What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[XgungraveX]

simple /10char

[Payadopa]

While I agree the combat does lack the final fantasy feel especially with all the adjustemnts they've made over the years. and while I loved XI in the nearly 10 years i spent playing it. I honestly don't think i'd prefer the menu based system.. but this is where i feel the 1.23 combat system had things right and looked like it was going in a solid direction. until they abandoned it and wnet warcraft instead.

XI did have a lot more depth to it though. which came down to the bestiary in many ways. you had mobs with high armour like crabs, then fast and agile birds squishy but pretty evasive. slow but hard hitting gigas, every mob felt different and thus required a different approach. even in weapon skills. doing a fusion skill chain on a fire based monster whooops.

it wasnt perfect though because this variety ended up being rather short lived. you could go onto ffxiclopedia (if it still exists) go through the bestiary and notice that 75% of all mobs shared the same weaknesses, ice, thunder, piercing. which is why those becasme the only things you would ever invest merit points into.. but i do think if they'd learnt from that and made sure to diversify it a bit more that it would have been so much better.

but in XIV they went totally the other way and made every monster the exact same. the only thing that changes from one to the next is how much hp they have.. they all have the same defence, the same evasion, the same weaknesses and resistances. and it just makes things boring.

jobs in XI were also way better than in XIV. and while the above flaws kinda made some preferable over others there was still a great deal of flexibility to be had.. look at tanks. ninja, paladin warrior, samuarai, dancer, monk,, bluemage, probably more could all be incredibly solid tanks. i would quite often tank sky gods as a monk using counterstance. or a samurai with seigan. an attack that would stip all a ninjas shadows a samurai could just anticpate and ignore.. opened up many ways of playing jobs not just 1 mindless rotation that never changes.

all things that made it much more fun. and things i wish xiv incorporated more rather than kept stripping away. but i dont think id go back to a menu style system.

I'm in the same boat. I don't want LFGing for hours or get rid of the Duty Finder, but jobs are broken down to their most basic aspects and about to "more DPS". There is no creativity from a gameplay standpoint, no job synergy, no nothing. XIV shines in harder content or aesthetics where stuff matters more but the rest of the encounters is pretty to look at but shallow. Same with jobs.

[Raoabolic]

but jobs are broken down to their most basic aspects and about to "more DPS". There is no creativity from a gameplay standpoint, no job synergy, no nothing.

It's hard fix class balance when people go "Well X class does better than Y class during Z encounter! Fix it devs!". At that point you either have to tell the players to deal with it and make the game you envisioned or cater to them until each class becomes a watered down mess. Guess which direction XIV went. lol
Personally, I wish games had support jobs like Enchanter from EQ.

[indigo_imp]

In my experience at least this comes down to the disconnect between what you see happening and what really is happening... the game is nearly always lying to you. your standing in stupid but you dont get hit. you dodged the stupid but did get hit. because the damage was calculated and worked out sometimes 3 maybe even 4 seconds before you actually see the animation...

I agree, I like the snapshotting but it also leaves this kind of grey area sometimes. Like you said it's funny sometimes to see that you can stand in the actual effect/animation and not get hit depending on the timing. It can get tricky to adjust to the difference between the snapshot/cast bar/animation and the actual effect, at least for me. I think this also applies to some of the spells/actions that jobs have, where the delay in animation between pressing the button and having it take effect can make the combat feel unresponsive.

I think the long GCD contributes to this since the first time you hit a button the effect is instant (assuming no animation build-up), but then you have to wait a little bit to hit your next GCD action. This can be a nice rhythm/flow to get into, but it can also be frustrating at times when you just really want that action to trigger but you're moving too fast for the GCD. It feels like some actions get queued at certain points as well depending on when you press the button. When this combines with the animation delays for some abilities, I think that's what makes it feel unresponsive at times.

I've adjusted to this and I think it just takes getting used to, but I can see why others would dislike that.

Personally I don't mind the combat overall, but I do feel it could be more engaging and the jobs should have more room for decision-making. The job gauges could be played with to add more variety. For example as a red mage, maybe have more black than white could make the spells do more damage, but at a cost of lowering your HP. Maybe having more white would have your mana recharge faster and increase your casting speed. It could just be that some abilities would have additional effects depending on the balance of the gauge. Sure these kinds of things would introduce more balancing issues, but I think that really only matters for a very tiny minority of players who are competing for world firsts.

When the summoner revamp happened I was excited to see that the types of damage were mentioned as "wind-aspected" or "earth-aspected", etc. There are plenty of ways to add more things into the mix with that type of aspected damage. I'm sure every job could be adjusted to have more variety.

