Review of the current battle system

[allenshu]

To me, it's sad to know SE really started to put auto-attack into FF14, and it's even more sad to know that this new auto-attack system is basically a copy of FF11 after more details are revealed.

So what happened to the current battle system? Why most (based on the votes) players don't like it?

In fact, when FF14 was first released, one of the few things in the game made me so excited is this battle system. Like the original FF14 team once said, "Even some parts of this game are still incomplete, we are still very proud to show our players the new battle system!" This system is very creative and unique among most OLGs, and provides the most flexibility for players to interact with different situations during a battle. Let me review what I learned about the system, and why I did really enjoy it.

One most unique characteristic of this battle system is it introduced the FTG concept into a regular RPG style battle to make is more exciting/interacting but without losing RPG's principal rules. This goal was successfully achieved by combining: action selection, action recovery lag, TP/MP, CD, and stamina.

During battle, when dealing different situations, players need to decide to use what action to response. Actions can be imagined as playing a battle card game. With various cards on hand, players are capable to make one best decision from various selections to efficiently response enemy's action. Each class has it's "ACE cards" (ex. GLA's Sential, THM's emulate, LNC's Twisting Vice, etc) at different ranks, therefore, players can create their own special jobs after getting more cards from different classes and combining together to be a specific personal battle card set for specific enemies. Consequently, knowing enemies' action patterns become more important because some cards may be only useful for some enemies and the number of cards is limited. The concept actually make FF14 get rid of transitional FF jobs' mechanical impression to reach another level - each player can make his own unique job. In fact, it's more reasonable, too. For example, in FF11, a person who already gain high level on the other multiple jobs (ex. SAM, WHM, etc.) will forgot most of what he has learned when he start to fight as an archer (level RNG as main), but in FF14, he won't, and those what he has learned before actually make him become a much better archer.

Every action follows a recovery lag, whether players or enemies. Recovering lag is the key to bring FTG concept into the battle. Keep clicking normal attack actions will help not much except run out stamina make you standing there look stupid. Especially when fighting hard enemies, players will be beat down easily while getting hits during recovery lag. In recovery lag, players can't move/evade and can't perform next action. Therefore, following the action section concept, considering the balance between actions and stamina, select right actions and right moments to construct your battle plan become very important and challenging (and fun, of course). Since same rules applied to enemies as well, players can use enemies' recovery lag to strike back. In FF14, attacking from different positions brings different possible impacts. For example, attacking from an enemy's side can have chance break enemy's action, and attacking from rear has higher chance to make critical attacks. Some actions also require a specific position to make them work well.

After understanding actions selections and recovery lag, now it's obvious that stamina and CD plays important roles in setting your action sets and battle plans. Because stamina and CD decide the rhythm of a battle. So with one well-considered plan, a player can make his battle looks very smooth (or even wild, elegant, sneaky, whatever the style you want for your job). More important thing is, enemies follow the same rules here. Therefore, now not only pre-action signs from enemies (ex. purple light before wolves use drain HP, red light before puks do tail swipe) can help players to decide what actions to use to response, but also the enemies attacking rhythm can be one very important invisible sign to give information that what enemies attempt to do. Big damage actions usually require more stamina, so when seeing an enemy's attack rhythm changes, players can be ready to prepare what happen next, including store stamina for a series reactions, magical buffs, even try to step aside. Furthermore, after enemy's big move done, you know that will follow by a recovery lag, so then you can use the stamina you prepared to give one splendid strike-back.

Based on the updated information, it's already known that most of previous exciting parts will be gone after auto-attack system is introduced. To be honest, our current battle system exactly improved the flaws and unreasonable parts from old one, and now SE is changing it back to old one without trying to tell players how good it is. In my opinion, what make all fun gone are not the battle system itself. The defected SP calculations and party system are the real reasons make players gone (of course, also the incomplete world...)

Hope this battle system will be back someday =)

[Dyne]

It doesn't matter if you like it or if you think it is the absolute greatest thing ever. The fact of the matter is, majority rules, as evidenced by game flopping and on the brink of death. They can keep the current system and that would please you, but the majority will end up leaving it and eventually kill the game.

