Problem with Auto-attack

To be honest, I think auto-attack will be the downfall of this game's potential. I've hated aggro-indicators, and I have hated the addition of those NPC quests which server little to no purpose at all. But of the latter, I can live with those things, and I can understand why they are implemented. With auto-attack, I just can't see the reasoning in it much at all.

People have two different ideas on what tactics are

1. Stat-based

These kinds of strategies revolve around manipulating the stats of the opponent or one's self. For example, provoke increases one's enmity. Protect increases one's defense. These are all stat-based tactics. And people can use a myriad of combinations to bring down enemies focussing on minimasing the mobs damage and directing the mobs damage and also maximising attack and maximising defence.

Auto-attack works in this system because one spends his or her whole time changing the stats of the mob or the player in order for auto-attack to reach its full potential.

2. Action based

This system involves positioning (moving out of the way of attacks). This system involved blocking (blocking to increase defense). Attack is increased by putting one's self in the correct place, defence by blocking at the right time. Strategies in this system have less emphasis on stats and more emphasis on what people do and how they move.

Auto-attack doesn't work int his system because it defeats the purpose of combat decisions.


The reason I wanted to play FFXIV was because I was promised the latter of the two systems, not the former. I wonder how many other people will agree. And I wonder if SE has made the right choice.

In my opinion, SE should have eliminated such concepts as "provoke" and "protect" and instead made it so that tanks had to stand in front of the mob they were protecting their mages against. SE implemented collision detection but then never used it to their full advantage.

It's kind of disappointing and I wonder if they have utterly destroyed the game's potential, both in terms of enjoyment, and in terms of market potential.

Well, i do agree with you and i'm also worried about the way FFXIV is taking battle-wise.

I have faith that the devs can fully understand the current system Tanaka team made and that they won't discard it to add a battle system from other game, only adding more options to improve the possibilities of it...but, at same time, the more i read devs posts the weaker my faith becomes...sometimes i feel they not fully understand or control the way the game is going.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lienn

Well, i do agree with you and i'm also worried about the way FFXIV is taking battle-wise.

I have faith that the devs can fully understand the current system Tanaka team made and that they won't discard it to add a battle system from other game, only adding more options to improve the possibilities of it...but, at same time, the more i read devs posts the weaker my faith becomes...sometimes i feel they not fully understand or control the way the game is going.

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My faith was once incredibly strong when Yoshi was put in place of Tanaka. But then it began to waver with every passing month as he promised additions that seemed to throw every other feature of the game into conflict. The game is a confused mess (for want of a better word) at the moment, and i shudder to think where it is heading.

Oh well.

You're all talking gloom and doom.

:\

Discuss the positives so the devs know what they are doing right.

They are working on things, so you need to remember that until they have stated that they are happy, you can't really say anything that is implemented now is set in stone.

=]

I think they can and will make a great MMO.

I hope they change their mind about the whole auto-attack deal. They still have time to rethink the grand battle system's future.

i realized reading some of the plans, basically FFXIV died. They plan on creating a new game from the ground up, the only thing is they are going to use some of the assets from this game. They are making a whole new game, you just have to hope it will be good, but it wont be what this game was.

Lets not judge the system before they've released any more than "theres auto attack" released for info shall we?

IMO auto-attack isn't the only problem...it does can be added in the current system perfectly, bringing no harm for those that like the current system (like i do) and adding the auto-attack option for those that prefer using it.

Everything has 2 sides. IMO they can make the game flexible, offering multiples options so they can have greeks and troys happy...but that's not the way the things are pointing...its like Physic said...its more like they are planning on discarding the current game and making a new one...and i can say i don't want it...but i did what i can...i answered against the drastic changes at first poll, i answered against drastic changes at second poll, i offered several feedback here and even before the forum was launched regarding all points i thought that could be changed with tweaks instead of revamps and i keep asking them to preserve what made this game unique.

But that's all a single player can do...no matter how much effort i put thinking in multiple ways of protecting the current systems from harm, they are only suggestions and can just be discarded at first glance.

So i kind of prefer to post here my concerns since, this way, other players can do the same and we can end being heard by the dev team. ^^

I am looking foward to auto attack as, after about 1-2 hours of fighting, I usually like to strike up a conversation. But I have to choose whether I want to sacrifice my damage to socialize or play well and stay quiet, as the game requires you to use abilities quite frequently.

FFXI allowed socialization & combat to take place simultaeneously due to limited necessary input, and "camping."

FFXIV has the opposite extremes of camping parties/events and limited input: roaming parties and high input requirements.

Enabling auto attack simply applies one of your most basic attacks for you.

While I was at first VEHEMENTLY against auto attack, I am now extremely excited about its addition. I mostly play with a controller and I do not mind the gameplay currently, pressing the button for attack is not so annoying. Yet when I play with keyboard I am instantly agitated and disgusted with the 1 1 1'ing. Although some classes are able to mix it up, I would guess a range from 40-60% (higher for some classes) of all actions are consumed by "Attack". When you finally move on to Notorious Monsters, the amount of TP gained from attacking is diminished greatly; thus, this proportion is only increased more.

