Complexity/Sensory Overload

[ErzaScarlet77]

i'd like to see them combine most 3 hit combo into the same button like gw2.

[Felis]

I just wanted to clear that up. I play on controller and support your thread. I would find a keyboard and mouse UI a lot easier personally but I'm unable to use them because of my PS4 set up.

But PC and PS4 have the exactly same UI. You can play both with controller and/or keyboard + mouse

[MugenMugetsu]

I'm not sure why so many people, who play with controller, are stating that they don't have enough space to place abilities on their crossbars. There are, in my opinion, 128 easily accessible crossbar slots with an additional 8 available by holding L2 + R2 for a total of 136 crossbar slots to allocate abilities to. That's a significant amount of space! Even on the job in which I use the most crossbars, which is Nin, and I use 3 crossbars, I am able to easily access all of my most important skills on my primary and secondary crossbars with my tertiary crossbar having Kiss Of The Wasp, Kiss Of The Viper, and Shadewalker on that crossbar as those are my least used abilities as they typically do not have to be used multiple times per battle. R1+O to access my secondary crossbar and R1+Square to access my tertiary crossbar make for smooth crossbar swaps with R1+Triangle used to access my primary crossbar. Also, for any oGCD abilities that I need to keep an eye on, I place those on a hotbar located just to the right of my crossbar so I can see when those oGCD abilities are ready to be used.

I do understand that this is a bit off topic as the OP's primary concern is the amount of GUI management causing less enjoyment of the game itself due to having to pay more attention to the GUI than what is actually happening on screen and, as I stated in a previous post, I completely understand that it can become a bit much trying to keep an eye on everything, but I feel that when you have become proficient with the job that you're playing, and with good management of your HUD, it is possible to lessen the burden of having to keep an eye on the GUI and allows for more enjoyment of the fights themselves as you'll be more easily able to pay attention to what's happening on screen and enjoy the aesthetics of a fight, and character animations, while have to focus less on the GUI. This, however, is of course my opinion, and while it may not be as much of a problem for me personally, I do understand how GUI management can take away from other's enjoyment of the game.

[WinterLuna]

snip

So you're basically saying it's useless if you don't use the skill correctly because you've used it too quickly?

You can play both with controller and/or keyboard + mouse

I will rephrase, I can't play with this interface because I can't use a mouse and keyboard due to the fact I don't play with a desk.

I'm not sure why so many people, who play with controller, are stating that they don't have enough space to place abilities on their crossbars.

It's not that there isn't enough space, there's plenty of space. It's the lack of efficiency of switching between multiple hotbars. There could be 100 separate bars but this doesn't make it any easier to use.

Some people are completely fine with it, and I'm genuinely glad others find it easy to use! But some of us find it messy and rather annoying.

[Reinha]

I like it the way it is tbh. Having to learn how to control the class causes people to favour a job or two (not necessarily the easiest) that they find fluid and intuitive. Sticking to the same job causes people to become really good at it over time. Specializing into a class to master it is not a bad thing. It makes the game interesting, especially so when you've played a job for a year and want a change of pace. I have never felt I can't enjoy the scenery during my adventures. First run of A8 I was blown away by the music, names and visuals of the place. And even with most of my spell effects turned off, Collective Unconscious and Draw still look fabulous as ever. If you need to look at your hotbars a lot during combat then some practice might be a good idea.

The way I read it most of this thread is complaints about how awkward controllers are to play with. [Insert obligatory PC master race comment here.] I would be very unhappy having the game made easier because some people don't play with suitable equipment (suitable to themselves). This is one of the few games left with proper complexity in classes. I want to be able to utilize more than half of my MMO mouse. I like spending time building my own hotbar setup and building necessary muscle memory. I want to work with both hands when playing the game, not just with the hand resting on the movement keys. Controller users should perhaps poke the devs to make it easier to use a controller and not the classes. If the global cooldown was shorter there could be a problem with certain jobs (*cough* DRK *cough*) but as it is we have luxurious amounts of time to hammer the keys.

That said, when the new expansion comes they might need to make choice between fusing existing abilities or only adding passive traits. Personally I think it should be a mixture of both. Fuse some abilities, remove the ones no one ever uses and perhaps allow less but more meaningful cross class skills. Also give a few cool new abilities and passive traits. But please do not go down the route WoW did. Their pruning was a freaking disaster and it's happening again. Some specs are unrecognizable because their defining spells don't exist anymore.

