Still no auto-combo for 123 on old jobs.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

lol. lmao, even.

Hell, just make it an auto-battler. Why not? Let's just go full 2nd monitor content.

Why stop there? Just have the game play itself and I can log in once every few days to see how it's getting on. Then I can focus on actual games that haven't been run into the ground by droolers yet.

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Can't wait for the mobile game.

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

Its easy to be clueless about your replies considering the last 3 havent made any sense lmao. Its impossible to have a discussion with you when you cant/wont read.

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Just read what Shurrikan wrote instead of yapping nonsense. I don't feel like elaborating on what they explained perfectly already. But I do have the feeling that the only argument you manage to scrounge up is always invariably "learn to read"..

I would love to see the standard combos on one button. It's just button bloat for the sake of having more buttons.

Well if I work as an artist I will only do art, I will not work as HR,

123 combo is like forcing artist to be an HR for 3 hours a day,

That is like what we have now, 123 exist in almosy all jobs in the same way, it is not a unique combo or anything.

why not just put the whole rotation on one button? or like on 2-3 to be somewhat flexible. thats possible on several jobs without any problems.

dont come with exaggerating.

is there really so much of a difference between a combo and your rotation? if you mess up any of them you have a dmg loss. and most rotations in this game are very rigid.

less potential to make mistakes too.

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Originally Posted by Asari5

is there really so much of a difference between a combo and your rotation? if you mess up any of them you have a dmg loss.

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I would argue that, yes, there is "so much" of a difference.

Though, admittedly, there's little concrete consensus on what a rotation even is, so that will inevitably muddy the question and any answer to it.

Let's just stick with XIV examples for now (though there's plenty to be said for the differences in games with more separable actions).

Bard's "rotation", as it's typically considered, does not distinguish between Burst Arrow and Refulgent. (If it were consistently worth replacing DoTs sooner as not to risk wasting a Hawk's Eye proc, then maybe there'd be some further separation between the two, but as guides stand now, at least, there generally isn't.) They are, in effect, one and the same action, with the greatest-value prepped action always being used. Combos are mostly identical to this. In 99.9% of cases, you will not reopen a combo before finishing it. Apart from Aeolian Edge, you will never use an unprepped combo action.

Compare that, though, against what does actually compose the Bard rotation as distinct and important ordered parts: song order and the duration of each, oGCD sequence to ensure window maximization and minimize drift, gauge spender timings, etc. To me, these feel distinct. I imagine they would to many others, too, though the reasons may vary. Off the top of my head, the remaining parts of "rotation" require more than just tracking the shiny key, unlike the Refulgent Arrow / Shadowbite (or worse, key-swiping Refulgent -> Burst Shot ---activating Refulgent over Burst if both are available--- or Shadowbite -> Ladonsbite so that one needn't pay attention at all).

Or, consider BLM's rotation, and how it, too, may differ from a combo. Though BLM's flexibility was harmed with Dawntrail's addition of Flare Star --which nearly forced something like a combo onto BLM-- its rotation has pretty consistently been highly flexible, able to be varied around movement needs and alignment. Combos are the opposite of that.

That is especially true if said combos lack any surrounding flexible skills that have little to no cost (see ARR Monk and Impulse Drive or ARR/HW Monk and Fracture, or Touch of Death until Stormblood, which allowed --though at opportunity cost-- the Monk to retime the separate skills of their combos; see also Yaten-Enpi on Samurai, especially at its lowest relative net cost).

Heck, take even a job that has no completely fixed combo but still zero reason to use un-prepped skills in 99.9% of cases, as per the Dawntrail-neutered Monk. Rotation, then, is what remains after the forced non-decisions of combos (or, "Monk orb" spenders-when-prepped, "Hawk's Eye" spenders-when-prepped, etc. to the same effect). They are the alterations in Lunar form order (though that too was mostly neutered with the loss of Disciplined Fist), in Blitz order itself, etc.

Yes, both rotations and combos have fail states, but combos' are solely from missing the intended key, while rotations' fail states come from actually getting a decision wrong. They are about as different as missing the target and aiming for (and hitting) something/someone else -- they share a result, yes, but only insofar as one does not care about the decision-making.

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less potential to make mistakes too.

