"I don't want to think while I play, so no one should be allowed to."

[Kolsykol]

There's certain things I think some people view as '' QoL '' that aren't, especially when it comes to merging combos and stuff like that which is more gameplay oriented.
The reality is that people would feel compelled to use it because not using it would handicap yourself, if something is borderline mandatory because it's just so much more efficient then it's no longer a QoL feature really it's just a design revamp.
This is a lesson we should've learned from boss addons as well as other addons that have become normalized in a certain other MMO, people find ways to rationalize why it's '' not a big deal, just a small QoL thing '' but in effect it's really not especially not when it actually starts creeping into the design of the actual gameplay.
I like the combo system too and I wish they'd instead do something more interesting with it ( more combos, I miss Dancing Edge on NIN but make it more dynamic with more real decision making sorta like MNK ).
If you go the PvP route then all it ends up being is a 1 button spam which begs the question why even have them to begin with, it's only a visual thing at that point there's no other purpose to it and the skill floor ( albeit low ) is completely removed.
It's not hard to see people feeling pressured into using it even if they don't want to.
Not gonna go further into this I could go on but I think my overall point is fairly simple to understand.
It's very different than something like a better glam system or more features for easier searching in the market board.
Or say a search system for teleportation.

In regards to the Healer and Job design issue I think people kinda just need to accept that they're not gonna perform as well if they don't put effort into it.
I think most reasonable people can agree that someone who puts more effort into something should reap a higher reward.
The problem imo is that not only the FFXIV devs but also a lot of other devs spend too much time worrying about everyone performing at an equal level, but players are not equal.
It's okay that players perform worse if their only interest is the MSQ and other casual content.
And if their interest lies in harder content like Savage or even Ultimate then quite frankly if they can't play their Job at a competent level they're unlikely to be the type of person to put effort into learning mechanics and practicing to begin with.
So what exactly is the point of designing the optimal play of Jobs for these players?
They can still play and making things easy achieves nothing but make their numbers appear bigger on screen, but it in turn kills it in terms of fun and engagement for another significant portion of the players.
For the former it's all take and no give, while for the latter it's all give.

[pikalovr]

snip

the issue is that when you suggest any complexity it gets shot down cause "hardcore raiders" want it and it'll hurt the new player who's at level 50. (and should at least have a bare minimum understanding of the game and their kit but i digress). so people don't want complexity fine then make it just be a 1-2button rotation and open up the slots for oGCDs that can be added at higher levels only. but no that can't work either cause it dumbs down the rotation complexity (LMAO) even further. thats the issue there is no winning with people.

just like people can't use 2 braincells and some common sense to realize that, no MNK wouldn't get put down to a 2 button combo cause thankfully his rotation actually has nuance and each step of both combos has a reason to be used indepently. and SAM would just go to 3 buttons.

[Shurrikhan]

There's certain things I think some people view as '' QoL '' that aren't, especially when it comes to merging combos and stuff like that which is more gameplay oriented.
The reality is that people would feel compelled to use it because not using it would handicap yourself, if something is borderline mandatory because it's just so much more efficient then it's no longer a QoL feature really it's just a design revamp.

I want to touch on this particular example.

Combo consolidation is not a pure benefit to the user, in that it also removes tactile cues from the user, which can be rather vital to many for tracking the timing of a given fight (both in terms of hitting button A at moment X and just not falling asleep from boredom).

However, yes, it does remove a very, very mild fail condition -- the ability to do something other than resetting, switching, or progressing one's combos -- which would otherwise waste combo progress for potentially pretty massive potency loss and desync.

Consider, though: What if you simply made it impossible to do anything with pure combo skills outside of the only three options that are actually viable -- to reset, switch, or progress a combo?

There'd be no advantage to combo consolidation outside of addressing repetitive motion injury or moving the saved button space to more comfortable bindings, which would be worth the cost of tactile cues only to those who most need that reduced movement.

And yet there wouldn't be a single bit of actual depth lost. One could still hit the non-option buttons, just to (if there would be zero use case for the given key) no effect (outside of GCD drift as you note the mis-press and correct it), instead of a destructive one. One could still make the wrong choice, such as by resetting or switching to another combo, but only from among actual potential use cases (no matter how rare those use cases might be).

I feel like that's what's so often lost in the conversation. We feign that there could be no change in context when looking at choices A and B (e.g., an advantaged combo consolidation or the existing system) in isolation, never mind that the present context provides no advantage in actual depth or complexity (as the number of actual, viable options remain exactly the same as per consolidation), only an increase potential punishment that disproportionately affect a small portion of players (e.g., those with RMI or impaired dexterity).

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Lest this appear as cherry-picking, let me bring this back to the more general note:

Yes, QoL changes do tend to end up as design revamps to some degree, but we have a habit of treating them differently -- less imaginatively of surrounding warrants and prospects of design -- than we would other considerations of/around design revamps. But we shouldn't treat them separately, nor any less imaginatively. The choices at play aren't merely X feature in the existing context or nothing at all; most already encourage an examination of the present context and what parts of it are actually responsible for what we like, and what parts of what we dislike are not thus conjoined.

This ends up all the more strange and salient when compared against the QoL the devs themselves levy on us. CDs being reduced almost entirely to whatever easily matches to 120s cycles has mostly ended up considered as just wholly warranted QoL, regardless of however it may actually degrade the in-game experience... even while those same players will insist until hoarse that we should never have X, Y, or Z, even when those features have been much more carefully checked for negative implications upon the actual experience.

That's not to say that all mod ideas are good for the game. I'd agree, for instance, that boss mods would be bad for the game. I want to look at the screen, the actual audiovisual cues that give the fight more theme and flavor, not some new UI element that degrades all that. But by the same token I'd rather not have such skills as Arm's Length or Surecast even now, since those skills take up button space just to undo mechanics. Can we not apply the same criticality, the same warrants by which we might dislike a given mod idea, to the existing game, too? Can we not let each idea better polish our own understanding of what all we may like or dislike, and why, rather than just polarizing it all into oversimplifications (to mod or not to mod, should X be permissible or no)?