I do not see Auto Attack conflicting with any of the points you make, as there are plenty of other Actions to use strategically. Auto Attack simply makes your choice of actions focus on your unique ones instead of 50% Auto Attack 50% Other. Removing Auto Attack also gives you more time to use your more interesting skills as well, as you will not have to spend time building up TP using Attack; instead, you can use these abilities together.

Try as I might, I can't see that socialising while fighting is a good idea. You should be fighting while you're fighting right? And if what you're doing is so monotonous that you must distract yourself from it by socialising, then SE needs to address that problem, not by automating the system, but by giving people less monotonous things to do.

Perhaps they could just add a toggle for auto-attack so that people can flip it on or off when they really really need to talk. This could still preserve the action-based combat we were promised.

To further the original combat system, SE would first need to believe in it. And it's obvious that they don't. If they don't even believe in the concept behind their product, they can't begin to improve it. Instead of improving it, SE are merely set to destroy it.

Really? You're going to start this again?

The current battle system is the remnants of the scrapped alpha battle system. A rushed job in an attempt to make battle feel faster. SE turned a blind eye to the fact that their Rank system was symbiotic with the battle system in the fact that actions = rank up. When they introduced the stamina bar which made taking actions faster, they didn't take into account that they needed to adjust the way we skilled up. Which lead to spamming of skills. In what seemed like a knee jerk reaction, they changed it to our current model: Mobs give set SP. Which leads to necessity to build TP as fast as possible to burn down the mob as quickly as possible because now time=SP.
So what we are left with is the need to spam TP building skills for the sake of using more damaging skills. The fundamentals are fine. Build TP to use bigger and better moves. What's wrong with it is the need to press a button for every attack to be made.

I keep hearing people state they want to be involved in the combat. Being busy doesn't equal involvement. Being involved in the game means communicating with other people, adapting to current combat conditions.
I'm too busy making sure I don't miss a combat round because my stamina bar is resting at full and I'm not taking any actions. Why? Because I'm trying to tell the PT we got an add and we need to deal with it. After all if i'm not attacking I'm taking longer to kill which means less SP.

Adding in auto attack for the sake of TP generation might actually allow you to become more involved with other aspects of the game you are otherwise neglecting.

Have you considered how a console gamer might react to the requirements to be involved in battle? The use of the directional pad to navigate all actions? Do you have any idea how tedious that is?
This isn't street fighter where all your actions are mapped to 6 buttons easily accessed by a movement of your thumb. Or an action game where you have 2 buttons and what ever sequence you press them in determines what actions you take.
That is not how FFXIV was,is or will ever be set up!

YOu might reference TERA as that "action battle system" Did you know you're two main actions are mapped with the left and right mouse button. You use those 2 attacks for a majority of your gameplay. That battle system was set up to be action.
FFXIV is a menu system layed out on a skill bar in front of you. It's not an action game.

The addition of auto attack will relieve you of the duty to build TP. That is all. You are still involved in all other aspects of battle, be it positional, flow or timing of attacks (through use of engage/disengage i.e. toggle)

If you're talking then you are not being involved in the battle, you are strategizing it. If you want to only strategize, stand outside the battle, if not its pretty easy to quickly type /p add. If you are with your ls mates, use vent. It's pretty oclear when you have an add in this game and having to disengage/engage is much harder with auto attack than it is just not pressing a button.

It is pretty obvious anyone who will buy this game for a console will need to have a keyboard. Button mapping with a controller and keyboard to something that is comfortable to you should be no problem.

Do I want to wait for the computer to build tp for me, while I sit here? How is that any better than building the tp by swinging the sword myself? This does not seem any more immersive to me. As you said it is now focused on killing and gaining sp faster and this will only make people want to spam weaponskills and magic. As a GLD I enjoy timing attacking in between shield, healing and enmity. Auto attack is just a simple, easy out and extremely boring answer to a difficult problem. Most of the complaints are from jobs that mostly need to attack and weaponskill. The answer should be to give them MORE to do, not less.

Auto-attack does not equal automated fights, that's a silly assumption to make.

If anything it gives you even more possibilities to focus on "action based" content that you describe.

Abilities such as Protect and Provoke are a completely different question

So will auto attack apply to Archer's Light Shot as well? Cuz I already pull enough hate with breather room in between my shots.

I do not understand how it is not automated, if my character is attacking when I am not pressing or controlling anything.

Auto-attack is not automated because it only makes the base attack being used repeatedly...but it do opens the option for automated fight, just like it did in FFXI. Who never dualboxed in FFXI? Its all auto-attack fault. :/

The addition of auto-attack itself shows the incapacity of being creative of this dev team. Instead of adjusting the current battle system (which is very fun IMO) they prefer to use methods created for dial-up MMO games so people could fight "at server" and not at client side.

IMO the dev team should play Dragonica a bit to learn how to make a system that have auto attack for "easy mode" and button smashing for hardcore players that prefer performance over light play.

Tera took a clue from Monster Hunter and it worked out fairly well for them.

I was hoping FF14 was gonna be a little more Monster Hunter-ish in nature, but I guess we'll see what happens with the new battle system. I'm cautiously optimistic that they'll be able to come up with something good.

Let's hope the study the downfall of Star Wars Galaxies, and learn from their mistakes.

They should strive to make combat more like their cutscenes and cinematics and less like a chore.