More involved combat tp gain, difficulty, movement.Follow

I feel that the combat in FFXIV would be a lot more fun if combat was more intricate. If some how SE could make tp gain faster giving the player a constant action or option when in combat would be the first thing to consider. Down time in between skills is an issue for me. So the cool downs should also be shortened. This could be counter balanced by giving mobs more health and maybe making them more difficult so that the increase of tp would be more valuable and needed. This would encourage more tp management and therefore a deeper system mechanic. I like the strategic placement while on the battlefield in relation to classes and feel it adds great depth to the game. I also like the combo system and would like to see more combos and maybe skill chains in the future encouraging team work and strategic thinking when approaching a mob.

An example of this would be in the Fighting game genre where meter management is detrimental to the successful outcome of the match. If you burn through your meter you loose both offensive and defensive options.

Another aspect of combat that I feel would greatly increase the fun factor of combat in FFXIV would be the need to dodge enemy attacks and patterns specifically boss fights. A good example of this could be if a mob has an aoe that at the last second showed a shadow of were the objects would strike you would have to move out of the way or be hit with a negative status effect and damage. This would keep players on their toes and make combat that much more interesting.

I feel that FFXIV is on the right path for success and took a lot of good things about MMORPG's and made them more involved such as the crafting. The storyline of FFXIV in my opinion feels more like a traditional final fantasy game than any of the current Final Fantasies that have been released since Final Fantasy X. The only thing I find lacking is involved combat. I believe that this changes can be made while keeping the traditional feel of the series and without loosing FFXIV original identity.

Please give me your feed back and let SE know if you would like to see these changes all or any in FFXIV. Once I have enough support both pro/against I will link this post to the suggestion forums for SE to look over.

Thank you for your time
Tsubaki Kuranai (Ragnarok)

Edited, Apr 23rd 2012 7:27pm by Schmidtnurface

Edited, Apr 23rd 2012 8:11pm by Schmidtnurface

For sure I will do that. I watched a lot of endgame footage and though the gameplay is more involved I feel there is a lot of downtime between waiting for cooldowns and imo this is probably the biggest issue out of them all. I also watched a video of the ifrit fight and the battle was more about standing still in a certain place versus actively dodging attacks. If you force the player to constantly being aware of patterns and their surroundings they will in return be more involved instead of sitting there auto attacking waiting for cooldowns.

I suppose what I am getting at is that combat should feel like combat and a seemless experience versus wait and hit buttons.

Edited, Apr 23rd 2012 8:15pm by Schmidtnurface

I'm just curious, what job was the video capper playing? I'm betting it was a DoM. Most if not all of the footage I've seen of end game combat has all been capped by a person playing a DoM class. IF you ever see footage of end game combat capped by something other than DoM or maybe tank, I'm sure you'll see that they have included everything you've mentioned that you want them to include. As an example, while playing a non ranged DD class like monk or lancer during ifrit (hard mode) battle, you really don't have time to just stand there and wait for your cool downs to wind down. You're busy paying attention to the attack pattern of ifrit and waiting to see what special attack he uses. Ifrit battle is all about his attack pattern and changing what you are doing based on what he throws at you next. Moogle is a bit different. It's way more hectic to deal with than ifrit is. It's nice and easy for the first half of the battle, but then all hell breaks loose and you have ten different things you have to pay attention to. I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised when you get there.

Geez, I almost had a seizure with all the flashing lights and bursting particle effects in that video. I seriously don't think that half a second went by in that 24 minute clip without a sizable explosion occurring on the target! (* _ * )

More on topic, though, button-spam is not the answer to interesting combat; button-spam makes for tedious combat. We used to have a battle system that required the player to ceaselessly hit keys and the majority hated it so much that SE altered the pace of battles. It may be fun for ten or fifteen minutes but, after about an hour, most people have had enough with it... oh, kind of like explosions.


Edited, Apr 24th 2012 1:09am by KaneKitty

What is with my computer....

Edited, Apr 24th 2012 4:36am by Schmidtnurface

a billion times.. =(

Edited, Apr 24th 2012 4:36am by Schmidtnurface

And a stable, lag-free connection to the servers. From all around the world.

I've never been able to understand why people kept saying cool downs on the stamina bar was wasted time. With auto-attack you have weapon delay, which is the same as the cool downs in terms of logic, except with the stamina bar you actually had full control. That argument seems illogical. If anything, all it needed was maybe a little rehash to make the stamina bar regen faster or add haste (since it's been in the game for a long time, some bombs have it) which again, is the same basics to auto-attack.

Personally I loved the stamina bar. It's the main reason I left FFXI for FFXIV but that was my personal liking of course.

Sad to say the mobs still die before you see the animations of your attacks. It gets annoying to see that while leveling in Natalan for 6 hours of hitting at nothingness.

I enjoyed and saw potential in the alpha power gauge system. I didn't like the stamina system in it's XIV form. They tried to make a hybrid of hotkey cooldowns and a stamina system and it didn't work. Why not?

1.Too many button presses to initiate a small selection of redundant commands. That works well in hack and slash games. But in an mmo far more tactical depth is expected.

2.It needed a queue system similar to XIII but not identical. It would have been cool if you could queue up 3-5 commands that would fire off sequentially and auto repeated until you selected a different queue. Think of it like the mortal kombat finisher moves. The 0-9 keys would be your queue selectors. And each command would have it's own tp cost represented in the queue. XIII was similar to the Legend of Legaia game. It need confirmation for every round of combat with no sequential queues. Of course there would have to be tp modification to make it flow properly.

3.The whole combat system would need to be based around the queue system. Including the magic system. Each magic bar would have it's corresponding mp cost represented in command bars.

There would be an option for manual selection for those times or people who want to micromanage everything.
Imo action gauge>a different stamina system>auto attack>XIV old stamina system if latency or repsonsiveness isn't horrible. Others have their own opinions ;p.

Edited, Apr 29th 2012 3:56pm by sandpark