Combo Action Button

[Shurrikhan]

You don't need Freeze, Break, Drain, or Erase, and Scathe, as well as Fire 2, are mostly situational. Since, yea you can use Scathe as you move, but now we have Triplecast and multiple Flares are more potent than Fire 2.

Wow...look at all of that space and things you don't need because they're mostly useless. Meanwhile, let's nitpick about Fire IV and Blizzard IV not being the same button.

Right. Let's have 6.0 NOT fix Freeze, Scathe, or Fire II, nor replace them with anything more functional. We'll just leave them optional to even keep on your bar, or outright remove them from the game. There. All so that pairs of abilities that are mutually exclusive to each other, and have zero reason to occupy separate slots, can occupy separate slots.

While we're at it, let's remove Upheaval, Shake it Off, and Raw Intuition to return Fell Cleave and Decimate to their rightful places and make it cleanse that muddling bastardization that packed what was clearly two abilities into that single title of Equilibrium -- now called Angry-but-Healthy and Overpower-More, available only in Defiance and Deliverance respectively.

No one is saying to let other issues lie. They're just pointing out that when you can fix an issue -- even a minor one -- at absolutely zero cost, you may as well do it. There is no harm in having the option of two further hotbar slots available. There is benefit, but there is no harm. That's an improvement. Not wasting buttons for zero benefit is objectively better design than wasting buttons for zero benefit.

[Gralna]

I'd prefer not to have a combo button and keep skill rotations as they are.

If we keep oversimplifying where does it end? combine all combos to one button press, get rid of damage boosters and just bake them into combo potencies, get rid of alternate combo trees and just bake them into the base combo button, reduce every class down to just spamming one button. No thanks, I'll take my "artificial" difficulty over mindlessly pressing 1 button all day.

[Sigma-Astra]

Right. Let's have 6.0 NOT fix Freeze, Scathe, or Fire II, nor replace them with anything more functional. We'll just leave them optional to even keep on your bar, or outright remove them from the game. There. All so that pairs of abilities that are mutually exclusive to each other, and have zero reason to occupy separate slots, can occupy separate slots.

While we're at it, let's remove Upheaval, Shake it Off, and Raw Intuition to return Fell Cleave and Decimate to their rightful places and make it cleanse that muddling bastardization that packed what was clearly two abilities into that single title of Equilibrium -- now called Angry-but-Healthy and Overpower-More, available only in Defiance and Deliverance respectively.

No one is saying to let other issues lie. They're just pointing out that when you can fix an issue -- even a minor one -- at absolutely zero cost, you may as well do it. There is no harm in having the option of two further hotbar slots available. There is benefit, but there is no harm. That's an improvement. Not wasting buttons for zero benefit is objectively better design than wasting buttons for zero benefit.

Congratulations in making a strawman of something I didn't even say and ignore how I've been saying from the very beginning that we should fix those abilities first before deciding that consolidation needs to happen on some skills. Did my sarcasm fly over your head or are you just purposely being obtuse and not really reading anything that I've been saying all along in order to continue making hyperbolic opinions that don't go anywhere?

Again, instead of focusing on skills that need a heavy dose of refinement, you're still bothered by two skills not being one button. Changing the way Blizzard IV and Fire IV work with each other isn't going to fix Freeze, Scathe, or Fire 2, and I would rather see them work on those than your gripes about Fire IV and Blizzard IV taking two spaces on your hotbar which isn't a design flaw, it's not a broken interface, it's not even really that much of an improvement when you have six skills that are still haphazard to use in the background.

Fire IV and Blizzard IV not being one button isn't a problem, it's just a personal pet peeve of yours and you don't like it. Plain and simple.

Simple doesn't always mean it's better either.

It's literally broken. Ley Lines and Between the Lines have the same result but can only be used in completely disjoint conditions, so they should be the same button. Making them the same button would be objectively better design.


What seems to be beyond you is that such an improvement to the interface wouldn't force you to relearn anything. If you're so offended at fixing what is broken, you can spend two slots to maintain the behaviour of the current broken interface.

It's not really broken, but okay, that's your personal pet peeve with the job then.

[Reynhart]

I'd prefer not to have a combo button and keep skill rotations as they are.

Again, putting combos on one button or three won't change anything about "skill rotations", nor weaving oGCD between WS.