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Disclosure: I could be misreading some of the context above, as I'm not sure whether "don't come with exaggerating" should mean that others have exaggerated the ease of the game right now (rhetorically minimizing the difference further official access to consolidation would make), the increased ease of play if combos were officially allowed to be consolidated, or just the that ease in excess of what can already be done for any PC player (via plugins), etc.

I think, on the whole, you'll find more people think having less potential to make mistakes is, overall, more a loss than improvement given how little left there is to make mistakes on. But, that still leaves the whole question of what a well-crafted fail-state is and what is, say, a mere unengaging trap (or worse, acts as a net loss to available nuance / deeper forms of difficulty).

For my part, combos are the absolute minimum means of engagement --any other form would be preferable, granting all the same forms of engagement while having room enough for far more-- but are arguably better than absolutely nothing. Barely. And not if at cost to anything else. But still barely better.

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As such, my preferred solution to combos would be to make each combo action separately usable, freeing the available sequences of actions into many more paths and branches varied under a greater number of contexts (as in some 3-5, rather than simply the "more than 0", despite that being the low bar set by virtually all combos in virtually all situations).

Barring that, though, given the prevalence of plugins already allowing consolidation (rendering official access to consolidation mostly just into console-parity) and how often the button-count of combos are used to obfuscate or even excuse most jobs' lack of available decision-making/depth/nuance on the whole, I would not mind if macros were un-neutered such as to allow players to consolidate what they please without additional performance being lost to packet loss, ping, or the inability to queuing their actions (though I would still restrict macros to only one queued action activated per button-press and, special-targeting aside, subject to all the normal constraints of unmacroed GCD actions).

Please don't give them ideas to put the combo on a brain dead one button thing like pvp has

I mean, with the removal of any risks in using most jobs we could most likely just script the entire rotation into one single button and it'd be usable 90+% of the time. The only things holding it back at this point are positionals and casts, and we still have folks asking for those to be removed too. I'm beginning to wonder if some of them are just trying to make it easier to run bots through the game at this point.

Because regurgitating a fully scripted rotation is the epitome of boredom, and that's the crux of the matter for many of us and the whole story of modern XIV. But reducing it without meaningful compensations elsewhere would just dumb it down for the sake of it.
The main problem people have with base combos is that most of them don't even branch anymore, which makes them more hollow than ever, and frankly, they're so ridiculously bland and boring than actually defending that braindead system is mindboggling on its own.

If any of those people play other games they will understand what "combo" means,

Combo should have multiple routs for different purposes,

The problem is that 123 do not have actual game purpose, it is there because the sake of it,

If 123 could lead to different routs that each routs have specific purpose then yes keep it.

Other than that it is useless

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

If any of those people play other games they will understand what "combo" means,

Combo should have multiple routs for different purposes,

The problem is that 123 do not have actual game purpose, it is there because the sake of it,

If 123 could lead to different routs that each routs have specific purpose then yes keep it.

Other than that it is useless

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Useless for complexity in itself, yes. So was Kaiten, similarly a non-decision unless one had made prior relevant mistakes. (That didn't make it necessarily useless on the whole, though.)

However, even a 123 is not useless in its net effect. It's effectively an arbitrary tax, weighing down everything else, even if only minimally to most players. This increases the strain of cognitive load (again, however minor) introduced by other gameplay elements, making them feel a bit more sufficient.

It's an incredibly lackluster way to do so -- a mostly wasted opportunity in each non-decision to exist without any way to adjust the timing of said non-decisions to make them feel more separately valuable -- but still adds to gameplay more than not having it.

(That said, I don't feel that the game is necessarily easier when combos are consolidated. GCDs provide rhythm and timing markers, and as such, not having separate buttons in turn means not having distinct tactile cues that --upon playing out the same opener at full uptime over a given fight, etc. multiple times-- would otherwise provide timing cues for the fight while also, for many, keeping one's brain engaged enough not to get lost even after wipe #~27.)

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

The problem is that 123 do not have actual game purpose, it is there because the sake of it,

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The purpose is so that your filler rotation isn't just fingerbanging 1 button for 40 seconds.

Following your logic by extension the entire rotation serves no purpose because all of the buttons just deal damage. Why have more than 1 button? If we only have 1 button, why even have a button? Just make the whole rotation automatic.

The incessant streamlining needs to stop. The game honestly needs a full revert to Stormblood minus TP.

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Originally Posted by BigCheez

The game honestly needs a full revert to Stormblood minus TP.

