What Are Some Easy Wins for Improving Combat Content?

[Shurrikhan]

I should have specified that I was envisioning a solo instance for this, sorry! I wouldn't want to skip out the team experience at large, that would do more harm than good. I just want an in-game xivsim so it reduces the pressure and tension in PF.

It would, but does it not also make each new fight seem that much less like an actual experience that players face together? I understand that XIV fights are already damn near solo instances played in tandem, but it just seems like that's not necessarily an impression that would serve the game best in the long run to enable, to the point that I can't help but look cautiously even on obvious QoL for it.

Like, it makes sense. It can do good. I'm just hesitant to add a further paving stone down that path of streamlining out of concern for where that path may likely lead, if that makes sense?

If I'm in an orchestra, I can practice my part by myself. I don't just read the sheet music at home and try to imagine how it would sound.

Of course, there's also the problem of even situating this practice version, since often what ought to be done is strat-dependent. If you create a solo-instance practice version that either (A) it will have to pick a particular party strat to demonstrate --thereby pushing that strat onto the community and reducing the available fun of strat-building/-adjusting-- or (B) it can only really a mechanics-viewer (solely what the boss does, as you might see already in an Adventure Guide or the like with an embedded video player), rather than a party-actions viewer (i.e., what you[all] should about it).

Of those, I'd actually prefer the latter, as it's at least less invasive and acts as a better SSS alternative without necessarily seeming to so badly devalue the later party experience (little if any worse than being pushed to watch video guides in advance).

[Marxam]

combining "proc skills" into one button would be my top priority. Things like AST Draw and Play, combined as one button (why this hasn't been years ago is baffling). Other examples include ogcds (1-2 mins) that once activated lets you use another ocgd/gcd exclusively. Things like Primal Rend, or Confiteor combo. These gcds can only be used IF you activate the skill that procs a buff to let you use it, so theoretically it is a dead button until you press that preceding button. Its even more baffling when you consider that pvp actions already do this so it has been proven in-game that ogcds can share the same button as gcds that are inherently linked to each other.

I just find a lot of redundant design just for the illusion of keeping busy to be increasing with each expansion. It's also hypocritical when they say they want to suppress button bloat but can't combine skills that synergize with each other.

[Katish]

- Reduce button bloat and replace those said buttons with meaningful ones. (Especially healers)
- Remove redundant skills
- Add boss phase sequencing so that it would allow one job or job-type to excel over all other types, while also making those phases continuous in terms of switching between them. Or a buff for bosses where it reduces damage outside of a certain job role (These would be an indirect nerf to meta, as it forces you to save your high hits for that moment where you want to be the job exceling). Some less lazy examples to that can be individualized as below points where it's not a buff.

+ Healers
o Gimmick that allows heals to contribute to damage on some phase sequence. (Will not be applicable outside that phase) [For longer healer excel phases]
o Gimmick that allows bosses to freeze everyone taking collective HP into consideration and multiplying that by some amplification of max HP to incapsulate everyone outside healers in ice. It must be healed for that amount to free the party. [For varied healer phases]
o Gimmick that allows a boss to mark everyone with a long lasting esunable damage down debuff. [For shorter healer excel phases]
o Gimmick that kills everyone in the party outside the healers but bestows LB3 (Basically mandatory Tank LB3 but for healers) [For shorter healer excel phases]

+ Ranged
o Gimmick that lets the boss fly off the arena making it impossible for anyone to consistently hit them outside the range role. The movements in air are sporadic making it so spellcasters lose the spell their casting by having it interrupted sometimes.
o More gimmicks where Peloton can be used, where sprint will not be enough. (Can be like some collapsing area)

+ Spellcaster
o A pulsing barrier pushing everyone out close to the boss continuously for an amount of set time, and platforms that amplify spellspeed at the same time (while adding more cast spells to the other two casters).

+ Melee
o Field where everyone not close to boss does reduced damage (basically a boss Sacred Soil but for everyone on the outside of the range)
[Note these are only examples]

[LilimoLimomo]

Reduce truly needless button-bloat.

