Button Bloat

It's getting silly the almost 2 rows of attack-ish skills , just make rank 2,3,4 and so on of like 3 buttons for single and maybe 2 buttons for aoe. Some classes will need a few more for buffs and dispels, also 5 or 6 defensive buffs are dumb just have like 2 and lower timer on em.If Square ever looked at the unused skills they would know there is bloat and that game money could be put to better use like cotton tails on Viera or fixing the male au'ra's run animation so it doesn't look like they have rickets when running.

Square Enix faced the issue for button bloat in Heavensward. They addressed it by removing unused, useless skills and merging them. Over time, they created an "upgrade" system so that older actions didn't need to be on the hotbar when level syncing, and made better use of traits to adjust the rotation as you level.

They have aimed to keep the button bloat about the same in every expansion, so if you think it's bad now, it would have been much worse after 4 expansions if they hadn't been keeping it balanced.

Many people tend to be critical when a job has as few buttons as you are suggesting. Take Summoner for instance. It's a well-designed job that plays well but a lot of people attack it on the basis of it having few buttons in regular use overall.

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Originally Posted by OogaShaka

If Square ever looked at the unused skills they would know there is bloat

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No, there is not, or barely. There used to be in Heavensward and Stormblood, but by Shadowbringers they had removed almost all of it. You appear to play Paladin, so sure, there is Shield Bash still, but mostly there aren't unused actions anymore (unless you just don't know how to use them).

Role actions are maybe kinda unused, that's been a thing with role actions since they were added because you usually don't need Leg Graze and stuff like that.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Many people tend to be critical when a job has as few buttons as you are suggesting. Take Summoner for instance. It's a well-designed job that plays well but a lot of people attack it on the basis of it having few buttons in regular use overall.

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Well-designed isn't exactly the best description to give on current SMN for a myriad of reasons. Some of it, and probably more, are:

• oversimplification to the point that no thinking is required. EW WHM is simple and straight-forward but it is not insulting as EW SMN. WAR, also a smooth brain job, has even more buttons to press than EW SMN.
• removal of a mechanic instead of embracing the original design and just continue to improve on it.

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Originally Posted by OogaShaka

It's getting silly the almost 2 rows of attack-ish skills , just make rank 2,3,4 and so on of like 3 buttons for single and maybe 2 buttons for aoe. Some classes will need a few more for buffs and dispels, also 5 or 6 defensive buffs are dumb just have like 2 and lower timer on em.If Square ever looked at the unused skills they would know there is bloat and that game money could be put to better use like cotton tails on Viera or fixing the male au'ra's run animation so it doesn't look like they have rickets when running.

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I quite like my running animation thank you very much. Leave it alone. As for buttons, the amount of buttons is fine. If anything many if not most jobs could handle having a few more. And if you have unused buttons, you're #doingitwrong

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

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Many people tend to be critical when a job has as few buttons as you are suggesting. Take Summoner for instance. It's a well-designed job that plays well but a lot of people attack it on the basis of it having few buttons in regular use overall.

...

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I'm not sure a job that can be macro'd into a single button can be called well designed. Especially when that macro actually allows you to play at a fairly high level. Other than that, +1.

There was another thread about this fairly recently and almost everyone who complained about button bloat in the thread later exposed themselves as having no clue how to bind their abilities properly.

For reference, here are the number of buttons for each job currently. Every job has around 30 buttons give or take, with SMN having the least at 25 and SCH having the most at 35.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

SCH having the most at 35.

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Does this cover pet commands? 3 hotbars is not enough for me. Yes, i also have Repose on my hotbar and i find ways to use it.

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Originally Posted by rawker

Does this cover pet commands? 3 hotbars is not enough for me. Yes, i also have Repose on my hotbar and i find ways to use it.

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Not sure, but the post says this: "Scholar (+2) - As a pet job, SCH has a ton of actions that are not assignable to hotbars. SCH gains two new abilities in EW: Protraction (like a targeted Thrill of Battle) and Expedient (AoE mitigation + Combat Sprint). SCH's hotbar is going to be somewhat difficult to manage with 35 unique actions. On the plus side, Summon Selene and Summon Eos are essentially the same button, and one can be removed. You can also consider removing Repose, which sees little use in high-end combat currently."

