[dev1022] Auto-attack system questions and discussion

[AmyRae]

Battle needs 2 things imo:
1. Depth.
2. Weight.

So... we should release FFXIV on the Nintendo 3DS?

[OmegaNovaios]

K so here is my attempt at an idea:
To keep depth and add weight maybe have every class have three seperate ability categories: magic (yes even melee based "spells"), tactics and weapon skills. Magic would be on global cooldowns and use up MPs (and still making MP management be important and adding some refresh abilities to certain classes). Tactics would be what are currently called abillties and would use stamina. Stamina would start at zero and drop down as it was used, but would build up based on points you'd get from the use of both magic and WSs. Weapon Skills would still use TP of course, and would be built up from your auto-attack. TP gain would depend on weapon and auto-attack type, but could also be augmented with haste. Tactics would be the center piece of this system, as youd wand to build it up to get access to more potent abilites and effects. Consequently it would be harder to get stamina points, and it would be neccessary to put the "weaker" melee abilities under the "melee spells" (or we could call it something else if thats too weird) category. In addition to this, mages would need to get a lot of Tactics abilities added to them that would greatly augment the power or efffect of their spells and thus make getting stamina points important for them as well.

Good? Bad? I should be executed for crimes against FFXIV?

So in summary: Yes to auto-attack, but keep the depth of the battle system, and add in more weight to my decisions.

The 3 categories seems weird to me or perhaps I don't quite understand the concept all that well since it's so different, but I think its similar to what already exists. Now I'm not 100% sure on this, but I know some melee actions have elemental attributes to them, I'm pretty sure that using some magical actions as a DoW gives those actions melee properties and can't be used at range, and as for all damaging spells I'm not sure but perhaps they are also give melee properties. I know buffs, debuffs, and cures as DoW can be used at range and isn't affected by elemental properties. Now nuke tiers don't affect the same nuke's cool down on any tier and a global cool down does not exist. Now the melee actions with elemental attributes does use MP but there aren't many of those actions. You can cross class any spell to use MP which can deplete you MP quite fast as DoW. However using spells as DoW does require magical stats to be effective but this is all part of your class setup and how you tactically want to play the game. So I don't see much change here from what you proposed.

Not entirely sure what you mean by tactics, but I'm assuming melee buffs, (Featherfoot, Raging Strike, Ferocity) crowd control (Shadowbind), or enmity actions (Provoke, Taunt, Wardrum). We have these also. Personally I think stamina could stay the way it is even with an auto attack and it would behave the same way (auto attack would still deplete the stamina gauge each hit and if you don't want to use stamina you can simply toggle it off). If you changed stamina to only be used by tactics (melee classes only unless you cross class) then tactical action cool downs must be directly linked with the progression of stamina. This way it gives weight/opportunity cost to your actions (which preferably wouldn't be too fast IMO).

Now the balance issue here is how many tactical actions does SE expect to to generally be used. In the current setup some people use no tactical actions and some people use very many tactical actions. For example I could have 2 enmity, 1 crowd control, 2 accuracy buffs, and 2 attack buffs. Now I would consider this a lot of actions and way too many for SE to consider allowing a player to use w/o some heavy opportunity cost or direct tactical play based on battle situations. Personally I would code the game to allow 2-3 tactics be used around every 15-30 seconds to keep up with the battle pace of FFXIV. The thing I like the most about your proposal is that this greatly encourages those who don't use any tactics to equip at around 2-3 tactical actions and those who only equip 1-3 attack actions and 4+ buff tactical actions to use on 1 single attack to use fewer tactical actions or force weight on the situation rather using back to back tactical actions because everything is based on stamina (which is built up fast enough to spam many tactical actions) and you are only restricted on cool downs for each action individually (not globally). So I really like this idea.

Personally I don't think the magic idea is so good if you mean to change actions and give DoW new magical skills. However your proposal states to build stamina through using magic and TP abilities while building TP stays the same. Now there are 3 options here.

1. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build both TP and Stamina.
2. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build TP and using TP converts into Stamina.
3. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build TP and using TP/MP converts into Stamina.

Personally option 3 looks best to me, option 1 works, and option 2 just fails IMO. Here are the reasons why:

1. Both DoW and DoM can gain stamina, fairly more difficult for DoM because it's generally not best tactic to just spam regular attacks since spell casting is much more effective. Thus making the use of tactical actions very inconvenient however with an auto attack this is a much more viable option.
2. This limits DoM to either using melee actions or relying Radiance/(forgot name of THM action equivalent to Radiance) with the same TP issue as 1.
3. Now both DoW and DoM can build both TP (if needed by DoM) and stamina efficiently.

