A Perspective on Abilities, Spells, and Weaponskills

[MiniPrinny]

So, as I’m sure most of us have realized from doing PvP, playing on controllers, or simply trying to find key bindings that are comfortable if you have smaller hands (like myself), that FFXIV already is showing some rather significant button bloat. I’m not one to call for simplification of gameplay, however, I think a simplification of the execution of gameplay would be a good idea. As it stands, many Jobs have abilities they use as soon as their recast has finished or weaponskills or spells they use very rarely due to those weaponskills or spells apply effects that just aren’t very useful outside of niche situations.

In addition to this, we have a cross-class system that is criminally underused and offers no choice, there’s a laughably thin “illusion of choice,” but generally speaking, there is a right answer for all five slots on every Job in the game.

So, what’s a solution to all this? It is my opinion that Yoshida’s team could benefit by borrowing some concepts from FFXIV’s contemporaries, particularly the idea of having few buttons, but more depth to them. For example, imagine a world where as a tank, you had basically three defensive abilities with shorter recasts than the ones that existed now. One that assured you used your Job’s primary defensive mechanic (blocking for Paladins, health boosting for Warrior, parrying for Dark Knight), one that greatly boosted your Job’s specialty (physical damage for Paladin, vampiric attacks for Warrior, magical damage for Dark Knight), and one that was a catch all for situations where it was required (Rampart, Inner Beast, Shadowskin). Would the tanks really need more than that?

Another example would healers, who would all have singular, powerful healing abilities on shorter cooldowns, that again, defined their strengths more clearly. A White Mage would have Divine Seal, showing their unparalleled healing power, and perhaps, even their raw damage. A Scholar could have a new ability that vastly increased their critical hit rate, giving them not only a clear definition as the perfect barrier healer, but also as a healer who is extremely flexible and can easily dance between healing and harming. And not to be left out, an Astrologian could have a personal version of Haste, tying them more clearly to their Time Mage roots and also defining them as the most mobile and fastest of the the healers, while again, being dual purpose, it gives them the ability to attack even faster.

All the damage dealers as well could just have their own unique abilities that vastly impacted how they played, does a Black Mage really need Raging Strikes, Ley Lines, Enochian, and Sharpcast? Is Astral Fire not enough on its own? Does Swiftcast and Sharpcast not provide enough of an identity for Black Mage being a powerful burst mage who relies on procs to do their damage? I certainly would hope those abilities do indeed provide Black Mage with an identity. Likewise for Jobs like Summoner with Rouse and Spur, two abilities that serve the same function; or Monk with Fists of Earth, Wind, and Fire, can those abilities not just stack and become passive features of being a Monk? Does Ninja really need six abilities that all do damage? Would it not be enough to do just three? Such as Mug, Trick Attack, and their Ninjutsu?

And then there are the two damage dealers who have the most abilities in the game, Machinist and Bard, who both have so many dull abilities that basically just increase their damage with nothing interesting about them. You stack them all up at the beginning and then in the case of Bard, keep using them as the fight goes or in the case of Machinist, you wait for your next Wildfire to hit them all again.

So, how can we fix this? Well, part of the solution is trimming the fat. We don’t need things like weaponskill chains that are basically pressing the same button three times, only you need three buttons due to some sort of weird limitation in the engine or hardware. Weaponskill chains could easily be just a single button that started with a basic attack, then a secondary attack, and finally the third attack. Additionally, the casters would all benefit from a compression of their spells. White Mages don’t need three versions of Stone on their hotbar, but due to level syncing and Stone II and Stone III losing Stone’s heavy, they keep them there. A White Mage who is above level 22 could just have Stone II replace Stone as a natural evolution from being a Conjurer, and again, at level 54, they could have Stone II replaced with Stone III. Along with these spells keeping the benefits of their weaker forms, so all three versions of Stone would inflict a heavy debuff. This system could also work for the damage dealing casters as well. Summoners and Scholars don’t need Bio and Bio II, just Bio II being a 75 potency DoT would suffice. Likewise, just making Miasma II into an upgraded version of Miasma that was always an AoE like Aero III would work as well. Same with the Ruin/Broil series, Ruin III could just be what a Summoner uses in Dreadwyrm Trance, a 200 potency single target attack that also blinds, likewise, a Scholar would always have Broil as a 170 potency single target attack that also blinds. Removing these fluffier “middle stage” abilities from our hotbars would be a boon for players of all Jobs and would offer much more room for growth and more unique and novel abilities as the game ages.

