Korean Live Letter Summary

[Bourne_Endeavor]

For arm of the destroyer, the way a FC member tried to explain it to me is that its low potency makes it not worth the energy cost even with a high mob count, but I don't know I haven't mathed it out.

Arm of the Destroyer is only ever worth using on 5+ mobs, but it will burn through your TP fast. So it's far more situational than other AoE abilities, especially due to its low damage.

[Magic-Mal]

I doubt it. Bard is probably one of the easier jobs to prune. Fold Straight and Refulgent Shot into the same button, making it so whenever Refulgent procs, it will temporarily replace Straight as you always want to press Refulgent. Afterwards, cut out Repelling Shot and call it done. Bard only received three new skills in Stormblood. So it's a fairly straight forward adjustment.

More like 7 new abilities since I count a rework as "New". Minuet, Ballad, and Paean are all attacks now that individually change gameplay alot when active. And then there's Pitch Perfect too.

[BillyKaplan]

More like 7 new abilities since I count a rework as "New". Minuet, Ballad, and Paean are all attacks now that individually change gameplay alot when active.

I wouldn't say the songs themselves were new to the hotbar, necessarily. But it's also not right to say BRD only got those new buttons - if you wanted to keep your refresh support, you had to bring in your role actions. Some buttons effectively doubled.
Personally, I'd dislike to see some skills go like the sleep skills and Fluid Aura. True, they're only useful in low levels, but they're still somewhat useful there, and I'd hate to see them go.

For Ishgard I do think they'll go the route of the Doman Enclave. Either that or give us another custom delivery NPC with effectively the same story-line. Calling it now, dress-up Lucia at max rank.

New FSH content that isn't a tacklebox... :thinking:

[Bourne_Endeavor]

More like 7 new abilities since I count a rework as "New". Minuet, Ballad, and Paean are all attacks now that individually change gameplay alot when active. And then there's Pitch Perfect too.

Those were already on your hotbar though, thus they have no impact whatsoever on button bloat or pruning, which is what the discussion is about.

[HyoMinPark]

More like 7 new abilities since I count a rework as "New". Minuet, Ballad, and Paean are all attacks now that individually change gameplay alot when active. And then there's Pitch Perfect too.

Your three songs should have already been on your hotbars in the first place... they aren’t new buttons.

In terms of new buttons, we gained 4: Pitch Perfect, Troubadour, Nature’s Minne, and Refulgent. If you want to add in our necessary role actions, Refresh, Tactician, and Palisade (we already had access to Invigorate, Second Wind, and Peloton [Swiftsong] in ARR/HW, so I don’t count them, and Head Graze is situational enough that it doesn’t have priority space on my hotbars; the other cross-role actions are worthless in most content).

And we lost Shadowbind, Hawk’s Eye, Quelling Strikes, Blunt Arrow, Flaming Arrow, and Wide Volley. Not to mention B4B and Internal Release. Repelling Shot is useless enough that it shouldn’t even be on your bar. So we more or less evened out in terms of buttons lost versus buttons we gained.

At most, they can get rid of Repelling Shot, and consolidate Straighter Shot procs into Refulgent Arrow with a level 70 trait, since you aren’t ever going to Straighter over Refulgent save for a niche scenario that can be easily avoided if you’re paying attention (DoT refresh under SS). This is even assuming they’re going to add in 5 new skills in 5.0; they could just upgrade our DoTs again, which would honestly be better since they’re such a large portion of our damage anyways.

BRD isn’t hurting for hotbar real estate. They never have been tbh.

[Magic-Mal]

Your three songs should have already been on your hotbars in the first place... they aren’t new buttons.

In terms of new buttons, we gained 4: Pitch Perfect, Troubadour, Nature’s Minne, and Refulgent. If you want to add in our necessary role actions, Refresh, Tactician, and Palisade (we already had access to Invigorate, Second Wind, and Peloton [Swiftsong] in ARR/HW, so I don’t count them, and Head Graze is situational enough that it doesn’t have priority space on my hotbars; the other cross-role actions are worthless in most content).

