button bloat

i justed wanted to tell SquareEnix that im happy your guys are working on this. my ideal class has 4-6 buttons for single target rotation, 1-2 for aoe, 1-2 cooldowns and the rest for other stuff like mount, role actions etc.

You may want to check out the new PVP then ;)

*makes popcorn*

sounds.... fun...

Every job should have only one button.

Probably sarcasm, but there are games out there where you literally do only have 5 or 6 buttons but the game play is vastly more engaging that what XIV has. Simply because of how everyone of those buttons shapes combat in some way. In XIV so many of the buttons are just extra daamge buttons that essentially just do the same thing as half the other buttons which is not fun or engaging game play.

Rotations arent fun either. they're lifeless, static, and largely thoughtless. People kicking off about Kaiten because its takes thought away from the class. It really doesn't, You follow the same rotation in every encounter which basically means you press Kaiten at the exact same times in every encounter without second thought. It's just another button in a rotation.

You can go and do a current piece of content and you'll do a rotation.
4 months from now when the next patch drops go into a new piece of content and what rotation will you use... OMG! its the exact same one....
4 months after that, another new patch with new content and wow you guessed it same rotation again...
4 momnths after that yet another patch drops and.... Well you get the picture.. There's no thought in rotations it's basically just muscle memory.

The Dissidia Final Fantasy mobile game has more engaging content than XIV does and you have 7-9 buttons there depending on the character. and a whole bucket load of diversity between characters to boot.
Final Fantasy XII has more engaging combat than XIV does and you can basically automate huge chunks of that with gambits..

I just want to tell Square enix that I'm glad you made My FFXI Dancer have more than 40 abilities and included the subjob system so I can use half of that job's abilities which I sometimes go Warrior or Thief ( I did go subjob White Mage once)

the job is has alot of depth to it

it's really fun and I love that I can support and heal my party with Curing Waltzs and be a healer if the White mage or Red mage or Geomancer dies

or using Fan Dance If I need to be a Tank for a bit or just reduce taking damage

thank you SE!


https://we-are-vanadiel.finalfantasy...5/vol/1/14.jpg

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Probably sarcasm, but there are games out there where you literally do only have 5 or 6 buttons but the game play is vastly more engaging that what XIV has. Simply because of how everyone of those buttons shapes combat in some way. In XIV so many of the buttons are just extra daamge buttons that essentially just do the same thing as half the other buttons which is not fun or engaging game play.

Rotations arent fun either. they're lifeless, static, and largely thoughtless. People kicking off about Kaiten because its takes thought away from the class. It really doesn't, You follow the same rotation in every encounter which basically means you press Kaiten at the exact same times in every encounter without second thought. It's just another button in a rotation.

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So changing the Kenki gauge to a "PRESS THE GLOWY BUTTON FOR DAMAGE!" is better than managing your Kenki to get the damage buff and getting a SWEET animation to boot? Please stop speaking for Samurais like you know how to play one. Managing Kenki is pointless now, you just slap the glowy button until you have no more kenki, not fun really.

I wouldn't mind combining different combos into single buttons a la pvp. Mods do that already.

As a controller player, everything is possible due to swapping extended crossbars, but some classes are fairly uncomfortable to play. That would go a long way into making them more accessible and not really much simpler.

Can't do this with every class though, but RDM and DRG come to mind. Not compressing all their combos, but at least the 123s, leaving rest of weapon skills separate.

SAM and MNK get more complicated because of their rotations, though.

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Originally Posted by Akantorz

So changing the Kenki gauge to a "PRESS THE GLOWY BUTTON FOR DAMAGE!" is better than managing your Kenki to get the damage buff and getting a SWEET animation to boot? Please stop speaking for Samurais like you know how to play one. Managing Kenki is pointless now, you just slap the glowy button until you have no more kenki, not fun really.

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Shinten isn't fun either it's just another extra damage button.. but combat on the whole isn't much fun which I referenced in my earlier post. Every encounter you follow the same old dull boring static rotation from muscle memory and basically requires single digit brain cells to pull off.

The amount of thought required is negligble. Patch 6.4 lands months from now and everyone knows what rotation they'll use because it's the exact same one they use now... BORING.

The point I was aiming to make is the combat system could be a shed load more engaging even if it only had 6 buttons or so that the op mentioned as long as those buttons carried weight and impacted the fighting some fashion... where XIV has a shed load of buttons and most of them just do a bit of extra damage... Shinten exists only to keep players artificially engaged in that 2 seconds between gcds because players would get so bored if they had nothing to press...

