltips, hidden stat effects, awkwardly uneven growth curves, arbitrary cast-to-damage times, strange timing idiosyncrasies, and the like, I'd rather see something simple, be able to easily engage with it, and for it to have enough going on -- intuitively -- underneath it to keep me invested for far longer.

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and please stop trying to suggest features we just removed that people didn't like

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I have yet to suggest a single one of them. You have, pretending that they somehow had anything to do with my post. I have not.

Again, try reading things without writing your own fears into them (accuracy as a stat, despite my being clear that it wouldn't be, or accuracy as a hit/miss system, when the entire point was in making it no longer a hit/miss system) or strawmanning the content into something that connects only through what you, yourself, have written into the idea (i.e. skills that would require more setup and interaction from other skills must be "like BLU" (RNG), despite their being precisely no RNG in the accuracy system I suggested save the +/-5% standard deviation we already apply to damage).

Less strawman. More reading comprehension. There, my first actual suggestion for you or anyone else on the thread. (As opposed to, again, a spitball theoretical elaboration of how what is seemingly more simple can do far more.)

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

The easiest ways to pull off these "intrinsic" (as opposed to "arbitrary") combos would be to give each a position each on a couple spectrums that naturally necessitate some interaction.

Let's spitball one such spectrum -- Pierce.

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Alright. Shoot. Your post is pretty long so I'll just take the section I'm quoting and put an ellipses to say there's more to it and I'm acknowledging it.

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Context 1:
Enemies now have Defense...

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And throw out the only metric we have for how much damage we will do on each hit given that we only have arbitrary numbers and not percentages? I like your idea, it's cool and all, but I feel like when I'm trying to judge how much i'm doing on a per-fight basis and get an idea of how well I'm doing, if the defense of an enemy affected that I'd have a harder time feeling good about my job because I'd need to figure it out on a per-fight basis and as it is it's already somewhat hard to do that without outside sources like FFLogs.

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A player's nominal Accuracy is now called "Precision". This is important for delineations below.

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We already got rid of accuracy as a visible stat.

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Certain modes of mitigation...

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Okay, let's cut out the middle man. "You can affect enemy and player accuracy." None of that "if you penalize accuracy it's evasion". and just encompass it in a term without needing to summarize it with "and thus the all-encompassing term is".

However, that's not the only thing that's odd about your post. You are implying that accuracy is a stat/we should have a stat that affects the chance to be hit by an attack. The problem is, every cooldown that's done that in FFXIV's history has either had a major flaw (perfect dodge either always worked or never worked and it was all dependant on what kind of damage it was) or were never used because the community favored consistant and reliable cooldowns (Anticipation, Featherfoot, Dark Dance, Bulwark). So you're just asking for something people disliked to come back.

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Accuracy now affects damage...

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First off you are explaining this very poorly. And second off, this sounds a lot like the Heaven's Eye/accuracy melds issue that was around in HW that made healer DPS a pain in the butt, and some DPS a pain to keep just enough on them to be able to hit the boss 100% of the time, but instead it would be to hit that point where you're ignoring the defense.

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Combo steps...

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Ya lost me, what?

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The standard deviation of damage...

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Original HW/ARR accuracy may have been a pain, but what you are suggesting would probably piss people off given that adds more variation in the hit depending on how hard your defense idea messes with damage.

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Context 2:
The GCD/oGCD system has been repalced with the Stamina system, with three significant net benefits:

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Is this... TP again? Oh wait, no GCD or oGCD? Wait, are you suggesting they take apart this whole game just for this? The game is already a mess in terms of coding as it is.

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The Stamina system allows more flexibility in rotation and activity.
While average APM at optimal play will be nearly identical...

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You could probably say that a lot more concise that 2 paragraphs. However, what you're asking for seems to want a completely different kind of MMO. If you want that kind of MMO, go find it. I doubt they'd put that much work into something like this. You're asking for not just something simple like "remove an ability/rework it." you're asking to straight up remove and replace an entire combat system. They'd need to rebuild the entire game from the ground up, taking many years and man hours.

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The Stamina system allows more flexibility in casting and movement between casts.
The stamina system is...

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This paragraph above all others is just "It would do this" without really explaining how. Instead just saying what it would do and not thinking further than that. Also, as a caster main I actually like being the kind of caster who sits there and casts. That's kind of what makes it fun, minimizing movement where possible.

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The Stamina system allows for far greater interaction with enemies.
(1) Stamina is lost upon damage taken, and (2) just as players use Stamina, so, too, do enemy mobs.

