What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[Helgarm]

There are a lot of buttons. I'm sure it could be lessened a great deal if they really tried.

[AnnRam]

I paid a full expansion price + sub and bothered to level up my Machinist from 70 to 90.

Only to press 1 more skill in my hotbar while everything remains the same except for the android who acts on his own

[midnitdragoon]

The combat system needs a final fantasy xiv 1.0 dragon explosion treatment.... It needs to be rebuilt.

[vanaii]

There are a lot of buttons. I'm sure it could be lessened a great deal if they really tried.

Yeah, there's a ton of button bloat that's gathered over the years for some jobs. There'll be more button bloat as they add even more levels.

I'm not entirely sure how to fix that without either making it so the leveling experience rarely adds new things OR have even fewer options when being synced down.

Maybe sync itself is what needs to shift. I just know we'll have a riot if buttons start disappearing, even if they need to -- look at sam.

[Ishe-P]

I generally think that combat is the weakest aspect of this game. You can see in places how great--or at least more involved--it used to be, but it's clear so much has been gutted in ways that are baffling if one does not assume they were targeting universal viability, one that evokes an 'open access for all' ethos. I think the universal viability goal is the game's biggest detriment because with this framework there isn't a whole lot you can do in term of boss design beyond 'go here, stand there, wait for xyz, deal with a certain debuff's effects.' The more classes that get added, the more limitations that have to be introduced. It appears that duty actions were introduced to maybe correct this and provide some flexibility but proved to not be popular with enough players to really give them a good push.

For me at least, classes feel nominally distinctive with the distinctions are actually presented in pretty clever ways to avoid their very obvious similarities to other classes or encounters. Strip away the sound effects and flashy colors though and it becomes immediately apparent that the game is very close to bumping its head against the design ceiling. But hey, they did some clever stuff to make 100s of races for Cosmic Encounter (a board game that's pretty neat) so I don't doubt they have a trick or two up their sleeve, I just wish they'd move a little faster with new ideas. It all feels so conservative and sluggish as it is now.

[Ivtrix]

me dps me push raid buff every 2 minute unga bunga

entire endgame revolve around us going unga bunga, you unga bunga?

[MediocreIndigo]

I don't play any MMOs other than FFXIV and I'm also not into raiding so I feel like I don't really have enough of an idea of what would qualify the combat in this game to be good or bad. It's fine, I guess? It's pretty different from most of the other games I play. Clicking (I play with mouse + keyboard) on certain enemies in order to target them can be a bit of a hassle when there's a lot of stuff on the screen at once, but it's more of a minor inconvenience.
I've only been playing since May 2021 so I don't know firsthand what combat in the older expansions was like. I also mainly play the game for the story so combat isn't really a high priority for me in the first place. So long as it isn't too infuriating I'll probably be fine with it.

[Kaurhz]

It's OK but could be a lot better - and they've made some silly decisions. Healing is just abysmal, however.

[MagiusNecros]

PvP good. PvE bad.

[Shurrikhan]

The combat system needs a final fantasy xiv 1.0 dragon explosion treatment.... It needs to be rebuilt.

To what intent, though? What is your desired result?

We've been seeing jobs redesigned pretty frequently these last few expansions. Has that been for the better?

If not, you're asking to mulligan 10 years of polish-work --not all of it good, but almost certainly better than the design ideas that never survived closed testing or feedback-- with, in effect, random stuff that will necessarily skew towards whatever ideas were considered too terrible even for our forbearance.

Some direction, please, lest we almost certainly just get something worse.

________________

For my part, I enjoy the optimization that goes into rigid, effectively full-uptime encounters due to fixed timers and ability-sync, but dislike that such encapsulates 95% of combat, instead of a third or less. It feels like the systems, encounter design, and job design, in fixating on optimizations iconic only to full-uptime encounters have pigeon-holed themselves into an incredibly narrow band of available combat experiences, let alone fun exploitable therefrom, wasting most other prospects.

I'd much rather see most content provide significant grounds for adaptation and improvisation. I'd therefore rather see a greater number of granular, more flexibly connected parts in our rotations, too; such does not necessarily degrade (more likely increases) the skill ceiling on optimization even in full-uptime combat but provides a greater space for such adaptation and improvisation that can in turn affect encounter design and make room, in turn, for greater job diversity. I'd rather jobs follow "less is more" in terms of buttons and use that constraint to first really flesh out jobs as distinct in their play and advantages, rather than "less is better" in terms of actual distinctions (i.e., homogeneity first, identity second, which ultimately narrows both available job-based play and encounter design). I'd therefore also rather the game actually embrace the "all jobs on one character" concept in full, instead of using it primarily as an extender for time played metrics / a way to conditionally extend grinds that effectively punish only part of the playerbase while leaving the game unable to act upon that optional multi-leveling.

Is that far too vague to be actionable? For now, yes. I could provide a dozen or so pages of elaborations, "do"'s, and "don't do"'s, but it's with those kernel ideas that things start, and at least that much provides some degree of direction that can source discussion here by which to refine it.