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Originally Posted by hagare

*makes popcorn*

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OP straight up posted in the wrong neighborhood with this take :P

Can I downvote? for real tho please leave our abilities alone and don't make this game even easier.

Since you don't do any of the endgame content where it even matters what your DPS is.
Just unbind keys then and just do your 123 combo.

Don't ruin the game for the rest of us.

OP, fishing on the forums honestly isn't as entertaining as spear-fishing in-game, I've heard. :D

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Originally Posted by forsakee

Can I downvote? for real tho please leave our abilities alone and don't make this game even easier.

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Sorry, forum rotations only have one button.

Sounds like OP should go play something like ESO or one of the many other MMO's out there with boring 3 button combat.

Could be worse. Your don't have a bug that vastly affects your job rotation in situations that you generally have no control over - or have a button that wasn't asked to be shared that's now causing skill queueing issues.

More fun, is the second time your job has been once again affected by an actual bug.

Kupo there are various ways to minimize button boat (some in terms of ToS some are of course not so I won't go in to detail.)

ToS Legal I believe are:

In-game macros (not ideal but works)
Not certain about keyboards that allow macros..I assume since you are still there at the PC there should not be an issue its not as if you are afk etc.. but I am not certain about this nor would they really have a way to check if you are using a programmable keyboard.

Since the dawn of SNES I remember having a turbo controller that would spam a button so I could "test my might" in MK lol Could do it manually but why when you can just hold a button down lol :p

Course you could be like some and spam one or two buttons in normals and nobody really notices kupo haha savage they would but normals..eh you can get away with 1-5 buttons.

Personaly, i dont care if a basic 123 rotation becomes 111, if its just a constant rotation on its own. There is no thinking here about the next ability if you are going for the rotation.

However, once at the 3rd ability there are follow ups, it starts to matter because your button presses become an automatic reflex based memory system. You dont realy need to remember which button you pressed last because your finger is already prepared for the next one. And this sort of feedback matters in combos. Turning this into a 111 combo on that is more likely going to make the class harder to manage efficiently.

Even if there is a resource bar charging up at runtime, its something the player has to track visualy. Tactile feedback is always faster and therefor more efficient. Only when the resources are a bit more complex to manage (like red mage), then merging things could be done as QoL so you dont have to remember which button is the next one in the combo (its just that the red mage doesnt have that issue as there is nearly always an option of choise going on). But even here, lets say you can charge up your resource in a basic 12 combo, to which 2 has no use seperately (there is no 3). Then merging this is simply better. But the moment there is an option to take a diffirent path in abilities, it must be a seperate button.

OP might be trolling a bit but the button bloat is a bit of a problem. For example, a lot of jobs just have a 123 combo for the sake of having one. First in my mind is machinist and reaper. Some jobs have combos where the 123 makes sense to have because they can branch off in different direction, like samurai, dancer, and monk.

In the case of RPR specifically, it feels like i barely ever need to hit the 123 combo, it's very filler.

Edit: I just want to add. A rotation can have depth and fewer buttons. More buttons don't mean more depth, more buttons just means more bloat.

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Originally Posted by Averax

OP might be trolling a bit but the button bloat is a bit of a problem. For example, a lot of jobs just have a 123 combo for the sake of having one. First in my mind is machinist and reaper. Some jobs have combos where the 123 makes sense to have because they can branch off in different direction, like samurai, dancer, and monk.

In the case of RPR specifically, it feels like i barely ever need to hit the 123 combo, it's very filler.

Edit: I just want to add. A rotation can have depth and fewer buttons. More buttons don't mean more depth, more buttons just means more bloat.

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I would not mind one button combos if post have multiple outcomes. I like the pld in the regard to the combo because at the end you can dot or start another chain of things. <3 kupo

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Originally Posted by gamerseb

I wouldn't mind combining different combos into single buttons a la pvp. Mods do that already.

As a controller player, everything is possible due to swapping extended crossbars, but some classes are fairly uncomfortable to play. That would go a long way into making them more accessible and not really much simpler.

Can't do this with every class though, but RDM and DRG come to mind. Not compressing all their combos, but at least the 123s, leaving rest of weapon skills separate.

SAM and MNK get more complicated because of their rotations, though.

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RDM is fine.

DRG I have a whole other bar swap for aoe because my 123 is actually 12345 and the aoe doesn't fit on my main bar.

Ideally I would not bar swap at all, like with SCH, whm, dnc and my tanks. I use expanded xhb for them and gate R1 swapping.

Still trying to find an ideal setup for smn because the bar swap doesn't feel good or "stick" if I swap before combat to use aoe abilities in my opener on trash. If I open on bar 2, it swaps back to 1 when I get in combat and it's driving me crazy.

