[VPR] I would like an option to separate my combo buttons on Viper.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I just find it ironic that, in the span of the same thread, you've simultaneously demanded simplifications for VPR and dismissed the job as 'hellishly easy'. Why would you recommend changes to a job that you have no real interest in playing, and don't respect the gameplay? It's genuinely baffling. Just play something else, don't go out of your way to sabotage it.

VPR players don't want further simplifications.

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Demanded simplifications? At which point did I sound demanding in the original post? At which point did I say that I didn't want this to hypothetically be an option?

I went out of my way to "dismiss" Viper as a hellishly easy job because you went out of your way to rudely assume I was struggling with the job. I am not asking for a "simplification". I am asking for a quality of life change. The job will not fundamentally change at all if you go from pressing 2 buttons to pressing 6 buttons that do the same thing as those two buttons. Your oh-so-special job won't suddenly be simple because some people get to have an option that will not fundamentally change the job at all. It will simply make the job less boring for people that don't want to suffer through a two-button rotation when there's an easy fix for it. It's genuinely baffling how you seem to think I'm making Viper simple when your job is already just saving 50 gauge every two minutes to perform double reawaken windows within buffs. Even uptime on this job which other melee jobs have to optimize around is hellishly easy when you have what is essentially a DPS-positive toxikon with Uncoiled Fury. I ask that you read instead of getting any more dismissive than you already are.

It is not "sabotaging" a job if it's an option. Sabotaging a job is what all the people complaining about Astro being too complex (it really wasn't) did ruining it for all the people that wanted it to be busy.

Adding an auto-combo on the final step reduces the four combo system into two. That's a fairly obvious simplification. Melee jobs are always about mechanical execution.

A beginning player will be forced to hunt-and-peck using their hotbar guidance, but this is inefficient in harder fights and lets you only plan one GCD at a time. Over time, as you get used to mentally tracking where you are in the sequence, you learn to do this without looking. NG historically added to this by adding one additional element for you to track that shifts the pattern as you play. Each one of these elements that you remove diminishes the job further.

Either way, it seems like you have a lot of disdain for this job, so I'm not really sure why you would insist on changes for it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Adding an auto-combo on the final step reduces the four combo system into two. That's a fairly obvious simplification. Melee jobs are always about mechanical execution.

A beginning player will be forced to hunt-and-peck using their hotbar guidance, but this is inefficient in harder fights and lets you only plan one GCD at a time. Over time, as you get used to mentally tracking where you are in the sequence, you learn to do this without looking. NG historically added to this by adding one additional element for you to track that shifts the pattern as you play. Each one of these elements that you remove diminishes the job further.

Either way, it seems like you have a lot of disdain for this job, so I'm not really sure why you would insist on changes for it.

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A beginning player will not be forced to do anything. Do you understand what the word optional means? It means you can opt-in to having it that way or opt-out of having it that way. Nobody is being sabotaged. Nobody is having anything taken away from them. No elements of the job are being removed. I am essentially asking for this to be an option without my hotbar looking ugly as sin.

https://i.imgur.com/ygefm3e.png

So that it would essentially look like this instead depending on which combo you built into with the third button being greyed out the same way serpent's tail conditionally converts depending on which combo GCD was used before it (e.g. Death rattle, first legacy etc.)

https://i.imgur.com/xgBdNrK.png


I do not understand how you are still struggling to understand that this is not at all a simplification of the job. How do you not understand that an OPTION will not remove anything, and this is not at all comparable to the removal of noxious gnash which was not made an option. I am simply asking to be able to put on my hotbars buttons that can not be put on hotbars.

I have no disdain for this job. Not once have I stated that I dislike the job: I just dislike that I can't assign buttons that could otherwise be optionally assigned to hotbars the same way you can opt to not have buttons change like tcj to tenri jindo or ikishoten to zanshin or macrocosmos (a GCD in case the two last examples being oGCDs ruins it) to microcosmos. I find it mindnumbingly easy to pickup and mindnumbingly easy to master both before and after the removal of noxious gnash. Just because I find it easy doesn't mean I don't want to play it. None of the standard rotations in this game are particularly complex and Viper is not even remotely an exception to that.

https://i.imgur.com/Pt5URAm.png

Asking for an 'optional' setting to reduce VPR from a four combo system to a two combo system is a bit like asking for an 'optional' setting to remove casts from BLM. It still ends up resulting in a gameplay simplification for all players in the long run.

