Bring Back Kaiten

[Shurrikhan]

But that's the thing, the vast majority are. The majority of 1-2-3 combos for example have no reason to exist.

They do as long as you're punished for not using them. And so long as console remains without access to xivcombo and xivcombo remains against ToS, we will be.

They could be cleanly replaced with a single button that... <snip>. The combo is purely cosmetic, to support 3 different animations despite factually only having a single gameplay effect.

It would be... if you actually made that change. But that change hasn't been made.

I get what you mean, but what you describe as the bad hypothetical case is what we have.

It's not. You're describing something with zero fail state and without even the ability to take on choice rather than simply lacking it in the content presently given. We don't have that, thankfully. Not quite.

It's a simple rote memorization thing, not actual interaction or agency.

And yet, so long as you're not the perfect cyborg computer, choosing what to risk drifting on for the simple fact that at some point you are almost certainly going to mess up on your execution of that rote-ly memorized thing in context still offers interaction and agency.

It could be better, aye, but for 99.9% of players it is still very much something.

I should add, I think the idea behind Kaiten or something akin to it is pretty damn cool, but it's previous incarnation is no better (but also no worse) than the replacement. Neither offers gameplay worth mentioning, in fact I'd argue neither are worse a hotbar spot and the whole gauge of Samurai serves no purpose and could be cleanly removed.

I disagree, for the simple fact that it'd be yet more dull without them than with.

Would I rehaul the job from scratch for greater cognitive load and button-density, both, if I had some dictatorial turn at the wheel? Absolutely. But I also wouldn't want to ignore that the simple rhythmic fun of APM and having to swap between buttons, sometimes hitting certain actions asap while holding others until just .5s + ping before the next GCD, all while executing mechanics perfectly, is also fun for seemingly a majority of players. Even if that cognitive load would add the keys and riffs of a certain job, it'd be the latter that adds provides the ear candy or by whatever other means brings the arrangement and mixing together, so to speak.

[TheGrimace]

I miss you, Kaiten. Let me hear your sweet sound once more...