[dev1022] Auto-attack system questions and discussion

[Danniedeadboy]

Auto-Attack would destroy this game, using actions makes this game unique i love this game because I feel so involved I can stop attacking at a moments notice I can queue my actions and feel like everything i do is strategy instead of just watching my character slash or fire away. FFXIV makes you more involved and if you're paying attention to 111111111111 then like others have said, YOURE NOT PLAYING THE GAME RIGHT!!!! there is so much more then just 111111 you have to carefully watch whats going on in the game in order to revise your actions at times it does feel like you're just spamming but isnt that like other games as well, no matter what you do in any other game you're still spamming actions but in a different setting? I'm Against Auto-Attack. I feel the way the battle system is things go alot faster than they did in FFXI.

[Chumeia]

I would like the ability to turn on or off a set of attacks. I guess a Macro could be written but it would be a nuisance. What few parties I have been in were mobs. Everything happened so fast that I barely had time to select the enemy and initiate attack. If my auto attack selected a Group Majority, or follow Group Leader then I could concentrate on more specialized skills rather than having to stop and hit the Attack button.

See, if you are used to 100% KB based combat then the current system works quite well. But I an d many more soon will be using Controllers. Thus the game must be able to accommodate a controller/KB hybrid environment.

What could be really useful is a Gambit like system as used in FFXII. Gambits were effectively a simple Macro system, and it worked really well, though I was often glad the gambit could also be Quickly switched OFF when some one stopped behaving as needed.

It might be really cool, if a group leader could even assign a default set of expected behaviors and depending on your own settings, each member would take on basic functions of the active gambit selections. Of course this should be optional, and on an active switch so that it doesn't interfere when it doesn't work quite right, or the defaults aren't getting the job done and manual intervention is needed to save the day.

[BadJoeRed]

For profiling purposes of the reader, I'm more or less against adding auto-attack, it's not necessary.

Having said that, IF we have to get auto attack implemented, I don't see any other way to keep as many people happy about it as possible. (other than the following idea explained below )

Battle system can stay almost exactly the same as it is now. Keeping the stamina bar as well.

Here it is: They need to add an additional "slot" directly next to our action bar. This "slot" will be an action of your choice that you can change, or toggle on/off at any time with a hotkey. This will be the "auto-attack slot."

Example: let's say you have Light Stab on your action bar as #1, and Heavy Stab as your #2 ability. By pushing some combination of keys such as ~hold down the Right shift key and push 1~ (I know shift wouldn't work because it is used for Battle Regimen, it's just an example) doing this would automatically load Light stab into the "auto attack slot." At any time during your auto-attacks and during battle, you can push ~Right shift key and push 2~ this would instantly load Heavy Slash into your "auto attack slot." Doing this will change your auto attack to the new action on the next swing.

Auto-attack should only execute after the stamina bar has reached 100% in order to give people sufficient stamina to ensure they have enough to use their barrage of actions and weapon skills.

Optional, but depending on whether or not SE wants to discourage the use of autoattack, they can impose a slight delay when your character does the auto attack swing.

Example: Instead of your character doing the auto attack at 100% stamina, the auto attack will only swing when you would have technically regenerated up to 105% or whatever they feel is fair. This would make using autoattack 'slightly' worse than pushing all of the keystrokes yourself because of the wasted time it takes your bar to go from 100% to 105%. (by this I mean, if your selected auto-attack takes 20% of your stamina bar, your stamina will still go down to 80%, NOT to 85%, and then you must wait for it to return to 105% to execute another auto attack)

As I stated above, I don't really want autoattack, but if they add it, I think it really needs to be done in a similar fashion.

what do you guys think? on both sides of the argument? Is it a fair compromise?

I firmly believe AA will be in game soon.

[Eron]

Unless you play conquer online auto attacking doesn't do much of anything. How many games with auto attack have you actually just let it auto attack? None. You know why? Cause it's crap. It does crap damage, creates crap threat, adds crap combo points. The only thing that doesn't make it crappy is using your skills, which makes you INVOLVED. To say auto attacking will make gameplay less involved is crap.

I'm all for something innovative however. The MMO norm of spamming skills based on cooldowns and procs has been overdone and since this game is already soooooo different than the others why not play with new ideas. I wish I had a suggestion for you all but I'm just a player. If it sucks I'll just grab a pickaxe and mine while complaining about how crappy the game is on the forums.

The previous post has some good ideas. Not perfect but on the right track

[Betelgeuzah]

I can watch T.V and hit the 1 key at the same time.

You know, for saying "the encounters in this game are too easy and require no more than the use of three keys" there are better ways to express the current situation.

Now it's more like

"Because the monsters in this game are easy and require no actual thought and most of my abilities are unnecessary because of it, I want the developers to automate the combat so that I don't have to involve myself when fighting easy monsters. I don't want the developers to make the actual encounters harder and require more varied actions to be used instead, because I can not comprehend that these two issues could be linked and fixing one solves the other."

In addition,

"Because the UI layout does not support the gamepad I want the developers to change the gameplay to something that is more forgiving for gamepads with this kind of UI, instead of actually changing the UI layout towards something that makes the kind of gameplay XIV provides possible and efficient with a gamepad."

Not to mention

"Implementing auto-attack reduces the server lag, which makes playing easier. However, I am against actually improving the server code and hardware for the same results because that would be simply backwards logic."

As well as

"I have no time to communicate in this game because of the required button inputs, however I don't want S-E to implement voice chat because console gamers never use voice chat ever and that is a PC-only feature. It is better to reduce the amount of button inputs instead, because that isn't backwards logic".

More:

"Auto-attack was done perfectly in FFXI (editor note: especially during the early levels) and there were never any complaints about it, therefore it should be implemented."