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There are definitely parts of combat for certain jobs that have been improved since Stormblood or would deserve improvement beyond their Stormblood states (though not necessarily remaining a net improvement all the way into Dawntrail or even Endwalker), but I agree on the whole.

Though, given that, short of a "~~ Classic" situation, we won't get a full revert, I'd be satisfied for now simply with replacing some non-decisions, thoughtless bundles, etc., again with actions more open to nuance -- ideally amid among enough identity improvements (and varied and multiple opportunities in each piece of content to leverage them) to pacify those overly worried about <3% raw throughput differences between jobs.

And, above all, I'd like for the game to stop trimming out gameplay wholesale just to avoiding necessary (or disproportionately helpful) technological improvements. Instead of removing any and all DoTs, improve the ease of tracking said DoTs across multiple enemies (especially one's target). Instead of forgoing difficulty in dungeons, simply increase the checkpoint count/usefulness. Etc., etc.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Just read what Shurrikan wrote instead of yapping nonsense. I don't feel like elaborating on what they explained perfectly already. But I do have the feeling that the only argument you manage to scrounge up is always invariably "learn to read"..

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The argument doesn't need to be "scrounged up" when its incredibly valid for the circumstance lmao, but I'll indulge in this conversation one more time I guess. Lets look at what the OP said, which btw is clearly a WoW troll that doesn't play this game or does any meaningful content (see other threads on their thoughts that VANILLA WOW raids are better than FF14 lmao):

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

In WoW the devs gave you the skills and said do whatever you want with them, be creative, think outside the box. In FF14 they give you skills and instructions on how to use them if not outright enforcing a hardcoded rotation. There's no outside the box thinking because the box has very clear and narrow boundaries. Open World, as much as it even counts you can just press whatever, it doesn't even matter. Instanced content is 'pull all trash to the next wall/gated area and AoE with whatever' or dancing circles around a boss while playing your clockwork piano. That is the game, FF14. In a way Deep Dungeons actually provide the best designed content that allows for the most individualism and where cc, slow, root skills are actually used.

SE is aware of that, but they know that they would have to redo the entire game to fix this, so they try to add makeshift complexity by means of combos and piling up on skills and introducing the idea of 'button misclick' as a major PvE mechanic. How many ''deliver XXX potency damage for the first target, and XX% less for all remaining enemies, can be used when/after" buttons do you actually want on your job? It doesn't make the game any more interesting at all. It doesn't matter if you press 10 buttons to reduce an enemy that has no mechanics to zero health, or 50. How many times/hr do you want to press 1-2-3, while pretending that it is a high form of MMO gameplay that is to be preserved. MMOs specifically invented the auto-attack, so players wouldn't have to do that.

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If you genuinely feel that this game has no good boss fights, the core gameplay is doomed, and that any form of arbitrary complexity can be removed without valuable replacement because its doomed anyway, then YES this game was never for you. You do not like this game and don't want it to get better. Is that you?

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

Lets look at what the OP said, which btw is clearly a WoW troll that doesn't play this game or does any meaningful content (see other threads on their thoughts that VANILLA WOW raids are better than FF14 lmao):

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(Given that the context of her post focused equally on complexity as, say, job identity) I'd agree that calling Vanilla WoW raids better than FF14 raids is... a bit out there, to say the least, --even if I likewise tend to prefer content that is open to job identity in meaningful ways over tightening balance and content both towards mere button-flow variants on the same 2-minute cycle ideas or the like-- but I can't help but get the impression you never played ARR, Second Coil Savage, etc. Dungeons weren't always "pull all trash to the next wall/gated area", nor were raids always "striking dummy with added DDR". Addressing issues like those excesses of streamlining could as accurately be called a "revert" as a "rework".

I have several characters myself, so I'm not basing that assumption on your character only being a few years old, to be clear, but simply on the content of your replies. The game started off not so different from those separate abilities mattering, combos feeling each more like actions in their own right with more palpable progression through their skills, dungeons in which CC could be of use, frequent ability to run non-standard comps in dungeons, greater cross-role play, etc.

(Hell, the game launched with the main feature of "build your own job" and all primary stats being of use to everyone, if in varying ways, before Yoshida squished that customization into a micron-thick wire. Having that kind of customization would be unfit for the game as it's been since, yes, but even then we can't say preferences for that kind of customization have "never" fit this game.)