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Originally Posted by rawker

Does this cover pet commands? 3 hotbars is not enough for me. Yes, i also have Repose on my hotbar and i find ways to use it.

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Probably, its the only way it could reach 35 keys. I'm guessing they are only adding the 2 useful pet abilities since the rest are completely useless.
As for bloat I don't feel like there is bloat on any job right now, some spells rarely ever get used but I would not consider them real bloat, it's more like the upgrade system failed those abilities and left them to rot when they should have been merged into something else by max level and can just be ignored. 30 abilities seems like the golden spot for me.

It's so weird that they have the ability to merge combos but would rather delete abilities than do that in PVE. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't want to do it because it'd make the leveling experience lackluster (more than it already is) by not having a new shiny button on the hotbar, which we only get more dynamic abilities at later levels.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They addressed it by removing unused, useless skills and merging them.

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Yet Cure I and Benefic I still exist and require a slot in case you ever down-sync to low enough level...

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Originally Posted by Moqi

It's so weird that they have the ability to merge combos but would rather delete abilities than do that in PVE. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't want to do it because it'd make the leveling experience lackluster (more than it already is) by not having a new shiny button on the hotbar, which we only get more dynamic abilities at later levels.

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On the former point, I can see a few other reasons they might not want to. Like branching combos, and it is still technically a possible point of failure/stress. On the latter point, I don't think that is a good reason as to why. If pvp'ing combos meant that the leveling experience became worse, they could just move some abilities to lower levels. They need to do that anyways really.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Take Summoner for instance. It's a well-designed job that plays well but a lot of people attack it on the basis of it having few buttons in regular use overall.

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Summoner still got Physik that heals 400 HP and doesnt scale.


The button bloat is a real issue, i dont want to play most jobs without combo plug in, Reaper, Ninja, Paladin for example suffer a lot from button bloat.
I say specificly BUTTON bloat , not SKILL bloat, you can have a lot of skills, but my keyboard only got so many buttons i can manage with one hand.

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Originally Posted by ZiraZ

Probably, its the only way it could reach 35 keys. I'm guessing they are only adding the 2 useful pet abilities since the rest are completely useless.
As for bloat I don't feel like there is bloat on any job right now, some spells rarely ever get used but I would not consider them real bloat, it's more like the upgrade system failed those abilities and left them to rot when they should have been merged into something else by max level and can just be ignored. 30 abilities seems like the golden spot for me.

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Obligatory hotbar setup
https://i.imgur.com/bSiLDRM.png

Hmm.. this may look bloated to some but it's actually fine and makes sense... unlike uh...
https://i.imgur.com/29NOAsa.png

yeah. i didn't even bother changing the default hotbar setup. I despise EW SMN.

For SCH, I have a hidden hotbar where Sprint is in there. I should kept Return, and Teleport from SMN hotbar for padding. Ugh. Such an eyesore

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Originally Posted by Arohk

Summoner still got Physik that heals 400 HP and doesnt scale.

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These examples are still nothing compared to Heavensward and Stormblood.

I think they are intending to remove Resurrection from Summoner because they wanted to if the rework was a success, which it is considering how many of them you see in duties. So maybe they will remove Physick as well.

Cure and Benefic are obviously still meant to be relevant from a design perspective even though experts ignore it.

And Shield Bash has been kept for job identity reasons. There aren't a whole lot of examples of bloat compared to the first expansions this game had, tbh. What they kept was deliberate or because of job identity, and they even eventually removed things that were part of job identity such as Fluid Aura, so they will probably eventually do it with Shield Bash tbh.

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I say specificly BUTTON bloat , not SKILL bloat, you can have a lot of skills, but my keyboard only got so many buttons i can manage with one hand.

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Some people do want it to just be a few buttons like PvP, but for whatever reason, FFXIV made lots of actions/abilities part of the game's "identity". In my years playing, I've seen some people say that the large amount of actions is why they play, because some games keep it extremely simple.

