Still no auto-combo for 123 on old jobs.

[Asari5]

arent there plenty of answers in this topic from people whon want combos to be gone to get less buttons?

thats kinda saying they dont want more skills for a more interesting rotation.

something else than more skills in return? what should that be? positionals already got reduced to the bare minimum... people want that to be removed as well.

more complex job mechanics? we are at a point where its quit clear they dont want that. every job has to be for everybody whith barely a skill ceiling.. people could feel bad xD

more fight mechanics? they wont overhaul the whole fighting system and there is only so much they csn do with the current one.

[Shurrikhan]

Square doesn't add meaningful abilities outside of expansion releases.

Tbf, they add few to none with expansion releases, either.

Which is why none of this conversation has ever been beholden to what the devs tend or tend not to do.

If we consistently constrained any and all discussion to the words, or even typical actions, of the devs, little to no improvement would be possible.

[GoatOfWar]

Tbf, they add few to none with expansion releases, either.

Which is why none of this conversation has ever been beholden to what the devs tend or tend not to do.

If we consistently constrained any and all discussion to the words, or even typical actions, of the devs, little to no improvement would be possible.

The only reason we're here today is constant incessant complaining about all minor gameplay friction.
I'm sure lot's of people had the idea that they could just build on the existing job designs elsewhere. But that's not what Square does.
You don't fix the game by adding to the pile just because it's mildly inconvenient to press 123. You just make the gameplay *even worse*.
Putting basic GCD combo's into 1 button would not be an improvement. It would make the game *even less* enjoyable.
What is the number one complaint that healers have had for the past 6 years?

[Kandraxx]

Hey, OP here. This seems to have gotten quite a bit of momentum so I want to stress again: I would want it as an OPTIONAL check box and mostly where the 123 doesn't serve any purpose at all other than visual flavor or to artificially prolong the rotation.

Now I hate bringing up THAT GAME for comparison, but I do feel like that the fundamental problem and how SE is trying in vain to address/mask it can be explained easily that way.

In WoW you have skills that all stand alone and have a meaningful impact on their own. I'm mostly talking about the older versions because I stopped playing it long ago but, for example on a Shaman you have the shocks. Earth Shock - damage and interrupts spell casting, Frost Shock - damage and slows target. Or Mortal Strike on a Warrior. Crusader Strike on a Paladin. Even freaking Moonfire on a Druid. These skills are insanely fun to press like you go 'baaam' and they create some sort of satisfaction. Rotations do exist but the skills still live on their own. In 14 this kind of satisfaction is completely missing. Like the closest you ever get to this is with skills like Setsugekka but even that doesn't come remotely close. It's all combo into combo into oGCD filler into resource bar 1 into resource bar 2 into finisher, repeat.

In WoW the devs gave you the skills and said do whatever you want with them, be creative, think outside the box. In FF14 they give you skills and instructions on how to use them if not outright enforcing a hardcoded rotation. There's no outside the box thinking because the box has very clear and narrow boundaries. Open World, as much as it even counts you can just press whatever, it doesn't even matter. Instanced content is 'pull all trash to the next wall/gated area and AoE with whatever' or dancing circles around a boss while playing your clockwork piano. That is the game, FF14. In a way Deep Dungeons actually provide the best designed content that allows for the most individualism and where cc, slow, root skills are actually used.

SE is aware of that, but they know that they would have to redo the entire game to fix this, so they try to add makeshift complexity by means of combos and piling up on skills and introducing the idea of 'button misclick' as a major PvE mechanic. How many ''deliver XXX potency damage for the first target, and XX% less for all remaining enemies, can be used when/after" buttons do you actually want on your job? It doesn't make the game any more interesting at all. It doesn't matter if you press 10 buttons to reduce an enemy that has no mechanics to zero health, or 50. How many times/hr do you want to press 1-2-3, while pretending that it is a high form of MMO gameplay that is to be preserved. MMOs specifically invented the auto-attack, so players wouldn't have to do that.

[GoatOfWar]

How many times/hr do you want to press 1-2-3, while pretending that it is a high form of MMO gameplay that is to be preserved. MMOs specifically invented the auto-attack, so players wouldn't have to do that.

How many times are you going to misconstrue the argument you're presented with?
This is not about *just* the removal of the 123. Nobody here cares about the 123. It's about the progressive step-by-step oversimplification of the game you're trying to pile on to further.
The game doesn't need to be made even simpler than it already has become.

[Shurrikhan]

Reminder of position before it's strawmanned, for context:

• I prefer separate keys. Apart from the general mechanics alike to targeting and WASD, I prefer a more even distribution of button-presses.
  