[zipzo]

i'd like to see them combine most 3 hit combo into the same button like gw2.

Quick shout out, also, to Aion for doing this as well, and that game is dated.

[Duelle]

I would like to also add that the problem isn't available hotbar space (some people always point out they have more space available) but rather ease of use for the player. The game in it's current form is incredibly cumbersome to play if you aren't using something like an MMO mouse or (sorta) a controller. Personally I'm not at all surprised so much of the player base has trouble playing their classes properly. I'd wager these people haven't gone out of their way to purchase extra tools to make the game playable and so they struggle.

Your average person is not going to get a gaming keyboard (which these days come loaded with neon backlighting and a bunch of stuff an average person doesn't need) or a gaming/MMO mouse just to play this game. The average person would more than likely just use a regular keyboard and mouse combo.

But you didn't factor in the damage. Repelling shot is a bad skill, but it's not useless. For example, Fracture is a bad skill but has a use, the way shield swipe used to be was a useless skill (no redeeming qualities no matter how much you stretched it).

The issue with Fracture is that it's standalone rather than offer some mechanical advantage to MRD/WAR. Shield Swipe attempted to go against the grain on revenge-style attacks (which hit hard but have a modest cooldown AND are off-GCD), which is why that eventually fell short.

I imagine the average player wouldn't care about skill bloat or the use of macros and just roll with the punches as they are thrown at them by the devs design decisions.

I disagree. The average person simply won't analyze stuff down to the involved mechanics, and instead will say "this used to be fun but they did something that makes it no longer fun".

That said, when the new expansion comes they might need to make choice between fusing existing abilities or only adding passive traits. Personally I think it should be a mixture of both. Fuse some abilities, remove the ones no one ever uses and perhaps allow less but more meaningful cross class skills. Also give a few cool new abilities and passive traits. But please do not go down the route WoW did. Their pruning was a freaking disaster and it's happening again. Some specs are unrecognizable because their defining spells don't exist anymore.

WoW took pruning overboard because they also removed side abilities that were there for the sake of concept (Divine Intervention for paladins) or for fun within context of the class (Eyes of the Beast for hunters). That doesn't make pruning inherently bad; It's just that the people involved went really overboard.

[zipzo]

They also were pretty quick to relieve people of abilities they'd had since the beginning of the game.

At the very least they could have coupled effects in together and kept some of the names but it's a bit heartbreaking to essentially feel like you lost a long-time friend. I mean when you've been using a skill for years and years, it certainly feels like a friend. They weren't careful enough on this front, and really left a sour taste in a lot of folks' mouth. It wouldn't be all that much different if they ripped some valuable nostalgic item you've been keeping in your bank since vanilla or something. A lot of people really felt like they took important pieces of their character away without choice, even if in a lot of cases were talking abilities with very situational uses. That's situations that will now go less interesting in the future without those abilities...

[Terribad]

I personally am not having an issue with any of it. I play on PC and PS4, it's a tad more annoying with a controller but MMOs have been designed around K/M. So with this not being an action based MMO, which I feel work loads better with controllers, that's just one of the cons when it comes to using them.

I also don't play every class since I have little to no interest in most of them, so that allows me to "master" my current job better. I know the skills and stuff by heart so I honestly don't have to look down at my hotbars. I don't know, I feel like if they make the jobs/classes and encounters any easier this will be as easy as Hello Kitty. If people are having troubles remembering skills perhaps focus on fewer classes/jobs? Just because it's an option, doesn't mean you have to do it.


The only thing I agree with is having high level skills replace the old ones, however I'd want the extra skill space to be replaced with different new skills.

[seraseth]

I can agree with this. Loved BLM throughout 2.x, the simpler rotation let me focus on the mechanics and such in coil and primals. With them increasing the complexity of all the dps jobs, as well as the number of mechanics in a lot of fights in heavensward, I just don't find it as fun anymore.

As stated by a few others previously it's everything added together that becomes too much. Watching bars and timers and stuff to dodge and remembering all the mechanics and timing for each fight. A good portion of my guild found the game far less enjoyable at 60 than they did at 50. I only just recently came back to finish the main storyline and work on the new beast tribes. As it stands, I just don't feel like doing anything further in the end game.

Here's hoping for some changes in 4.0