Job action combos one button

[Saraide]

No, because they are options. I... just don't know how to say it any other way.



If you have positionals, you can't 1-1-1 mindlessly, so it doesn't make things easier except on the hands.





Sure, disabled people just don't try hard enough.

You should be shameful of saying that sort of things. I'm glad some people can play well with disabilites, but you both are just elitists that use some examples as an excuse to speak shit, and I don't even want to argue with you anymore, you're just despicable.

Are you speaking from experience with disabilities? This isnt the first time this discussion is happening and I always get the impression a lot of people are just trying to speak for people with disabilities without knowing or even caring about the people they are allegedally standing up for.

Every option devs build into the game has to be designed around, that's just how it is. You cant give an option and then pretend it doesnt exist. There are mods that already allow the combo collapsing and iirc it's one of the most downloaded plugins. Do you want to tell me everyone of those people is facing disabilities? Or do they just want to have an easier time with their rotation and their hotbar setup.

yeah, positionals, where to squeeze in an oGCD would still make you pay attention.
But it does get easier. From the ease of pushing 123 to the ease of pushing 111

I'm not saying you wouldnt have to pay attention at all anymore, I'm saying you are automating away the attention you needed to spend on your basic combo. When you have entire burst window happening and at the same time a complicated mechanic to resolve, going back to your regular combo just takes a bit of attention that you just wouldnt need anymore.
Why are you trying to distract with positionals and oGCDs?

[Shirala]

Are you speaking from experience with disabilities? This isnt the first time this discussion is happening and I always get the impression a lot of people are just trying to speak for people with disabilities without knowing or even caring about the people they are allegedally standing up for.

Every option devs build into the game has to be designed around, that's just how it is. You cant give an option and then pretend it doesnt exist. There are mods that already allow the combo collapsing and iirc it's one of the most downloaded plugins. Do you want to tell me everyone of those people is facing disabilities? Or do they just want to have an easier time with their rotation and their hotbar setup.

I am disabled and I think your first post was extremely insulting. Sure, a young healthy guy had an injury and learned to adapt. That says nothing other than the guy was driven to do such a thing.

The devs need to take into consideration people who cannot push a million buttons or have slower reflexes. Make it an option if other folks want to be challenged with the original setup.

[Saraide]

I am disabled and I think your first post was extremely insulting. Sure, a young healthy guy had an injury and learned to adapt. That says nothing other than the guy was driven to do such a thing.

The devs need to take into consideration people who cannot push a million buttons or have slower reflexes. Make it an option if other folks want to be challenged with the original setup.

I'm sorry I came across as insulting to you.

Making it just an option unfortunately doesnt mean anything. It would be something that the game then needs to be designed around as it would very clearly be an intended way of playing the game. There is a little bit of risk involved with playing the original setup that a combo collapse wouldnt face anymore (that's the whole point of it). However that risk isnt just something you alone are facing. This is a team game so by making it an option you're essentially making everyone who doesnt like a bit of an extra risk to the party. Whatever they choose to do, it will always affect everyone playing that job and everyone in the same party as them.

This is my first post in this thread btw:

Two things:

I think there are better ways to adress the button bloat that does exist on some jobs as it doesnt even affect a lot of jobs, stuff like undraw.

Remembering where you are in your combo takes a bit of attention that collapsing all combos into one button would automate away. Sure, no one is gonna miss a combo action when attacking a target dummy. But when something like firestorms together with your burst window is going on things might look a bit different. And keep in mind jobs balance is done for the harder content in the game. If you drift like a madman on a dungeon boss, why do you even care.

I do find it weird that some people act like collapsing combos is such a huge deal in terms of reducing button bloat but at the same time act like it's no big deal at all whenever they face pushback against the idea.

How is that insulting? My very first point was essentially agreeing that there is button bloat and that it can be solved. I just dont think combo collapse is the correct approach.

What actually takes effort, for people with or without disability alike, is setting up your hotbars in a way that works for you. A lot of people dont want to spend that effort and rarely can you make someone else do your hotbars for you because that's a highly personal thing.

[hagare]

Are you speaking from experience with disabilities? This isnt the first time this discussion is happening and I always get the impression a lot of people are just trying to speak for people with disabilities without knowing or even caring about the people they are allegedally standing up for.

