Job action combos one button

[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:


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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.

[hagare]

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.

yet you wonder why I bring up oGCDs in connection to GCDs.
I'm starting to think you don't optimize rotation

[Saraide]

yet you wonder why I bring up oGCDs in connection to GCDs.
I'm starting to think you don't optimize rotation

I mean it sounds like you're just trying to deflect.

[Ransu]

I mean it sounds like you're just trying to deflect.

I have to agree with him. It really does sound like you don't optimize your rotations. Collapsing abilities similar to pvp wouldn't even work for most of the melee jobs. It would actually make the flow of combat janky, or worse they would have to simplify things even more to make it work. Either way, the entire concept is a terrible idea.

[Saraide]

I have to agree with him. It really does sound like you don't optimize your rotations. Collapsing abilities similar to pvp wouldn't even work for most of the melee jobs. It would actually make the flow of combat janky, or worse they would have to simplify things even more to make it work. Either way, the entire concept is a terrible idea.

What? My entire point was never about oGCDs, just about combo collapsing itself (like is the thread's topic). I am still confused as to why oGCDs and positionals were even brought up as counter in the first place. Did I ever claim they require no attention or that keeping up your combo is the only thing? If so I would like you to point that out to me so I can clear up a misunderstanding.

I find this a very weird leap in logic you have there tbh: I doubt that the people who want combo collapsing are interested in rotation optimization therefore I definitely dont optimize my rotation.