[AmiableApkallu]

For example as a red mage, maybe have more black than white could make the spells do more damage, but at a cost of lowering your HP. Maybe having more white would have your mana recharge faster and increase your casting speed.

My original fear was that elemental affinities -- of the kind present in all the "classic" Final Fantasy games that I've played -- would make RDM an awful mess/challenge to play well, but alas, those aren't a thing in FFXIV.

[Fiel_Tana]

There are definitely many mechanics that aren't clear at all, and I've had to look up guides online to find out what exactly I was doing wrong. I feel like that's not good for the game. It happened to me with the first alliance raid and the same issue occurs in the latest one.

In my experience at least this comes down to the disconnect between what you see happening and what really is happening... the game is nearly always lying to you. your standing in stupid but you dont get hit. you dodged the stupid but did get hit. because the damage was calculated and worked out sometimes 3 maybe even 4 seconds before you actually see the animation...

This is why I don't enjoy FFXIV combat, the disconnect between what is seen and what actually is happening feels terrible. When my WoL visually is in the exact same safe spot as the others, arrived at the same time or earlier, yet I get one shot and no one else suffers a scratch... feels terrible and happens VERY frequently.

Same with the mechanic warning visuals. Many times I've seen it go off AFTER I'm down on the floor. So, we're to memorise the exact fight times, perfectly executed 3-4 seconds ahead, or however off the timing is at that moment?

Also the mechanic warning visuals that are off-screen & we only know they exist if:
a) We were lucky enough to have the camera in that exact spot and the exact moment and instantly understood that means we should instantly be in the safe spot... or rather, that we should've been in a few seconds before but now we're dead.
b) We've failed it enough to ask and get a clear and understandable answer (not something vague as "opposite colours" at the start of a fight we clearly don't know) and are great at memorisation.
c) We watch videos of it from enough angles to understand and have the entire fight planned ahead. Again, relies purely on memorisation and takes the joy entirely out of it for some.
d) We die frequently so the healers leave us down and we then watch from the floor enough to memorise the entire scripted fight. Let me tell you, that does NOT induce any "my WoL heroically defeated the enemy" feelings of satisfaction.

Also ability sponginess, some seems to be animation delay (Holy), others seem similar to the combat visual lag, but less delayed, maybe .5 to 1 seconds.

Other games don't have this problem. WoW for example I could fight in high end stuff and was able to react in time. Also the combat itself there is more reactive, which I prefer, here the entire rotation is a full 2 minutes script that must be memorised and performed perfectly to line up buffs. Some might prefer that, but I don't.

Other combat issues:
1) Tab targeting is atrocious.
2) No way to reduce boss graphics flashiness. Being light sensitive this often causes headaches and makes it extremely difficult to even see what is going on at times.
3) Unable to zoom out farther / Bosses are simply far too large to even see on the screen. This could be because my screen is smaller? Youtube videos of the fights often seem to show more of the combat arena. If so, that is yet another problem with the game design.

As you may have guessed, no, I don't do high end combat here. I'd love to, but there are too many issues, that for me, it's sadly not fun at all.

[Zomkei]

as a healer main -

[Lubu_Mykono]

For most classes to have just a 1 2 3 combo there is a lot of button bloat.

[Golurkcanfly]

To me, the combat is hampered by a few things in job design, but encounter design as a whole is generally interesting.

1) Many jobs are full of parasitic mechanics and buttons that are simply there to be pressed rather than contributing to a central job identity. SAM's Kenki Gauge post-Kaiten removal, Gunbreaker's Sonic Break (GCD DoT), and MCH's Battery Gauge/Automaton Queen are examples of this. While they certainly contribute to the overall gamefeel of each job, they don't make for interesting decision-making nor synergize with the core identity of the job (SAM's Iaijutsus, GNB's Cartridge spenders, MCH's Overheat burst phase).
2) The utility options given to most jobs are rather boring. There's a ton of raid damage buffs, but options that aren't damage buffs/mitigation like Scholar's Expedience are few and far between. To me, utility tools are most interesting when there's a question of when to use them beyond just aligning raid buffs.
3) There's a ton of redundant buttons that have the exact same use case except one is single target and the other is AoE (Orogeny/Upheaval, Shoha I/II, Holy Spirit/Holy Circle). Without resource implications, these tend to be rather bland.

In addition, while not always relevant, the leveling/synced experience of a bunch of jobs is miserable and non-indicative of how a job feels at higher levels. PLD is the biggest offender to me with not even having a GCD DoT until after ARR.

[Atamis]

It gets the job done, but I feel it would be far better if they went with the more action oriented style we have seen of recent games.