It would be cool to see this feature return!

[Magis]

they mean it would involve completely redesigning every encounter and re-devising every rotation for every fight.
We have close to 90 different instanced encounters with probably another 30 in development. Bringing it back would basically be saying "nuts to that!" and rebalancing every single fight to accomodate a feature they didn't feel was worth keeping probably for this exact reason.
If a boss needs to have a body part destroyed, it's easier to just make that part a separate entity like with the five-headed dragon, the qarn HM boss, the toto-rak final boss, etc.

No it would not? Pre-patch/expansion fights would be the same as always while later ones would incorporate weakpoints. We already have "targeted limbs" (boss in Sunken Temp, WoD Hydra, boss in Toto-Rak) on some monsters without breaking the game or having every mob redesigned, how would it be any different with just having a flag on new monsters vs old ones?

Also, I wouldn't be surprised if some of that original underlying code is still there. We still have elemental and weapon type specific damage (blunt, slashing, etc), they are just "disabled" currently. Check the combat logs, and it will say "monster hit with <element> damage".

Doesn't really matter if it is boring or not. The system is just not in place, look at Monk for example. Cannot use X skill unless in X stance which means they are forced to do a rotation anyways. The only possible change that would be "easy" to implement for them would be to change it so you break a limb by doing X skill form Front instead of Rear and things like that. However it really isn't necessary, we already achieve this by allowing things like "Titan's Heart" become target-able. This is just adding fluff to the battle system that could use other improvements currently (mudra lag fixes, removal of pointless abilities, changes to the cross class system).

Well, seeing as SE doesn't seem to be afraid of changing base rules (ie: no base class for exp classes), I don't see this being a problem if they were to go ahead with something like this. Also, if a player was going to fight a certain monster with a certain weakness, would they not build their strategy/rotation around that fight? Wow, going in with the same rotation you use on every monster may not work and you may have to change things to cater specific monsters. Everything is fluff, you can break the game down to "make the number go higher". It makes the game less monotonous and goes beyond the memorized "do job's rotation" and "do the certain mob's dance".

[RayneBoemir]

While this is all fine and dandy realize that if these linked attacks were in the game the community would dissect it and find out the most powerful one making one the most potent, and unless they make all linked attacks a copy of each other which would be pointless people would prefer one class over the other which is a no no. We already have limited use of healer and even less of tank limit breaks.

[Mardel]

@ Magis

The argument you just made, makes little sense. These rotations, for the most part, cannot be changed (for monk), or in other cases become severely inefficient. What I'm saying is the skills in place currently will be used in the same order regardless of them breaking limbs or not because that's the efficient way to use them. Not to mention this would only effect physical classes currently which already deal with enough BS compared to many ranged jobs in PVE; there is no need to force some other mechanic onto them.

Look at it this way if True Strike could break a limb and you had 3 seconds to use it to prevent a skill and you just used Snap Punch >> touch of death. What would you do? Remember 3 seconds only. The answer is, be screwed because you'd have to have PB up in order to skip bootshine and go straight into true strike. Meanwhile a job like drg can use a skill at any given time; things like this cause balance issues. Maybe I'm just opposite of you and after playing all the jobs in raid content I would be annoyed by having to SPAM 1 skill to break a limb only to beg a bard to sing me paeon later.

[Kosmos992k]

Well, having played White Knight Chronicles on PS3 - to it's death - I can definitely agree with the wish to incorporate 'breaks' on larger enemies. In WKC, you could break tails or legs causing the boss or sub boss to fall to it's knee or side for a short time. For example a lot of the larger 4 legged bosses/large monster, could be broken at the knee, and then, when they slump down, you attacked their back for an extra drop. Given things like titan's heart and the differing phases in his fight, it's obvious that this feature could be more widely used in larger enemies.

Some enemies also had tail breaks for additional drops, and heads/backs became subject to melee attacks when an enemy was 'broken'. It meant we had some tactics to use when farming rare drops, since for those you of course needed to break the enemy, and then hit the appropriate place, and of course with RNG, you may have to do that more than once to get any drop.

Another thing that this did in WKC was added strategy to certain boss and bounty fights where breaking the knees was paramount to gain a pause in combat to recover HP or MP before continuing. Of course it also enabled you to score large attacks on vulnerable spots while the creature was incapacitated.

One thing to the folks talking about bringing multi-attack chains/combos, have a look at a light or full party with a good spread of jobs. Look at the differing skills and the status ailments that they can inflict. If you properly time and chain the attacks of a group, you can fully maximize your damage as a group and minimize the ability of the enemy to inflict damage on the party. If you do it right, you can also build your LB more quickly. Yes, I can hear it now, "we all know this, it's obvious stuff". It's obvious, but perhaps there is something else to it?

I think that the existing combat system rewards working as a team and combining attacks can significantly increase the damage output and decrease the damage taken by the party (through player/party buffs and enemy debuffs), as well as more quickly building for a large attack (limit break). That sounds like a pretty good description of attack chains and/or combos. Unless you're only looking for attack chaining and combos that have large bright graphical indicators and large numbers on screen for emphasis, the existing combat system does include the essential elements of attack chaining and combos, but it's kind of an 'implicit' combo (the effect happens without a fanfare), rather than an explicit one (the effect is accompanied by large numbers, special graphics and sound effects).

I mean, we can all 'feel' when a fight goes well and everyone is in sync, buffs and debuffs are happening and the fight is quick, as opposed to a fight where people are spamming basic attack rotations without attempting to buff/debuff. To me, the coordination to pull of a multi-player attack chain or combo is not really much different from the teamwork and coordination needed to maximize the use of buffs/debuffs and limit breaks.