Combo Consolidation: How long before we see it in PVE?

[Khaoticsuccubus]

I like the way it's implemented now, and I think people hide behind "OMFG TOO MANY BUTTONS" instead of just honing their skill.

To be fair, Too many buttons is definitely a thing when it comes to playing with a controller.

[alimdia]

I really don't see how pressing 1-2-3 makes the game challenging. Or how a lack thereof would make it "dumbed down" If people find that challenging in the fights..I think we have a totally different problem.

So we're back in a full circle.

Seeing how many DF DPS have such massive difficulty hitting buttons, I say yes it is very different.

Whether you accept it or not, the skill gap comes from people who know how to do these extremely easy rotations and those who don't, and the skill gap is so big that someone who does know can deal twice as much damage as someone who doesn't.

Contrary to what Zigabar said, it doesn't raise the bottom, you're asking to remove the upper half of the skill bar and dumb everything to the lowest common denominator, press 1 over and over to win.

[Ferth]

Contrary to what Zigabar said, it doesn't raise the bottom, you're asking to remove the upper half of the skill bar and dumb everything to the lowest common denominator, press 1 over and over to win.

That's a gross oversimplification. You will still be weaving oGCD cooldowns inbetween weapon skill combos and moving for mechanics and positionals. The people who don't do this for whatever reason aren't going to suddenly be amazing. There will still be skill and nuance, it just won't require so many buttons.

[alimdia]

That's a gross oversimplification. You will still be weaving oGCD cooldowns inbetween weapon skill combos and moving for mechanics and positionals. The people who don't do this for whatever reason aren't going to suddenly be amazing. There will still be skill and nuance, it just won't require so many buttons.

No, your argument for consolidation could be perfectly used to buffs, why not consolidate all buffs to one button that keeps changing between damage up and resistance down? What's the point of having more than 1 weaponskill and 1 buff? There's no skill in hitting different buttons after all, so let's turn everything into spam 1 to win, anything more than 1 or 2 buttons is too convoluted and overcomplicated.

[Keridwyn]

I don't think we'll start seeing any 'Spacebar Heroes' for a little while yet. At least another couple expansions. But we might start seeing it in the future to combat serious button bloat. Example you have six combos that all have three skills. Instead of taking up eighteen buttons, they'd just take up six and you'd rotate between them. Again, this is something we're a few xpacs away from though and only time will tell.

[Ferth]

No, your argument for consolidation could be perfectly used to buffs, why not consolidate all buffs to one button that keeps changing between damage up and resistance down? What's the point of having more than 1 weaponskill and 1 buff? There's no skill in hitting different buttons after all, so let's turn everything into spam 1 to win, anything more than 1 or 2 buttons is too convoluted and overcomplicated.

Yeah, it sure is a slippery slope, alright... if they add combo consolidation to pve pretty soon they're gonna come after our guns.

[BroodingFicus]

I'd rather prefer they didn't or at least not to the extent it seems to be leaning toward in PVP. If you're playing against others, aka you're not dealing with things that have set moves/mechanics that can be learned and accounted for so you can focus on your rotation, it makes sense to me that maybe you'd consider trying to lessen the amount of buttons needed to execute combos in order to let the player focus on hitting a thinking, moving target. But PVE? People learn fights. They learn when to dodge, when to turn around, when its best to burn cooldowns, etc. After that the only thing left is to perfect your rotation to try to do all of that, only better and faster. If I had to run roulette, farming the same dungeons for months at a time, knowing my combo's were going to be nothing but spamming one button between buffs and cooldowns, it seems like there would be very little motivation to work on improving and the usual grind would become unbearable.

The only argument I can see for it is to combat bloat and I think FFXIV is already doing a good job of taking that into consideration at an early stage. Hence the reason we are getting new moves but being told that in the end we will actually not be getting more buttons to press. That's a good move. I also hope they do things like consolidate new versions of moves (stone I,II,III automatically upgrading to the proper form based on your current sync) but trying to 'simplify' rotations to the extent some are suggesting may make jobs more 'accessible' but most players in standard level content are not going to be challenged by hitting a few buttons once they already know mechanics. A friend drug me back to WoW during the last expansion for a month or two after years of not playing and the thing the drove me off the fastest was how bare some of the classes felt. They lost all personality and playing one felt much like the other with different aesthetics thrown on. On a personal level, I wanted to sit around hitting three or four buttons, I'd buy a tamagachi.

[alimdia]

Yeah, it sure is a slippery slope, alright... if they add combo consolidation to pve pretty soon they're gonna come after our guns.

