Auto attack: A complete battle system

[Kaedan]

For anyone who thinks auto attack is going to stop them from spamming actions go try Rift or WoW and let me know how that works out for you. Auto Attack =/= Less button pushing.

Yeah, you mentioning Rift actually brought up a good point.

Auto attack in Rift and Aion is worthless. It just doesn't do anything. Everyone's too busy spamming their other skills.

What I don't get, is that in Rift and Aion, people spam two or three skills over and over (Aion better than Rift, since at least it's not just "combo builder skill > combo builder skill > finisher"). But when they're pressing the exact same number of buttons in this game, it's unacceptable.

It just doesn't make sense. I think it's more to do with people's psychological needs than anything else. It's that, "if it's against the norm, it's bad" sort of thinking. Because they are so ingrained with the idea that AA is necessary (afterall, almost every other MMO has it), they just automatically assume it's needed in this (even though it's worthless in almost every other MMO).

[ChiefCurrahee]

Yeah, you mentioning Rift actually brought up a good point.

Auto attack in Rift and Aion is worthless. It just doesn't do anything. Everyone's too busy spamming their other skills.

What I don't get, is that in Rift and Aion, people spam two or three skills over and over (Aion better than Rift, since at least it's not just "combo builder skill > combo builder skill > finisher"). But when they're pressing the exact same number of buttons in this game, it's unacceptable.

It just doesn't make sense. I think it's more to do with people's psychological needs than anything else. It's that, "if it's against the norm, it's bad" sort of thinking. Because they are so ingrained with the idea that AA is necessary (afterall, almost every other MMO has it), they just automatically assume it's needed in this (even though it's worthless in almost every other MMO).

My frustrations stem from the necessity to constantly press a button otherwise you sacrifice TP generation thus losing damage.

Yes auto attacks are worthless in those games, But what they have, what we don't have is regeneration of the governing mechanic pools. Which are used to fuel their skills abilities and attacks.

We have TP

Lets say I wanted to use a skill that cost 2000 TP. Ok, so I need to press the attack button that build TP maybe 4 times (lets hope we don't miss) to build up the TP, now I press another button to execute the skill i wanted to use in the first place.
Now if I take no further actions, neither does my character, nor does my TP pool. My potential for further damage goes down the longer I do nothing.

Now in Rift, most of your skills are available to you from the get go, So I can use skill after skill after skill, and the governance pool that allow me to cast these skills regenerates on it's own. So if i stopped attacking, My potential for further damage does up.

Another issue is with the UI. It is a nightmare to navigate with a gamepad. you are constantly pressing left and right to get to each of your skills. I find a lot of my time is spent between TP generating attacks and TP skills and reactive abilities. It becomes so tedious after just a few fights I have to step away from the game.

I think it's a great idea that SE is giving us the freedom of choosing attacks on demand like other "standard" MMOs but the mechanic behind TP building is frustrating.

If they keep the TP mechanic combined with the current UI and the hopes of having a successful PS3 console launch I think AA would fit very well with this system.

Conversely If they do away with the TP mechanic and had stamina control the rate at which you can attack (which it currently does) SE would have to issue cool downs of all other skills to prevent a person from using "Skewer" non stop. This would bring the game even closer to being a "WoW" clone. A lot of people had a outrage with the "!" over quest givers heads how would they react to this?

Now just to be perfectly clear. When I say Auto Attack I don't mean FFXI version of battle game play. Where you sit there for an eternity to get to 100TP to use a WS and if you had 150% TP upon execution of that skill you were left with 0. THats not what I want.

FFXIV allows you to access your skills with less TP and retain any TP you didn't use. So really in FFXIV you can attack once us a WS attack again use a WS. Its much faster paced.

THe version of Auto attack I want is for me not to have to issue each command to say "Yes I want TP please" My character is standing there with his sword ready for attack just waiting and waiting and waiting while getting whacked on by a puk.
I want to target a puk draw my sword and issue the "attack" command and have my character begin to build TP while i navigate the action bar to select my strategy for battle.