Button bloat and patch balance

[Quyn]

Ive played MMOs since DAoC and cant recall one, having as many keybinds as FFXIV, for regular combat use. That is due to the combo system + ogcd system in FFXIV.

So I would somewhat disagree with the assertion FFXIV being on the low end of button quantity.
Id say its the opposite actually.

Maybe Lotro or Everquest rivaled it ? too long ago to remember.

Im curious to hear which mmos had more keybinds for regular combat use. I would exclude Bars of buffs from this, as they happen before combat and rarely during it.

[CelestiCer]

Ive played MMOs since DAoC and cant recall one, having as many keybinds as FFXIV, for regular combat use. That is due to the combo system + ogcd system in FFXIV.

So I would somewhat disagree with the assertion FFXIV being on the low end of button

Your argument point is regular combat I assume you mean PvE, while mine is from a PvP perspective. I played plenty of PvP focused MMO's like BlackDesert, ArchAge, Aion, Revelation, Perfect World, ForsakenWorld, EtherSaga, Revelation just to name a few.

Examples of listed things you want reachable outside of your Class Abilities

• Juggling multiple potions, dispelling potions, food buffs, consumables
• Clicking Guild activation buffs and Teleports put on hotbar cause no room to hotkey
• Siege ammo, flares and other combat items for large scale combat
• Keybinding Multiple Pet skills and Mounts for different combat benefits
• Hotkeying different Gear sets and weapons to swap midcombat

Not all is essential every second, just until it is for PvP where every second counts. Both FFXIV's PvP and PvE does not have to deal with nearly any of what's listed above. That was my argument point. If you take away the PvP and only focus on PvE combat, it's different. But Hotbars don't discriminate, thus I compare MMO Bloat to MMO Bloat not PvE to PvE.

You can also equate Bloat to what's " Necessary ". Let's go back to FFXIV's PvE SAM kit. I said I have 34 buttons. Do I use all of them, all the time? constantly? No.

Example, Single target combat i.e Extreme's and Savage fights. Will I use the following nonstop?

• Mangetsu
• Oka
• Fuko
• Hissatsu: Guren
• Hissatsu: Kyuten
• Shoha II
• Kuyten
• Legsweep

No. Heck all Endwalker EX's and Savage fights thus far I don't use any. 8 buttons less


Lets ask the next question. Do most of the players really use the following in their daily fates/dungeon/msq/casual activities?

• Feint
• Meditate
• Legsweep
• Tincture
• TrueNorth
• ThirdEye
• Hagakure

Do they regard most or all essential enough to cast? from what I seen? no.

A lot of Players don't even know TrueNorth exists, god forbid they Feint ever. Nvr Legsweep an AoEing mob for a party member. I even had players ask me " Why use Third Eye? I have a healer "... Makes me wonder what other players not care to cast on other jobs... neglecting the buttons they have, not use all of it, and complain about... " Bloat".

But even if I find all of what I have essential, Kaiten included, which perfectly fits on my hotbars, I consider Samurai " Not Bloated " for what I have experienced from FFXIV vs Previous PvP MMO's on what I needed on my hotbars for essential combat.

[Theodric_Thorne]

Your argument point is regular combat I assume you mean PvE, while mine is from a PvP perspective. I played plenty of PvP focused MMO's like BlackDesert, ArchAge, Aion, Revelation, Perfect World, ForsakenWorld, EtherSaga, Revelation just to name a few.

Examples of listed things you want reachable outside of your Class Abilities

• Juggling multiple potions, dispelling potions, food buffs, consumables
• Clicking Guild activation buffs and Teleports put on hotbar cause no room to hotkey
• Siege ammo, flares and other combat items for large scale combat
• Keybinding Multiple Pet skills and Mounts for different combat benefits
• Hotkeying different Gear sets and weapons to swap midcombat

Not all is essential every second, just until it is for PvP where every second counts. Both FFXIV's PvP and PvE does not have to deal with nearly any of what's listed above. That was my argument point. If you take away the PvP and only focus on PvE combat, it's different. But Hotbars don't discriminate, thus I compare MMO Bloat to MMO Bloat not PvE to PvE.

You can also equate Bloat to what's " Necessary ". Let's go back to FFXIV's PvE SAM kit. I said I have 34 buttons. Do I use all of them, all the time? constantly? No.

Example, Single target combat i.e Extreme's and Savage fights. Will I use the following nonstop?

