Less scripted fights more online engagement

[KisaiTenshi]

So, if that's what you believe, can you then recommend me some MMO that will offer such "Variety" within itself? I had played literally every single one out there, and I can't say I remember any MMO that can offer much difference what beyond its core.

Don't look at MMO's for variety, because every time a MMO tries to come out as an action game, it eventually has to be watered back down into an ATB (active turn based) game due to North America's rubbish internet.

I've seen this plenty with Japanese and Korean games where the game seems to run smooth as butter in Korea, due to players being like like less than 20ms of latency from each other, but then you get to north America and it's not unusual to have 150ms, and then Australians and players in EU playing on North American servers with their friends have to deal with 300ms latency.

The reason a lot of MMORPG's use "attack patterns" comes back to allowing players to play together. I'm sure you've encountered players in the game who seem to get clipped by AOE's all the time, because their client is likely behind by several frames. That's why the current DT content with the rapid AOE's is kind of pushing it. It's likely much more doable in Japan on Japanese connections, but in North America, those AOE's appear for a split second and give the impression you're not supposed to avoid them, but instead already be standing where you'll avoid it. Even when you play with the trusts, you have to second-guess where the trusts are going to stand, but they ALWAYS stand in the same place for that phase.

If the game was always random, the trusts wouldn't work at all.

[PyurBlue]

I think people don't really understand how insanely complex the design of a battle system in any game is. The dev have a vision of the kind of games they want, and conceive a system tailor specifically for it. So unless they wanted to create a system that can do more than one style of battle and invest twice or thrice the resource to develop it from the beginning, that won't be a change you see 10 years into development.

In a way FF14 can serve as an example of a more dynamic game, at least early FF14 can. The lower levels had some recurring enemy types that players were expected to learn through repeated encounters. That would inform them on those enemies general capabilities and give hints on how to deal with new versions of those enemies. Things like cyclops and morbols. I wouldn't consider these to be exactly what I want in terms of less scripted combat, but there are some interesting ideas there on how to build a more dynamic combat system.

FF14 also has PvP which is unscripted by nature.

I find that people that people that ask for "less scripted fights" don't understand what it means.

Many fights and mechanics in FF14 can be memorized and a lot of the difficulty comes from being unable to know what will happen exactly until you see it. That's the core of my complaint, and I think the same goes for many who are asking for less scripted combat.

You can write an AI script that chooses a response from a list based on the current situation and I guess you could call that scripted, but I wouldn't. That's dynamic. It's also something that FF14 doesn't do. In FF14 a mechanic happens at X time or Y % HP. Sometimes there is a choice of mechanic from a small list at X time or Y% HP, which is very slightly better but not a huge improvement. I think what people want is the illusion that they are fighting someone, an observing and thinking entity, and not fighting something, a mechanic dispenser.