What would you guys think about getting more Dynamic, "Combo" abilities?

[CaptainLagbeard]

How hard it is to recognize that there are divergent combos in the game? Do you want to have to put the same attack twice in your hotbar and have to figure out which one leads to which second attack?

You know you can mark the icon to show which combo is which... And the name... "Oh hey, does this button that has the Yukikaze icon and it's tooltip says "Yukikaze combo" lead to Gekko? I don't know!"

[CaptainLagbeard]

There is a very good reason: Meikyo Shisui. There exists an opener designed to get Tsubame out ASAP. Like, 1 GCD earlier then normal. It exists to insure that you can get it in 2, 3, 5 minutes down the fight. Or just whatever you need to get out 1 GCD earlier in the cycle. It requires you to Meikyo a Jinpu. With the given combo system, this sort of fringe, gigabrain stuff can't exist. And let me tell you, getting in an otherwise impossible Tsubame is magical. That's not the only use, of course. Some Midare outright ghost if you don't do it.

It's a bit of a PPS loss in the opener but it's truly amazing.

But that's the entire point: The single button combo system removes Options. Limits tools. Cripples creativity. For what gain? So the devs can hit button bloat in all the wrong areas?

Nah. Not supporting that.

Oh yea, I did actually kind of forget about Meikyo Shisui, which would complicate a lot of things for consolidating SAM... That is a fair point...

And getting rid of Meikyo would be an absolutely terrible idea, and even if you made it just use the final attack of the combos, it wouldn't be a perfect solution since very extremly rare occasions, one might use it refresh Jinpu/Shifu...

[Sylve]

It was hyperbole to express how silly the concept was. Sorry you've taken it literally.

DRG is heavily rigid, yes. That said, True Thrust is the jumping off point for 2 different chains. Your current example is impossible due to this. In addition, it's entirely missing Raiden Thrust. Perhaps you've not played it in a while?

Regardless, there are instances beyond the most rigid rotation in the game, such as SAM. Hakaze as the starting point allows you to enter into 3 different combos, each doing something different. This allows for one to make snap decisions, such as going to Yuki early to take up your filler GCDs, or altering the overall flow on the fly to better work with the situation, or even just Ad Hok SAM in general. With a 1-2-3 system, this becomes impossible. Or do you propose players keep 3 separate instances of Hakaze on their bar? Or that, in order for your "option" to work, you would basically need to switch SAM over to the current PvP-style GCDs. Not sure how happy all the SAM players will be to have Midare nerfed because you reach it 2 GCDs earlier every time.

But then I didn't think I'd need to spell out the ramifications for you.

Raiden Thrust is literally True Thrust with higher potency. Raiden Thrust overwrites True Thrust, not just its keybind, but also overwrites True Thrusts functionality as a combo starter. You don't choose to use Raiden Thrust, You're forced to as long as you're correctly performing the rotation. It was never an extra skill to press in the rotation.

OK, lets dig into SAM under the hypothetical existence of the ability to condense.

All 3 combo chains begin with Hakaze. So i create a button that contains the path 'Hakaze - Jinpu - Gekko' and place it on hotkey 1.
Next, I take a new button and set the path of this button to 'Shifu - Kasha' and place this on hotkey 2.
Lastly, i take Yukikaze and place it plainly on hotkey 3.

To get all 3 Seals, my rotation would look like this:
1 > 1 > 1
1 > 2 > 2
1 > 3
Finally, to make effective use of Meikyo, i need only have Jinpu on Shift+1 for the occasion i require it. Or even set up a button that turns Meikyo into Jinpu after Meikyo for the opener.

Having Kasha and Gekko on shift 1 and 2 (or allowing shift modifiers to raise the step in the custom buttons) allows Midare to be executed with the exact same path as having them all separate binds.

The end result is that i took 6 weaponskills and halved the required keybinds for their effective use without reducing the number of skills involved.

[Sylve]

Exactly! Rare as it may be, the option of it is there, meaning that creative players could find use for something that is otherwise unoptimal. That said, there are a ton of other consolidations that can be made that won't inhibit this sort of thing. Conditional things, such as Fang and Claw/Wheeling could be made a single button, or force Chaos Thrust/Full to transform. Third Eye could change to Seigan, Queen to Explode, Dragonfire Dive to Stardiver, etc. etc. There are a ton of ways to make button efficiency better while allowing the core buttons to remain as they are.