Should they really want to cut button bloat from SCH, these came into my mind:

1. Make pet movement be a default control you can bind keys on For example:

   • CTRL + Left click = Move (Pet)
   • CTRL + Right click = Attack (Pet)

2. Heel can be replaced by adding a trait to Summon Eos, making its cast time instant when it is currently summoned.
3. Stay is redundant as the current Place command already tells the pet to stay where it is placed. It can also be made into another key bind.

With those, 4 buttons are already freed up. As for the abilities... Physick on SCH can be removed and increase the potency of Embrace. There are lots more they can do to simplify without turning SCH into lol-SMN

tldr, Pet commands can be reworked to be part of your character's keybind.
https://i.imgur.com/1GnOqFh.png

I would LOVE to have more 'conditional' buttons that hold 3 or 4 abilities on them actually, like how Red Mage and Summoner reuse buttons for several different phases of their rotation. It doesn't even have to be big stuff on the same scale as that. Stuff like making Hypercharge turn into Heat Blast once you use it. Replace AoE actions with a stance that changes your single target stuff to your AoE actions.

As has been mentioned plenty of times I also wouldn't mind getting single button combos like in PvP, but I know that's more controversial.

Something I haven't seen mentioned before though is the potential of jobs getting traits that upgrade role skills into unique abilities that still maintain their original function, but still have some other use as well. Would be a good way to add a lot more depth to the actions without increasing button bloat.

We could easily add a dozen or more skills and still take up LESS buttons than we currently do, if they just applied them we'll. There is no reason to waste an entire button slot on something that can only be pressed directly after something else, and is useless in all other contexts.

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

I would LOVE to have more 'conditional' buttons that hold 3 or 4 abilities on them actually, like how Red Mage and Summoner reuse buttons for several different phases of their rotation. It doesn't even have to be big stuff on the same scale as that. Stuff like making Hypercharge turn into Heat Blast once you use it. Replace AoE actions with a stance that changes your single target stuff to your AoE actions.

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Imagine you are a PLD. After using your 1-2 AoE combo, 2 targets are left and 1 is about to die before your next GCD is available. It is wiser to just use Holy Spirit instead of Holy Circle, correct? With your proposition, I have to toggle a stance so that I get to use my ST ability. Yes you cut off extra buttons but you have introduced, not complexity, but unecessary button presses.

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

As has been mentioned plenty of times I also wouldn't mind getting single button combos like in PvP, but I know that's more controversial.

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I am a GNB and my healer is currently KO'ed. Brutal Shell combo is kinda good and will greatly improve my survivability.. but with this, I still have to do 2 extra GCDs so I can refresh my barrier.. Same with PLD and DRK when recovering MP.

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

Something I haven't seen mentioned before though is the potential of jobs getting traits that upgrade role skills into unique abilities that still maintain their original function, but still have some other use as well. Would be a good way to add a lot more depth to the actions without increasing button bloat.

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SCH already has that. Emergency Tactics, Deployment Tactics, Recitation. These abilities do nothing on their own but they modify the properties of other abilities.. I mean, every caster/healer has it = Swiftcast. The only acceptable increase in button count is for abilities that does this.

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

We could easily add a dozen or more skills and still take up LESS buttons than we currently do, if they just applied them we'll. There is no reason to waste an entire button slot on something that can only be pressed directly after something else, and is useless in all other contexts.

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See above.

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Originally Posted by TheOperator3712

On the former point, I can see a few other reasons they might not want to. Like branching combos, and it is still technically a possible point of failure/stress. On the latter point, I don't think that is a good reason as to why. If pvp'ing combos meant that the leveling experience became worse, they could just move some abilities to lower levels. They need to do that anyways really.

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Branching combos just wouldn't get merged, obviously. Most button bloat comes from tank combos anyway, or DPS with doubled up skills for AoE/single target that do the same thing and waste space for nothing since there are very few serious encounters where AoE rotation matters (Samurai being the worst offender).

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

They have aimed to keep the button bloat about the same in every expansion, so if you think it's bad now, it would have been much worse after 4 expansions if they hadn't been keeping it balanced.

