Anyone think it would be awesome if we could Skill Chain Combos

[Sasagawa]

Hi Everyone

Now for those who have never played FFXI let me explain

In ffxi to do a sill chain you need 2 players or 3 if you would like to magic burst on top.

P1-WS + P2WS = Skillchain (+ Magic = Magic Burst)

basically you could skillchain for x amount of damage ontop of the damage from skills and then time that SC with a mages freeze or flare or whatever depending on the skillchain for more damage (like a guaranteeing crit).

Different skill chains did different effects wind damage, gravity, etc

Now my idea would be to skill chain combos so lets take a PLD tank

PLD tank does fast blade flat blade combo

Flat blade skill chains with Warriors Brutal Swing so fight would look like this

(P1 Fast Blade + (Flat Blade + P2 Brutal Swing = Skillchain)) + maim + Godasbane etc.


Potentially you could have 3 or 4 skillchains in a row in a good party with great timing .

Just a thought

Sasa

[GinTama]

i would very like a system which lets us do combos with other players

[Enfarious]

Skill-chains and Magic Bursts were some of my favorite mechanics in ffxi combat.
That said, they had a system in place to produce skill-chain like effects, Battle Regimens, it was horribly broken, in a time before auto attack it made you lock out your controls to wait on people to add abils to a queue and then for someone to execute that queue. What that meant was that either tanks/healers weren't doing anything or weren't getting magic/skills into regimens and DDs were standing idle losing DPS to do what was at best a laughable amount of extra damage from a regimen. It was part of why AA came about.

Looking toward the future, aside from the difficulty of making the branches for skill-chains there's no reason they won't be back in 2.0, and it's been said that they will make a return in news/posts past. I just hope that they include all classes/jobs into the mix and don't make it something that locks out our controls again or it will again go unused.

[Scherwiz]

I am sure a system like this is in the works for 2.0, at least I hope so.

[Estellios]

^^^ It is, they were talking about party-wide "Super move" style things.

[Shurrikhan]

As cool as chaining these abilities together sounds, unless there's an a damn good reason as to when and when not to skillchain (conditional and within the general and immediate strategy of the fight, not preset or categorical), it seems like it'd just be a matter of counting off plus/minus latency for massive skillchain after skillchain, with no actual thought involved. That... doesn't sound fun, honestly.

"2-ability pre-reqs go. 1 ability... now! Casters, everyone, now!" x (until fight ends)

I'd really, really like to see skillchains involved in FFXIV, but I guess what I mean by that has more to do with the feel of team coordination than the actual "skillchain" concept from FFXI.

I think what the game needs in order to fulfill that role though isn't the addition of named concepts like skillchains or set combos or whatnot. It simply needs a greater amount of fundamental factors, almost down at the mathmatical level of the game, that become the basis for skillchains, combos, phase timing, and so much more.
But, jumping back to the skillchain system itself as usable for FFXIV: if there was an actual reason for pairing certain attacks with other ones at a certain time, like pairing Aero-->Fast Blade for a long range, high emnity attack from a Paladin to grab threat, with some at least small cost for having used that synergy, anywhere, by any manner, I'd enjoy the hell out of it. But any added feature to the game should carry an additional level of strategy, not reduce strategy further by forcing one overpowered procedure to be used continuously.

Sorry for sidetracking, but I feel that is the problem with the combo system as a whole, namely the tp waiver, which allows you to not only get a free ability, but qualify for a second ability with less tp than the ability costs normally. Worse yet, the only reasons one would have for using abilities separately are also removed through the combo bonuses -- i.e. Skullsplitter's only use separately would be to grab enmity quickly with a powerful attack, but the immediacy (and additional tp cost) of individual use is lost to the enmity bonus for using it in combo. Virutally all strategy is lost when there is only one feasible option. I hope SE will fix that in the combo system, but should they manage that, I don't want to see them make the same mistake with this system as well.

[Enfarious]

I have to agree with alot of what you said about the current combo system Shurrikhan it is kind of broken. It's not limited to just WSs though mages rarely use tier 2/3 spells outside of combo why waste the MP/Recast/DMG so a whole chunk of spells are put into the list of "Only use in combo".

There is another thread that was talking on lines of formations and strategy: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...tle-Formations there's a fair bit of making certain skills work synergistically, and my own thoughts are similar to yours in that, I don't want to see a mind numbing use A B C repeat thing happen, I also don't want to see a system that doesn't offer enough benefit to make people see working toward using it as worthwhile. The current combo system is pretty much that, really what we've got here is an open world action MMORPG wrapped in the FF name, press X Y B, B X A B, except that we do it by pressing 123, 456, 789. I suppose that playstyle is what the mainstream wants though.

I'd much rather see true party based strategy where player position and skill and spell usage is for more than just bonus DMG. The old regimens system had a good idea it was just poorly executed, I look forward to seeing it return, hopefully it becomes the only way to incapacitate mobs, yeah I know this would "force" people to fight in a particular way, IF they want the incapacitation, but it'd be worth it. I also think that the synergy bonuses of using multiple skill types needs to be far better than using thm_spell > thm_spell > thm_spell, or solo combos. Really give a bonus to team strategy not something negligible that will only add what FFXI had, which was kind of if a WS happens and I accidentally chain off it great but I'm not going to try to make SCs, that made me sad, but other than a bit of extra damage, which now everyone can SC solo so who cares about the rest of the party, there are no benefits to get people to want to do it.