Best part of a new patch? Third party tools not working.

[Kranel_San]

Some mods/plugins are extremely helpful on an individual level such as PvP combo system in PvE which should have been an official feature by now to help with accessibility but for some reasons SE don't want to do it.

[Shurrikhan]

Some mods/plugins are extremely helpful on an individual level such as PvP combo system in PvE which should have been an official feature by now to help with accessibility but for some reasons SE don't want to do it.

In Short:

Probably over potential controversy due to fears by those who prefer bloat GCD steps over bloat oGCD actions and/or don't want to lose the ability to hit 12345 instead of 11111 to make the same decision.


Slightly Longer:

Some who really like going 12345 to make a single inseparable decision also don't like managing as many oGCDs, especially if they're less satisfying to press than the typical quality of skill up to that point, and (rightly enough) fear that the devs would feel compelled to replace any buttons made optional by that feature... with further bloat actions. That in turn would make consolidating 12345 into 11111 non-optional.

I don't think that's likely; I think the devs would be plenty willing to leave those then-optional buttons unfilled and would more likely just literally lock out combo steps you haven't yet reached as to level the playing field between those using and not using consolidated combos (with the only difference then being whether one sacrifices handy tactile cues to concentrate their bindings down to a more comfortable space). But, if I had to guess, that'd be the main reason for hesitation.

[Packetdancer]

I don't think that's likely; I think the devs would be plenty willing to leave those then-optional buttons unfilled and would more likely just literally lock out combo steps you haven't yet reached as to level the playing field between those using and not using consolidated combos (with the only difference then being whether one sacrifices handy tactile cues to concentrate their bindings down to a more comfortable space). But, if I had to guess, that'd be the main reason for hesitation.

I don't think the game's well-architected to support having both the combo'd actions and individual ones. You can kind of get around it by just binding the combo on multiple buttons, but it's not quite the same (especially since you then just have multiple buttons you can mash).

And all sarcasm aside, I did genuinely find the old Gunbreaker burst combo more enjoyable; I had Gnashing Fang on 7, Savage Claw on 8, and Wicked Talon on 9, and Continuation on Shift-4. Now, I'll note that I do 7+ on my MMO mouse side buttons, and 1-5 on keyboard (and generally try to avoid using 6 for anything common, because it's an uncomfortable reach), so it was <mouse button A> + Shift-4, <mouse button B> + Shift-4, <mouse button C> + Shift 4 -- and I found that a deeply satisfying sequence every time I got to do it.

Now it's just <mouse button A> + shift-4, repeated three times, and I couldn't tell you why that's slightly less satisfying on a pure dopamine level... but it is. Dumb as that feels to say.

(Well, okay, I mean, that's not the case in the opener, where you mix in stuff slightly in a different order, but you get my meaning nonetheless.)

But I do agree that if the combo tree does not branch, there's really no reason to put them all on separate buttons. I just wish more of the combo chains did branch, so it was like... 1 followed by 2 (and then 3) or 4 (and then 5, and then 6), etc. Like with SAM and such.

[Shurrikhan]

I don't think the game's well-architected to support having both the combo'd actions and individual ones.

It's essentially just a matter of adding an extra button per combo that one could then place at will.

That would also solve issues surrounding existing and former consolidations. If one wanted Mirage Dive together, they could just use the Jump+MD key. If they wanted them separate, they could just use the Jump and MD keys, separately. If they just wanted to be able to button-mash Jump without fear of MD going off afterwards but still didn't see any reason to leave MD separate, they could put down Jump and Jump+MD. Win-win.

I just wish more of the combo chains did branch, so it was like... 1 followed by 2 (and then 3) or 4 (and then 5, and then 6), etc. Like with SAM and such.

Personally, I wish they all branched at every step (including the first), for a kind of geometric configuration (3 by 3 choices, though some of those may cap out and lead back to the base sooner), or at least had some interface for skipping ahead at cost. I like having more GCD buttons. I just wish they weren't a matter of, say, spending up to 10 buttons on what are presently just 3 actions (spread over 3 to 5 steps).