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

The argument doesn't need to be "scrounged up" when its incredibly valid for the circumstance lmao, but I'll indulge in this conversation one more time I guess. Lets look at what the OP said, which btw is clearly a WoW troll that doesn't play this game or does any meaningful content (see other threads on their thoughts that VANILLA WOW raids are better than FF14 lmao):



If you genuinely feel that this game has no good boss fights, the core gameplay is doomed, and that any form of arbitrary complexity can be removed without valuable replacement because its doomed anyway, then YES this game was never for you. You do not like this game and don't want it to get better. Is that you?

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Tell me you never played anything before SB without telling me you never played anything before ShB..

Watching these two people argue is like watching a brick wall talk to another brick wall.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

Watching these two people argue is like watching a brick wall talk to another brick wall.

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Welcome to the end result of the 1-2-3 threads. It happens in every single one given enough time.

And the trend of the idea being supported mostly by those with little game knowledge or skill continues!

We didn't even talk about AoE combo yet,

It is another useless buttons, it is there because it is there,

Even if we consider 123 is a combo it should be atleast AoE too, why we have 6 buttons for it?

Having separate AoE combo specially for tanks it is too much and they have to at least merge them as single combo or find another solution

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

Having separate AoE combo specially for tanks it is too much and they have to at least merge them as single combo or find another solution

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I mean, it's clearly not "too much". Most aren't having any trouble with it.

Is it wasteful, compared to allowing the ST and AoE combos to cross and interact in certain ways (even if that would come at some cost to the predictive decision-making or selecting a combo n gcds before the finisher one really needs/wants at a particular time)? Certainly.

But they're not so glaring an issue that they'd *need* addressing; having those actions separate or consolidated is simply a stylistic preference with certain advantages in each direction (though, as you note, less so for separate AoE keys nowadays, due to the lack of AoE in serious content), for which only one preference is currently allowed to be met... officially.

Unofficially, though, if you (A) don't like it, (B) play on PC, and (C) don't record yourself... it's not as a certain solution hasn't been commonplace for years now...

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd agree that calling Vanilla WoW raids better than FF14 raids is... out there, to say the least

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I don't really think it's such an out there opinion, depending on what you want out of a raid.

If you just want a difficult fight then yeah sure, vanilla WoW raids were a joke in terms of mechanical complexity or actual difficulty.
But they certainly felt more like you were actually "raiding" a real place in the world with your huge party of adventurers, slowly making your way through an unexplored location, killing whatever hostiles show up and grabbing everything valuable.

Despite both obviously just being games XIV's raids feel a lot more "gamified", you know what you're there for and so does the game so to speak. So it simply teleports you straight into a fighting pit, disconnected from anything else, with a small group and tells you to go beat up the thing and collect your reward.
ARR tried to go for the more vanilla WoW route but the smaller scale and disconnected "stages" meant it never felt quite right.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I don't really think it's such an out there opinion, depending on what you want out of a raid.

If you just want a difficult fight then yeah sure, vanilla WoW raids were a joke in terms of mechanical complexity or actual difficulty.
But they certainly felt more like you were actually "raiding" a real place in the world with your huge party of adventurers, slowly making your way through an unexplored location, killing whatever hostiles show up and grabbing everything valuable.


Despite both obviously just being games, XIV's raids feel a lot more "gamified", you know what you're there for and so does the game so to speak. So it simply teleports you straight into a fighting pit disconnected from anything else and tells you to go beat up the thing and collect your reward.

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While it's off-topic; I do miss the lead-ups to the boss while raiding. I don't mind if they want to have Savage be just the fights, but can we at least have Normal versions be actual raids where it feels like infiltrating a boss' lair? I dislike that raids now are just rebranded trials.

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

The argument doesn't need to be "scrounged up" when its incredibly valid for the circumstance lmao, but I'll indulge in this conversation one more time I guess. Lets look at what the OP said, which btw is clearly a WoW troll that doesn't play this game or does any meaningful content (see other threads on their thoughts that VANILLA WOW raids are better than FF14 lmao):



If you genuinely feel that this game has no good boss fights, the core gameplay is doomed, and that any form of arbitrary complexity can be removed without valuable replacement because its doomed anyway, then YES this game was never for you. You do not like this game and don't want it to get better. Is that you?