[Petori]

I don't really like the current system. It has it's good points but some very bad ones too, at least for me.

Stamina bar & UI are the worst to me. I do however like how I have complete control over my actions.

[allenshu]

It doesn't matter if you like it or if you think it is the absolute greatest thing ever. The fact of the matter is, majority rules, as evidenced by game flopping and on the brink of death. They can keep the current system and that would please you, but the majority will end up leaving it and eventually kill the game.

Like I said, sometimes it's hard to have people enjoy a new game without teach them how to play, and those people can be the majority. In my opinion, it's just a little too fast to give up without actually showing the reasons why our current battle system was created in the very beginning. On the other hand, listen to the majority sometimes is worse than teach them, especially for a work required very unique and creative ideas, like a good game.

[Verecund]

Stamina in it's current state was the downfall IMO. They should've either improved its function or removed it... instead they removed it AND are copying in FFXI's version of an 'auto-attack' (and probably verbatim too >.>).

I'm not really for or against an auo-attack feature being implemented... but it depends how it is implemented. I don't want to spend most of my time during encounters initiating auto-attack and watching my TP bar fill... it's counterproductive and even more boring.

[Physic]

Stamina in it's current state was the downfall IMO. They should've either improved its function or removed it... instead they removed it AND are copying in FFXI's version of an 'auto-attack' (and probably verbatim too >.>).

I'm not really for or against an auo-attack feature being implemented... but it depends how it is implemented. I don't want to spend most of my time during encounters initiating auto-attack and watching my TP bar fill... it's counterproductive and even more boring.

well they are apparently doing a lot of battle changes, i guess we ll see how entertaining this will end up.

[Physic]

after looking at the toggle aoe answer it occured to me.

they are basically going to kill or marginalize all unique elements of ffxiv battle. thinking about it and remembering what matsui said,

Thank you for taking the time to pore over these words. Having read the blueprint, there is bound to be more than a few players who feel that we’ve only recited a handful of things common to all MMORPGs. There may be others still who are saddened - perhaps even piqued - that elements they felt made FINAL FANTASY XIV unique will be going to the cutting block.

he starts off talking about the fact that it sounds like they are jacking all other MMOs. then he states that features that are unique will be killed off, i had thought this was just about AA, and maybe a few things getting cut, but nope. They are going to try to remake the battle in a classic MMO sense. Hence the old school job upgrade, traditional roles only. 1 class is 1 job. AoE Mage mechanics is going.

So basically they want to do regular MMO battle mechanics, and i guess all you can hope, is that they do it better than other developers. hmmmmmm sounds like ... bad. ehhh

[Haibel]

I don't really like the current system. It has it's good points but some very bad ones too, at least for me.

Stamina bar & UI are the worst to me. I do however like how I have complete control over my actions.

the stamina bar replaced the action bar in the alpha which was essentially the same thing. I don't feel the UI is overly
bad. It's a lot better then it was. but it still needs some more fine tuning. really with the amount of actions the game has.
they could have had every action having a separate recast time forcing people to use multiple actions, speeding up combat and cutting down on one key spam. make everything map able on keyboard mouse and game pad and they would have a great system.

[allenshu]

So basically they want to do regular MMO battle mechanics, and i guess all you can hope, is that they do it better than other developers. hmmmmmm sounds like ... bad. ehhh

Speaking of unique or creative battle mechanics, in fact, there is nothing can be called "unique/creative" in the recent auto-attack demo video. It is amusing when thinking this way: If that demo video was showed before FFXIV was released, players with common sense would find out very quickly that it is really nothing but another bland battle mechanics. It is even more amusing to know that SE deliberately put two new action models and change the BGM to cover the fact that what they showed is one out-of-date battle mechanics (and it worked to "the majority").

[Blitz0309]

I could of liked the current battle system if the classes weren't all just the same thing with different names. The game has so much fail in it that you can't say a single aspect of it is good without it being brought down by something else that was completely moronic to implement in the first place.