Button Bloat: Data for discussion

[Renathras]

...

- You can press X to doubt, but I've had it happen a handful of times that I got a Cure 1 off and it landed JUST before/as the damage was hitting, saving the target. It's niche, but useful. It's why I prefer Cure 1 -> Esuna ideas since it still retains that (and the MP economy) functionality.

- ...though more for SCH. Physic and Adlo just don't work well as an upgrade path. Your proposal is how I used to think to do it, but then you run into the problem: Does it cost 500 MP or 1000 MP? Cure 2 and Benefic 2 are just straight upgrades to Cure 1 and Benefic 1 in everything but MP cost and cast time (for Cure), but SCH has something else going on. The total healing + Shield of Adlo is pretty considerable, and well more than the 800 potency of healing from WHM. If anything (since shields are more valuable than healing in pretty much all cases other than beating a Doom healing check, and you have Emergency Tactics for that), Adlo's total should be lower than Cure 2's. Right now, it's a smidge higher (800 vs 840), but making it this wayy would be 800 vs 990, which is a pretty considerable difference. It's why Physic -> Leeches makes even more sense.

- Which spells did I say combine? Sorry, was supposed to be Whispering Dawn + Fey Blessing, like my SCH write-up thread. Specifically for that reason; they currently do have a CD of both being 1 min.

Because there is also the extra easily accessible set by holding L+R or R+L giving 16 more,

I literally brought this up... You can say "you can't just ignore them", but they aren't easily accessible. Press and hold commands don't work for everyone, and don't work as well as tapping a bumper or holding a shift button on keyboard. I already mentioned this. You liking it is fine, not everyone does. Quite a few people don't play with that system, because they don't find it "extra easily accessible". I don't.

It also doesn't counter the point that 30 buttons is already a lot of buttons. What argument can you give that an MMO class must have at least 40 buttons or it isn't challenging/interesting/fun?

My post comes off a bit contradictory because I was adding a bit of nuance to the discussion. Supersnow is right in that there are 48 easily accessed buttons

They aren't "easily accessed", though.

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I feel like this is the point where we collectively have to realize "subjectivity". We don't have a clear and agreed on definition for "easily", clearly. To me, easily on keyboard is either one button (1 to +) or holding down a modifier and pressing those buttons (Shift/ALT/CTRL + 1 to +). That gives a total of 4 bar sets that are pretty easy to access. For controller, it's holding down one trigger and pressing a button, with the allowance of a quick bumper tap before doing so. Those are "easily accessible".

If you think other things are easily accessible...good for you. I'm genuinely happy for you.

...but that isn't a universal position, hence why I don't use it for discussions.

...and Upheaval should get a trait to upgrade it's damage, which changes the animation from uppercutting the enemy, to grabbing them with one hand and headbutting them really hard

"You can't suplex the Ghost Train but you CAN pick it up off the ground and headbutt it!"

[ForsakenRoe]

Physic and Adlo just don't work well as an upgrade path. Your proposal is how I used to think to do it, but then you run into the problem: Does it cost 500 MP or 1000 MP?

500-600 to make it more comparable to the revamped Cure2's cost. Also, Regen is 1200p and costs 400. The shield is quite comparable to Cure2, only being 'out of control strong' when it crits. Cure2 can be spammed, Adlo loses effectiveness if the shield isnt broken by the time the next cast is finished. Also, having Adlo at say 600, makes it more incentive for newer players to think 'I could Succor this, orrr... I could Adlo>Deploy, for a stronger shield AND it's MP cheaper!', helping to build a good habit earlier on. As nice as Physick>Leeches might sound, it doesn't mean we'll use Physick-Leeches any more often, so it's still going to be a pretty dead button on the bar

I'm personally not super opposed to Blessing/Dawn getting combined, but... I can see it causing a lot of overheal issues, potentially. That, and I'd rather they made Blessing an AOE gauge spender or something, instead of 'Remote Deploy Indom'

[SaberMaxwell]

I'll agree to disagree, Ren.

[Rithy255]

It baffles me how easy it would be to cutdown on Paladins button Bloat without even needing to change anything fundamental about the job

Abilities Such as FOF/Goring exist for no reason as they're just Burst buttons which Req/Confiteor combo. Circle of Scorn is just a random boring ability mainly meant for APM, Holy circle could also become a Cleave attack thats casted on the enemy meaning Spirit could be removed.

Abilities Such as Holy Shelton/Intervention, could be merged into one button, Just make holy Shelton targetable reduce it's CD, Have a special condition that you *cannot* reapply it's effect while under holy Shelton's effect.