If a skill can only be used after another, and the first cannot be reused (due to its recast time or anything else rigidly preventing it) for the whole time the follow-up action can be used (as in Namikiri Ready for 30s, which can only occur after incurring the 120s CD of Ikishoten), there is no reason for the follow-up action to require an additional button, and there should at least be an unencumbered option to consolidate them, or even direct consolidation for all. Likewise, if there is never any reason to waste the follow-up action before recasting the initial action (as in Draw->Play), they should (have the unencumbered option to) be consolidated.

If a skill is only technically usable (as a trap) outside of a particular sequence (see true "combos"), then there should likewise be an unencumbered option to consolidate that sequence into a single key.

I agree with this, though I want to add to it:
This may be covered by what you already wrote about traps, but for example, I would want BLM's Despair to be the same button as Blizzard III. In 99% of cases you would never want to cast Blizzard III when you could instead cast Despair; that remaining 1% edge case only exists because the BLM goofed and didn't leave themselves enough Astral Fire time to cast Despair, so they're casting Blizzard III to mitigate their mistake. I don't think that rare "already-messed-up" edge case is worth making these skills 2 different buttons, and I'd be surprised if there weren't other actions that could similarly be consolidated.

Redundant buttons should be removed or consolidated.
Bard has some great examples of this, though most classes have something in this vein:

Empyreal Arrow and Sidewinder are both just cooldown damage oGCD's (and depending on your perspective, so is Bloodletter). This is just the same skill 2 (or 3) times with 2 (or 3) different buttons. Rather than adding redundant skills, just adjust the damage or cooldown of existing skills that are the same, so that players get the experience of using oGCD's more often without button bloat.

Similarly, Venemous Bite and Windbite are the same skill. It's unnecessary. Just allow a second stack of venom on targets or something so this can be one button. You're making a controller-friendly game, so don't add multiple skills unless they actually add something new to a class's rotation that is worth a whole new button.

Add an accessibility setting to hold buttons for fights with button-mashing mechanics
This is unreleated to button bloat, but it should be incredibly easy, and it's kind of stunning that this wasn't done long ago. Just a given if you care about your disabled/aged players. Easy win.

[ASkellington]

I dunno about "low development cost" I'm not sure how hard this would be to implement, but:

Better tab targeting.

Right now it doesn't seem very consistent. Its obvious in PvP but it certainly shows up in PvE as well - where you want to target the nearest enemy to you (likely infront of you) but instead it picks an enemy 20y away, or you're already targeting what's infront of you and you want to target off to another enemy near by (maybe to apply a DoT or to just switch to target with higher health) and it goes not to the next closest but one that's again farther away relatively.

Mouse Over support?

This is more of a PC thing than a controller one unfortunately, but being able to MO would be nice.

For Controller perhaps better party targeting support rather than just cycling through the list?

[Shurrikhan]

I agree with this, though I want to add to it:
This may be covered by what you already wrote about traps, but for example, I would want BLM's Despair to be the same button as Blizzard III. In 99% of cases you would never want to cast Blizzard III when you could instead cast Despair; that remaining 1% edge case only exists because the BLM goofed and didn't leave themselves enough Astral Fire time to cast Despair, so they're casting Blizzard III to mitigate their mistake.

Whether my wording would cover your wants is admittedly ambiguous, largely because I didn't want to overstate Marxam's suggestion in my paraphrasing it.

There is another in the hidden box, though, that would cover this, in a fashion mentioned in your macro thread: Just un-neutering the macro system, by having it perform, with queuing, one action per button-press (as plugins can already do, by just undoing the flag telling it not to queue macro actions).

Add to that conditionals like range and movement and voila, you can have Thundercloud > Scathe > Thunder III all in one button, Fire IV > Despair > Blizzard III all in one button, etc., per user preference in button-flow.

Redundant buttons should be removed or consolidated.
Bard has some great examples of this, though most classes have something in this vein:
Empyreal Arrow and Sidewinder are both just cooldown damage oGCD's (and depending on your perspective, so is Bloodletter). This is just the same skill 2 (or 3) times with 2 (or 3) different buttons. Rather than adding redundant skills, just adjust the damage or cooldown of existing skills that are the same, so that players get the experience of using oGCD's more often without button bloat.

True, but they both could be and have been distinct. Sidewinder used to require having one's DoTs up, back when they were 18s a little less reliably maintained. And EA, moreover, has the potential to overcap gauge or be more desirable if held a second to be used in the upcoming song instead (though, yes, simply weaving the song a second early instead is usually preferable).

