Hi Everyone,

A few threads having been popping up along the lines of 'What should they include from FFXI', 'What would you like to see in FFXIV' etc. I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread to discuss specifically the combat system.

Here's what I would like to see:

Combos
More blood + Fatalities (perhaps if you finish a mob with a special attack you get some sort of buff?)
Skills Chains/Magic Bursts or something similar. I think it's important that there's something in there to reward a well co-ordinated group.
Important skills - I find alot of MMOs give you skills that you very rarely need to use. I'd like every skill to be important and would prefer quality over quantity.
Faster Combat with less downtime - Nobody likes sitting around for 5 minutes everytime you kill something while the group regains mana. I think downtime should be kept to a minimum.

That'll do for now but i'm sure i'll think of plenty of other things to add later.

Originally posted by NightThing

Hi Everyone,

A few threads having been popping up along the lines of 'What should they include from FFXI', 'What would you like to see in FFXIV' etc. I thought it would be a good idea to have a thread to discuss specifically the combat system.

Here's what I would like to see:

Combos
More blood + Fatalities (perhaps if you finish a mob with a special attack you get some sort of buff?)
Skills Chains/Magic Bursts or something similar. I think it's important that there's something in there to reward a well co-ordinated group.
Important skills - I find alot of MMOs give you skills that you very rarely need to use. I'd like every skill to be important and would prefer quality over quantity.
Faster Combat with less downtime - Nobody likes sitting around for 5 minutes everytime you kill something while the group regains mana. I think downtime should be kept to a minimum.

That'll do for now but i'm sure i'll think of plenty of other things to add later.

combos: please be more specific. multi hit weapon skills are in ffxi already. is that what u mean by combos?

blood and fatalaties: they arent really part of the nature of final fantasy. i wouldnt want to see it.

skillchains and magic bursts: probably will be in the game

important skills:  so far, i think almost every skill in ffxi has a good use.

faster combat: the combat speed in ffxi is good except its a grind. you only have the massive downtime your talking about if the mages in your party suck and dont know how to conserve mp.

the number one thing i would like to see is more individualism.  something like this final fantasy 12 except with a limit. so technically you could be a mage that wields a 2hnd sword and has offensive whitemagic and offensive black magic. on the other hand another person might be a mage that has defensive magic and blue magic and wears heavy armor.

this would give people the optertunity to become unique. im curious to see how parties would work out. but it would be like in ffxi where you have people being super specific on jobs they want for parties.

I don't think we would see magic bursting as it is in ffxi. The whole idea of Skill Chain and Magic burst take a lot of time and brain power to set up and the players of FFXI are too fucking lazy err too fucking stupid umm ... too fucking impatient  ..... they don't care anymore.

From what I am hearing things will be a lot more streamlined and will be more methodical. Also in the intro trailer we saw the Galka fighting multiple enemies, that is actual combat. It is going to be a system where there are multiple enemies attacking at once and it is not going to be in the FFXI light where you pull one mob, kill, and you have time to set up these chains and such. Ee are either going to see a system where we will never see mbs or they just won't be in the game OR we will see a system where it is almost mandated.

As far as different classes getting different weapons to play with ... blame these guys: D&D.

Originally posted by grafh

combos: please be more specific. multi hit weapon skills are in ffxi already. is that what u mean by combos?

blood and fatalaties: they arent really part of the nature of final fantasy. i wouldnt want to see it.

skillchains and magic bursts: probably will be in the game

important skills:  so far, i think almost every skill in ffxi has a good use.

faster combat: the combat speed in ffxi is good except its a grind. you only have the massive downtime your talking about if the mages in your party suck and dont know how to conserve mp.

the number one thing i would like to see is more individualism.  something like this final fantasy 12 except with a limit. so technically you could be a mage that wields a 2hnd sword and has offensive whitemagic and offensive black magic. on the other hand another person might be a mage that has defensive magic and blue magic and wears heavy armor.

this would give people the optertunity to become unique. im curious to see how parties would work out. but it would be like in ffxi where you have people being super specific on jobs they want for parties.

    

Why are you comparing all of my points to FFXI? You're obviously abit confused so perhaps I wasn't clear enough. The idea is to simply discuss/speculate what you would like the combat system to be like. The fact that that FFXI has combos and that every skill has a good use is completely irrelevant as it doesn't automatically mean that FFXIV will be the same.

Anyway, in response to some of your comments - I deliberately wasn't too specific with combos, no point going into too much detail with something because realistically it won't be like I describe. I would just like to see combos of some nature and not just repetitive single attacks. Spell combos could possible be quite interesting, perhaps certain spells could be linked together if you get the timing right and each cast is more difficult to time.

