Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[Dyvid]

Well I'm definitely not bored with the combat system. One of the things that keep me coming back. In FFXI I fell asleep, literally, playing dps or healing jobs so this is a step up for me. When you say adding strategy, can you explain what you mean exactly?

[Fendred]

Well I'm definitely not bored with the combat system. One of the things that keep me coming back. In FFXI I fell asleep, literally, playing dps or healing jobs so this is a step up for me. When you say adding strategy, can you explain what you mean exactly?

I made a thread that has a few of my thoughts on how combat could be improved. If you search for it I'm sure you would be able to find it. To sum up what I said in that thread...

1) Distinguish between localized heals and ranged heals so that monsters can have AI's that will take advantage of players trying to make too much use of either (either encouraging monsters to try flanking the healer if he is ranged healing, or encourage the use of AoE attacks if players clump up all the time).

2) Use more non-elites that have specialized strategies for taking down individual players instead of elites, and tanks should be more limited in the number of monsters they can hold aggro on at any given time. This way the DPS have some opportunity to contribute some actual team work instead of just being the guys who take advantage of it all the time. Actually, most fights shouldn't even be elites because it just leads to tanks being the center of the universe and forcing the design of the game to gimp their damage.

3) Take into account a monster's detection range when calculating threat. Standing in plain view of a dragon boss that is currently being tanked by a paladin while throwing heals at that tank should generate tremendous threat, if not serving as an outright taunt mechanic. Threat management as a group thing forces others to stop and consider their actions as opposed to just monotonously doing the same thing over and over again.

[Dyvid]

I made a thread that has a few of my thoughts on how combat could be improved. If you search for it I'm sure you would be able to find it. To sum up what I said in that thread...

1) Distinguish between localized heals and ranged heals so that monsters can have AI's that will take advantage of players trying to make too much use of either (either encouraging monsters to try flanking the healer if he is ranged healing, or encourage the use of AoE attacks if players clump up all the time).

2) Use more non-elites that have specialized strategies for taking down individual players instead of elites, and tanks should be more limited in the number of monsters they can hold aggro on at any given time. This way the DPS have some opportunity to contribute some actual team work instead of just being the guys who take advantage of it all the time. Actually, most fights shouldn't even be elites because it just leads to tanks being the center of the universe and forcing the design of the game to gimp their damage.

3) Take into account a monster's detection range when calculating threat. Standing in plain view of a dragon boss that is currently being tanked by a paladin while throwing heals at that tank should generate tremendous threat, if not serving as an outright taunt mechanic. Threat management as a group thing forces others to stop and consider their actions as opposed to just monotonously doing the same thing over and over again.

1) I can see this as interesting. It would be more in lines of having both melee and ranged attacks to shake up the group.

2) Not sure if adding more mechanics to "trash mobs" would make people happier. Take for example the mole from 1.0. The dove under ground and resurfaced at another location. This would add to the time it takes to kill them and those making them annoying rather than challenging. As far as dps becoming back up tanks, not sure I care for this either. We have instances that require a back up tank and tank trade offs. We also have instance that require dps to refocus their attention on adds or the group wipes. Honestly the whole point of a tank is to absorb damage and keep the monster attention on them. Like healers, if you can add a little extra dps good but that shouldn't be your prime focus.

3) This too seems like a interesting idea though not sure how important it would be since the tank should be facing the monster away from the party.

But like with all things, once you learn how to do something it can become tedious and boring. I'm replaying the Last of Us and it's not having the same impact as it did the first time around mainly because I now know the ends and outs of the game. I know what's about to happen and how to approach it.

Exactly my point on why you should watch videos/read about the mechanics beforehand

Well this is hardly the first game where the community required players to know about an encounter before they actually did it. FFXI had many guides, walk through, and online hints that became required reading in many groups. FFXIV is only in the modern age now where you can youtube things.

[Fendred]

1) I can see this as interesting. It would be more in lines of having both melee and ranged attacks to shake up the group.

Yeah, that was what I was thinking myself. More like Final Fantasy Tactics only in real time.

2) Not sure if adding more mechanics to "trash mobs" would make people happier. Take for example the mole from 1.0. The dove under ground and resurfaced at another location. This would add to the time it takes to kill them and those making them annoying rather than challenging. As far as dps becoming back up tanks, not sure I care for this either. We have instances that require a back up tank and tank trade offs. We also have instance that require dps to refocus their attention on adds or the group wipes. Honestly the whole point of a tank is to absorb damage and keep the monster attention on them. Like healers, if you can add a little extra dps good but that shouldn't be your prime focus.

Damage dealers as of right now mostly take advantage of teamwork as opposed to contributing to it because of how their role is set up. The idea here is to increase the importance of positioning and crowd-control mechanics and lower the need for tanking.

3) This too seems like a interesting idea though not sure how important it would be since the tank should be facing the monster away from the party.

Some monsters detect by sound. The same kind of rapid aggro increase could happen if a black mage is doing his incantations too close to an intelligent bat monster. For those fights, if melee damage dealers are involved, all attacking party members may need to juggle threat and use stuns. Again, the idea is to involve all party members in how aggro is managed. In addition, if they add spells like "sneak", which lower the chance of being detected by sound, their would be at least three ways to tackle said bat demon: Have all melee combatants aggro juggle/stun, have all ranged keep their distance while the tank handles things, or have some unspecified class with access to the sneak spell cast sneak on melee dps and handle it that way. It also creates a reason for spells like "sneak" and "invisibility" to be brought back, which also create some interesting options for the open world.

Also, it opens the possibility of defeating an encounter by avoiding it. A concept generally left unrewarded and unrefined in MMORPG combat.

But like with all things, once you learn how to do something it can become tedious and boring. I'm replaying the Last of Us and it's not having the same impact as it did the first time around mainly because I now know the ends and outs of the game. I know what's about to happen and how to approach it.

Right now the problem isn't people growing bored of old content as much as the end game content being an overbloated memorization fest. It's scaring new players away. Skill at teamwork and class proficiency are secondary at best during those kinds of fights.