What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[Cach]

This is a thread about **COMBAT**

No insultino the Endwalkerinoooooooooo ! WAAAAAAAH!

I kid, I kid. Summoner rework and the killing of the notion of pet combat was a sizeable change, and... Warrior cone skill becoming a circle? I've got nothing.

[Sebazy]

Why does each expansion need to radically change the gameplay loop in some way? If the recipe is good, stick to minor tweaks, if any. If the recipe is bad, then fix it.

This is a 9 year old MMO soon. The game needs to evolve and keep things fresh to maintain momentum and growth. ARR through to Shadowbringers all felt unique in their own way.

ARR was a rebirth as it's name suggests
Heavenward was almost as thorough a rework as ARR in terms of gameplay.
Stormblood was a comparatively weak expansion in some regards but even so it still ushered in many significant rethinks not only of classes but also the importance of side content such as Eureka.
Shadowbringers brought with it a new found focus on accessibility and narrative.

Endwalker is pretty clearly aimed at riding the coattails of Shadowbringers huge success but as a result, it lacks it's own identity as an expansion. It's just doubling down on the same highlights as Shadowbringers (And IMO falls short at doing so).

To give an example of what I mean, look at how a typical raider will tackle each new Expansion release.

Level a job through the MSQ > Spam Dungeons to get basic tome gear > Spam primals to get Primal Gear > Wait 2 weeks for Normal Mode Raids > Farm 2 weeks of tokens for Normal Gear > Buy/craft Crafted and Penta Meld it > Wait 2 weeks for Savage > etc

This routine has remained strangely intact from Heavensward through to Endwalker with the only change being the relative ease of materia now vs back then. I'm really not sure why.

There are plenty of other areas SE could throw curveballs at us again. Bozja's raids were a decent curveball, lets see more of that elsewhere to break how formulaic and by the numbers the core gameplay loop is in places.

[vetch]

Except the game is actively promoted as a Final Fantasy game first and foremost (hence why it's often called an RPGMMO instead of an MMORPG). The immense amount of new story in EW is most definitely an expansion. A post-patch is the equivalent of a (free) DLC.

RPGs have gear and build choices outside of a straight vertical ladder, they have niche abilities that add flavor even when they're not used 100% of the time, story choices you can make to affect the story, enemies that actually try hard to kill the player, battles that bar your progress until you learn the game a bit more, dungeons with more than one hallway, etc., etc..

This game is more like Dynasty Warriors with a visual novel attached.

[znushu]

RPGs have gear and build choices outside of a straight vertical ladder, they have niche abilities that add flavor even when they're not used 100% of the time, story choices you can make to affect the story, enemies that actually try hard to kill the player, battles that bar your progress until you learn the game a bit more, dungeons with more than one hallway, etc., etc..

this game actually use to have that back in 1.0 but many of the spells got removed due to users on the forum complaining about the excess of ability bloat.

This was the amount of spells someone I knew unlocked while leveling their Conj who was at the time only 48. I guess I should explain the image abit though.
"Class Action" refers to the job you are currently playing right now and below that are the spells and skills you unlocked for it.
"Additional Actions" refers to your other jobs with the job icons that you can select and pick out spells and skills in that job to use.
every skill and spell had a "requirement" which lists either DoW or DoM but if it says both then you can use it for both types of jobs.
the "action bar" is literally your hotbar which it was numbered 1-3 but most others I knew just used 'macro-chains' (making a macro that casts a series of spells to skills in a combo) instead of what my friend did here and just put the ones they needed all down which worked for them because they used a controller and yes. 1.0 aka legacy version was 100% controller compatible which worked better then using a keyboard/mouse but most users didn't play with a controller at the time thus most suffered the keyboard/mouse controls.

[SargeTheSeagull]

Why does each expansion need to radically change the gameplay loop in some way? If the recipe is good, stick to minor tweaks, if any. If the recipe is bad, then fix it.

If it were up to me, each job's kit would be more or less there at Lv.70. You get the standard boilerplate core for the role and job in the Lv.1-50 range. Then Lv.51-60 and Lv.61-70 each add a coherent chunk of flavor -- PLD's magic rotation should come within the space of one expac, WHM's lilies should come within the space of one expac, and so on. Maybe this can continue for yet another expansion, but I'd start to worry about space on hotbars.

