Reducing Button Bloat and Skill Gap

[Shurrikhan]

My attempt at simple but mostly comprehensive solutions for each issue from a basic interface or QoL function standpoint.


Reducing Button Bloat

User Interface:

Stacked Slots

Stacked slots are multi-skill dynamic slots providing functionality similar to macros but accessible through standard means. They queue as would any singular hotbar key or its slotted skill, but they allow the key to perform any of several actions based on priority—abilities not available will be skipped. The slot will assume the icon and tooltip of the highest priority skill currently available. Augmented (e.g. Straighter Shot) or buff-combined (e.g. Life Surge + Full Thrust) variants of skills may be considered and prioritized separately from their original form.

One could thereby, for instance, combine either of the Dragoon’s four-step combos into a single key, combine all of the Monk’s weaponskills into 3 slots, or even sequence a full series of oGCD cooldowns into a single slot.

By default, when multiple cooldowns must be shown within the same stacked slot, they occur in outmost to innermost radial indicators. Other options are available.

Stacked slots are created by dragging an additional skill to an already filled slot while the hotbar lock is on, and selecting “stack” instead of “replace”. With the lock off, placing a skill over an unstacked slot will simply replace the assigned skill. Upon stacking, an additional window will open, allowing you to adjust priority order of the stacked slot, and append variation tags. Skills added will default to the highest priority. Combos are automatically priority ordered.

The command /hotbarlock (short-script /hbl) has been added to toggle the hotbar lock without requiring the hotbar 1 lock graphic to be visible.

Cycled / Radial / Quick-bar Skills

This essentially just allows for skills like Summon I, II, and III to be placed into one. Queuing Summon will open a radial or quick palette that allows you to select which Summon you next want. With such a system in place, you could have 10 summons and still spend only one button on them.

Charge Skills

This essentially just allows for skills like Thunder I, II, and III to be placed into one. Because they only differentiate by cast time, the spells can be slotted into one and be differentiated based on how long they are held. In short, you would have Thunder, which advances if held until a queue-registerable time before its completion time to Thunder II, and in turn to Thunder III. At this time, it will not, however allow analog charging. It will simply release at the next cast completion time from whereto it was held. In either case, however, this would require actual game design changes that would allow a spell to change identity (in the analog case, effect) mid-cast.

Reducing Skill Gap

Improving information and instruction via menu resources.

Actions and Traits replaced by the “Martial Tome” and “Trade Book”

All combat-related actions are stored in the Martial Tome, and the rest in the Trade Book. Some may appear in both (e.g. primary actions). Menu “actions” may also now be clicked and dragged to your hotbar, such as “return”, “mounts”, or even teleporting to a specific location. A “slot” button has been added to the controller menu hotbar key-binds, allowing for the same.

The user interface of the combat-related Actions, as now kept in the Martial Tome, has been greatly improved. By default, skills are now sorted by function, and include graphical tags for Empowerment, Enfeeble, Vulnerability, Direct Damage, and Duration Damage. Combos are placed together and make their relationship very, very clear.

The Martial Tome also includes toggleable fly out menus for additional notes and a player rendering of the skill mentioned as used against a level- or progression-appropriate enemy in its usual context—
e.g. a combo skill would show the skill or skills before it in sequence, and would weave in level-appropriate oGCDs, while buffing oGCDs like Power Surge, Duality, Barrage, or Life Surge would also show the level-appropriate skill that would most benefit from it thereafter. This would be shown against a mob frequently encounterable at your level, or in demonstrating the benefits of, say, a defensive additional skill, against one of a boss's attacks in which it would be significant.

The Martial Tome also includes an additional tab for open notes, which includes an imbedded functionality for notating rotations, and allows these rotations to be simulated and optionally rendered, with their buff and debuff durations tracked. These renderings can be paused, rewound, and advanced. They will mimic the same latency as in actual play, and oGCD that are expected to clip will be highlighted in their notation.
Improving information and instruction via auxiliary resources.

The Training Room

This is an added functionality available to just about any striking dummy or in a friendly duel, allowing you to record your rotation as it plays out into your Martial Tome for later study, just as with any simulated rotation. It also includes a modified potency parser.

You can also simultaneously play any notated or other recorded rotation from your Martial Tome with your training run in order to attempt to match to it and show any deviations from it. This is recommended for players attempting to learn a tight fixed rotation, but it is warned that true combat will rarely be so enabling.

