Things Getting Too Obnoxious

[Egnasya]

Generally I agree to:

- Button bloat. No matter how you go bout it, 35+ buttons is too much to handle comfortably on a keyboard OR controller, should be around 20 - 25 for an MMO.

- Too many meaningless abilities. Prime example Hot Shot / Lead Shot on MCH. Those are literally copy&paste from Dragoon for no reason other than filling button slots devs had no idea what else to put in. Damage they bring could be easily distributed to other actions. Nothing procs from them, they're not used or modified by other abilities. They're just there to be there, needlessly adding complexity without real depth. Adding even more wheels to a vehicle that already has 5, but is supposed to have 2.

- Class / job identity issues. Every class has DoTs, every melee has positionals, every DPS has a big bad playstyle changing buff at 60, many abilities feel like carbon copies taken from other classes, and so on...


Those things need to see major corrections by 3.1, or else be prepared that things get even worse with further expansions.

[Jim_Berry]

*SNIP*

You forgot Mug lol... Yeah, when you are solo'ing and need the little HP, but for items? Meh!

Takes too much to time the action. Trying to get the mob low only to have a crit kill it.

[pandabearcat]

FF14 certainly isn't off to a bad start, but what I was wishing was it would learn the lessons it took WoW 7 years to learn...but instead it seems to be following directly in its footsteps.

I really want diversified resources for each class. I want my rage, my energy, my soul shards. I want actually different classes. I want procs, and I want trinkets. I want set bonuses not some cruddy AF2 that locks me into one class with no real bonus other than stats.

I want gearing choice, not gearing bloat.

[Odowla]

Dunno why you'd want dots removed, they are really great because of their low cost, and thet give you damage if you cant hit the target for whatever reason

[Myon88]

Part of the purpose of Hot Shot/Lead Shot is to also serve as a minor attention tax, where you have to mentally track the buff to make sure you're refreshing it on time. As a trade off, they have a very generous damage per execution time to make it worth your while.

If you've ever been distracted in a hectic situation and glanced back at the boss to see your Lead Shot has fallen off without you remembering to refresh it - that's a demonstration of it's purpose right there, it's a mechanic designed to reward attentiveness.

[Odowla]

I mean, not really "reward" attentiveness, most fights once you know them come down to counting gcds anyways, so you can fully focus on mechanics and it'll pretty much be the same thing everytime. A3s especially heavy on this, you end up clipping lead at 12s or there's no time to refresh it later after the first sluice, then you need to clip hotshot at about 18 seconds or it'll fall off at a really bad spot

I wouldn't really call them that at all, like, they're usually your highest potency attack and are pretty high on the priority lists. Do you call Heavy Thrust an attention check?

[Subucnimorning]

I disagree a lot with the OP's notion that melee requiring positionals is a bad thing, it is part of what has attracted me to melee DPS in this game, it adds some complexity to rotations and some challenge on certain fights to max DPS. Without positionals all rotations would be mindnumbingly boring, in my opinion.

[Myon88]

I wouldn't really call them that at all, like, they're usually your highest potency attack and are pretty high on the priority lists. Do you call Heavy Thrust an attention check?

I would consider Heavy Thrust as such, but I get the feeling we're just splitting hairs on semantics here. The point is they are all investment effects of some kind which give you something to keep track of, and yes, by virtue of being as such they are very commonly your highest potency or highest priority attack.

So I think they have a place, if only because they add a marginal and acceptable level of complexity. It might be second nature to you or me to keep it up as needed, or use them at opportune times - but there are no doubt people out there right now losing DPS because buffs like this fall off and they don't notice, so it's doing its job in being an additional check you have to pass to do optimal DPS.

Hot Shot and Lead Shot's 30s duration is a pretty comfortable window too, short enough you can count GCDs to get a feel for when to refresh it, but also long enough that you can use it to count your longer cooldowns ("2 more refreshes and Wildfire is back up" kind of thing).

[Ronzeru]

Generally I agree to:

- Button bloat. No matter how you go bout it, 35+ buttons is too much to handle comfortably on a keyboard OR controller, should be around 20 - 25 for an MMO.

This. It's less 'being difficult' and more button bloat.

[pandabearcat]

Examples of button bloat:

1. Basic enmity rotation for tanks. I understand there is -some- decision making there, but imo cycling through 9 skills is about as bad as pressing one button 9 times. Set rotations are just not exactly that fun for me.

2. Combo system in general. Aside from MCH which has some randomness and skill involved (such as holding onto cleaner shot, etc), all melee combos could stand to be one button. I know that wouldn't work for positionals...but 9 buttons for monks could easily become 3 buttons, one for each of the combos (you press it 3 times).

3. All of the Deliverance abilities for WAR. Seriously, why this isn't a toggle between IB/FC, SC/Deci, is beyond me.

4. Ruin III/Ruin I for SMN. Now, there are some cases where you would use Ruin III outside DWT, so I don't mind this. However, during DWT there is no reason for Ruin I to exist.

The biggest way they can solve button bloat however is to make macros actually work.

Allow macros to actually queue.

Use a system like WoW's

/cast [harm, @mouseover] [harm, @target] [harm, @targettarget] Bio II

would be much, much better than our current

/ac Bio II <mo>
/ac Bio II <t>
/ac Bio II <tt>

which can't be macroed, which also casts all 3 in sequence, instead of the smart thing which is actually check with conditions for valid target before casting.

Also, something like

/cast [stance:1] Inner Beast; [stance:2] Fell Cleave

OMG removes button bloat.

Similarly, would make healer macros actually usable for mo/t/tt, instead of unqueueable and always that slight chance of accidentally healing yourself instead of mouseover...the horror.

This is clunkiness.