DevTalk: Correlate Cooperation Strongly to DPS to Encourage Teamwork!(SkillChains2.0)

[Kiara]

Hi Renta,

Excellent thread. Thanks for taking the time to compile the problems and some interesting ideas for how to fix Battle Regimens.

I totally agree with you (and voted for it in the Players Poll):

* Bring back the innovative Skillchain System.


We need a dynamic, creative system in combat that adds depth and truly engages the player. Something that excites and incentivizes newbies and veterans to want to use in combat.

Not only was it cool to see Skillchains happen in XI, but the Magic Burst Effects were great. Detonation, Light / Dark Skillchains, with the huge glowing sphere of Magic Energies growing... and exploding! Much better than what we have now with non-existent special effects in Battle Regimens in XIV.

The addition of Chrono Trigger Combo Techs is nice as well. Something interesting and creative to add to the mix.

Hopefully we get some changes by 1.19 / 1.20.

[elreed]

i like the idea, but it could work with BR if they dont lock the players actions you can stack all the weapon skills with magic enhancement to those attacks, and would help to keep things in order because of the battle speed that the game already has and most likely will be upgraded later with new gears and abbilities.

What i am saying is that they should take all the TP needed when choosing a skill to stack for battle regimen and let the player keep attacking growing new TP and let them do weapon skills if they want in the meanwhile.

Doing this BR stacking would help mages take their time to check wich character move they want to enhance while everyone keeps fighting and choose wisely, then after everything is set up they can unleash the battle regimen to do its thing

Is really great reading this kind of great ideas, keep it up and help this thread be popular

[Ferth]

I'd love to see a system akin to ckillchains implemented. I think there are plenty of ways this can be done that would improve on the admittedly awful BR system.

I loved the skillchain system in ffxi, seeing something similar in ffxiv would certainly be fine with me.

Or if they wanted to maintain an air of difference between 11 and 14 they could limit BRs to 2 or 3 people, selected at the start by the person initiating the BR, which in effect could very much resemble the tech system from chrono trigger.

I am glad that even though they are delaying fixing the BR system it is because they recognize that it needs more than minor tweaks to become an effective system.

[Physic]

after messing with BR a bit in small groups, all i can say is synergy wise, its awesome damage wise, its worth it, speed of kill also worth it.
Special looking effects, uhhhhh they should definately increase that.

Its pretty easy and fast to execute a 2 or 3 man chain. since anyone can start it, if people take too long you just unleash. since for WS-WS it multiplies your dmg by 1.5 with boosts on your strong Ws its pretty impressive, throw blood weapon and you got a full heal.
After awhile of playing, you can tell when someone is about to BR, they start doing boosting skills, then you can cue a quick WS to increase their dmg 1.5
problem is, it works really well with the stamina system, by using BRs when your stamina is coming back, you can lose no DPS or action time at all. You can randomly cue a BR when you are low on stamina and wait to see if anyone wants to join while your stamina builds up. if no one does you can just let one loose and all you got is a full stamina bar.

thing is, now that stamina and manual attack is going away, it will actually be losing dps, not to mention trying to land buffs with it will very tricky or weird depending on how they execute it.

le sigh, i will miss the manual/stamina system methinks.

Sooo how to do it without stamina, just letting people put in actions without stopping other actions is a simple solution, problem is, how will that work with buffs?
If they go back to the old SC system, you will probably only be able to get one buff before the window ends, and no one else will be able to WS, until the whole SC is complete also it takes out the possibilities of debuffs like we had. and other techniques for say buffs and etc from being added.

Honestly i would probably give up the buffs, for BR with a chrontrigger/cross like special abilities. some would just be you doing the attack after the other with extra dmg.effects, but certain combinations could be cool skills, built around 2 to 3 man combinations

but ehhhh still some problems.

[elreed]

Sooo how to do it without stamina, just letting people put in actions without stopping other actions is a simple solution, problem is, how will that work with buffs?
If they go back to the old SC system, you will probably only be able to get one buff before the window ends, and no one else will be able to WS, until the whole SC is complete also it takes out the possibilities of debuffs like we had. and other techniques for say buffs and etc from being added.

Honestly i would probably give up the buffs, for BR with a chrontrigger/cross like special abilities. some would just be you doing the attack after the other with extra dmg.effects, but certain combinations could be cool skills, built around 2 to 3 man combinations

but ehhhh still some problems.

well i was thinking the same thing, one way to go around this is to change the buffing abbilities a bit like raging strike and ferocity to be up for certain period of time like berserk did in FF XI so even if you attack with other abbilities you can still have the buff up

[Rentahamster]

Hi Renta,

Excellent thread. Thanks for taking the time to compile the problems and some interesting ideas for how to fix Battle Regimens.

