Combining some buttons into one

[Ultimatecalibur]

If you want to know what spamming the same button for your entire DPS combo feels like, go ask the healers.

This is hyperbolic. The healer's single target dps "rotations" are made up of 2 buttons a dot and a cast. even with combo compression no jobs rotation would actually compress to a single button. Every current non-healer rotation would still need a fair amount of buttons even if the basic combos were compressed into one or two buttons.

This is problematic for branching combo's, because you need to know what place in the combo you are currently at, in order to keep mental track of your buffs, debuffs and gauge accumulation.
By having it all on one button, you are forced to watch your hotbars continuously, and can no longer rely on muscle memory.

That is completely wrong. If you have every played a console action game with combos you would know how easily muscle memory and visual feedback work to let you know exactly where you are in combos without flashing lights.

Also, there are some jobs it simply wouldn't work for, such as Monk, whose Perfect Balance opens up all combo moves to be used in any order you like.

Perfect Balance is flawed in its current implementation (it is either used for fast GL generation or Dragon Kick+Bootshine spam no real use of the flexibility) and could easily be replace by another method of fast GL generation.

Samurai would still require at least 3 different buttons for it's combos, so it's not saving much space.

Still opens up 4 buttons which is significant considering that a total of 10 buttons are used for weaponskills currently.

Dragoon could theoretically go down from 8 to 4. But again, as you will want to weave Life Surge in before True Thrust, this will make it much more difficult to keep track of.

I think you mean Full Thrust and then you simply do Life Surge after the second press of the True/Raiden->Vorpal->Full combo. If you are using Life Surge on True/Raiden that is even simpler you push Life Surge after you do both WT/FC.

Machinist... might actually be a job this could work for. You don't ideally weave anything in before Clean Shot as you want to use those on Drill/Anchor instead, and the basic 1-2-3 combo doesn't give you anything besides continuous gauge, the only hurdle here is keeping track of that 10 battery gauge from Clean Shot. But this may still result in the job being 'too simple'.

3rd press = 10 battery isn't hard to learn.

This sort of 'simplified gameplay' will go hand in hand with 'simplified jobs' and people don't want their jobs being simplified anymore. It's not merely a QoL change.

1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 1, 2, 3 is not more complex than 1, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 1, 1, 2. It looks more complex but that complexity is illusory.

There is a place for this however, GNB has it in Continuation, and I'd be all for another new job that features this mechanic, if it worked for that job.
But if you apply it to existing jobs, you'll get as much backlash as the healers are giving right now.

False Equivalence. The Healer dps rotation backlash is because the healer rotations lack anything substantial. The 5th casting of Glare/Broil/Malefic has the same lack of rotational importance as the 1st and the 9th where as every 2nd and 3rd button press of a combo does have substance. The healers would likely be complaining a lot less if their DoT needed to be reapplied every 15s rather than every 30s as they wouldn't be spamming the same damage spell up to 11 times between reapplications.

[SomeRandomHuman]

Perfect Balance is flawed in its current implementation (it is either used for fast GL generation or Dragon Kick+Bootshine spam no real use of the flexibility) and could easily be replace by another method of fast GL generation.

Solution: Activating PB grants 1 stack of GL on any part of the chain or 2 if done from Coeurl Stance. I could see the middle ground for it being positional being met in order to trigger the stack. Something like this would also bring more use to tornado kick if used effectively.

[Kokonji]

Theoretically you could do it yourself (combining the skill in one button) via macro... although, it will add some macro clunkiness here and there...

as smn, i have mixed feeling about this things,
on one side, less button bloat is good thing to an extent,
but on the other side, i just don't want to "accidentally" end my DWT phase because Deathflare is the same button as DWT (as I tend to mash the button when trying to activate them until I need to push other button -- yes, even if it's full gcd button mash... )

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edit:
fun things about macro is, someone (Larryzaur if you know him) actually do a full rotation of smn using only 3 buttons macro: https://twitter.com/Larryzaur/status...37422235926528
yeah, i know it's for meme, but still... (all smn skill button reduced to only 3 macros, is still included in the range of possibility of reducing button bloat by dev, right ? ) .-.

[Seraphor]

Theoretically you could do it yourself (combining the skill in one button) via macro... although, it will add some macro clunkiness here and there...

I'm not sure how, because in all cases except Monk, all combo skills are on the GCD and can all be used when the GCD has completed.
If you macro combo skills 1, 2 and 3 to one button, then whatever skill is first in the list, is the skill that macro will use. You'll just be spamming 1 over and over.
And of course as I state above, Monk is the one job this unequivocally cannot work for.

[SpiralMask]

I'm not sure how, because in all cases except Monk, all combo skills are on the GCD and can all be used when the GCD has completed.
If you macro combo skills 1, 2 and 3 to one button, then whatever skill is first in the list, is the skill that macro will use. You'll just be spamming 1 over and over.
And of course as I state above, Monk is the one job this unequivocally cannot work for.

at least for SMN, having dreadwyrm macro-swap to deathflare and back is safe enough given their longer cooldown and single use (and being on the ogcd), but the demi's and their finishers wouldnt work since you should be using the finisher twice during their duration. i'm sure there's a few other corner-cases that could work (requiescat -> confitieor?), but they're be jsut that--corner cases

[Kokonji]

I'm not sure how, because in all cases except Monk, all combo skills are on the GCD and can all be used when the GCD has completed.
If you macro combo skills 1, 2 and 3 to one button, then whatever skill is first in the list, is the skill that macro will use. You'll just be spamming 1 over and over.
And of course as I state above, Monk is the one job this unequivocally cannot work for.

Oh, yea, i mean for some ogcd that tied to each other (like when we press this ogcd button, it will activate the skill, the button goes on cooldown, and make another button active when the first skill is still on effect - or something like that) to an extent
so... it seems macroing full blown combo is not possible right away I guess... especially if it have branching combos everywhere...

[SpiralMask]

Oh, yea, i mean for some ogcd that tied to each other (like when we press this ogcd button, it will activate the skill, the button goes on cooldown, and make another button active when the first skill is still on effect - or something like that) to an extent
so... it seems macroing full blown combo is not possible right away I guess... especially if it have branching combos everywhere...

it's possible to group all the "flank" and "rear" monk 1-2-3's onto one button each, and just alternate them as appropriate while you go through your combo, but that'd be rather clunky and a bit tough to explain to the player the sort of back-and-forth you go through (especially with dragon kick, the "flank" starter being obtained at level 50)

[SpiralMask]

haven't kept up on the thread so far, but I'm in full support of anything that can slim down the existing button amount while preserving the current skills (so that more can be added going forward without needing to gut every class and redo their whole combat structure and leveling experience again)

[SpiralMask]

honestly i wouldnt mind if healers had only two offensive buttons (attack and dot)

...so long as they had SOMETHING ELSE that was equally engaging to do, such as old-AST card mechanics, or more in-depth fairy gauge management for SCH, or... i dunno what for WHM since they abandoned the CNJ elementalist roots there's nothing thematic to ground it in now

[Jin-]

Think there is a mod for that, plugin in that custom launcher