Thread: Community improvements and tweaks to the battle system 5.0

Originally Posted by Dzian

No it wouldn't would still have kaiten, seigan, the disengage and gap closers. guren and its new single target version..

shinten is quite literally just a busy button so people dont get bored for that whole 2 seconds or so between gcds. here have something to press.. it doesnt change the samurai gameplay.

While I'd generally agree with you and Acidblood in this regard, you have to consider what would take its place here, and how.

Kaiten would net you a mere 240 potency at that point per use on Gekko/Kasha, an efficiency of 12. That's not far below Shinten's 12.8, sure, but as Yukikaze (at 200 potency per 20 Kenki, or an efficiency of 10 ppk) would only be worth the same damage efficiency as Gyoten/Yaten (even Enhanced Enpi would be nearer to a use on Gekko/Kasha), you'd essentially be looking at Dark Arts spam in its hayday, but worse, as you generate enough Kenki for a Kaiten every 2-3 productive GCDs, rather than every 3 (Grit) to 4.5 (without Grit), and it'd be a damage loss to use anything but that one skill save for once every 5 minutes. The rotation of its use would be painfully stale, too. For every 3 Sen generated, Kasha would get a use, Gekko would get a use, and then the Midare itself would get a use, while Higanbana would merely demand that you skip the Kaiten on its Gekko or Kasha (if not raising the single sen through Yukikaze) and use it on it instead. Once you get Ikishoten, you'd then be sure never to use Yukikaze to generate Higanbana, wherever possible, so that you could use the Kaiten before the Higanbana as well and absorb 20 of the excess 50 Kenki per minute on a stronger skill than Gyoten/Yaten. You'd then also need to slip in 3 Gyoten per minute just to keep from overcapping.

I don't really see how that'd feel any better. We have a decent mix right now. I'll agree that we have a ton of button bloat in this game at present, but I don't think Shinten is a good example of that.

Originally Posted by Dzian

You don't really need a stamina system per se. the old battle system in 1.23 and early 2.0 concept achieved much of this just by having TP be accumulated instead of spent.

The 1.23 TP implementation was accumulated only through auto-attacks, which would require uptime, and so long as skills had any innate cost, would force a reduction of apm whenever there was any further cost to Stamina (or, again, to uptime).

was a much more fun system personally especially with all its little tricks like incapacitations and stuff. damn sight more interesting than positionals stand here for 15 extra potency on that punch your going to throw..... positionals as they are now aren't engaging; it's just more pointless busy work.

I have to disagree, at least in terms of implementation. We never saw enough of the content to know one way or the other, so I'll refrain from commenting on it generally, but all we really got from the incap system -- while novel at first -- was X skill needing to be used on X mob, requiring X composition for X bonus loot or further ease of kill. I'm looking for more nuance and less of the unintuitive arbitration we already (or, still) have so much of.

These days, I'd have to slightly agree with you about positionals, but I at least can say with certainty that we had working implementations in the past. Back in 2.x, managing my positionals was actually easier, despite having far larger potency penalties for getting the wrong position. Why? Because DK and Bootshine were far closer in potency, Twin Snakes was shorter but just long enough to be overextended into a Demo-drop rotation (where you let Twin drop just barely after activating Demolish, then reapply DK before it, longer than Twin at the time, could fall off), Fracture and Touch of Death had no positionals, and Impulse Drive was of even potency to True Strike. Rather than being screwed at variable amounts by forced positioning, I could just... adapt, and lose little to nothing.

It's only after they started mitigating the risk that they figured actually having control over ones positionals through delaying GCDs and modular rotations must be superfluous and then removed the whole basis of positionals' compelling gameplay.