Does FF14 have a button bloat problem?

[Gothicshark]

snip

Simple Answer NO.

Long Answer: Still no but with more words.

The game is designed to be played on a Playstation, as such they have a hard cap on Buttons per class. This means we also get more passives as we level and many high end abilities replace lower abilities or have switches that change them during play.
You comparing this game to WOW which has a very different design policy and gameplay shows a serious lack of understanding of how to play FFXIV. I would go back watch videos on how to play RDM and Summoner as you do not seem to get the gameplay or job.

As to WOW Warlock vs Summoner, not even close. You are doing the same dumb assumption people have been doing for years, Summoner is nothing like Warlock, never has been, never will be. It's a pet class with a Dot is the only thing close. Warlock is three different trees. Affliction Curse and Dots, Demonology you wanted pets here's an Army, Destruction you wanted to yell explosion so here is a bigger boom. The only Job similar to Warlock in FFXIV is Black Mage, and it is only at an aesthetics level if you played Destruction. Demo Warlock is not like any gameplay in FFXIV, and Affliction is also an unseen play type. And when you look at the history of these classes in WOW and the Jobs in Final Fantasy you see why they are nothing similar, Every Job in FFXIV so far is based on past Jobs from previous games, Reaper is going to be the first New Job in FFXIV. Final Fantasy Jobs are loosely based in stereotypes from Early Dungeon and Dragons filtered through a uniquely Japanese perspective. While Warcraft copied a Table Top game called Warhammer and tried to integrate their classes based on ideas from American Dark Fantasy.

Also if you found Sub Rogue to be too complex, I feel for you, as that class/spec wasn't that hard, My 3rd main (and 1st character in2005) in WOW was a Sub Rogue. Although I preferred Warlock until I came to FFXIV in 2015.

If you want a suggestion how to optimize and simplify your gameplay, grab a controller, and set the game up with the Cross Hotbar. You'll find it fairly simple even Ninja is easy on a Controller.

Also because I use a Keypad and Gaming Mouse, I have found that I have the opposite issue, not enough Buttons. ESP since I use macros to optimize my Hotbars in a way I like Best.

See: https://i.imgur.com/QoQzMbW.jpg for how I do my UI, it's not aimed for clean btw, it's aimed for uniquely me.

Basically I find your comparison of WOW to FFXIV wrong, and I feel you are complaining about the wrong issues when it comes to abilities. Personally I want to see White mage low level healing abilities integrated better for high end, It's a waste to of abilities to essentially have to ignore abilities after specific levels because they are inefficient gameplay after specific points.


Edit:
Additional UI:
Red Mage: https://i.imgur.com/z8SwjC1.jpg
Summoner: https://i.imgur.com/Z5ZUHZm.jpg
White Mage: https://i.imgur.com/4DHwoIF.jpg
Paladin: https://i.imgur.com/vwxHNFr.jpg
Ninja: https://i.imgur.com/93p5jkY.jpg

DPS UI explained: https://i.imgur.com/Cnr6Vnx.jpg I do Healer and Tank jobs differently, but uniformly different. Also Ninja has the Ninjutsu on the AOE part as it works better that way for me.

[Lunalepsy]

Is it just me, or does this game actually have a skill bloat problem, mainly with dps classes. Having pushed a healer to 80 now and messing around with DPS and boy, everything feels like I’m playing a WoW 5.0 sub rogue….

Like with RDM for example, I need to have Verfire and Verstone on my bar, two skills which can’t be used without procs whatsoever, instead of them temporarily replacing veraero and verthunder when it’s actually time to use them.

And from what I’ve seen while glancing over most jobs’ skill book, RDM is even on the “easy” end of the spectrum. I’m bracketing easy because for me personally, bloating a spec with skills will only add pseudo-difficulty in form of it being tedious and tiring to play.

Especially since all these buttons don’t change the fact that in this game there is still only one intended and hardcoded way to play a class, so you’re just adding and adding to the robotic sequence while not adding any actual choices or gameplay enhancement.

Like take the ‘14 summoner for example, I think this might be the closest thing to a WoW warlock. In WoW I can either DoT, nuke, go heavy pet, shadow or fire based, or a weird combination of all. Well here I run around and DoT mobs and guess what? It doesn’t work, because they won’t die and there is no way to specialize a job into a direction. So here, I put my 2 dots up, send in my pet, draw ether, execute the 2-dot-up nuke, pet specials, various CD based skills and then spam my ST spell, repeat. This is what I mean.

This might just be me, or not, but I’d definitely like to see some pruning in the coming expac.

It does! Too many useless skills.

[Kolsykol]

No.
Imo it's about perfect now, I can't think of any dps that feels bloated.
Unless your definition of bloat is '' it doesn't 99999999% NEED to be separate buttons ''.

Personally I much more enjoy pressing more buttons than just spamming 1 and sometimes 2 and 3 like more or less in WoW ( I am exaggerating, but basically. Lots of spamming the same button. ).
I dunno why some people are always so obsessed with doing as little as possible and pushing as few buttons as possible.
I get it if we're talking about positional with BLM for example and doing as little movement as possible but that's different.
But I don't really get it when people want it to basically be a button masher.

