Does FF14 have a button bloat problem?

[midnitdragoon]

Yes it does have a skill bloat problem. It's basically Street fighter button presses. Honestly, they should have gone with a battle system similar to final fantasy 11 or final fantasy xiv 1.0. The game could have benefited immensely from a slower paced battle in the long run, yes you'd have less abilities but they would have more impact

[Yasminou]

In Endwalker, BLM could remove 4 buttons, without affecting the playstyle whatsoever because some spells can only be cast in Astral Fire or Umbral Ice and so could be on the same key that switches depending on the buff:
- Fire IV and Blizzard IV (this could already be the case in Heavensward);
- Despair and Umbral Soul (same but with Shadowbringers);
- Freeze and Flare (UI/AF requirement is new starting in Endwalker).
Furthermore, there is no reason for Between the Lines not to replace Ley Lines when it is on.

[Ayche]

I think FFXIV handles the amount of actions it has by letting you dictate your level of engagement yourself.
I am pretty sure all jobs can be reduced down to core 10 actions or so that lets you pass most content in the game.
Sure, hardest content requires everything the job has, but that is something you take upon yourself and have to accept the challenge.

[Jeeqbit]

The developers are aware of button bloat and aim to keep it at what it is now when adding new actions by upgrading them.

There are a lot more in this game than some other games, but if there were too few actions then people would complain about that too.

You can enable a third hotbar to help.

[Kohl]

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.

I feel it more with specific jobs rather than a role. But that is just me and my insisting on playing on a controler.

[Ronduwil]

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….

I think it's a matter of perspective. I personally prefer no more than four buttons in my rotation, but I guarantee that there are players who are still dissatisfied with their eight button rotation because they've been at this game for 10 years now and those eight buttons no longer pose a challenge for them.

[Xeltoris]

The main thing is, particularly with your example of Veraero/Verthunder and Verstone/Verfire, the way the job functions requires you have access to all four of these actions. Removing that removes rotational agency entirely, because they're separate for a reason. You're allowed to override your procs in part because only one thing actually guarantees a proc.

Now: Verholy/Verflare temporarily replacing Aero and Thunder? Scorch temporarily replacing Jolt? These things make sense. Similar in the vein to how Gunbreaker is going to have its 3-part cartridge spender condensed to one changing ability, it's something you're not rotationally actively hitting *that often* compared to your bread and butter filler.

I think the jobs don't need pruning as much as they need intelligent condensing of abilities, which seems to be a theme. Some new abilities are functioning similar to Verholy/Verflare (Gunbreaker, any job getting an AoE rotation upgrade rather than another ability such as Dragoon), some jobs are having dead or mandatory buttons baked in passively (looking at you, Enochian and Life/Blood of the Dragon), etc. The development team has also already addressed the issue, so I don't think we need further pruning as long as additions continue to be added in this manner.

As to your comparison of Summoner to Affliction Warlock: the thing to remember is that jobs in FFXIV are not classes in WoW. A Job in FFXIV is a complete kit built to a particular playstyle and theme. You're not intended to hyper-focus on one part of any Job's toolkit, you're intended to use the entire toolkit for what it is. Coming at this from a perspective as a former Mythic raider, I understand why this isn't particularly palatable to some people, but I find I personally infinitely prefer a static toolkit with a lot of options to the way toolkits work in WoW.

[Xirean]

I think it's a matter of perspective. I personally prefer no more than four buttons in my rotation, but I guarantee that there are players who are still dissatisfied with their eight button rotation because they've been at this game for 10 years now and those eight buttons no longer pose a challenge for them.

Have you considered playing MOBAs?

[Xaruko_Nexume]

I think it's a matter of perspective. I personally prefer no more than four buttons in my rotation, but I guarantee that there are players who are still dissatisfied with their eight button rotation because they've been at this game for 10 years now and those eight buttons no longer pose a challenge for them.

I like 4 button rotations too. Jobs like Bard and Paladin feel really good early on in my opinion. By 70 many start to feel pretty overwhelming. More abilities need to be baked in as passives I think.

[Lexis]

Some jobs feel like they have the perfect number of buttons while others are a bit overwhelming. I gave up on Ninja at lvl 70 because there were just more abilities than I could conveniently keybind so playing it felt like a game of twisters with my fingers (and with some early sings of arthritis developing in my hands, that's not a good thing). I decided to try machinist instead since it has less buttons overall and I've been having a blast. White Mage is also in a good spot for me button wise.

Part of me wishes all the jobs had an equal number of abilities similar to that of MCH or WHM, but I also understand how a greater variety can appeal to a wider audience. Ninja seems to be an incredibly popular job so I imagine those who enjoy the class as it is wouldn't be too happy to see it pruned.