The other part of the solution I offer is a revamp of what we consider to be “cross-class” actions. As it stands currently, you get five cross-class actions as a Job. One for every 10 levels until you reach level 50. We all know this. But, what if we were to change this? Instead of giving you five actions, give instead just three, and in place of the level 20 and level 40 slots, two “mastery” slots. The mastery slots would contain passive traits that are natural to the class or Job they originate from, but that the Job you are on currently can borrow in weakened forms.

For example, a Bard could take “Swift Feet” or “Inspiration” from Pugilist. “Swift Feet” would increase the Bard’s critical hit rate by 5%, and their evasion by 5%. “Inspiration” would in turn increase the potency of the Bard’s songs by 5% and boost the healing power of all nearby players by 10%. A Monk however would have both mastery traits at full power, having a passive increase of their critical hit rate, evasion, and their allies’ healing power that outscaled a Bard’s increases. Now, you probably noticed that, ignoring the bardsong boost, those boosts are basically trait versions of Internal Release, Featherfoot, and Mantra. Internal Release is the only ability in the list of abilities a Bard can take from Pugilist that is taken often. But offering the option for a defensive and supportive damage dealer like Bard to take something that will boost their party’s abilities while also boosting their own would aid them greatly. At that point, the Bard could also take Second Wind, as well as two new abilities that would actually impact their playstyle as well as impacting a Pugilist’s playstyle. For example, Perfect Balance being available to Bards as well as Pugilists, and it allowing both to ignore their Job’s core mechanic (stances for Pugilists, “aiming time” for Bards).

(TL;DR) To summarize all of this into a cleaner package, the amount of actions we have currently is much too high to, within reason, add more abilities to the game. Looking forward, the game will have to make some sacrifices in “complexity” to allow for more interactive gameplay, more depth in terms of character customization, and the addition of more actions over time. Many players can already see the treacherous path ahead should Yoshida’s team not make precautionary actions to limit the amount of hotbar space the core actions of the Jobs take up. The solutions I offered were a revamp of how weaponskills and spells work, as well as how the cross-class or “additional actions” work. Changes that will, hopefully, if implemented not only free up hotbar space, but also allow the players to choose more unique builds for their characters.

I have, for the sake of expanding the discussion's pool of people, also posted this on reddit. If you wish to, please, take a look.

[DarthVella]

I agree with you that we're getting a lot of button bloat and somewhat redundant skills; and while your proposed fixes are simple and most likely effective, I have to disagree with you on some small points.

For starters, you mentioned the Stone family of spells and Ruin/Broil that could be consolidated into traited upgrades at certain levels. I think Ruin and Stone I have a place as "filler" spells that you can fling in healing downtime without harm to your MP bar, while Stone II/Broil are MP inefficient and are used when damage is a priority.

There are also reasons to be wary about changing the weaponskill chain system. Different skill combos have distinct uses - for example, tanks can choose to to focus on their hate, apply mitigation, restore their resources or do straight DPS as the situation calls for. One comment on Reddit spoke of taking hints from fighting games - using different combinations of A>B>C to accomplish different combos. That would help a lot but also has problems. Plus, it's boring to sit there pressing the same button over and over again.

You spoke of reducing the number of overlaps in self-buffs in favour of lower recast times. I agree with you fully; especially when it comes to cross-class skills, as it is tempting to pick more class-appropriate buffs to cover the downtime of your current ones.

Speaking of cross-class skills, your "Mastery" idea is interesting. Allowing traits to have appropriate effects for each of the jobs that can cross-class it could improve diversity and character progression as well as alleviating button space; but does come at the cost of further restricting "best in slot" skills.

I suppose when it comes down to it that I like the complexity. You can do some pruning here and there but simplifying the way you play too much would do more harm than good.

