Please focus on giving console players more hotbar space, instead of removing actions

Every expansion we lose buttons or buttons are consolidated in the name of not having too many buttons. I don't think this is sustainable if FFXIV is to continue for years to come. Kaiten on Samurai is one example.

I think it would suck if every expansion for the next 10 years just added more follow-up attacks to already existing buttons, or removed old buttons to make space for the new. That isn't near as interesting as adding totally new, separate buttons.

Keyboard players have plenty of space for new buttons thanks to the ability to swap hotbars with any number of different button combinations or add "shift + button" or "ctrl + button," utilizing the numpad, etc. Even for people with small hands, it should be very easy to hit the first 4~5 numbers and many of the letters around WASD.

But I recognize it is different for controller players.

Rather than continue removing or replacing skills, could we please see more actual unique actions in the future, alongside work being done to give console players a better experience on classes with a many actions?

I don't know what this would look like, but as I said, the current strategy isn't sustainable. I've found myself dreading each new expansion's job changes more than being excited for them because I'm afraid of my favorite classes losing actions or systems that I love because of hotbar space.

Agreed, it would be extremely easy to just drop in another WXHB hotbar set on top of the current ones by using a combination such as hold R1+R2 or L1+L2 or perhaps a double click of one of those although the double clikc is already used they could make it an option to change it to a 3rd set.

I feel like we need to have a discussion about why people think more skills equals more better.


We don't need 36+ skills that are used.


That's too much. Make it 20 and make them actually matter.

all I use is controller, a bunch of crossbars that i need to tap in special ways to access is dumb, mainly because they would just be wasted space, most of the games content is in older expacs anyway, when they fix those garbage rotations then we can think about extra crossbars.

also having a bunch of extra skills would just be tedious, the majority of players in this game arent in forums and play their jobs barely good enough to escape most dungeons, more skills would send them into mental shock probably.

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Originally Posted by velswen

Every expansion we lose buttons or buttons are consolidated in the name of not having too many buttons. I don't think this is sustainable if FFXIV is to continue for years to come. Kaiten on Samurai is one example.

I think it would suck if every expansion for the next 10 years just added more follow-up attacks to already existing buttons, or removed old buttons to make space for the new. That isn't near as interesting as adding totally new, separate buttons.

Keyboard players have plenty of space for new buttons thanks to the ability to swap hotbars with any number of different button combinations or add "shift + button" or "ctrl + button," utilizing the numpad, etc. Even for people with small hands, it should be very easy to hit the first 4~5 numbers and many of the letters around WASD.

But I recognize it is different for controller players.

Rather than continue removing or replacing skills, could we please see more actual unique actions in the future, alongside work being done to give console players a better experience on classes with a many actions?

I don't know what this would look like, but as I said, the current strategy isn't sustainable. I've found myself dreading each new expansion's job changes more than being excited for them because I'm afraid of my favorite classes losing actions or systems that I love because of hotbar space.

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if anything pc is one limiting job abilitys, I play on controller and heres a fact for you, and a little bit of math



there are 7 bars we have access to 7x 16 (16 for each one) each action bar we have can hold we have plenty of space for bars and we can quick change it, if we ever need more they can add from 7 so honestly i fail to see "how we dont have enough bars"

16 x 7 = 112 slots for abilitys we have on ps5 that is more than enough space lol


if anything its much easier to use massive amounts of abilitys on ps5 controller lol I could easily use a 112 abilitys on a job with a ps5 controller just fine with how it is

all it takes is a little bit of thinking and organization skills and u can use everything faster than a keyboard user could

and if they added another 7 that can come up by l1 instend of r1 could use double the amount to have 224 abilitys just fine I mean really the only bars i even use on ps5 are 1 and 2 and 4 i can easily go to with the switching option to buff/lb sprint etc

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I feel like we need to have a discussion about why people think more skills equals more better.


We don't need 36+ skills that are used.


That's too much. Make it 20 and make them actually matter.

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Yeah, got to love the button fetishists.

What actually matters for good combat is flow and sound design. Not the amount of button one has.

I agree in principle, but I don't really think controller players have much of an issue with hotbar space if I am honest.

