Combining some buttons into one

[Seraphor]

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

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.

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.
Ninja would go down from 4 to 2. So that only saves you 2 buttons, but you want to know what part of the combo you're in for Bunshin/TA windows.
Samurai would still require at least 3 different buttons for it's combos, so it's not saving much space.
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.
Dancer will at most shave off 1 button in it's basic 1-2 combo, as the rest are procs that you can hold.
Bard doesn't need this at all.
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'.
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.

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.

[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.