Cover, Clemency and Shield Bash Could obviously be removed, but I rather rework them to be less Situational, as of now they do need more justifiable reason to stay though (Shield Bash mostly)

I feel like yeah the rework was a step in the *right* direction, but it's just led to the job to have more clearly redundant DPS abilities that I would much rather have something that im actually going to use more then one minute with my burst, aka goring/fof.

[Shurrikhan]

It baffles me how easy it would be to cutdown on Paladins button Bloat without even needing to change anything fundamental about the job

Abilities Such as FOF/Goring exist for no reason as they're just Burst buttons which Req/Confiteor combo. Circle of Scorn is just a random boring ability mainly meant for APM, Holy circle could also become a Cleave attack thats casted on the enemy meaning Spirit could be removed.

Abilities Such as Holy Shelton/Intervention, could be merged into one button, Just make holy Shelton targetable reduce it's CD, Have a special condition that you *cannot* reapply it's effect while under holy Shelton's effect.

Cover, Clemency and Shield Bash Could obviously be removed, but I rather rework them to be less Situational, as of now they do need more justifiable reason to stay though (Shield Bash mostly)

I feel like yeah the rework was a step in the *right* direction, but it's just led to the job to have more clearly redundant DPS abilities that I would much rather have something that im actually going to use more then one minute with my burst, aka goring/fof.

I do miss old Goring (though I'd revise its interaction with BoV DoT, if that's retained), and I'd prefer a Req that isn't just a second oGCD-weave cost of FoF so I wouldn't ideally want a prune job to be dependent on removing those buttons, but yeah... these seem reasonable. Getting under 32 total buttons (including Sprint and Tincture) is a stretch, but getting under 36 would be a good goal. If Req and Goring aren't going to be desynced from FoF, then it makes sense to consolidate at least one of those out of costing a button, and there is literally zero cost to consolidating Shelltron and Intervention and just applying IV's bonus to the self-targeted effect as well.

10/10.

For Clemency and Shield Bash, I'd love to see a proc that allows them to be used oGCD, and for Shield Bash to gain conal AoE fall-off and to suppress the target's damage [halved on others] to be dealt in the next 4 seconds (thereby being [decreasingly] wasted if the stun goes through, but offering some sort of vs. bosses usage (as a stop-gap until CC as a whole system can be revised to not be a waste of bar-space in most content).

[Supersnow845]

Ren once again you can’t just take your opinions as fact then argue with everyone who doesn’t share those opinions, it’s the same as in the other healer threads, you start with the assumption your opinion is the absolute right and we are all wrong

I have never met a console player who doesn’t use L+R in at least some capacity (even if it’s for mount and summon eos) and I never said needing 40 buttons is needed for class complexity, all I said is that having a “button bloat” discussion then saying “yeah it’s too hard for some people to press L+R so I’m gonna ignore them so yes console does struggle with buttons is just a complete false start of an argument

[Rithy255]

For Clemency and Shield Bash, I'd love to see a proc that allows them to be used oGCD, and for Shield Bash to gain conal AoE fall-off and to suppress the target's damage [halved on others] to be dealt in the next 4 seconds (thereby being [decreasingly] wasted if the stun goes through, but offering some sort of vs. bosses usage (as a stop-gap until CC as a whole system can be revised to not be a waste of bar-space in most content).

Personally for Clemency you could
A: (The simple route) Make it OGCD but cost more mana, so you can't spam it otherwise it will be a DPS loss to your magic burst; This would actually make it a fun system to spend/manage your MP On.
B: Have a Way of becoming OCGD through a proc, Maybe from using a successful defensive or something like you gain a stack every minute for clemency.
Either way something that implements a OCGD clemency would really make the ability fun I think you'd have to Remove/nerf Paladins Holy spirit/burst attack healing but I'd be more then happy to trade that for something more flexiable.

Shield Bash I thought of something like your Gap closer doing no Damage now you can also rush to allies as well, but your shield bash would replace it in a sense that it would do 150 damage (or more), be OCGD, hold charges and Stun in a cone of enemies, that I'd genuinely love to see, gives Paladin a actual useful "shield attack"

See i think what annoys me the most about Paladin is just how much better I can see it become... granted that's a lot of Jobs :/


Also with goring blade i kinda really miss the alternative combo, as now it feels like we're just kinda spamming atonement with the changes made.

[Shurrikhan]

Personally for Clemency you could
A: (The simple route) Make it OGCD but cost more mana, so you can't spam it otherwise it will be a DPS loss to your magic burst; This would actually make it a fun system to spend/manage your MP On.
B: Have a Way of becoming OCGD through a proc, Maybe from using a successful defensive or something like you gain a stack every minute for clemency.

