Suggestion: Extended Combo System

[Reldhir]

Howdy all,

So... i was thinking about the combo system and how i think i could be improved, but first let me briefly describe why i think it needs to be improved.

Fluidity of combat
The combo system feels "kinda off" currently. Monsters move in somewhat unpredictable ways at the best of times, so positioning yourself for a combo can be quite difficult.

Also, flexibility in combat feels strained as it sometimes feels as though you are forced to use combos inorder to unleash your most powerful skills. Sometimes you want to use you're most powerful attacks but can't reach them via combos simply because a positioning strategy (Ifrit) or erratic movement of the mobs (moogles) prevents you from doing so.

Now i know you are not actually "forced" to use combos but idealy you want to get the most out of youre skills so combos are "potentially" a more efficient use of tp/mp, but only when you can manage to get them off.

Also, i realise the behaviour of mobs preventing use of the combo system could just be a strategy developers deploy to increase difficulty. But i ask, why add a system into the game that you plan on breaking with adjustments to enemy ai? Especially when this system seems to be the central concept surrounding combat now.

Yes, the combo system is what seems to be the central concept combat is based around.


Brief? haha yeah i know :P

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Now for the fun part, The Extended Combo System.

Currently our combo system works like 2 or 3 small trees (saplings really), you have 2 or 3 starting skills and they sometimes branch off to another skill. Heres the thing, none of the individual trees are related in anyway. You cant have skills from 'tree 1' branching into skills from 'tree 2', 'tree' 2 to 'tree 3',"tree 3 to 1 and so on.

So my suggestion is, why not interlace these trees, or better yet, rip them out and replace them with something more akin to a web or lattice? We can connect these individual combo trees by forming connections via combos between them.

I know, I know, "You plan on fixing the combo system... by adding more combos...?" sounds absurd yes? But hear me out first. haha

It's quite simple really, by having multiple routes you can take to reach your more powerful skills you instantly become more flexible in combat as you are not restricted to the same starting position everytime you want to use the skill.

As an example, take the Lancer's Chaos Thrust. Currently, there the only way to reach this via combo is through Vorpal Thrust, the requirement is that you must use this skill from behind the target, and land it sucessfully. Now you may be in a solo situation where movement behind the target is very difficult, thus preventing you from accessing this combo tree. Now, in the case of the Lancer, there are only 2 major combo trees, True Thrust combo and Vorpal Thrust combo. By taking out the ability to trigger Vorpal Thrusts combo, the game effectively halves the number of skills the Lancer has, in turn reducing it's flexibility in combat.

However, if we introduced a network/lattice-like system, Chaos Thrust in the 'Vorpal thrust combo tree' can be utilised via a combo link from the 'True thrust combo tree' thus enabling the use of latter skills in the 'Vorpal Thrust tree' without having to activate Vorpal Thrust.

Now, im not saying let every skill be tied together in every which way imaginable, but there must be some sort of link between trees, there must be multiple routes that can be taken to acheive the end goal.

Also, why not have combos that stack upon the same skill? (using lancers as example again) True Thrust, True Thrust, Ring of Talons? it could add more variety in play style and a new flavour to combat.

And again, I know there are much more simpler ways around these problems than changing the combo system, but this is just one way i think would work, and a much more fufilling and fun way at that. (FUN being the keyword here )

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Very quickly, I know some people will say we will be too powerful, or you only want to change this to become more powerful. Yes its true i want to be more powerful, but you can always counterbalance this by adding or removing effects when skills are comboed in "cross-tree" so to speak. (personally i think the cooldown timers on skills manage this quite well already) Remember my objective with this idea is to make battles more fluid and random and just generally more fun, if we become more powerful through it then awesome for us haha.

Also, instead of just giving us combos as we learn the skill, maybe we could gain these combos through quests? perhaps grand company combo manuals or something, even an ancient "mastery of the way of the combo" book lol, could be dropped from NMs or something. Perhaps even a combination of the above haha.

But anywho theres probably more to be said on the topic, but its very early morning for me so im still a bit slow at the moment haha, so we'll leave it at that for now.

Please feel free to comment, suggest, whatever, both positive and negative welcome. (Though hopefully more or the former hehe)