Auto attack: A complete battle system

[Evovenom]

"Why AA is a bad thing" = "Why no AA is a good thing". What's the point as the former has been discussed times and times again?
By who, you and your mom?

Combat becomes more automated, this is not acceptable.
Says who? You?

The game is dumbed down for PC players for the sake of console players.
Oh boy, that's strange, seeing how Square Enix makes video games for consoles. And when making pc games they add gamepad support lol.

The game is dumbed down because the servers can't handle anything more complex
This here is too dumbed down no need for comment.

than half-automated combat system.
Un, this guy never did play XI. "Replies, yes I did, I got to level 25 then quit was too dumbed down"

The game is dumbed down so that players can chat using text-based functions instead
of using a voice chat like every other MMORPG in existence.
Yes, that's right because all MMO have voice chat like xbox live chat has... lawl.

The change requires resources and time and the end result is what was listed above.
Says you as CEO or as cave-man?

I think you are too dumbed down. Lol...

[ChiefCurrahee]

...I'm pretty sure you didn't read the rest of my post if that's your response.

I'm not saying a bunch of people are for an auto-attack, I'm saying that due to the very closed nature of the polls and these forums, we can't say that anything is indicative of anything(including my perspective on the issue), and arguing the opposite makes you look totally irreverent to the opinions of people who don't get to post here/post in the polls, and thus makes you look dumb.

I'm not saying you are dumb, in fact I like some of your ideas on other stuff like BRs, but doing that makes your arguments look dumb.

So you resort to insults... awesome.

Now correct me if I'm wrong please. I believe anyone who has a SE account is able to participate in the Polls. Or is it players how had/have an active FFXIV account? I don't remember. Conversely would you want the opinions of people who may have never even played the game answering those questions?
I would think from a developers stand point, I'd want the views and opinions of people who have actually spent a reasonable amount of time with the game, especially the views and opinions of the ones who left.

I also recollect that Yoshi P said that has several tens of thousands of responses to the players poll.
found the quote:
"And finally, the second Players' Poll has come to a close. As with the first, the turnout was overwhelming, with tens of thousands of users taking the time to make their voices heard. "
link: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...449d1b7c37eb49

How can you argue against tens of thousands of people, when the majority of those people feel that the "spamming of abilities" is the 2nd biggest problem with the battle system? Are they all dumb too?

Your several friends, all 10,000+ of them feel that FFXIV's battle system is fine. None of them own the game, thus haven't spent oh.... I don't know, a month playing the game.

However, anyone with a SE account (which anyone can get) can access these forums. (I believe)

[Malakhim]

So you resort to insults... awesome.

Now correct me if I'm wrong please. I believe anyone who has a SE account is able to participate in the Polls. Or is it players how had/have an active FFXIV account? I don't remember. Conversely would you want the opinions of people who may have never even played the game answering those questions?
I would think from a developers stand point, I'd want the views and opinions of people who have actually spent a reasonable amount of time with the game, especially the views and opinions of the ones who left.

I also recollect that Yoshi P said that has several tens of thousands of responses to the players poll.
found the quote:
"And finally, the second Players' Poll has come to a close. As with the first, the turnout was overwhelming, with tens of thousands of users taking the time to make their voices heard. "
link: http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...449d1b7c37eb49

How can you argue against tens of thousands of people, when the majority of those people feel that the "spamming of abilities" is the 2nd biggest problem with the battle system? Are they all dumb too?

Your several friends, all 10,000+ of them feel that FFXIV's battle system is fine. None of them own the game, thus haven't spent oh.... I don't know, a month playing the game.

However, anyone with a SE account (which anyone can get) can access these forums. (I believe)

Nobody is dumb for voicing their opinions. Many people are dumb for assuming that everyone agrees with them and there isn't a group of people who may think differently. Example, look at any auto-attack thread and then look at the Triple Triad thread. Looking at the content alone, you can see that for the most part, people are all for minigame inclusion, whereas there's a sizable amount of people posting here are for and against an AA system. If we were to go by poll results, then that shouldn't be the case at all. This of course keeping in mind that anyone can read these boards, but only those with active FFXIV accounts can post in them as evidenced by this thread, which by definition is a closed system.

I wasn't calling you dumb in the previous post(and I even said as much in it), and I'm still not going to call you dumb. [Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XIV FORUM Guidelines.].