If you use WXHB, then you have 32 easily accessible buttons, and then a further easy 16 actions accessible via Expanded Hold Controls.

Just to reiterate, I am by no means saying quantity over quality, but I just don't think controller players are really as limited on hotbar space as people like to believe.

We have enough space for skills, I just want more accessible hotbars from button combos for things like emotes, more custom layouts for classes, etc. Because 8 hotbars just isnt enough for me :D

16 buttons per hotbar
3 easily accessed hotbars
that's 48 skill you can use easily
You don't need more than 48 skills

Rather we have less buttons for damage and more utility stuff + reasons to use them in fights personally

There are 32 reasonably accessible non-meta keys with the left hand on all QWERTY keyboards. Some keyboards have additional access but have you reaching into the right-hand area.

However:

Some of those aren't really usable for actions: ESC, CAPS, TAB (3)
Some are needed for targeting: F1-F6 (6)
Some are needed for movement: WASD, SPACE (5)

Leaving us with: ~, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Q, E, R, T, F, G, Z, X, C, V, B (18)

You need a certain number of actions for non-combat things: mounting, etc. This is up to the player.

It's also inaccessible to force more than two buttons to be pressed with a single hand at the same time. You might be able to do it, but not everyone can, comfortably.

That leaves us with 18 unmodified and 18 modified buttons, for a total of 36 for everything. If you reserve just 4 for non-combat purposes, that leaves you with a cap of 32 actions.

That said, I don't think you really need 32 buttons to make a meaningful rotation based on playing other MMOs and even PvP in this one. We do have some jobs that push right up to that limit, and I think a couple that push past it. Honestly, I would like to see a hard cap of 32 actions per job, if not a little bit lower.

I do think that if SE got rid of the role actions and replaced them with individual job actions, they could free up a lot of button and design space as well as separate the jobs more in terms of design space.

Any more than 32 buttons is pretty much unplayable, on controller, no thank you.

As a controller player, I have a quick access to 48 slots at the moment (16 on main hotbar, 16 on upper hotbar accessible through 2-click on trigger, then another 16 on LT+RT/RT+LT combos).
With all due respect, we don't need more than that. What are you going to do with all those buttons even? What are keyboard players supposed to do with 48+ buttons to smash?

(And then there are 5 more hotbars I'd need to access through RB + their number, which still doesn't take that much time frankly, so that's another 80 slots that are in a fairly fast access. If you're actively using more than 128 buttons and need more than that - I have some questions, because I honestly have no idea why would you need that many ever, anywhere).

SAM didn't lose Kaiten because of button bloat, it was lost due to redundancy. You need to use two weaponskills at the minimum to acquire a Sen to use a Midare ability, 5-6 WS to use tekko, and a total of eight WS to use Setsugekka. Why players enjoyed having to press yet another button to use midare skills is beyond me. It makes them feel like a Jedi? An anime version of a samurai instead of an actual one? I would take Seigan over it 10 times out of ten if we could have one back.

Some skills are needlessly tacked on, and the game could actually use some additional pruning and consolidating before adding even more buttons to press. Console players do not need additional hotbar space. Current controller set up has a budget of 48 slots that can be allocated. Even with some of these spaces being used for things like limit break, pots, sprint, menus, etc. It is still more than plenty. The APM for some jobs is already ridiculous.

I find it better to have fewer more meaningful skills to make gameplay interesting than excessive tacked on skills to make gameplay less boring. Just my $.02

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Originally Posted by 1313

Any more than 32 buttons is pretty much unplayable, on controller, no thank you.

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get good then, on controller i can use 25 emotes +all my abilitys and joking around at the same time with no delay lol

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Originally Posted by Gemina

SAM didn't lose Kaiten because of button bloat, it was lost due to redundancy.

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Shoha 2 survived, despite being redundant, to the point you could just literally slap it together with shoha with "600 to target and 33% for all remaining enemies" and it literally frees up that slot. There is no reason for Shoha 1 and 2 to both exist, they're simply a gauge dump every 3 Iaijutsu.

Kaiten went away because it required even the littlest of thinking about your job gauge's resource management for your burst window. If it was about bloat Shoha fits the bill. If it was about redundancy Shoha still fits the bill.