I sort of see your point about the blood and fatalities. It would have to depend on the mob. Instead of blood and fatalities let me rephrase it to 'better effects and finishing moves' :) (i'm sure we have nothing to worry about regarding the effects),

I don't like your idea of a mage wearing heavy armour. I think that would be stupid. I agree that more individualism would be good but not in that way. Mages are meant to be in cloth and robes, it helps define the class. You start putting mages in heavy armour and you take away the diversity of the classes.

No movement - I would like to see a bit more traditional combat system in FFXIV and by that I mean... disable movement. I don't care if it's turn based or "ATB" type combat, just as long as you can't move characters manually.

Speed - The speed of combat should be slow enough to allow strategic thinking.

Skills Chains/Magic Bursts/Combos - I don't want to see any of that... such systems are only needed when the skill usage is boring. Such systems also encourage players to do things which are not usually needed. Of course there are some people who like such systems, but isn't it better to remove all kinds of "instructions" and encourage players to think with their own brains. I mean... with such system players are just following instructions like "1st: A, 2nd: B, 3rd: C" and the reward is usually something which makes it worth of it. In other words players just have to believe those instructions if they want to deal a lot of damage... it doesn't encourage strategic thinking, in fact it does the opposite.

Level Up/Ability System/Job System - I'm fine with ANYTHING, as long as it's not copied from game X. Currently it looks like that they might want to copy the AP system from FFX-2... It also looks like that they want to copy the job system from FFXI... hopefully I'm wrong.

I would like a lot of control over my character, and hopefully moves getting unique animations.  One thing that drives me crazy about wow is you might have a toolbar of special attacks, but its the same (human example) jump up like an a-hole, and swing.

I enjoyed the skill chains also, but it needs to be a lot more fluid, sometimes it feels a bit clunky and some groups don't even use them anymore.

I would also like to see more enemies.  It feels a little strange having a group of 6 people just AMBUSH the hell out of a blue crab in the desert.

Originally posted by Masa1

No movement - I would like to see a bit more traditional combat system in FFXIV and by that I mean... disable movement. I don't care if it's turn based or "ATB" type combat, just as long as you can't move characters manually.

Speed - The speed of combat should be slow enough to allow strategic thinking.

Skills Chains/Magic Bursts/Combos - I don't want to see any of that... such systems are only needed when the skill usage is boring. Such systems also encourage players to do things which are not usually needed. Of course there are some people who like such systems, but isn't it better to remove all kinds of "instructions" and encourage players to think with their own brains. I mean... with such system players are just following instructions like "1st: A, 2nd: B, 3rd: C" and the reward is usually something which makes it worth of it. In other words players just have to believe those instructions if they want to deal a lot of damage... it doesn't encourage strategic thinking, in fact it does the opposite.

Level Up/Ability System/Job System - I'm fine with ANYTHING, as long as it's not copied from game X. Currently it looks like that they might want to copy the AP system from FFX-2... It also looks like that they want to copy the job system from FFXI... hopefully I'm wrong.

Interesting points. I know from your other thread that you're not a fan of FFXI and to be honest I don't think FFXIV will be what you're looking for either.

The 'No Movement' think I don't think is realistic. It just wouldn't work. Can you imagine fighting a boss in a 24 man raid with everyone bound to the spot or not having any real control over their character? There's lot of other reasons why it wouldn't work too but not worth going into.

Completely disagree with you on the skillchains/magic bursts too. I think they make things more interesting. They should be difficult to do so that's it is actually a 'skill' chain and not 'following instructions' as you put it. But the combat certainly needs things like this to reward a group that is working well together. In some cases being able to perform skill chains/magic bursts (or the ffxiv equivelent) could be the difference between a wipe and successful kill.

With regards to the job system. I think it is going to be similar and I think it was something the vast majority of players really liked about ffxi.

 I played FFXI for a long time before moving on to more technologically advanced games like EQ2 and WoW for starters...

On thing I LOVED about FFXI (and the thing I miss about most newer games) was the level of skill of most players I grouped with. Perhaps it wasnt so much skill as it was group mechanics.. everyone had a role to play and everyone knew that role. Good players knew that role well and the group system worked splendidly. However, I think what drove me away and drove many of my friends away was simplicity. Combat was simply too simple., there wasnt enough complexity to keep me and others interested. Skillchains and Magic Bursts helped, but they just weren't enough. This issue may have changed in recent years but I haven't played for at the least three years, so I can't coment on new content.

I would definately like to see more complexity come to FFXIV where combt is concerned and I have a few ideas for what could help with group mechanics such as skill combos, which ultimately are different than skillchains.

Skill Combos: If anyone remembers an old Sega Genesis game called Phantasy Star IV they had a system very much like what I'm talking about. Of the four characters in your group each had several individual skills but when timed correctly multiple character's skills would combine and form combo skills that did more damage and actually (numberwise and visually) created all new skills as a team. This is something that could really add to combat in any MMO where co-operation and timing could do more than just a little extra damage as a chain, but instead offer a group a new level of team play and damage dealing capabilities by allowing the group to gain group skills.  Perhaps even require "group level" where activating these combo skills and such increases the groups level opening new skill combo levels and perhaps increasing the experience the group gains as they work together and succeed in not dying 10,000 times.