  
• However, I think weaponskills should have frequent and significant reason to be separate.
  
  
• So long as they do not in 99.9% of cases, though, I see no harm in un-neutering macros as to allow players to consolidate what they please (still to a limit of one queued skill per actuation).
  
  
• I don't particularly trust the devs to implement consolidations well. I would rather simply leave such things up to the players, with the devs simply giving (back) the tools for that.

What is the number one complaint that healers have had for the past 6 years?

Lack of interest in their between-heals downtime, including offensive actions.

And what is the number one "terrible idea" they have noted would in no way solve that issue?

Adding bloat buttons that amount to the very same filler action, just at greater button cost -- as per combos.

Using 1 key for 1 action or using 4 keys for 1 action still leaves just 1 action, plus or minus tactile cues at cost of added button count. You get either tactile cues or better managed button-space, one or the other.

For my part, all else being equal, raids would be literally easier with the buttons separate because I have plenty of comfortable space as is (mostly from a combination of MMO mouse and having reworked my Caps key to a mod key), making those cues more valuable than the reclaimed button-space. I doubt I'm alone in that. There is no pure ease-of-performance advantage to button consolidation in practice (e.g., in actual content of any seriousness).

Inb4 posting on a former from which I have always posted regardless of characters play, instead of one's current main, renders this opinion (or even just simple summary of healer discourse) null.

___________

But hey, it's also been far more than 6 years of people asking for greater actual complexity only to be asked "With what button space?!" and in turn for even the slightest musing about consolidating bloat and rarely-used levers (specific-case or long CDs that render the more nuance-capable CDs beneath them redundant, obligatorily bundled CDs, mutually exclusive actions, and/or rigid sequences, etc.) to be demonized.

• We can't remove Role Actions in favor of greater individual flavor, no matter the likely increase to actual complexity and job identity, because "oh no, my Rampart!"
  
  
• Can't remove Arms Length or Surecast in favor of actually paying attention to mechanics or using job-specific nullifiers because being able to choose which (for most of their content, 100% of) knockback mechanics to completely and easily invalidate is so much more "complex" than using your damn tools.
  
  
• Can't allow macros to actually be unneutered because then people might ask for more placeable ground AoEs back or consolidate pairs of skills that make zero sense to keep separate.
  
  
• Can't even offer an option to include a button to put one's single-target direct-damage filler action into a single key because "No, my illusion of complexity that couldn't possibly survive the tiniest fear of facing more difficulty than is necessary, forcing me to switch no matter how much more fun and useful to fight memory it might be for me to leave them separate!"

I can't say I'm shocked at this point.
__________

If we're to speak of trends and vilify any and every suggestion when it's still in the earliest bounds of discussion (e.g., before any matched conditions, etc.), then it's worth noting also that time and time again, many here have chosen illusion of complexity and nostalgic anchors over any chance for meaningful revitalization.

I am not saying you are doing that, per se, but just as you may see any individual suggestion as part of a larger, problematic course, that, too, is a problem you are perpetuating by dismissing offhand any sort of potential contexts or imaginings beyond what we have right now.

If you're to conflate individual space-saving suggestions necessarily with a motive of dumbing the game, then it's worth considering also what ways to readd meaningful complexity to the game behavior like yours would preclude.

_____________

Alas, if even pointing out an obvious strawman or conflation falls to, within even just a couple posts...

Just fuck off

...then opportunities for constructive discourse are probably mostly dead already.

[Alice9]

The jobs in this game are way too simple as is, so personally, I wouldn't want them to become any simpler, no matter how big or small of an amount that would be. Because even as an optional feature- it would likely become something Square would have to take into consideration going forward for job adjustments and new jobs going forward, and I really don't think it's worth the effort right now especially at a time when many are wishing for the game to be more engaging in general.

Honestly, even if I wanted autocombos, at this point I don't trust Square's ability to handle such a thing at all. At least not right now. I feel there's a good chance they will somehow find a way to somehow upset people on both sides of the coin. We've seen what they've done with Viper- and that couldn't even last over a month without having to be simplified even more.

[Shurrikhan]

Honestly, even if I wanted autocombos, at this point I don't trust Square's ability to handle such a thing at all. At least not right now. I feel there's a good chance they will somehow find a way to somehow upset people on both sides of the coin. We've seen what they've done with Viper- and that couldn't even last over a month without having to be simplified even more.

Same. I'd rather they just give us the tools to do as we feel is fitting. I don't want a broad toggle for combo consolidation.