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This game has it's goods and bads. It's is also not my creation, nor do I profit from it in any way so I don't need to put blind devotion on display. I feel for my needs (which as I said, is mostly side content) it's still worth the sub, but I wouldn't mind seeing certain aspects being improved on. Because the main game is barely an RPG at this point, let alone an MMORPG.

I'm not really going deeper into the WoW debate because by definition this game (being a console game, yes, that's what it ultimately is) it can't be as deep as WoW, so it's not even a fair comparison. Everything has to be designed in a way so someone with a controller can react and interact in an acceptable way. If you think that Vanilla WoW isn't much better at being an actual MMORPG (and all that comes with it) then that's your opinion and I'm gonna respect it.

But I can't really see how the mainstream content, being the various box encounters would be better than say, WoW's Blackwing Lair or Naxxramas. Let alone later all-time fav contents like Ulduar or ICC. In all different aspects.

In the end in 14 the bosses don't even have real mechanics, (the real mechanic is getting your bloated job down in a way so you meet the enrage timer x8), nor are they tactically hard but they're designed in a clever way so that there's a high probability that at any point, any single one of the 8 players will space out and flub something.

And the statistics speak for themselves, barely anyone cares about the savage/ultimate content. And for the people that seemingly did care, 2/3 are cheated or bought.

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Originally Posted by Kandraxx

I'm not really going deeper into the WoW debate because by definition this game (being a console game, yes, that's what it ultimately is) it can't be as deep as WoW, so it's not even a fair comparison. Everything has to be designed in a way so someone with a controller can react and interact in an acceptable way.

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I will push back on this; the cross-hotbar setup in this game allows for up to 48 buttons before needing to swap to a different primary cross-hotbar. You can have up to 16 skills per cross-hotbar, and 8 different hotbars, allowing up to 128 skills. Keyboard and mouse allows up to 10 hotbars with 12 buttons per hotbar, so in reality controllers can have up to 8 more buttons. The only real "advantage" that KB+M offers is targeting with a mouse rather than a d-pad or shoulder buttons, which considering that many players have been fine with that since 2013, that's not exactly a downside.

The game used to be far deeper than what it is now back when it was stuck on the PS3, saying that this game can't get to WoW levels of depth because it's on a console doesn't sound accurate.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

I don't really think it's such an out there opinion, depending on what you want out of a raid.

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True, true, but it was under the broader topic of complexity / being "dumbed down". Here, job identity is "dumbed down", but it's harder to get further "dumbed down" mechanically among "AAA" MMOs than... vanilla WoW raids.

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Originally Posted by TheDustyOne

While it's off-topic; I do miss the lead-ups to the boss while raiding. I don't mind if they want to have Savage be just the fights, but can we at least have Normal versions be actual raids where it feels like infiltrating a boss' lair? I dislike that raids now are just rebranded trials.

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Same. Tbf, I don't want the "trash" to be truly, well, trash... but I would like to see a couple decently hard mob fights that act as mechanic hints for the coming boss and/or allow for more freeform strategy (focus these mobs down to remove this mechanic sooner).

Alliance Raids do a decent job of providing scenery and sometimes even a halfway interesting mob fight (oddly enough NieR raids may take the cake there, imo, though generally each raid has at least one decently neat bit of trash), but I would like also to see raids more in the vein of Bozja's but even more freeform (think Firelands, at the most extreme), with players having the ability to queue for the entire raid in one go in somewhat-customizable order, such that it feels like a real, lived-in place being stormed.

Oddly enough, there was a ton of talk about this back in 1.23, as Dalamud was first falling, due to the original Castrum Meridanium 8-man scenario-like dungeon. I think a lot of players to more stuff like that, but far more fleshed out and opened to varying strategies. Would also love to see that as a new content type -- maybe "Assaults", since we already wasted the word "raid", perhaps opposite more freely-paced "Forays" as ways of diving into setting themed off existing dungeons but likewise more open and lived-in?

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Same. Tbf, I don't want the "trash" to be truly, well, trash... but I would like to see a couple decently hard mob fights that act as mechanic hints for the coming boss and/or allow for more freeform strategy (focus these mobs down to remove this mechanic sooner).

