13 Mechanics.

In trying to come up with various ways to define and differentiate classes, it's become clearer and clearer that whatever I do is going to be dependent more than anything else on the universal combat system (including the parts always there, but perhaps not available to every class).  Traditional 'abilities' with set cooldowns, damage, types, conditions, etc, and their composition within a class's rotations can certainly help to create a unique feel to a class, but on the whole the points that differentiate the class are based on more general limitations than the individual abilities themselves.  These limitations are all essentially branches from simple derivations of the combat system at large, and the more branches that system supports the more ways there are to differentiate classes and aesthetically and mechanically fulfill the roles expected of them.

I've made 13 example mechanics to try to show the extent of what can be done with advancements to the combat system at large, rather than worrying about individual traditional 'abilities'.  I'll be using some example spells.  Given my choices it might be obvious which MMO I've been thinking about lately...

**Examples and explanations coming later in edit.  I just wanted to make sure 13 really was enough to do virtually anything.**

(I) A. Timing dynamics

(II) a. Range systems

(III) B. Ability mixing
Additional control mechanisms needed--cast on button-release instead of button-press

(IV) b. Unique procedurals
Additional control mechanisms needed: none (may change order and timing, but no extra buttons needed)

(V) C. Non-unit-possessed systems

(VI) c. Systems targetable

(VII) D. Missile systems use interceptable non-unit system lines that hold simultaneous equations.

(VIII) d. Missile systems interceptable, deflectable, shearable

(IX) E. Reactive queuing

(X) e. "Stancing" for Intent / Shaping spell effect by overarching purpose modifiers

(XI) ee. Purpose-granting and non-purposed-lending.

(XII) [(4)b and (10)e together] General stancing / Fields

(XIII) "Store" queuing.  Eventive-function effect transfer, post- and simultaneous-.

(x) Total customizability of action-setting

(y) Calculation directions can be held by an action or its effect.  All values (be them quantifiable, normally non-quantifiable, percentile, derivative, flat, positive, or negative) can be equated to each other by some rate through these directions.

(yy) Certain actions that do not directly carry directions may still take different places in the order of operations based on aspect, stance, or other passive modifiers.

Fundamental Class Revisions

Fundamental Class Revisions

Foreword

[HB]This will probably be one of the most hit-or-miss of my topics, primarily because it is a rather huge change.  TBS, it breaks a lot of the separation of classes, allows personal pursuit of essentially custom abilities and jobs, while retaining true-blood jobs as things achieved, rather than merely granted by quest-lines.  A Red Mage should be a Red Mage at heart too.  In my system, it will take that to become one.  And yes, this is a pipe-dream.  It’s just one for which I did create a solid path to the beginning of implementation, though I’d now need to dredge much of it up from a poor memory.[/HB]

Parallels

[HB]This system is heavily tied to:

• A full combat system revamp
• An original interpretation of material befitting FFXIV’s world lore
• (And a piece I’m now reconstructing similar to Battle Regimen)
• The same priorities in construction are used in the revised crafting system and improvements to world interaction.[/HB]

Basics

[HB]Classes carry numerous paths of learning encapsulated by their weapon field.  These may on occasion overlap, and will behave as such.  Learning in one field can be used in others that make use of those concepts.  Additionally, some learning can be simultaneous.  You are not always leveling one class at a time.  Connections to Disciple of Land classes (including the added Scholar, Mechanist, and Tamer) are especially versatile.

These “concepts” are mechanically and thematically driven.  They are not abilities in and of themselves.  Rather, they are new levels to note of control or leverage into a fight. 

Abilities can be developed by the players themselves.  The width of their uses should be enough to complete the gameplay experiences in combat as the players develop.

Ability scaling as such is a matter of adding complexity, especially in long-term strategy without developing an urge to pull out one’s hair.  Favorite and powerful abilities become more predominant without eclipsing the fundamental strategy you learn at lower levels.  Building up effects personally and as a team compose a large part of team combat.[/HB]

Materia Parallels (Basics 2)

[HB]A huge part of this system follows the original use of the materia concept specific to FFXIV.  To cover it briefly, this system treats materia as the physical existence of ideas, which can be composed of purposes/longings and memories, essentially the future and past, within the present.  This often connects to the Echo concept, has roots in de-leveling, and is the leading component to job-making, advanced ability-making, and late-game concepts.  One of its unintended but enjoyable consequences is a huge amount of replayability and its parallels to the Twelve.   

