Combo Action Button

[Dualgunner]

I fully agree. When i see this kind of opener :

... why should i have to deal with such buttons bloat ? Just give me a one "raid opener button" to press 21 times in a row. I dont see the difference between pressing 1 2 3 4 5 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 14 2 rather than 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.

I mean if it was just 1111111, there'd be no player community built around optimizing rotations because you'd have one single rotation (how do you optimize pushing X 21 times in a row? How do you adapt for different situations that can occur in a fight that mandate you shift your cooldowns and globals to better maximize your damage?)

[Gemina]

Except, the only failure our combos allow is finger slippage, which is irrelevant except to the newest players, those most easily panicked, or the physically handicapped. It is not a difficulty that the vast majority of us face except mid-hectic-mechanic when progging when over-stressed in Savage content. At most, it adds exclusion. Generally, it's a non-factor.

You're looking at this from the wrong angle. Keeping up maximum DPS despite mechanics is a factor EVERYONE deals with. Mechanics are designed to disrupt you so you can't go ham like you do on a dummy. Regardless of how the combo was broken, it all boils down to disruption from one command to the next.

By your own definition, our "combos" are not combos. For a command to benefit from the previous, that following command must first actually exist outside of the given sequence. Otherwise you cannot have improvement. You can add something on to or in place of nothing, but you cannot improve on something that does not yet exist. And unless you're calling all combos skills in ubiquitous 100 potency and zero additional effects each as the actual skill, there's no improvement happening. Our "combos" are like a series of switches with electromagnetically sealed caps, each of which simply opens the next until you reach the final (read: actual) switch. You cannot viably hit C before B or B before A.

What are you on about? Combo bonuses are all over our tool tips. How on earth are just dismissing the 100 potency skill to start things off? And the sequential skills DO exist outside the combo. You're really confusing me here, because you're not really disagreeing with me, and everything you said in this block is exactly the reason why I say a combo button won't work.

Compare that to a good fighting game. There, failure is not limited to manual mishaps; it includes more significant memory, it includes prediction, and it includes strategy.

So does executing your combos in this game. You're making it sound like you can do difficult content in this game on auto pilot. Maybe you are that good, but I sure in hell's am not.

Each of in-range skills can see use in its own right and each do actually benefit others through the effects of the skill itself, rather than their merely unlocking each other in a decision-less sequence. In some, specific skills could only be accessed through specific sequences, but in every case every initially available action had course-viability and at every stage in every course you still had at least situationally viable choices. Those, therefore, are combos. XIV's are not. XIV's is a cycling system that reduces the amount of decisions one can make to every x GCDs. They are, for all intents and purposes, a way to dumb down gameplay.

Ok, now I'm starting to make sense of your post. I think your issue is that the combos in this game are static, so you just execute the same ones over and over again with little variance. By definition it is still a combo. Just one you use all the time. But cut it out with this 'dumbing' down game play. Get off of your high horse. I screw up all the time, and I'd be hard pressed to believe you execute your combos with surgical precision for each and every fight, for each an every mechanic. Again, maybe you really are that good, but the average PUG player is not.

[Reynhart]

How can you 'add' on to a combo if it wasn't previously established?

Ok, let me get back to what you were saying :

After full combos are established, they don't get a whole lot of modifications with the exception of potency adjustments.

In ARR, True - Vorpal - Full was a full combo. It was modified outside of potency adjustment in HW by adding a 4th step. So, in HW True - Vorpal - Full - FaC/WT was a full combo.
It was modified outside of potency adjustment in SB by removing randomness and adding a 5th step.

I was referring to complicating the combo strings even further.

Your were replying to someone suggesting a 4th, 5th or 6th step to jobs that currently have three steps. Considering 4th and 5th step already exists for DRG, and that that job received an additionnal step at every expansion, saying there's no way these could be implemented ever is based on nothing.

[Shurrikhan]

You're looking at this from the wrong angle. Keeping up maximum DPS despite mechanics is a factor EVERYONE deals with. Mechanics are designed to disrupt you so you can't go ham like you do on a dummy. Regardless of how the combo was broken, it all boils down to disruption from one command to the next.

