Separate damage instances for multiple-hitting skills

[Venoss]

The title says it all. Gameplay feels more responsive and smooth when multiple hitting skills (like pretty much anyone from samurai in which he hits with like 2 or 3 slices) should have multiple damages adding to the whole (like Dream within a Dream from NINJA).
It just feels soooooo much better. When you get one damage only after doing a three strike thing, it feels.... empty. feels wrong. feels bad.
I know this is nothing critical or that important, the result would be the same damage and everything, but just how the gameplay feels.
I think they can easily do such a change, wouldn't impact anything mechanic-wise, and we 'd just have a more immersive gameplay.

[Equitable_Remedy]

I'm going to be completely honest: I have no strong feels about this either way. So far as I can tell, I am totally indifferent to there being one or more 'damage instances' to multi-hit moves.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Shougun]

They used to be like this, long ago, I believe it was changed for balance concerns. Like that Gru meme where he looks at the white board as a doubletake, here it's "adds the opportunity for builds and wrong choices" and then SE looks at the board again it means sometimes things are not going to be as balanced as they'd hope.

I always thought pseudo multi-instance would have been more fun than not (pseudo as in perhaps the game still does a one calculation attack, but then will divide that end result visually over the multi-hit), but I'm sure it would mean extra stuff to worry about still and they decided not to. Which isn't to say I'm trying to shutdown the thread, just that is at least the history of it as I know it.

I believe there is precedence to show that it is fun, given you can see it in other works by SE itself, beyond just other games, personally it's fun to see the numbers match the imagined effect of damage. Not a game destroyer, or maker, but just one of those fun little things (doesn't mean you should intentionally dodge or miss it, a lot of games get praise for those 'little things' specifically, but also doesn't mean if they did something else rather that the game would be dooooooommed lol).

[IckeDerTyp]

If ya ask me, we wouldn't even need damage numbers in the first place!

However, Monster Hunter did show me that seeing a big number can feel good at times.

That's just psychology tho, nothing actual is gained!

However, I wouldn't mind either way!

[Shurrikhan]

I wouldn't mind the added option for those to whom it'd matter. I'm just not one of them.

If not an option, then I'd absolutely not want this change.

As far as balance goes, I don't see why it would be an issue outside of flat potency increase 'next action' buffs, which are found only on BLU and MCH anyways.

[Shougun]

I wouldn't mind the added option for those to whom it'd matter. I'm just not one of them.

If not an option, then I'd absolutely not want this change.

As far as balance goes, I don't see why it would be an issue outside of flat potency increase 'next action' buffs, which are found only on BLU and MCH anyways.

Isn't it the whole sort of two handed weapon vs dual wielding thing in FFXI, where here it just adds another element of tuning your kit (and any moment you can tune your kit means balance wibble wobbles lol). I mean they did this change closer to when you could actually share more actual kit stuff too. At this point things are probably sanitized enough it would matter 'less'. IIRC we had the multi-hit type stuff in 1.0.

Just like how Warrior has had crit built into their kit so they work for stuff differently than PLD / DRK. Say if PIE or INT added a lot of damage to DRK's magic stuff, just one of those elements of 'too many variables'.

[Shurrikhan]

Isn't it the whole sort of two handed weapon vs dual wielding thing in FFXI, where here it just adds another element of tuning your kit.

Only if something can actually cause it to make a difference. For now, that exists only in two places, and one of them already basically cancels itself (Heat Blast, which is all you'd be using Overheat's flat single-target potency increase on, is a single-hit attack).

IIRC we had the multi-hit type stuff in 1.0.

We did, but the buffs back then affected the "next hit" (nerfing its effect on multi-hit skills), not the "next weaponskill". The weaponskill still involves every hit therein, at which point it makes no difference how many hits something has. Today, it's irrelevant.

At this point things are probably sanitized enough it would matter 'less'.

If ever a buff were reintroduced to a real job to give a flat potency buff to a following action (again, the only way for this all to make a difference aside from perhaps a duration-based buff now having a lower effective duration if ending that period with a multi-hit, depending on snapshotting), it'd just be a specific and probably job-unique synergy between two skills or a buff and a certain small category of skills.

That said, I actually think more should be sanitized. Crit should go back to a flat 50% damage modifier and its stat only affect chance but act as Determination upon guaranteed crits. Skill Speed and Spell Speed should be merged or the prior duplicated to the latter on DRK and PLD.

[RitsukoSonoda]

FFXI didn't seperate damage per hit for multi hit weapon skills and instead totaled it all for a final amount. This caused these type of weaponskills to vary greatly in damage range when used with things like the passive double attack and triple attack traits which could proc on each hit of the weaponskill and weapon passive effects that could multiply damage. And as I found out as a DRK using an apocalypse to close a LV3 skill chain. When all passives and extra effects line up and everything procs... you break the game's enmity system if the thing you hit survived.

[Shurrikhan]

FFXI didn't seperate damage per hit for multi hit weapon skills and instead totaled it all for a final amount. This caused these type of weaponskills to vary greatly in damage range when used with things like the passive double attack and triple attack traits which could proc on each hit of the weaponskill and weapon passive effects that could multiply damage. And as I found out as a DRK using an apocalypse to close a LV3 skill chain. When all passives and extra effects line up and everything procs... you break the game's enmity system if the thing you hit survived.

Unless each individual hit allowed you to double or triple all of the skills' hits, this doesn't quite make sense.

If you could individually double a 5-hit skills' hits, its damage could therefore be 100%, 120%, 140%, 160%, 180%, or 200%, while doubling a 1-hit skills' hits could only result in 100% or 200% (a much more jarring range). The multi-hit attack would have a greater chance of getting at least some benefit, but that much less chance of getting the whole benefit.

The same goes for the passive weapon effect unless, again, each hit of n hits in a skill could somehow also affect n other hits in the same skill. They'd have that much more chance to trigger, but, affecting only part of the total damage, that proc's effect would be proportionately less.

Here's hoping the game wouldn't carry such an obvious oversight, but /shrug.