This is a lot of effort that you're investing in trying to force gameplay changes on job that you've just described as 'monotonous', 'functionally slow', and 'hellishly easy'. If your proposal goes through like the NG change did, it'll just give you yet one more excuse to be dismissive of the job. No thank you.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Asking for an 'optional' setting to reduce VPR from a four combo system to a two combo system is a bit like asking for an 'optional' setting to remove casts from BLM. It still ends up resulting in a gameplay simplification for all players in the long run.

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Not even the same ballpark. Taking cast times away from BLM makes the job play completely differently, whereas giving you the option to split the combos just changes how your fingers move around the controls.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

This is a lot of effort that you're investing in trying to force gameplay changes on job that you've just described as 'monotonous', 'functionally slow', and 'hellishly easy'. If your proposal goes through like the NG change did, it'll just give you yet one more excuse to be dismissive of the job. No thank you.

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They aren't forcing gameplay changes and generally, the more options you have, the better.

VPR has eight standard combo buttons and four combo finishers in single target. As you might expect, that would take up a lot of hotbar space under the conventional system. OP's suggestion hinges around turning the last step into an auto-combo. The end result is that you have a simplified version of the job that operates on two alternating combos, with the hind and flank variants just being alternate animations. That defeats the purpose of the job design.

Part of the uniqueness of VPR's gameplay is that it diverges from the traditional combo system. Rather than relying on the tactile feedback of your keybind placements to tell you where you are in the sequence, you play from memory. I appreciate that this isn't for everyone, but there are a lot of alternatives that people can play instead using the traditional approach. I think if the development team keep redesigning jobs around the players who don't like playing them, the game will end up losing more players than it retains in the long run. If you try to design for everyone, you satisfy no-one.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

VPR has eight standard combo buttons and four combo finishers in single target. As you might expect, that would take up a lot of hotbar space under the conventional system. OP's suggestion hinges around turning the last step into an auto-combo. The end result is that you have a simplified version of the job that operates on two alternating combos, with the hind and flank variants just being alternate animations. That defeats the purpose of the job design.

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I think you have misunderstood what they are asking for.

From my understanding, you will end up with 6 total GCDs to replace what we already have. Steel Fangs, Reaving Fangs, Hunter's Sting, Swiftskin's Sting and, for the sake of this, 2 other GCDs, which I will call Left Fang and Right Fang.

You press Steel Fangs, it light's up Hunter's Sting and/or Swiftskin's Sting, just as it does now. The same for Reaving Fangs.

When you press, say, Hunter's Sting, Left Fang will be replaced with Flanksting Strike and Right Fang will be replaced with Flanksbane Fang. This happens at the same time, and the one with the correct venom buff will be lit up, just as it is now.

The same logic then applies with Swiftskin's Sting, turning Left Fang into Hindsting Strike and Right Fang into Hindsbane Fang.

This is essentially exactly how the current Viper combos work, it s just that these are spread out over several buttons rather than being consolidated into 2.

VPR at lvl50 has effectively 2 buttons.. I don't like that

This is a great suggestion, OP. I personally wouldn't use it because I'm fine with the current design, but giving more options is always a good thing. It shouldn't be limited to VPR, either.

I'm sorry you had to deal with someone saying you are 'sabotaging' a job even though yours is a sensible suggestion (and, in theory, easy to understand...). I'm not surprised, though.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

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What you're recommending here is already an option in the game. Drag three copies of SF and three copies of RF to your hotbar. Done.

This is probably not a good idea, however. You're probably going to place your combo fairly centrally on your keybinds, likely next to WASD. Your Reawaken actions remap SF, RF, HC, and SC, so all four of these actions need to be quickly accessible, ideally all on a single layer. You also probably want the entire twinblade combo on adjacent keys so that you can glissando it, which was the recommendation that content creators received during the media tour. Adding in redundant keybinds will probably make mapping this a lot less efficient.

Either way, if you want to try to make it work, the choice is already there.