Condensing Bard with Morphing Buttons

[SailorCeti]

After playing my Dragoon to 80 and picking up Reaper, I agree. If there's a button that activates something else, and isn't useful until the other thing is used, then by all means, morph the dang button. It isn't as if they'd be getting rid of an ability, only saving space on the bar.

[Xiaoki]

The point is having to pay attention which makes for engaging gameplay. With Bard that gameplay is having a short amount of time to react and hit a different button, with 123 combos it's remembering your place in the sequence after diverting to do something else or making sure to finish the combo first. Whether you find that gameplay fun or not is a different matter ofc, some do others do not. I'm not a fan of proc jobs but I'd much rather have either of those options over spamming one button without thought.

LOL engaging gameplay?!

This has to be a joke post.

Having Burst Shot and Refulgent Arrow be separate buttons isn't engaging, it's just so the developers can add artificial complexity and fill up button slots.

Also, bonus LOL for the low effort Strawman "spamming one button without thought".

Yeah, this has to be a joke post.

[Tulzscha]

LOL engaging gameplay?!

This has to be a joke post.

Having Burst Shot and Refulgent Arrow be separate buttons isn't engaging, it's just so the developers can add artificial complexity and fill up button slots.

Also, bonus LOL for the low effort Strawman "spamming one button without thought".

Yeah, this has to be a joke post.

It makes you pay attention (assuming you care about playing well), that's basically the definition of engaging. I know it's one of those buzzwords people use differently all the time but that's what it means. If you put Burst and Refulgent on the same button you'd be spamming that one button a lot more. What's so hard to understand?

[Xiaoki]

It makes you pay attention (assuming you care about playing well), that's basically the definition of engaging. I know it's one of those buzzwords people use differently all the time but that's what it means. If you put Burst and Refulgent on the same button you'd be spamming that one button a lot more. What's so hard to understand?

That is not the definition of engaging.

Engaging has a recognized definition and that is not it.

It seems appropriate that your response and the one above yours are basically "I dont want to be pressing the same button all the time, just most of the time"

I guess pressing a different button every so often gives people illusion of "engaging gameplay" even though, functionally, pressing one for both is the same thing.

[Tulzscha]

That is not the definition of engaging.

Engaging has a recognized definition and that is not it.

It seems appropriate that your response and the one above yours are basically "I dont want to be pressing the same button all the time, just most of the time"

I guess pressing a different button every so often gives people illusion of "engaging gameplay" even though, functionally, pressing one for both is the same thing.

Arguing about a word while ignoring the point is silly if you ask me but if you want to go that route: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engage

5a : to hold the attention of : ENGROSS
her work engages her completely

And yes pressing a different button every so often is better than a single button. Example: https://www.fflogs.com/reports/N1hrn...casts&source=7

In that log the Bard uses a total of 174 weaponskills of which 100 are Burst Shot and 45 are Refulgent Arrow. That works out to about 57% of their gcds being one ability and about 26% being another. If those abilities were to be combined into one you're looking at about 83% of all gcds being one ability, not to mention it would remove the entire thought process of checking to see if Refulgent procced before using Burst Shot which is actually kind of a big deal, it's not difficult but it requires a little effort on the player's part almost every gcd. That required effort is what makes the job engaging, otherwise you wouldn't even need to look at the screen.

Your gcds if Burst and Refulgent were combined would literally be refreshing dots every ~45s, hitting Apex every minute and mindlessly spamming one ability otherwise because there's literally nothing else to think about (ogcds aside because they exist in both examples). That doesn't sound fun to me. But some people find playing new SMN with 1 macro fun so what do I know.

[Xiaoki]

not to mention it would remove the entire thought process of checking to see if Refulgent procced before using Burst Shot which is actually kind of a big deal, it's not difficult but it requires a little effort on the player's part almost every gcd. That required effort is what makes the job engaging

This part right here is all I need to see.

If you think checking to see if Refulgent Arrow is lit up or not requires thought or any bit of effort then I don't know what to say except LOL.

Instead of arguing semantics with me you should be angry at Square Enix for letting the class degrade to such a point.

[Tulzscha]

This part right here is all I need to see.

If you think checking to see if Refulgent Arrow is lit up or not requires thought or any bit of effort then I don't know what to say except LOL.

Instead of arguing semantics with me you should be angry at Square Enix for letting the class degrade to such a point.

Riiiight because looking at information, interpreting it and deciding on an action based upon it is just a thing that happens automatically through some kind of psychic instinct and doesn't involve using your eyes or brain at all. lol.

Bard isn't that bad, on the official and totally not biased at all scale of fun I'd rate it a solid "Eh". Tbh if there were more Bloodletters during Mage's Ballad it could easily be upgraded to "Yes, I would absolutely play this job over grinding out yet another relic weapon for a job I rarely play".

[Ferrinus]

In order to make button consolidation not a no-brainer, each step of a combo should do something a little different such that being unable to choose which to use is technically a restriction, even if you'd use them in order 99% of the time.

An example: Gunbreaker 1-2-3 goes 1. damage, 2. damage + selfheal/shield, 3. damage + resource generation. Normally you'd loop through them in order, but if for some reason you wanted to maximize your own durability (say the healer is dead and you need to live a little longer to let the DPS finish the boss) you might want the option to do 1-2-1-2-1-2,

Bard's generic attack and high damage proc can sort of justify being on different buttons because if you had to push two bombs away before returning to focus on the boss, you might want to Heavy Shot both bombs and then Straight Shot the boss instead of wasting your proc on a target whose health doesn't matter.

[Xiaoki]

I agree... Most jobs do a 1, 2, 3 combo and morphing them into 1 would save a lot of space (especially for controller users that have 8 primary abilities they can set)

Unfortunately, I don't see this ever happening.

If you look at an extreme example like Dragoon the problem is obvious.

If you consolidate the buttons for Dragoon's 2 single target combos, AoE combo and Jump combo you would consolidate 12 buttons down to 4.

Would be a bad look for the game if you condensed a Job down to less than 20 buttons.

[Jirah]

Additionally, Sidewinder really doesn't serve much purpose anymore. It's just another oGCD attack on a Job that's swimming in oGCD attacks.

EA gives you rep, BL/RoD is tied to Mages ballad, wouldn’t classify it as swimming in OGCD if they serve greater purpose than fat unlike say MCH or loosely RDM. SW is the most useless skill but It’s BRD only OGCD with zero affiliation, the Flèche or the 3 drills.

Sidewinder has many avenues to make it more tangible, they can give it back the dot effect which is a organic reminder to keep them up, could be lazy and give Rep too along side EA, have some sort of link to Armys increasing the potency of SW per rep or somthing, or SW can be a super dot itself it’s nothing now and can be anything