Like turning our basic combo into the button mashing in PvP, I just don't get it.
It sounds so boring to me and not involved at all.

Turning the Gnashing Fang combo into one button for GNB I can kinda understand because it's essentially just one ability split into three, but I still kinda feel a bit meh about it because it makes the rotation feel less varied.
I want my fingers to feel active not like I am just hammering the same three buttons.
And on MNK I'd say it's the opposite problem where it feels too repetitive and like there's not enough buttons.

[Shurrikhan]

Turning the Gnashing Fang combo into one button for GNB I can kinda understand because it's essentially just one ability split into three, but I still kinda feel a bit meh about it because it makes the rotation feel less varied.

I mean, you're free to hit a different button each GCD to progress the exact same unfailable decision (or just roll your fingers across the three relevant keys so that the first applicable one is queued, since the non-options among the GF combo can't even be hit), but it doesn't make the rotation itself any more or less varied. It's just needlessly button-inefficient. Nothing less. Nothing more.

[Liam_Harper]

Yes. It's not that we have too many buttons exactly, but there's a lot of filler and low-impact abilities that add 1-2% dps and are just there for the sake of pressing buttons.

I wasn't really too impressed with class design for Endwalker tbh. There are a handful of good QoL changes and a few nice abilities, but overall the classes will play the same. Most of the new abilities are traits that are basically normal class balance or system tweaks disguised as a new ability, filler oGCD's that are bland potency, aoe or single target versions of existing oGCD's that don't really change much and blatant copies of abilities from other classes.

I can understand why they do it, it's "safe", it's easy to balance. I like that they don't pull a WoW and try to reinvent the wheel every expansion. But it's too safe and hard to get really hyped for it.

[DPZ2]

I can understand why they do it, it's "safe", it's easy to balance. I like that they don't pull a WoW and try to reinvent the wheel every expansion. But it's too safe and hard to get really hyped for it.

It's comfortable. It means that there aren't going to be weeks or months spent trying to acclimate to changes in how the job you've been playing in the same way for almost 2 years now works on November 25th.

It's how most MMOs work, a tried and true formula. Class design is never radical.

It only worked in WoW (sometimes) because players could try new things in the PTR and write up the next Definitive Guide to Playing X months before the expansion comes out.

[Shurrikhan]

It only worked in WoW (sometimes) because players could try new things in the PTR and write up the next Definitive Guide to Playing X months before the expansion comes out.

Given that competitive PvE content was likewise delayed there, the PTR was by no means a requirement for specs/jobs/classes to have more than the barest difficulty...

Given, also, that the way each spec played was also far more fight-dependent, as WoW raid encounters are generally far more varied in how they ought to be approached than are XIV's, precise generalist advice was also far less relevant once one progressed to the level content in which that degree of knowledge would particularly matter.

[Dogempire]

Yes. It's not that we have too many buttons exactly, but there's a lot of filler and low-impact abilities that add 1-2% dps and are just there for the sake of pressing buttons.

I wasn't really too impressed with class design for Endwalker tbh. There are a handful of good QoL changes and a few nice abilities, but overall the classes will play the same. Most of the new abilities are traits that are basically normal class balance or system tweaks disguised as a new ability, filler oGCD's that are bland potency, aoe or single target versions of existing oGCD's that don't really change much and blatant copies of abilities from other classes.

I can understand why they do it, it's "safe", it's easy to balance. I like that they don't pull a WoW and try to reinvent the wheel every expansion. But it's too safe and hard to get really hyped for it.

I really wish they would condense the 123 buttons that don't actually have any branching options, something like monk's combos you can't condense into a single button, but with GNB's continuation or MCH's 123 combos I don't see a point to keeping it 3 buttons when literally nothing about the class would change except a few hotbar slots are freed

[Shurrikhan]

I really wish they would condense the 123 buttons that don't actually have any branching options, something like monk's combos you can't condense into a single button, but with GNB's continuation or MCH's 123 combos I don't see a point to keeping it 3 buttons when literally nothing about the class would change except a few hotbar slots are freed

I'd rather just have an equally-numbered (and multiple) choices across each GCD and use that as the basis for consolidation, rather than at best only 1 GCD per combo having actual choice (and only at most 3 choices), but if they actually put the buttons to use on something that isn't similarly bloated, I wouldn't hate further PvP-style combo consolidation.

[Deceptus]

I really wish they would condense the 123 buttons that don't actually have any branching options, something like monk's combos you can't condense into a single button, but with GNB's continuation or MCH's 123 combos I don't see a point to keeping it 3 buttons when literally nothing about the class would change except a few hotbar slots are freed

You absolutely CAN condense monks into a single button (2 sets), especially if you switch Snap Punch and Demolish's positional requirement.

They have a flank rotation to buff - can easily be a 123 set. Demolished changed from Rear > Flank.

They have a rear rotation to damage, can easily be a 123 set. Snap Punch changed from Flank > Rear. Rear rotation is done twice for every flank rotation and the buff timers line up perfectly.

Flank to buff > Rear x2 > Repeat.

6 buttons condensed to 2.

Same with their AoE rotation. Can easily be a single button, especially in Endwalker when 4 Point Fury will generate the Twin Snakes Buff.