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You know what kind of game this sounds like? Monster Hunter. I'm not saying that this is 100% monster hunter. But I'm just saying that I don't think every game needs to have these exact traits. We well, Stamina lost upon damage taken? That doesn't sound fun to me. Also, you said something about tanks doing less "meat shielding" and doing more "deception" and "kiting" and stuff... Is this a Monster Hunter thing? I only played a few hours of MH, didn't get far, but if this is I'd much rather we just let Monster Hunter be Monster Hunter and find ways to improve what we have and stuff.

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The Mechanic Itself: Pierce

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Oh right, the thing your post has been leading up to... only halfway down the post or more.

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Pierce, which varies between 0 and 75, determines the steepness of the Accuracy-Damage curve. Pierce-75, for instance, will penetrate all enemy Defense with just an Accuracy of 125%, but would also miss entirely with an Accuracy of 75%. Thus, it is most useful when an enemy has set itself up as to be unable to dodge or has become exhausted.

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This is the reason I wanted to respond to this post. What does this mean? Like... Is this an attack? Is this a status? Is this a stat? You've not made this clear. You've only said it's "a mechanic" and then went on to completely reconstruct a completely new system that isn't explained very well and just, to me, word spaghetti and using big words to sound technical without really saying much.

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So let's apply this mechanic to two skills: Between the Eyes (MCH) and Disembowel (DRG).

Between the Eyes in generally considered an execution skill...

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So.. basically it's like Misery's End? But like available at any time and made so when it's above that % it's a stun? That sounds neat. But I'd like to see it in work first. Which is why your "it would make the player think about" doesn't work. We don't know since we can't see it/the player in action interacting with the skill. You're making assumptions on how a player would act/play the class without having a class, and without having an actual player playing it. You can say it will work that way all you want, but we don't know until we see it happen.

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Disembowel is more of a 'hybrid' skill; it includes in its animation a sort of forced parry and counterattack...

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what? uh... I don't think I understand. Like, what do you mean "forced parry counterattack." Do you mean if a Dragoon parries they'll automatically do it?

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Meanwhile, both Disembowel and Between the Eyes could be horrible choices against a highly-evasive opponent, such that would be better served by using Grenado Shot, Spread Shot, or Split Shot, at ascending risk vs. reward, or Chaos Thrust, Sonic Thrust, Wheeling Thrust, Vorpal Thrust/Fang and Claw, or True Thrust/Full Thrust, again at ascending risk vs. reward.

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That would be a cool idea. Like, no joke. I've always liked variable kits that have tools for certain situations. That, however, doesn't mean it'd work in an MMO environment. Most MMOs have simpler combat to make it a little more accessible and make it so more lag-laiden people will not be as affected. However, at the same time, each MMO is designed differently. FFXIV is designed so the players have a linear progression and a kit that can handle everything, changing that suddenly (example: role actions) makes it clunky and harder to play. However, since you're suggesting it'd be a completely different system, under this theoretical system, yes that sounds neat. But, it also implies that the opponent's stats would be visible to the player or known to the player somehow, which then creates a completely different problem of "hitting it with whatever until I know what works." Which is less fun.

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You can have strong but inaccurate skills...

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So... Blue Mage?

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Now, all that, of course, would be just a beginning. It's literally one additional effect or element mentioned in a tooltip.

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No it's not. You literally just said like a billion different skills and other things. Putting that in a single tooltip would probably be too much for one person to read. And even then, asking people to read a tooltip of something in a game where people don't read tooltips of actions, and one so long it should be put in a tutorial/help box? no.

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How do we deal with....

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Exploitation...? of the AI or the mechanics? Because if it's mechanics it sounds like you don't know the definition of exploitation. Also, in all honesty, this sounds more like a D&D campaign than an actual game at this point.

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Add to this a further system within AI, like "Focus", and a Armor-break system (let's just call it "Break") and you can give each skill a place that is created by its surrounding skills and situations. Disembowel doesn't need to arbitrarily nested between True Thrust and Chaos Thrust (accessed, really, only to do the CT-WT-F&C line as a whole); it can have things that inherently feed into and from it, and multiple of them at that.

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Let's stop adding systems to AI in an MMO. If we're talking AI, AI needs to be pretty simple as to not lag the game when a bunch of creatures are thinking of what to do when attacked with the server-side program and latency across cheap lines. I fact, how much work and stuff you are asking for almost seems to be you want this game to be far more deep than most games are right now. And that's saying something. Even Dark Souls doesn't have half the things you're talking about.

