What abilities are you most sad got removed?

[Shurrikhan]

Whenever I bring up in a thread how many skills could be removed at 0 loss of depth to the gameplay, this is what I mean: we have so many rote buttons to press that require 0 brain interaction to decide when and whether to use them. There is no reason to press 5 buttons in 2 seconds to achieve X potency if the same could be done with 1 button if that sequence never changes. If there's no interaction. If your entire rotation is just a glorified DoT with animations, then you provide no more value (as a whole character) than a debuff on the enemy dealing damage every 3 seconds. Huzzah. Bemoaning skills lost that were nothing but this extremely flat and rote gameplay is wild to me: They are the very example of what the game needs to shed more of. All of!.

Despite being fine with the likes of Distraction being removed (and tank stances only if/since they weren't ever going to be made a real "dance-able" mechanic instead of a mere trap)... I think that's a bridge too far.

I like Continuation, for example, because I like the way my fingers move across the keyboard when using it, between the GCD and oGCD, and that I don't have to worry about accidentally delaying a defensive by an animation time's gap if I accidentally double-hit the action and they were consolidated onto the same key. But, that too is within limits to me.

The sweet spot imo is around the above, or Heat Blast -> Gauss/Ricochet. For others, though, it might well include having Gnashing Fang's combo each take a separate key as well (while I'd rather have all combos able to be consolidated via un-neutered macros and baseline removal of button-traps if combos are to remain just rigid sequences that bloat the number of buttons required per sequence despite enjoying that finger movement elsewhere, so long as the space saved isn't filled with other bloat).

Kaiten was the mid-point for me. It was bloat, but it was sexy and thematic and, alongside the previously varied Kenki costs formerly on Guren/Senei, was what gave any semblance of depth to Kenki. I could therefore actually miss that in ways I would never miss, say, old Power Surge (use on CD before Jump).

To me, some degree of bloat is okay, as long as it has bundles enough rule of cool to justify itself. It hurts a lot more when some else's failing to hit their bloat means your own damage gets capped, be that in the form of raidbuffs or especially Distraction (or, say, Lucid Dream, if healer MP were still more consistently relevant to your survival), but even then, some skills existing for the sheer buttonflow, animation, or over-subtle damage profile adjustments is okay. I just don't think I could ever miss it when it's lost.

While I could imagine a 4-button DRG that would have more cognitive load than the current one by having it shift between auto-battle schemas atop a couple timing-sensitive actives, that simply wouldn't be the game people signed up for or were ever fond of, and so it doesn't seem worth trying to pursue absolutely maximum cognitive load per button across all things. It's a damn good metric to keep in mind but hardly all-important.

[Carighan]

I like Continuation, for example, because I like the way my fingers move across the keyboard when using it, between the GCD and oGCD, and that I don't have to worry about accidentally delaying a defensive by an animation time's gap if I accidentally double-hit the action and they were consolidated onto the same key. But, that too is within limits to me.

This is actually a really good example of what I mean. Continuation is close to being a really cool mechanism, it just isn't. As-is, it could be removed at no loss of gameplay complexity or - if you prefer that - it could be kept and vast swaths of the remaining kit could be removed, again at no loss of gameplay complexity, folded into auto-combos via Continuation.

However, what makes it "close but not quite there" is essentially just that you always want to press Continuation. With just minor-tweaking to make it a "Usually, but not always"-skill, it'd have tremendous value, in particular as it gets added to more an more elements of the kit. It'd also make Gunbreaker elegant insofar that the raw hotbar space-usage would be low, instead there's a button that combos from ~most abilities into something else, should you need it or want it at the time buuuuut these combo options don't last, as they overwrite one another.

In particular I'd probably shift the cartridge cost of many skills onto their continuation. With some potency rebalancing this would already evoke much of this "Usually you want to use this, but sometimes you do not". If it then also has interactions with some defensive/utility skills, it'd be a really interesting job where a single mechanism is the centerpiece of it, and interacts with every single part of the job equally but without being a rote button press.

And yeah of course there's limit to simplification, at least in context. For animation-sake if nothing else, like you say, rule of cool. I have no qualms with having an absurdly long combo on an autocombo button, but the final button that has some sick big animation that you only get if you get to skill #8 while also having a specific buff up, that one probably ought to be separate just for that reason: It feels awesome to then hit the big red nuke button.

