What did Yoshi mean when he said that the combat system will change in 4.0

Was it just skill pruning, or something a little more extreme?

I am also curious.

Based on this Famitsu interview with Yoshi-P, of which a fan translation can be found here, it's nothing extreme.

A few of the combat system related bits:

• Basic GCD rotations (like 1-2-3, 1-2a-3a, 1-2b-3b combos for DoMs) will remain unchanged.
• Abilities with little appreciable use, or that often don't change the outcome of the battle anyway (e.g., Featherfoot) will be replaced with more meaningful abilities.
• High level signature abilities (e.g., Blood of the Dragon, Enochian) will have new UI components to increase awareness and maintainability. Possible modifications to these abilities to increase their uptime for less skilled players while rewarding players who use the abilities correctly.
• Cross-class abilities that are commonly regarded as required by all jobs of a role (e.g. Raging Strikes) will be learned per role.

Presumably, we'll know a bit more after next weekend's FanFest.

I am going to guess streamline them more and lets not forget the Jump Potion will bring in players who will be placed at level 60 with no idea on how to play their class. I would not be suprised if combat system change is also done to make it easier for jump potion users to be introduced to FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Laerune

I would not be suprised if combat system change is also done to make it easier for jump potion users to be introduced to FFXIV.

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This is the point we are at :( The battle system needs to be reworked so people can skip everything that gets them used to it

Bit disappointed that none of their changes so far appear to be doing anything to address hotbar bloat. I know people look upon WoW's massive class prune as a deterioration of class identity, but I feel like with all the cross-class skill nonsense and 5 extra abilities in HW, that the space for buttons right now is just "too $&@%ed high!".

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Bit disappointed that none of their changes so far appear to be doing anything to address hotbar bloat. I know people look upon WoW's massive class prune as a deterioration of class identity, but I feel like with all the cross-class skill nonsense and 5 extra abilities in HW, that the space for buttons right now is just "too $&@%ed high!".

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I heard Yoshi said that the amount of skills will remain about same with stormblood. So they're not adding but they're not removing much either seemingly.

Rip my two hotbar skills on two rows, can't avoid having a third row now x)

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Originally Posted by Laerune

I am going to guess streamline them more and lets not forget the Jump Potion will bring in players who will be placed at level 60 with no idea on how to play their class. I would not be suprised if combat system change is also done to make it easier for jump potion users to be introduced to FFXIV.

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^this 100%

Its also exactly why the cross-class system is changing to just a pool of abilities we pick from rather than leveling up other classes.

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Originally Posted by Madepossible

Rip my two hotbar skills on two rows, can't avoid having a third row now x)

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I use five.
Seven if in PvP!

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Originally Posted by Canadane

I use five.
Seven if in PvP!

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On PC I think it's manageable,, but if you play on the ps4 pro with a controller: it's a lot of swapping!! *cries*

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Originally Posted by Madepossible

On PC I think it's manageable,, but if you play on the ps4 pro with a controller: it's a lot of swapping!! *cries*

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I use a controller and have 3 hotbars. It sucked at first, but you do get used to it eventually. There's also that new Y hotbar they released, but it wasn't my cup of tea. *hands over a tissue* Dry those tears, you will still be awesome. >: )

But, I think Meeka19 is correct. Don't ask me where I read this, but I believe the devs mentioned they were going to add more traits instead of abilities this time around.

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Originally Posted by AnaviAnael

I use a controller and have 3 hotbars. It sucked at first, but you do get used to it eventually. There's also that new Y hotbar they released, but it wasn't my cup of tea. *hands over a tissue* Dry those tears, you will still be awesome. >: )

But, I think Meeka19 is correct. Don't ask me where I read this, but I believe the devs mentioned they were going to add more traits instead of abilities this time around.

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Much obliged! Three hotbars already? 0.0 mmmm more traits would be nice! I do imagine you have to work on a 4th hotbar *huggles* I had to be creative at some point cos for example when im on mnk, I have blood for blood plus Internal Release fused in one button! OmO

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Originally Posted by Madepossible

On PC I think it's manageable,, but if you play on the ps4 pro with a controller: it's a lot of swapping!! *cries*

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With the W cross hotbar, you can have 6 bars at once without any hotswap (which takes much less than a GCD either way).
48 skills at your fingertips, and more just a button tap away isn't extremely hard to work with.

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Originally Posted by Madepossible

Rip my two hotbar skills on two rows, can't avoid having a third row now x)

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7 hot bars, 8 for PvP, all of which are frequently used. I play on controller too.

Even if I recently unsubbed from the game, this is definitely the one and only detail that interests me from the possible expansion (I'm not even bothered of the new jobs: they'll most likely be copy cats of what we already have, unless they'll surprise me).
If it's interesting enough I'll definitely check it out again when the expansion hits again...if not I'll just stay away.

PS: And no speed is fine.

We action combat now? Gotta manually aim Jump, woo!

