Action Bars/Macros and the Action & Traits Menu: needed changes

First, all of my suggestions in this post are intended together to help fix a serious gameplay and technical problem for FFXIV.

Secondly, some of these changes are intended to make a currently confusing process simpler; while others are intended to give players more options that are not currently available.

Suggestion 1) Open Up Every key on the keyboard/gamepad/mouse for Complete Customization.

Suggestion 2) Remove the current Macro system, change the ALT & CTRL Modifiers to switch to Action Bars 2 & 3, and allow all Macros to be placed directly onto the Action Bars via the Action and Traits Menu.

Suggestion 3) Allow players to store Action Bar Pallettes, and allow players to actively switch between them, either by the Up and down keys or D-Pad. ( Identical to how switching Macro Palletes in FFXI worked)

All of these together I believe will advance FFXIV so far ahead of where it is now, gameplay-wise, yet it does not require reworking or rebalancing major features of the game.

I will attempt to explain these suggestions further, and why I believe they are extremely important.

Suggestion 1 involves Player Preferences. All of us have different preferred play styles, yet currently, we are stuck playing a certain way. Instead of the Developers spending time and resources finding a play style that works for all us, we could fix this problem ourselves.

Example: I have been wanting to try binding my 1-4 buttons on my gamepad to 1-4 on the action bar, and use R1 and R2 as ALT and CTRL, and play the game more like an action-RPG. This would be my preference ofcourse, and everyone would have the ability to make the game play their way. Ofcourse I could probably break the game rules and find a way around this, but I choose not to because I respect S-E.

Suggestion 2 involves making the game easier to access for new players, and alleviates the need for excessive macro making for some players who choose not to do so. In addition suggestion 2 is important to make suggestion 3 work. For PC players, who use the KB & Mouse, it is rather difficult to retain full control of your character if you use keys 6-0, as it requires you either moving your hand away from WASD or taking your hand off the mouse. PC Players can, however, take advantage of the macros, and use ALT & CTRL to access up to 15 keys fairly easily; this change would simply remove the need to make macros for those keys, and would make the process easier for newer players who are unfamiliar with the macro system.

Suggestion 3 brings everything together, and I believe, vastly improves the battle system. These changes would eliminate the need for Game Pad users and KB users to constantly use the UP & DOWN commands to switch between action bars to use commands. All commands would be available through ALT & CTRL modifiers. Game pad users would still need to move left and right to select their commands, but not up and down at least. In addition, this would allow players to place more macros with their actual actions, giving more freedom. Finally the added Action Bar Palletes would allow players to store entire Action Bar sets for all their classes.

The end result would be a more stream-lined system that is both more accesible to new players, and more customizeable for advanced players, while at the same time providing more options to each player.


If any S-E reps read this, thank you for your time, I hope it wasn't too difficult to read.

And for the rest of the community, think about these suggestions~

I agree 100% with suggestion 3. A GUI setup for saving your action bar would really help the whole game. I hate having to manually set up my actions every time I change a job, and then if I use a macro command to change them I have to write new macros every few lvls to update the action bars when i change. I think it would save a lot of time/ effort to just have saved pallets. Maybe even make the game change pallets based on when you change to a job. It just all around sucks when you have to spend 15 min to set up your job every time you change it.

yes please for the love of God, the macro's and bar is very clunky. they need to make both one thing and being able to save them like in ffxi would go a long way, it takes 3macro spaces as it is now for each class u want to macro in moves for. is either make macro's and the bar together or just turn the hole thing macro's and screw the bar. either one works for me though i prefer the macros least each move then has lines to add to it if need be without having it in 2places. and to make the macro making easy i don't see why they couldn't turn all the moves and commands all auto translate, and specific to the macro making for it, though it pretty easy to do now there are things they can do to make it very simple.

also the battle bar closes right as one mob ur targeting dies this is horrible too.

also u can't move around the shield, it's easy to set up but really is retarted that u can't move it around.

also the time it takes for a macro to switch in all u'r spells is very lengthy and doesn't always put all the moves in.

on a note for point allotment to make it faster i'd suggest adding a open number box rather then putting them in one at time, so u can just put like 110 in on one stat by just scrolling in the number 110, not punching in the controller 110 times, having the amount that it would change showing the possible change b4 u hit ok would be great too. so u hit 110 then it shows u'd gain 148mind then hit ok. bam done. also maybe 2 seperate ones for the elements and the stats themselvs.

I would add that extra macro lines would also help very much to reduce the need for redundant macros. Enough lines to compile 3 macros for action settings into one, maybe add extra lines to accomodate for gear as well.

I suggest creating an options to display all 3 layers of skill slots at once on the screen. Supporting as well the idea of putting macros in those slots and saving entire palettes just like XI.

The biggest issue with displaying only one line of skill slots at once comes when losing focus on it while being on the wrong/undesired row. You're stuck trying to get focus back on the skill bar, switch it back to your main offensive one, get back on the right target if necessary... precious time wasted that can get you killed and extremely frustrating. Iirc, using sub target actions and manual targeting while having an unlocked camera makes you lose such focus.

It would be nice to be able to resize this bar as well which will probably be necessary if we ever can display more than one row on screen.

This is a good discussion to be had, in light of the new info.

I noticed in the Q/A they were planning on opening up more buttons to customization; I understand why there might be some technical things getting in the way, but I certainly hope they are planning on eventually letting us remap everything.

And I'm more curious how they plan on changing the action bar. The Up/Down Mechanic, while it works decently with Gamepad, it works horrdily with the KB at the moment. It is essentially an elaborate menu system that allows you to place things where you like.

Honestly though, I think Targeting is a huge problem: spending too much time targeting in proportion to actually fighting, which ends up placing a huge emphasis on how good you are at targeting.

Also, the IJKL and arrow key wonkiness will hopefully be fixed.