Combination – Button Bloat & Skill Gap

Reducing Chaff

Reducing Artificial Difficulty in Skills

Here “artificial difficulty” in skills is characterized by any skill that does allow for a point of decision. Their additions to gameplay are purely rhythmic, and lackluster even then. Luckily, there are very few of these. Power Surge is the only true example, as there is never a greater benefit to use the skill on a Spine-shatter Dive instead of a Jump, and with the ten-second buff window, it will never have to be delayed in any way that its consuming skill would not also.

There are two solutions for dealing with artificial difficulty:

• Revise the skill to allow for a point of decision, however situational (e.g. a longer stun on Spine-shatter Dive when improved by Power Surge).
• Combine the skill into its bound correlative (e.g. drop Power Surge and buff Jump).
  (In the given case, the only change will be up to one GCD less of ramp-up, assuming GCD-bound effects like Heavy Thrust and Disembowel were already in place.)

Pruning or Revising Non-Tactical Additional Skills

“Non-tactical” skills here refer to any skill or effect therefrom that is not significant, reliable, or otherwise functional enough to allow for a change of tactics. Examples include Keen Flurry or Featherfoot. That said, these are much harder to determine. Featherfoot, for instance, may be worthwhile against an enemy that cannot one-shot you, in that you could stay until reduced below a margin of health at which the next blow would be fatal, carrying 100% physical mitigation for x duration of time, if any only if it would cause a difference in how you (by extension of your party) are healed. However, it has zero effect except as a desperate last resort against an enemy that can one-shot you. Because in 99.9% of cases, your life is worth more than your few seconds of uptime, its usage, or alternatively your survival, ends up a non-decision, and its chance benefits are therefore omitted. To revise these, one would need to either:

• Append additional benefits to the skill to allow it to function to tactical significance in virtually all type-applicable contexts (e.g. physical for Featherfoot), albeit it only for a portion of applicable instances due to its cooldown, or —
• Revise the mechanics behind such abilities, such as evasion or parry, wherever the game as a whole could also benefit, to the same effect.

[Shurrikhan]

Again, these solution ideas are limited to the standpoint of primarily user interface and certain similar additions. They cannot entirely make up for any jagged learning curves within the game, nor fragmented or contradictory community expectations.

Please let me know if I've missed something from within that standpoint that could be of significant aid.

[lyndwyrm]

On button bloat:

I would be a huge fan of stacked slots, and with how the combo system works they would be straightforward and could cut 3 or more keybinds from almost every melee job. Monk is still the odd duck because its combos work differently, but if they could be combined with buffs, perfect balance in this case, then combo abilities could generally be executed with 2 keybinds instead of 6, even though the other abilities would be available somewhere. And of course, a significantly more robust macro system could accomplish everything mentioned, but may be harder for players to use or learn.

If I'm understanding the Cycled/Radial/Quick-bar Skills mention right, you would need to enter 2 key commands to execute the action, i.e. pressing "1" then "1" for summon I, or "1" then "3" for summon III. It's not 100% clear to me what is being suggested. Of note, this is similar to one of the additions to cross-hotbars they added where you reach a set hotbar by pressing R2->L2 + key and L2->R2 + key. Instead of going to a static hotbar however, it goes to a sub-listing for that keybind. This would be handy for a variety of situations, though I see primarily stances and other not-often-used skills as the easiest targets for places hotbar bloat could be reduced.

On the skill gap:

I have a sort of "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" opinion on in game information. On the one hand, I certainly see no reason not to include more and better documentation and tools about each job, rotation, ability, buff, and debuff. On the other hand, I also don't think a majority of players would use it except when it is convenient for them (this mentality is even probably one of those "contradictory community expectations"). A training room would be great for people that want to improve but unused by most that believe themselves to be playing "good enough." Statics and some PF groups would get use out of it, but in DF and a majority of PF groups, this would not be the path of least resistance.

On gameplay changes to reduce the skill gap however, there is truly so much that can be done.

I'll preface this with the fact that I don't believe any of these sorts of changes are likely, though I would happiliy be surprised, and that I feel this goes beyond UI-level changes. Also from what the devs have said, changes of this sort won't happen with 4.0.

Many cooldowns could be reduced to a trait, and power surge is a great example. Power surge could then either make every other Jump hit for 50% more, every one hit for 25% more, reduce the cooldown, make Jump and Spineshatter Dive hit for a portion more, etc. One thing I learned that some abilities in WOW do is activate automatically. This happens with self-healing abilities and the like in particular, but could also apply to lifesavers like Living Dead and Holmgang. Many reactionary abilities and "always-use" cooldowns could be modified in a way that either actually or effectively activates them automatically. Most changes of this sort would not appreciably change gameplay, but would reduce the number of keys to press and keep track of.

