Quote Originally Posted by Redname View Post
What i wanted to ask is if you really think the combat is boring. And what example would you use to describe a fast combat system since it seems i havent experience
I wouldn't say FFXIV's combat is slow, but it is boring - particularly outside of boss encounters.

Mostly, the boring feeling for me arises from the fact that combat is, for the most part, predictable. In fact, it's arguably the most predictable combat I've seen in a game in ages. Boss mechanics? Almost completely predictable. My rotations? Completely predictable. I feel like with most encounters, I can literally scheme them out on paper, in advance, with virtually no 'if X then Y' checks. This is compounded even further when facing non-boss creatures, because they simply aren't a real threat to the player. Just spam your basic AoE or single-target rotation until dead.

To me, a superior system would be dynamic. I want enemies that behave unpredictably, and better yet react to players over time. Isn't that the very definition of AI? Lest we forget, enemies in Half-life - a game that's barely two months from its 20th anniversary - reacted in a more believable fashion than do enemies in FFXIV. SE doesn't seem to have bothered with that piece; they just took the old ATB gauge from FF7, sped it up to a couple of seconds per move, and took away the option to pause when it was your turn. That doesn't make for a very compelling MMO experience.

The speed of combat is, in my opinion, neither here nor there. There are plenty of great combat systems in place in games today, running the gamut from fully real-time to turn-based. First-person shooters and the like are obviously lightning-fast combat. ARPGs like Diablo 3 are extremely fast as well, as is something like Guild Wars 2, to pull an MMO example. On the other end of the spectrum are fully turn-based games like Divinity: Original Sin (or its sequel). FFXIV's predecessor, FFXI, was real-time but very much on the slow end of the spectrum.

The one thing in common for all these games, however, is that combat is dynamic. Whether it's enemies moving or taking cover in a shooter, or a new water surface appearing for you to electrify in Divinity, there's always something about the battlefield forcing the player to think or react. It's the core reason the combat is fun. FFXIV almost entirely lacks this. There's no real variation in commands we execute, and even movement is largely something that becomes pseudo-scripted. Fights in FFXIV are memorized, not strategized - and no adjustment to the speed of combat will alter this fact.