simple way to reduce button bloat without changing gameplay

[angelar_]

Uhm guys, you can already do this in the game without any mod.

Assuming hotbar 1 is your regular and hotbar 9 is your AOE. Just create 2 macro to switch between them. I do this on RPR 'cause the absurd number of buttons it has.

But this doesn't solve the real problem with button bloat.

XIV is designed around having a certain number of buttons. They have expressed this on more than one occasion that in Endwalker the classes are more or less "at their limit" for how many buttons they can have.

The problem with bloat is not that the player doesn't have a solution for it. It's that the skill design space is limited by this bloat.

For instance, Black Mage has 32 class/role buttons. (I'll leave potions and Sprint out of the picture for simplicity.)

Out of those buttons, 6 buttons are AoE version of single target buttons. As you state, you can use a macro to toggle your bars to facilitate an AoE toggle (provided you are not already using them all, of course...) That leaves you with 26 buttons in total.

Or does it? The 6 paged buttons still exist for the class, and that space cannot be used for other skill design. If they comimitted to an official system with an AoE stance swap, you would truly eliminate these skills, making the actual number of skills Black Mage has 26, then say +1 for the new stance button making 27. That's 5 extra buttons for skill design space that are being squandered on vapid button clones.

To speak nothing of combo buttons, of course.

I am not arguing for or against the existence of an AoE stance, as I agree with others that the implementation of it does not have 0 drawbacks and I frankly don't care to think that hard about something that I seriously doubt will ever exist (however their impulse to remove Cleric Stance comes to mind.) But an officially supported AoE swap button would be simply superior to a macro hack. Also, a macro solution being obviously optional additionally creates a problem I'll address in a different response:

If only there were some way to please both sides of the PvP combo button argument.....
Like maybe......putting the "combo" action as a separate action in the actions menu....

Yep, that would just be too craaaaazy to consider.

As I outlined above with a prospective AoE toggle, the benefit of combining buttons is lost if it doesn't expand the classes' design space.

With that goal in mind, making the change optional creates a design problem: Players using the paging combo buttons would be asking for new skills because they now have space for them. To cater to them leaves those who choose not to use them with the original problem: too many buttons. Whatever implementation for this would have to be uniform or there's really no point in even doing it (unless you just really badly want to go 11111111111111111111 instead of 123123123123123123 at face value.)



Ultimately, the entire problem with button bloat is it leaves them with no space for new class design. They're already only adding like 2ish new buttons each expansion, with others being passives, upgrades, pages for existing skills, or deleting old skills, the last of which is a volatile solution (Example: community response to SAM's Kaiten.) If they cleaned up wasteful buttons, they would have more room to continue to expand upon classes without risking blowing things up.