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Originally Posted by loreleidiangelo

Bit disappointed that none of their changes so far appear to be doing anything to address hotbar bloat. I know people look upon WoW's massive class prune as a deterioration of class identity, but I feel like with all the cross-class skill nonsense and 5 extra abilities in HW, that the space for buttons right now is just "too $&@%ed high!".

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I thought this was a bit ironic. At one point during the fan fest it looked like he was going to talk about addressing hotbar bloat, but then he goes and says, "we're going to take those useless actions that people don't put on their hotbar and make them useful" which... just adds to the bloat.

A combat overhaul is good news for me. Something needs to be done so healing and damage numbers don't get too inflated. It would be nice also if the classes felt epic, I hope there will be rework on the class fantasy too :).

it's been a while so i don't remember it exactly but from the fanfest it was along the lines of.

additional abilities system is being replaced by role abilities. The one they used as an example is provoke for tanks.
So basically instead of unlocking skills from other classes and assigning them cross-class. Each role will now have a specific role-shared skill pool

he said heavensward skills like enochian and blood of the dragon created a huge gap between the highly skilled and more casual players. So they are altering them and adding UI elements to make them easier to use effectively

and he said they will be pruning unused abilities, giving a few examples, which will also include removing the "role abilities" from the original classes

and they just hinted at things like making it run more fluid and smoothly in general

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Originally Posted by Zied

Was it just skill pruning, or something a little more extreme?

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He expressed the desire to lower the difficulty of playing classes, maybe modifying abilities/flow of how classes function to make how to optimally dps more intuitive for all classes?

I think we will get some slimming down as we will probably get 5 new abilities with HW and yoshida mentioned that they do not want to have players needing any more keybinds than we already use.

My predictions based on how WoW has functioned after a few expansions, some abilities will be overhauled, others cut. which we already knew some abilities were under review as they mentioned possibly replacing/overhauling abilities currently deemed as useless by the community such as feather step ect.

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Originally Posted by Chiramu

A combat overhaul is good news for me. Something needs to be done so healing and damage numbers don't get too inflated. It would be nice also if the classes felt epic, I hope there will be rework on the class fantasy too :).

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with the item level based systems like WoW and what we have in ff 14 "number inflation" aka power creep is unavoidable especially when a new expansion comes out, look at 2.0 vs 3.0, at the end of ARR max item level (individual item) was i135(average i130) as the item level goes up with the levels (51-60) by the time you get to 60 the first stop on the ilevel train was 210 (if you did raiding) and after 3 raid tiers we are now at i270, if ilevel makes a similiar jump as 2.0 => 3.0 you can estimate that the first stop max ilevel would be 350.

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Originally Posted by KirigayaKazuto

with the item level based systems like WoW and what we have in ff 14 "number inflation" aka power creep is unavoidable especially when a new expansion comes out.

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It wouldn't be as bad if they didn't think they needed to bring out a new tier of gear with every content patch.

I would be happy if they made a way to scale dungeons up for difficulty like how WoW dungeons are now. The Mythic+ dungeons are a good way to reward great players, also Blizzard has used it for tournaments(caught a bit of University students competing for time against each other to win scholarship money).

Please bring gear back to dungeons SE!

I hope they finaly get rid of those annoying positional atks >.>
I always ignore that! I feel stupid running around the target just to do abit more damage <,<
On 1vs1 its even impossible to do it!

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Originally Posted by AsahinaMyLove

I hope they finaly get rid of those annoying positional atks >.>
I always ignore that! I feel stupid running around the target just to do abit more damage <,<
On 1vs1 its even impossible to do it!

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You're doing it wrong. It's only a half step into or out of the Rear indicator, which is the gap in the target circle. You barely twitch the stick/key and you're in the other position.

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Originally Posted by Blueyes

I thought this was a bit ironic. At one point during the fan fest it looked like he was going to talk about addressing hotbar bloat, but then he goes and says, "we're going to take those useless actions that people don't put on their hotbar and make them useful" which... just adds to the bloat.

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Right? They make me nervous whenever they mention improving useless skills. That isn't going to help button bloat. Feint is so useless, I don't even have it on my hotbar!

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

Right? They make me nervous whenever they mention improving useless skills. That isn't going to help button bloat. Feint is so useless, I don't even have it on my hotbar!

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I'm not sure why this is even a thing. Including class actions, five cross class actions, and all quest actions through 60, a majority of jobs (seven, and DRG is one of these) have only 32 actions; three have 33; and NIN has 35 (if you do the sensible thing and put Ninjutsu-Chi-Jin-Ten-Ninjutsu on your bar; 34 if you have only one Ninjutsu button or play by controller). Sure, the new abilities coming from 61 to 70 could require bar conservation efforts, but as things stand right this moment, the only jobs that eat up extra bars are the ACN specialists, if pet commands get placed on normal bars.

It's literally mostly the same rotations(some will change a bit). Useless moves made not useless.

And they're raising the skill floor, and the skill ceiling stays the same