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Limit Breaks Underwhelming?
rhavok
Member Posts: 117
Let me preface this by saying that I have not really looked into limits that much, my experiences come from 3 different dungeon runs. This past beta weekend I ran Sastasha Seagrot, Tam-Tera Deepcroft, and Copperbell Mines for the first time. They were my first light party experience with the game which means Limit Breaks!
So if my understanding is correct, the limit break fills up based on party actions, such as stunning a boss during a spell cast. Once the bar is filled up it is used by one party member and the limit is based on the role using it. Tank increases party defense, Melee Damage does single target damage, Magic Damage dealers do AoE, and Healers do a full party heal. (I think that info is correct, feel free to correct me or add to it)
Coming from years of skill chains and magic bursts in FFXI, this system feels a little... blah. I was hoping for something a little more interactive I guess. When massive skill chains and magic bursts happened it was a thing of beauty, and they required total party coordination to pull off. Some were so complex that a Black Mage would have to start casting their magic burst spell before the skill chain even started in order to burst said skill chain after it was executed.
But I digress, I see no reason why a system like this couldn't have been in FFXIV too. Each character have a limit bar, and then each players limits played off of one another for greater effects. The current system seems a little anti-climatic in my opinion. Am I alone in this thought?
(Also, I realize this is not FFXI 2.0, and that alone is justification for the system's current mechanics.)
Comments
if enough people complain about it im sure it will be changed i havent experinced it yet cause im not pushing in beta cause the characters will be wiped so : )
I agree they are pretty meh. Rather then coordination and teamwork like with skill chaining it usually comes down to the same melee class using the LB. There is no strategy to it at all.
While running dungeons with friends it was always me using the LB because I was a Pugilist and there was never any reason to use the other LB. This may change for raids or the endgame dungeons that are (hopefully) harder but as it stands it's pretty boring.
Yeah, I don't know if it should be changed really. I honestly would rather Square stuck to their guns and said this is how the game is, deal with it. Too many MMO's bend at the will of the playerbase now and we don't always know what is best.
There is nothing wrong with the current system and depending how demanding it is to fill up a gauge, it could be a nice new feature. I guess I just had the wrong idea of what it was going in to it, and because of that I was let down. It is no one's fault but my own.
And yes, I totally feel you on the waiting part. I should have done the same thing. I have invested way too much time into a character that is going to be deleted. I started out with a class and race I have no intention of playing in release, but I have grown quite attached to my Mithra Gladiator. The immersion factor makes it super easy to get attached to the character in my opinion.
That's right, I called her a Mithra, wanna fight about it!
I was kinda disappointed in it at first, too. I also played XI for many years and loved the skillchain system.
However, throughout the fights I've been doing (the dungeons you mentioned, as well as Brayflox's Longstop (very fun dungeon, that), and the Ifrit fight, I've found that the way Limit Breaks work are actually pretty nice, in a few different ways.
For one, the effects they provide are significant. I've helped to turn a fight that could have gone either way squarely in our favor by using the Melee LB on my DRG. Our WHM saved our asses by using their Healing LB at a point where we were having a rough time during one fight. The Tank's ability to put up a massive Defense boost also helps considerably. So it's a very situational thing. As you learn the fights, you start to get a feel of what different enemies are capable of, and how you can counter or deal with them. You then choose the appropriate LB for the situation. So it definitely becomes a tactical thing.
There's a second level to it, where LBs become Tiered. If you're early enough on in a fight, and things are going smoothly, you can "save up" your LB gauge and get to a full 2 bars (haven't had a 3 bar yet), but if an "oh shit" situation happens (as they sometimes do), you can use the 1 full bar you have as an emergency tactic to get things back on track.
The fact that player tactics and such (canceling enemy attacks, successfully pulling off combos, etc) increase your LB gauge more quickly, it encourages players to play more strategically and to not just mash 1,2,3 over and over. It encourages you to pay attention to what the enemy is doing, so you can use that Stun ability at the right time, etc. It actually encourages and rewards tactful gameplay, in a way that Skill Chains in XI never really did.
To elaborate on that, for a skill chain to go off accurately, you had to have everyone coordinated and have everything timed perfectly for it to work, that is on top of everyone having gained enough TP to use their WS. All you have to do to gain TP is hit, or be hit. The net effect of a SC/MB is that the strategy is contained entirely within the SC itself. Everything else is normal combat.
