Rebalancing Suggestions for 4.0

[SpookyGhost]

Because warrior has exactly 2 extra buttons on-gcd over paladin right now and dark knight has one extra on gcd.

It's almost as though PLD has the least of the 3.

My point is that if youre going to demonstrate simplification, maybe using the most simple class and dumbing it down further isn't the best way to go. It makes you sound like you want the game to be literally press 1 -> 2 to win. If you think the dev team for XIV is competent enough to make general content with mechanically challenging difficulty that puts merit into an overly simple rotation (3 button combos are simple enough, I do not understand why we're going with 2 now), then I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm not saying it can't be done, right - Blade and Soul is a good example of a really small button layout with a ton of situational skills due to automatic skill switching. But that's not happening in XIV unless Bahamut returns from his grave and turns everything to ash again. I think we should think in the confines of our simplest jobs atm - PLD, MNK, and WAR. We realistically shouldn't need to get simpler than those 3.

In the interview you can see that Yoshi-P thinks that the difficulty of Midas lies in the fact that you have to juggle a lvl 60 rotation with all the mechanics in each floor. Now, personally, if the hardest content is going to be Midas-tier and we're forced to press 1 and 2 for max DPS then I no longer see the point in raids as you've essentially flushed out anyone with skill beyond smashing their face against the keyboard.

I know there's button bloat, but look at PLD right since we're using that example so often - literally 6 buttons for all their combos. I play on a standard keyboard with a 2 button mouse, anything and everything for PLD fits on there perfectly, from CDs to it's oGCDs. That is why it's the worst example, it's literally "Yeah, yeah, PLD, simple class, but what if we went even further? What if we made it so a small baby could play PLD?"

[Freyyy]

snip

I don't see the difference in difficulty/complexity between pressing 1 2 3 and 1 1 1 for using a combo, especially with a 2.5 sec pause between them. You just have to use unnecessary keybinds that could be used for more interesting new skills instead. It doesn't change the complexity of the job whatsoever since the combos in this game are incredibly dull and are basically just one skill spread into 3 GCDs. If the game was action-based and if you had to press buttons quickly, then yeah, 1 1 1 would be much easier than 1 2 3. But that's not FFXIV's case.

[SpookyGhost]

words

Right, so, here's the only realistic way I could accept 111 and 121 and blah blah blah blah: If 3, 4, 5, and 6 all become similar conjoined combos. If we're getting rid of the 123 system just for the sake of more "+5% damage", "deals 500 unaspected potency", "deals 50 potency over time for 30s", etc then I don't see the point. If anything at all is the problem, right, and I'm fairly certain I remember this from the interview, it's actually the oGCDs/buffs/etc that need to be toned down. I really severely doubt it has anything to do with GCDs being too overwhelming.

[Brannigan]

I play on a standard m/kb as well and everything for every class fits on there fine. Turns out, every class gains abilities at about the same rate and they all have roughly the same number of buttons to press (except for pet classes, who might want a couple extra).

However, just because everything fits on there now doesn't mean it will in the future. It also doesn't mean the current combo system is a good one. Finally, 123->111 isn't dumbing down if 2 and 3 don't do anything on their own anyway because there's no execution requirements to speak of. These aren't chain combos in a fighting game.

[Nihility]

It's almost as though PLD has the least of the 3.

My point is that if youre going to demonstrate simplification, maybe using the most simple class and dumbing it down further isn't the best way to go. It makes you sound like you want the game to be literally press 1 -> 2 to win. If you think the dev team for XIV is competent enough to make general content with mechanically challenging difficulty that puts merit into an overly simple rotation (3 button combos are simple enough, I do not understand why we're going with 2 now), then I have a bridge to sell you.

I'm not saying it can't be done, right - Blade and Soul is a good example of a really small button layout with a ton of situational skills due to automatic skill switching. But that's not happening in XIV unless Bahamut returns from his grave and turns everything to ash again. I think we should think in the confines of our simplest jobs atm - PLD, MNK, and WAR. We realistically shouldn't need to get simpler than those 3.

In the interview you can see that Yoshi-P thinks that the difficulty of Midas lies in the fact that you have to juggle a lvl 60 rotation with all the mechanics in each floor. Now, personally, if the hardest content is going to be Midas-tier and we're forced to press 1 and 2 for max DPS then I no longer see the point in raids as you've essentially flushed out anyone with skill beyond smashing their face against the keyboard.

