Button Bloat

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Originally Posted by Moqi

It's so weird that they have the ability to merge combos but would rather delete abilities than do that in PVE. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't want to do it because it'd make the leveling experience lackluster (more than it already is) by not having a new shiny button on the hotbar, which we only get more dynamic abilities at later levels.

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On the former point, I can see a few other reasons they might not want to. Like branching combos, and it is still technically a possible point of failure/stress. On the latter point, I don't think that is a good reason as to why. If pvp'ing combos meant that the leveling experience became worse, they could just move some abilities to lower levels. They need to do that anyways really.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Take Summoner for instance. It's a well-designed job that plays well but a lot of people attack it on the basis of it having few buttons in regular use overall.

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Summoner still got Physik that heals 400 HP and doesnt scale.


The button bloat is a real issue, i dont want to play most jobs without combo plug in, Reaper, Ninja, Paladin for example suffer a lot from button bloat.
I say specificly BUTTON bloat , not SKILL bloat, you can have a lot of skills, but my keyboard only got so many buttons i can manage with one hand.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Probably, its the only way it could reach 35 keys. I'm guessing they are only adding the 2 useful pet abilities since the rest are completely useless.
As for bloat I don't feel like there is bloat on any job right now, some spells rarely ever get used but I would not consider them real bloat, it's more like the upgrade system failed those abilities and left them to rot when they should have been merged into something else by max level and can just be ignored. 30 abilities seems like the golden spot for me.

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Obligatory hotbar setup
https://i.imgur.com/bSiLDRM.png

Hmm.. this may look bloated to some but it's actually fine and makes sense... unlike uh...
https://i.imgur.com/29NOAsa.png

yeah. i didn't even bother changing the default hotbar setup. I despise EW SMN.

For SCH, I have a hidden hotbar where Sprint is in there. I should kept Return, and Teleport from SMN hotbar for padding. Ugh. Such an eyesore

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Originally Posted by Arohk

Summoner still got Physik that heals 400 HP and doesnt scale.

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These examples are still nothing compared to Heavensward and Stormblood.

I think they are intending to remove Resurrection from Summoner because they wanted to if the rework was a success, which it is considering how many of them you see in duties. So maybe they will remove Physick as well.

Cure and Benefic are obviously still meant to be relevant from a design perspective even though experts ignore it.

And Shield Bash has been kept for job identity reasons. There aren't a whole lot of examples of bloat compared to the first expansions this game had, tbh. What they kept was deliberate or because of job identity, and they even eventually removed things that were part of job identity such as Fluid Aura, so they will probably eventually do it with Shield Bash tbh.

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I say specificly BUTTON bloat , not SKILL bloat, you can have a lot of skills, but my keyboard only got so many buttons i can manage with one hand.

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Some people do want it to just be a few buttons like PvP, but for whatever reason, FFXIV made lots of actions/abilities part of the game's "identity". In my years playing, I've seen some people say that the large amount of actions is why they play, because some games keep it extremely simple.

Should they really want to cut button bloat from SCH, these came into my mind:

1. Make pet movement be a default control you can bind keys on For example:

   • CTRL + Left click = Move (Pet)
   • CTRL + Right click = Attack (Pet)

2. Heel can be replaced by adding a trait to Summon Eos, making its cast time instant when it is currently summoned.
3. Stay is redundant as the current Place command already tells the pet to stay where it is placed. It can also be made into another key bind.

With those, 4 buttons are already freed up. As for the abilities... Physick on SCH can be removed and increase the potency of Embrace. There are lots more they can do to simplify without turning SCH into lol-SMN

tldr, Pet commands can be reworked to be part of your character's keybind.
https://i.imgur.com/1GnOqFh.png

I would LOVE to have more 'conditional' buttons that hold 3 or 4 abilities on them actually, like how Red Mage and Summoner reuse buttons for several different phases of their rotation. It doesn't even have to be big stuff on the same scale as that. Stuff like making Hypercharge turn into Heat Blast once you use it. Replace AoE actions with a stance that changes your single target stuff to your AoE actions.

As has been mentioned plenty of times I also wouldn't mind getting single button combos like in PvP, but I know that's more controversial.

Something I haven't seen mentioned before though is the potential of jobs getting traits that upgrade role skills into unique abilities that still maintain their original function, but still have some other use as well. Would be a good way to add a lot more depth to the actions without increasing button bloat.