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Likewise, it's a problem I have with modern dungeon design as well where the trash is there to be a health sponge we AoE down and nothing more. At most maybe there's a mob that needs an interrupt or Square will mix things up and have a mob that summons more mobs (Alzadaal). Gimme traps and environmental hazards that I need to kite mobs through and around (I remember some older ARR and HW dungeons did this, leading mobs into some spots would give a vulnerability debuff), give me a need to interrupt more often, or a reason to focus certain mobs down quicker, or reasons to use CC tools more than we currently do.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

Watching these two people argue is like watching a brick wall talk to another brick wall.

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The sad thing is that I went in this thread initially to exactly say that (as my first series of posts in that same thread will attest). One side is too afraid for SE to dumb it down some more without counterparts, the other wants to get rid of something that's braindead to them and replace it by more engaging counterparts. In reality everybody more or less agrees that what we have is crap, and everybody agrees that SE if they even get to work on it, would not give us anything interesting in return for trimming down the crap, as they're usually wont to do.

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Originally Posted by Valence

The sad thing is that I went in this thread initially to exactly say that (as my first series of posts in that same thread will attest). One side is too afraid for SE to dumb it down some more without counterparts, the other wants to get rid of something that's braindead to them and replace it by more engaging counterparts. In reality everybody more or less agrees that what we have is crap, and everybody agrees that SE if they even get to work on it, would not give us anything interesting in return for trimming down the crap, as they're usually wont to do.

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Easy jobs. Complexity through mechanics. It's the obvious way SE is going. People need to accept it.
It's the only way to even come close to making the ultra casual and hyper hardcore happy at the same time.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

Easy jobs. Complexity through mechanics. It's the obvious way SE is going. People need to accept it.
It's the only way to even come close to making the ultra casual and hyper hardcore happy at the same time.

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It might make the ultra casual and hyper hardcore happy, but everyone in-between gets to pound dirt.
Because if you're even remotely above "pressing buttons randomly because you never bothered to even read tooltips" you quickly find that the gameplay is both incredibly boring and monotenous while the content you're doing is exactly the same.

Since you do not have the added complexity through mechanics, you're doing the same content that's designed for ultra casuals, all you're left with is atrocious job gameplay in complete faceroll content.
The same applies to the higher end players who still like to experience the rest of the game, spamming the same 4 (5 if you're doing ultimate) fights for 8+ months isn't exactly peak gameplay either.

In my opinion the whole "jobs need to be this watered down for the hyper casuals" is complete nonsense anyway, Stormblood showed that you could have more engaging jobs and casuals did their usual content just fine, they simply didn't engage with the job mechanics beyond the barrier of entry because said content never required it and still doesn't.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

they simply didn't engage with the job mechanics beyond the barrier of entry because said content never required it and still doesn't.

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This is the problem, and it's entirely why SE is doing what they're doing. The community as a whole has encouraged and accepted this behaviour, you yourself have done it just now with your reply. SE as a result have dumbed jobs down because they see lower skilled players just not using half of their abilities.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

This is the problem, and it's entirely why SE is doing what they're doing. The community as a whole has encouraged and accepted this behaviour, you yourself have done it just now with your reply. SE as a result have dumbed jobs down because they see lower skilled players just not using half of their abilities.

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Even with the current dumbed down jobs you still have players with 33 broken combos and a bunch of hexa weaves as a warrior, so no amount of "streamlining" is going to make people play correctly if they simply can't be bothered.
And no that's not some made-up example, it was a savage log of all things.

The idea that it's the developers' job to make everyone play their job correctly is flawed from the start, and making the jobs "impossible" to play wrong by removing any and all failure states is one of the dumbest ways to go about it. It is an unachievable goal to try and "fix" people's lazyness.

I need the mod that does this to get more traction so it can be implemented in the game.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Even with the current dumbed down jobs you still have players with 33 broken combos and a bunch of hexa weaves as a warrior, so no amount of "streamlining" is going to make people play correctly if they simply can't be bothered.
And no that's not some made-up example, it was a savage log of all things.

The idea that it's the developers' job to make everyone play their job correctly is flawed from the start, and making the jobs "impossible" to play wrong by removing any and all failure states is one of the dumbest ways to go about it. It is an unachievable goal to try and "fix" people's lazyness.

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Yes, obviously there's always going to be idiots who don't know how to play their jobs. However, SE is seeing a trend of the overwhelming majority of people just straight up not using their full kits, so they streamline it because of this.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

Easy jobs. Complexity through mechanics. It's the obvious way SE is going. People need to accept it.
It's the only way to even come close to making the ultra casual and hyper hardcore happy at the same time.