I totally agree with you (and voted for it in the Players Poll):

* Bring back the innovative Skillchain System.

Thanks, and yeah, I voted to bring it back as well. It doesn't even need to be skill chains specifically, I just want some kind of teamwork and cooperation gameplay mechanic that encourages player interactions, as cooperation is one of the main key aspects of an MMO.

If working together means bigger damage numbers and a greater level of entertainment, than I'm sure that will be a great incentive to players.

But really the issue also becomes the fact that other people will have to wait for your SCs to do dmg, ... but in 8 man parties, with 3 or 4 DD, your really going to have to do alot of dmg to make up for no one being able to use a WS for 6 seconds. not to mention TP is faster, and the main form of dmg/skill use in this game.

Yes, the game mechanics do need some tweaking so that TP burning is not always the best way to go about doing things. This can possibly be done by keeping the queuing aspect of Battle Regimens.

[Gun_Anam]

I'm just gonna jump in with a quick idea with regards to the implementation and possible simplicity this could have.

We have the BR commands list as people stack the skills. We could still use something like this to similar effect. Don't have every weapon skill count towards the skill chain. Simply use a skillchain skill by pressing the BR button instead of the action button. The skill will be used instantly and then go onto the skill chain link (formerly BR list) with a countdown timer of around 6-8 seconds and the following rules would apply:

If no other skill is added to the skill chain by being used in the same manner then the skill chain drops and needs to be started again.

If a skill is used within the skill chain timer the timer refreshes with the stacked skills, up to a total of say 8 skills in a skill chain. (I say 8 because it's the current maximum for BR's and we don't want the screen getting covered with a 20 skill list for the chain)

If a skill already in the skill chain is added to the chain again it breaks the chain without any effect.

You can't stack a skill chain skill on your own action.

I don't think we need the complexity of the elements for this. If the 8 skills in the chain are reached without being broken then we can have something flashy with big numbers.

If the skill chain timer runs out before 8 skills are reached then various effects can be applied depending on just how many were stacked. ie. if 4+ skills were stacked there's additional damage. if 6+ skills were stacked there's additional damage and debuffs.

[Aramyth]

What's the desperation for "co-op" when fighting? Other than my skills and your skills should compliment each other? Most MMO's play how XIV plays right now. Like you tank, I'll heal you. I cast Dia, you do more damage. I cast slow, you take less damage. That sort of thing.

Most people didn't even bother with skillchains in XI and even back when it was more Skillchain + MB 'required', some people were still too stupid to do the right thing at the right time and screwed them up anyway. And sometimes you couldn't find classes that skill chained as well together.

I'll pass. Thanks.

[Razor]

I really like the way this thread is going and just thought I'd throw in my two cents on the matter.

Since this game has a different pace than XI, the traditional skillchain system I think would interfere too much with the combat system as it is (As a gladiator I spam Phalanx and it would be rightly annoying to have to work that around the other DDs weapon skills) so I'm going to suggest something a little different.

I would leave the standard TP generation and weapon skills the same instead of having those spamable skills create skillchains. Instead have another alternate gauge (I've seen this suggested elsewhere so I'm not taking full credit for this idea) that builds up through auto attacks and weapon skills. This gauge when filled up would provide access to class-unique skills that could chain with other class's "super" skills to create skillchains. These skills would have a delayed damage effect (similar to the awful ancient magic the game currently has) that could work something like this:

Marauder uses a fire based axe attack for 150 damage
5 seconds later the skill finishes and deals an extra 250 damage for a total of 400 damage.
- Alternatively -
Marauder uses a fire based axe attack for 150 damage
Lancer uses a light based lance attack for 150 damage
5 seconds later both skills finish and each deals another 550 damage (1100 total) damage followed by a skillchain that also deals 1100 damage for a grand total of 2500 damage dealt between the two players.

Of course I just threw crazy numbers out there for demonstration, but that's how I'd like to see the skillchains work out. This way players would still be able to experience the fast paced ws-spamming combat they've been used to while being able to cooperate to deal really big numbers (which is what every DD truly wants to do).

[Chain]

How were XI skillchains confusing in the least? They were very simple at the core. BR are massive fail and I hope and pray that the new team realizes this.