The other thing is procs. FFXIV does have procs of various sorts, Bloodletter, half MP Medica, free Esuna, double power Scathe, Thundercloud, free Unleash and others. Take Divine Seal, it could be changed to a 25% chance of any given heal being increased by 30%, or to a flat 7.5% healing buff. Either would be simpler for players to handle at the cost of finer control of battle. With every change of this sort, the ebb and flow of battle is mellowed, making gameplay more consistent but less involved. (and I'm not going to get into the pros and cons in an aside in a post I'm making at 3am)

[Shurrikhan]

On button bloat:

I would be a huge fan of stacked slots, and with how the combo system works they would be straightforward and could cut 3 or more keybinds from almost every melee job. Monk is still the odd duck because its combos work differently, but if they could be combined with buffs, perfect balance in this case, then combo abilities could generally be executed with 2 keybinds instead of 6, even though the other abilities would be available somewhere. And of course, a significantly more robust macro system could accomplish everything mentioned, but may be harder for players to use or learn.

My main goal here was to basically give all the benefits of a full-fledged and unfettered macro system, without the annoyances or the "being taken temporarily out of game" that their construction normally requires. I'd certainly be willing to go further into improving on the macro system itself, including such robust functions as improved hotbar swapping, overlaying actions, etc., but I felt those might not be as universally used as something that comes within the most basic means of skill slotting. Essentially, these are that, to a degree I think would be functionally comprehensive but far from overwhelming, and placed in the most intuitive area or means I could think of.

Perfect Balance is the one wrench in the works here, seeing as once activated, you need access again to all 9 weaponskills at once, instead of just the one stance's worth. If SE wanted to go the low-bloat route, they could essentially make it a Form Shift that has no animation time whatsoever, available only for the 10 seconds after Perfect Balance's activation, but it would feel awkward to then receive basically the same, always-available but inferior-quality skill two levels later. It's just a bit of a conundrum.

If I'm understanding the Cycled/Radial/Quick-bar Skills mention right, you would need to enter 2 key commands to execute the action, i.e. pressing "1" then "1" for summon I, or "1" then "3" for summon III. It's not 100% clear to me what is being suggested. Of note, this is similar to one of the additions to cross-hotbars they added where you reach a set hotbar by pressing R2->L2 + key and L2->R2 + key. Instead of going to a static hotbar however, it goes to a sub-listing for that keybind. This would be handy for a variety of situations, though I see primarily stances and other not-often-used skills as the easiest targets for places hotbar bloat could be reduced.

The way I imagined the Quick-bar (or quick-palette on controller) is that the one button (Summon, last selected form) would work much like an R2->L2 palette of its own. I would place "Summon" on a specific side of a specific hotbar and then assign "Spread" slots to neighboring slots that wouldn't be used simultaneously anyways, such that when I hit Summon (which defaults to the last used, i.e. Summon II), I can hit either "spread" slot to select either other form of Summon (Summon I and Summon III) or leave it at Summon II (cancelling the spread by hitting the Summon II again and bringing my "spread" slots back to their normal states), thus gaining relative button space with no real loss of control.

Radial would instead give that control over to your mouse or either joystick, selecting whichever choice from its angular portion of the screen.

Cycled I will likely just remove when I edit in these clearer descriptions.

I have a sort of "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" opinion on in game information. On the one hand, I certainly see no reason not to include more and better documentation and tools about each job, rotation, ability, buff, and debuff. On the other hand, I also don't think a majority of players would use it except when it is convenient for them (this mentality is even probably one of those "contradictory community expectations"). A training room would be great for people that want to improve but unused by most that believe themselves to be playing "good enough." Statics and some PF groups would get use out of it, but in DF and a majority of PF groups, this would not be the path of least resistance.

Agreed completely here. But, I have also met plenty of people who when having been informed that they are not performing up to par, have little to no idea how to improve, and will honestly ask for whatever training I can give. Sadly, some of the best education one can have in that regard is to just practice, with a parser. I wanted to make that easier, free from "banned!" controversy, and create a far more lucrative experience for the time spent. Facilitation for operant conditioning and all that.

That said, I feel like required guildhests, or especially something that can be used for a similar training purpose but would be solo content (as not to be carried or otherwise able to ignore the intended instruction) such as job quests, and clearer descriptions of abilities and their typical applications right at the time the ability is received, are about the only things with which I can expect to affect all players.