Job action combos one button

[Shurrikhan]

PvP too was also more engaging on the gameplay level before they did this.

Again, though, you're conflating actions with buttons. Those changes did not just consolidate our actions. They reduced them by nearly half.

A HW PVP DRG, for instance, effectively had some ~20 real, separable actions (no, I do not count but one move per combo among those, as we'd still never rush or reset them even in PvP). It then added 5 further (much more interesting) PvP skills atop that, for a total of ~25.
Now, a PVP DRG has just 12 separable actions, and then just 2 (much less interesting) PvP skills, for a total of 14.

That pruning was in no small part because they felt the button counts were overwhelming. Had they just consolidated the bloat beforehand, that wouldn't have been an issue, nor an available excuse for action/decision pruning.

[Canadane]

Again, though, you're conflating actions with buttons

I am not.
Press 1-2-3 is inherently more fun than pressing 1-1-1. It doesn't matter if it's the same skill repeated or a combo of skills, I very specifically am speaking of what the player is doing not the player character ingame is doing.

[Shurrikhan]

I am not.
Press 1-2-3 is inherently more fun than pressing 1-1-1. It doesn't matter if it's the same skill repeated or a combo of skills, I very specifically am speaking of what the player is doing not the player character ingame is doing.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. I see nothing inherently fun about hitting a different button each step of the same decision.

I won't deny that there are probably others who would prefer that, say, Gnashing Fang, Savage Claw, Wicked Talon, Jugular Rip, Abdomen Tear, Eye Gouge, and Hypervelocity all took separate buttons, instead of just their current total of 2 keys. I just don't think you're anywhere near a majority and would rather not sacrifice actual complexity for a pretense thereof (our current unconsolidated combos).

Like Terin, I'd prefer real combos --that each skill in a given combo have real use, to be synergized meaningfully-- but if this is all we're getting from them, then I see no reason to force each player (or, each non-PC player) to waste that hotbar space or to hold back further job complexity just to keep room for our fake combos' fake complexity.

[Kolsykol]

I hope they never do this, the combat is very engaging as it is don't dumb it down.
Actually pressing a lot of buttons is part of what makes it fun for me and sets it apart from most other MMO's.

People can dumb down how they describe rotations all they want, the fact still remains that yes pressing 1 2 3 is harder than spamming 1 especially when you add other stuff on top of it too and have the whole package and yes at least imo it's way more engaging too.

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. I see nothing inherently fun about hitting a different button each step of the same decision.

I won't deny that there are probably others who would prefer that, say, Gnashing Fang, Savage Claw, Wicked Talon, Jugular Rip, Abdomen Tear, Eye Gouge, and Hypervelocity all took separate buttons, instead of just their current total of 2 keys. I just don't think you're anywhere near a majority and would rather not sacrifice actual complexity for a pretense thereof (our current unconsolidated combos).

Like Terin, I'd prefer real combos --that each skill in a given combo have real use, to be synergized meaningfully-- but if this is all we're getting from them, then I see no reason to force each player (or, each non-PC player) to waste that hotbar space or to hold back further job complexity just to keep room for our fake combos' fake complexity.

I wouldn't disagree that I'd like the combos to be more exciting.
But if it's between what we have now and turning it into like how it works in PvP then I'll take what we have now.
If we go with the premise however that they'd add more complexity to it then I might change my mind about it but I don't think that's really the premise of the thread.

[Knot_D]

I mean GNB Gnashing Fang combo already turned into 1 button, why not the rest? (Except MNK of course)

[ForteNightshade]

They removed nearly every bloated action by now, everything we have and used in a rotational basis is useful... There's no bloat to cut anymore.

No they haven't. They've introduced new bloat in this very expansion. Some examples? Shoha II, Orogeny, Crown Play/Minor Arcana and Abyssal Drain are all new EW buttons they have no reason to exist and could be baked into their single target equivalent with fall off percentage.

