Dark Knight Megathread

[Shurrikhan]

here is my own thoughts, and please.. no one shoot me with the "bloat" bullet over this one.

Offers a bulletproof vest in the form of:

You have button A and button B with crossable dynamic combos that conclude on their 3rd GCD. This gives you a total of 8 decisions (AAA, AAB, ABA, ABB, BAA, BAB, BBA, BBB), as per your earlier number of weaponskills, but only requires 2 buttons.

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Alternatively, consider a open combo system.

Let's give this system 4 buttons. There are a lot more skills available than just 4, but you'll never need more than 4 buttons to perform them. (Alternatively, we could call these buttons "Paths", with "AA", for instance, referring to two consecutive button presses in Path A, and "AB" referring to a press of button A before a press of button B. Etc., etc.)

Now, let's fill them out with some characteristics. To keep this sample especially simple, I'll just follow three rules from which the rest falls into place:

1. Every path gives a consumable buff.
2. You cannot stack multiple of the same buff.
3. All consumable buffs are consumed together for their combined effect.

Path A gives buff A'. Path B gives buff B'. Path C gives buff C'. Path D gives buff D'. You cannot hold multiple of buff A', buff B', buff C', or buff D'. You can hold up to A', B', C', and D' simultaneously, but any skill that consumes any of those will consume all of them. Simple enough?

(Consuming all together is not a weakness, in this case; their combined effect is given at least nearly in full (i.e., is balanced as to maximize combo choices.)

Now, because you can't stack multiple of the same buff, we're going to take the button-efficient option in using the space of otherwise wasted possibilities.

Pressing A gives A', and I can't stack A' twice, so AA will consume A'. Similarly, BB consumes B', CC consumes C', and DD consumes D'. Easy enough.

But, that still leaves all my other options. Until I hit any button (A, B, C, or D) twice, I can continue my combo. If I've already hit A and B, I can conclude with ABA, ABB, or continue a GCD further to ABCA, ABCB, or ABCC, or continue even to a fifth GCD for ABCDA, ABCDB, ABCDC, ABCDD. Same for any other first two GCDs.

Whether, as a player, I'd want to stack them all together of course depends on what those consumptions do or how they interact and the efficiency of consuming them together. All this is just an empty frame; I'd still need to fill it with my 4 buffs of choice so that it works the way I want it to.

Moreover, I could choose to make order matter or avoid that layer of complexity, per my choosing. If the buffs only prime the finishers, then all that matters (as with Ninja's Ninjutsu) is the combination, not the permutation. If the buffs are themselves impactful or dynamic, then the permutations may meaningfully differ.

Again, that's just one of many possible frames.

You might, for instance, instead have one Path have no finisher of its own, and instead ramp indefinitely (with some alternate means of constraint included). That may well suit momentum-centric or flurry-style skills. Or, it could have an eventual limit, be that at a threshold to its buff effect (say, having generated 30% additional Attack Speed) or just after n consecutive presses, or n presses before having hit any finisher, or n presses before having fully consumed its buff.

There's tons you can with do with this.

The point is, though, that you can form up to some 120 different decisions... off 4 buttons. No, you would not want to actually have 120 meaningful decisions available to make, even assuming over-optimistically that their gradations wouldn't all just blur across each other, but the framework for such is very much possible.

Here, the above sample allows for 64 decisions in 4 buttons, if the buffs were themselves impactful instead of merely primers. In effect, this still would mean only the complexity of about 24 decisions, outside of the highest levels of min-maxing.

Just a bit of the playflow layout. I only snipped the very top, but imagine the same for the AD branch and the equivalents across B, C, and D.