That "how" matters. Performing less than optimally due to an error of judgment does not feel at all like your performance being mangled because a sweaty index finger slipped one key too far left or right. Sure, the latter can similarly add intensity, but only to the same degree that visuals and audio each add intensity to a film. They are not the same. They do not feel the same. The "how" is not interchangeable and some means of that disruption are going to cause players to feel different balances of, say, ingenuity available (and other things positively felt) and punishment to be inflicted (and other things negatively felt), even at the exact same leniency, all because of how it's done. Food is not all the same thing just by nature of all having (one or more) calories per mouthful.

More importantly, perhaps, "combos" are not what's adding the difficulty there. CD sync, preemptive movement, resource banking, mechanical tracking, breakpoint awareness -- these are very real forms of difficulty, even if varying with job. Remembering to press 3 after 2 after 1 is not. If anything, it's helpful to your sense of cadence and thereby mechanical tracking.

What are you on about? Combo bonuses are all over our tool tips. How on earth are just dismissing the 100 potency skill to start things off? And the sequential skills DO exist outside the combo. You're really confusing me here, because you're not really disagreeing with me, and everything you said in this block is exactly the reason why I say a combo button won't work.

Then I ask, again, which to you is the actual Disembowel?
Disembowel itself --

Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.

Or Disembowel as available only after Impulse Drive --

Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
Combo Action: Impulse Drive
Combo Potency: 240
Combo Bonus: Reduces target's piercing resistance by 5%
Duration: 30s

You will never use Disembowel without Impulse Drive first. If you can honestly tell me with a straight face that this

Delivers an attack with a potency of 150.
190 when executed from a target's flank.
Additional Effect: Increases damage dealt by 10%
Duration: 30s
____________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 200.
____________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
_____________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
_____________________________
<Unavailable>
________________________
<Unavailable>
_________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 160.
_________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
_________________________
Delivers an attack with a potency of 100.
___________________________
<Unavailable>
__________________________
<Unavailable>

looks like an actual set of skills run in combination, then so be it -- I guess then we have combos. But I sure as hell can't see it as such. To me, our "combo" skills are not skills at all until they're proceeded by their prerequisite skill. That, definitely, can not be a logical combination of actions. It is purely a series, with in the majority of GCDs for combo classes, no options to combine. That is not a combo. It has nothing to do with being static, per se; it has everything to do with the fact that one does not form a "combination" from a single homogeneous item.

"Would you like the $10 combo, with the 1/4lb Angus burger, salad, drink, and side-order?" "What's the side order?" "Mac and cheese. Only Mac and cheese." "Can I just get a drink?" "No, you can only get that combined in the $8 combo." "The burger?" "Would you like the Angus burger and the double-decker BLT?" "The BLT." "Okay, that comes with a salad, drink, and side-order of mac and cheese for $9." "Umm, the Angus then?" "That's only available in the $10 combo." "Can I get... just the Mac and Cheese?" "Sure, but would it really be worth the GCD on its own?"

That's your Dragoon combos. And, though to a lesser extent, the way all our combo systems work. Their sole unique addition to the game is to reduce available choices. Multiple items per choice.

So does executing your combos in this game [-- "it includes significant memory, it includes prediction, and it includes strategy"]. You're making it sound like you can do difficult content in this game on auto pilot. Maybe you are that good, but I sure in hell's am not.

I'm not saying that I can do difficult content in this game on auto-pilot. But it's sure as hell not "combos" holding me back. If anything, they steady finger-rolling it enforces makes content easier (so long as progression is done in a way that allows for optimal practice rather than death-tripping through mechanics) by binding timing to muscle memory. When I feel my finger itching to reach for my third Higanbana, I know TA and CS are about to go off and I know how soon the next mechanic will go up. By the time you're doing any serious content, the combo system is more boon than risk except, again, to the most easily panicked of players or those with physical handicaps.

Ok, now I'm starting to make sense of your post. I think your issue is that the combos in this game are static, so you just execute the same ones over and over again with little variance.

Give me an actual XIV "combo" that you use with variance in continuous ST uptime outside of TCJ prep on NIN or pre-Meikyo/Haga on SkS Samurai. Bonus points if you can show me where "combo" string length is not mutually exclusive with that variance.

By definition it is still a combo.

No. It is a sequence or a set. Again, unless you honestly consider Kasha to be encapsulated by "Delivers an attack with a potency of 100", it is not a combination of existent elements to be arranged logically. Nothing exists outside of that arrangement. It is a sequence or a set.