Other than that, all i ask is for Square-Enix to make sure they attempt to make all jobs viable at all levels of gameplay. I remember when being a Dragoon in FFXI meant you capped at lvl 50 or so, and being a thief meant you capped at 60 because dark knights took your spot in nearly every group. This kind of game imbalance should be viewed as unacceptable when a character class/job becomes completely useless.

This is also a large reason why I quit FFXI, my two favorite jobs in that game were the thief and the dragoon, after my thief burned out at 60 I simply didnt see much point in playing any of the other jobs which I really didn't like all that much. On top of that Square-Enix never seemed too interested or motivated to fix those problems.

Originally posted by NightThing

The 'No Movement' think I don't think is realistic. It just wouldn't work. Can you imagine fighting a boss in a 24 man raid with everyone bound to the spot or not having any real control over their character? There's lot of other reasons why it wouldn't work too but not worth going into.

I can certainly imagine 24 man boss raid without movement.

You say that "No movement" doesn't work in MMORPGs? Just look at Atlantica Online. Although each player controls 9 characters (and max 3 players allowed in team). It could be 1 character per player, since there's no technical limitation. So you saying "doesn't work" only means that you refuse to let go of movement during combat which is usually present in MMORPGs.

It's no wonder that Atlantica Online is currently keeping the #2 spot. They did what Square Enix was afraid to do: a MMORPG which is actually different from the traditional MMORPG mass.

So next time just say "I don't like such system" instead of saying that "it doesn't work", if you can't proof it.

No movement = BORING.

You make it so players can't move during combat and then you miss out on a lot of reactive fighting like when a boss casts a spell you definately dont want to get caught in the middle off.  Some naxramas bosses come to mind there which are actually fun fights.

I know it's FF, and in most FF games you stand there and fight the mobs and bosses but this is online if you want to play a classic FF game go play one, if I wanted to stand still in combat that's what I'd do, I'd go play FFVII or X-2 or whatever.

Masa1 - Let me rephrase it then. I can't imagine the 'No movement' working in FFXIV. I haven't played Alantica so can't really comment on that. I can't say that I "dislike such a system" because I don't think i've played a big mmo with no movement, so maybe I would like it. But the way I picture the combat in FFXIV I think it will be much better with movement.

I agree with Haven's point, it would mean you probably couldn't dodge attacks and things like the positioning of party members during a fight would become irrelevant.

Except when casting AoE so there is a little something at least.

If there's one thing SE concentrates on when making a game, it's teamwork. Almost everything in FFXI required teamwork. I really hope they don't divert from that mentality with FFXIV. I really hate the direction modern MMO's have taken where it's just a group of individuals spamming their attacks rather than a team of people working together. It's like playing a basketball game where each player has their own ball and they all just keep shooting baskets rather than one ball being worked around the court to score the goal.

I would like to see SE stick with the skill chain idea. Perhaps take it one step further and have skill chains be more than just 2 or 3 attacks strung together. It would be cool if chains were more like 6 to 9 attacks. Perhaps have TP build slightly faster and skills not use up the full bar but still have it be much better results to perform the attacks in succession rather than just spammed at random.

I agree. We know that there's going to be more balance between solo and party play but I hope they keep it so there's still more benefit to grouping up and players are encouraged to work together.

Originally posted by NightThing

I agree. We know that there's going to be more balance between solo and party play but I hope they keep it so there's still more benefit to grouping up and players are encouraged to work together.

Well I think you're reading too much into what they stated.  They said it would be more casual friendly, but that doesn't necessarily mean more solo friendly.  If anyone can find a way to make grouping more casual friendly, it's SE.  Perhaps they meant finding and forming groups will happen quickly and you can get to your hunting grounds faster.  Or maybe they'll incorporate something along the lines of Mythic's public quest idea and make it work right.  Who knows?

Originally posted by Masa1

Originally posted by NightThing

The 'No Movement' think I don't think is realistic. It just wouldn't work. Can you imagine fighting a boss in a 24 man raid with everyone bound to the spot or not having any real control over their character? There's lot of other reasons why it wouldn't work too but not worth going into.

I can certainly imagine 24 man boss raid without movement.

You say that "No movement" doesn't work in MMORPGs? Just look at Atlantica Online. Although each player controls 9 characters (and max 3 players allowed in team). It could be 1 character per player, since there's no technical limitation. So you saying "doesn't work" only means that you refuse to let go of movement during combat which is usually present in MMORPGs.

It's no wonder that Atlantica Online is currently keeping the #2 spot. They did what Square Enix was afraid to do: a MMORPG which is actually different from the traditional MMORPG mass.

