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

[Reika]

Tp should not be generated through auto-attack, only through specials.

There will be more going on with auto-attack and stamina combined than without auto-attack. Those buttonmashers out there are still free to mash.

Source?
/10

[konnichiwa]

Tp should not generate through auto-attack is just my opinion. No source

[Reika]

I mean the 2nd part of that.

[konnichiwa]

It goes opinion, quote from a few posts above mine, opinion. Sorry, I didn't quote his entire post and I'm not clear when I'm stating fact or opinion.

[RichardButte]

so basically better combat is one that doesnt require so much action, that you are unable to type. But has some moments of entertainment thrown in there.

Better combat would be combat so intense, strategic and involved that you'd never be able to type during it. Current combat is the complete opposite of this, where you could just stop to type and let most mobs hit you. Auto attack would only ensure that you're at least hitting them back the entire time.

[Physic]

If this combat is that to you, its because your fighting weak stuff, partially the developers fault, because they herd people into behests, and set the cap on exp at 10 levels higher, when a team of 8 can destroy those mobs in seconds. Before said limitations i had many involved second to second battles versus super powerful monsters, where you actually had to adapt to the fight and make decisions that mattered in battle.
honestly i dont really get the button mash aspect of the game, there are so many things i usually have to do in combat that i dont have time to be pressing auto attack all the time.
keep evasion high with light attack, burst damage with heavy/flurry debuff mob accuracy, watch for when i evade for fast damage and stun jarring strike. watch for when i miss so i can feint. watch for mob tp skills i can avoid, alter positioning. In leves, determine the state of the party, adapt taunting and hate skills, or holding seperate mobs.

Maybe this is because back when i did most of my leveling, best exp was outside of leves, and the tougher mobs gave more experience, and were what you fought if you had large groups. We would seek out interesting fights because those generally gave the best exp. Steam rolling weak mobs was good for certain mob types, if the spawn rate was fast but it was just an alternate path, and even though the mobs had low hp, they generally still had dangerous abilities.
Even now, since i have done mostly low man things, and didnt realize the 10 level experience cap, i fought more difficult battles where each action was pretty important.

I can see saying combat is too involved, but when you fight the harder mobs, in the more challenging areas, at levels where you dont own a mob before it can even use its skills, the battle system shines, and you dont have time to just press auto attack in battle, in fact that would kill your stamina, not allowing you to make good use of it when you need it.

[RichardButte]

If this combat is that to you, its because your fighting weak stuff

I've fought harder stuff as well and generally I'm just furiously spamming heals to keep the tank alive (such is the role of a healer, though).

But the real problem there is that it's still more efficient to kill 3-5 "faceroll" mobs in the same time it would take you to kill one orange-red mob that will actually challenge you.

I love punching the horns off of Aldgoat Billies. It's fun because it gives me a specialized goal other than simply attacking the mob until it dies and it's also fun because I have to specifically set up my skills to accomplish this goal. I want to gain enough TP to fire off Concussive Blow II while not killing the goat before I break its horns, and I also want to stack up my accuracy and damage-increasing buffs before I fire off CBII. It makes the combat extremely goal-oriented and is easily the most fun I've had with the combat system.

In any other case, I could use all of these abilities to kill the mob faster, but generally just nuking it to death works fine. All of the other abilities take more time to cast than they're worth in helping to finish the fight, typically, so there's no real point in using them.

If more fights could be made like the horn-hunting battles, this game and the battle system would be infinitely better for it. In fact, I consider the specialty combat to change the drop table of a mob to be one of the best aspects of this game and I wonder why it wasn't more heavily advertised. I honestly didn't even know it was in the game until fairly recently and I consider it one of the game's best selling points.

[Reika]

Adding auto attack will help you accidently kill that billygoat before you break the horns off. It would be better to ask for more dynamic monsters like the billygoat, skeleton, buffalo, etc. Almost everything with a head has its head specifically hit when hit with Concussion blow II, Skull Sunder II, or Shrieker from the front. but the problem is it doesnt really do anything. What it could do is put them in a daze every time you do enough damage to the head, when they come out of the daze, rinse and repeat. The Buffalo is actually a perfect example of what they should do with way more monsters. Certain weaponskills can incapacitate the legs and knock it down completely for a good amout of time, and wipe its TP. We need more of that, not auto attack.

[konnichiwa]

Auto-attack does not assume auto-target as well. If your goal is to target something specific, there should be no accidental killing blow via an unintentional melee strike unless you made the mistake of not selecting the correct target first.
Attacking from start to finish while controlling which specials are used and when all while consistently damaging the target seems very immersive and appealing to me.

Edit: auto-attack can also help you consistently damage one target while focusing another with specials.

[Physic]

yeah, i agree that horn hunting is more entertaining, and i look at a lot of the systems that were in the game, for hard fights they were seriously pretty involved.

I will say that mages get left out of a lot of the interesting battle elements. Tanking is a complex activity, meleeing can also be pretty involved with different enemy skills, trying to build up dmg and survive. But mage stuff seems like you basically spam either heals or damage, and managing mp isnt as much of an issue now, so they really dont have too many concerns in battle. They could probably use magic abilities that have more utility, different effects, and ranges. While on pug i have line of attack weaponskills, aoe weapon skills, single target big dmg, single target debuffs, various buffs and reactionary skills and whatnot, mages dont seem like they have too much variety in what they do.


Konnichiwa. what reika is refering to is that you hold back on your regular dmg skills as much as possible so as to focus as much dmg on the skills that have a chance of breaking the horns. If you are auto attacking you increase the chance you will kill the monster before you can break its horns off.

there are actually a fair amount of game mechanics like this in harder fights, like raptors if you hit them in the back they can do a huge dmg aoe move. So if the mob turns, you can just not attack and run back to the front, in an auto attack system, its fairly likely at least one attack will go off before people can change positioning.

for on next hit skills, it allows you to stack buffs and then use it on the skill of your choice, sometimes these skills are your regular attacks, not your weapon skills.

procs for reactionary skills like haymaker, phalanx, fracture, can fail if your stuck in an animation, so they will have to make sure you can interupt any animation to perform these abilities. (ie if your in mid swing you can still pull off one of these abilities)

The stamina system allows you to, for example with the bloodweapon weaponskill mongrel, build your stamina/tp to full then unleash a lot of dmg at once.

in FFXI you basically had to turn around, or sheathe your weapon to try and control these type of things, but that was a stop gap measure, and kind of foolish.