Still no auto-combo for 123 on old jobs.

[Absurdity]

This is the problem, and it's entirely why SE is doing what they're doing. The community as a whole has encouraged and accepted this behaviour, you yourself have done it just now with your reply. SE as a result have dumbed jobs down because they see lower skilled players just not using half of their abilities.

Even with the current dumbed down jobs you still have players with 33 broken combos and a bunch of hexa weaves as a warrior, so no amount of "streamlining" is going to make people play correctly if they simply can't be bothered.
And no that's not some made-up example, it was a savage log of all things.

The idea that it's the developers' job to make everyone play their job correctly is flawed from the start, and making the jobs "impossible" to play wrong by removing any and all failure states is one of the dumbest ways to go about it. It is an unachievable goal to try and "fix" people's lazyness.

[Derio]

I need the mod that does this to get more traction so it can be implemented in the game.

[Collin_Sky]

Even with the current dumbed down jobs you still have players with 33 broken combos and a bunch of hexa weaves as a warrior, so no amount of "streamlining" is going to make people play correctly if they simply can't be bothered.
And no that's not some made-up example, it was a savage log of all things.

The idea that it's the developers' job to make everyone play their job correctly is flawed from the start, and making the jobs "impossible" to play wrong by removing any and all failure states is one of the dumbest ways to go about it. It is an unachievable goal to try and "fix" people's lazyness.

Yes, obviously there's always going to be idiots who don't know how to play their jobs. However, SE is seeing a trend of the overwhelming majority of people just straight up not using their full kits, so they streamline it because of this.

[Shurrikhan]

Easy jobs. Complexity through mechanics. It's the obvious way SE is going. People need to accept it.
It's the only way to even come close to making the ultra casual and hyper hardcore happy at the same time.

I'd argue that it doesn't actually help those groups, either, such as for the reasons Absurdity mentioned in her post earlier.

The ultra casual aren't going to care about how quickly they can learn to play up to some particular threshold of optimization across multiple jobs. Many will play only one or two and most won't give a damn about performance above the degree already doable even if jobs were hugely varied and/or had far more complexity available to them (to then be ignored).

The hyper hardcore aren't going to care about where their complexity comes from for their experience on any single job -- only that they have it available to them -- but the multiclassers among them will notice their optional engagement longevity shortened by jobs being made more similar to each and the difference (for any single given job) being made up for only in the content itself. What's worse, all other content but the most challenging now being more wastefully unengaging to them.

Yes, obviously there's always going to be idiots who don't know how to play their jobs. However, SE is seeing a trend of the overwhelming majority of people just straight up not using their full kits, so they streamline it because of this.

Which is a, frankly, terrible approach to almost anything, in games or otherwise.

Those not using their full kits also had no need to use said full kits. It makes no sense to remove that "excess" from those for whom it was still relevant just to make those ignoring what is optional to them feel less bad for not engaging with what they chose not to engage with.

[Avoidy]

How braindead do you want this game to be?

They've come for every other gameplay element already. You barely need to manage resources. A lot of overcapping issues were prevented with DT job changes; instead of giving you 50 gauge, you just get the ability to use the skill the gauge would've given you, meaning you no longer have to manage your resources around avoiding overcap. MP is used on only a couple of jobs, and TP was removed years ago to the satisfaction of many. Every job was sanded down into a 2 minute cycle, with 90s/180s buffs being eliminated. DoTs on jobs were gutted or removed -- in bard's case they were allowed to keep their dots but the purpose of them was neutered like crazy and makes one feel like they might as well have just removed them. Area of effect heals like Asylum and Earthly Star were increased in size to basically be the size of the whole arena, eliminating the need to think about placement or positioning. Bosses that moved to a corner of the arena teleport back to the middle so tanks don't have to think about positioning. "Holding aggro" now is as simple as turning on your stance and pressing provoke; there's no need to worry about losing aggro afterwards to a good dps or something like in the past. Every job that had a high-risk high-reward "stance" has had that eliminated. AST's sects are gone. You no longer need to think about which version of a job fits best for the moment, because every job only has one method and if you find another way then the devs will take the game down for five hours to gut that too. Genuinely, I'm surprised jobs like bard and ninja are still allowed to exist, except look -- in the recent patch, for no reason at all, they decided to eliminate the "stand still for a few seconds" requirement of TCJ on ninja. One less thing to think about.

But yeah with all of that as context, I won't be surprised at all if they roll this out in 8.0. They'll say they're freeing up button space for the console players or something, and then we can all enjoy mashing 1 instead of the barely more thought provoking 123. And every two minutes, we can press our two minute buff and then maybe mash 1 and 2 if we're lucky. And in the background of all this, 90% of the content will be really really really simple. Like, at worst you might die because of visual clutter your first time through, but then never again. And the other 10% will require you to slam your head against a wall with 7 other people doing coordinated dances until you all get it right, and think of how boring that prog will be when your whole rotation just got even less thoughtful, less enjoyable. I could enjoy prog in other mmos because the jobs were fun. I can't in this game; I'd rather log out and read a book. We're already in a boring place, but yeah, let's make it even more boring.

