Why do you want auto-attack? (discussion)[dev1022]

[darkstarpoet1]

Sorry dude, but you're full of it. Those 'revisions' are minor changes that can be made relatively quickly whilst bigger changes happen in the background. If SE was trying to 'cut their losses' they'd shut the damn servers down, they've ALREADY LOST.

Stop acting like you know anything about the design direction or progress they're making based upon the little we know. You're obviously someone who's happy to grind away in a largely pointless fashion considering your ranks, and that puts you and other players happy with the current system in the smallest minority. Look at the first player poll, people asked for radical changes en masse. Look at how many people left the game.

Tanaka drove it into the ground, Yoshida's picking up the pieces based purely on SE capital. If they didn't believe it could be repaired for a PS3 launch, we wouldn't be on a new official forum made for discussion about a game that, for all intents and purposes shouldve been shut down if all they wanted to do was 'recoup'.

You're wrong.

no just because my opinion does not line up with yours it does not make it wrong. you tell me that i am acting like i know what direction they are headed now, but yet say yourself you do not either. all i was saying is that i liked the direction the game went from xi and wow, but we seem to be drifting again in that direction. i never once said i liked the game as it was. they have multiple things they need to do to fix the game, but an aggro indicator that does not work properly is not one of them.

btw, my ranks are none of your business. i enjoy parties with my ls and have gotten my levels from enjoying time with others. it is not that i like the game the way it is.

now as far as tanaka drove it into the ground can you imagine the quality xi would have been if they had fired its director just a few months after release when it took almost a year to get a decent game out of it. did you not read the reviews it had when it was jp only for the first 11 months before it was released in the us? according to them the game was even in worse shape than this one is and it seems to have turned out pretty well. my point was we do not know what tanaka had in mind to do to fix the game and make it more enjoyable, but i would have liked to see what was planned.

just so you know i voted for radical change also, but exclamation points over the npc is not what i had in mind when i said yes.

[SnowTiger]

It takes away the tedium of spamming attack over and over. It's not like it takes any thought, so I don't see any point in it... The time it frees up could be put to much better use via strategic elements that could be added, which the game definitely needs more of... With things like the use of abilities, tactics, or whatever else they might add.

Of course, even if they don't add those strategic elements, auto-attack would still be welcome, because chatting is still a lot better than button mashing mindlessly.

[gifthorse]

You keep on mentioning this like it's relevant. I completely agree that having full control over battle is in future for MMORPGs, but there's way more to having control over combat beyond simply not having auto-attack.

The FFXIV engine has shown no hints of being able to offer the kind of dynamic combat that those two games have. Hell, we can't even move during combat while using skills, something that pretty much every single current-gen-MMORPG offers. You're way too hopeful if you think they have the tools to transform a combat system where you're tied to the ground to something like GW2 or TERA have.

Guild Wars 2 has a target lock-on battle system like FFXIV with active attacks. It's the same combat system as FFXIV's present rendition, just more streamlined and less spammy.

And anyway, when the people behind TERA left NCSoft with stolen network code, they allegedly showed it to Square Enix before founding their own company BlueHole Studios. So ... technically SE could make this game TERA if they wanted to go to court for it. LOL.

Lack of auto-attack is not the reason why the combat system in those two games is going to move the genre forward. Stop acting like it is. There's collision detection in GW2's projectiles and spells, for the love of god.

SE isn't incapable of adding in the network coding for such things. They've already shown they can make collision detection between mobs and players etc (from alpha to beta) in a short amount of time. It's feasible they can improve the battle system in this way too, by making temporary colliding assets or something.

The battle system in this game probably lost its chance to compete with that when the engine was finished. At the very least, and for its sake, I hope it has the tools to adapt to this generation of combat systems.

The graphical engine is somewhat separate from the network code, although it defines the limits of certain actions. There is nothing to prevent SE from improving the active-combat system besides the issue of server-to-client latency (due to their global servers)... and also how talented their network programmers are.

Tanaka may have had the right idea (one of the few good ideas he had, in my opinion), but his programmers, whoever was in charge of the engine, and whoever had to implement the combat system, obviously didn't, or at least they didn't know how to make systems that would truly take advantage of his idea.

That's true. But dismissing the idea (which we admit to being good) isn't the best approach. Improving upon the idea is.

Auto-attack might be a huge mistake.

[gifthorse]

solracht, your sig is fantastic. The same of course applies to the (!) markers, immersion breakers QQ.

EDIT: I felt bad for making the 100th post off-topic, so... auto-attack WOO! Read Matsui's actual post about it, he even explains that he finds it to be a necessity in the new battle system they're designing.

LOL, that's because he designed the whole combat system around auto-attack, since that's what players asked for in the polls.

[gifthorse]

no just because my opinion does not line up with yours it does not make it wrong. you tell me that i am acting like i know what direction they are headed now, but yet say yourself you do not either. all i was saying is that i liked the direction the game went from xi and wow, but we seem to be drifting again in that direction. i never once said i liked the game as it was. they have multiple things they need to do to fix the game, but an aggro indicator that does not work properly is not one of them.

btw, my ranks are none of your business. i enjoy parties with my ls and have gotten my levels from enjoying time with others. it is not that i like the game the way it is.

now as far as tanaka drove it into the ground can you imagine the quality xi would have been if they had fired its director just a few months after release when it took almost a year to get a decent game out of it. did you not read the reviews it had when it was jp only for the first 11 months before it was released in the us? according to them the game was even in worse shape than this one is and it seems to have turned out pretty well. my point was we do not know what tanaka had in mind to do to fix the game and make it more enjoyable, but i would have liked to see what was planned.

just so you know i voted for radical change also, but exclamation points over the npc is not what i had in mind when i said yes.

Genius post.

[gifthorse]

It takes away the tedium of spamming attack over and over.

If combat is so boring that auto-attack is the only way you can think of fixing it, then that batle system needs more than autoattack... trust me.

It's not like it takes any thought, so I don't see any point in it... The time it frees up could be put to much better use via strategic elements that could be added, which the game definitely needs more of... With things like the use of abilities, tactics, or whatever else they might add.

All auto-attack does is add a background DPS rate to your attacks, meaning that mob hp will be adjusted accordingly. Rendering the whole thing futile.

Of course, even if they don't add those strategic elements, auto-attack would still be welcome, because chatting is still a lot better than button mashing mindlessly.

What is the point of chatting while in combat? I don't want to talk when I fight. I want to fight when I fight.

[solracht]

Not really going to bother making another long post to argue, because either you or I have the wrong idea of what a game engine really is and how much it limits what can be accomplished in a game.

For the future of the game, I hope it's me.

May want to rewatch GW2 battle videos, by the way.

[gifthorse]

Not really going to bother making another long post to argue, because either you or I have the wrong idea of what a game engine really is and how much it limits what can be accomplished in a game.

May want to rewatch GW2 battle videos, by the way.

Regarding Guild Wars 2, you lock onto targets to attack them or you use ground-targeting AoE or conal AoE to attack multiple mobs within range (things which FFXIV basically has already).

Side bar: the engine governs how the developers make the client, its functions, and what we basically see, the server and network-code governs how the game responds to our actions and the actions of others. Given that we are discussing combat in an MMO, the network coding is most relevant.

[gifthorse]

But I agree that this is a futile discussion now, especially considering they have already chosen their direction (auto-attack). All we can do now is watch as the forest burns.

[indira]

it dont matter to me ill just play regardless if they do add it im gonna multibox plain and simple.