Reducing Button Bloat and Skill Gap

[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.