Quote Originally Posted by BlaiseLallaise View Post
And thus we come around to my point. Who really wants to stop using abilities? Is anything more boring than standing around waiting for stamina to get high enough to use another ability? Even with auto-attack, which I am in favor of, I could still burn up my stamina, just with more weapon skills and less basic attacks. Auto-attack does not reduce my stamina usage, it just diverts it to something else. For example, as PUG, Heavy Strike is my #1 ability. If that gets removed and translated over to an auto-attack, I still have Light Strike and Pummel to use as TP building abilities.

But I'll concede this much. Perhaps the stamina gauge would be fine if only abilities cost less stamina to use. Having a barrier in place that causes me to physically stop doing anything for seconds at a time is a bad idea. Whatever happens, we need the freedom to continue to use our abilities.

Ok, I just thought of another scenario that might work. If auto-attack restored some stamina relative to the frequency of strikes, then that might also help reduce the number of times I have to sit around waiting for stamina to refill. Another idea would be to have stamina act like MP, where it doesn't cost much to use an ability, and it doesn't refresh while in active mode without some item/ability designed for that purpose.
If we're going to have a stamina gauge, it should do something to enhance the battle system, not simply limit the amount of stuff you can do, as cooldowns do that for us already.

For example, make it so stamina isn't used by normal attacks, but:

-Hold the attack button (of whatever attack it is) to allot more stamina to the attack. More stamina = more damage, but less chance to hit (like DnD's classic "power attack").

-Use an ability to turn stamina into MP in the middle of a fight.

-Ability that allows you to burn stamina to run at 2X speed until you run out of stamina.

-Ability that burns your stamina down but multiplies your evasion rate by 4X while doing so.

-Ability that doubles your magic potency and your casting speed while burning your stamina down.

-Ability that doubles your damage output while burning stamina.

All of these would make for very strategic choices the player would get to make, and more choices is what makes a game fun.