Every option devs build into the game has to be designed around, that's just how it is. You cant give an option and then pretend it doesnt exist. There are mods that already allow the combo collapsing and iirc it's one of the most downloaded plugins. Do you want to tell me everyone of those people is facing disabilities? Or do they just want to have an easier time with their rotation and their hotbar setup.



I'm not saying you wouldnt have to pay attention at all anymore, I'm saying you are automating away the attention you needed to spend on your basic combo. When you have entire burst window happening and at the same time a complicated mechanic to resolve, going back to your regular combo just takes a bit of attention that you just wouldnt need anymore.
Why are you trying to distract with positionals and oGCDs?

positionals and oGCDs are disctractions?
They're part of your core rotation. You don't just press your 3 main combo ya know.
Seems like people who object to this change think that your main combo exists in a vacuum. *shrug*

[Saraide]

positionals and oGCDs are disctractions?
They're part of your core rotation. You don't just press your 3 main combo ya know.
Seems like people who object to this change think that your main combo exists in a vacuum. *shrug*

Why are you bringing up oGCDs and positionals in the first place is my question.

[Shurrikhan]

Where did I claim it automates the entire rotation?

I never said you did. I said you claimed it automates away the attention needed for following one's GCD combo(s). Which you did, right here:

I'm saying you are automating away the attention you needed to spend on your basic combo.

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Not a lot of GCDs even have positionals at this point and only on SAM do they actually matter for resources.

SAM doesn't generate resources from positionals anymore, but that's irrelevant anyways; potency is potency. Previously, those 5 Kenki were worth ~64 potency. Now, as direct potency, they're worth a straight 60.

Resource management has you pay attention to your resources mostly not really your combo steps.

Let's consider, then, the most 'stupidly simple' combo in the game -- DRK's.

It wants to bank for burst; any resource explited outside of burst is a potency loss.
Every 2nd step in combo, though, risks overcapping MP. Every 3rd step in combo risks overcapping Gauge.

That's a fair bit of resource interaction in that combo, no?

[Saraide]

I never said you did. I said you claimed it automates away the attention needed for following one's GCD combo(s). Which you did, right here:


_______________


SAM doesn't generate resources from positionals anymore, but that's irrelevant anyways; potency is potency. Previously, those 5 Kenki were worth ~64 potency. Now, as direct potency, they're worth a straight 60.


Let's consider, then, the most 'stupidly simple' combo in the game -- DRK's.

It wants to bank for burst; any resource explited outside of burst is a potency loss.
Every 2nd step in combo, though, risks overcapping MP. Every 3rd step in combo risks overcapping Gauge.

That's a fair bit of resource interaction in that combo, no?

Right, thank you for correcting me on samurai, I forgot about that.
You can use that edge or that bloodspiller any time earlier, you dont have to keep it up to directly overcapping it. If they arent in buffs either way, they can be freely shuffled around and IMO that is something decoupled from paying attention to your combo.

[Shurrikhan]

If they arent in buffs either way, they can be freely shuffled around and IMO that is something decoupled from paying attention to your combo.

I suppose that depends on how far ahead one can predict. To take DRK's combo as example again, because you want to minimize both Edges and Bloodspillers outside of burst, without overcapping MP or Gauge, you're looking any time (not all players necessarily needing more than one glance, but many also needing damn near bar-staring) between end of burst and next would-be overcap at whether you can, before your next Syphon that'd otherwise overcap, start a TBN that would pop (allowing you to push an Edge back towards burst), whether you will can enter burst before your next Souleater that would otherwise overcap, etc. Those things together have so much more cognitive load than shifting, almost subconsciously for most players, from button 1 to button 2 to button 3 with respective combo GCDs that the latter is hardly worth mention. (The latter is a feature, yes, but far more of tactile experience than of any sort of complexity; for most fully able players, it is already autonomous, and soon provides at least as much aid as difficulty.)

The step-tracking is still significant, and the 1-2-3 movement may aid that via tactile cues, but that 1-2-3 movement itself is an incredibly minor part of what goes into and surrounds even that most basic of combos (a straight 1-2-3 with zero alternate combos available) or "the[ir] attention needed".

That's why I have trouble seeing this option, should one choose to take it, as somehow destructive to depth or as "automating" play in any sense beyond its literal effect (to collapse button-movement and only button movement -- not to remove the need to track steps, track contexts, ready positioning, or any of that remaining vast majority of what goes into comboing in this game).

