Does FF14 have a button bloat problem?

[Kandraxx]

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.

[LisSquid]

I just want to see abilities used more like a proc. The 1-2-3 1-4-5 combo playstyle is boring, but whatever. I just feel bloat on the abilities you proc that only exist for a snapshot of your rotation. Looking at BRD, mostly..

[Reap00]

I have been playing New World while I wait for the expansion. New World combat consists of 6 buttons + left and right mouse button inputs. I find the combat terribly boring after playing a couple of weeks. XIV had a button bloat problem in the past but I think SE has found a fairly good balance as far as buttons are concerned.

[Larirawiel]

FF14 has a kind of button bloat problem but the jobs have IMHO still too few abilities. The problem is, too many abilities are basically the same. As a tank you have a mitigation buff that reduces the incoming damage by 10% and you have another mitigation buff that reduces it by 30% but with a different CD and different duration etc. Those duplicated abilities bloat up the buttons in the UI.

Cheers

[RitsukoSonoda]

FFXIV really had a skill bloat problem during HW. Then they trimmed a bunch of stuff with Stormblood which was alot of early mid lvl skills at the time that they say were rarely used. I think that was around the time cross job skills got changed as well from being 5 blank slots the player could assign certain skills learned from other jobs to just being a generic unlock if a job of the class has reached lvl threshold but only jobs of that class get it.

[Recon1o6]

It doesn't really have a bloat problem. Some controller players think there is one, but a lot don't know about the W-hotbar.

Its generally only specific jobs that have too many buttons, and more often than not, they are bloated with buttons that should be merged (smn bahamut being separate whereas phoenix was not seperated from an attack) or useless clutter people don't realise they should delete off their hotbars (benefic 1)

[Bearded]

Coming from ESO where the hotbar is 5 skills plus and ultimate there could be considered to be a bit of a bloat indeed. However there are only a few skills that I never or rarely use on my RDM.

I think FFXIV, like many MMORPGS fell into the "skill each level or couple of levels" trap that resulted in a bloat which they tried to counteract with the pruning but it's bloating up again.

Rather than remove the bloat though I'd prefer they change the way sync works - it should not remove the knowledge you have of skills, it should let you use all the skills you have unlocked but just adjust the impact of those skills based upon the levelsync.

There is nothing more boring than having only one or two skills open to you when you run that low level duty yet again. Allowing the higher level abilities (but withs correctly scaled down damage) this would show newcomers what they can aspire to unlock as they progress along their character path too.

[_Pigzig]

Buttons still feel more meaningful to me than WoW
As DPS Warrior in WoW so many spells are just some variation of "do damage" and you mash one every second.
In FFXIV you have combos etc and slower GCD

I recommend getting a gamer mouse and/or adjusting keybinds if you have trouble hitting the million buttons

[Rinhi]

certain classes have too many, where buttons could be changed when procced (say, SAM, GNB or PLD), while others don't have enough buttons and you'll have several empty spaces on your hotbar (i.e. MCH and DNC)

[Sotaris]

Some jobs, maybe. I don't think it's such a big problem. It used to be worse.