If we keep oversimplifying where does it end?

Depth of gameplay is knowing the skill rotation, not mistaking what buttons you need to press.

[Ilan]

Again, putting combos on one button or three won't change anything about "skill rotations", nor weaving oGCD between WS.

Depth of gameplay is knowing the skill rotation, not mistaking what buttons you need to press.

Yeah it wouldn't change anything except maybe that you don't have to learn any rotation anymore. The funny part is that all the combo button "fanatics" think that the skills and combos would stay the same, you can bet they won't.

How about SE does it in another way? Integrate 1 button and i mean 1 button only which lets all the poor souls who are overwhelmed with all these evil buttons have their complete rotation including OGCD on this single button and the rest of the players keep their buttons how they like?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

snip

The entirety of this rather pointless triad can be boiled down to will they fix Piercing Talon or equivalent skills like it. If yes, go right ahead—which is what I said. However... if they aren't going to do that for whatever reason than it remains a useless ability no matter how you attempt to spin it, thus becoming button bloat. How this assessment required several paragraphs to reach I'll never understand.

For the... fifth(?) time now... I don't care about combo consolidation. I care about whether changes are made reductively or in the interest of a fulfilling product. Pretending that we have more going on than we actually do through the UI by which we interact with those decisions protects non-options at the cost of options, non-gameplay at the cost of potential gameplay. And I find it absolutely bewildering that you would trim anything that is currently poorly implemented as if it suffered from fundamental flaws.

You act as if combo consolidation will be some sort of dystopia of (weaponskills in numbers, abilities in letters) A3BC1DE1FG1H1122I222, but it feels like you'd be fine with losing applications of Doomspike in high-movement ST combat or of Elusive Jump and receiving absolutely nothing new to your gameplay for the next 3 years so long as you get to spend the most buttons possible on the fewest unique/separable actions so you can shuffle down those weaponskill keys. If so, that's pretty well my worst-case outcome.

And yet you continue to partake in said arguments about it. Regardless, a poorly implemented skill that isn't being fixed serves no purpose. It doesn't matter how you imagine they could fix it, if they aren't going to, it's functionally useless. There's a reason virtually no melee DPS touches their ranged abilities. Put simply, unless they're changed to have a better implementation, it's better to cut them out entirely before anything else.

Really? I wasn't aware having a dissenting opinion on combo consolidation was somehow dystopian. Or did I even mention Elusive and Doomspike. In fact, I recall saying outright I'd rather they add nothing to current meta jobs and focus their attention on WHM, DRK and MCH who desperately need a rework. It's almost like this was a massive exaggeration you pulled out from thin air.

[Reynhart]

Yeah it wouldn't change anything except maybe that you don't have to learn any rotation anymore.

Do you really learn your WS rotation like 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-6-5 instead of Heavy-Impulse-Disenbowel-Chaos-Wheeling-Fang-True-Vorpal-Full-Fang-Wheeling ?

How about SE does it in another way? Integrate 1 button and i mean 1 button only which lets all the poor souls who are overwhelmed with all these evil buttons have their complete rotation including OGCD on this single button and the rest of the players keep their buttons how they like?

Again, it's really bad when all people like you could use as an argument is such blatant overexaggeration. But I guess "ending a combo you started" must be a top tier skill for you if button slots are so important.

[Ayer2015]

I'd rather not see combos reduced to 1 button each. That said, all jobs could use with reduced redundancy. Personally I'd much rather see fewer skills with a higher impact.

[Derio]

IMO it doesnt have to be manditory but it should be optional.

[Shurrikhan]

The entirety of this rather pointless triad can be boiled down to will they fix Piercing Talon or equivalent skills like it. If yes, go right ahead—which is what I said. However... if they aren't going to do that for whatever reason than it remains a useless ability no matter how you attempt to spin it, thus becoming button bloat. How this assessment required several paragraphs to reach I'll never understand.

Here's your "saying that".

If they want to improve it, go right ahead—take it off the GCD.

Why did I not take that as agreement with my sentiment that they should makes fixes in such a way that doesn't sacrifice the amount of gameplay available to a job, both parts currently functioning and not? Because it doesn't. Piercing Talon as an oGCD would fill no purpose more than pre-SB Leg Sweep did in raids. You are still thinking of it as just a button, and not a component of gameplay. I can slap on another 6 oGCDs to weave through and it would change nothing about gameplay past the first sorting for ppm by opener order and desync breakpoints -- which occur entirely prior to combat.