It has almost no relation to stat-granting materia, likely connected more closely to job soul gems, in a less purely functionalistic manner.  It should have emotional connections to your character, past and present implications of character abilities, and some slightly humanistic / religious motifs (a dichotomy, but nonetheless connected in this case).[/HB]

Detailing the Multi-Class Nature of Revamp

Part 1

[HB]If you’ve seen any of my posts on DoL revamping, you probably have a pretty good idea as to what I’m after already.  While I do not want to see any class turned solely into a holder for mechanics and mindsets, I think isolating each does far more to decrease the unique value of classes.  I aim to make neither error.

In those DoL revamp examples I mentioned improvements to the complexity of resources and materials, and how the learning or ‘mastery’ of these materials could be beneficially implicative of enemies and events in those gathering environments or of those compositions.  This is still exactly what I hope to see from Disciples of the Land.

Actually, though it might be a slight oversimplification, the multi-use of each tier of classes is largely as follows:

War: mastery of martial niches and roles of combat including their instinctive thematic ties

Magic: mastery of the abstract and magical surroundings of combat and sources of power

Land: mastery of world knowledge and its use

Hand: mastery of one’s tools (weapons, armor, devices) and the disassembly and weaknesses of others’

In short, a Blacksmith (though my crafting revisions make this a far deeper experience and one that can certainly make an enjoyable living alone [given gatherer friends at least]) does not end his experience with his time at the crafting table or guild workshops.  It carries as much as realistically possible into combat.  His personal connection with his own blades, wielded himself and/or by his party is a subtle but significant factor in combat.  A leatherworker’s expertise will often help in the killing of strong-hided beasts, and an armorsmith’s the killing of armored humanoids.[/HB]

Part 2

[HB]This is not to say that everyone will want to be everything.  More than previously these classes have great depth, and though one can now jump in at various points more than before (there are no necessary copper, bronze, iron stages – just as one does not necessarily have to train an Archer to be a Stormbow (random name here meaning a sort of AoE archer) or Ranger or Elemental Archer, instead being able to take aspects of camouflage, burst, debilitative, misdirective, ranged, and weapon-specific lines of learning, etc, separately. 

Additionally, in party function, personal strength, and even making money in the economy, depth will often outdo width.  Or, more aptly put, strength comes vertically, versatility comes horizontally, and being able to make a unique niche within either.  (I apologize for switching the meaning of “depth” here.)  Just as one could be a competent dps with only one dps class at max level, it’s plenty possible here.  To best get this point across I’d have to give simulations on combat and business under my revised systems.  I’ll give lengthier examples in their own subject pages, but here are some briefs:[/HB]

Combat-Related Example

Part 1

[HB]In my combat system, fights are plenty possible without dedicated healers and tanks.   More difficult, usually, and requiring much more intricacies especially in terms of building up effects on targets, rather than through the roles of party (this does get pretty complicated, but its learning scales gradually through one’s “levels” so to speak).  In general, precisely hybridized party compositions are less situationally versatile than your general role-broad compositions, most usually employed for specific NM hunts and the like.  Broad-spectrum roles in general within each class, though, will of course increase versatility.  And it is also, again of course, a compromise. 

As to combat itself, this system uses a huge amount of potential interlinking of abilities, along with custom ability creation itself.  The most prominent feature is the use of targetable ‘systems’, which includes a spell of attack already in motion, the effect grounds or receiver of an action, another party member preparing an action or using a pairable effect, or oneself to be interlinked with another action. 

For instance, (though these names are largely placeholders given the revision) a Conjurer could cast Aero onto a Pugilist using Fleetfoot to allow the Pugilist to use these dodges to either deal air damage to enemies surrounding her, use air magic as bonus to her own counter-attacks, or use the air magic following dodges as a source to use her own special attacks (imagine a jump-turning dodge turning into a Dragon Kick).

However, at a price, the Pugilist could learn how to do this herself.  This is likely in parties where too much attention would be required for the caster to pair effectively with every party member, and obviously when a player wants to be able to extend a string alone that would normally require party chaining.  You could say that most of our base classes do this on their own already, even though the secondary effects are more ‘pretty’ than tactically variant, such as Vorpal Thrust, Impact Drive, and Dragonfire Dive.  Actually, all stem from the parts of combat entailed in Lancer warfare, and as such even in my system they could still be gained without straying at all from Lancer.[/HB]

Part 2

[HB]But let’s take an amateur Red Mage enthusiast given this system, with experience in Gladiator and Thaumaturge/Conjurer.   He could develop an abstract source for flame magic, which he can then tie into his combat via Trance (consider this like a thematic-specific TP build), to create surges of fire magic.  Let’s say this particular player developed his access point via training in parrying and gliding sword combat, and from… a flint.  I’ll go over how such a seemingly abstract way of learning can be done later.  The uses are what’s important for now.