For old abilities they haven't yet pruned? Play/Draw, Senei/Guren, Shinten/Kyuten, Tsubame-gaeshi, Jump/Mirage Dive, Sonic Break/Bow Shock and Aetherflow/Energy Drain are all buttons they could be merged. Then you have abilities like Cure and Benefit which should just upgrade into their higher level equivalents as they're completely worthless above 50. On the newer side once more, RPR's Shadow of Death is essentially Heavy Thrust—a maintenance buff removed from Dragoon four years ago.

And yes, Samurai has a LOT of useless button bloat. As does Astro.

[Shurrikhan]

For old abilities they haven't yet pruned? Play/Draw, Senei/Guren, Shinten/Kyuten, Tsubame-gaeshi, Jump/Mirage Dive, Sonic Break/Bow Shock and Aetherflow/Energy Drain are all buttons they could be merged. Then you have abilities like Cure and Benefit which should just upgrade into their higher level equivalents as they're completely worthless above 50. On the newer side once more, RPR's Shadow of Death is essentially Heavy Thrust—a maintenance buff removed from Dragoon four years ago.

I'm not sure why we ought focus on removing AoE | ST options before combos. At least they provide a degree of choice (though less so when the ST option is only 10% stronger than the AoE, as per Bloodletter and Rain of Death, etc.), unlike separate combo GCDs.

But yes, they could certainly be replaced by conditional skills (defaulting to the AoE if shaped AoE check would include 2+ targets, and giving the ST animation and bonus damage if there's only one) with minimal (but still existent) loss to affordance, given that XIV so rarely has any use for focus damage over greater total damage.

Agreed on all other points.
___________

They removed nearly every bloated action by now, everything we have and used in a rotational basis is useful... There's no bloat to cut anymore.

Frequency of use doesn't determine bloat. Bloat is just a matter of (in)efficiency by which a function is afforded-- i.e., whether the given implementation offers decision-making of greater value than what would likely be possible if it used up fewer buttons (and something else, of average decision-making value for that kit, took up that space). If a given implementation offers zero further actual choices than another that would use up fewer buttons, that implementation is bloated.

If I made you do a 3-step mudra to cast Glare, you'd use up 3 additional buttons, but that Glare would still just be Glare and spammed just as repeatedly. (If the idea of using 4 buttons to do a single action attracts you, note that you could accomplish the same, right now, by binding Glare to 4 different keys and hitting those in order with each cast.) Those added buttons would be used very frequently -- each 23 times per minute -- but they'd still be entirely bloat.

Press 1-2-3 is inherently more fun than pressing 1-1-1. It doesn't matter if it's the same skill repeated or a combo of skills

Then bind Glare to 3 different keys and rotate, 1-2-3, through them. And just like that, your WHM play is "inherently more fun" now.

[Giyu]

I neither press 1-1-1 nor 1-2-3 since I use macro for combos
e.g.
1-0-0
0 means idle

[Duskane]

I don't mind it as a option
and putting the combo into 1 button isn't really comparable to healers
since DPS have loads of other buttons to press while healers its just 1 spell and a dot

[Lilyth]

Then bind Glare to 3 different keys and rotate, 1-2-3, through them. And just like that, your WHM play is "inherently more fun" now.

If there's anything worse than doing a 1 button rotation is this argument. If I told you they were gonna give Savage loot for free the next patch upon talking to the NPC and people complained about it, do you think it's fair to say "Hey just pretend is still locked behind savage, and just like that nothing has changed, everyone is happy now"?

1-2-3 might not be the hardest most punishing thing out there, but it's something. At least it's a reason for three individual actions to still exist. You have a sequence of different commands and chaining them in a specific order gives you more damage. With 1-1-1-1-1, 3 different actions accomplish nothing, it's just visual padding. There to give players the impression your char still has some modicum of combat interaction when in reality replacing everything with an insta-cast generic "glare" would be the same thing.

I honestly rather keep my 1-2-3 over that.