Also, one quick thing from one of your other posts (which, I just wanted to comment on something. Your idea of the game interacting with the actions like that is neat, but not practical to making a game fun and flow nicely with hundreds of people playing it in a big world, which despite what FFXIV looks like does happen):

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If I had to provide a rule of thumb, though -- If the combat system can't keep a player new to a given role but not to the game feeling like they very frequently have new things to learn or improve upon and (mostly intrinsically) compelled to do so over the course of leveling, it probably isn't deep enough. That's the same standard we hold single-player games to. I don't understand why MMOs should suddenly get a pass when they waste obvious opportunities for the gameplay experience over time.

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ABSOLUTELY. NOT. THIS. "if the combat system doesn't engage new players" DOES NOT MEAN IT SHOULD BE MORE DEEP. For example, let's say Monster Hunter or Dark Souls don't do anything for me. Those games shouldn't be more deep. Hell, they seem to be doing something right to keep people invested, but I'd argue that depth is the least of their problems if I play it. And ironically, some games that take deep and engaging games and simplify them do extremely well in engaging the player anyway. (Ex: Divekick vs. Fighting games, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle vs XCOM, Advance Wars vs. most strategy games).

It's not a "rule of thumb" what you said. The actual rule of thumb for this should be "each game is a different beast. What makes for engaging content/battle systems in one might not in another."

Yes MMOs get a pass, somewhat. But most of that is the heavy reliance on internet causing latency issues at points, on top of the fact that MMOs aren't just MMOs. They are MMORPGs, MMOARPGs, MMOFPS, MMOPlatformers (idk I'm making stuff up at this point). FFXIV is an MMORPG. It's not an exception to the rule, it's just that RPGs tend to focus in areas that aren't usually fantastic combat but usually stat planning and group communication. This is true of most RPGs, most RPGs have an element of planning and at least a little bit of some sort of communication even if it's not with a group you're working with. MMORPGs do get a slight pass in that they usually build these systems around epic encounters making you feel like you're taking down gods.

The system you're establishing which sounds more like Monster Hunter/Dark Souls is geared more towards making you feel like you're fighting against real beasts and real giant monsters. When you take off the Rathalos' tail in Monster Hunter, it feels like you did that by watching what it was doing and how, and having instincts and muscle memory over planning and strategy. When you defeat a massive god/powerful magic being in an FF game you felt like you did because you planned where they had power.

Each game should focus on providing the player with the experience they want you to have, changing FF now to a more monster-hunter style combat with more "flowing abilities" and things that send enemies flying would probably flip the kind of feel the game is going for, which isn't a good game design choice. I'm not saying for certain it would not work, but I am saying that there's a high likelihood it wouldn't.

TL;DR
Be Concise

one kind of gameplay that works elsewhere doesn't work here.

don't say any for-sures if we don't have any evidence of people doing things with it.

not fun =/= needs to be deeper

and please stop trying to suggest features we just removed that people didn't like,

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Originally Posted by RadicalPesto

Removing Shinten would literally remove the entire reason for the Kenki resource to exist, removing the entire reason Samurai has to land positionals. I don't think it's a very good example of a skill you could "easily remove".

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No it wouldn't would still have kaiten, seigan, the disengage and gap closers. guren and its new single target version..

shinten is quite literally just a busy button so people dont get bored for that whole 2 seconds or so between gcds. here have something to press.. it doesnt change the samurai gameplay.

It's like this

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Originally Posted by Acidblood

Conversely, one of the reasons I am disliking GNB is that you could halve their number of 'damage' buttons and change almost nothing about their gameplay, in fact you may just improve it. The same could be said for RDM with their 'Dual Mana' system, which doesn't actually offer any flexibility and so feels more like an excuse to give RDM a bunch of duplicate buttons than it does any real attempt at giving them engaging gameplay.

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so many of the buttons we have are basically just tacked on to create busy work and do not make for engaging gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

snip

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You don't really need a stamina system per se. the old battle system in 1.23 and early 2.0 concept achieved much of this just by having TP be accumulated instead of spent. you'd start a battle with zero tp and use skills as you built it up. as opposed to starting with max tp and spamming skills every second.

was a much more fun system personally especially with all its little tricks like incapacitaions and stuff. damn sight more interesting than positionals stand here for 15 extra potency on that punch your going to throw..... positionals as they are now arent engafging its just more pointless busy work.

if a sam completely ignored positionals i think it worked out he'd lose something like 6 potency per socond.