And we lost Shadowbind, Hawk’s Eye, Quelling Strikes, Blunt Arrow, Flaming Arrow, and Wide Volley. Not to mention B4B and Internal Release. Repelling Shot is useless enough that it shouldn’t even be on your bar. So we more or less evened out in terms of buttons lost versus buttons we gained.

At most, they can get rid of Repelling Shot, and consolidate Straighter Shot procs into Refulgent Arrow with a level 70 trait, since you aren’t ever going to Straighter over Refulgent save for a niche scenario that can be easily avoided if you’re paying attention (DoT refresh under SS). This is even assuming they’re going to add in 5 new skills in 5.0; they could just upgrade our DoTs again, which would honestly be better since they’re such a large portion of our damage anyways.

BRD isn’t hurting for hotbar real estate. They never have been tbh.

That was the point of my worries though. I don't trust the team to NOT mess up BRD. Last time they deleted "underused" attacks they deleted Flaming Arrow, Hawk's Eye, Blunt Arrow, etc so... All attacks that were constantly used 24/7. While they kept Repelling Arrow and made it completely worthless.

They'll probably do something dumb like delete Raging Strikes and Bloodletter next time in 5.0 or delete Straight. Shot and make it a trait so the buff is up forever. All to "Close the skill gap between casual players and elite players by raising the skill floor"

When I see "pruning" you better believe I am put on edge.

[Lauront]

There is no way to make it optional. If implemented, they simply aren't going to prune skills anymore, thereby forcing people who dislike the combo consolidation to deal with excess button bloat or conform.

I have no idea why people keep bringing up whether it takes more skill or not. Yoshida only said they wanted players in PvP to press less buttons likely because of how fast pace everything is. Granted, considering how well the PvP overhaul as been received. That approach didn't turn out too well. Regardless, it's not a skill issue but merely a psychological one. For a lot of people, myself included, the simple moment between keys gives the illusion of more engagement. Spamming 1-1-1-1-2 feels very repetitive hence why so many healers, especially Astros, want more DPS abilities.

I mean it isn't even that fast paced compared to some of the high end PVE content, unless you mean that enemy players die a lot faster than bosses. This is what he said:

Skills automatically comboing (aka press 1 button to combo) is not going to be implemented in PvE. The reason we did this in PvP while reducing the amount of total skills is that we want players to focus more on team strategy and tactics. In PvE we feel that the effective use of branching combos is one sign of player skill.

To me, he is saying that pressing more buttons = more skill, because otherwise he would treat branching combos as an independent thing and not as a follow up to his prior sentences, which discuss the 1 button combos. I think he's wrong and that the two are distinctive things.

You're not spamming it in that way for a melee dps, because you have positionals and OGCDs to weave in, too, as well as other abilities, and you still have to make sure you're sequencing it correctly. Healers do in fact only have a few spells to press (usually 1 filler, 1 dot), but that's by design. If they're expected to DPS, I can agree, though, that they need more embellishment than a main attack and a dot. What I think would benefit both casters and healers are a few more OGCDs, but healers would still need a base rotation to be built up from where they are now.

1 button combos just tidies up your hotbars and you're still using the same amount of abilities, just with less button bloat. Some people may not like this, psychologically, but if there's two or even three expansions to go, SE will have to get clever about how they prune (e.g. using traits which modify them instead of adding more, 1 button combos), or simply not add any more abilities, which would be sad.

I'm sure there are a lot of skills that could double up this way. Not combo hits, but other 'occasional' skills that you can only ever use one at a time. Summoner's Aetherflow, Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare could all go together, as could Summon/Enkindle Bahamut.

Although I wonder if there's some kind of issue with switching in skills that have different recast timers, or something.

I use a macro to combine Deathflare, DW:T, Summon Bahamut and Enkindle Bahamut. Maybe a tad less efficient than separate buttons for each but I like it. That is certainly one area where they could consolidate more of the spells into one button, since which spell was cast previously/which state you're in modifies the spell. Same with Geirskogul -> Nastrond.

I hope if they add Megiddo Flame (hint hint SE <3) or Comet for BLM, they will e.g. modify Flare for it.