With Limit Breaks, the LBs are the reward for strategic combat overall. You fill the bar through hitting and being hit, but you fill it much faster through tactical and strategic gameplay. So the net effect is that people will want to play more carefully, choose their abilities more deliberately and pay a lot more attention to the fight... it encourages situational awareness. The payoff is having one significant ability with substantial payoff. Functionally, it's kinda like blending the concept behind XI's Skill Chains, with its 2 Hour abilities.
I can only imagine that as more challenging fights are introduced, the importance of filling that LB gauge up quickly, and then choosing the right LB for the situation, will become more and more important. And that we'll have new LBs to work with.
It also occurs to me that they *could* work a combo system into the LBs. Where if you have 3 bars full, one person's attack would use 1 bar, while another's would use the remaining 2, etc. Not sure if that's a plan, but it's certainly a possibility.
And really, I don't think a system like XI's Skill Chains and Magic Bursts would fly well with people these days. Hell, even in XI people stopped using them.. much to my disappointment, as I loved doing those. I think LB is the best alternative to such a system as I can imagine and is actually a very intelligently designed system. I'm really liking it.
And hey... it's distinctly FF, is it not?
I found myself in the same situation as you did. In fact during Copperbell we had a limit that was never used because our DPS couldn't figure out how to trigger it, despite us telling him how to access the button >.>
There was zero reason for me to use it as tank, and the conjurer wasn't feeling too stressed over healing. As a result, the limit bar just sat there full for most of the dungeon run. Not wanting it to go to waste the CNJ used it on the last boss just so we could see the effect.
Coordinating skillchains and magic bursts were literally the only redeeming qualities I found in FFXI's combat. And that kind of cross-player coordination is the only compelling argument I can come up with for slow paced MMO combat. (Spend some time with GW2's fast paced, action, zipping in, dodging out, non-stop casting combat and you'll quickly come to realize that speed of gameplay and careful coordination are at odds.) But Limit Breaks don't seem to offer any of that same timing and coordination. It's an extremely passive experience for anyone who isn't pressing the limit break button; and even for that person, it becomes just another single button press on the action bar.
For the dungeons I ran, it also didn't matter who used the limit or when. DPS usually just took it to feel good about seeing some flashy attacks. I saw a bunch of nostalgic Bravers. While I suppose there will eventually be scenarios for certain encounters where the group might plan to save the tanky or healing limit break for a certain moment of the fight, that would still require bare minimum strategy and virtually no coordination or timing.
I agree the whole combat system is not FF,it is Yoshi's ideas he got from several other games and some were before he came on board.I truly believe this Yoshi guy is really smart and takes hi s job serious,he will do a good job even though the game will never be FFXI,the core design is already set in stone.Can Limit Break be improved,most certainly and i believe he will probably make changes to it in the future.
The combat over all lacks in high spike damage .
The whole game has a different approach really,fights were designed to be a tad faster,so the game plays a lot like all the other MMORPG's and less like FFXI.If you for example had your MB's that would be high dmg that followed a Renkai by even more dmg,that is your high spike dmg,mobs in this game would die too fast.Hence the whole philosophy was changed to lower dmg ,fewer choices,easier kills.The FEWER was again to support the faster design approach,no time to create spells and abilities at every level and takes too much time to test a system that would have all sorts of variations on combat,simply limiting the whole system made it easier for them.This is exactly what other games are doing as well.
I might add that it is not all Yoshi,most of the design was before he came on board.He himself stated that most of their staff believed the design was to be different than FFXI and that alone was it's mistake.Instead of taking the good from FFXI,they just wanted to make it different,i guess to warrant selling a new game and not coming across as nothing more than a FFXI redo with better graphics.
Personally i love the FF universe and the way they tell their stories and CS's.There is always passion in the characters and lots to do.I will like the game even though it will not be FFXI,but i have seen nothing come close to FFXI anyhow and never will as all games are going streamline systems.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I wish they would develop this system more they have some really good ideas on the official forums.....
I would love to see individual limit breaks for each member and combo limit breaks that can be chained for bigger effects......
Theres a couple of threads on the beta forum asking for individual LB's to be implemented among other improvements. Might be a good idea to put forth your feelings there as you guys in this thread are not the only ones commenting on the validity and usefulness of the LB system.
Here's the main one.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ARR-Test/threads/56546-Enhancements-to-Save-the-Current-Battle-System-INDIVIDUAL-Limit-Break-PARTY-Combos!
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