Thread: Community improvements and tweaks to the battle system 5.0

In my personal opinion, most battle content preview to Shadowbringers has become very dull with this battle system, since some skills, availably for example at lvl 50, now you have to wait until lvl 71, or have simple disappear with this simplified versions of the jobs

My suggestion is than instead of just simple removing the ability’s, make available lower version of the skills, we already have at full lvl, and make then automatically upgrade at each tear of content, for example a warrior (marauder) at lvl 15 you get skull sunder then at 50 becomes Butcher-block, at 60 Heavy Swing etc.

This way the battle system can continue with the current line than is in place, and don’t smash 3 buttons from level 50 to 80. Or worst form 0 to 80.

You can also make available to chain longer combos, with different results, using the same principle than we have with the PVP battle system, that way it can be solved the problem of need 30 cross bars, and make a little more challenging the mastering of jobs.

Which are your thoughts and suggestions with this battle system?

The amount of buttons doesn't really matter. What generally matters is what those buttons do and how they affect the game.

An example of this would be oGCDs for DPS classes. Generally speaking these do nothing for game play they exist only to make busy work for players. You could easily remove samurais Shinten for example and bake its potency into its regular gcd abilities and it really wouldn't make any difference at all to encounters within the game.

I personally for example find Opera Omnias battle system to be much more engaging than XIVs and typically there you have at most 5 buttons to press. but they all have varying effects or consequences on combat.

Final Fantasy 15 had a fairly engaging combat system and there you had like 4-5..

The problem XIV has then is not in how many buttons it has, It's in the way that virtually none of those buttons have any actual impact on combat itself. A boss won't react any differently if you press 1 1 1 1 1, or 1 2 3 4 5, or even 1 3 5 7 9. It makes absolutely no difference to how the fight plays out...

There are some rare examples where you might actually have an impact on a fight by utilizing a stun or silence but those cases are few and far between.

If you want to fix combat instead of giving players more buttons to press just to create busy work. Why not make the buttons they do have more engaging and actually meaningful to the encounters

Combat would be much more fun if it wasn't just the same old rotation over and over and over again.

Originally Posted by YojimboM

What you are describing is an entirely different genre of MMO called "action combat".

Trading button count for depth of effect per button does not add or subtract overall depth available -- it merely makes reaching the keys a bit easier. Such allows for a higher expectation of player responsiveness, but does not demand that the pace of the game is suddenly increased. Nor does it suddenly change the genre to "action combat" (which, by the way, is not a genre).

Neither "tab-target" nor "action" are genres. They're just levels of a particular quality, which then imply certain priorities.

"Action" games require better poll rates, better prediction, appropriate hitbox geometries, and more in-depth physics systems, and tend to make use of these by reducing the button count required in favor of more intuitive and reactive combat, often while maintaining the same overall depth in any given fight (though often also trading depth in personal toolkits for their interactions with party members, enemies, and the environment of play).

"Tab-target" games are what you get when the game can't afford to make appropriate hitbox geometries or more in-depth physics systems. Because the player cannot then make reasonably convenient and precise use of skillshotting when lacking these core qualities, additional keys must be sacrificed specifically for the purpose of targeting particular enemies, though that targeting is still usually less precise or convenient than in any decently-made "action combat" system. In turn, however, this frees up the camera and to a lesser extent the mouse/aim-stick hand, allowing for a slightly different perspective on battle if the game chooses to build around that opportunity. So button depth and player control are sacrificed and, somewhere down the line, replacing these lost capacities grants a couple unique opportunities during static/stationary play (which would be virtually absent in action-combat which has the means and reason to make constant use of the player camera and will thus tend to make it central to its gameplay).


On topic:

Personally, I hated FFXV combat. There's hardly a single element from that game I'd suggest using here, even if only tangentially and with only the very best aspects of its concepts cherry-picked for adapted use. But, I'd agree that our skills (and, each individual combat key) should have more depth. Personally, I think that would best come from making our core skills more modular and each individually compelling, able to be 'combo-ed' in a variety of ways that could together form rotations, but never the same one--or series thereof--over time, given a larger range of interactions with our enemies and environment.

I'd prefer that each skill strike where it appears to, against however many enemies it would appear to. I'd prefer that each does as their animation would appear to do: Vorpal Thrust could push enemies to the side, Full Thrust would either gut the enemy from groin to throat or --if too armored-- 'launch' it into the air, while Fang and Claw could provide an exceptional flanking second strike and Whirling Thrust could disperse enemies as it focuses a core one (alongside a falling vertical cleave). I'd prefer preferential targeting (or, "soft-targeting" if you prefer) over pure tab-targeting. I'd prefer conditional selection, especially for healing, whereby you can pre-queue an ability and select its target at any time before its queue actuates or start casting a spell immediately and select its target at any time before the cast completes, etc., etc. And while I would indeed prefer to see a more active, intuitive, deep, and responsive form of gameplay, those system preferences, at least, I see less as a particular taste in gameplay as simply greater quality in undermechanics and the larger number of possibilities that would be unlocked by those better undermechanics.

If I had to provide a rule of thumb, though -- If the combat system can't keep a player new to a given role but not to the game feeling like they very frequently have new things to learn or improve upon and (mostly intrinsically) compelled to do so over the course of leveling, it probably isn't deep enough. That's the same standard we hold single-player games to. I don't understand why MMOs should suddenly get a pass when they waste obvious opportunities for the gameplay experience over time.

Originally Posted by Dzian

The amount of buttons doesn't really matter. what generally matters is what they do and how they affect the game.

An example of this would generally be oGCDs for DPS classes. generally speaking these do nothing for game play they're just they're to make busy work for players. you could easily remove samurais shinten for example and bake its potency into regular gcd abilities and generally it wouldnt make any difference at all to encounters within the game.

I personally for example find Opera Omnias battle system to be much more engaging than XIVs and typically there you have at most 5 buttons to press.

final fantasy 15 had a fairly engaging combat system and there you had like 4-5..

the problem xiv has isnt in how many buttons it has it's in the way that virtually none of those buttons have any impact on combat itself. a boss won't react any differently if you press 1 1 1 1 1 or 1 2 3 4 5 or 1 3 5 7 9. it makes absolutely no difference to how the fight plays out...

there are some rareeeeee examples where you might actually have an impact a fight by utilizaing a stun or silence but those cases are few and far between.

if you want to fix combat instead ofgiving players more buttons to press. why not make the buttons they have more engaging and actually meaningful.

combat would be muchmore fun if it wasnt just the same old rotation over and over and over again

Each button doesn't necessarily have to impact on the fight, and FFXIV's combat can't really work like that or you would have bosses getting stun locked... I do agree though, and one of the reasons I love BLM is that while every button only does damage to the target most have a secondary effect on the BLM themselves; this gives each button a distinct purpose and gives BLM (somewhat) flexible and deep gameplay despite having a relatively low button count.

Conversely, one of the reasons I am disliking GNB is that you could halve their number of 'damage' buttons and change almost nothing about their gameplay, in fact you may just improve it. The same could be said for RDM with their 'Dual Mana' system, which doesn't actually offer any flexibility and so feels more like an excuse to give RDM a bunch of duplicate buttons than it does any real attempt at giving them engaging gameplay.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Personally, I think that would best come from making our core skills more modular and each individually compelling, able to be 'combo-ed' in a variety of ways that could together form rotations, but never the same one--or series thereof--over time, given a larger range of interactions with our enemies and environment.

I really like to see this

Keep posting your thoughts, you never know who might be reading, and which improvements we can get from it.