So, from Lv.71 onward, the focus shifts to dungeons and trials, adding more varied mechanics (more memorable instances such as the original Copperbell slime mold, for example), and removing reliance on telegraphed AoEs and fixed battle scripts.

Yeah. Their point is that the recipe wasn't very good in ShB and instead of refining it in EW, they just added more of each ingredient. It isn't awful by any means, but it's definitely not as good as its past incarnations nor did it change combat substantially enough to be called an expansion. They didn't meaningfully expand on anything introduced in ShB. They added two jobs (one of which is a shameless copypaste of scholar) and gave most other jobs another finisher they hit once per minute. Tanks each got a stronger cooldown and a finisher. Healers got another strong heal they didn't need (or want), melees got more finishers, ranged got nothing, casters got a crappy summoner rework that did nothing but obliterate an entire playstyle, ANOTHER red mage finisher and black mage got a fancy fire upgrade. None of these meaningfully changed combat. Especially when compared to what every job got in previous expacs.

[Atelier-Bagur]

This is a 9 year old MMO soon. The game needs to evolve and keep things fresh to maintain momentum and growth. ARR through to Shadowbringers all felt unique in their own way.

ARR was a rebirth as it's name suggests
Heavenward was almost as thorough a rework as ARR in terms of gameplay.
Stormblood was a comparatively weak expansion in some regards but even so it still ushered in many significant rethinks not only of classes but also the importance of side content such as Eureka.
Shadowbringers brought with it a new found focus on accessibility and narrative.

Endwalker is pretty clearly aimed at riding the coattails of Shadowbringers huge success but as a result, it lacks it's own identity as an expansion. It's just doubling down on the same highlights as Shadowbringers (And IMO falls short at doing so).

To give an example of what I mean, look at how a typical raider will tackle each new Expansion release.

Level a job through the MSQ > Spam Dungeons to get basic tome gear > Spam primals to get Primal Gear > Wait 2 weeks for Normal Mode Raids > Farm 2 weeks of tokens for Normal Gear > Buy/craft Crafted and Penta Meld it > Wait 2 weeks for Savage > etc

This routine has remained strangely intact from Heavensward through to Endwalker with the only change being the relative ease of materia now vs back then. I'm really not sure why.

There are plenty of other areas SE could throw curveballs at us again. Bozja's raids were a decent curveball, lets see more of that elsewhere to break how formulaic and by the numbers the core gameplay loop is in places.

Kinda hard to already judge EW when you're going with the perspective of a completed expansion timeline with Shb if you're bringing up stuff like Bozja and all of its raids which were things that were added in post-Shb patches. To me, I already feel like EW is giving way more bang for its buck with not only concluding the 10 year story, but also all the new forms of content we're getting such updating the old ARR duties in the msq, adding in duty support for those old dungeons, pvp rework, new quality of life features and now with 6.2 we'll be getting 2 new forms of mid-core content with variable and criterion dungeons and island sanctuary along with additional duty support for HW and lets not forget they're finally going to do the initial graphical updates transition within post-EW up to 7.0

Bozja was literally a slimmed down version of Eureka (a piece of content from SB) that while I absolutely enjoyed it; lets not kid ourselves with how much of a mess and unfinished the overall content was. They were being ambitious and we did get some additional fun raids, but the werent able to fulfill a lot of the ideas that were planned for it, relegating to rushing the whole experience. Its a shame but oh well.

[Raikai]

To the OP:

I generally like the combat system. What I don't like is the sheer number of stuff that is nearly a copy of something else. While it's not button bloat per se because it fits well in the rotation, I get to ask myself if (for example) MCH's new Chainsaw could've been something else other than a copy of Air Anchor. Or why Dancer's Fan Dance IV is not an upgrade for FD III (getting 2 charges) when it literally does the same thing but with a different animation?

I'm not even asking to follow those what ifs, but... At least add a secondary effect to those actions to justify they being yet another button! Give a bleed dot to Chainsaw, or make Fan Dance IV's bird leave an AoE burn zone on its trail.

