[Suggestions] Ideas for a more lively and strategic combat system.

[Augury]

"Spike" Attacks are skills which allow for optimal DPS, with little/no regard for fuel regeneration (often because of a spammable recovery item or skills which allows them to get back MP/SP/TP etcetc). What enables this is usually a system of cooldowns which tries to balance extreme attacks with large cooldowns, and mid-high range damage attacks with higher fuel costs, but little extra cooldown. In the late-game of most MMORPGs these tend to dominate the "DPS" function and reduce the overall dynamic of the system to simple calculation over meaningful choice at the given circumstances.

Examples include RO's "Sonic Blow" for the Assassin-job or higher levels of Rogue skills in WoW. I believe there are several Guild Wars videos of players using "Spike Builds" during PvP sessions.

The point to make here is that for a battle system to be immersive, a player character cannot simply be a "tank" or "DPS" build and cooldowns create an almost turn-based effect which favors those who can output or take more in a set amount of time- creating a "speed" of sorts to the games involving them rather than a "tempo"

[Carpe]

Elite mobs would be somewhere in between regular mobs and NMs. They would have more hp, damage, and better AI than a regular monster (to promote party tactics), but not to the extent of being an NM. They would also have spawn distributions and spawn times similar to regular monsters, but would be confined to certain areas. It would be like fighting Incredibly Tough mobs in FFXI. That way you get a balance between people who want to grind solo and people who want to grind in a party. The regular monsters would be the best choice for a soloist, while the elite monsters would be the best choice for the small parties, large parties could go after NMs. Another incentive to fight these kinds of monsters would be to get experience chains off of them, but not off of regular monsters. I just like the idea of them diversifying the content so we have different choices when deciding where/how to level.

I could see something like this:

Solo = Regular Monsters/Levequests
Small Party= Elite Monsters/BCNM/Leve-Linking/Dungeons
Big Party = NMs (that are you're level)/HNM/Raids/Behest

[Augury]

I could see something like this:

Solo = Regular Monsters/Levequests
Small Party= Elite Monsters/BCNM/Leve-Linking/Dungeons
Big Party = NMs (that are you're level)/HNM/Raids/Behest

"Elite" mobs tend to be a bit more of a pain than they are worth, but I like the thought of small party based activity. Other than Leves and Dungeons, I think some non-PvP faction play would make for interesting things which can only be taken by small groups. Say- for example, crossing hostile territory to deliver a message in time.

Full-blown boss battles are also wonderful for small party design- Especially in a game (like FFXIV) where the character design doesn't designate a single "healer" or "tank" or "DPS" unit, allowing everyone to work their roles out on the fly (such as every player supplying a different buff or using a different type of elemental attack based on their affinity, even if they are maining a martial-discipline while the Thaumaturge/Conjurer- if there is one- supplies necessary healing, nuking, or things more rooted into actually needing a great deal of status investment)

[Bittereye]

I read this and had to throw in my two cents as well. Love the post btw!!!! Awesome job! Ok, your last section mentioning battle effects caught my eye. I would like to see visual cues as well EX: When we are bound, the spell effect bind will stay wrapped around the person(s) that was hit with Bind. That way other players that are about to head to the next leve point can see that we are 'bound' by the spell and not some tiny icon. When Efts cast their AoE bind spell, all of us should still have the barb-like effects still wrapped around us until the time is up. Same goes for Sleep. The Cockatrice spam that like crazy and sometimes the AoE range can be far without mages knowing to heal them to wake up. I have always wanted to see tiny Z's floating from our heads when we are asleep. Again, another visual cue on screen to indicate that we are slept and not some tiny icon. Maybe have the debuff icon next to our names above our heads?? Similar to the new HP bar command but this time with the debuff icons also. I think all of the effects are very 2D like and need more depth to them. Someone should post the differences of FFXI spells and FFXIV spells. You will see that almost all FFXI spells of an extra dimension! FFXIV spells look very cookie cutter, flat, 2D.... not matching the overall visual quality of the game's engine. Let's keep this thread going. Hope the devs see this!!! Great ideas from everyone!

[Bittereye]

One more thing haha... It would be nice to have different colors or even a different font type for the new NMs or any NM for that matter. Right now their names just look like all of the other mobs. Change the text color to a more dangerous color etc. Hopefully Im not alone on this idea.

[Nakiamiie]

We sure have many interesting ideas here.

...crossing hostile territory to deliver a message in time.

That's an interesting battle content, especially if you try to deliver a message to a small group of rebels in the territory of the Garlean Empire, haha. But first comes the battle mechanics themselves.

When we are bound, the spell effect bind will stay wrapped around the person(s) that was hit with Bind.

Bind... that was the word I was looking for yesterday, I was really tired, haha. But yes, you get the general idea of having long-lasting visual effects.
Aren't FFXI spell effects very 2d as well? The effect bursts, then nothing (except the status icon).

One more thing haha... It would be nice to have different colors or even a different font type for the new NMs or any NM for that matter. Right now their names just look like all of the other mobs. Change the text color to a more dangerous color etc. Hopefully Im not alone on this idea.

I think I understand the reason for this. The other day, I was walking in La Noscea and ended up face to face with a NM. At first, I didn't realize it was a NM, I just thought it was a sub-species with a different name (as usual). Being a Lalafell, everything is so much more bigger than me, I just thought it was bigger because everything is bigger. Then, I targeted it and that's how I knew: rank ??

So yes, maybe some other visual cues for special monsters could be nice. But before engaging the NM, battle mechanics must be tweaked, haha.

[Teknoman]

Could we please get combo systems similar to what was shown in Final Fantasy XIV's opening movie?

[RichardButte]

I'm at the point where I'm not even going to log into this game again until I see that they've made some sweeping changes to the battle system.

It's just too depressing to deal with this kind of "combat" system...

[RemnantWolf]

You made a comment on more differences for positional combat. I had made a thread that went more in depth into this idea and I thought I would link it here. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...4-True-Tactics

That plus with the combat system being such a major part of the game and the overhauls going on right now, I think this thread needs to be seen by more people. Because this thread has a lot of good Ideas and they need to be discussed and the devs should see them so this is a bump also.

[Rinsui]

It's a pity - now we have the beginning of really good content (at least some hints), but we lack the combat dynamics to enjoy it.