[Aravell]

Easy jobs. Complexity through mechanics. It's the obvious way SE is going. People need to accept it.
It's the only way to even come close to making the ultra casual and hyper hardcore happy at the same time.

That actually satisfies neither of those groups, they're just very easy scapegoats to use.

If all the difficulty comes from fights, you either see the basic fight difficulty jump up to where the "ultra casuals" start struggling (DT) or you get fights so mind-numbing that the "hyper hardcore" only have any fun in 1% of content (EW).

However, if the dev team actually bothered to split the difficulty between the jobs we play and the content we do, then everyone would be able to have fun in the content they do, and absolute flops of a savage fight like P7S wouldn't be so boring if the jobs you play had some form of nuance to play with.

[Enjuden]

So convenience is a bad evil thing that should be punished? Am I a lesser player for using a more comfortable PS5 controller instead of a Wii remote? Are you really genuinely against OPTIONAL QOL CHANGES?

I find controllers more comfortable, controllers cannot easily fit all buttons on so you have to use toggles to swap between different sets of buttons.
Having condensed combos means more free space to help create a more comfortable cross-hotbar. The action condensing so far for me has only been a positive and is also ABSOLUTELY OPTIONAL.

Condensed combos also seem to be the perfect everybody wins fix to the current button bloat issue where job design is stagnating from Devs unwilling to add more buttons onto most jobs incase it bloats controller players hotbars.

It is not optional, and you know it. The main TL;DR of condensed combos is that it is no better than having the game play itself, which is entertaining in a single player game like Spiderman or Arkham, but god awful in an mmo. The key things of an MMO is growth of a player, and foundation is an important, if boring part of that process. In this current system, 123 is there to have timing and rote notation down. If that is gone and all you have is OGCD to worry about, you don't really have much choice left. It sounds convenient for you because screwing up on Red Mage and overflowing mana is apocalyptic in how it affects your damage. Everything is slower, it takes forever to cast things, and you do less damage in an already low damage class so it feels awful.

Here's the main problem with it. If you get rid of the 1-2-3, in this case your mana balance mini game, then you have no decisions to make anymore. You simply have a Red Mage skin of current Summoner, but do significantly worse for the same effort. The growth to hit the floor is already very, very low as it is, and unfortunately getting to the ceiling isn't difficult when the answer is 'press your stuff at 2 minutes then promptly ignore everything until it is off cooldown'. The juggling between this stuff is meant to keep you busy while concentrating on something else, the fight itself. That's the entire premise of mmos whether you like it or not. If you want something else, then frankly you need to support action mmos which are dying by the year usually due to corporate greed, which is pretty sad. Unless it's Dungeon Fighter, somehow.

Hyperbole will get you nowhere with me, or anyone but yourself and your circle. I played on controller as well in all content, including Ultimate, and yes, it can easily fit all buttons with the extra bars if it isn't filled with nonsense and your sets are done in a way that make sense. You are arguing to remove 1-2-3, which is fine, but it is replaced with nothing. If you want it gone so badly, healer exists, where they literally press 1 and OGCD until Savage/Ultimate. For 100 levels, and very likely until the game is in maintenance mode.


The difference for skill condensation is that the buttons are only relevant after a specific OGCD is pressed. You never press anything but Resolution after Scorch for instance. If they did not condense Red Mage melee like they did Gunbreaker's cartridge combo, and that is what you're arguing for, then sure, you could argue that and I would agree with it since at that time it is pointless to press anything else, so it should be condensed.

The main problem is if you get rid of too many things to play around with, you have half a system that 'works' but is so mind numbingly boring to play that you'd quit before even finishing the MSQ. We already have that problem with healing as it is, as much of a joke that the healer strike thread is because they were too dumb to even agree on a single point when interviewed, the thread at least consistently said it is boring to only press 1 then press 2 3 4 when it's off cooldown. It is completely miserable, and watching people want to doom their jobs to this is sad.

Imagine thinking that aligning 3 glowy buttons in the correct order when they light up is being good at a rotation..

Imagine fixating on a single point of an argument and flanderizing it, then pretending that is the entire argument. Oh right it's the internet, you get away with it until you're called out, then crawl back into the hole you came from when people realize you're not meant to be taken seriously.

[Vintersol]

How about an option to put combos on a single button for those who don't like it separated? The people who want it seperated can keep it as it is.

[Collin_Sky]

The simple fact is this feature exists as part of third party tools named after a certain meteor. There is no reason at all to gatekeep it and not implement it into the game at this point considering people can already do it.

Reposting because people still don't understand that is is going to happen at some point, probably 8.0 whether you want it to or not. SE has slowly added many TPT to the game. They've started doing it to new jobs. It's coming to old jobs sooner or later.

[Shurrikhan]

Reposting because people still don't understand that is is going to happen at some point, probably 8.0 whether you want it to or not. SE has slowly added many TPT to the game. They've started doing it to new jobs. It's coming to old jobs sooner or later.

Then there needs to be all the more focus on reintegrating nuance and/or skill expression in what few ways are still apparently permissible to the devs (and not so annoyingly overused in players' opinions) or re-expanding those boundaries.

I'll agree that at this point it's basically just a way to better balance the game across both console the DADT access available to PC, but I also agree with others here that there needs to be less emphasis on streamlining for streamlining's sake.