• Mangetsu
• Oka
• Fuko
• Hissatsu: Guren
• Hissatsu: Kyuten
• Shoha II
• Kuyten
• Legsweep

No. Heck all Endwalker EX's and Savage fights thus far I don't use any. 8 buttons less


Lets ask the next question. Do most of the players really use the following in their daily fates/dungeon/msq/casual activities?

• Feint
• Meditate
• Legsweep
• Tincture
• TrueNorth
• ThirdEye
• Hagakure

Do they regard most or all essential enough to cast? from what I seen? no.

A lot of Players don't even know TrueNorth exists, god forbid they Feint ever. Nvr Legsweep an AoEing mob for a party member. I even had players ask me " Why use Third Eye? I have a healer "... Makes me wonder what other players not care to cast on other jobs... neglecting the buttons they have, not use all of it, and complain about... " Bloat".

But even if I find all of what I have essential, Kaiten included, which perfectly fits on my hotbars, I consider Samurai " Not Bloated " for what I have experienced from FFXIV vs Previous PvP MMO's on what I needed on my hotbars for essential combat.

I'll admit to being one of those bad players who never uses Feint because I don't know when it's most useful, but True North actually feels the least awkward to use on SAM because of how it's nearly synchronized with Meikyo Shisui. I can never remember which positional ability is the flank and which is the rear, so I just stay in rear and use TN/MS together when they're off CD.

[CelestiCer]

I'll admit to being one of those bad players who never uses Feint because I don't know when it's most useful, but True North actually feels the least awkward to use on SAM because of how it's nearly synchronized with Meikyo Shisui. I can never remember which positional ability is the flank and which is the rear, so I just stay in rear and use TN/MS together when they're off CD.

The amount of times I play in regular casual content, dungeons and even extreme's where players prioritize RP macro's and Emotes to only die to the most simple mechanics cause reasons, is mindboggling... compared to what they should actually be worried more about like what buttons they should be paying attention to outside of emotes and RP macro's during PvE combat...

This is the erm... reason I find it so questionable from Square when they decided to use " Button Bloat " as an excuse to remove Kaiten. Although not limited to Kaiten, for what other abilities they removed or will remove and not limited to that excuse alone, it just stood out that badly. I had to deal with so much more in PvP focused MMO's, it felt like I had no space on my hotbar for that little thing that mattered so much in crucial moments.

Compare to that FFXIV? and we have Dungeons where Bots do all the work. I just use Enpi and have Thancred man handle it all /pet emote Y'shtola to show her who's really mommy while I Netflix. Or I read the forums on the 2nd screen where people complain about Bloat as I look back at my Scions just... auto clearing the Dungeon for me on the main screen. I for funzies " Hakaze Spam " through large portions of the MSQ's with just Hakaze because I can... it doesnt' feel like a lot of what we have that is considered bloat? is actually even essential to clear content.

So when we enjoy an ounce of skill-expression, be it Raiding or making Dungeons and Fate farming go fast, where every button will be used... only to have it be taken away cause its considered bloat to fix... practically nothing is like... and not just Kaiten btw name any skill that ever existed that was fun to use and is gone cause reasons.

What reasons exactly? who knows.

[WiccaP]

Its funny that in any thread about button bloat/rotation or skill, mch is always regulated to 'easy' or 'simple'. When as of 6.0 mch had/has the second highest buttons per minute, second only to ninja. How is a job with zero utility and meh dps the second busiest button job? It doesn't make sense, and balance has been way outta wack on phys dps, especially mch, for years with a lot of player feedback and never once truly addressed. Regardless of issues with the story overall, Stormblood mch was a good change and spot for the design of the job in a lot of ways. Just like I thought shadowbringer's summoner was a good spot for the summoner. They could stand to be tweaked here or there, but overall mechanically they were solid at those points and then ShB imo negatively changed MCH like EW did to summoner. If they keep going down this route with jobs, they are going to oversimplify their jobs to a point of unpopularity for the game. Keeping the floor relatively low for newbs and casuals is fine, but can we stop lowering the ceiling as well?

"This is based on the CPM(cast per minute)s of the top 10 players from FFLogs Primal #2(Hydaelyn Extreme) rDPS rankings.

The CPM is for all weapon skills, spell, and abilities.

It does not take into account the complexity of skill turning, and is a simple measure of finger busyness.

