Too much, now too little. AutoAttack

[Eekiki]

To me FF means a game complicated enough that only the people that take the time to make strategies and learn the systems in the game get to excel in the game. Of course that is a little overkill for an MMO, but when they implemented Auto attack they may have gone too far in the other direction.

I understand what you're saying. Every game, MMO, Final Fantasy, or otherwise, needs to have some learning curve in order to stay interesting.

On the other hand, there are mechanics that eventually come to be known as "standards". If you've ever watched the videos of the Angry Video Game Nerd, he often laments over platform jumper games that make you press up on the control pad to jump rather than one of the buttons. And imagine the outrage if the next Super Mario Bros. game had you hold down A instead of B to make Mario run faster.

I said this when auto-attack was first introduced. There are other ways SE can make XIV unique amongst MMORPGs. Making players choose every attack does not make it more of an "action" combat system. If they wanted to do that you'd have to make the combat work sort of in the style of Zelda or Kingdom Hearts games (which would be incredible).

But to do that would take a lot of work, not to mention the fact that nine years after the release of FFXI, SE still hasn't figured out how to fix their ridiculous server latency issues in their online games.

[User201109011315]

Spamming actions was a problem (allegedly).

Autoattack was not a solution (apparently).

[Murugan]

Yes, there's probably umpteen dozen of this thread already but I felt like I probably have a somewhat different opinion.

When I started 14, I enjoyed it because it was different. It wasn't perfect, but it was okay. I'd played 11 and a few other MMOs, and 14, while borrowing from a few, was fairly unique.

Manual attacking kept you busy and was to a certain extent fun. You could easily decrease your damage output by slowing your attacks and weaponskills. Had the emnity system been working properly I would have enjoyed this system. BUT due to continuous button pressing, it also make anything but Voice Communication during battle very inconvenient.

Now, with Auto-Attack, there is no control. There is only eying the TP bar, waiting for your next WS and hope you don't pull hate. At least we can type now but at the cost of an interesting battle system.
//Not to say it doesnt help some classes like GLA and PUG. For classes that need TP AND to be watching for certain events or other timers, autoattack is quite helpful.//

I would have preferred a hybrid system. Select a non TP attack to be repeated every so often, with the ability to speed up or slow down at the cost of stamina, with some weaponskills requiring TP and stamina to use.

Stamina didn't need to be abolished, it just needed a more creative use than effectively limiting our TP gain.

I just hope that 14 doesn't continue to slide toward generic-ness.

There are no classes that play the way you describe. In my opinion you are playing your classes wrong.

The only time in any class that I am simply "watching my TP bar build", except at very low levels (under 25-30 in some classes and without any guild mark purchasable abilities) is if I am purposely holding back or something.

[weeble]

only good thing auto attack did was make it easier to type and fight, while i like this idea cause i hate vent. it totally destroyed everything else, from all the pl'ers, duel boxing and afk'ers to crawl back in too not having as much to do in some classes when in battle ...

on top that i want to see large 8man group grinds brought back, heck 15man back would be even better.

[Melian]

For the life of me, I can't fathom why anyone at all finds manually pressing one to attack either immersive, entertaining, or challenging. I just can't....

I think the points about not having to spam one/being able to type/being able to hit reactive moves are all pretty decent reasons to not need to manually attack. If I wanted a game that kept me on my feet I'd go find a pvp shooter or something. Maybe a pvp mmo even. Both of those require "active" attacks for decent reasons.

FF14 (as FF11, and most of your off-line ff's) is focused on PvE content, and really doesn't/shouldn't require you to spam 1 to attack. It might give you the illusion of being occupied if you're spamming one. It might actually make you occupied because you're spamming one. But it's not an interesting sort of alertness like you have with keeping your eyes open and your trigger finger ready in pve stuff. It's just dull, mindless, button pressing for the sake of button pressing.

[Astray]

Seems like some of you are forgetting that the battle system hasn't been completed yet(same thing with many other aspects of the game.

For some classes it's a bit boring now but it sure is a hell of a lot better than spamming 1 all day but lets wait and see what we really get with the 1.21 update.

[AsterBarnivere]

Seems like some of you are forgetting that the battle system hasn't been completed yet(same thing with many other aspects of the game.

For some classes it's a bit boring now but it sure is a hell of a lot better than spamming 1 all day but lets wait and see what we really get with the 1.21 update.

Just because they announced "Things that will make AA better, doesn't change the fact that we still have AA"..

[Synthesis]

I find auto-attack ok in general. But ! Here I go, lol. Pug is quite ok he attacks quite fast, but I play Lancer and its like 5 second between each attack or lol, spamming 1 key was much faster and much better fun. This is just boringly sloooow. :P ! So class which is the best for gameplay is ARC now. (No auto shots)


My friend quitted after two days when he bought game after 1,18, he might quitted before patch anyway. He just said me that battle system is very slow, that means boring compared to others games.

[DonMega]

Auto-Attack can help with spamming but i was disappointed that they took a very similar formula from FFXI making AA the most important way to do damage by TP gain coming from Auto-Attack instead of taking some of it importance away to make more manual attacks that involve position and combo attacks for bonus damage and other things like causing status effects making some of these a timed cooldown and some TP related. I like the way Xenoblade Chronicles did their AA formula but it could had maybe a few more layers of battle attacks. Maybe they can innovate this formula i guess i'll be waiting to see.

[Physic]

Auto-Attack can help with spamming but i was disappointed that they took a very similar formula from FFXI making AA the most important way to do damage by TP gain coming from Auto-Attack instead of taking some of it importance away to make more manual attacks that involve position and combo attacks for bonus damage and other things like causing status effects making some of these a timed cooldown and some TP related. I like the way Xenoblade Chronicles did their AA formula but it could had maybe a few more layers of battle attacks. Maybe they can innovate this formula i guess i'll be waiting to see.

basically, they made a pretty boring battle system, maybe not AA itself, but its all tp based which goes back to AA. It has no depth. No combos, no special conditions, nothing deeper than apply buffs and hit tp skills repeatedly as soon they come up, and its basically the same for any melee. adding stats and fixing animations wont change that fact, the battle just has no depth anymore.

For those who thought the old battle didnt have depth, it was probably because you were fighting trash monsters. balancing Stamina, movement, BRs etc was much deeper, and funner, well pugilist was anyhow, and archer, but archer is still pretty similar.

I rem matsui mention some form of self comboing, i hope they get this in soon, because for a melee, battle as it is, is basically just tank and spank now. If your solo, its just spank.