That said, I think any consideration like this ultimately comes down to just one crux:

Do we allow players to remove the button-traps of unprepped combo actions (such as by a broad toggle and a macro conditional by which to enforce or ignore that rule), or no?

If we do, then un-neutered (properly queueable, etc.) macros can wholly cover this just by placing the furthest combo action on top and trickling down to activate the first one actionable, with players remaining to free to restart combos, rush out later unprepped actions, or whatnot, as they please.

If not, then we're arbitrarily prevented from putting together combos in the same way we would CDs and their follow-ups into the same key. But then, at least there's zero FOMO on/for some minor (possibly even at net cost, given lost memory cues) advantage in ease of play.

[Valence]

Square doesn't add meaningful abilities outside of expansion releases. They only remove things and give you one new ability to cramp into the burst window at expansion release. That's it.
That's all they ever add. You'd have to be naive to think square will look at the game in 7.2 and go.. ''yeah let's consolidate these buttons and add something meaningful to fill up the gap'' No, they don't do that and never have. They'll just remove things and make the game easier, like they always do. That was the feedback they got, so that's what they deliver. This is how they've been simplifying the game since Shadowbringers. They just remove and remove.

Are you talking to me? Where did I even say that SE will look at the game and go "yeah let's add meaningful things to the kit in 7.2!"?
This is again, arguing against strawmen, nothing more. Of course SE isn't going to do that, they just sanded down the jobs even more that very last patch.

Yes, they are. In fact, I haven't seen anyone suggest something to replace the lost combo actions.

In addition to this, when was the last time that SE added something to a job to increase it's complexity? If they consolidate combo actions, there is an approximately 0% that they would add anything new to fill the empty space.

Are you actually reading what people write or making it on purpose? The amount of mentions asking to bring other buttons that interact in meaningful and engaging ways with the kit instead? No? Flew right above?
That's exactly what I'm saying. Both sides are talking past each other because they're just interested at shooting at strawmen.

[Quuoooote]

Pressing 123 isn't hard.
Not letting your buff fall off isn't hard.
Refreshing your DoT isn't hard.
Pressing your oGCDs on cooldown isn't hard.
Spending gauge to avoid overcapping isn't hard.
Hitting a positional isn't hard.

When you take any one of these things in a vacuum they seem like something insignificant that could be discarded without much impact. The problem is that the game is only interesting because you need to keep all of these little plates spinning at the same time. The number of things that you need to keep track of to execute your rotation properly gets lower with every patch and the game becomes less engaging as a result.

THIS. Please, please, please consider that if you find the current state of jobs and their 1-2-3 combos boring, further simplification / reduction is NOT the solution that you think it is. We should be pushing in the opposite direction entirely, for a complete job overhaul so that we can have engaging gameplay systems built upon the foundation of a simpler combo system.

I'd like to use Bard as an example despite it not being a traditional 1-2-3 job because I find what SE has done to it criminal, and can barely tolerate playing the job any more after playing it nearly exclusively throughout Stormblood and Shadowbringers. Stormblood Bard had a very simple 1-2 "rotation" because it was specifically designed with that in mind in order to allow players the brain space to juggle all of the other substantial job mechanics that made the gameplay experience supremely satisfying. We had (at the end of SB)...

• Straight Shot buff upkeep (30s crit rate buff)
• 30s DoT duration (required more maintenance)
• 30s Song durations (faster cycling)
• Proc decision making between Straight Shot and Refulgent Arrow
• Double Repertoire procs which made the job much more active and chaotic, and enabled optimizations like triple weaving BL > Empyreal > BL during Mage's Ballad

... all working in tandem to keep players engaged, on top of non-rotational upkeep like Refresh/Tactician, Palisade, and of course Foe's Requiem.

Nowadays in Dawntrail the skeleton of the job and the 1-2 rotation remains intact, but all of the above mechanics have either been removed or simplified (mostly removed). DoTs are so boring now that, according to a lot of feedback I've personally seen, players are asking for their outright removal (sound familiar?) or expecting them to get axed because they don't add anything meaningful to the job. Repertoire procs are so predictable and easy to manage now that the focus of the job has effectively become the 1-2 rotation, and Bard is now boring as a result.

We need to build upon this core instead of detracting further with even greater streamlining or removal, or things are only going to continue to get worse. Ask for branching combos back, or more depth in your rotation—please, anything but 1-1-1. Because knowing SE, the one thing you should be most afraid of is them actually listening and "streamlining" things even further.