SkillChain Concept Discussion
I have been working on an idea to ask SE to bring SkillChain 2.0 into FFXIV. And bringing it here first to get good feedback before posting my final draft on the official site. Reason I chose here is because I know you guys are long time players of both SE mmos and I want pure feedback with knowledge of both SE FF mmos.
I would love to see the skillchain system be real time and accessible at all times. But certain properties of the current combat system might prevent this from happening.
I am asking for feedback here. I want the system to promote party synergy, prevent abuse, and make sure the cost of playing in synergy vastly outweighs ignoring it for those brief seconds. Secondly, I want you to help me come up with a visible and intuitive way that a player can easily communicate and read what skills to use to properly to execute skillchains and magic burst.
A pro for FFXI in comparison to all other mmorpgs with party synergy combos in it. FFXI was the only one where you could do most common weaponskills and spells to achieve it, it added complexity to the combat and a sense of comradery, and it added a fun aspect. A con was it was poorly balanced around light and dark being too powerful in comparison to the others and there was no visible and intuitive way to communicate and read execution other than text chat. Please help me flesh out an idea for the best party synergy system ever created.
Building The Ultimate SkillChain System
All modern MMO games have one serious weakness: every player in a party receives equal share of experience and gold regardless his impact into the fight. The reward system in all MMOs does not stimulate players to exert oneself. You can act well or not to act at all. Sometimes you can see a lazy player who just sneaks around and receives experience and gold or clears without even trying to participate in the group’s action. I see FFXIV changing the situation.
Introducing Proficiency
Proficiency is a special resource in FFXIV that gives you several valuable benefits. To accumulate it you must perform well in combat. You receive Proficiency for successful combos , successful blocking, interrupting, attacking, dodging the red, and other actions. It is an indicator of how good you are. Your proficiency build up from each fight depends on the amount of proficiency acquired during an encounter.
Proficiency rewards increase proportionally to the complexity of the fight and your proper actions during the fight. If you use your skills in time, and react quick you receive proficiency points. So you are interested in getting as many proficiency as you can because you can access the skillchain system more often.
Direct rewards are great but it is only one side of proficiency benefits. Proficiency points are earned through participating in combat but they also help you to defeat enemies quicker. Each class has its unique limit breaks allowing huge variety of special attacks, summons or other actions. They are powerful and can be recharged only by accumulating Proficiency. The more proficiency you receive the quicker you recharge your Proficiency meter which grants access to skillchains at the more common level and limit breaks on the higher scale.
How to earn more Proficiency points?
Master your class and try to react according to situation. Interrupt enemies, use synergy, use your defensive buffs at the right time, dodge the red and do all you can to maximize your efficiency.
Enchained System
I would love to see the skillchain system be real time and accessible at all times. But certain properties of the current combat system might prevent this from happening. The enchained system is a proposal I put forward if you think real time at all times would mess up the meta too much.
Gaining proficiency will fill up a secondary meter besides the Limit Break Bar called the Enchained Bar. Upon filling the Enchained bar the enemy is susceptible to skillchains and magic burst. Upon gaining enchained status and releasing/activating the bar. For 30 Seconds, all GCD and personal skill combinations are removed,TP/MP cost are increased by 20%, damage is increased by 20% for successive skillchains and magic burst for the duration for all party members who successfully use the Enchained system and skilchain and magic burst. The meta during the stagger sequence is party synergy and dynamics versus personal player glory like the Limit Break system or Character rotations.
The Skillchain Rules
Each user succeeding a user in the skillchain and magic burst timeline has 6 seconds to effectively skillchain or magic burst.
Any finisher skillchain can be executed by as many players that react to the initiated skillchain in time.
Any magic burst can be executed by as many players that react to the finisher skillchain in time.
Any weaponskill used that does not resonate with the initiated skillchain, the finisher skillchain that follows, or the magic burst that follows the finisher will neither proc increased potencies on the current skillchain or interrupt others chance to finish the current skillchain.
Successfully making group skillchains and burst can extend the default enchained timer by 5 seconds each successful skillchain and burst increasing the duration of enchained to an additional 30 seconds maximum.