As such, it would be, to my mind, and equal or better solution to simply reinvigorate those abilities if/when/where possible.

Similarly, Venomous Bite and Windbite are the same skill.

They are, now that no context could ever make TTK difference matter, but for a moment... consider Iron Jaws. IJ itself is... almost negative gameplay, in its current form (increasing BRD's filler/proc_filler casts from 8 of 9 to 17 of 18 casts). If we consolidate VB and WB, we're still stuck with their being dead buttons due to Iron Jaws, whereas if we remove Iron Jaws, we're stuck only with 2 overly-alike DoTs that each see use... for which the best solution is just to, again, diversify them. Which would probably do BRD a lot of good.

Which is a verbose way to say I'd rather not have consolidation preclude improvements to the actual kit, and therefore would rather not lock in boring-ass abilities by consolidating them before even giving them a chance not to be so dull.

Similar BRD example: Refulgent Arrow. We just key-swipe (just hit button 1->2 together so that Refulgent goes off if possible, Burst Shot if not) that shit right now, making it so we don't even have to deal with what little "depth" it has by being a "hit when glowing" mechanic. But if could stack? If it had any time-sensitive synergies?

Add an accessibility setting to hold buttons for fights with button-mashing mechanics
This is unreleated to button bloat, but it should be incredibly easy, and it's kind of stunning that this wasn't done long ago. Just a given if you care about your disabled/aged players. Easy win.

Given that we only see this in, what, at most three fights, and none of those uses are remotely interesting... I almost wonder if it'd be better just to remove those bloat QTEs entirely.

For Controller perhaps better party targeting support rather than just cycling through the list?

How about, say, Compass / Party-Wheel Targeting?

Steps:

1. Un-neuter macros and allow [st] / [soft] / [softtarget] as targeting options for abilities. Additionally, allow targeting procedures (such as [on-release], [@cursor], [@mouseover], [@UI, etc.] to be attached directly to skills via the Actions and Traits Pane.
2. Allow players to simultaneously hold a Soft Target and "Hard" Target, perhaps with a UI component added for said Soft Target.
   
   
3. Allow for a "Party Wheel", with a fair few sub-options. This places a radial display at the bottom of your screen that allow you to select, via joystick or D-PAD (but using Top, Top-and-Right, Right, etc., instead of having to list-cycle), the target of your next soft-targeted ability from a wheel of party members. What else is displayed in your Party Wheel is highly configurable, but let's say there's at least contextual display of icons (e.g., cleansable effects, who all has shield HP greater than what you could produce with a non-crit, and highlighting Melee DPS and, in a more subdued color, your tank when drawing a Melee Card) and compact option for HP display either as a compact bar, section divider bar, or as a background.
   
   Optional center section (no D-PAD selection / no joystick nudge) into which you can place self, hard target, focus target, or a trickle-down through them in custom order (casting Malefic with hard target > self > focus would cast it on the Focus; casting Asp. Benefic with hard target > self > focus would cast on self if target isn't friendly; etc.).
   
   
4. [OPTIONAL]No longer require a target to be set before beginning a cast and give the option to swap to new targets mid-cast if/when applicable (yes, this greatly helps prehealing against random-target mechanics, but that doesn't seem so awful).
5. [OPTIONAL]Allow for a "prevent movement while holding button on casted actions" option, so that people can use their movement key to aim while they cast.

Better tab targeting.

This one is harder, as there's almost always going to be some conflict here, especially if you try to have tab-target always prefer the nearest target. Honestly, having modded the hell out of tab-targeting every which way in other TT-MMOs my recommendation here would be to not conflate the Cycle Targets (left-to-right) key with Target Nearest Relevant Unit key and instead make use of both. That said, an option to control that would definitely help.
_________________

EDIT (Due to Daily Post Limits)

Though I'm not sure if you could really make a good "Fire IV > Despair > Blizzard III" macro regardless, because depending on circumstances, there are times when you can cast Fire IV but if you do then afterwards you won't have enough mana to cast Despair, which means you should choose to cast Despair instead of the Fire IV. But I'd love to be able to pair Despair and Blizzard III without any loss!