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Originally Posted by Dzian

The Dissidia Final Fantasy mobile game has more engaging content than XIV does and you have 7-9 buttons there depending on the character. and a whole bucket load of diversity between characters to boot.

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I mean, that game also has about 99% of its content faceroll easy (including coop content) with only the latest Lufenias or whatever they are up to now being challenging

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Originally Posted by DormantOne

i justed wanted to tell SquareEnix that im happy your guys are working on this. my ideal class has 4-6 buttons for single target rotation, 1-2 for aoe, 1-2 cooldowns and the rest for other stuff like mount, role actions etc.

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I agree with you, as I am old and infirm.

My ideal solution would be to make combat macros work better, so that we could stack skills without losing however many fractions of a second (and avoid people just posting DON'T DO THIS whenever one searches for combat macros in order to make combat easier for oneself).

A compromise would be to have the combos all put on one button like in PvP. (I realize that there is a plugin that does this, but having to use a plugin is not a great solution at all.)

Miss when jobs made you think tbh.

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Originally Posted by Jkap_Goat

https://we-are-vanadiel.finalfantasy...5/vol/1/14.jpg

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I miss "mission girls."

Please dont make this into wow

Button bloat can be easily solved by combining multiple combo abilities into a single button. Take Dragoon for example:
Combine "True Thrust", "Vorpal Thrust", "Full Thrust", and "Fang and Claw" into a single button
Combine "Disembowel", "Chaos Thrust" and "Wheeling Thrust" into a single button.
There, now we have 5 slots we can put to better use. Gunbreaker (And PVP actions) already have the action that does this (Gnashing Fang -> Savage Claw -> Wicked Talon), why not do the same for all other actions? Button bloat isn't a good excuse for removing Hissatsu: Kaiten.
It doesn't necessary make the game easily, combos already have glowing outline indicting the next viable actions.

I honestly don't get how 111 is "easier" than 123 when the latter is clearly a sequence of keys one next to the other that your finger runs through... unless you're scattering your filler combo through very distant keys for some reason. Maybe for someone with hand move impairment that would indeed be a game changer in regards making it much easier? You know what is harder? Monk branching combos, because that one you have to be aware of other elements to decide if it's 1-2-6, 1-5-3, etc...

At best, 2-3 extra vacant keys allow them to add more oGCD abilities to weave in between these combos. They could drink more from the 6.1 pvp job action design, because that's proof that even with a tiny amount of buttons is possible to create engaging interactions among actions... Imagine if such premise would be applied to the PVE design when that can potentially host 3-4x times more actions.

I tried PVP here years ago, and was unable to do anything because all my abilities had changed, and most of them weren't on my bars / keys. I'm not about to spend 20 minutes reconfiguring my UI every time I go do PVP, and back again after I leave.
I might be interested it it if we could just use our normal set of abilities.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I honestly don't get how 111 is "easier" than 123 when the latter is clearly a sequence of keys one next to the other that your finger runs through... unless you're scattering your filler combo through very distant keys for some reason. Maybe for someone with hand move impairment that would indeed be a game changer in regards making it much easier? You know what is harder? Monk branching combos, because that one you have to be aware of other elements to decide if it's 1-2-6, 1-5-3, etc...

At best, 2-3 extra vacant keys allow them to add more oGCD abilities to weave in between these combos. They could drink more from the 6.1 pvp job action design, because that's proof that even with a tiny amount of buttons is possible to create engaging interactions among actions... Imagine if such premise would be applied to the PVE design when that can potentially host 3-4x times more actions.

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Most people that complain about it are clickers who never bothered to learn how to keybind.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I honestly don't get how 111 is "easier" than 123 when the latter is clearly a sequence of keys one next to the other that your finger runs through... unless you're scattering your filler combo through very distant keys for some reason. Maybe for someone with hand move impairment that would indeed be a game changer in regards making it much easier? You know what is harder? Monk branching combos, because that one you have to be aware of other elements to decide if it's 1-2-6, 1-5-3, etc...

At best, 2-3 extra vacant keys allow them to add more oGCD abilities to weave in between these combos. They could drink more from the 6.1 pvp job action design, because that's proof that even with a tiny amount of buttons is possible to create engaging interactions among actions... Imagine if such premise would be applied to the PVE design when that can potentially host 3-4x times more actions.

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If it was just 1-2-3 it would be fine. Nobody is asking for 1-1-1. What we have a problem with is when it is, in reality, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0-alt1-alt2-alt-3, etc. Most jobs require 3 full hotbars of buttons. That is neither possible nor fun for me, and that is why I use macros to stack skills.