Overall, I think this (especially combined with auto attacks for convenience whether this system is implemented or we keep the current system) makes combat much more engaging, adds tactical elements, and just more fun IMO. It reduces the constant need of using everything as soon as cool down wears off (which is horrible IMO it's just a big twitchy spam fast that doesn't involve any thinking and thus tedious repeated actions that doesn't require any effort other than how long you can keep it up before you need a break).

Great idea. Hope my version helps and explains for all to understand.

Edit: As for the DoW magical melee actions this gives DoW more emphasis to use these actions (which are very weak and quite useless IMO) since it would build slightly more stamina since it uses both TP and MP.

Edit: This also helps to define roles. Not a huge impact, but the issue right now is too much freedom (I like the sandbox idea overall just needs cross crass penalties) which allow players to do basically everything on every class. This proposal limits the tactical actions greatly thus keeping someone from let's say trying to DPS while tanking at the same (2 accuracy + 2 attack + 2 enmity buffs with only 1-2 DPS actions, cures, and damage mitigation actions equipped). This is just 1 example.

[Amsai]

The 3 categories seems weird to me or perhaps I don't quite understand the concept all that well since it's so different, but I think its similar to what already exists. Now I'm not 100% sure on this, but I know some melee actions have elemental attributes to them, I'm pretty sure that using some magical actions as a DoW gives those actions melee properties and can't be used at range, and as for all damaging spells I'm not sure but perhaps they are also give melee properties. I know buffs, debuffs, and cures as DoW can be used at range and isn't affected by elemental properties. Now nuke tiers don't affect the same nuke's cool down on any tier and a global cool down does not exist. Now the melee actions with elemental attributes does use MP but there aren't many of those actions. You can cross class any spell to use MP which can deplete you MP quite fast as DoW. However using spells as DoW does require magical stats to be effective but this is all part of your class setup and how you tactically want to play the game. So I don't see much change here from what you proposed.

Not entirely sure what you mean by tactics, but I'm assuming melee buffs, (Featherfoot, Raging Strike, Ferocity) crowd control (Shadowbind), or enmity actions (Provoke, Taunt, Wardrum). We have these also. Personally I think stamina could stay the way it is even with an auto attack and it would behave the same way (auto attack would still deplete the stamina gauge each hit and if you don't want to use stamina you can simply toggle it off). If you changed stamina to only be used by tactics (melee classes only unless you cross class) then tactical action cool downs must be directly linked with the progression of stamina. This way it gives weight/opportunity cost to your actions (which preferably wouldn't be too fast IMO).

Now the balance issue here is how many tactical actions does SE expect to to generally be used. In the current setup some people use no tactical actions and some people use very many tactical actions. For example I could have 2 enmity, 1 crowd control, 2 accuracy buffs, and 2 attack buffs. Now I would consider this a lot of actions and way too many for SE to consider allowing a player to use w/o some heavy opportunity cost or direct tactical play based on battle situations. Personally I would code the game to allow 2-3 tactics be used around every 15-30 seconds to keep up with the battle pace of FFXIV. The thing I like the most about your proposal is that this greatly encourages those who don't use any tactics to equip at around 2-3 tactical actions and those who only equip 1-3 attack actions and 4+ buff tactical actions to use on 1 single attack to use fewer tactical actions or force weight on the situation rather using back to back tactical actions because everything is based on stamina (which is built up fast enough to spam many tactical actions) and you are only restricted on cool downs for each action individually (not globally). So I really like this idea.

Personally I don't think the magic idea is so good if you mean to change actions and give DoW new magical skills. However your proposal states to build stamina through using magic and TP abilities while building TP stays the same. Now there are 3 options here.

1. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build both TP and Stamina.
2. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build TP and using TP converts into Stamina.
3. Regular attacks (hopefully auto) would build TP and using TP/MP converts into Stamina.

Personally option 3 looks best to me, option 1 works, and option 2 just fails IMO. Here are the reason why:

1. Both DoW and DoM can gain stamina, fairly more difficult for DoM because it's generally not best tactic to just spam regular attacks since spell casting is much more effective. Thus making the use of tactical actions very inconvenient however with an auto attack this is a much more viable option.
2. This limits DoM to either using melee actions or relying Radiance/(forgot name of THM action equivalent to Radiance) with the same TP issue as 1.
3. Now both DoW and DoM can build both TP (if needed by DoM) and stamina efficiently.

Overall, I think this (especially combined with auto attacks for convenience whether this system is implemented or we keep the current system) makes combat much more engaging, adds tactical elements, and just more fun IMO. It reduces the constant need of using everything as soon as cool down wears off (which is horrible IMO it's just a big twitchy spam fast that doesn't involve any thinking and thus tedious repeated actions that doesn't require any effort other than how long you can keep it up before you need a break).

Great idea. Hope my version helps and explains for all to understand.