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Hahaha, no. If this were true, BLM would still be in the 28 button range like it was in stormblood (including anything you might conceivably want on your bar, including things like food or potions.) Classes like SAM prove they've actually forgotten the lessons of heavensward, and a solid third of classes have more buttons now than the worst class did in heavensward.

Xenoglossy, Senei, shoha 2. Even things like reaper's 'of death' skills and, especially, soul sow/harvest moon, show that they really forgot about the concept of button bloat and have added a ton of bloat since the SB enshrinkening.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, they've also homogenized addle and feint into basically being tacticians while giving all healers more 10% mits to layer with tank's reprisal. Let's just conveniently forget the sheer amount of mits tanks have in general and how 1 mit is never good enough under most conditions.

No, right now this is the worst the bloat has ever been, just not universally by raw button count. Buttons being useful does not stop it from being bloat, which is especially frustrating as well.

Also, this isn't intended as a strawman so much as a tangent launched off of the false belief that the devs try not to bloat out. Even a cursory knowledge of the game or, say, BLM's history shows they've forgotten about the problems of bloat. To the point where I know some players actually have macros just to swap hotbars between AOE and ST skills because it's that ridiculous right now.

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Originally Posted by Somnolence

Yet Cure I and Benefic I still exist and require a slot in case you ever down-sync to low enough level...

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I think it's more because of Freecure and...Enhanced Benefic? By all means, those traits need to be removed and replaced by something actually useful or moved to another ability (my pick would be the jobs' respective damage spells or DoTs to incentivise using them), but them being as they are makes sense with why the abilities don't just straight up upgrade, unfortunately.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

I think it's more because of Freecure and...Enhanced Benefic? By all means, those traits need to be removed and replaced by something actually useful or moved to another ability (my pick would be the jobs' respective damage spells or DoTs to incentivise using them), but them being as they are makes sense with why the abilities don't just straight up upgrade, unfortunately.

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Even if you procced freecure off glare it’s still useless above about level 45 because you would never want to cast cure 2 anyway

In general they should just drop the cost of cure 2 to avoid the problems of synced coils and then just have cure 1 upgrade to cure 2

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

You appear to play Paladin, so sure, there is Shield Bash still

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How to tell you don't do deep dungeons without saying "i don't do deep dungeons".

Im not really having button bloat issues but i have no trouble reaching keys on my KB. Still, theres many buttons that can be consolidated and apparently are going to be.

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Originally Posted by Mecia

Im not really having button bloat issues but i have no trouble reaching keys on my KB. Still, theres many buttons that can be consolidated and apparently are going to be.

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I really want to believe those are true (not enough, but it's a good start).

We need more bloat, not less. Well, job dependent. Look at all this room for activities!

https://i.imgur.com/Ogob0WG.png

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Originally Posted by rawker

Imagine you are a PLD. After using your 1-2 AoE combo, 2 targets are left and 1 is about to die before your next GCD is available. It is wiser to just use Holy Spirit instead of Holy Circle, correct? With your proposition, I have to toggle a stance so that I get to use my ST ability. Yes you cut off extra buttons but you have introduced, not complexity, but unecessary button presses.


I am a GNB and my healer is currently KO'ed. Brutal Shell combo is kinda good and will greatly improve my survivability.. but with this, I still have to do 2 extra GCDs so I can refresh my barrier.. Same with PLD and DRK when recovering MP.

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This is such an incredibly bad faith reading. I am talking about changes to the game, things that happen ever expansion. Yes your rotation is going to change. "MY DPS WOULD SUFFER IN THESE SUPER SPECIFIC NICHE SITUATIONS!" You dont even know if those combos will continue to function the same way in 2 months. Saying we can't have better designed systems on the off chance it makes you play slightly less optimally while your healer is dead is absurd.

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Originally Posted by rawker

SCH already has that. Emergency Tactics, Deployment Tactics, Recitation. These abilities do nothing on their own but they modify the properties of other abilities.. I mean, every caster/healer has it = Swiftcast. The only acceptable increase in button count is for abilities that does this.

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Literally so unrelated to what I was saying that I don't understand what your point is. ET, DT and Recitation are not traits, they are skills. Swiftcast functions identically on every single caster. That is not what I was saying even remotely.

