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

[Rentahamster]

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