We could easily add a dozen or more skills and still take up LESS buttons than we currently do, if they just applied them we'll. There is no reason to waste an entire button slot on something that can only be pressed directly after something else, and is useless in all other contexts.

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

I would LOVE to have more 'conditional' buttons that hold 3 or 4 abilities on them actually, like how Red Mage and Summoner reuse buttons for several different phases of their rotation. It doesn't even have to be big stuff on the same scale as that. Stuff like making Hypercharge turn into Heat Blast once you use it. Replace AoE actions with a stance that changes your single target stuff to your AoE actions.

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Imagine you are a PLD. After using your 1-2 AoE combo, 2 targets are left and 1 is about to die before your next GCD is available. It is wiser to just use Holy Spirit instead of Holy Circle, correct? With your proposition, I have to toggle a stance so that I get to use my ST ability. Yes you cut off extra buttons but you have introduced, not complexity, but unecessary button presses.

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

As has been mentioned plenty of times I also wouldn't mind getting single button combos like in PvP, but I know that's more controversial.

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I am a GNB and my healer is currently KO'ed. Brutal Shell combo is kinda good and will greatly improve my survivability.. but with this, I still have to do 2 extra GCDs so I can refresh my barrier.. Same with PLD and DRK when recovering MP.

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

Something I haven't seen mentioned before though is the potential of jobs getting traits that upgrade role skills into unique abilities that still maintain their original function, but still have some other use as well. Would be a good way to add a lot more depth to the actions without increasing button bloat.

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SCH already has that. Emergency Tactics, Deployment Tactics, Recitation. These abilities do nothing on their own but they modify the properties of other abilities.. I mean, every caster/healer has it = Swiftcast. The only acceptable increase in button count is for abilities that does this.

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

We could easily add a dozen or more skills and still take up LESS buttons than we currently do, if they just applied them we'll. There is no reason to waste an entire button slot on something that can only be pressed directly after something else, and is useless in all other contexts.

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See above.

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Originally Posted by TheOperator3712

On the former point, I can see a few other reasons they might not want to. Like branching combos, and it is still technically a possible point of failure/stress. On the latter point, I don't think that is a good reason as to why. If pvp'ing combos meant that the leveling experience became worse, they could just move some abilities to lower levels. They need to do that anyways really.

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Branching combos just wouldn't get merged, obviously. Most button bloat comes from tank combos anyway, or DPS with doubled up skills for AoE/single target that do the same thing and waste space for nothing since there are very few serious encounters where AoE rotation matters (Samurai being the worst offender).

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They have aimed to keep the button bloat about the same in every expansion, so if you think it's bad now, it would have been much worse after 4 expansions if they hadn't been keeping it balanced.

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Hahaha, no. If this were true, BLM would still be in the 28 button range like it was in stormblood (including anything you might conceivably want on your bar, including things like food or potions.) Classes like SAM prove they've actually forgotten the lessons of heavensward, and a solid third of classes have more buttons now than the worst class did in heavensward.

Xenoglossy, Senei, shoha 2. Even things like reaper's 'of death' skills and, especially, soul sow/harvest moon, show that they really forgot about the concept of button bloat and have added a ton of bloat since the SB enshrinkening.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, they've also homogenized addle and feint into basically being tacticians while giving all healers more 10% mits to layer with tank's reprisal. Let's just conveniently forget the sheer amount of mits tanks have in general and how 1 mit is never good enough under most conditions.

No, right now this is the worst the bloat has ever been, just not universally by raw button count. Buttons being useful does not stop it from being bloat, which is especially frustrating as well.

Also, this isn't intended as a strawman so much as a tangent launched off of the false belief that the devs try not to bloat out. Even a cursory knowledge of the game or, say, BLM's history shows they've forgotten about the problems of bloat. To the point where I know some players actually have macros just to swap hotbars between AOE and ST skills because it's that ridiculous right now.

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

Yet Cure I and Benefic I still exist and require a slot in case you ever down-sync to low enough level...

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I think it's more because of Freecure and...Enhanced Benefic? By all means, those traits need to be removed and replaced by something actually useful or moved to another ability (my pick would be the jobs' respective damage spells or DoTs to incentivise using them), but them being as they are makes sense with why the abilities don't just straight up upgrade, unfortunately.