Consolidated Combos would solve the issue of button bloat going into Shadowbringers

Before anyone gets up in arms about how consolidated combos will make the game too easy or too brain dead: Yes, it will probably make things slightly more simple and a tiny bit more brain dead, but it won't be by any significant amount. Job's gameplay complexity comes from weaving your oGCDs between your weaponskills, not by pressing different buttons for the weaponskills themselves.

I'm sure most players keep their weaponskill combos mapped to the easiest hit buttons on their keyboards or controllers. For me, I have my combo buttons mapped to 1-2-3 and a Shift modifier (and a Ctrl modifier for Monk). Using Paladin as an example, I have my Rage of Halone combo mapped to 1-2-3, my Royal Authority combo mapped to 1-Shift+1-Shift+2 and my Goring Blade combo mapped to 1-Shift+1-Shift+3.

That is six buttons all within very short distance of each other. If these combos were consolidated to one button each, like in PvP, then it would compress them down to three buttons, allowing room for three new abilities being added in Shadowbringers. So, instead of using 1-2-3 and a Shift modifier for my combos, I would only need to use 1-2-3 and I could use Shift+1-2-3 for new or old oGCDs.

To express how many melee classes would save on space if consolidated combos were added to PVE:

• Paladin's six buttons would be reduced to three.
• Warrior's six buttons would be reduced to three.
• Dark Knight's five buttons would be reduced to two.
• Dragoon's eight buttons would be reduced to two.
• Monk's nine buttons would be reduced to three.
• Ninja's five buttons would be reduced to three.
• Samurai's six buttons would be reduced to three.

At minimum, this would free up three buttons on hotbars and controllers, allowing for three new abilities to be added in Shadowbringers, without the removal of any current abilities. For Dragoon and Monk, they'd get an extra six buttons each. Would you Dragoons like more Dragon-oriented offensive abilities and Jumps added? Would you Monks like to have more Chakra-related attacks added?

And for those that haven't played PvP and don't understand how the consolidated combos work, each button represents a full weaponskill combo. You only need to hit the same key three times to do the combo and all of the combo buttons change according to what step you're on for your combos. But they've taken extra steps to maintain your ability to use any combo you see fit.

Say, for example, you want to use the Royal Authority combo as a Paladin. This requires you to use Fast Blade, Riot Blade and then Royal Authority. As all of the Paladin's combos begin with Fast Blade, you can hit any of the three consolidated combo buttons to queue up the next action. This will result in your Rage of Halone button switching from Fast Blade to Savage Blade and your Royal Authority and Goring Blade combos to change from Fast Blade to Riot Blade. You can then hit either of the Riot Blade buttons to queue up Royal Authority and Goring Blade for their respective buttons, while Savage Blade in your Rage of Halone button will reset back to Fast Blade, should you need to go back to that.

I think consolidation works better for some jobs than others but I start to wonder what it would look like if we just didn't have combos in the first place. Did rdm really need a 123 melee combo for example. Drg ended up with those long 12345 combos after the extended combo trait.. I feel in cases like that the rotation design could be a bit more interesting if it wasn't so combo weaponskill focused. Well variety is good I guess.. some people prefer those more consistent jobs, some people prefer ones with more random procs that throw off the order you dial things up.

They already said they won't do it. Pressing 1-2-3 in the right order is a skill that SE want to reward.

The reason this works in pvp is because of how much theyve simplified the jobs.
For example DRK doesnt have Dark Arts in pvp.
This would greatly effect the way you use your combo, you'd have to pay real close attention to know which part of the combo you're on in order to know when to hit dark arts, you won't be able to rely on muscle memory, you'll have to watch your hotbars all the time.
Same goes for using Blood of the Dragon, or Duality, etc.
So in actual fact consolidating combos would make things more complicated, because outsude of pvp combos dont exist in a vacuum, they all have interactions with other skills.

And what exactly is going to happen to Perfect Balance on MNK? What about SAM and Kyouka Suigetsu (while you'd normally use them for Sen weaponskills, in some case you might use them for Jinpu during AoE rotation). Come back when you figured out answer to these problems without completely butchering their playstyle and turned it into PvP-lite.