How the Skillchain 2.0 System Works in Practice
1.Every weaponskill will have a resonating property(the initiator sequence) which will be color coded hotbars to indicate what chain is being started or what property is used upon activating a weaponskill
2.Certain weaponskills will combo with the initiator’s weaponskill, the second weaponskill in the chain is called the finisher.Which will be color coded hotbars to indicate what chain is being finished. An appropriate icon will pop up after a character initiates a skillchain for any players with weaponskills indicating what skills synergize with the initiated skillchain. The player who attempts a finisher skillchain has 6 seconds after the initiator skillchain has been activated to effectively skillchain.
3.If a mage is present certain spells will combo(magic burst) with a skillchain created by the initiator and finisher provided the elemental properties of the skillchain and magic burst align.The spell icons in a magic users hotbars will also be color coded to indicate what magic burst synergize with the skillchain built by the weapon skillers. An appropriate icon will pop up in the users field of view indicating what type of spells synergize with the finished skillchain. The player who attempts a magic burst has 6 seconds after the finisher skillchain has been activated to effectively burst.
The Visual Guide To How I propose Skillchain 2.0 in game
[img=http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s495/fourplay4/Slide1_2.jpg]
[img=http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s495/fourplay4/Slide2_1.jpg]
[link=http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s495/fourplay4/Slide3_1.jpg]
[img=http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s495/fourplay4/Slide4_1.jpg]
[img=http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s495/fourplay4/Slide5_1.jpg]
[img=http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s495/fourplay4/Slide6_1.jpg]
[img=http://i1054.photobucket.com/albums/s495/fourplay4/Slide7.jpg]
Let me know what you guys and girls think. Help me revise this to make it as awesome as possible before my final draft. Also it has been awhile since I actively used the FFXI skillchain system so I may lack some knowledge about it. I purposely renamed one of the properties to Combustion in the level 1 chains because I thought it sounded cooler.
Edited, Aug 3rd 2016 12:44am by sandpark
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While neat in theory it would never, ever work in this game. The battle system is far to reliant on strict rotations to ever allow for that type of player interaction.
Scillhains worked in FFXI (for a time anyway) because FFXI had an... empty... enough battle system for it. You had the occasional spell or ability or WS, but most of the time you just sitting there waiting for something. Even mages usually weren't casting every second of the fight. In that situation waiting and extra few seconds for TP or to time a MB wasn't a big deal.
That's not the case in FFXIV though. Here's you're pressing buttons literally every second you're in combat. The entire concept of "wait for someone else to do a thing" doesn't exist. Not on a consistent basis anyway. (There's a little synergy right now, but mostly in the form of buffs. DRGs buff BRDs, etc. There's no real interaction there.) The only time you'd ever see a SC or MB is if abilities just happened to line up as people used them individually.
Other issues with this proposed plan:
It's insanely complicated. I read that entire post twice and looked at all of those pictures and I'm still don't really understand it.
Many of those things would be literally impossible to implement. Things like "gain resources by dodging things or using defensive CDs at the right time." How could the game possibly determine things like that? Especially since every phase of every fight is different. Does it only count if you were in the red but them moved out of it? What if you're a BRD who was never in range of that 10 yard AoE to begin with? Are you missing out? How on earth would you ever balance that?
Scillhains worked in FFXI (for a time anyway) because FFXI had an... empty... enough battle system for it. You had the occasional spell or ability or WS, but most of the time you just sitting there waiting for something. Even mages usually weren't casting every second of the fight. In that situation waiting and extra few seconds for TP or to time a MB wasn't a big deal.
That's not the case in FFXIV though. Here's you're pressing buttons literally every second you're in combat. The entire concept of "wait for someone else to do a thing" doesn't exist. Not on a consistent basis anyway. (There's a little synergy right now, but mostly in the form of buffs. DRGs buff BRDs, etc. There's no real interaction there.) The only time you'd ever see a SC or MB is if abilities just happened to line up as people used them individually.
Other issues with this proposed plan:
It's insanely complicated. I read that entire post twice and looked at all of those pictures and I'm still don't really understand it.
Many of those things would be literally impossible to implement. Things like "gain resources by dodging things or using defensive CDs at the right time." How could the game possibly determine things like that? Especially since every phase of every fight is different. Does it only count if you were in the red but them moved out of it? What if you're a BRD who was never in range of that 10 yard AoE to begin with? Are you missing out? How on earth would you ever balance that?