[Packetdancer]

It's essentially just a matter of adding an extra button per combo that one could then place at will.

Mm... yes and no. The issue is that given how the hotbars work, it would likely have to be a second copy of the entire combo... or you would need a sort of hotbar action abstraction system (which I suspect is how the mod that consolidates combos in PvE likely works).

The latter would be the better approach, honestly. Especially because you could then functionally make it a 'build your own combo' system; instead of "here is a pre-made button that is your entire chain", you would just have a little hotbar-like list you could drag actions onto, then you'd drag the icon for that list onto a hotbar. Each time you pressed the button, it would send the current action, and advance one step.

For those who just want their 1-2-3 on a single button, that handles it easily. From an accessibility standpoint, it wins for flexibility because someone could put a mix of GCD and oGCD into a single button. For instance, someone could make a combo button that was (to use SGE as an example) "Eukrasia" followed by "Prognosis", and then they could just hit that button twice quickly to do Eukrasian Prognosis.

I've mentioned this in other threads touching on accessibility, but back in the WildStar closed beta I had a dear friend who had severe nerve damage to his hands from his time in the military. He could barely type coherently when his hands seized up, and hitting any sort of precision button combo was... let's just go with "a non-starter" at those times. The solution I came up with for him was something sort of like what I describe above: I wrote a tool that let him create those sort of combos, and then bind it to like... 6-9 different keys. So, for instance, he might have an attack rotation in a combo cycle that was bound to `, 1, 2, 3, and q. Then as long as he hit that general area of the keyboard -- which was doable even when his hands were seizing up -- he'd do the action he meant to. And there was a keybinding to toggle that mode on and off, so he could also (try) to type normal text in the chatbox.

Unfortunately, he passed away due to pneumonia before I finished the project, and I lost heart and handed the code off to someone else. (Get your flu shots!)

But if we want to approach the PvP-style combos in PvE as an accessibility thing, I think I'd rather do it more like that -- a more open-ended system, that can address more use cases -- than simply consolidating the 'stock combos' each into a single cycling key. Especially since that solution would allow people both to do the consolidated combos or to leave the actions split across multiple separate keys, as best suited their taste.

(Sorry, accessibility is a thing I have come to take very, very seriously in game design.)

[Shurrikhan]

Mm... yes and no. The issue is that given how the hotbars work, it would likely have to be a second copy of the entire combo... or you would need a sort of hotbar action abstraction system (which I suspect is how the mod that consolidates combos in PvE likely works).

The latter would be the better approach, honestly. Especially because you could then functionally make it a 'build your own combo' system; instead of "here is a pre-made button that is your entire chain", you would just have a little hotbar-like list you could drag actions onto, then you'd drag the icon for that list onto a hotbar.

So, mods actually do... both. The consolidation macros, moreover, are just prepackaged forms of the second (in which you can consolidate whatever you want in whatever order you want, including both oGCDs and GCDs, even based on conditionals like targeting enemy, targeting friendly, or targeting nothing). (The super cheesy ones go further in conditional scripting, but the more basic ones are merely this.) They're effectively just how macros work in WoW, if not for WoW's own familiarly arbitrary restriction (against priority order GCDs -- whereas oGCDs, for whatever reason, are still allowed to be done all in one key), much like virtually any decent use of macros is arbitrary reemed in XIV.

That said... both would work fine. Having a separate per combo key or just... not screwing over macros.


I give you four buttons: Hard Slash, Syphon Strike, Souleater, and Souleater Combo. Maybe the last comes in its own "Combo Actions" section, or maybe it's just part of the same basic skills page.

Let's say, for the sake of fairness between those using consolidation or no consolidation, Syphon Strike and Souleater themselves are no longer trap buttons; instead, they literally can't activate until you reach their step.

