Flaws of the combat system

[Jeeqbit]

Even in Savage, there is no way for individual players to make any sort of awesome run-saving move that makes them really stand out as an individual. The only thing you're allowed to do, as any role, is squeeze out some more damage. Which the TOS discourages you from ever seeing. As a result, a competent player and a great player look almost identical without third party tools.

I've seen run-saving moves, such as a perfectly-timed clemency to save the last remaining healer, a perfectly-timed TBN, a perfectly-timed healer LB3, a perfectly-timed tank LB3 and even a perfectly-timed DPS LB3 when the boss is low and most of the party is dead. On a tank the party mitigation can prevent lots of deaths if everyone isn't topped off or has vuln stacks.

The most auto-attack damage tanks take in Shadowbringers outside of Ultimate is probably Diamond Weapon lol

The auto can hurt in unreal trials and occasionally they hurt in specific savage floors depending on how the boss is tuned, but it does seem quite rare and it doesn't help that the boss is too busy casting things. As a tank gears up it does make all sorts of attacks more trivial too, because after enough weeks not using much mitigation for tank busters is unlikely to cause the tank to die.

[Saraide]

Nope. Including those.

Even in Savage, there is no way for individual players to make any sort of awesome run-saving move that makes them really stand out as an individual. The only thing you're allowed to do, as any role, is squeeze out some more damage. Which the TOS discourages you from ever seeing. As a result, a competent player and a great player look almost identical without third party tools.



It's true that tanks take by FAR the most damage while mass pulling in dungeons, but I highly disagree with you on Savage as someone who does it as a healer. Outside of tank busters, you can basically just ignore the tanks. Boss auto-attacks are a complete joke, and tanks have enough personal mitigation and healing for healers to fall asleep until either a tankbuster or raid-wide cast bar appears; their 5-second warning that they will have to heal something soon. The most auto-attack damage tanks take in Shadowbringers outside of Ultimate is probably Diamond Weapon lol

A clutch invuln can absolutely save the run, I've done so multiple times. For example in SoS ex i used my invuln to survive the boss lb2 which preserved our LB for the healer that was just standing back up. Or in e12s we had multiple almost wipes saved by using my invuln so the healer could LB3 in peace.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

I didn't make this thread to propose to make the game harder. The idea was to make it different and more interesting.

Take the tanks, for example. They all have basically the same toolkit, and the differences between them are more aesthetics than gameplay. That reduces the replay value, because if you played one tank, you played them all, apart from some minor flavour stuff.
The same goes for the healers, even though they now intend to split healers into "pure" and "barrier", and I can see that being rolled back in 7.0 or 8.0 already.

The tendency seems to be to cut features from jobs to homogenize the roles. That lessens the impact job identities have on the gaming experience, and it makes me not feel very motivated to try out now jobs, because they're "the same, only in green".
To be clear, we're not yet at this point, but this is what I feel is the general direction.

I'm not in the "make it harder, because I'm awesome, and I got bored already" camp. What I'd like to see is more things like crowd control, strategic play, stacking of buffs, exploiting effects caused by other jobs, and the like.
I'd like to see tanks do more damage than now, and be just as sturdy, but only when they use their cooldowns, and less so outside of them.
Healers could do more healing, buffing, debuffing and crowd control, generally more varied activities, and not just default-nuke-spam and a dot.
Support could be strong, short bursts instead of 45 seconds of meh-ness.
This opens up a lot of possibilities other than "wall to wall, and healer nukes 90% of the time, for low damage, using 1 button".

There are also some rather weird concepts, like "mobility tax" or "support tax" I'd like to be scrutinized again, after looking at the game in 2021. I feel some of these concepts are still stuck in the Heavensward era, where Black Mages were actual turrets, which is not the case anymore.

[SeverianLyonesse]

I didn't make this thread to propose to make the game harder. The idea was to make it different and more interesting.

Just have to note, that even though these are all good proposed changes and I agree with you...any proposal to make the gameplay more varied is generally going to make it harder. Especially for new and casual players.

Still doesn't prevent me from wanting things to be more challenging than brain-dead, though.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

The idea is to reward good team play with faster runs, more damage, etc.
The skill floor is okay, do it the old-fashioned way, get through a place in 15 minutes. Or have hidden mechanics that count utility used and synergies used properly, and reward that with faster runs, rare mob spawns, bonus seals, a quest opening up after the run... so many possibilities.