Job CPM Min Max
NIN 45.6 44.4 46.4
MCH 45.1 44.2 46.4
BRD 42.5 42.1 43.3
SAM 42.2 40.5 43.2
GNB 41.5 39.7 43.9
DRG 40.9 40.3 41.8
MNK 39.8 38.8 41.3
AST 38.6 35.9 40.6
DNC 38.4 36.5 40.6
DRK 37.9 36.6 39.6
RDM 36.5 35.9 37.1
RPR 36.0 35.1 36.8
SMN 35.7 33.9 37.4
SCH 35.4 33.1 38.0
PLD 34.6 33.1 36.4
WAR 34.1 32.4 35.1
SGE 33.1 31.1 35.0
BLM 32.8 32.2 34.8
WHM 31.7 30.2 34.1
"

[Quyn]

Lets ask the next question. Do most of the players really use the following in their daily fates/dungeon/msq/casual activities?

• Feint
• Meditate
• Legsweep
• Tincture
• TrueNorth
• ThirdEye
• Hagakure

Do they regard most or all essential enough to cast? from what I seen? no.

A lot of Players don't even know TrueNorth exists, god forbid they Feint ever. Nvr Legsweep an AoEing mob for a party member. I even had players ask me " Why use Third Eye? I have a healer "... Makes me wonder what other players not care to cast on other jobs... neglecting the buttons they have, not use all of it, and complain about... " Bloat".

But even if I find all of what I have essential, Kaiten included, which perfectly fits on my hotbars, I consider Samurai " Not Bloated " for what I have experienced from FFXIV vs Previous PvP MMO's on what I needed on my hotbars for essential combat.

Ah interesting, thank you for sharing.
Many games you've quoted, I havent played, so I cannot comment on those. I did play Aion and Archeage when they were new. They weren't button heavy at all but I never ventured into their late game PvP.

I find that line of comparison somewhat flawed since it compares top end performance of PvP at full capacity, to a setting of easy content with an uninvested player.
It would seem more logical to compare that to a Savage or ultimate raider in FFXIV.

But I do agree that comparing PvP to PvE is somewhat difficult to begin with, apples and oranges.

I think it is fun to list all of Sam's ( any melee dps would do, I just chose Sam because you elected to use it as an example) regularly used keybinds for something like Savage as an exercise of comparison :

6 for basic combos sen building
Shinten
Midare
Tsubame
Hagakure
Meditate
Meikyo
Senei
Shoha
Ikishoten
Ogi Namikiri
Gyoten
Enpi
third eye
true north
Arm's Length
Bloodbath
Second wind
Feint
Pot

Thats roughly 25 Keybinds of actions you'd use regularly in Savage content at maximal effort level, excluding any AOE binds. A pretty respectable number of stuff to bind and swiftly use, without dropping GCDs.

I find this manageable but for me its hitting the limit of what I find reasonable. I use my mouse thumb keys as a modifiers, since mmo mice are so clunky/ large.
I suppose my main point is that you'd use all those skills fairly often, unlike keybinds to pre pull one time buffs etc.

[Quyn]

Its funny that in any thread about button bloat/rotation or skill, mch is always regulated to 'easy' or 'simple'. When as of 6.0 mch had/has the second highest buttons per minute, second only to ninja. How is a job with zero utility and meh dps the second busiest button job? It doesn't make sense, and balance has been way outta wack on phys dps, especially mch, for years with a lot of player feedback and never once truly addressed. Regardless of issues with the story overall, Stormblood mch was a good change and spot for the design of the job in a lot of ways. Just like I thought shadowbringer's summoner was a good spot for the summoner. They could stand to be tweaked here or there, but overall mechanically they were solid at those points and then ShB imo negatively changed MCH like EW did to summoner. If they keep going down this route with jobs, they are going to oversimplify their jobs to a point of unpopularity for the game. Keeping the floor relatively low for newbs and casuals is fine, but can we stop lowering the ceiling as well?

"This is based on the CPM(cast per minute)s of the top 10 players from FFLogs Primal #2(Hydaelyn Extreme) rDPS rankings.

The CPM is for all weapon skills, spell, and abilities.

It does not take into account the complexity of skill turning, and is a simple measure of finger busyness.

Job CPM Min Max
NIN 45.6 44.4 46.4
MCH 45.1 44.2 46.4
BRD 42.5 42.1 43.3
SAM 42.2 40.5 43.2
GNB 41.5 39.7 43.9
DRG 40.9 40.3 41.8
MNK 39.8 38.8 41.3
AST 38.6 35.9 40.6
DNC 38.4 36.5 40.6
DRK 37.9 36.6 39.6
RDM 36.5 35.9 37.1
RPR 36.0 35.1 36.8
SMN 35.7 33.9 37.4
SCH 35.4 33.1 38.0
PLD 34.6 33.1 36.4
WAR 34.1 32.4 35.1
SGE 33.1 31.1 35.0
BLM 32.8 32.2 34.8
WHM 31.7 30.2 34.1
"

Button bloat and CPM are separate variables. Your job could have 5 keys with a CPM of 90.

