Auto-attack

[kukurumei]

I am on the fence with Auto Attack. For melee jobs that are in a monster's face beating it to death, then I wouldn't mind seeing AA. On the other hand, I hate the idea of having AA on a mage job or even a ranger for that matter. Hate control is key for these roles and having your character continuously build hate when you don't want it to is NOT helpful. Here is a refresher on how we avoided it in FFXI and why it won't work as good here(or at all):

• Stay out of range: Mages now have long-range attack. You are no longer "spooning" them to death, so this won't work.
• Turn around: The main way to avoid AA from FFXI as to just turn away from the enemy. Unfortunately, in FFXIV monsters can do extra damage to you when you are turned around. Plus, many skills turn you around, like healing.
• Put away your weapon: Mages in FFXIV can use shields, so putting away your weapon means you just lost your blocking. It also increases the time it takes to cast, as now you have to waste animation time waiting on your character to go back to fighting stance.

Of course, all of this could be resolved by simply giving us the option of whether we want AA on. For my mages and ranger... you're royally screwing up my hate management. Everything else? I don't care either way. I mean, they can adjust hate management as well, but to what end? You have to keep adjusting more and more just to solve something that could be done with a flip of a switch. We'd just have to "educate" people on a constant basis to turn off their bloody AA when they are a mage though, hah!

So in the end, you want AA... fine... just let my mage turn the thing off.

This hasn't been a problem for every MMO with AA, what makes you think it will be a problem here? Simple fact is, it's been solved long before FF11 was invented.

[Bearious]

I have not seen one post on this entire thread that actually looks at the overall goals for the implementation of the auto-attack. It is very clear that the launch of FFXIV did not go so well. Poll results show that over 85% voted yes when asked "Would you welcome changes to FINAL FANTASY XIV that would drastically alter the rules already set in Eorzea?" We, voted yes on that so everyone needs to stop crying now that they are doing something about it. The fact of the matter is, is that the auto-attack will do wonders to FFXIV's combat system. Currently using your basic attack does nothing to actually add skill or tactic into combat (except promote stamina management). The only reason for having a basic attack is to generate TP to use your useful skills. By automating this process, they are taking focus away from basic attack spamming and putting the focus onto useful abilities that promote skill and tactics in team play. People need to be looking at the real focus of this implementation to see that it is truly necessary. Yes, it is true that removing the current system will make combat less involving at low ranks. However, SE is not focusing on making combat exciting for rank 1's. The truth is that the implementation of auto-attack will do wonders for high rank play, making it much more skillful. That is why everyone one of us plays this game. We play to rank up, and as we rank up, there needs to be more of a challenge to keep the gameplay interesting. When you have 30 different abilities at rank 50, you should not be spamming one of them for 80% of the fight. By implementing the auto-attack, they are implementing SKILL and TACTICS into FFXIV at high rank play. I don't see how anyone can argue against that.