[dev1022] Auto-attack system questions and discussion

[Vanguard319]

In my opinion, coming from someone who has played WoW, Rift in beta, Warhammer online, and countless other Free MMO's past/present. They all have auto attacks in combat. Why not keep FFXIV original and let the combat w/o auto attacks stand as is. All auto attacks do, if any of you notice, is make animations from abilities glitch.

Also, it takes away from the strategic feel of combat that FFXIV currently has going for it. It's about time a game breaks the mold. It also holds more true to the FF gameplay feel. FF console titles didn't have auto attacks, the combat was strategic, you picked to "basic attack" or use of a "skill" every time a characters turn came around. and putting that feel into an MMO was done as well it could be in this case i would like to think.

Another point to make here is Bioware is following suite on this one, and NO auto attacks in SWTOR either. "the times, they are a changin' " auto attack fans need to get used to it.

You hit the nail on the head! in addition to SWTOR, both KOTORs and SWG didn't have auto-attack either, in the context of the star wars universe, it made more sense to have active time battle, especially since Galaxies had space combat on top of traditional RPG combat. FFXIV doesn't have a built-in flight sim, but the world has that same pace and feel.

I don't know about most of you, but when I'm playing a video game, I want to be engaged and focused on the game, not watching TV or doing anything else

Another good point, if you aren't engaged enough to be focusing on the game, and not watching TV, or reading, then I've gotta question whether or not the game you are playing actually has any entertainment value at all.

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).

This is another good point, there are skills in the game that use no stamina at all, but they are few. GLA has Phalanx for example, PUG has Haymaker, ARC has buffs like raging strike and hawk's eye. (Of those, the WS's have cooldown timers low enough that they are almost irrelevant.) There is no real reason why the current battle engine can't work without some reevaluation of cooldown timers and stamina use. It would be more efficient than trying to build an entirely different combat system from scratch, seeing how many OTHER things you would have to alter and bastardize just to make it work.