Auto Attack wins!

[northernsky]

Quick question that others may have better insight on.
How will auto-attack relate to 0 cost skills such as Heavy Strike, Full Thrust, Pierce etc? Right now these do have a place, be it not always in every fight. Occasionally it's nice to throw out a Heavy Thrust in order to temp bind a mob that is running all over the place. It seems to settle them down.

That's a good question. But I don't think that this is a major issue. For example, why not having an icon where you toggle which auto-attack you are going to use (having the choice between all the 0 cost skills abilities that you have earned)?

[Kazimir]

A lot of people use the party search feature... it works just fine.

What server are you on? I haven't seen anyone use the party search since December on Saronia.

[Lamhirh]

I personally dont use it. only times i do somethi gin party is behest ( whis is easy to get oparty usually) and during leves, but i do leves with friends/LS, so i really dont need party search <_<. also most random people would get annoyed as i actualy like walking everywhere ( as XIV have very nice walking animation, and i am RPer in my heart <_<)

[Kazimir]

Quick question that others may have better insight on.
How will auto-attack relate to 0 cost skills such as Heavy Strike, Full Thrust, Pierce etc? Right now these do have a place, be it not always in every fight. Occasionally it's nice to throw out a Heavy Thrust in order to temp bind a mob that is running all over the place. It seems to settle them down.

They are likely changing a lot more than we realize with the battle system. Having these different basic attacks may not be necessary once that is done.

They also haven't given us the information needed to make an educated guess about what they are doing. For all we really know they will make it so we can just select that attack and it will auto-attack until we pick another.

[Holy_Dragoon]

@northernsky
You see that is just it, Auto-Attack for things like Full Thrust would lessen your effectiveness. Through my experiences thus far in the game I have found the other basic attacks to be situational. Also they have purpose in things like Battle Regimens (Mind you BRs can be a little flaky and seemingly insignificant).

I just hope that it's one of the things that has been considered when implementing Auto-Attack. Without more information, it's hard for me to make a call one way or the other. If they considered ways to do these types of things, then by all means I can see this as a positive direction.

I think the intricacies of the current system are not taken advantage of because they are minimal, and to notice them you have to pay very close attention to things like overall damage output and group dynamics. Most gamers want to have a good time, and easily see the benefits of their in-game skills. Even I will admit, I can easily spam Light attacks and be mostly successful. However I have found enjoyment in figuring out the subtle differences to placing skills at the right time against tougher mobs.

For an example, just last night we would use Heavy Thrust to bind Raptors that would get out of control, then have 2 Lancers balance the timing of Twisting Vice in order to prevent 90% of those AOE attacks that Raptors can do. It paved the way for less healing, and more offensive magic. This in turn came full circle as Raptors would want to attack mages, but could not because we would keep them bound long enough that they would swap targets back towards our Marauder Tank.

I would hope that these kind of things can continue under the coming Auto-Attack system.

[Kallera]

I know the battle system needed tweaking, but I've a lot of reservationations about putting auto attack in.

The reason dragon age ii put in the action oriented battle system was to attract the console playing crowd, I personally enjoyed it. What SE is doing for console release is the opposite.

For SE, the console release is pretty much THIS game's last chance, unless they intend to pour copious amounts into advertising, knowing full well they are going to be in the midst of releasing 2011 games.

And if they so much as even think of automating crafting, I'm leaving.

[Corrderio]

Maybe I'm a minority but I really don't think a full auto attack system is necessary, in fact I like the manual input. I think something simple like toggling a regular attack on/off would be better than just forcing auto attack on everyone.

[northernsky]

@northernsky
You see that is just it, Auto-Attack for things like Full Thrust would lessen your effectiveness. Through my experiences thus far in the game I have found the other basic attacks to be situational. Also they have purpose in things like Battle Regimens (Mind you BRs can be a little flaky and seemingly insignificant).

I just hope that it's one of the things that has been considered when implementing Auto-Attack. Without more information, it's hard for me to make a call one way or the other. If they considered ways to do these types of things, then by all means I can see this as a positive direction.

I think the intricacies of the current system are not taken advantage of because they are minimal, and to notice them you have to pay very close attention to things like overall damage output and group dynamics. Most gamers want to have a good time, and easily see the benefits of their in-game skills. Even I will admit, I can easily spam Light attacks and be mostly successful. However I have found enjoyment in figuring out the subtle differences to placing skills at the right time against tougher mobs.

For an example, just last night we would use Heavy Thrust to bind Raptors that would get out of control, then have 2 Lancers balance the timing of Twisting Vice in order to prevent 90% of those AOE attacks that Raptors can do. It paved the way for less healing, and more offensive magic. This in turn came full circle as Raptors would want to attack mages, but could not because we would keep them bound long enough that they would swap targets back towards our Marauder Tank.

I would hope that these kind of things can continue under the coming Auto-Attack system.

Yup you're right, and those subtilities make the fights exciting, I also hope that auto-attack will preserve this. Actually, I think it will be even easier, with more time to focus on the mobs moves, on your fight log "monster X readies TP move Y" and on your reflex moves.

I'd like to be able to change the base ability to auto-attack on the fly, not in between fights.

If you can toggle what action your next auto-attack will be I think you may still do like you described, especially if they actually implement a fast auto-attack (the current actions are not 100% instant anyway with lags and natural cooldowns).

[Zkieve]

I think the bottom end is how the introduce auto attack , not if they introduce it or not.
people saying AA= game doomed , or saying AA= game fixed are both out of their minds.

[northernsky]

I think the bottom end is how the introduce auto attack , not if they introduce it or not.
people saying AA= game doomed , or saying AA= game fixed are both out of their minds.

This, and how they modify the rest of the battle system and future content regarding auto-attack