[ChiefCurrahee]

Again with the insults, lets keep this civil.

This isn't a place to fight, and you are trying to turn it into one. You had asked where I was getting my numbers from. I gave you my evidence.
If you want to dispute that the polls provided by SE does not capture the over all consensus of the mood of the player base fine, argue that point. Don't call me an idiot.

Now I'm not saying that tens of thousands of people want an auto attack. I am saying that tens of thousands of people feel that there is something wrong with the way we input commands. If those polls only reflect currently subscribed players, I could reasonably go as far as saying it reflects the sentiments of the player base that left and couldn't vote. People are fairly homogenous until you give them distinct choices.
If the poll said do you favor an auto attack I would think that the population would be very divided as we see in the threads about this very topic.
But the question gave you something like 6 or 8 choices and the top 2 hot issues the community as a whole had were 1) lack of class uniqueness and 2) spamming attacks.

So instead of name calling, lets get back to the topic of this thread.
Clearly you are not a supporter of auto attack by standards of my OP. So lets have a discussion on how we can better FFXIV so it becomes a more enjoyable game.

[Issachar]

Auto Attack ftw.

[Dyvid]

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.

[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.

[Kaedan]

So your basic issue is it's difficult to navigate between the activating the "Light attack" skill and whatever TP skill you're trying to use. I've never tried, but can't you move the "Light Attack" skill? And even if you can't, wouldn't them changing it to allow you to move it solve that problem? All without the need for an AA.

Because classes are always going to have "super" skills that do more damage or have effects, there needs to be limiting factor on how often you can use them. As you mentioned, they can either do this with TP or with Cooldowns.

So you say you don't want FFXI's boring, "wait pressing no buttons until I have 100% TP", but then you go on to say that you actually do, just in different words. If we keep the system as is and just allow you to move the "Attack" button to a more convenient location, we arrive at the same place.

[ChiefCurrahee]

So your basic issue is it's difficult to navigate between the activating the "Light attack" skill and whatever TP skill you're trying to use. I've never tried, but can't you move the "Light Attack" skill? And even if you can't, wouldn't them changing it to allow you to move it solve that problem? All without the need for an AA.

Because classes are always going to have "super" skills that do more damage or have effects, there needs to be limiting factor on how often you can use them. As you mentioned, they can either do this with TP or with Cooldowns.

So you say you don't want FFXI's boring, "wait pressing no buttons until I have 100% TP", but then you go on to say that you actually do, just in different words. If we keep the system as is and just allow you to move the "Attack" button to a more convenient location, we arrive at the same place.

I thought I was pretty clear with what i meant. I'll spell it out.

FFXI: auto attack (wait = auto attack)
wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait TP skill.

FFXIV: w/ auto attack (wait = auto attack)
wait TP skill wait TP skill wait wait BIG TP skill wait TP skill.


Fairly big difference there since FFXIV allows you to use WS with less TP requirements and if you have more TP than the skill requires that TP rolls over. In FFXI it did not.

Lets look at it from a different perspective.

You're playing a mage class. You want to cast "Thunder"
but wait. You need to build MP before you can cast it. You need to press a button 4 times before you can press the button to cast "Thunder" Ok lets cast Blizzard....Do you think something is wrong with that? I do.

So to sum up my response to your post.
I have 2 issues with the battle system
1) The mechanic behind TP gain, and the need to press a button before I can press another button.
2) The UI is tedious to navigate with a gamepad to do #1 (there are examples in back posts if you care to see) a gamepad has to input two to three times as many steps than actions your character performs. i.e. if takes 50+ steps to do take 25 actions.


I know I'm not going to change your mind. Thats fine. When I started this thread it was meant to be a constructive discussion on how an auto attack could benefit this game. But it has turned into a debate between those for or against. I'm guilty of participating in getting this thread off topic.

I'm not sure if people read post #1 or hop in and add their two cents. Maybe they skip down and read the last few posts and add their feedback.

But I know after the first page. I received No feedback on that idea.

How do you think a console gamer will receive this game with its current mechanics of battle and UI? Probably just as well as the PC community warmly welcomed FFXIV on launch. Thats my opinion. SE has an uphill battle with this game they need to get it right, and my original post was an idea on how maybe they could find a compromise between those who find the current system to frustrating and those who are enjoying the active battle system w/o having a FFXI repeat and it becoming a WoW clone.