[Shurrikhan]

This is actually a really good example of what I mean. Continuation is close to being a really cool mechanism, it just isn't. As-is, it could be removed at no loss of gameplay complexity or - if you prefer that - it could be kept and vast swaths of the remaining kit could be removed, again at no loss of gameplay complexity, folded into auto-combos via Continuation.

More or less. It just squeezes into oGCD slots otherwise used for mobility/defensives/CD-attacks, simply typically forcing one to remember to use the other skill (since it has an actual CD you want to get rolling or needs to be out before the coming hit) before Continuation, akin to any other combo. But little low-thought flow-beats like that that can still feel good, albeit with diminishing returns (albeit with a small bump from regularity/cohesion if/once applied to everything). They're like the "ear-candy" mix-tricks of music -- mostly vapid, yet often memorable, and sometimes even conducive to broader theme.

Of course, if I could have my tyrannical way with all things job design, GNB would probably be a 'gigabrain' job wherein you swap into/between and consume different cartridges (now more alike to the Lost Skill sources from Bozja) almost akin to DMC5's Devil Breakers:

You could hold 2 [later 3] of these cartridges to swap between. Cartridge names should be techy but also vaguely tribal/primal and brutal/plainly-sublime in their vibes: Wolfbane, Shellshock, Boreal, Pulsar, etc. You are forcibly specialized in that you can only pick 2 [later 3] to take with you and swap between. The primary resource would instead be more akin to Kenki, spendable in varied ways based on cartridge type, including buff-nexts (Dark Arts), follow-ups (Continuation), or replacement enhanced GCDs (Burst Strike or Fated Circle, but now especially chunky even if still not optimal except as a window-closer over buff-nexts or follow-ups, which now includes more AoEs as well). The second gauge, meanwhile, would work akin to Reaper's in that spending the resource resonates with your own person (allowing cartridge-based self-buffs to carry onto the next cartridge for synergies), through which you get the bonus combos and a few of your oGCD sustain (i.e., healing and/or mitigation) and situational tools. You can overdraw from your Cartridge, but doing so damages it, penalizing max resource and generation thereafter. You can also choose to fully manually Overdraw from it, passively generating massive amounts of primary resource but increasingly damaging the cartridge until it destroys itself. Or, if you need to swap back to the utility of the other quickly, you can simply rotate it out and let it repair from any penalties amounts over time (say, 60s max unless Overdrawn, in which case it's maybe 75s). I.e., you basically have No Mercy constantly available to you; you just have to take the time to recover later. A new UI component now tracks your cartridges health in terms of how long it'd take to fully restore it.

snip

I'd like nothing more than to see the 1.x "build your own job" idea actually well implemented, but neither it nor ARR/HW cross class was that. Both were mostly just traps or inconsequential gimmicks that just allowed the devs to cut down on unique job actions relative to had Action Points or Additional Actions (crossclass) not been a thing. In practice, some of it stumbled into a better result than was typically arrived at via the Role Actions that replaced it, but it was mostly a haphazard mess. It didn't give "freedom to customize your job as you see fit", since cross class was barely of impact outside of vapid obligatories like Invigorate (Lucid Dreaming but for non-casters) or was completely imbalanced.

Also, no, people didn't particularly "know the bounds of their class" better back then, nor was that why there was less toxicity (if that was ever even a thing). (Personally, the last time I remember XIV being any less hostile, skeptical, instinctively defensive, or kick-happy than WoW, GW2, or the like was... well, whenever there was nothing of substance that'd reward stringency anyways, just as on any of those MMOs. It has nothing to do with job design and everything to do with people having something they want that others' underperformance could screw over, or, in the most extreme cases, treating the game as a non-hourly job.)

Don't get me wrong, though: Had they actually implemented the 1.0 to 1.17 (so, pre-Yoshida) idea well, that'd have been amazing. You'd feel like an adventurer with whatever skills and stats you'd acquired and tried to make the best use you could of, where experience and versatility across contents within static and matchmade play would count at least as much as having the hyper optimal setup for a given singular fight, rather than interchangeable Dragoon / purple shirt extra #44323.