Why do you want auto-attack? (discussion)[dev1022]

[solracht]

Guild Wars 2 and TERA say "hi".

You keep on mentioning this like it's relevant. I completely agree that having full control over battle is in future for MMORPGs, but there's way more to having control over combat beyond simply not having auto-attack.

The FFXIV engine has shown no hints of being able to offer the kind of dynamic combat that those two games have. Hell, we can't even move during combat while using skills, something that pretty much every single current-gen-MMORPG offers. You're way too hopeful if you think they have the tools to transform a combat system where you're tied to the ground to something like GW2 or TERA have.

Lack of auto-attack is not the reason why the combat system in those two games is going to move the genre forward. Stop acting like it is. There's collision detection in GW2's projectiles and spells, for the love of god. The battle system in this game probably lost its chance to compete with that when the engine was finished. At the very least, and for its sake, I hope it has the tools to adapt to this generation of combat systems.

Tanaka may have had the right idea (one of the few good ideas he had, in my opinion), but his programmers, whoever was in charge of the engine, and whoever had to implement the combat system, obviously didn't, or at least they didn't know how to make systems that would truly take advantage of his idea.