Auto attack: A complete battle system

[Meenkieblade]

Battle brainstorming!


Battle system
-This will be very hard to fix....parts are fine, parts are broken.

-I'd love an auto-attack option. How hard would it be to set that to the 1st eaction action? Choose which you want (stab vs. slash, etc.) and your character will do that on the mob whenever possible (maybe having to hit it once at the start to prevent auto-attacking the wrong mob). Oh, and make it so it doesn't take stamina. If only the special moves used stamina the flow would be more.....dynamic. Sure, it'd take more stamina to do things....but hey, we're adventurers! Slashing a sword is supposed to be easy! Spinning and slashing takes more effort, it makes sense!
It's also lame when you stop hitting a mob because you're actually trying to socialize a bit. x.x

-Auto-shield maybe? >.> Just restrict damage a bit perhaps? Kind of like Defender, but more class/wep specific.

-Battle regiments....Great idea, very poorly executed. They're easy to screw up, mistime, and tricky to put into action. The SkillChain system in FFXI was rarely used beyond a few levels when Freeze was awesome and some end-game battles. Sure, it was extra damage....but waiting for your teammates to get TP sometimes was aggravating and wasteful.
With everyone able to use pretty much any WS ability now....it gets complicated and fairly silly.

-Maybe try this;
Instead of focusing on the Abilities people are using, focus more on the timing. Right now, some WSs focus on a particular body part of the enemy to create an effect. Maybe take this a step further and just have everyone with a same-area-hitting-attack go at once?
For example; Someone counts down with a macro, 3,2,1 GO Head Attacks! Three people with Head-Aimed WSs nail the mob at the same time compounding damage and having some sort of effect on the mob. Simple, and easy! (of course, WSs would need to use a LOT more stamina...can't have people just spamming that. Unique WSs to each class along with auto-attack, this could be nifty!)

[Asra]

-Battle regiments....Great idea, very poorly executed. They're easy to screw up, mistime, and tricky to put into action. The SkillChain system in FFXI was rarely used beyond a few levels when Freeze was awesome and some end-game battles. Sure, it was extra damage....but waiting for your teammates to get TP sometimes was aggravating and wasteful.
With everyone able to use pretty much any WS ability now....it gets complicated and fairly silly.

Very easy to mistime or screw up? Have you seen Regimen at it's full power? It's as easy as stacking the right type of attacks to inflict the right status effects, and then stacking magic attacks and Weaponskills to unleash massive amounts of damage. All it takes to execute is minor amounts of communication and a person to start the stack and a person to launch it. The only thing wrong with regimen right now is that in areas of heavy lag it is inclined to hang and some people will not be able to execute the regimen, forcing people to go passive and active again to cancel.

The only real way to "screw up" a regimen is someone stacking the wrong type of skill, and its as easy as them going passive/active to fix. This is no different from renkeis/skillschains from XI, just without the effects and bonus magic damage doesn't have a delay timer, and you do it manually. I only think it needs some tweaks and that glitch fixed and it will be good to go, perhaps an easier way to cancel out of the regimen then going passive and then active again.

Theres only four types of attacks: Physical normal, magical normal, weaponskill (including weaponskills used by the Disciples of Magic) and magic spell. There is nothing complicated or silly about it, it's just hard to grip at first glance because it sounds more complicated than it is. Personally, I can't blame anyone in that notion though, it took me a small amount of time to fully grip the awsome effects of regimen.