So next time just say "I don't like such system" instead of saying that "it doesn't work", if you can't proof it.

Actually I think they were right to say it doesnt work because we arent talking about Atlantica Online. We are talking about Final Fantasy XIV. Why it doesnt work? Thief class, there is no strategy in standing still. When you make people stand still it takes the fun and strategy from Sneak attack out of the game especialy if Trick Attack lingers as well. If you wanna play a game like Atlantica then go play Atlantica if its the #2 spot then what makes it bad that you would be looking at FFXIV. No offense but its pretty rude to tell someone what to say. Everyone else here can play devil's advocate too, not just you.

My point is that there are classes in MMOs as well as Final Fantasy that have abilities that would be gimped or boring if in a system like Atlantica. Why would you even not want movement in combat? That just screams "i'm not good enough to control my characters movement while keeping track of my abilities and spells". Having movement in an MMO brings a lot more strategy to the table. I understand the old FF games didnt have movement in combat, trust me ive played them all many times. Although you have to understand that most people find that kind of thing boring in an MMO.

I admit it works in old FF games and I like it but there is a lot of different in me controling one character that cant do shit and has to set there and take every lump he is delt and controling 3-5 characters in a FF game not in MMO setting. In an MMO if i'm a THF i can run behind the mob to avoid that nasty poison cone attack the crawler does. In the MMO setting you talk about if it doesnt miss me i'm just screwed. It sounds to me like this takes away more options then it gives to players and in the MMO world taking things away from people and giving them shit in return doesnt go over so well with the playerbase. Food for thought.

Originally posted by grafh 

<snip>

the number one thing i would like to see is more individualism.  something like this final fantasy 12 except with a limit. so technically you could be a mage that wields a 2hnd sword and has offensive whitemagic and offensive black magic. on the other hand another person might be a mage that has defensive magic and blue magic and wears heavy armor.

this would give people the optertunity to become unique.

<snip>    

this^^

I'm still looking for a game that allows me to create my own class (I'm not talking about skill-based games where you train whatever skills you want, and everyone is the same generic class with the option to train anything you want).

At character creation: you choose your weapon proficiencies, armor proficiencies, type of skills you want to use, etc...

FFXI kind of gave us the option to create our own classes with the sub-job system (Runes of Magic and Guild Wars also offer this).  In FFXI, you couldn't be a WAR/BLM and remain effective in a group.  There were specific jobs that worked well with other specific jobs (WAR/NIN, NIN/WAR, PLD/WAR, BLM/WHM, SMN/WHM, etc....).  If you didn't use one of the "socially acceptable" job combinations, noone wanted you in their group.

Originally posted by xiirot

Originally posted by grafh 

<snip>

the number one thing i would like to see is more individualism.  something like this final fantasy 12 except with a limit. so technically you could be a mage that wields a 2hnd sword and has offensive whitemagic and offensive black magic. on the other hand another person might be a mage that has defensive magic and blue magic and wears heavy armor.

this would give people the optertunity to become unique.

<snip>    

 

this^^

I'm still looking for a game that allows me to create my own class (I'm not talking about skill-based games where you train whatever skills you want, and everyone is the same generic class with the option to train anything you want).

At character creation: you choose your weapon proficiencies, armor proficiencies, type of skills you want to use, etc...

FFXI kind of gave us the option to create our own classes with the sub-job system (Runes of Magic and Guild Wars also offer this).  In FFXI, you couldn't be a WAR/BLM and remain effective in a group.  There were specific jobs that worked well with other specific jobs (WAR/NIN, NIN/WAR, PLD/WAR, BLM/WHM, SMN/WHM, etc....).  If you didn't use one of the "socially acceptable" job combinations, noone wanted you in their group.

I actually played a WAR/RDM for a while and did quite well at tanking.  I was accepted into groups to tank but they were mostly hesistant to let me in.  I did do well and wish I had kept that up...im now playing EQ2...I may go try out FFXI again though because it is awesome with the ability to mix and match jobs.

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Originally posted by xiirot

FFXI kind of gave us the option to create our own classes with the sub-job system (Runes of Magic and Guild Wars also offer this).  In FFXI, you couldn't be a WAR/BLM and remain effective in a group.  There were specific jobs that worked well with other specific jobs (WAR/NIN, NIN/WAR, PLD/WAR, BLM/WHM, SMN/WHM, etc....).  If you didn't use one of the "socially acceptable" job combinations, noone wanted you in their group.

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Hopefully they will address the unacceptable combos. I like how Runes of Magic added special elite skills that each combo got so they all had something worthwhile about them. I remember PLD/WHM didn't work at all in FFXI, but Knight/Priest (pretty much the equivalent) in RoM works just fine.

It seems to me that a no-movement combat system would be a giant step backwards in world believability.