PvP Actions Design & How It Could Translate to PvE

[Tenken7]

After playing every job in PvP, I realized just how fluid and nice it was to play this game without all of the button bloat. It was an eye-opener as sometimes we don't know that we really don't like a way of doing something until we see a far better alternative.

Jobs that have a 1,2,3 combo, for example, feel like a breath of fresh air in PvP. Never, under any circumstance, have I ever started an opener with 2, or 3 and it is so nice not to have two unnecessary extra actions on my Hotbar, that it's hard for me to go back to the messy PvE action bloat.

in PvP, every job feels very engaging yet clean. So, how could this translate into PvE? I haven't a clue but I am hoping that the people who designed the PvP action system, expand their wisdom into PvE and help us with what I could only describe as action vomit.

I commend SE for a job well done with PvP, especially as it could be considered "early access" of sorts, and I hope that this new and fresh take on actions translates, somehow, into PvE.

Thoughts? Opinions? I'd like to know how the community feels about this.

[Darthgummibear]

If they did this to PVE I would quit the game instantly.

[Tenken7]

If they did this to PVE I would quit the game instantly.

Care to elaborate?

[Darthgummibear]

Care to elaborate?

Considering you think that they actually did a good job with pvp this time around, I would be wasting my breath.

[Tenken7]

Considering you think that they actually did a good job with pvp this time around, I would be wasting my breath.

Yes, I think they did a great job with PvP, all things considered. I'm sorry you feel that way though. Thanks for sharing.

[GayRobot]

This system works because 5 human players are (generally) more engaging to fight than one giant boss with a completely scripted timeline. I don't think I'd ever want to see PvE kits stripped to this level, since encounter design simply doesn't make up for the loss in engagement and complexity. The new PvP kits do a great job of delivering on flavor and variety, though. A lot of this is because jobs don't have to be compared with other jobs in their "role", just an approximate ballpark of "how good is this at killing people and helping allies not die".

They'll never, ever do it, but I want walkcasting in PvE: give DNC its forced melee back, give BRD and MCH the PvP cast times on their filler, and then give all three roles caster damage to make up for their loss of mobility. Almost every fight in the game is designed around 100% uptime anyway, so it's time for the phys ranged "mobility tax" to go and I don't care how they get rid of it, LOL.

(Also, healers are already DPS in everything but name, so go ahead and remove filler heals. No one besides Netflix curebots were using them anyway—if SAM can have Kaiten removed for button bloat, Cure 1 and 2 are surely next on the list, right?)

[Tenken7]

This system works because 5 human players are (generally) more engaging to fight than one giant boss with a completely scripted timeline. I don't think I'd ever want to see PvE kits stripped to this level, since encounter design simply doesn't make up for the loss in engagement and complexity. The new PvP kits do a great job of delivering on flavor and variety, though. A lot of this is because jobs don't have to be compared with other jobs in their "role", just an approximate ballpark of "how good is this at killing people and helping allies not die".

I agree with you 100% which is the reason why I wonder if there is a way to learn from PvP if only to alleviate the button bloat in PvE. A copy/paste would be disastrous for reasons you already mentioned but I wonder if some cleaning up would help. If anything, I would like to see the 1,2,3 combos reduced into one button since nobody ever starts with 2 or 3.

[Ransu]

No, stop asking for this. It makes sense for the fast pace in pvp but that stuff does not belong in pve. Pressing 1 over and over for 10 minutes would be incredibly boring.

[Tenken7]

(Also, healers are already DPS in everything but name, so go ahead and remove filler heals. No one besides Netflix curebots were using them anyway—if SAM can have Kaiten removed for button bloat, Cure 1 and 2 are surely next on the list, right?)

This might be an unpopular opinion but after playing Sage in pvp and not having to switch targets every two seconds, I really enjoyed it. I honestly wouldn't mind if we had a healer option that didn't require the constant target switching and healed/shielded purely through different damage actions. I would main that in a heartbeat. Granted, in a perfect static, you rarely have to hardcast a heal but, this is the exception, unfortunatly, and not the rule.

[GayRobot]

I agree with you 100% which is the reason why I wonder if there is a way to learn from PvP if only to alleviate the button bloat in PvE. A copy/paste would be disastrous for reasons you already mentioned but I wonder if some cleaning up would help. If anything, I would like to see the 1,2,3 combos reduced into one button since nobody ever starts with 2 or 3.

I don't know if combo consolidation is ever going to happen—no one posting here is likely to care too much about low-level combat feel, but I can see new players being pretty whelmed if jobs like PLD had nothing to do but press 1 for the entirety of ARR.

I also personally know a surprising number of endgame players who constantly lose track of their combo during fights—for them, at least, combo is still mechanically relevant even at level 90. I get the vague feeling that this covers more players than you might expect, at least if the occasional 25-minute Expert roulette means anything. For those players, it's more than just QoL: it's a DPS increase that was out of their reach otherwise, which is a weird thing to think about.

I think it'd be cool if non-branching combos and boring oGCDs got removed/consolidated, so that hotbar space could make way for faster, more demanding jobs. Unfortunately, Square seems to like removing abilities and replacing them with nothing, so I guess I'm okay with manual combos for now.