And to top them off

"It wouldn't make the gameplay less involving AT ALL. You would simply have time to do something else than playing the game, such as picking your nose and doing the dishes. Less button inputs would also be required from you, which again, does not make the gameplay less involving AT ALL, because you can still watch the game perform these inputs for you instead, and that is almost as fun as watching a movie."

-

If anyone has any other counter-arguments for auto-attack, I'd like to hear them here and combine them together for easier reading.

[Andrien]

Yes I want auto-attack. Please do this.

It was done perfectly in FFXI and there was no complains. I cannot think of anything negative about this except for personal opinions, but I feel it wont hurt to add it and it'll be a good addition because it was great in FFXI.

[Betelgeuzah]

"Auto-attack was done perfectly in FFXI (editor note: especially during the early levels) and there were never any complaints about it, therefore it should be implemented."

Thank you, I'll add this to my list asap.

[ChiefCurrahee]

The problem lays with the need to generate TP.

Lets take other MMOs for example.

WoW,Aion,Lotro,Rfit,LieneageII,ect ect.
The combat mechanics allow you to issue any of your attacks on demand, pulling from 1 governance pool (Mana,Stamina,action ect ect) and no more than 1 pool. With that, that pool recharges at a set rate, augmented by gear and stats.
In these games, you start combat at 100%. It's up to the player what attack to use. Fire off the mega nuke? or attack with small "DoT" attacks? Any way you look at it all skills, sans conditional, are at your disposal from the get go.

FFXIV uses up to 3 governance pools! You have to issue the TP generating command to store enough TP to use that WS and sometimes that WS uses MP as well. None of them regen on their own. You are forced into attacking.

The system is "spammy" not because players are pressing 11111 it's because of the need to constantly press any button.

Lets face it. If you stand idle you lose DPS, you lose TP gain which leads to more DPS loss.

The current battle system mechanics doesn't fit into how the game was originally designed.

How many of you remember alpha? Remember that battle system. where your attack bar would fill up once it reached 100% you could issue a command, or wait and let it power up further for more dmg/acc?
Remember SP gains were based on the quality of the action taken, not the speed of which you could kill a mob?

SE dropped the ball when they changed the power bar mechanic to the stamina bar to speed up combat,but failed to change anything else associated with battle mechanics. Then dropped the ball again when they patched in set SP, and failed to change the battle system to fit accordingly.

So now the best strategy is to kill at break neck speeds for the best SP gains, in order to do that you have to constantly issue commands, to constantly issue commands other than your non TP attacks (basic attacks) you need TP so you issue TP gen attacks.

I want to see an AA implemented because the the current need to gen TP to issue what should be our "more meaningful attacks" becomes tedious, nearly to the verge of "whats the point of using anything else?"

If TP generated automatically during battle w/o having to issue an attack there would be no need for AA.

How about getting rid of TP as a whole and put all skills on a cool down?

Make mechanics more in line with "standard" MMOs.

Don't want that either?

Well according to SE's polls a majority aren't happy with the current system in place. AA is a viable solution for the "spammy" nature of the game. Adjustments would have to be made globally to the the battle system, but it's cheaper and less labor intensive than building a new system from the ground up.

[Malakhim]

Stuff.

So if I'm understanding right, what you're saying is that the biggest problem with the system right now as opposed to other MMOs is the fact that you have to "build up" the ability to use your best stuff? I can sort of agree with that.

It's mostly true with melee and not with magic users from my experience though. I don't know any magic spells that require TP, and assuming you don't get that stupid bug that drains all your stamina before a fight begins, you can unload your best spells right from the get go.

Your argument about why the game is "spammy" is interesting, but at the same time, you still had to "build up" TP to use weapon skills in FFXI, although admittedly there was no button pushing there. Although almost every Final Fantasy post VI required you to deal/recieve damage to unleash limit breaks, and it wasn't until FFX that they introduced alternate methods of generation(I forget the specifics though). That's kind of a Final Fantasy thing at this point.

Also, as a bunch of people pointed out, abilities that you buy at guilds have different effects, like added TP generation(at higher stamina costs) or "combo" hits in the case of Flurry. Weapon skills aren't pointless, because they'll usually add in an elemental effect, higher damage, AoE, an enfeeble, or all of that.

I'll agree with the point that SE seems to have made key changes in the way the battle system works without actually making sure that everything else is consistent with the change, however. I think Andrein's post about AA in FFXI is probably very true because of this point: There was much more consistency with FFXI's systems than there are here.

[Betelgeuzah]

The combat mechanics allow you to issue any of your attacks on demand, pulling from 1 governance pool (Mana,Stamina,action ect ect) and no more than 1 pool. With that, that pool recharges at a set rate, augmented by gear and stats.

While you have a point, that is not really all there is to it. These other games make use of more than one "pool" at time, usually this being some kind of TP or MP and cooldown, global or local.

In FFXIV there are actually three pools- TP or MP, local cooldown and a global cooldown. This is why the current system as-is can not be sustained. Skills need to be divided between those with local cooldown (that do not use stamina) and those without local cooldown (that use global cooldown = stamina). No skill should use both, except if they use no TP or MP, in which case it is okay.

Remember SP gains were based on the quality of the action taken, not the speed of which you could kill a mob?

Yes, I remember the system that favored skills that did the least damage as well as being spammable and fights that were artificially lengthened. No, no "ball" was "dropped" when they changed it to set SP, and that has nothing to do with the combat system.

So now the best strategy is to kill at break neck speeds for the best SP gains

And the problem is that the game allows this. If the monsters never pose such a threat that you need to use debuffs or defensive skills, why would you use them?

You got the diseases almost right but your cure is like giving aspirin for a brain tumor.