Also just like Seraphor said, you think this'd simplify the system down for some people but it won't. Most people already have enough problem doing 1-2-3 correctly, asking them to remember 'How many times had I press 1 already?', 'Do I switch to 2 on the next button?', 'Do weave this oGCD with the next 1, or the next 1?" will bring in more problems than it solves.

Since this precise argument came up on reddit, I am going to quote myself:

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No, it wouldn't be. Those oGCDs will all come with cooldown timers, thus I will spend more time spamming 1111 than anything else. DRG has plenty of hotbar space anyway. It can easily fit a fourth jump. We already have three—four if you count Elusive. I really don't see a pressing need for a fourth, fifth or six just to have something new and shiny.

It's change for the sake of change, really.

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This reduces DRG to essentially spamming 1-1-1-2-2-2-2-1 endlessly. Which renders it boring. One of the primarily complaints healers have right now is how boring spamming Stone IV/Malefic III/Broil II is.

Yes, I know oGCDs attempt to mitigate this but they all have CDs. Looking up one of my O9S parses, 153 out of 250 casts were GCD abilities. Therefore, I'll spend far more time spamming two buttons than pressing anything else unless they add a slew of new oGCD which defeats the purpose of skill consolidation entirely. We simply don't need a bunch of new abilities. They can either upgrade our existing ones or maybe toss in one new thing. Hell, they could make the combos have different effects depending on the sequence. No new buttons but new "abilities".

Ultimately, I don't want combo consolidation just to add new abilities we don't even need.

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Seraphor also makes a good point. Muscle memory is a huge factor when it comes to optimization. With combos all consolidation into a single button, I have to pay more attention to which stage of the combo I'm in, especially on jobs like DRG. Whereas now, I scarcely even look at my hot bars. It's much easier to miss click when you're spamming the same two buttons. Putting this all aside, DRG in particular doesn't have button bloat. In fact, we have a useless skill in Piercing Talon. If anything, I would rather they bake new abilities into oGCDs. Battle Litany is on a three minute cooldown. Why not put a second oGCD behind it, which we can only use after Litany—similar to now Geirskogul becomes Nastrond? Not only does this take up no additional space, it lets us use buttons that are otherwise sitting on lengthily cooldowns.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

They already said they won't do it. Pressing 1-2-3 in the right order is a skill that SE want to reward.

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I would like to see a source for this. With PvP already using a system like this, I don't see why they would make a different decision for PvE.

I was under the impression that PvP was their testing ground for this, and while the conversion to putting it in PvE has taken longer than I'd like, I suspect it may come with whatever various changes the expansion will bring.

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Originally Posted by Raldo

I would like to see a source for this. With PvP already using a system like this, I don't see why they would make a different decision for PvE.

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It was in the Korean Live Letter 2018, I'm sure there is thread about it somewhere on the forums, anyway this is pretty much what Yoshi said...

Skills automatically comboing (aka press 1 button to combo) is not going to be implemented in PvE. The reason we did this in PvP while reducing the amount of total skills is that we want players to focus more on team strategy and tactics. In PvE we feel that the effective use of branching combos is one sign of player skill. As part of our current concept regarding the battle system, we are purposefully leaving the PvP and PvE systems separate.

Dragoon does have slight button bloat. Why do we need two separate combo openers: True Thrust and Impulse Drive? DRK, WAR, PLD, NIN, SAM all have 1 combo opener GCD that branches. Further, why does Heavy Thrust exist? SAM get their damage buff from their 2nd hit, as does WAR. Vorpal Thrust is just pure damge with no buff or debuff, why not give it HT's buff and also make True Thrust open either combo. Bam now you have 2 free slots.

As an offtopic aside, I don't think DRG will get a 4th Jump unless it's a conditional oGCD or a straight upgrade. Moreover, SE addressed the issue of jump animation lock associated with jumps by giving us Mirage Dive. Mirage Dive, for all intents and purposes is a 4th Jump in that it's a ranged oGCD, but it doesn't cause personal animation lock because there's no movement (the dragon spirit does the jump). Giving us a traditional jump means more animation lock. If they made it like SSD/DFD to reduce animation lock, then DRG will have 4 gap closers, while other jumps only have 1. It would be a bit ridiculous.

"We're not going to do this" tends to be a poor argument because they're people, and people change their minds.