[Jeeqbit]

I didn't make this thread to propose to make the game harder. The idea was to make it different and more interesting.

Take the tanks, for example. They all have basically the same toolkit, and the differences between them are more aesthetics than gameplay. That reduces the replay value, because if you played one tank, you played them all, apart from some minor flavour stuff.

That must be the case, or you would get situations where your class is not allowed in certain raids because it's not very good at it.

Right now, they have different toolkits but they achieve the same thing.

Dark Knight shields, Warrior self-heals, Paladin blocks, and Gunbreaker is a mix of shields and self-heals.

Dark Knight and Gunbreaker do a lot of weaving while Paladin and Warrior don't have much weaving at all.

You can argue they achieve the same thing but they do it in different ways so it is fun to switch between.

What I'd like to see is more things like crowd control, strategic play, stacking of buffs, exploiting effects caused by other jobs, and the like.

Crowd control would be too difficult for new tanks, but there is still the initial aggro of stray enemies, especially if one of them missed your aoe. The point of a tank is to protect the party and crowd control is not the only way to do that. We have party mitigation, damage downs, party heals and we hold the enemies so they don't attack the party.

We can already stack buffs and exploit effects created by other jobs, like Ninja's trick attack. We used to have it where one class would apply a piercing debuff, making certain classes that do piercing damage have an advantage and other classes would apply a slashing damage debuff to give certain classes an advantage, but it resulted in certain compositions being desired over others and it got to a point where it could not be balanced and needed to go.

I'd like to see tanks do more damage than now, and be just as sturdy, but only when they use their cooldowns, and less so outside of them.

As a tank main, I want to feel that I do a lot of damage on a tank. I want to feel that the health bar moves when only I attack. At the moment this is how it is so I am happy with the tank damage. I don't take that for granted, because I know they could change their mind about tank damage and reduce it a lot more.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

If the basic features cover the needs of the encounters, and they just have to be tuned to fit all content, there's no problem with adding unique things to the classes that go beyond flavour. Like I said, the homogenization is at this point just a tendency, but it's one that's easy to see and has to be kept an eye on.

Crowd control doesn't even have to be a tank responsibility. The rest of the party could have some tools, and there could be a dedicated job for it later.

When I talk about stacking effects, I'm not talking about something generic like Trick Attack, and I don't mean things like a timed piercing debuff. Imagine something like this:

Tankbuster incoming. Tank uses a mitigation skill that has a chance to retaliate. Riposte is being triggered, placing a debuff on the target called "bleeding wound".
DPS could exploit that by timing an oGCD for this debuff to appear, just your good old oGCDE damage skill, but with a secondary effect on the condition that the target has the debuff;

- Melee exploits it, and now the wound is "ripping open" (damage ticks with chance to paralyze for a second).
- Ranged DPS could make it a "deep wound" (attack speed goes down).
- Magic DPS could make it a "festering wound" (damage spikes on the target in random intervals, "explosive haemorrhaging")
This debuff would stay with the boss until the fight is over, one way or the other.

Will you then cheese some fights? Maybe, but this would be earned, because it rewards group effort beyond "hit it till it's dead".

That's a bit more interesting than a piercing debuff, which is still fine, if it has charges instead of a timer. If you debuff the boss and the next 5 hits do extra damage, it doesn't matter if there's one or five piercing users in the team. Add an immunity timer, so the debuff can only be triggered once a minute, no matter how many people on the team are capable of inflicting it.

I'm still not a game designer, this is just an example, made to help explain the idea behind the thread. It would help with the rush mentality not by punishing the player, but by giving precise, good teamwork an edge. The skill floor would be untouched (could still use your oGCDs for quick damage), but the ceiling would go up.

[TaleraRistain]

That might also have a lot to do with the lack of reliable internet connection for most of the world in the early 2000s. Broadband was still new and novel (and expensive), and PC building was still a niche geek pastime so your average Hewlett-Packard prebuilt couldn't handle anything more intense than Solitaire. There are simply much more people into gaming now, with high speed internet and computers/consoles strong enough to run an MMO.

I played EQ on a Compaq prebuilt.