If you put fewer than n steps of the combo on your bar including the combo key or n-1 buttons after starting placing discrete steps alongside the combo key in the missing one's place, the Actions and Trait menu will flash the remainder at you to remind you to slot them, but you could always just, say, do Hard -> Syphon -> {Combo} so that you could just default to hitting button 3 if you like. You can use both at the same time; it just reminds you to put in the combo and/or the missing steps if you're screwing yourself over.

(The only thing you can't manage under this new baseline functionality are conditionals, such as to cause Bloodspiller to replace your other weaponskills if you would otherwise overcap on your Blood Gauge.)

At base, only Hard Slash and Souleater Combo start off available, the latter of which literally shows Hard Slash.

• You hit Hard Slash or Souleater Combo [Hard Slash] and... Syphon Strike lights up and becomes available, Hard Slash desaturates, and Souleater Combo then shows Syphon Strike. Souleater remains locked.
• You hit Syphon Strike or Souleater Combo [Syphon Strike] and Syphon Strike, too, desaturates and again becomes locked, Souleater lights up and becomes available, and Souleater Combo then shows Souleater.
• You hit Souleater or Souleater Combo [Souleater] and you return to the base state.

Those can work simultaneously. One can have one or the other, for any particular combo, or technically both. Want Ley Lines separate from Between the Lines, then just slot those two separately instead of using the pre-build consolidation.

(Sorry, accessibility is a thing I have come to take very, very seriously in game design.)

Same. I just think having no easily seen and graspable system could a missed opportunity for accessibility.

I'll gladly take a not-gutted macro system, but I think having some buttons/macros that are already there, quick to drag and drop, would not only create an easier alternative, but also a sort of welcoming mat for those later improved macros. (Naturally, also let players choose also to automatically drop in the consolidations instead of discrete keys (toggleable separately by type -- e.g., Necessary Sequences, Natural Sequences).

[Packetdancer]

So, mods actually do... both. The consolidation macros, moreover, are just prepackaged forms of the second (in which you can consolidate whatever you want in whatever order you want, including both oGCDs and GCDs, even based on conditionals like targeting enemy, targeting friendly, or targeting nothing).

I should clarify a little bit what I meant there. (I am still deep in migraine-land, so I do apologize if I either ramble or am not as clear as I could be.)

From what I can see of how the hotbars work from a bit of cursory poking, there's no (rational) way to constantly swap actions in and out on in series. The PvP action buttons appear to work sort of like macros behind the scenes, where the actual ID of the action on the bar doesn't change, but the icon (and other metadata, like tooltip et al) and the code executed by that action ID do.

Now, in PvP, there's no way to put the individual pieces of the combo on separate parts of the hotbar. (At least, not without some trickery.) But to have the option of both the individual 1-2-3 actions on the bar and to have a PvP-style single-button-combo, you would either need to make a new copy of that combo (e.g. something with a separate action ID than the actual individual actions), which could also be dragged from something -- say a "Combos" tab of the Actions & Skills list -- or you would need a more complicated/abstract system which could basically just take generic 'this is the combo sequence' lists of actions to be executed in series.

That's all I mean: basically, if the devs wanted to pull one-button combos a'la PvP into PvE, they either need to define every possible combo folks would use (and make pre-made 'combo sequences' that could be put on a hotbar) or they need to make a tool in the game that lets players define those for themselves. The latter is more work, but -- in my opinion -- also the 'correct' approach.

But if that's a QoL change they intend to make as part of their (demonstrable) effort to take QoL hints and lessons from the modding community, given this game's wonky input system and code cruft, it's probably not one that we'll see land in the client in the immediate future.

Same. I just think having no easily seen and graspable system could a missed opportunity for accessibility.

On this we agree entirely.

(I'm actually in the middle of writing up a guideline document on "designing for accessibility" for the gamedev team I lead in my spare time, because -- as said -- I do feel fairly strongly about accessibility issues. So, migraine or not, this topic in a general sense is all fairly front-and-center in my thoughts right now.)