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I'd argue that it doesn't actually help those groups, either, such as for the reasons Absurdity mentioned in her post earlier.

The ultra casual aren't going to care about how quickly they can learn to play up to some particular threshold of optimization across multiple jobs. Many will play only one or two and most won't give a damn about performance above the degree already doable even if jobs were hugely varied and/or had far more complexity available to them (to then be ignored).

The hyper hardcore aren't going to care about where their complexity comes from for their experience on any single job -- only that they have it available to them -- but the multiclassers among them will notice their optional engagement longevity shortened by jobs being made more similar to each and the difference (for any single given job) being made up for only in the content itself. What's worse, all other content but the most challenging now being more wastefully unengaging to them.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

Yes, obviously there's always going to be idiots who don't know how to play their jobs. However, SE is seeing a trend of the overwhelming majority of people just straight up not using their full kits, so they streamline it because of this.

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Which is a, frankly, terrible approach to almost anything, in games or otherwise.

Those not using their full kits also had no need to use said full kits. It makes no sense to remove that "excess" from those for whom it was still relevant just to make those ignoring what is optional to them feel less bad for not engaging with what they chose not to engage with.

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Originally Posted by Ajisaii

How braindead do you want this game to be?

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They've come for every other gameplay element already. You barely need to manage resources. A lot of overcapping issues were prevented with DT job changes; instead of giving you 50 gauge, you just get the ability to use the skill the gauge would've given you, meaning you no longer have to manage your resources around avoiding overcap. MP is used on only a couple of jobs, and TP was removed years ago to the satisfaction of many. Every job was sanded down into a 2 minute cycle, with 90s/180s buffs being eliminated. DoTs on jobs were gutted or removed -- in bard's case they were allowed to keep their dots but the purpose of them was neutered like crazy and makes one feel like they might as well have just removed them. Area of effect heals like Asylum and Earthly Star were increased in size to basically be the size of the whole arena, eliminating the need to think about placement or positioning. Bosses that moved to a corner of the arena teleport back to the middle so tanks don't have to think about positioning. "Holding aggro" now is as simple as turning on your stance and pressing provoke; there's no need to worry about losing aggro afterwards to a good dps or something like in the past. Every job that had a high-risk high-reward "stance" has had that eliminated. AST's sects are gone. You no longer need to think about which version of a job fits best for the moment, because every job only has one method and if you find another way then the devs will take the game down for five hours to gut that too. Genuinely, I'm surprised jobs like bard and ninja are still allowed to exist, except look -- in the recent patch, for no reason at all, they decided to eliminate the "stand still for a few seconds" requirement of TCJ on ninja. One less thing to think about.

But yeah with all of that as context, I won't be surprised at all if they roll this out in 8.0. They'll say they're freeing up button space for the console players or something, and then we can all enjoy mashing 1 instead of the barely more thought provoking 123. And every two minutes, we can press our two minute buff and then maybe mash 1 and 2 if we're lucky. And in the background of all this, 90% of the content will be really really really simple. Like, at worst you might die because of visual clutter your first time through, but then never again. And the other 10% will require you to slam your head against a wall with 7 other people doing coordinated dances until you all get it right, and think of how boring that prog will be when your whole rotation just got even less thoughtful, less enjoyable. I could enjoy prog in other mmos because the jobs were fun. I can't in this game; I'd rather log out and read a book. We're already in a boring place, but yeah, let's make it even more boring.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

Easy jobs. Complexity through mechanics. It's the obvious way SE is going. People need to accept it.
It's the only way to even come close to making the ultra casual and hyper hardcore happy at the same time.

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That actually satisfies neither of those groups, they're just very easy scapegoats to use.

If all the difficulty comes from fights, you either see the basic fight difficulty jump up to where the "ultra casuals" start struggling (DT) or you get fights so mind-numbing that the "hyper hardcore" only have any fun in 1% of content (EW).

However, if the dev team actually bothered to split the difficulty between the jobs we play and the content we do, then everyone would be able to have fun in the content they do, and absolute flops of a savage fight like P7S wouldn't be so boring if the jobs you play had some form of nuance to play with.

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Originally Posted by undull1

So convenience is a bad evil thing that should be punished? Am I a lesser player for using a more comfortable PS5 controller instead of a Wii remote? Are you really genuinely against OPTIONAL QOL CHANGES?

