Elementality – Fundamentals to Involve Chain/Sequential Elemental Casting; Complexity

[Duelle]

Haha, yeah I probably should have mentioned that I wouldn't copy FFXI either.

I wouldn't be so worried about them copying XI if the battle designer from XI had stayed there instead of him being moved to work on XIV.

I wouldn't make any combo that requires another player's action as a dependent factor with an exact difference on your next cast. I'd just make a difference based on the proximity of their landing. You can still achieve things similar to skill-chaining by using a party-loading (mantle) system, but it requires sub-targeting.

You could also take the approach Dragon Age took to combined spells, but you'd need to design spells in a way that they had a lingering effect.

To the latter half, I think something distinctly FF could be made without those problems. I honestly think it was done wrongly. I know that sounds arrogant before knowing how exactly I'd do it. I guess it's just a gut feeling where it seems logically ridiculous to believe that there's no better way.

You're a better man than I for having more patience. I have something of a threshold for experimentation and innovation, and once that thershold is surpassed I start saying "stop horsing around and just use something that works". Granted, I'm being lenient with this game so far because up until Yoshida took over I haven't seen SE so much as try different things to see what sticks and what doesn't.

And goddamn I'd love to see Red Mages especially done right...

Indeed. Hopefully locking RDM to a rapier if they implement Fencer will solve half of the job's problems.

*Ahem*
Trying to get back into the topic, if you want to add complexity to magic then yes, spells should build on each other in some way. My original suggestion a while back was build up mechanics per element (back then, I was under the assumption BLM would get all elements like they normally do). Something like opening with Burn on a mob to give them a DoT effect, then having all fire spells gain bonus damage from Burn being on the target mob. On ocassion you get a proc that makes, say, Flare instant-cast and reduces the MP cost of Flare by 25% (assuming Flare would be a very expensive spell that will quickly drain you of MP if used outside of procs). Add a mechanic where you get MP back (either by a proc that can be consummed instead of using it on the instant-cast Flare). Add Meltdown as a modified spell that decreases physical and magic defense by 5%.

Thus, BLM's gameplay if they like Fire would be using Fire spells comboing into each other (Fire => Fira => Firaga => Firaja), keeping Burn up on the target to up personal DPS, keep Meltdown up on the target to increase raid DPS, if they get their proc they can throw in Flare, if short on MP they can consume their proc to get MP back instead of using it on Flare.

Problem is, this is just one element out of six. Playing to the elemental wheel is very risky because then you make things very complicated with little reward in return.

I guess we could try to change things to make the elements interact with each other, though. Open with Frost (increases ice resistance but decreasing fire resistance) for the DoT effect but the effect has charges. Like say, Frost when afflicting a mob has 4 charges, thus boosts incoming fire damage 4 times before the effect has to be applied again. Can still have stuff like Meltdown as a debuff to be applied by the BLM.

Of course, if left as an open debuff, that means a BLM can use Frost, then 4 BLMs can volley Firaja on the mob to consume the debuff and do a ton of damage at the same time. By the same token, if Regise the BLM is setting up his fire combo to consume all 4 Frost charges, but Duelle the Red Mage comes in and uses the Fencer-derived Flame Thrust in the middle of Regise's casting, Duelle ends up denying Regise part of his potential damage. I'd still like to see the ancient magic-type spells as spells that should realistically be used within procs but can be used outside of procs for a higher resource cost.