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Originally Posted by Graveyardprincess

get good then, on controller i can use 25 emotes +all my abilitys and joking around at the same time with no delay lol

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Doubt.



Or you're like, 17 and a pianist.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Doubt.



Or you're like, 17 and a pianist.

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its not that hard we got 7 things you can instantly switch between without much movement of your hands lol its more diffuclt to use a keyboard with more than 12 abilitys than it is a controller with 100 abilitys

one button is required to switch between our hot bars then we can instantly use the ability you can switch bars faster than the global cool down counts down lol\


ps you have to be joking if u believe that its that hard, either that or you never played a fighting game on a console lol

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

Shoha 2 survived, despite being redundant, to the point you could just literally slap it together with shoha with "600 to target and 33% for all remaining enemies" and it literally frees up that slot. There is no reason for Shoha 1 and 2 to both exist, they're simply a gauge dump every 3 Iaijutsu.

Kaiten went away because it required even the littlest of thinking about your job gauge's resource management for your burst window. If it was about bloat Shoha fits the bill. If it was about redundancy Shoha still fits the bill.

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It went away because it made the opener in endwalker a nightmare. Has nothing to do with job gauge and everything to do with the number of times it had to be pressed along with other ogcds in a short window.

Remove namikiri and the problem goes away.

Shoha 2 still should have been an upgrade to shoha though

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Originally Posted by Graveyardprincess

its not that hard we got 7 things you can instantly switch between without much movement of your hands lol its more diffuclt to use a keyboard with more than 12 abilitys than it is a controller with 100 abilitys

one button is required to switch between our hot bars then we can instantly use the ability you can switch bars faster than the global cool down counts down lol

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Yeah no. No it's not.

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Originally Posted by Jijifli

Shoha 2 survived, despite being redundant, to the point you could just literally slap it together with shoha with "600 to target and 33% for all remaining enemies" and it literally frees up that slot. There is no reason for Shoha 1 and 2 to both exist, they're simply a gauge dump every 3 Iaijutsu.

Kaiten went away because it required even the littlest of thinking about your job gauge's resource management for your burst window. If it was about bloat Shoha fits the bill. If it was about redundancy Shoha still fits the bill.

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As I said in my post, there are still more skills that can be pruned or consolidated. The presence of these abilities does not warrant the return of the skills that were deleted.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I feel like we need to have a discussion about why people think more skills equals more better.


We don't need 36+ skills that are used.


That's too much. Make it 20 and make them actually matter.

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No. Make it 36+ that actually matter. More skills that are more interesting is better.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

Yeah, got to love the button fetishists.

What actually matters for good combat is flow and sound design. Not the amount of button one has.

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Sound design has literally nothing to do with how many decisions go into playing your job.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

I feel like we need to have a discussion about why people think more skills equals more better.


We don't need 36+ skills that are used.


That's too much. Make it 20 and make them actually matter.

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I'm advocating for not removing more skills every expansion. Why do you want more skills to be removed? What benefit is there to taking away things people like?

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Originally Posted by velswen

No. Make it 36+ that actually matter. More skills that are more interesting is better.

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Because you dilute the impact of each skill the more there are.

Also, you reduce the ability for broader audiences to play.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Because you dilute the impact of each skill the more there are.

Also, you reduce the ability for broader audiences to play.

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says who plenty of chars ive made on skyrim have like 37, and dnd characters if a caster have a ton of spells without it diluting lol

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Originally Posted by Teno

Pvp has 10 skills and its gameplay is infinitely more complex than the pve bloat we have. Why tf is there stil a 123 combo for so many jobs ?

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you know what makes it more complex? Its simply PEOPLE thats it the computers the combat the battle fights are so brain dead and simplified pattern that it cant be complex lol pvp cant be compared to pve due the fact players can't be predicted

Pvp has 10 skills and its gameplay is infinitely more complex than the pve bloat we have. Why tf is there stil a 123 combo for so many jobs ?

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Originally Posted by Graveyardprincess

says who plenty of chars ive made on skyrim have like 37, and dnd characters if a caster have a ton of spells without it diluting lol

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You do not have 37 skills you are using at once in Skyrim. It is also a completely different game with a different combat design.