I find controllers more comfortable, controllers cannot easily fit all buttons on so you have to use toggles to swap between different sets of buttons.
Having condensed combos means more free space to help create a more comfortable cross-hotbar. The action condensing so far for me has only been a positive and is also ABSOLUTELY OPTIONAL.

Condensed combos also seem to be the perfect everybody wins fix to the current button bloat issue where job design is stagnating from Devs unwilling to add more buttons onto most jobs incase it bloats controller players hotbars.

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It is not optional, and you know it. The main TL;DR of condensed combos is that it is no better than having the game play itself, which is entertaining in a single player game like Spiderman or Arkham, but god awful in an mmo. The key things of an MMO is growth of a player, and foundation is an important, if boring part of that process. In this current system, 123 is there to have timing and rote notation down. If that is gone and all you have is OGCD to worry about, you don't really have much choice left. It sounds convenient for you because screwing up on Red Mage and overflowing mana is apocalyptic in how it affects your damage. Everything is slower, it takes forever to cast things, and you do less damage in an already low damage class so it feels awful.

Here's the main problem with it. If you get rid of the 1-2-3, in this case your mana balance mini game, then you have no decisions to make anymore. You simply have a Red Mage skin of current Summoner, but do significantly worse for the same effort. The growth to hit the floor is already very, very low as it is, and unfortunately getting to the ceiling isn't difficult when the answer is 'press your stuff at 2 minutes then promptly ignore everything until it is off cooldown'. The juggling between this stuff is meant to keep you busy while concentrating on something else, the fight itself. That's the entire premise of mmos whether you like it or not. If you want something else, then frankly you need to support action mmos which are dying by the year usually due to corporate greed, which is pretty sad. Unless it's Dungeon Fighter, somehow.

Hyperbole will get you nowhere with me, or anyone but yourself and your circle. I played on controller as well in all content, including Ultimate, and yes, it can easily fit all buttons with the extra bars if it isn't filled with nonsense and your sets are done in a way that make sense. You are arguing to remove 1-2-3, which is fine, but it is replaced with nothing. If you want it gone so badly, healer exists, where they literally press 1 and OGCD until Savage/Ultimate. For 100 levels, and very likely until the game is in maintenance mode.


The difference for skill condensation is that the buttons are only relevant after a specific OGCD is pressed. You never press anything but Resolution after Scorch for instance. If they did not condense Red Mage melee like they did Gunbreaker's cartridge combo, and that is what you're arguing for, then sure, you could argue that and I would agree with it since at that time it is pointless to press anything else, so it should be condensed.

The main problem is if you get rid of too many things to play around with, you have half a system that 'works' but is so mind numbingly boring to play that you'd quit before even finishing the MSQ. We already have that problem with healing as it is, as much of a joke that the healer strike thread is because they were too dumb to even agree on a single point when interviewed, the thread at least consistently said it is boring to only press 1 then press 2 3 4 when it's off cooldown. It is completely miserable, and watching people want to doom their jobs to this is sad.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Imagine thinking that aligning 3 glowy buttons in the correct order when they light up is being good at a rotation..

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Imagine fixating on a single point of an argument and flanderizing it, then pretending that is the entire argument. Oh right it's the internet, you get away with it until you're called out, then crawl back into the hole you came from when people realize you're not meant to be taken seriously.

How about an option to put combos on a single button for those who don't like it separated? The people who want it seperated can keep it as it is.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

The simple fact is this feature exists as part of third party tools named after a certain meteor. There is no reason at all to gatekeep it and not implement it into the game at this point considering people can already do it.

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Reposting because people still don't understand that is is going to happen at some point, probably 8.0 whether you want it to or not. SE has slowly added many TPT to the game. They've started doing it to new jobs. It's coming to old jobs sooner or later.

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Originally Posted by Collin_Sky

Reposting because people still don't understand that is is going to happen at some point, probably 8.0 whether you want it to or not. SE has slowly added many TPT to the game. They've started doing it to new jobs. It's coming to old jobs sooner or later.

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Then there needs to be all the more focus on reintegrating nuance and/or skill expression in what few ways are still apparently permissible to the devs (and not so annoyingly overused in players' opinions) or re-expanding those boundaries.

I'll agree that at this point it's basically just a way to better balance the game across both console the DADT access available to PC, but I also agree with others here that there needs to be less emphasis on streamlining for streamlining's sake.