I could have sworn that was damn near impossible with the current MP values unless skipping B4 or casting Flare in what is otherwise an ST rotation? After three casts of F4 under Umbral Hearts, you're left with 7600 MP, which is only enough for 4 Fires (leaving you at 1200 MP out of the 1600 needed for F4) and a Despair (costing at least 1200 MP), no?

But I haven't touched BLM at lv90 in a couple weeks, so I may have forgotten.

[LilimoLimomo]

Mouse Over support?

This is more of a PC thing than a controller one unfortunately, but being able to MO would be nice.

I'm not sure if there's additional functionality you're looking for, but on the off-chance that it might help, mouseover is one of the targeting options you can use for a macro. So if your framerate is somewhere around 30 or 60 fps, a macro like this...

/macroicon "Cure"
/macroerror off
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>
/ac Cure <mo>

...would let you cast spells on a mouseover target. As a controller player I'm not too familiar with all the ins and outs of how this works, but I found this old thread where some folks discuss the finer points of the functionality.

[LilimoLimomo]

True, but they both could be and have been distinct. Sidewinder used to require having one's DoTs up, back when they were 18s a little less reliably maintained. And EA, moreover, has the potential to overcap gauge or be more desirable if held a second to be used in the upcoming song instead (though, yes, simply weaving the song a second early instead is usually preferable).

As such, it would be, to my mind, and equal or better solution to simply reinvigorate those abilities if/when/where possible.

They are, now that no context could ever make TTK difference matter, but for a moment... consider Iron Jaws. IJ itself is... almost negative gameplay, in its current form (increasing BRD's filler/proc_filler casts from 8 of 9 to 17 of 18 casts). If we consolidate VB and WB, we're still stuck with their being dead buttons due to Iron Jaws, whereas if we remove Iron Jaws, we're stuck only with 2 overly-alike DoTs that each see use... for which the best solution is just to, again, diversify them. Which would probably do BRD a lot of good.

Which is a verbose way to say I'd rather not have consolidation preclude improvements to the actual kit, and therefore would rather not lock in boring-ass abilities by consolidating them before even giving them a chance not to be so dull.

Oh certainly, I'm not familiar with the history of Bard but replacing "redundant" abilities with something that actually breathes life into the kit seems great. So changing a redundant skill so that it does something novel and interesting that changes the way a player thinks about their class, rather than adding yet another button to unload during unload times...that sounds smashing.

And as for Iron Jaws, yeah...it's only purpose is to "simplify" the already needlessly complex DoT game. So it's prime to just be removed. Or alternatively, have Venemous Bite just become Iron Jaws when you're aiming at a target that has 2 stacks of poison or whatever. Lots of similar solutions to this issue.

Given that we only see this in, what, at most three fights, and none of those uses are remotely interesting... I almost wonder if it'd be better just to remove those bloat QTEs entirely.

Wouldn't oppose this!

There is another in the hidden box, though, that would cover this, in a fashion mentioned in your macro thread: Just un-neutering the macro system, by having it perform, with queuing, one action per button-press (as plugins can already do, by just undoing the flag telling it not to queue macro actions).

Yeah if macros could do something along the lines of trying every macro line in sequence until an action triggered or 0.5 seconds expired, that would be great!

Add to that conditionals like range and movement and voila, you can have Thundercloud > Scathe > Thunder III all in one button, Fire IV > Despair > Blizzard III all in one button, etc., per user preference in button-flow.

Oh my god, if macros could intelligently cast a charge spell if I'm standing still but instead do an instant-cast if I was moving, that would be amazing. That would solve some of my biggest issues with my BLM setup.

Though I'm not sure if you could really make a good "Fire IV > Despair > Blizzard III" macro regardless, because depending on circumstances, there are times when you can cast Fire IV but if you do then afterwards you won't have enough mana to cast Despair, which means you should choose to cast Despair instead of the Fire IV. But I'd love to be able to pair Despair and Blizzard III without any loss!

[ASkellington]

I'm not sure if there's additional functionality you're looking for, but on the off-chance that it might help, mouseover is one of the targeting options you can use for a macro. So if your framerate is somewhere around 30 or 60 fps, a macro like this...

Oh I know about this already.

But what I'm looking for is something built in that isn't a macro simply because macros are clunky to use. Especially in comparison to mouse overs as done by addons in some other MMOs.

This is less for me specifically and more for other people who want it. Better party targeting is just something that's needed in the game in general.