It doesn't sound like you actually do high end content in xiv, maybe try some of that first before commenting on combat design

Getting rid of all the unnecessary departmentalization of single target and AOE would do a lot more for preserving hotbar space. What I mean by this is where many jobs have two of the same button, but one is for bosses while the other is for trash mobs. FFXIV doesn't feature any combat elements that interact with the concept of target-ability outside of a very tiny set of examples, such as the Magus Sisters. It's not worth it to have entirely divorced AOE rotations or actions because you never use them outside of very shallow combat encounters.

Samurai is a job that has "too many buttons" apparently, right? Going off of Samurai's current action list, you could very easily clear up a lot of hotbar space doing the following:

Fugo > replaced with Yukikaze: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100 to all enemies in a cone before you. Combo From Hakaze: Potency increases to 300 for the first enemy and 75% less for all other enemies; Increases the Kenki by 15; Grants Setsu.

Kasha > replaced with Oka: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100 to all enemies in a cone before you. Combo from Yukikaze: Potency increases to 120; Grants Fuka for 40 seconds; Increases Kenki by 10; Grants Ka. Combo from Shifu: Potency increases 330 (380 from Flank) for the first enemy and 75% less for all other enemies; Increases Kenki by 10; Grants Ka.

Gekko > replaced with Mangetsu: Delivers an attack with a potency of 100 to all enemies in a cone before you. Combo from Yukikaze: Potency increases to 120; Grants Fugetsu for 40 seconds; Increases Kenki by 10; Grants Getsu. Combo from Jinpu: Potency increases 330 (380 from Rear) for the first enemy and 75% less for all other enemies; Increases Kenki by 10; Grants Getsu.

^ Yukikaze is the same as it is in single target, but is now also your AOE combo starter. Oka and Mangetsu replace their single target variants and just have slightly different effects based on whether you combo them form Yukikaze or from Shifu/Jinpu respectively.

Hissatsu: Shinten > upgrades into Hissatsu: Kyuten: Delivers an attack to all nearby enemies with a potency of 250 for the first enemy and 50% less for all remaining enemies. Costs 25 Kenki.

Hissatsu: Senei > replaced with Hissatsu: Guren: Delivers an attack to all enemies in a straight line before you with a potency of 860 for the first enemy and 75% less for all remaining enemies. Costs 25 Kenki.

Shoha II > Replaced with Shoha: Delivers an attack to all nearby enemies with a potency of 560 for the first enemy and 75% less for all remaining enemies. Costs 3 stacks of Meditation.

^ That is 6 less hotbar slots, and both single target Samurai and AOE Samurai is roughly the same. I chose cones since that requires a target for single target, meaning you can't whiff them in single target, but they can also be circles if we're that allergic to cones on Samurai for some reason. Potencies in AOE are a little different, and can also be easily adjusted. They're more focused on the first target you're hitting rather than equally distributing damage across all enemies, but I don't feel that's an issue.

Either you slim down total action counts, which do make things more comfortable for everyone, not just controller players, or you can use that newly freed up space to add something else to jobs. Maybe use that extra space for more ways to spend Kenki on Samurai, for example.

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Originally Posted by velswen

I'm advocating for not removing more skills every expansion. Why do you want more skills to be removed? What benefit is there to taking away things people like?

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I have no particular attachment to any skill outside of animation. To me that would be like having an affinity for F# on a piano by itself. I only care about how they play together and how they flow into each other and how they feel when played as a unit.

In RPGs that allow training, I use it because something that might have made sense when your character was level 3, might not make sense anymore at level 12. It's okay for abilities to evolve and for them to be pruned from time to time. Design requires the ability to remove as much as the ability to add or change.

I do think that FFXIV relies too much on ST/AoE symmetry. It creates the illusion of variety while not actually producing it. AoE rotations tend to be shortened versions of the ST rotations, but otherwise identical. I've wondered why they don't create more unique AoE and Cleave Abilities (i.e., 2 target)

MNK does a channeling tornado kick for 5s with 30% mit
NIN does a dash strike hitting up to 5 enemies in range as long as each one isn't more than 10 yalms from each other
BLM drops a fire tornado in a designated location doing damage over time to enemies in proximity
BLM drops a lightning storm over a targeted enemy that follow them randomly striking OTHER mobs
DRK gets a shield that absorbs damage and then does an AoE burst after it takes X damage doing Y% of damage absorbed.