Just one you use all the time. But cut it out with this 'dumbing' down game play. Get off of your high horse.

How do you not see the irony in this? The longer the "combo" extends the less often you are permitted choice. And a choice from a selection count of one is not a choice at all. It's very simple. The stricter the dependencies and more non-entity a choice is made outside of those dependencies, the less thought is required. I am not saying that XIV combat on the whole is dumb. But it entirely factual that our version of a "combo" system requires incredibly little thought compared to one that actually meets the definition of a combo system (i.e. has multiple real choices which combine in meaningful ways).

I screw up all the time, and I'd be hard pressed to believe you execute your combos with surgical precision for each and every fight, for each an every mechanic. Again, maybe you really are that good, but the average PUG player is not.

I screw up too. Sometimes I forget that my NIN lost uptime the TCJ TA will be late. Sometimes I forget to click off Riddle of Fire before my PB for my double TK into full GL. Sometimes I forget I can hold more Kenki for raid debuffs. Sometimes I waste 5 Kenki because I used Seigan too early and didn't deplete Kenki fast enough before Haga. Sometimes I overextend my Astral Fire during movement phases, thinking I can resolve my AM quickly enough to make it. Sometimes I even let my DoTs fall off just before Raging Strikes. But not one of those things has to do with moving my finger from button 4 to button 5 or E to R to T. I've scarcely if ever made a combo error outside of GCD-crippling lag spikes since I sprained my wrist, and it's not because I'm skilled at the game. It's because it's among the lowest forms of difficulty in XIV. Almost any other reason to misperform will strike you first even if not as obviously. Having everything else essentially grey out and the next viable button light up does not increase difficulty; it reduces it. Yes, replacing that with 1-1-1-1-1 would further reduce difficulty, but that entire concept is only applicable because our actual decisions available are already limited to 1-1-1-1-1.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

And please explain how pressing 2 2 2 1 is LESS keypressing than 1 2 3 4?

I'm still triggering a global between each separate press of the key. I'm still hitting my oGCDs while that GCD is active.
Once more: 1 button, 4 keypresses.
Literally pressing keys the exact same number of times, its just the same key multiple times rather than having 4 keys dedicated to literally 1 attack path that has zero branching.

You're reducing the amount of unique key presses from eight to two, in the case of DRG.

While neither is difficult, I find two buttons far more boring, especially given how frequently your combos are utilized. You will inevitably spam two buttons more than anything else. It may seem irrelevant to you, however I much prefer having different buttons. Since they aren't going to add eight new abilities, it will also reduce the amount of buttons on DRG overall—a job which already has plenty of available space. If I had any confidence this would simply be an option, maybe I'd be more open to it. SE doesn't tend to work that way though.

Are you advocating that from now until the servers shut down, we get no new skills ever again? The fact that I have to use 34 separate keybinds already is obscene. Layering basic weaponskill combos into one button does not reduce button presses.

No. Although, I do not actually want new abilities going into Shadowbringers, personally. Regardless, they can simply upgrade existing ones. There simply isn't a need to add new abilities, especially when things like Piercing Talon still exist.

Then we have the separate issue of generally mutually exclusive skills requiring their own binds. Blood Price and Blood Weapon are a good example. They can never be used together, so why are they separated buttons? Warrior switching between Fel Cleave and Inner Beast based on Stance is the perfect solution for a variety of skills.

These are not the same thing. Blood Price cannot even be pressed without Grit nor does there exist a combo sequence. Those shouldn't be separate buttons.

Then there are Controllers. How do you propose to add new abilities to the game if the controller hotbars can't support any new buttons?

A lot of controller players I know don't have any issues. In fact, my BFF plays BRD, AST and occasionally SCH—jobs far busier than DRG. Not only does she have plenty of space on a controller, she hates the idea of combo consolidation. To quote, "Just upgrade my DoTs and leave my fucking job alone."

The developers have 2 options on the table:
Condense weaponskill combos into a layered button and put mutually exclusive skills into a switching button like FC/IB.
OR
Delete skills to make way for new ones.

