Too much, now too little. AutoAttack

[Eekiki]

To me FF means a game complicated enough that only the people that take the time to make strategies and learn the systems in the game get to excel in the game. Of course that is a little overkill for an MMO, but when they implemented Auto attack they may have gone too far in the other direction.

I understand what you're saying. Every game, MMO, Final Fantasy, or otherwise, needs to have some learning curve in order to stay interesting.

On the other hand, there are mechanics that eventually come to be known as "standards". If you've ever watched the videos of the Angry Video Game Nerd, he often laments over platform jumper games that make you press up on the control pad to jump rather than one of the buttons. And imagine the outrage if the next Super Mario Bros. game had you hold down A instead of B to make Mario run faster.

I said this when auto-attack was first introduced. There are other ways SE can make XIV unique amongst MMORPGs. Making players choose every attack does not make it more of an "action" combat system. If they wanted to do that you'd have to make the combat work sort of in the style of Zelda or Kingdom Hearts games (which would be incredible).

But to do that would take a lot of work, not to mention the fact that nine years after the release of FFXI, SE still hasn't figured out how to fix their ridiculous server latency issues in their online games.

[Rokien]

Since we now have auto attack, I wonder if it wouldn't be a bad idea to reintroduce the old (accuracy/power) meter for TP moves.

It could use a bit of an update, but I think it would add some nifty interaction to our high-end attacks.

Zantetsuken, wow I totally forgot about it. I think everyone would agree to that. You should really make a thread on it or someone. But I havn't seen someone bring it up in a long time. So, you should make it!

[Rutelor]

Most games are going toward more active combat system. Polls suggest 60% of MMO players want a more active combat system, and perhaps the nature of MMO combat is one reason most gamers aren't MMO players. So it is strange to see SE revert back to the antiquated FFXI modality rather than try and fulfill their vision.

Polls also suggest that a staggering and ever-increasing segment of the US population eats mainly fast food. That doesn't validate the decision. Numbers also can be invoked to demonstrate that a huge proportion of MMO players prefer games that are far lamer than what you would allow yourself to play.

That's one of the problems implicit with democracy, which G B Shaw defined as something that "substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." We take democracy as a form of government because, frankly, all the alternatives are worse. But this is not the case in game design.

Let the designers, and not the incompetent many, do the job. I, for one, will disagree with the minimum common denominator in the polls and state loudly that I do NOT want a hybrid between action games and MMOs in the combat system (at least not in this game,) thank you very much.

A forum like this should be driven by arguments and reasons, not by invoking the preferences of millions. But it's difficult, because we, the people, tend to think that "election by the incompetent many" actually has a marked high-thought content. It doesn't. We elected G. W. Bush once. So, I don't care if legions want something (legions once wanted slavery.) I'd much rather you show me your reasoning.

Rut

[Eekiki]

We elected G. W. Bush once.

No we didn't. The Supreme Court gave him the election.

[User201109011315]

Polls also suggest that a staggering and ever-increasing segment of the US population eats mainly fast food. That doesn't validate the decision. Numbers also can be invoked to demonstrate that a huge proportion of MMO players prefer games that are far lamer than what you would allow yourself to play.

That's one of the problems implicit with democracy, which G B Shaw defined as something that "substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few." We take democracy as a form of government because, frankly, all the alternatives are worse. But this is not the case in game design.

Let the designers, and not the incompetent many, do the job. I, for one, will disagree with the minimum common denominator in the polls and state loudly that I do NOT want a hybrid between action games and MMOs in the combat system (at least not in this game,) thank you very much.

A forum like this should be driven by arguments and reasons, not by invoking the preferences of millions. But it's difficult, because we, the people, tend to think that "election by the incompetent many" actually has a marked high-thought content. It doesn't. We elected G. W. Bush once. So, I don't care if legions want something (legions once wanted slavery.) I'd much rather you show me your reasoning.

Rut

Perhaps you should reasses the reason we have autoattack in the first place. It was purely because "the polls said so". When the polls work in your favour, I guess they are valid, and when not, they are a flaw in democracy.

[Eekiki]

I got one more thing to say.

SE's promise with the implementation of auto-attack was faster, strategy-based combat with a more logical flow. This has not happened, mostly due to ridiculous cooldown timers on basic abilities. The one thing that did make combat interesting, battle regimen, is being removed with no word on what will go in its place.

That's what's wrong with combat, not auto-attack, but rather what is meant to go on top of it.

[User201109011315]

Spamming actions was a problem (allegedly).

Autoattack was not a solution (apparently).

[Falcus]

Speak for yourself. It's quite easy to control whether you are auto-attacking or not.

As a Gladiator, it's a huge relief to have Auto attack. Huge relief. Lets me focus on doing my job, and not spamming a button I would have been constantly spamming anyway.

Before 1.18 it was pointless to use regular attacks for the most part in anyway. It's nothing new for GLA.
Before 1.18 it was a waste of stamina so in that sense auto attack benefits GLA since they don't have to waste stamina on attacking anymore.
But for other melee classes I preferred manual attack. Only DoW I like playing now is ARC because of that. The rest are just boring now.

[Cycloptichorn]

Before 1.18 it was pointless to use regular attacks for the most part in anyway. It's nothing new for GLA.
Before 1.18 it was a waste of stamina so in that sense auto attack benefits GLA since they don't have to waste stamina on attacking anymore.
But for other melee classes I preferred manual attack. Only DoW I like playing now is ARC because of that. The rest are just boring now.

Guess I have to say I disagree with that. It's never useless to use regular attacks, as you gotta get TP somehow. No TP = no Phalanx, and that means you're a crappy Gladiator. Before I was required to basically spam the 1 key as much as possible to gain TP; now I don't. That's an improvement.

I can't speak as to what you do or don't find boring, though. I don't find auto-attack to be boring with any of the classes at all. And I must say, there certainly are a lot of people here who continue to put a lot of time into a game that they supposedly don't like much of anything about...

[Murugan]

Yes, there's probably umpteen dozen of this thread already but I felt like I probably have a somewhat different opinion.

When I started 14, I enjoyed it because it was different. It wasn't perfect, but it was okay. I'd played 11 and a few other MMOs, and 14, while borrowing from a few, was fairly unique.

Manual attacking kept you busy and was to a certain extent fun. You could easily decrease your damage output by slowing your attacks and weaponskills. Had the emnity system been working properly I would have enjoyed this system. BUT due to continuous button pressing, it also make anything but Voice Communication during battle very inconvenient.

Now, with Auto-Attack, there is no control. There is only eying the TP bar, waiting for your next WS and hope you don't pull hate. At least we can type now but at the cost of an interesting battle system.
//Not to say it doesnt help some classes like GLA and PUG. For classes that need TP AND to be watching for certain events or other timers, autoattack is quite helpful.//

I would have preferred a hybrid system. Select a non TP attack to be repeated every so often, with the ability to speed up or slow down at the cost of stamina, with some weaponskills requiring TP and stamina to use.

Stamina didn't need to be abolished, it just needed a more creative use than effectively limiting our TP gain.

I just hope that 14 doesn't continue to slide toward generic-ness.

There are no classes that play the way you describe. In my opinion you are playing your classes wrong.

The only time in any class that I am simply "watching my TP bar build", except at very low levels (under 25-30 in some classes and without any guild mark purchasable abilities) is if I am purposely holding back or something.