(approximately 10 kenki lost per 9 gcds from one missed positional bonus. 10 kenki being 40% of a shinten. 40% of a 300 potency attack is 120potency. 9 gcds is somewhere near 20 seconds. 120 potency / 20 seconds. = 6 pps).

given that just those 9 gcds would total what was like 3500 potency so roughly 175 potency per second. of which 6 potency is what 3%
if you went and factored on higabana extra potency from kaiten and guren and such. i don't think id be to far wrong to say landing your positionals would barely have a 1% increase on your performance....

wow thats some engaging gameplay...

ninja wasnt much different if they just stayed behind the boss and ignored positionals all theyd lose was 60 extra potency on armour crush once every 30 seconds or so. .. a whopping 2 pps or whatever it was. maybe 5.0 is different i havent looked at ninja yet

positionals just don't do anything which is why alot of people think they should be scrapped. the battle system is so full of unrewarding stuff that is basically just busy work and not actyally fun or engaging.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

No it wouldn't would still have kaiten, seigan, the disengage and gap closers. guren and its new single target version..

shinten is quite literally just a busy button so people dont get bored for that whole 2 seconds or so between gcds. here have something to press.. it doesnt change the samurai gameplay.

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While I'd generally agree with you and Acidblood in this regard, you have to consider what would take its place here, and how.

Kaiten would net you a mere 240 potency at that point per use on Gekko/Kasha, an efficiency of 12. That's not far below Shinten's 12.8, sure, but as Yukikaze (at 200 potency per 20 Kenki, or an efficiency of 10 ppk) would only be worth the same damage efficiency as Gyoten/Yaten (even Enhanced Enpi would be nearer to a use on Gekko/Kasha), you'd essentially be looking at Dark Arts spam in its hayday, but worse, as you generate enough Kenki for a Kaiten every 2-3 productive GCDs, rather than every 3 (Grit) to 4.5 (without Grit), and it'd be a damage loss to use anything but that one skill save for once every 5 minutes. The rotation of its use would be painfully stale, too. For every 3 Sen generated, Kasha would get a use, Gekko would get a use, and then the Midare itself would get a use, while Higanbana would merely demand that you skip the Kaiten on its Gekko or Kasha (if not raising the single sen through Yukikaze) and use it on it instead. Once you get Ikishoten, you'd then be sure never to use Yukikaze to generate Higanbana, wherever possible, so that you could use the Kaiten before the Higanbana as well and absorb 20 of the excess 50 Kenki per minute on a stronger skill than Gyoten/Yaten. You'd then also need to slip in 3 Gyoten per minute just to keep from overcapping.

I don't really see how that'd feel any better. We have a decent mix right now. I'll agree that we have a ton of button bloat in this game at present, but I don't think Shinten is a good example of that.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

You don't really need a stamina system per se. the old battle system in 1.23 and early 2.0 concept achieved much of this just by having TP be accumulated instead of spent.

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The 1.23 TP implementation was accumulated only through auto-attacks, which would require uptime, and so long as skills had any innate cost, would force a reduction of apm whenever there was any further cost to Stamina (or, again, to uptime).

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was a much more fun system personally especially with all its little tricks like incapacitations and stuff. damn sight more interesting than positionals stand here for 15 extra potency on that punch your going to throw..... positionals as they are now aren't engaging; it's just more pointless busy work.

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I have to disagree, at least in terms of implementation. We never saw enough of the content to know one way or the other, so I'll refrain from commenting on it generally, but all we really got from the incap system -- while novel at first -- was X skill needing to be used on X mob, requiring X composition for X bonus loot or further ease of kill. I'm looking for more nuance and less of the unintuitive arbitration we already (or, still) have so much of.

These days, I'd have to slightly agree with you about positionals, but I at least can say with certainty that we had working implementations in the past. Back in 2.x, managing my positionals was actually easier, despite having far larger potency penalties for getting the wrong position. Why? Because DK and Bootshine were far closer in potency, Twin Snakes was shorter but just long enough to be overextended into a Demo-drop rotation (where you let Twin drop just barely after activating Demolish, then reapply DK before it, longer than Twin at the time, could fall off), Fracture and Touch of Death had no positionals, and Impulse Drive was of even potency to True Strike. Rather than being screwed at variable amounts by forced positioning, I could just... adapt, and lose little to nothing.

It's only after they started mitigating the risk that they figured actually having control over ones positionals through delaying GCDs and modular rotations must be superfluous and then removed the whole basis of positionals' compelling gameplay.

Just play Black Desert Online and it will solve all this issues.

If you don't like positionals and only want to press 3 buttons, I've got the game for you, its Called World of Warcraft, please leave.