As such, I don't see it as offering, for most players, more than it'd lose in memory aid via tactile cues. Its offerings are merely reach and lost traps of bumping the wrong key; its shortfalls are nonetheless traps, merely of a subtler kind, if one forgets that, yes, they do need to use X action by Y GCD, etc., and fails to track what GCD their on by the next time it matters (which is more frequent than we may first assume), which can be exacerbated by lack of tactile cues if one doesn't grow used to that.

So long as it's an option --and I will insist that it absolutely can be introduced as such and would be if its being an option were presented as inseparable from the request for any combo consolidation (which I would support), for the reasons I have already given repeatedly, until someone can offer decent reasons to the contrary-- I see no reason why players for whom that space matters should be barred from having that option through legal means (or, as available also to any but non-Steam PC players). It's a trade-off, and those who can get more out of one end than the other should be able to take what suits them better.
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Admittedly, there is also a more abstract --OCD-related, if you will-- reason for my wanting to change how rigid combos are presently handled. It's button-waste, and if the game wants to insist on a separate button each for those actions, then those actions should also be separately usable.

At present, the use of any one combo key effectively locks out and wastes all but 1-2 others until that combo has ended; those other combo keys exist only as traps, without even the most situational of reasons to be used beyond having started into entirely the wrong combo by mistake (a mistake that can already be equally well addressed through consolidated keys). A job like Dragoon could manage far more interesting play by using a looser combo structure, managing combos via, say, Momentum (provided by Vorpal, Full, Spike, etc.) and Flurry (Sonic, Disembowel, Chaos, etc.) and certain skills building and/or taking from both. Such would be both less disproportionately punishing and capable of far more ingenuity (while also making for more frequent and interesting SkS tiers).

Give players a reason to use actions separately, outside of a fixed combo, and I'll agree that they should have separate keys, outside of a fixed combo. It's as simple as that.

Short of that, though, I see no reason why we shouldn't smooth the number of keys towards their available number of decisions -- and, ideally, even out the number of decisions available across different GCDs/steps. The buttons shouldn't exist, without contrary option, just to be traps. However subtly (as the case with Monk rotations), they must be capable of more, or the option should be given to trade out the tactile cues that their artificial complexity provides for the ease of reach of forgoing that artificial complexity.

[Saraide]

(snip)

I'll be honest here and lay out my bias here: I highly doubt most people advocating for combo collapsing are engaging in complete rotation optimization at all.

This is what I meant in my first post btw. Everytime there is pushback or questions, combo collapsing will be talked down to making basically 0 difference in both job complexity and amount of buttons removed because it's going to be like 2 buttons less. And some jobs dont even have combos, I wouldnt even count monk there either. To me there is a massive discrepancy between how much people advocate for it and how much the combo collapsing plugin is used on one hand and the extremely low impact you are describing on the other.

[Shurrikhan]

To me there is a massive discrepancy between how much people advocate for it and how much the combo collapsing plugin is used on one hand and the extremely low impact you are describing on the other.

Again, I do think the impact will vary. You give up something (helpful tactile cues) to avoid something else (annoyingly pointless trap buttons), the (de)merits of which will vary person-to-person.

I think, however, that the discrepancy comes down to consolidation (or allowing for combos to be separate actions -- either one) being also a solution to a second issue, and so it ends up a solution to two different problems, or sees approach from two different ends. Put more simply, if the total interest so much larger than what we'd see from Group A (with its related Reason A) alone, it's because there's also a Group B, with their own reason for wanting it.

That other approach or issue is that more abstract design principle I mentioned before: Inseparable combos are an eyesore of a design. As insignificant as its impact may be to the average player, the design itself lands, painfully, between two worthwhile designs that'd give it reason for those buttons (consolidation or separable actions), managing neither.

You'd have no less a 'disproportionate' reaction (one larger than its direct influence on players' ability to play what they want) to, say, a clunky or worthless ability even on a job whose kits still works plenty smoothly or powerfully on the whole.
Does the current combo design have large impact? For most players, no.
Does it make the game (or job) significantly less playable? For most players on most jobs, no.
Is it bizarre to the point of annoyance to many? Absolutely.