Don't try to ridicule my post, you know your reasoning can be extended beyond combos, so why stop there? Many games only use one single hotbar for actions, should we consider that the baseline to what is considered "not convoluted" and purge everything else?

[OcieKo]

Lets not kid ourselves people, its not the core action rotation that separates the casuals from the hardcores its buff management and encounter knowledge. Rotating combo buttons arent going to change that. In the end youll still have a GCD from one to the next and will habe to know not to blow you long CD buffs right before an invuln phase. Only thing it actually does is reduce the physical capacity required, which as a person who plays with a few female gamers, hand size itself can be a huge factor. Time to accept not everyone can hit 1 with their thumb and 0 with their pinky like for example I can. Also this concept isn't even remotely new, tho it did start more in PVP oriented games where you decision making required more speed. AOC, GW2, and B&S come to mind, hell in WoW we used to macro that functionality into our sets back in the Vanilla > WotLK eras (and if you ask me quality macro programming is a skill in and of itself).

And if a change like this makes room for more interesting mechanics, I'm all in. Personally I'd rather get more unique opponents than a harder time doing my thing.

If you really want some vast aresnal of skills to be feasible, start finding a way into neurology research fieldscand build an SAO style VR device, then the last remaining barrier can go poof for you.

Edit: I was a fan of the EQ style of ability creation, more long term choices and buffs and less constant maintenance on everything. You had variety here and there, but you also had those constant support functions available to you. Also I miss selling SoW to buy KEI...

Edit: and if you want to be super picky a person could manually lay out a 30 sec rotation or so with just assigning the same skill to multiple buttons, i.e. that uber skill rotation could actually be made into 1234567890poiuytrewqasdfghjklmnbvcxz and thats just pressing the next button in line going up and down the keyboard. And then all that skill would not change, they had to learn the rotations order over a duration of time/clicks and the do everything else with the joysticks/mouse.

[kikix12]

I'm not really sure what issues some of you have with this suggestion. What skill does it take to push 1, then 2 and then 3?! Is that a skill in gaming?! It is the exact same as pushing one button once and again. The result is the exact same as well. All it will do is allow that skill that is in the final slot to be used with a 0 instead of =, for example. And that skill that you use with CTRL 2 be used with =.
This have nothing to do with skills. It does not dumb down the game and it does not make running content over and over again any more or less boring. It is the exact same. After all, if you were running the combo over and over, pushing 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3 is still going to be as boring in reality as 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1. That's how repetition works. It bores people. It doesn't matter whether it have 1 or 10 elements. Doing the same string repeatedly makes people lose focus. That's what there are other skills for there, like the ones that are off global cooldown, that have situational use. To prevent boredom. The only part of combos that counters that is the divergence into two paths, if both paths have their situational values.

Skill is NOT a valid argument. People still will screw up their rotations and use the wrong combo (because, I mean, you still WILL have different combos, this is not about consolidating combos, it's about consolidating button inputs within a single combo). And those will be screwups coming from actual skills in the game. This will only make mistakes unrelated to the game for people with certain physical conditions (like being sleepy) or that are slightly distracted (by their kid yelling while playing tag with a sibling) less common.

Now, preference, that is an argument to not make consolidation mandatory. But it is no reason to not make it optional. Yes, some may feel better pushing more buttons than fewer and that's perfectly valid reason. Games are supposed to be enjoyable. But there are certain things that just cannot cater to everyone. This is not one of those things. It can cater to everyone. Those that want consolidation can get it, those that don't want to get consolidation can not get it. You won't even know whether the other player uses it or not. You won't see any difference, be it in their use of skills or their output. It will just be more enjoyable for them and it may help them keep focused over, lets say, six hours instead of three. All you need to do is accept that you are you and that others are others. Stop trying to force others into enjoying the same things that you do. Would you like it if I forced you to love really sour things, like, drinking the raw, condensed juice of a lemon (which I like, but most cannot take a more than a sip without trouble)? Or very spicy things (which, heck, can actually be lethal for some)?!


And the combos and non-combos have a clear barrier. You will always want to use the previous skill that is part of the combo before using the latter. You will literally never want to use Maim or Skull Sunder without first using Heavy Swing. And not only you. Absolutely everyone else in the game is the same. 100% of the players will want to hit Heavy Swing before Maim 100% of the time. For other skills, that's not the case. Everyone will use their buffs and non-combo skills whenever they will feel like is best for them. Consolidation of them will have actual mechanical effect, actual change of output. You would actually SEE the difference between non-consolidated buffs and consolidated buffs. Those are two vastly different things.