I know you've taken a while to respond, but we've since passed this. BTW that config only eliminates 2 buttons since you have to manually put Jinpu back on and Meikyo doesn't transform and would never need to. You'd have combo 1, 2, 3, and jinpu. You've only gotten rid of Shifu and Yuki as separate buttons. A lot of dev time when you can accomplish this by getting rid of the self heal and tying Merciful Eyes and Seigan together, eh?

Well, it wasnt something i wrote as a "this is the way it needs to be" thing, Just an example how such a custom condensing system could be used to save keybinds.
I still thing Meikyo should grant Jinpu and Shifu if they aren't already active as part of its effect, but thats a subject for a different thread, lol.

The main point was just to demonstrate that we can save keybinds even on jobs that have many branching combos. Any buttons we can save for ourselves is one less button for the devs to see as pruning targets XD

[Canada_bangs]

Yah, but there lies a fundamental issue, part of the crux behind why I don't think it's the best way to go: Square will still need to design around people who don't use the option. While I understand your view of "players will need to make due," I know that Square won't share that sort of view. They are good enough to know that, when you give the playerbase an option, you still need to consider the players that don't use that option. Meaning that, if your proposed condensing system (or something similar) is implemented, Square is forced to design around those that use it, but also those that don't.

Unfortunately, even if we were given the option of mapping our entire, expanded rotations to a single button, Square would still prune because some people will still use every single button individually.

That last part and job changes and moves and skills getting updated. I think people are only looking at -space- but that's the least of the issues honestly. space isn't the only thing to think about. In other words I agree with you Darsien.

[CaptainLagbeard]

Exactly! Rare as it may be, the option of it is there, meaning that creative players could find use for something that is otherwise unoptimal. That said, there are a ton of other consolidations that can be made that won't inhibit this sort of thing. Conditional things, such as Fang and Claw/Wheeling could be made a single button, or force Chaos Thrust/Full to transform. Third Eye could change to Seigan, Queen to Explode, Dragonfire Dive to Stardiver, etc. etc. There are a ton of ways to make button efficiency better while allowing the core buttons to remain as they are.

SAM exists in awkward position because of Meikyo, as it allows the SAM to ignore the combo temporarily... So I don't know what could be done for it's combos...

Edit: MNK kind of exists in a similar state due to Perfect Balance. But kind of suffers from having even more actions...

But for others, there's really much less issues. And there is some amounts of general trimming around actions that can only be activated after certain other actions that they could really do.

DRG has Mirage Dive, which could easily replace (High) Jump when usable. Geirsgokul can only be used during Blood of the Dragon, so it could easily replace that button.
MCH as stated has Rook/Queen and Overdrive which might as well be just one button. Additionally, Hypercharge could easily turn into Heat Blast while active, since you can only Heat Blast/Auto Crossbow while Hypercharge's overheat effect is active.
AST doesn't really need both Draw and Play separately.
SCH doesn't need Summon Seraph and Consolation separately.
NIN has Assassinate which require using Dream Within a Dream first.

[Aurelius2625]

How about NO. Yeah, it's gonna be a NO from me dawg.

Play a healer if you just wanna spam one nuke with one dot all day long. Yeah. 400 casts of GLARE is really amazing my dude. Fantastic gameplay!

[Penthea]

Believe me, I have. I would absolutely hate it. Reducing the buttons sequences down to two would make the jobs feel boring. It essentially means I'll spam 11112222 on say, Dragoon endlessly.

This is what dpsing on a healer feels like and a huge amount of people hate it because it's so bloody boring. If OP looked beyond the offensive class's experience with rotations they would realise that making the experience closer to how healers dps would not be well received.

[ItMe]

At the very least something like this could be a good way to reduce button bloat.
Though if our hotbars had more free real-estate they might be compelled to fill it with shit we don't need.
Imagine how much wonkier MNK would be if it had room for more shit it doesn't need...

[Goji1639]

This is what dpsing on a healer feels like and a huge amount of people hate it because it's so bloody boring. If OP looked beyond the offensive class's experience with rotations they would realise that making the experience closer to how healers dps would not be well received.

If having 123 instead of 111 for your basic combo is the only thing making a DRGs rotation not feel like a Healer, then DRG already basically has a Healers rotation. The problem is something more fundamental with the class that should be addressed.

Plenty of the classes I play would feel better without the pointless button bloat; I'd personally love to free up a few buttons for some QoL things.