I was talking about Traits, those things we get on some levels where we don't get a new action, but which modify existing actions. Having Job specific traits that modify role actions would give more actions to each job and further cement their identity, without increasing the number of buttons we use.

For example, each tank getting a unique modification to Rampart.

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Replace AoE actions with a stance that changes your single target stuff to your AoE actions.

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It will be incredibly unconstructive, but... Ew. No. Heck no. The idea literally makes me shudder.

And more constructively, now: it seems hard to implement. There's no strict equivalence between mono rotation and AOE rotation in most jobs, because AOE rotation contains far fewer skills. Would the proposed change just be a sort of switch between several bar displays? That sounds more complicated than what we've got now, not to mention the lack of flexibility it implies in gameplay.

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Originally Posted by Merrigan

It will be incredibly unconstructive, but... Ew. No. Heck no. The idea literally makes me shudder.

And more constructively, now: it seems hard to implement. There's no strict equivalence between mono rotation and AOE rotation in most jobs, because AOE rotation contains far fewer skills. Would the proposed change just be a sort of switch between several bar displays? That sounds more complicated than what we've got now, not to mention the lack of flexibility it implies in gameplay.

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Oh absolutely. That was just an example. More just trying to say "There are ways to condense multiple buttons down into far fewer without losing the overall gameplay of the combo system"

Like, I don't think it would be a good change to make the AoE and Single Target rotation exactly the same. CERTAINLY not as a universal change. It was more an example of one kind of way the system could be implemented. But an increased focus on things akin to stances that change what action is on each button, would help give us more toys to play with, without also giving us carpal tunnel.

I just jumped to AoEs because the vast majority of endgame content doesn't use them, or uses them sparingly. They are used in the occasional add phase and that's it. The rest of the time they are taking up space. My point is that it would be far better to have some alternative use for those buttons when we don't need AoE's, which is THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE TIME.

What bloat, you dont even use all your buttons all the time,

Aoe rotation you set in another bar and only switch to it when more than 4, your cds can go into a bar like number 4 on controller and easy switch to it. Single target at max has 10 buttons that you can use constantly most of the things are long cds so that doesnt really count as a button, even one a controller you have a total of 168+ buttons. yet at max we have 20ish skill buttons every slot needs to be used tbh, that means outside of sprint, and limitbreak need around 164 abilitys per job

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Originally Posted by Octavia_Deathschoicen

What bloat, you dont even use all your buttons all the time

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Yes, that's what bloat means.

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Originally Posted by Taranok

To the point where I know some players actually have macros just to swap hotbars between AOE and ST skills because it's that ridiculous right now.

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I have such macros, but I had them in Heavensward too. I don't see how they would solve it other than to do the 100% to target, 50% to all others thing.

Relating to summoner and scholar, why is summon pet even a thing. Just make it auto summon and remove the button. I don't want to waste a button that is pressed once an instance. Why would you not have it summoned? They even made it so dissapate auto summons it again after use, so there is really no point in it.

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Originally Posted by Asako

Relating to summoner and scholar, why is summon pet even a thing. Just make it auto summon and remove the button. I don't want to waste a button that is pressed once an instance. Why would you not have it summoned? They even made it so dissapate auto summons it again after use, so there is really no point in it.

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1 use case: if you want your pet to return to your location asap. This problem arose when they decided to make pets set and leave. Should pet management gets the attention it needs, then we might get people asking for it to be instant cast

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Originally Posted by Ceetee

Oh absolutely. That was just an example. More just trying to say "There are ways to condense multiple buttons down into far fewer without losing the overall gameplay of the combo system"

Like, I don't think it would be a good change to make the AoE and Single Target rotation exactly the same. CERTAINLY not as a universal change. It was more an example of one kind of way the system could be implemented. But an increased focus on things akin to stances that change what action is on each button, would help give us more toys to play with, without also giving us carpal tunnel.

I just jumped to AoEs because the vast majority of endgame content doesn't use them, or uses them sparingly. They are used in the occasional add phase and that's it. The rest of the time they are taking up space. My point is that it would be far better to have some alternative use for those buttons when we don't need AoE's, which is THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE TIME.