Some of these might feel familiar from other games because there's a wide design space that's doable that SE isn't using. I would love to see some variations here.

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Originally Posted by Sjol

I do think that FFXIV relies too much on ST/AoE symmetry. It creates the illusion of variety while not actually producing it. AoE rotations tend to be shortened versions of the ST rotations, but otherwise identical. I've wondered why they don't create more unique AoE and Cleave Abilities (i.e., 2 target)

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The most confusing thing about that to me is that they will add new abilities that do ST damage and then falloff AoE, but also keep adding unnecessary AoE or ST versions of existing ST or AoE skills. SAM has two very blatant examples in Shoha II and Senei when they could have just added AoE to Shoha and adjusted the numbers on Guren.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The most confusing thing about that to me is that they will add new abilities that do ST damage and then falloff AoE, but also keep adding unnecessary AoE or ST versions of existing ST or AoE skills. SAM has two very blatant examples in Shoha II and Senei when they could have just added AoE to Shoha and adjusted the numbers on Guren.

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I'm pretty sure this is because they feel the need to give you something every even level during an expac. Honestly, if they had abandoned that approach a long time ago, we could probably have much better feeling advancement.

I think WoW handled it with your primary kit being done by 50 or something and then talents coming in after that, but it's been a long time since I've played.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

The most confusing thing about that to me is that they will add new abilities that do ST damage and then falloff AoE, but also keep adding unnecessary AoE or ST versions of existing ST or AoE skills. SAM has two very blatant examples in Shoha II and Senei when they could have just added AoE to Shoha and adjusted the numbers on Guren.

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The worst thing is the devs already made this mistake. HW was plagued with massive button bloat, and one of the first major reactions in stormblood was to consolidate useless buttons. Some of the buttons added, such as Guren and Foul, were combined single target/aoe skills. So, of course, the literal next expansion, Foul and Guren are now aoe-exclusive, and xenoglossy/senei were added for single target only. Frankly I'm surprised it took this long for the bloat to get completely out of hand again since they already were bad as of ShB.

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Originally Posted by velswen

Sound design has literally nothing to do with how many decisions go into playing your job.

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Don't underestimate the effect of good sound design. It really turns what might very well be something generic into something that feels good to use.

theres no reason any job should usee more than 36 buttons

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Originally Posted by avaule

I can't do the WXHB. All that double tapping hurts my fingers after only a single duty. I just use it to show the same hotbars that LT+RT and RT+LT use so I can always see my cooldowns. Cycling hotbars with RB is fine for non-combat stuff, but it's a nightmare in combat constantly being on the wrong hotbar. So I'm pretty much stuck at 32 buttons in combat.

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I use the double tap for situational abilities like self heals/potions and tank stance rather than stuff I need regularly. I also have 1 standard hotbar placed below my crossbar just to have skill cooldowns visible.

More space? we already have more slots on all Cross-hotbars than on all normal keyboard hotbars.

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Originally Posted by zarahleo

Agreed, it would be extremely easy to just drop in another WXHB hotbar set on top of the current ones by using a combination such as hold R1+R2 or L1+L2 or perhaps a double click of one of those although the double clikc is already used they could make it an option to change it to a 3rd set.

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I think the better solution would be for controllers to start having the extra bumpers that the Xbox Elite and PS5 Edge controllers have on the back. Holding R1+R2 or L1+L2 would really fatigue my small hands. I just tested how it would feel on a PS5 controller and the R1+R2 or L1+L2 combination adds a lot of stress to holding the controller. It's probably a non issue for bigger hands, but would be too much for mine.

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Originally Posted by zarahleo

Agreed, it would be extremely easy to just drop in another WXHB hotbar set on top of the current ones by using a combination such as hold R1+R2 or L1+L2 or perhaps a double click of one of those although the double clikc is already used they could make it an option to change it to a 3rd set.

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L1 and R1 already have their own function while the hotbars are active, which is to allow quick targeting left and right through enemies visible on the screen. I wouldn't want to give that up, and especially just to pile in an unnecessarily large amount of additional skills.