When people refer to button bloat, they usually mean the quantity of unique skills they must bind and press, not the quantity of button presses per minute.

[WiccaP]

Button bloat and CPM are separate variables. Your job could have 5 keys with a CPM of 90.

When people refer to button bloat, they [I]usually[I] mean the quantity of unique skills they must bind and press, not the quantity of button presses per minute.

I understand, which is why I said button bloat / rotation or skill. While they are separate variables the quantity of buttons pressed per minute does affect the playstyle of the job as much as the quantity of skills that must be pressed in the rotation. The 2 are not mutually exclusive and both contribute to the job overall and affect each other. My point was that it is typically considered an easy rotation, and to be fair it's not the hardest rotation, but it is extremely button press heavy. Which would tie into the overall topic of the thread Button Bloat and Patch Balance. So yes, Mch rotation can be called simple, but its also one that can easily be messed up by a mistake or ping issues.

If we are going to compare jobs based on DPS or functionality, the MCH rotation being simple and needing you to press more buttons per minute to be somewhat close to the average of the other jobs, is a topic that falls under balancing issues.

[Quyn]

I understand, which is why I said button bloat / rotation or skill. While they are separate variables the quantity of buttons pressed per minute does affect the playstyle of the job as much as the quantity of skills that must be pressed in the rotation. The 2 are not mutually exclusive and both contribute to the job overall and affect each other. My point was that it is typically considered an easy rotation, and to be fair it's not the hardest rotation, but it is extremely button press heavy. Which would tie into the overall topic of the thread Button Bloat and Patch Balance. So yes, Mch rotation can be called simple, but its also one that can easily be messed up by a mistake or ping issues.

If we are going to compare jobs based on DPS or functionality, the MCH rotation being simple and needing you to press more buttons per minute to be somewhat close to the average of the other jobs, is a topic that falls under balancing issues.

Apologies, I skimmed over your post too quickly and misinterpreted your point.

I never understood why MCH has been placed at the DPS it is at. I agree that it should deserve to be higher.

[Supersnow845]

Its funny that in any thread about button bloat/rotation or skill, mch is always regulated to 'easy' or 'simple'. When as of 6.0 mch had/has the second highest buttons per minute, second only to ninja. How is a job with zero utility and meh dps the second busiest button job? It doesn't make sense, and balance has been way outta wack on phys dps, especially mch, for years with a lot of player feedback and never once truly addressed. Regardless of issues with the story overall, Stormblood mch was a good change and spot for the design of the job in a lot of ways. Just like I thought shadowbringer's summoner was a good spot for the summoner. They could stand to be tweaked here or there, but overall mechanically they were solid at those points and then ShB imo negatively changed MCH like EW did to summoner. If they keep going down this route with jobs, they are going to oversimplify their jobs to a point of unpopularity for the game. Keeping the floor relatively low for newbs and casuals is fine, but can we stop lowering the ceiling as well?

"This is based on the CPM(cast per minute)s of the top 10 players from FFLogs Primal #2(Hydaelyn Extreme) rDPS rankings.

The CPM is for all weapon skills, spell, and abilities.

It does not take into account the complexity of skill turning, and is a simple measure of finger busyness.

Job CPM Min Max
NIN 45.6 44.4 46.4
MCH 45.1 44.2 46.4
BRD 42.5 42.1 43.3
SAM 42.2 40.5 43.2
GNB 41.5 39.7 43.9
DRG 40.9 40.3 41.8
MNK 39.8 38.8 41.3
AST 38.6 35.9 40.6
DNC 38.4 36.5 40.6
DRK 37.9 36.6 39.6
RDM 36.5 35.9 37.1
RPR 36.0 35.1 36.8
SMN 35.7 33.9 37.4
SCH 35.4 33.1 38.0
PLD 34.6 33.1 36.4
WAR 34.1 32.4 35.1
SGE 33.1 31.1 35.0
BLM 32.8 32.2 34.8
WHM 31.7 30.2 34.1
"

Very small edit, this does not take into account changing or cycling targets, generally only relevant to the healers because of their healing but if you account for target cycling (especially on console) AST is number one in APM, and also suffers from generic healer has too many heals bloat