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Hm... Yeah, okay. I understand better what you mean, and it seems more interesting than stacking a combo on the same key like in pvp. It would just have to be implemented in a more interesting way than the tank stance (clicking a button = an effect, no thought given to inserting the button into a class synergy), whether we're talking about a stance that activates AOEs or something else. In fact, I'd even find it quite interesting to have a form of "unlocking" the aoe, rather than a mono rotation / AOE rotation that are juxtaposed without any other form of interaction.

So we could imagine a kind of mono action combo, which would then transform the bar into an AOE action. It sacrifices a lot of flexibility, but at the same time, anticipating situations has always been part of this game's gameplay, so I don't think it's too crazy.

Think BLU having 24 abilities it can pick + role actions, while no doubt part of the design of having to make choices, also speaks to the intended scope of buttons. Would like if jobs are kept to a maximum of 30 buttons; a controller user can map two sets of 16 (32) and a M+kb user three hotbars (12 each for 36). Leaves room for stuff like a stat pot and flexibility for a macro or glam-specific mount or whatever. Seems fair. A few jobs at 35 buttons that definitely don't need that.

Something like SMN could definitely dare to have more.

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Originally Posted by Esmoire

Think BLU having 24 abilities it can pick + role actions, while no doubt part of the design of having to make choices, also speaks to the intended scope of buttons. Would like if jobs are kept to a maximum of 30 buttons; a controller user can map two sets of 16 (32) and a M+kb user three hotbars (12 each for 36). Leaves room for stuff like a stat pot and flexibility for a macro or glam-specific mount or whatever. Seems fair. A few jobs at 35 buttons that definitely don't need that.

Something like SMN could definitely dare to have more.

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Oh that is ABSOLUTELY great insight, yeah. I think capping at 25 job specific buttons (again, not the same as actions. RDM has 33 endgame actions, but only spread across 24 buttons) plus the 5 additional role actions, is probably the best design decision overall.

32 is the sweet spot for me (including role actions) because it's 2 crossbar, but stuff like tank stances, summon pets and dance partner can go in a 3rd crossbar since they're only tipically used at the start of a fight and can go in a non active crossbar.

But I'll never stop wanting new skills lol. There is so much more they can do with 32 buttons. Make me use them all!

Legitimately, most classes have bloat but it's pretty minor and only comes in 2 flavors: things that are only usable under certain conditions tied to another button, and aoe/single target iterations of the same skill. For the first, I mean like arcane circle should change to plentiful harvest when you use it because plentiful harvest is only usable after you do arcane circle, it makes no sense to have them be separate buttons. For the second, samurai is laden with gurren/senei, shoha/shoha 2, and shinten/kyuten. It baffles me that these buttons are all separate and abilities and not just aoe abilities that are like 300 potency attack to your first target, 40% potency to the rest.

I'm with the folks who think we're getting a bit too bloated. I use a gaming mouse and it's still only comfortable to use 1 hotbar and another with the shift modifier, adding ctrl\alt modifier means I'm losing speed and moving too far from the home row. So, probably 30 skills in a quickly and easily accessible spot, and I think even that is getting a little on the high side.

I feel like they made encounters as braindead as they could possibly be, and everyone's focus is on hitting their buttons in the correct order (and never stopping pressing them). I'd rather see more challenging encounters, with maybe fewer skills that were more impactful if they aren't used correctly\at appropriate times. I know that this design is possible, because many other games have very challenging encounters and nowhere near the number of skills any given job here has. Some of these OCD damage skills, well, what's the actual point of them except to have another button to press. Could be rolled up into the intended rotation.

I don't think there's a huge amount of bloat right now but probably are some places they could adjust things without affecting rotations too much. I do feel they would need to be careful, though. For instance, Brutal Shell spam has saved my butt more times than I can count. So it would be detrimental in that case to make that combo a single button that cycled through the actions. As someone mentioned, abilities where only one other possible button could be pressed after it? Possibly, but only if it wouldn't mess up weaving or things of that nature.