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Originally Posted by Shirala

If it was just 1-2-3 it would be fine. Nobody is asking for 1-1-1. What we have a problem with is when it is, in reality, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0-alt1-alt2-alt-3, etc. Most jobs require 3 full hotbars of buttons. That is neither possible nor fun for me, and that is why I use macros to stack skills.

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Might wanna look at MMO mice.

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Originally Posted by ZedxKayn

Might wanna look at MMO mice.

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I have an MMO mouse, and a Azeron Cyborg and still find this game has extra buttons just to have extra buttons. To me, PvP not only has more interesting abilities, but also more class identity since the rework, which shows you do not need excessive buttons to have a well design and fun class flow.

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Originally Posted by Nothv13

I have an MMO mouse, and a Azeron Cyborg and still find this game has extra buttons just to have extra buttons. To me, PvP not only has more interesting abilities, but also more class identity since the rework, which shows you do not need excessive buttons to have a well design and fun class flow.

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I think pvp has interesting abilities and better class identity, but it is very bare. In PVE no job actually requires 3 full hot bars, and about 25% of your skills are for niche situations that you likely do not need on your hot bar and about 25% of skills that could be combined to 1 key or an upgrade of a skill. I would probably say that about 45% of button bloat is people being unintelligent enough to set up better keybinds for there classes. If you are using 1-0 button bloat isn't the problem your keybinding is. I would not mind seeing the class identity from PvP go into PvE.

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Originally Posted by Acke

You may want to check out the new PVP then ;)

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PvP lately has been way more interesting and engaging than anything offered elsewhere, so maybe PvE should take some inspiration from there.

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Originally Posted by Shirala

If it was just 1-2-3 it would be fine. Nobody is asking for 1-1-1. What we have a problem with is when it is, in reality, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0-alt1-alt2-alt-3, etc. Most jobs require 3 full hotbars of buttons. That is neither possible nor fun for me, and that is why I use macros to stack skills.

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Sounds like you just need to practice more, before stepping into more difficult content spend like 2 hours hitting a target dummy. Once it's second nature and you can do your correct rotation step into extreme and work up. I main sam/reaper and play on ps4 controller, it toke hours of practice before I was ready for savage/ultimate. I don't know if you care about your dps but macro's effect your gcd. I'm curious what job you play because my dancer has half the abilities as sam ever consider re-rolling?

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I honestly don't get how 111 is "easier" than 123 when the latter is clearly a sequence of keys one next to the other that your finger runs through.

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This might be a GNB specific thing but for me - the fact that I want to enter into no mercy with three cartridges + at least keen edge "banked" means that my rotation is going to involve hitting 1 - NM, all my damage abilities - 23 + burst strike, if I want to fit everything I can into no mercy. And sometimes after my gnashing fang combo, if I'm not paying attention I can autopilot going back to 1 instead of hitting 2 or 3 like I should be, resulting in a pretty severe dps loss. Collapsing my standard 123 into a single button would completely remove my capacity to ever make that error, and I wouldn't exactly be thrilled about that.

But if SE absolutely has to remove "button bloat" I hope they do that before removing anything else.

The difficulty in a job is NOT to press 1, 2 and 3 in sequence. Except in the few classes that have extended, non-linear combos and you need to combine them (SAM/MNK for instance).

In a DRG, for instance, the difficulty of the job is learning when to enter Life of the Dragon, remembering to apply all oGCDs when necessary and not missing out, choose which combo to apply, and lining up with buffs. The difficulty of the job is NOT learning how to press 1-2-3 in sequence.

The 2 main combos and the AoE combo could safely be folded into a button, while leaving "Wheeling Thrust" and "Fang and Claw" out, while retaining everything that's interesting from the job, and allowing controller players to have a better time.

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Originally Posted by IdowhatIwant

I think pvp has interesting abilities and better class identity, but it is very bare. In PVE no job actually requires 3 full hot bars, and about 25% of your skills are for niche situations that you likely do not need on your hot bar and about 25% of skills that could be combined to 1 key or an upgrade of a skill. I would probably say that about 45% of button bloat is people being unintelligent enough to set up better keybinds for there classes. If you are using 1-0 button bloat isn't the problem your keybinding is. I would not mind seeing the class identity from PvP go into PvE.

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I do not think PvE should be as bare as PvP is. PvP just shows that you don't need tons of buttons to have strong class identity and engaging gameplay. Button bloat comes down to feeling. As I said I have an azeron 20+ buttons within less than a centimeter of my finger and an MMO mouse and I still feel button bloat exists in PvE. Maybe if that bloat lead to classes being rather unique rather than homogenized, I'd feel different, but it doesn't.