[Sebazy]

Kinda hard to already judge EW when you're going with the perspective of a completed expansion timeline with Shb if you're bringing up stuff like Bozja and all of its raids which were things that were added in post-Shb patches. To me, I already feel like EW is giving way more bang for its buck with not only concluding the 10 year story, but also all the new forms of content we're getting such updating the old ARR duties in the msq, adding in duty support for those old dungeons, pvp rework, new quality of life features and now with 6.2 we'll be getting 2 new forms of mid-core content with variable and criterion dungeons and island sanctuary along with additional duty support for HW and lets not forget they're finally going to do the initial graphical updates transition within post-EW up to 7.0

Bozja was literally a slimmed down version of Eureka (a piece of content from SB) that while I absolutely enjoyed it; lets not kid ourselves with how much of a mess and unfinished the overall content was. They were being ambitious and we did get some additional fun raids, but the werent able to fulfill a lot of the ideas that were planned for it, relegating to rushing the whole experience. Its a shame but oh well.

Why not though? We know what we are getting for most of EW especially with the team bailing on the additional planned job revamps until 7.0. Island sanctuary is really the only big unknown here, is it going to have an impact on the rest of the game? Who knows, Yoshida has repeatedly told people to manage their expectations for it but I'm honestly more concerned for Criterion, Dungeons have been extremely formulaic for the longest time. Will the team manage to dig themselves out of the trench and come up with something fresh, challenging and engaging? It's nice to dream but the track record isn't inspiring me with confidence here.

The PvP rework is a fair point and is something I'm inevitably going to overlook. The duty support stuff? Eh it's not exactly new nor does it really change much of anything.

Bojza is an interesting case, what it lacked in polish it made up for in accessibility and player retention by the bucketload, especially compared to Eureka and Diadem before it. I'm pretty confident that the next Eureka will continue Bozja's formula rather than try to reinvent the idea yet again. Given that they won't be hamstrung by a pandemic, it should allow them to properly finish the thing this time too, so that's no bad thing.

[Atelier-Bagur]

Why not though? We know what we are getting for most of EW especially with the team bailing on the additional planned job revamps until 7.0. Island sanctuary is really the only big unknown here, is it going to have an impact on the rest of the game? Who knows, Yoshida has repeatedly told people to manage their expectations for it but I'm honestly more concerned for Criterion, Dungeons have been extremely formulaic for the longest time. Will the team manage to dig themselves out of the trench and come up with something fresh, challenging and engaging? It's nice to dream but the track record isn't inspiring me with confidence here.

The PvP rework is a fair point and is something I'm inevitably going to overlook. The duty support stuff? Eh it's not exactly new nor does it really change much of anything.

Bojza is an interesting case, what it lacked in polish it made up for in accessibility and player retention by the bucketload, especially compared to Eureka and Diadem before it. I'm pretty confident that the next Eureka will continue Bozja's formula rather than try to reinvent the idea yet again. Given that they won't be hamstrung by a pandemic, it should allow them to properly finish the thing this time too, so that's no bad thing.

Mostly I say this due to how trends work where general reception changes after the initial release; like how ShB was when it was released and it was going through its patches, people didnt receive it all that well (besides its story) but now everyone seems to think that ShB was this amazing expansion when really it was just par for the course. The game slowly keeps getting better.

And I wouldnt say that duty support and the reworks to old ARR, HW and eventually SB content arent a big change when that literally will affect how new players will experience certain parts of the game. That goes a looong way with presentation. They already addressed the annoyances and lackluster of some of the now super old content such as Cape Westwind, Castrum, Prae and now we'll be getting a whole rework with adding in key npcs to HW msq dungeons and already people are blowing their load off with having a certain Elezen Knight join the party at a crucial moment in that story.


But yeah I still stand by my case, its still too early to tell how overall EW will be; but at least I can already tell there's a lot more new stuff coming in that what I experienced in the previous expansion.

[Ishe-P]

My opinion on FF14 combat, after drinking a bit and thinking drunkenly about stuff: it's the most boring shit ever. It's not fun, it's not inspired, it's an extension of being a football team and calling your plays on the field, which have a strategic workflow that works for some people, but doesn't work for me. If I can find something more interesting, I'll drop this piece of crap in a hot second. Why yes I am a pleasant person in real life, why do you ask?