I know there's button bloat, but look at PLD right since we're using that example so often - literally 6 buttons for all their combos. I play on a standard keyboard with a 2 button mouse, anything and everything for PLD fits on there perfectly, from CDs to it's oGCDs. That is why it's the worst example, it's literally "Yeah, yeah, PLD, simple class, but what if we went even further? What if we made it so a small baby could play PLD?"

Your missing the point entirely, the basic combo is only a small fraction of what each job does.
It's just a sample of how they could trim down necessary buttons because it's getting crowded. It's not a matter of making the game any easier

for monk it would just be a matter of putting the back skills and side skills on same button and auto toggle based on stance
that would cut 6 buttons down to 2(8 down to 3 if you include the aoe) but would not change the necessity of remembering where in the stances you are, how much duration your various buffs/debuffs have, what side of the mob you need to be on, etc etc. In fact monk is a rare case of almost being able to do it already with a macro since most of them are disabled out of stance
the only problem being that "all stances at once" buff but there is always a way to workaround

warrior could have it's combo skills trimmed to [heavy swing -> skullsunder -> butcher's block] [main -> storm's path] [storm's eye] to cut down buttons without really changing anything
and inner beast/fell cleave steel cyclone/decimate could be combined and toggle by stance like equilibrium already does

The combo thing works exactly the same for all jobs that use combos, you just need to add 1 key for each fork in the tree it's not rocket science

bard could have the bloodletter and rain of death just be toggles on heavy shot and wide volley, lots of people macro it that way already anyways, and why have quick knock and wide volley? they pretty much do exactly the same thing except wide volley eats up tp faster, when they changed the aoe skill procs for bard they also made having them as separate skills kind of silly
and wind bite/iron jaws could easily be extensions of venomous bite to the tune of "additional effect venom; additional effect: if target is affected by venom instead causes windbite; additional effect: if target is affected by venom and windbite refreshes both durations" the timing needs and usage remain exactly the same but all of a sudden 3 keys get trimmed to 1, could even have it alter potencies to match the current ones as additional effects tend to alter those anyways

literally every job has space to do that so it's not eating up so many keyboard resources without really changing how the job plays at all.
a few would need tweaks to work like black mage but black mage already uses far less buttons than most jobs so it wouldn't need as much love to condense it

do you really want the game to end up like WoW where every job had like 50 buttons of crap cluttering up everything and making the game feel more tedious than exciting?

[Freyyy]

do you really want the game to end up like WoW where every job had like 50 buttons of crap cluttering up everything and making the game feel more tedious than exciting?

yet now every class has between 10 and 15 buttons in WoW, after all the revamps they did

[MPNZ]

Did you miss the memo where all abilities on all jobs will be made easier? Basically the complexity they brought with 3.0 jobs they think that was a bad idea and they're going to "basics"

So it's not out of the realm for OP to ask for everything that just makes their job easier.

However i dislike that future but it doesn't seem there is enough people wanting to keep the jobs that complicated.

It feels like they dumped all of the fun mechanics and battles for an extreme focus on our rotations, DPS, and rushing through everything.

[AlphaFox]

I'm just gonna say, I think MCH/BRD are fine as is and that includes the Gauss Barrel and Wanderer's, the cast time is not as big of a deal as people try to make it out to be.

[Bloody]

Stuff like tempered will though... can't remember the last time I used that. The skill could be deleted, or its effects chucked on Sentinel. Nothing of value would be lost.

Temper Will is useful against knockback or pull mechanics like in Shiva EX or similar.

Having more fights designed that made situational skills actually useful (because pretty much every boss is immune to sleep and stun) would definitely help diversify fights. Having a boss that you need to stun or sleep to prevent certain mechanics, or a tank that needs to Tempered/Holmgang to prevent positioning nightmares is such a basic way to expand the diversity beyond the current "DPS, dodge, position, repeat" that many mechanics ultimately are currently. This would bring value to otherwise niche skills, improve fight dynamics, and do so without bloat or neutering anything.

[Yellow]

I'd really like SE to consider making our interaction with our abilities more intuitive and engaging.

Take a look at how games likes Blade and Soul, Aion, TERA, and ArcheAge deal with limited space for a lot of abilities. For example, let's say Ability 1 can trigger Ability 2. Instead of pressing '1' and then '2', Ability 1's icon changes to Ability 2, so the player only has to press '1' again. If this is used for multiple abilities, it means we can actually get a wider range of abilities to use from all of the space that's left over.

They've said it more and more that FF14 is beginning to transition towards more unique and challenging content to keep the game fresh. Maybe on top of enhancing the way we engage with our abilities, we could see a return of elemental weaknesses/strengths/etc, or maybe lowering the GCD from 2.5 to 2, or 1.5.