75 Rabbit/75 Sheep/75 Coeurl/75 Eft/75 Raptor/75 Hippogryph/75 Puk
75 Scorpion/75 Wamoura/75 Pixie/75 Peiste/64 Sabotender
51 Bird/41 Mandragora/40 Bee/37 Crawler/37 Bat
Items no one cares about: O
Missions no one cares about: O
Crafts no one cares about: O
75 Scorpion/75 Wamoura/75 Pixie/75 Peiste/64 Sabotender
51 Bird/41 Mandragora/40 Bee/37 Crawler/37 Bat
Items no one cares about: O
Missions no one cares about: O
Crafts no one cares about: O
Karlina wrote:
While neat in theory it would never, ever work in this game. The battle system is far to reliant on strict rotations to ever allow for that type of player interaction.
Scillhains worked in FFXI (for a time anyway) because FFXI had an... empty... enough battle system for it. You had the occasional spell or ability or WS, but most of the time you just sitting there waiting for something. Even mages usually weren't casting every second of the fight. In that situation waiting and extra few seconds for TP or to time a MB wasn't a big deal.
That's not the case in FFXIV though. Here's you're pressing buttons literally every second you're in combat. The entire concept of "wait for someone else to do a thing" doesn't exist. Not on a consistent basis anyway. (There's a little synergy right now, but mostly in the form of buffs. DRGs buff BRDs, etc. There's no real interaction there.) The only time you'd ever see a SC or MB is if abilities just happened to line up as people used them individually.
Other issues with this proposed plan:
It's insanely complicated. I read that entire post twice and looked at all of those pictures and I'm still don't really understand it.
Many of those things would be literally impossible to implement. Things like "gain resources by dodging things or using defensive CDs at the right time." How could the game possibly determine things like that? Especially since every phase of every fight is different. Does it only count if you were in the red but them moved out of it? What if you're a BRD who was never in range of that 10 yard AoE to begin with? Are you missing out? How on earth would you ever balance that?
Scillhains worked in FFXI (for a time anyway) because FFXI had an... empty... enough battle system for it. You had the occasional spell or ability or WS, but most of the time you just sitting there waiting for something. Even mages usually weren't casting every second of the fight. In that situation waiting and extra few seconds for TP or to time a MB wasn't a big deal.
That's not the case in FFXIV though. Here's you're pressing buttons literally every second you're in combat. The entire concept of "wait for someone else to do a thing" doesn't exist. Not on a consistent basis anyway. (There's a little synergy right now, but mostly in the form of buffs. DRGs buff BRDs, etc. There's no real interaction there.) The only time you'd ever see a SC or MB is if abilities just happened to line up as people used them individually.
Other issues with this proposed plan:
It's insanely complicated. I read that entire post twice and looked at all of those pictures and I'm still don't really understand it.
Many of those things would be literally impossible to implement. Things like "gain resources by dodging things or using defensive CDs at the right time." How could the game possibly determine things like that? Especially since every phase of every fight is different. Does it only count if you were in the red but them moved out of it? What if you're a BRD who was never in range of that 10 yard AoE to begin with? Are you missing out? How on earth would you ever balance that?
Well the Enchained System is the solution to that. When the party Enchained bar fills all GCD and personal skill combos(personal skill rotations) are omitted for that period of 30 seconds.
Games such as GW2 or ESO are just as fast if not faster than XIV and they have a group synergy system.The only argument left would be player rotations for combos, which I think if the Enchained System could fix if we didn't want it real time. Personal player rotations should take a back seat to group synergy anyways in a multiplayer game, don't you think?
It basically works just like XI skillchain except, there are visual indicator icons in hotbars and on screen so no guessing or communication issues when it comes into play. Want to do Combustion? Use a skill in the color code of red. Second player has a specific color icon appear on screen indicating it is time to skillchain if you use appropriate colors. After the second player participates a specific color coded icon appears on screen indicating it is time to burst the skillchain if you use the appropriate colored skills.
A similar system already works in another game that about works perfectly. And XIV already tracks some of this as well when building limit breaks. As for the red it wouldn't track if you moved out or was already out of the red. It only cares you didn't get hit by the red.
Thanks for your concern. I hope It made more sense after this post. Because if I can't convey what I am proposing, I can't get your input or feedback on how to make it work and work more fluidly.
http://elderscrollsonline.info/guides/finesse
Is it still confusing to give feedback or does no one want to see skillchains? Asking because not many comments have been said.
Edited, Aug 3rd 2016 3:39pm by sandpark
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