In short, he can set of flickered waves (not actually an arbitrary description; every bit counts) of flame magic from his metal weapons sliding across another. He uses these for offensive parrying, against parries, and a special little something in parties…

[Because this is a favorite issue of mine, let me explain the parenthetical.  He is a Lominsian.  He collects wisp-stones for the majority of his gil-making between training with a small group of like-minded swordsman and experimenters on the bluffs of the rolling hills off of Cedarwood.  Both of these motifs – the flickering of lights, control of light, and the waves, are prevalent in his time learning this.  This is an example of setting-situational typing.  Rest assured, it is generally far too balanced to become a deciding issue during leveling.  Both similarities and contrasts are useful to these in combat.] 

Imagine a Lancer chaining through a few linear striking abilities, driving an enemy back, before finishing with a charge and something akin to Impact Drive, but without the flame magic in it being used.  The Red Mage-to-be, who’s been simultaneously harassing the enemy’s defense, then pairs with the attack, sliding his blade down the exposed length Lancer’s spear in a fast slash, blasting flame magic into the enemy with both his own generation of flame magic and the potential in the spear attack.

Similar to this fairly obvious sense many moves effective for solo combat are also effective for party combat, if one knows how to stay teamed up effectively in combat.  This is both intended, and inevitable, given the overall feel of this system.[/HB]

FFXIV - Forum Copy: What Tanaka Did Right

TL;DR:
Armory system and physical levels. You shouldn't feel like someone drained your body back to when you first laid hands on a weapon just because you took out a claw instead of a wand. If only the armory system had gone much further in how it translated across classes, perhaps in use of concepts too, rather than merely exact abilities, people probably wouldn't have stood for it's loss.

Though the Tanaka abilities may have been slow to "cover all their bases", such as a basic attack, basic defense, basic opportune strike, they at least felt class-specific from the beginning. Skewer felt more "Lancer" than anything current Lancers get until Doomspike. 

Nostalgia:
I loved that if I wanted I could be a dodge-centered kiting archer who used air-fist head-bashes fired from my bow after dodging ranged attacks. Or I could be a line-driver stacked with Skewer and Doomspike atop my usual Puncture, and just enough tp growth to use all three without CD overlap.

Points of Possible Improvement:
The weakness was that some of the abilities should have varied further from similar types, i.e. Skewer-Doomspike-Puncture. Puncture could be anti-armor, and the damage dealt ignoring armor would deal additional shrapnel (projectile) damage to enemies behind the target, while Skewer remains the strongest full line-up, with no armor bypass, and Doomspike deals a portion of the damage as shadow, percentage growing as the physical damage is eclipsed by enemy defense.

Or, on the other side, it could have used categorical modifiers. For example, physical linear and single-target attacks would continue to bypass previously ignored armor when fired at the same target from the same area and side of enemy. Maybe linears could also affect the far side. This would do more for battle positioning, in my opinion, that the arbitrary "sides-back-front" system where people simply run over 90 degrees at interval, and back to standard position, with zero regard to their party needed. 

* * * * *

Revision Idea for Battle Regimen:
Imagine this with a revised Battle Regimen system. Rather than being locked into a party-wide attack chain, this simply allows you to select "systems" to build on or players to build from, such as casting Aeroga on a Fira system, with some unique effects atop the larger obvious ones. Or you can cast Aero on a Lancer, extending the reach of his next attack. Cast on Fleetfoot, to cause dodges to deal air damage to enemies on the far side of the Pugilist. 

Magic wouldn't be the only thing chaining together with other magics or physical either. It's just that the physical-physical combination effects go off mostly automatically. For example, two Red Lotus attacks made on the same enemy from opposite sides, by the nature of the original spell, would cause the AoE to expand further to the sides, between the attackers, instead of going out the far side. Two Skewers from the same angle would share some of the damage loss from armor, to a sum greater than if they'd been attacking more separately. Attacking from different sides, however, would reduce the enemy's dodge chance. 

All it requires is some mechanical changes put into place. Things like... parrying or blocking an attack has a matter of force, atop the simple RNG, and that the chance of being able to make any of the three physical mitigation types (dodge, parry, block) is also based within timing, such as from attacking with the parrying weapon. It should take account and advantage of a larger variety of factors that more greatly then involve your party or internal strategy and skill. 

Massive Disclaimer:
That said, this revised Tanaka idea probably couldn't exist on a Tanaka server framework...