There was definitely a tiring of the EQ formula in 2004 when EQII came out and was rather popular. It wasn't just internet connection or potato PCs. People were tired of having to group for everything, which is why one of EQII's main advertised draws was specific solo, group, and raid content. Still ran into ceilings on solo and group content, but it was the novelty that it even existed as a specific playstyle that was incredibly attractive.

There is no personal responsibility in this game. They never want to have a situation where failure or success is one person's fault in particular. There can't be any nuance to the combat as long as this philosophy remains. Opportunities for individual players to stand out are purposefully crushed at any opportunity.

I get the feeling you don't PUG much.

[ReynTime]

If the basic features cover the needs of the encounters, and they just have to be tuned to fit all content, there's no problem with adding unique things to the classes that go beyond flavour. Like I said, the homogenization is at this point just a tendency, but it's one that's easy to see and has to be kept an eye on.

Crowd control doesn't even have to be a tank responsibility. The rest of the party could have some tools, and there could be a dedicated job for it later.

When I talk about stacking effects, I'm not talking about something generic like Trick Attack, and I don't mean things like a timed piercing debuff. Imagine something like this:

Tankbuster incoming. Tank uses a mitigation skill that has a chance to retaliate. Riposte is being triggered, placing a debuff on the target called "bleeding wound".
DPS could exploit that by timing an oGCD for this debuff to appear, just your good old oGCDE damage skill, but with a secondary effect on the condition that the target has the debuff;

- Melee exploits it, and now the wound is "ripping open" (damage ticks with chance to paralyze for a second).
- Ranged DPS could make it a "deep wound" (attack speed goes down).
- Magic DPS could make it a "festering wound" (damage spikes on the target in random intervals, "explosive haemorrhaging")
This debuff would stay with the boss until the fight is over, one way or the other.

Will you then cheese some fights? Maybe, but this would be earned, because it rewards group effort beyond "hit it till it's dead".

That's a bit more interesting than a piercing debuff, which is still fine, if it has charges instead of a timer. If you debuff the boss and the next 5 hits do extra damage, it doesn't matter if there's one or five piercing users in the team. Add an immunity timer, so the debuff can only be triggered once a minute, no matter how many people on the team are capable of inflicting it.

I'm still not a game designer, this is just an example, made to help explain the idea behind the thread. It would help with the rush mentality not by punishing the player, but by giving precise, good teamwork an edge. The skill floor would be untouched (could still use your oGCDs for quick damage), but the ceiling would go up.

I'm sorry to say but some of the things you propose used to be part of the combat. They were removed before you joined.
Does it suck? Yes. But it's the direction they're going. And Yoshi P never goes back when removing features.

[Jeeqbit]

Crowd control doesn't even have to be a tank responsibility. The rest of the party could have some tools, and there could be a dedicated job for it later.

I think that melee DPS are actually supposed to do some crowd control, so they have more health and physical defense and a mitigation like Fists of Earth, Shade Shift, Third Eye, (Dragoon's just have more health overall), Feint, Leg Sweep, Arm's Length, Bloodbath and Second Wind.

I think most of the time a tank is available or the enemies die too fast for the tank to care, so that design doesn't seem to be very useful.

Tankbuster incoming. Tank uses a mitigation skill that has a chance to retaliate. Riposte is being triggered, placing a debuff on the target called "bleeding wound".
DPS could exploit that by timing an oGCD for this debuff to appear, just your good old oGCDE damage skill, but with a secondary effect on the condition that the target has the debuff;

I can see why that hasn't been done. That's far from a simple idea for someone to come up with so they probably never thought that far. The closest they have got to designing it to be so complicated is ARR with the piercing and slashing debuffs which along with other things were stripped away over time and the direction seems to be making jobs simpler to play so mechanics can be harder.

Will you then cheese some fights? Maybe, but this would be earned, because it rewards group effort beyond "hit it till it's dead".

A lot of fights in this game are about mechanics, not cheesing them with DPS. Eventually you can cheese parts of fights with DPS but the mechanics have a lot of work put into them and the mechanics are really what the game is about. I think that if a fight just has 3 mechanics and then repeats them for 10 minutes then it's completely about DPS, but there are a lot of fights that are designed to do something different for most of that 10 minutes so it stands to reason that developers would want us to actually see those mechanics they put so much work into.

Even without these ideas, really good teams already do kill bosses faster by optimizing better and aligning raid buffs.