[Duelle]

I agree with your premise, and as a person who fumbles with keyboards I sympathize with your plight.

I think part of the problem is that the devs went the way of multiple buttons and cooldowns to fill the ability lists, and have aimed to make gameplay very....mechanic-heavy to challenge players. The bloat is very noticeable on DPS jobs and something will have to be done one way or the other to smooth things out.

While I agree that combo-dependent classes (most melee jobs) should have some buffs and buttons trimmed, I think casters are fine up to a degree. I agree that BLM doesn't need all these cooldowns to do its job, and would gladly see Raging Strikes, Surecast and Enochian axed. WHM is trickier because Stone's utility is in the Weight effect, and that inherently hitting the DR cap on Weight (which is what would happen if you gave Stone II and III that effect) sort of makes it a bit of a waste.

Then you have classes like DRG, who are supposed to have buttons to add challenge to gameplay (a notion I do not agree with but that's how the devs have decided to design the job). Sure, it'd be easy to axe Heavy Thrust and redesign Blood of the Dragon into a resource instead of an extendable buff (thus one less button to push), but we also have the multiple combos DRG can perform. Granted, as the job currently stands you could consolidate True Thrust => Vorpal Thrust => Full Thrust to one button and Impulse Drive => Disembowel => Chaos Thrust to another.

[Khalithar]

There are a few things they could do to fix button bloat.

My first thought is fixing attacks that are only used to apply passive buffs. Twin Snakes, Straight Shot, Heavy Thrust, Maim, Darkside, Dancing Edge, and Storm's Path could all be axed so long as the bonuses are distributed correctly across the various attacks and a few potencies are adjusted so it's not a net dps loss, i.e. if they got rid of heavy thrust but just buffed all of lnc/drg damage by 15%? It would be fine. Your damage hasn't changed but you have one less button to worry about.

As for Duelle's post above, I'm fully behind ditching things like Raging Strikes for blm/mch or Blood for Blood for nin/mnk/mch/brd and just buffing their abilities appropriately to compensate for the lost cooldowns. I genuinely believe the combat system would be better off for it.

[Shurrikhan]

I agree with finding ways to reduce redundancies, but not with cutting down our overall control. If anything is taken therefrom, I'd prefer it be replaced by something a bit more intuitive, with even greater complexity of management, though in terms of priority or meaningful and adaptive decisions rather than sheer timely button-clacking.

My first thought is fixing attacks that are only used to apply passive buffs. Twin Snakes, Straight Shot, Heavy Thrust, Maim, Darkside, Dancing Edge, and Storm's Path could all be axed so long as the bonuses are distributed correctly across the various attacks and a few potencies are adjusted so it's not a net dps loss, i.e. if they got rid of heavy thrust but just buffed all of lnc/drg damage by 15%? It would be fine. Your damage hasn't changed but you have one less button to worry about.

As for Duelle's post above, I'm fully behind ditching things like Raging Strikes for blm/mch or Blood for Blood for nin/mnk/mch/brd and just buffing their abilities appropriately to compensate for the lost cooldowns. I genuinely believe the combat system would be better off for it.

But if changed to this extent, for instance, I'd probably soon quit the game. The latter two I could take (Raging and Blood dropped), but the prior removes not only rotation, but sometimes decision-making. I'd rather see the total potency of abilities (e.g. Twin Snakes technically being the second strongest Monk ability if not clipped, due to its bonuses on each consecutive move) pushed just a bit closer, making rotation less obvious, but also more choiceful and situational, then what few variances we do have removed.
tldr; I'm all for making the game more thought, less keyboard-playing, but be careful of what all's removed without due replacement when aiming simply for the latter.

Honestly, I have no issue supporting all the bindings this game needs--I didn't even take issue with WoW's bar-bloat Wrath haydays; shift-alt-Q,E,R,T, shit-ctrl-A,S,D,Z,X,C, or just about whatever else all feel quite natural to me. I just dislike bloat on principle, usually because it means better ways to really show off a given job's gameplay or theme has been missed. It's generally a sign of inflexible, redundant, and/or unintuitive ability arsenals.