Or they upgrade existing abilities like I mentioned previously. Two additional options are to expand the combos so better interact with one another. Say Disembowel combo-ing into Full Thrust triggers a different effect. Another option is to bake new oGCDs behind existing ones with lengthily cooldowns. You don't need to add a new button entirely when Litany sits on a three minute CD and does precisely nothing until its up again. Any of these alternatives accomplishes the same thing without taking away any abilities. Granted, Piercing Talon can still die. I'm also not a fan of Dragon Sight but that's more because macros are awful in this game. Either way, they have plenty of options which don't involve reducing DRG to pressing two buttons more often than not.

You just reduced a complaint from someone clearly not among the "numerous controller and Keyboard player who have no issues whatsoever nor do they want anything changed" to a matter of "get better hardware, pleb". So let's not pretend there aren't people who are having issues with it. The sheer number of threads over the years from those with physical handicaps asking for advice on how comfortably bind all they need to play well onto their keyboard, the button-bloat complaint threads, and the four Combo Consolidation threads still in the New Posts pages beg to differ.

That number wouldn't even make up a full percent. You don't design a system around the possibility of someone physically handicapped having difficulties interacting with it because, pragmatically speaking, those types of players are exceedingly rare. Furthermore, you seem to be forgetting the opposition those threads have received every single time. Even on Reddit whenever this gets suggested, it gets shot down.

If there were such an outcry demanding combo consolidation, Yoshida wouldn't have made a point to specifically say they aren't doing it for PvE.

[Deceptus]

Some people want it (myself included) some don't.

Why not make it available and those that want it can use it and those that don't, don't have to?

[Nora_of_Mira]

So if they did try and consolidate Sam combos the effect or description of MS would have to be changed to something else like grants a full Kenki gauge and perhaps adds easier access to Hissatsu skills.

thats precisely why I dont think they should do this kind of consolidation. not the mention the years of muscle memory lost.

[Shurrikhan]

You're reducing the amount of unique key presses from eight to two, in the case of DRG.

And? The amount of key presses available in any given GCD is identical. You have 1-3 keys you can actually press at any given time. 8 GCDs out of 10 in ST, you have 1 choice. 1 per 10 GCDs has at most 3 choices. Another GCD per 10 has at most 2 choices. Now you have as many keys for the you have the maximum number of choices ever simultaneously available. It feels like you're fighting to get 10 one-dollar bills over a single ten-dollar bills when they can only even be spent in increments of ten dollars.

While neither is difficult, I find two buttons far more boring, especially given how frequently your combos are utilized. You will inevitably spam two buttons more than anything else. It may seem irrelevant to you, however I much prefer having different buttons. Since they aren't going to add eight new abilities, it will also reduce the amount of buttons on DRG overall—a job which already has plenty of available space.

And your preference... trumps all other preferences? Why does your preference exclude an option that generally neither adds nor reduces difficulty except insofar as fitting buttons into a comfortable keyboard space, which, by your own words, isn't a difficulty either?

If I had any confidence this would simply be an option, maybe I'd be more open to it. SE doesn't tend to work that way though.

Alright, now we're getting somewhere. But then that still leaves the question: why does your preference outweigh that which it conflicts with? I could understand a poll released to all players having that kind of weight in its findings, but why is it essential that maintaining combos as they are right now trumps all improvements towards having as many buttons as choices, whether by decreasing button count or increasing choice count?

No. Although, I do not actually want new abilities going into Shadowbringers, personally. Regardless, they can simply upgrade existing ones. There simply isn't a need to add new abilities, especially when things like Piercing Talon still exist.

I, too, am not looking forward to new abilities while bloat is still rampant, but I think we -- and many others besides us -- will have very different ideas of where and how that bloat exists. Piercing Talon, though underwhelming, does not seem bloat to me so long as mitigateable melee downtime will exist, and I suspect mitigateable melee downtime will exist so long as variable percentage of melee downtime will exist -- for without that mitigation balance would shift more steeply towards either the minimization or maximization of the number of melee in a given party, constraining either encounter design freedoms or player compositional freedoms. What is the point of Lucid Dreaming so long as non-tanks do not partake in mob-gathering? What is the point in Diversion, so long as it will only ever be used as a lowest-priority burst CD among many, used on-CD thereafter? Even the devs have realized that at best Invigorate guts sustained physical AoE and merely punishes death in a randomized manner and have thus removed it. So why do we still have LD or Diversion or Protect? Piercing Talon at least cuts the average ppgcd loss of downtime by ~30%, helping to tighten melee-ranged balance. It sure as hell deserves improvements, but it has a good reason to be there. But we'd sooner scrap that than 2-minute CDs that can be performed at near optimal performance by an auto-clicker? Or over continuing to lock out access to 13 out of 14 weaponskills in the majority of GCDs? ...Your solution path seems a bit paradoxical here.

