[dev1058][dev1030][dev1033] Battle Regimens

[Junpei]

they werent limit breaks per say. Each Job had an ability with a 2 hour cool down. they all lasted 30s to 1 minute, i forget...

Warrior - Might Strikes - all hits are critical
Black Mage - Manafont - 0 mp cost
white made - benediction - all party HP restores to full, LOTS OF HATE on this :O
red mage - Chainspell - no casting times
Thief - perfect dodge - evade all attacks
monk - 100 fists - no cool down on auto attack,just keeps going and going
Paladin - invincible - guess?
ninja - mijin gakure - suicide + explosion

and other cool things

Also, FFXI did have TP aswell, but it was on a different scale.

Max TP was 300%, most normal attacks would generate 8-13% depending on what type of weapon you used. and a Weaponskill would require at least 100% but would be more powerfull if you let TP fill up.

There was system where some weapon skills could be chained together. For example, a warrior using "fast blade" followed by somebody else using "burning blade" would create an effect similar to a regimen, a big burst of damage would follow. a well time mage who cast the right spell could also perform a "magic burst" where the spell damage could be multiple 2 or 3 times its normal power.

There was no system for stacking the commands either, it was just well timed abilities! it didnt interupt the flow of combat and you could simply notice somebody else using an ability and chain one off for a damage bonus. although pre-planning was normally used to get massive effect out of it

THUS ENDS MY WALL OF TEXT!

[Eldaena]

Realistically it sounds like making chains work did take some skill in XI, but I think if they implemented something like that in FFXIV people would complain that it is too hard or it would favor certain classes due to certain regimens.

I would hope that even if visually the regimens would look different due to the abilities used, that they would have similar or equally strong effects in this game And perhaps the power of the regimens are increased by the number of abilities used, rather than which ones are used per class.

[Eldaena]

As for a limit break, I think instead of having like 2 hour cool downs, maybe they can have something that you can do only if you have 3000 TP, then it still has a cooldown after use, but not as long as 2 hours. Maybe like 10 minutes or something?

[Eldaena]

*sniffle* no more feedback? ='(

[Amineri]

I think that Battle Regimens will be changing a bit, implicitly, through the rest of the battle system changing. I'm still trying to imagine how it's going to work with the stamina bar gone.

That said, I have a few suggestions that seem like they would be fairly minor (small enough to implemented soon?) yet may have a big impact.

Allow Auto-attacking to continue while a Battle Regimen is queued up.
I think that one of the biggest deterrents to performing a Battle Regimen is waiting around while the rest of your party gets their actions queued up. For example, I queue Twisting Vice, and sit there for 6 seconds while my duoing partner activate Ferocity, Bloodletter, etc, powering up his weaponskill before adding it to the chain. It makes sense for him to power up, but ... well... it just feels boring sitting there doing nothing while it happens. Better timing / communication, blah blah, I still think that keeping AA going while the BR is chained would be nice.

Better feedback as to the results of a Battle Regimen.
The four battle regimen combos that inflict status effect -- the on-screen feedback that something has happened is FAAAAR too weak. Either trying to catch the name of the Regimen in the torrent of battle text, or noticing the tiny little new status effect icon on the enemy. Compare that to the "Light Party" / "Full Party" effects. Have some flashier on the screen to reward players for completing the regimen and give more clear feedback that the regimen effect took place.

As to the "power-up" regimens. Provide some clear on-screen feedback as to how the regimen is affecting your attack. If we correctly chain four weaponskills / spells from different classes so that my weaponskill is powered up by +250%, PUT A BIG +250% IN NEON LETTERS ABOVE MY CHARACTER'S HEAD. Some fancy and classy, ala FFVII-IX battle effects. The point is to visually reward the player for the teamwork, as well as to provide solid feedback as to what the regimen did. My original though on this was the big-scale, five minute summoning type quasi-cutscenes from earlier FF titles, but I realized that it need to not be so time-consuming to make it a chore to wade through the animations.

That is all for now ...