[Zojha]

To me, he is saying that pressing more buttons = more skill, because otherwise he would treat branching combos as an independent thing and not as a follow up to his prior sentences, which discuss the 1 button combos.

If 1-2-3 does not take more skill than 1-1-1, then that logically means 4-8-2 or any other 3-step combination does not take more skill than 1-1-1 either, because they're fundamentally all the same.
That also means that the combination of 1-2-3-4-8-2 does not take more skill than 1-1-1-1-1-1, as these can be broken down into their respective micro-combos. And you can repeat that argument for any chain of any length ad infinitum. 12-4-1-5-2-11-8-1-4-2-6 clearly isn't harder than 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1, except it is, in fact, a lot harder to memorize and perform flawlessly under combat conditions.

In other words: Yes, it does add skill. People commit the fallacy of looking at it in a vacuum, but in a vacuum, all skills are very non-demanding. Most of the OGCDs are, in a vacuum, literally just one button press every 20-90 seconds. You could make the argument that this adds so little gameplay that you can remove them entirely. But you have multiple OGCDs on top of your combo on top of your job mechanics on top of the boss mechanics. It all adds up, the 1-2-3 as much as the single button presses every 60 seconds.

[Lauront]

If 1-2-3 does not take more skill than 1-1-1, then that logically means 4-8-2 or any other 3-step combination does not take more skill than 1-1-1 either, because they're fundamentally all the same.
That also means that the combination of 1-2-3-4-8-2 does not take more skill than 1-1-1-1-1-1, as these can be broken down into their respective micro-combos. And you can repeat that argument for any chain of any length ad infinitum. 12-4-1-5-2-11-8-1-4-2-6 clearly isn't harder than 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1, except it is, in fact, a lot harder to memorize and perform flawlessly under combat conditions.

In other words: Yes, it does add skill. People commit the fallacy of looking at it in a vacuum, but in a vacuum, all skills are very non-demanding. Most of the OGCDs are, in a vacuum, literally just one button press every 20-90 seconds. You could make the argument that this adds so little gameplay that you can remove them entirely. But you have multiple OGCDs on top of your combo on top of your job mechanics on top of the boss mechanics. It all adds up, the 1-2-3 as much as the single button presses every 60 seconds.

So basically to make your argument work, you need to stretch it to chains like 12-4-1-5-2-11-8-1-4-2-6, i.e. something like playing a piano (where the skill lies in executing particularly long sequences of key presses, among other things), because it's pretty transparently ridiculous when you compare say, maybe, 1-1-1 or 1-2-1, to 1-2-3 or 2-5-6, i.e. 3 button combos. There is no skill differential between the two - not any that really matters on any level, because the difficulty increase between 3 and, say, 10 buttons is not at all linear. For FFXIV, it's all keyboard memory and two sets of 3 button combos is not particularly hard to execute. So I'm not buying that. The sequencing and timing is, as always, what matters for melee combos. It's in fact easier when the number of buttons falls to lapse into pressing the wrong one.

They don't need to do it exactly like PVP, where the entire combo is contained in just one button, but they can at least make it so that, e.g. buttons 5 and 6 are reduced to one, i.e. shared moves between sets would be fixed to a single button, so you'd have 1-1-1, maybe 1-2-1, and so on.

[Alleo]

I'm disappointed to learn that they don't want to combine combo skills into a single button in PvE like they did in PvP. It prevents clutter and...they could always just make it optional for those who do not want to use it.

I agree with you. Not only would it make the hotbars less cluttered but it would also stop them from taking out skills which (as Magic-Mal pointed out) may make the lower levels even more boring. And its not like every skill is part of a combo so a lot of jobs should still have their own difficulty to use it.

Also one button for a combo might take up the bottom of the less skilled players, while the skilled ones are already that used to their job that they can probably play it blind already. And on one point they will hit a wall where they simply cant take away more skills because each one will have their use thus they need a solution for this anyway.

I am also sad that the glamour dresser still needs time to increase some functions..another system where we dont even know when and how we get improvements and seemingly is that horrible on their system that they need to increase it with caution. Wonder if that one will turn into another "more egis coming later" thing too..