And yet you continue to partake in said arguments about it.

Because you continue to apply slippery slopes fallacies to the very idea of it. We are not at a point yet where consolidation is wholly necessary, let alone combo consolidation, but we have both addressed the hypothetical. IF it came down to it, I would sooner protect the amount of gameplay a job has available to it, because to me that is the only purpose the buttons have. Individual skills do not need protection of their individual buttons when they cannot function except in sequence. At that point the only gameplay you have is sequence. So, yes, IF it came down to it, I would protect gameplay over button count, button-to-action correspondence over button-to-skill correspondence. That is all we've been disagreeing on.

Regardless, a poorly implemented skill that isn't being fixed serves no purpose. It doesn't matter how you imagine they could fix it, if they aren't going to, it's functionally useless. There's a reason virtually no melee DPS touches their ranged abilities. Put simply, unless they're changed to have a better implementation, it's better to cut them out entirely before anything else.

Yes. Obviously. We just have very different ideas on what being "fixed" means. Merely having an extra button to slap every 20-30 seconds does not fix what by common sense was supposed to be a tool for add-/mob-gathering and melee-downtime mitigation. Keys like it were removed for good reason -- not because they were unfunctional or provided little ppm, but because they offered nothing to gameplay.

Really? I wasn't aware having a dissenting opinion on combo consolidation was somehow dystopian. Or did I even mention Elusive and Doomspike. In fact, I recall saying outright I'd rather they add nothing to current meta jobs and focus their attention on WHM, DRK and MCH who desperately need a rework. It's almost like this was a massive exaggeration you pulled out from thin air.

I've never said a dissenting opinion was, itself, somehow dystopian. What in "you act as if combo consolidation will be some sort of dystopia" implies that?

You stated that any movement towards combo consolidation would create an quality-destructive outcome without seeming to have remotely considered the risks involved opposite that.

The moment SE moves to consolidation is the moment it becomes their solution going forward. People who prefer unique key presses will simply be inundated with new abilities because they have no reason to prune or upgrade anything.

To which I have disagreed because whether or not consolidation takes effect is entirely irrelevant to having reason to prune or upgrade, and because in MMOs statements which minimize expectations of additive work -- Yoshida saying they have no plans to create a further surge of abilities with 6.0 -- have far greater staying power than any decision which is merely technical and easily reversible. We are not getting that "inundating" surge of abilities either way. The majority of requests for consolidation in any form, be it Defiance<->Deliverance, a modified Shield Oath <-> Sword Oath, Jump <-> Mirage Dive, SSD <-> Mirage Dive, Doomspike <-> Sonic Thrust, Ley Lines <-> BtL, Fire IV <-> Blizzard IV, DWT <-> Deathflare, Summon Bahamut <-> Enkindle Bahamut are being made simply because it is simply a wholly obvious and logical choice, not IN PLACE of something else. We do not have a fixed maximum or minimum button count. No one is arguing for a fixed button count.

But when, in the instance that something does have to go, and you sacrifice real tools or decisions (which, for instance, a Piercing Talon off the GCD would not be; that's just pre-SB Leg Sweep in raids) in order to protect button count... something's wrong there.

If there is a slippery slope to consolidation, the opposite is true as well. When every skill is protected as its own entity just for splitting a given action across multiple inseparable GCDs with different labels each, and the only metric to a successful ability is the frequency with which it participates in a button cycle, then you eventually stand to lose the majority of gameplay that is not dependent solely on whether one forgets what comes after their button 4.

We agree that we shouldn't consolidate combos yet. (Even, again, if I don't care that much either way--I swap my binds all the time without issue so I have nothing at risk from--I understand that others may be inconvenienced by it just as others would be convenienced, and it seems the prior is either more numerous or more vocal.) But our reasons for that are absolute opposites, it seems. I want whatever gameplay a best-fleshed-out job can offer, efficiently and cohesively, regardless of how many or how few buttons would be involved, and when I look at a toolkit I see actions permitted and the breakpoints between them, not separate skills except wherein those skills may actually behave separately. That's probably why we differ here.