I was thinking more Route B (at least, generally speaking) than Route A, but while we're at it -- here's a crazy Route C for you:
Both Clemency and Shelltron/Intervention/Entrench/Steelguard/Aegis Boon/whatever start as a charged cast and channel respectively with a minimum GCD uptime costs, but their effect (mitigation, and mitigation duration extending beyond the channel for Shelltron; direct heal potency and HoT duration and potency per tick for Clemency) and uptime cost is reduced by gauge.

This means that Paladin can always technically turtle/ for at least a lesser effect (a bit of a flavor, more so than useful advantage), but can spend gauge to reduce/remove the uptime costs and empower its healing and mitigation.

Shield Bash I thought of something like your Gap closer doing no Damage now you can also rush to allies as well, but your shield bash would replace it in a sense that it would do 150 damage (or more), be OCGD, hold charges and Stun in a cone of enemies, that I'd genuinely love to see, gives Paladin a actual useful "shield attack".

I guess I just want the Shield (Oath/Bash/etc.) aspect of PLD to amount to more than just bonus oGCD damage, if that makes sense?

[Zeastria]

I pref less buttons with versatile use, rather than lot of button with limited usage.

I'm only able to keybind/use 23 buttons..
so i end up just useing the mouse to click on the other abilities
(those with long CD are not keybinded)
Note: I also use macros to help me reduce buttons when possible.

[Deo14]

I guess I just want the Shield (Oath/Bash/etc.) aspect of PLD to amount to more than just bonus oGCD damage, if that makes sense?

Make Shield Bash replace role of current Goring Blade. Give it conal stun and AoE damage, possibly adjust CD. Now it's great unique mitigation tool for trash packs, it's being used for AoE, and it's much better thematically than some Goring Blade. If I could get greedy, I would love cosmetic changes to PLD, make basic 1-2-3-atonement be less stabby, since stab attacks are really not what I imagine when I think about paladin/holy knight. Basic combo with mix of both sword and shield attacks wouldn't affect gameplay, but better animations will always be appreciated. And rework those spin attacks too, what's the point of having shield when you turn your back to the opponent every 10 seconds.

I literally brought this up... You can say "you can't just ignore them", but they aren't easily accessible. Press and hold commands don't work for everyone, and don't work as well as tapping a bumper or holding a shift button on keyboard. I already mentioned this. You liking it is fine, not everyone does. Quite a few people don't play with that system, because they don't find it "extra easily accessible". I don't.

It also doesn't counter the point that 30 buttons is already a lot of buttons. What argument can you give that an MMO class must have at least 40 buttons or it isn't challenging/interesting/fun?

Just a disclaimer, I haven't read this entire thread.

Wouldn't it make more sense to ask for better accessibility options, instead of doing major overhauls of most, if not all jobs? Sure you can remove plenty of healers' skills, a lot of them are bloat, but most jobs have just 1-2 buttons which are real bloat, devs would either butcher every job, or they would need to make major reworks for most jobs. And even though your preferred number of buttons seems to be 32, why this value?(rhetorical question, I know why you specifically want 32) Another person in this thread specified 23 for some reason, I remember someone in past asking for 16, so which one should devs aim for? How would it work when new expansion comes? People do want new skills, so every 2-3 years, they will need to cull 2 buttons from each job.

Problem with the game is that there really isn't neither a lot of depth nor action combat. In other games, you can make a class feel great with just <10 skills, but that's because all of them are very meaningful and have plenty of different effects, while there are other mechanics like dodging. Because FFXIV is so shallow, skills are very limited, and most jobs end up with 20 different flavours of "Deals X damage", with another 5 being "Deals X damage, but AoE". So yes, you shouldn't try to make as much skills as possible, but this is just how this game was built.

Think about FFXIV as a piano (a lot of players do refer to gameplay as playing a piano), and about GW2 (profession have usually <15 buttons) as a violin.

(Keep in mind I'm not musician) Both violin and piano are considered one of the hardest mainstream instruments to learn, but because of very different reasons. Violin is a lot about mechanical skill. You have just 4 strings, so it should be easy right? It's not, just burning in your head right angle of the bow for each string is hard. Playing fake note is easy. Piano on the other hand, you always play note correctly. All you need to do is to press correct buttons, in right order, with right intervals in between them. Which would be so much easier than violin, except that piano has 88 keys, so they're comparable when it comes to difficulty. In both of those cases, it's simply different approach.

If you wanted to merge these two things, you would end up with something like xylophone for kids.