Edit: As for the DoW magical melee actions this gives DoW more emphasis to use these actions (which are very weak and quite useless IMO) since it would build slightly more stamina since it uses both TP and MP.

Yea you pretty much understand what Im saying. And yes it would be #3. I would like to clarify that each of the categories would be completely seperate so TP abilities only need TP, Magic only needs MP, and Tactics only need stamina. However, you would ofcourse need magic and WS to build stamina indirectly. I would also think there would be a small handful of abilities that were free of cost, but nothing too powerful.
Here is an example of ability breakdowns:
Mage: *Magic based WS for WS category
*Magic spells (nuke, heal, buff, debuff) for Magic Category (cure, fire)
*Special abilities that greatly increase potency of effect or durration, and maybe even some very high level spells for
the Tactics Category (benediction, 30% durration, Flare II)
Melee: *Normal WS for WS
*lower grade abilities for the "melee" Magic Category (defender, warcry)
*higher grade abilities for the Tactics Category (invinsible, double TP gain, eagle eye)

These are just examples.

[Suirieko]

I personally opposed the auto-attack system, mostly because, even though we're just spamming the attack it feels more, FFish to me, you know. While we do need more abilities, or more reason to use em, I find it more fun to do a couple of attacks, build up my TP then spam a few chain of attack abilities, like Trammel, Leg Sweep, etc. I feel that auto-attack could just take that away.

[Pardz]

TBH, I think if combat is more streamlined there wouldn't be such a huge need for auto attacks. There are so many times where I'm hitting the light attack button only to just stand there while unsheathing my sword then waiting for the attack to actually occur. It really frustrates me how clunky the battle system can be at times. But I think if they polish it more and make it so inputs don't take so long to process it would be much better.

[Nivana]

RE:

TBH, I think if combat is more streamlined there wouldn't be such a huge need for auto attacks. There are so many times where I'm hitting the light attack button only to just stand there while unsheathing my sword then waiting for the attack to actually occur. It really frustrates me how clunky the battle system can be at times. But I think if they polish it more and make it so inputs don't take so long to process it would be much better.

second

[Dyvid]

Instead of Auto-Attack why not a Command Stack like FFXIII? You select commands to be placed into the queue. Then the abilities are executed like normal. Only difference is you aren't spamming abilities.

An example would be as such:
[Light Attack][Light Attack][Heavy Attack][Weapon Skill][Guard]
[========____________________________________________]

[JakeRoon]

Instead of Auto-Attack why not a Command Stack like FFXIII? You select commands to be placed into the queue. Then the abilities are executed like normal. Only difference is you aren't spamming abilities.

An example would be as such:
[Light Attack][Light Attack][Heavy Attack][Weapon Skill][Guard]
[========____________________________________________]

This is win.

It's a simple easy solution.....don't forget that you can easily cancel the que as well should an "emergency" arise. You just input your next 5 attack and rock on. Chat whatever.

I'll probably get crucified for this......

but I actually would prefer a gambit system of auto macros like ff12.....mostly because I play with a beer in one hand. But also I find it relaxing, and it's not insulting to my intelligence.

I'll explain....they assume I am smart enough to watch health bars and cast cure when a party member hits 60% health, so they allow me to set an automaco that already does that so I don't have to space out watching health bars and can enjoy watching the game instead.

etc etc etc.

I know SE got a lot of flak for that system, but personally I loved it. I though it would have been perfect for an mmo, given the highly repetitive nature of the battles, and the need to type constantly.

And before you go all crazy on me, if you are not familiar with the system.....
You have to gain the automacros called "gambits" by leveling up, similar to spending guild marks. So you didn't have any for a the start of the game and then got one or two then as you reached the level cap you had a max of 8 or 10. And even then you had to find/buy the things to fill in the macro.....for example you had to find the "when party member is - 60% HP" part of the macro in order to use it.

It was pretty cool.



OH and guys.......if they implement auto attack (with an option to turn it off) don't worry , the basic attack won't use any stamina. Silly gooses.

[Luhy]

To address the difference between Light and Heavy attack, choosing one or the other could just make that your new auto-attack until you select another.

I think it's been argued by many people that an auto-attack feature is necessary. It's difficult to throw away a system you worked hard on, but in the end, you want players to be comfortable. We would rather talk to one another and worry about buffing our weaponskills than pressing one button over and over and not being able to socialize.

[Jovy]

Auto attack is not needed. The problem with the stamina gauge is there is no thought to using it. We should be able to combine attacks with tp moves. Or make it where we put some thought into using stamina weather it be because of the mob we are fighting or its weakness to blunt or pierce... or accumulating stamina for a comboed attack. Combining 2 spells or or 2 tps moves would help with these. This can also lead to better battle regimens.