The Buttons & You

[Valence]

I prefer to have less buttons that make me think of what I need to use next instead of having a set rotation of 30+ button presses. This game has too many strong damage abilities on a long cooldown that just make you feel sad when they don't direct crit. The main rotation of Dancer and Red Mage should be closer to what other jobs should strive for.

So much this. Not only the game has completely lost all resource management for most jobs, the pvp kits actually do provide what you're talking about. You don't have a set rotation. It's not a game of memory or muscle memory over scripted DDR, it's about making meaningful choices or mitigating bad situations with what resources you have at your disposal at that specific time. It's about using your brain and fast thinking or reacting under pressure. It's about identifying threats and the game situation at all times.

But it's not gonna happen in pve any time soon, it would just ask them to demolish entirely what their game is about once more, and probably even more than what they did in ShB.

Until you have to PvE the crystals in Shatter with the 1-1-1 combo and the 10-30s cool downs.

The PvP kits feel good because they were well designed for fighting players.


Moving that to PvE would feel miserable. And let's not get deluded into thinking that by condensing GCDs into less buttons, we will be able to have more in the jobs' kits. We won't, unless what they said about 8.0 actually materializes into something but I won't believe it until I see it.

Everybody in pvp hates crystal licking and they continue to serve us this somehow.

Moving that to pve would feel miserable because what's left of pve is miserable, as simple as that, and with a single uptime/dps metric and nothing else to play around. But it's interesting that we're making a parallel between ice licking and pve though. Says a lot about what pve is when it comes to job rotations.

[AmiableApkallu]

So much this. Not only the game has completely lost all resource management for most jobs, the pvp kits actually do provide what you're talking about. You don't have a set rotation. It's not a game of memory or muscle memory over scripted DDR, it's about making meaningful choices or mitigating bad situations with what resources you have at your disposal at that specific time. It's about using your brain and fast thinking or reacting under pressure. It's about identifying threats and the game situation at all times.

This is incorrect. Go to the Wolves' Den. Take your favorite PvP job. Go whack at one of the striking dummies for a 5min. Tell me about all the meaningful choices you're making, all the bad situations you're mitigating, and all the fast thinking and reacting you're doing.

The fact of the matter is, everything you've described has nothing to do with the PvP kit and everything to do with encounter design, and the people you're playing with and against.

PvP-style kits in PvE might restore flavor, but an encounter designed to be one-step-removed from a striking dummy is still, well, fighting a striking dummy.

[Valence]

This is incorrect. Go to the Wolves' Den. Take your favorite PvP job. Go whack at one of the striking dummies for a 5min. Tell me about all the meaningful choices you're making, all the bad situations you're mitigating, and all the fast thinking and reacting you're doing.

The fact of the matter is, everything you've described has nothing to do with the PvP kit and everything to do with encounter design, and the people you're playing with and against.

PvP-style kits in PvE might restore flavor, but an encounter designed to be one-step-removed from a striking dummy is still, well, fighting a striking dummy.

Incorrect and fallacious, you're not whacking at stricking dummies in actual pvp. This whole striking dummy / crystal licking is blatant bad faith trying to misconstrue what pvp is about and how the whole pvp battle system actually works.

If your job action kit is poor and doesn't offer any tools that interact with your vaunted encounter design, or even with the battle system itself, then you're missing one core part of the trinity. If people can be crowd controlled, it's thanks to actions and abilities that provide the tools to do so. If burst attempts can be countered by guarding, it's because there is an ability that does allow you to do so.

[AmiableApkallu]

Incorrect and fallacious, you're not whacking at stricking dummies in actual pvp. This whole striking dummy / crystal licking is blatant bad faith trying to misconstrue what pvp is about and how the whole pvp battle system actually works.

If your job action kit is poor and doesn't offer any tools that interact with your vaunted encounter design, or even with the battle system itself, then you're missing one core part of the trinity. If people can be crowd controlled, it's thanks to actions and abilities that provide the tools to do so. If burst attempts can be countered by guarding, it's because there is an ability that does allow you to do so.

And literally none of that matters unless the PvE encounter design actually bubbles all that to the top. Crowd control doesn't matter if there's nothing to be controlled. Burst doesn't matter if there's nothing that actually needs to killed posthaste.

That's the point.

If you're looking to "improve" PvE, you must necessarily "improve" encounter design. If all you do is import PvP kits into PvE, you haven't actually addressed what ails PvE.

[Valence]

And literally none of that matters unless the PvE encounter design actually bubbles all that to the top. Crowd control doesn't matter if there's nothing to be controlled. Burst doesn't matter if there's nothing that actually needs to killed posthaste.

That's the point.

If you're looking to "improve" PvE, you must necessarily "improve" encounter design. If all you do is import PvP kits into PvE, you haven't actually addressed what ails PvE.

Ok. I'm confused now. Where did I say I wanted to import the pvp kits into pve? What kind of strawman is this?

[TaranTatsuuchi]

If a skill can only be used after using a separate skill, there's no excuse for it to take up a separate button.

[RinaB]

I agree tbh. I don't see how it enhances my gameplay to have Gibbet and Gallows are on separate buttons when Blood Stalk, Unv.Gibbet, Unv.Gallows share 1. Same with Guillotine and Grim Swathe. Other then a chance to screw up the combo potency or positional I don't see the point. Rpr isn't cluttered but ideal button placement is a little wonky on controller. Is it unplayable? Ofc not, it would just be cleaner like this.

[Shurrikhan]

+1 for the "Let people do what they want (and increase the obviousness and quality of access to said customization)" camp.

If doing so reveals how little of the game's combat is just a pretense, possibly incentivizing a shift towards optimal play being more situationally varied instead of just based on the tightness of adhering to a set script, all the better.

[PaleYonder]

As a console player who plays with the traditional bars for wrist health reasons, I'm absolutely for cutting down the number of buttons drastically. Condense the combos, get rid of skills that don't do much in particular or also only set up particular other stuff. Whatever it takes. Some jobs just have way too many buttons, and it's getting unreasonable. As a result, especially on DPS, if I'd have to set up yet another hotbar to cycle through each time just for one or two minor or fringe skills, they don't get added, period. And as a tank or healer, while there are cases in which those few extra skills might be needed, they land on the extra bar that barely gets used, but that's just more to cycle through, and I'd prefer it otherwise.
By all means make the 1-2-3 optional for those who really want it; I couldn't say since I don't play high-end content. But to me, a lot of those buttons have to go.

[MrKusabi]

I like the idea of condensing buttons where it makes sense (can Cure I just auto upgrade so we can get away from the Freecure trap already please?), but I do dislike the "gating strong attacks behind buffs" thing they've started doing to address button bloat. That's not really a good way to deal with the issue (and I say this as a controller player). It makes coordinating with your party harder, because you have to either overlap buffs (therefore losing DPS over time for the party) or skip a big damage ability (therefore losing personal DPS).

So by all means, the devs should address button bloat, but they shouldn't forget about PF/PUG situations while they do.