You make it sound as if there are fundamentally flawed ability concepts. Outside of those abilities that can be performed passively (e.g. by auto-clickers), I disagree. All others are examples of flawed execution. And, sadly, bit by bit, the devs are removing their ways to fix those flawed implementations short of uprooting them. Piercing Talon and other melee ranged skills can be improved upon. They can be combo-linked. They can be dynamic. They can see relative ppgcd percentile increases as per Yaten-E.Enpi. And yet we lose yet another way to bring up potency without enabling abuse by leaving melee with solely a irrelevant resource (MP) instead of a mostly irrelevant resource (TP).

And, just what are you expecting from upgraded abilities? Upgrades like Stone IV do one thing only: increase uptime dependency. They do not change gameplay except by reducing cleave potential by adjusting breakpoints, and only very, very slightly at that. Traits like Lance Mastery II merely reduce the number of available rotations by trading excess BotD generation from a direct 3.33 ppgcd bonus (with a potency loss overall compared to 2 FT combos and 1 CT combo per HT) to solely the viable option of the standard 5-step combo short of a sub-2.3 GCD. Adding skills does not necessarily add anything to gameplay, but accentuating internal imbalance via upgrades does not either -- it can often diminish gameplay. You get your shinier, or uglier, and/or more ridiculous animation for a skill you already used in quite nearly an identical capacity, but quite often even fewer options in gameplay to show for it. That's no inherent improvement either.

That number wouldn't even make up a full percent. You don't design a system around the possibility of someone physically handicapped having difficulties interacting with it because, pragmatically speaking, those types of players are exceedingly rare.

I'm not saying that we should, but what are the benefits here worth disproportionately affecting them -- or anyone -- over? I don't feel any difficulty or complexity granted by the "combo" systems we have now. It already feels like a braindead finger drift (to me, just as it clearly doesn't for you) . So, what exactly are we spending 4+ slots of bloat per combo-based melee (admittedly, still a lesser offender than Role Actions) to protect? Help me understand the appeal here.

If there were such an outcry demanding combo consolidation, Yoshida wouldn't have made a point to specifically say they aren't doing it for PvE.

Except we've already seen this before. When glamour first came out, we were informed that we should not expect it ever to be implemented for PvP. That this warning was given does not mean that an public opinion was voiced in one direction, was considered, and was promptly dismissed for its minority percentage, but simply that parameters were set. It was introduced for PvP. The logical question then becomes "will this hit PvE, too?" Even an entirely neutral ground boils down, then, to "we have no plans to do that." This isn't pandering to a backlash of something that hadn't yet even had a chance to lash back; it's settling expectations as a matter of course when introducing something with potential precedent. Every MMO does this, and unless early tester feedback (which XIV does not even have available to it) shows significantly positive reception, each tends to err towards caution and conservative PR. If anything, any public outcry would come after such an announcement. And, in a sense, it did. Though no one outside of veteran PvPers particularly expected or cared about the PvP consolidations, the questions immediately came up -- "why not?"
Obligatory Recap: I have no horse in this race. I don't particularly want consolidation, myself, but I would like to know just what it actually conserves beyond a very vague notion of preference irrelevant of wider contexts.

[Sigma-Astra]

Combos don't need to be reduced to single buttons, but actions that have specific conditions, or paired actions that are mutually exclusive, should be merged.

The following could be consolidated into single buttons:

Ley Lines → Between The Lines (conditional)
Blizzard IV → Fire IV (mutually exclusive) or Enochian → Blizzard IV (conditional)

There is literally no good reason to reduce the BLM rotation like this. There's no button bloat with the job at all and the rotation literally isn't even that hard to place efficiently on your hotbar or complex at all to understand and follow through.

Why.

[Reynhart]

There's no button bloat with the job at all and the rotation literally isn't even that hard to place efficiently on your hotbar or complex at all to understand and follow through.

Button bloat is not the only reason why you should design the job smarter. Having to place mutualy exclusive skills on different slots is stupid, especially after they fixed exactly that on WAR.