What Are Some Easy Wins for Improving Combat Content?

[Shurrikhan]

I'll include my own two cents in a moment, but I've started this thread to hear from you all:

What appear to be some of the "low-hanging fruit", so to speak, that the devs might pluck in order to make noticeable improvements to combat content at relatively little development cost?


The more broadly and cheaply the improvement can be made/applied, the better, but feel free not to restrict yourself to that.

[Shurrikhan]

Shortlist from ideas thus far:

• Desynchronize damage-contributing CDs that are currently "obligatorily" or "automatically" synced to the 2-minute raid buff cycles.

  Decrease or increase the above abilities' recast/recharge times to sync up less often with 2-minute raid buffs and/or provide flexibly timed uses between raid buff cycles (for example, a 90s CD syncs with 2-minute raid buffs only at the start and then once per 6 minutes; a 2-charge 40s CD has one flexibly-timed use per 2 minutes, a 2-charge 30s CD 2 flexibly-timed uses per 2 minutes, etc.). Use former timings where sufficient (such as a 90s Guren/Senei).

• Vary the raid buffs timers themselves.

  This may cause one's averaged aDPS+rDPS to vary more with which jobs surround them, but mostly spreads out the volume of %effective-damage increases from raid buffs so that desyncs caused by deaths are less costly and the timings of some further CDs may become obligatory in the presence of other jobs (e.g., per-60s per per-90s raid-buffers).

• Add further options for reducing VFX Clutter.

  Separate the VFX layers currently made cull-able under Character Settings -> Control Settings (Character) -> Battle Effect Settings into "Broad Visual Effects" and "Near Visual Effects" and add Opacity sliders for both. Beneath these options, create two further sliders for... "Increasingly reduce opacity of overlapping visual effects (Reduce maximum visual clutter)" and "Apply transparency to effects where blocking view of target," which further decrease opacity.

• Increase the flexibility of the jobs most bottlenecked by certain inflexible timers or gauge maximums where that lack of flexibility also reduces the skill ceiling on the job.

  For instance, perhaps (A) allow the recast time of Soul Slice / Soul Scythe to scale with GCD speed and/or (B) Reducing the cooldown of Soul Slice to 6 GCDs for 400 potency and 20 gauge generated but have generate a stack of Harrowing Scythe every 2 further GCDs' time it allowed to cool, each of which grant it an additional 20 potency and 10 gauge generated, up to a maximum of 3 stacks. Chimes and slightly changes appearance at 3 stacks. In this way, RPRs would have slightly more agency over the timing of their gauge generation and expenditure at relatively low maximum/theoretical potency cost given the changes above.

• More reasonably sized (less obese) boss hit-boxes.

  Effective-uptime strategizing should be (at least) as much a concern for melee as for casters. While positionals are impacting effective uptime less and less, so too are casters becoming increasingly mobile, but that still doesn't excuse Melee having nigh guaranteed full uptime via oversized boss hitboxes while casters still have movement optimizations to deal with. If anything, both should have a lower floor to their uptime, allowing for more skill expression therethrough.

• Reduce truly needless button-bloat.

  If a skill can only be used after another, and the first cannot be reused (due to its recast time or anything else rigidly preventing it) for the whole time the follow-up action can be used (as in Namikiri Ready for 30s, which can only occur after incurring the 120s CD of Ikishoten), there is no reason for the follow-up action to require an additional button, and there should at least be an unencumbered option to consolidate them, or even direct consolidation for all. Likewise, if there is never any reason to waste the follow-up action before recasting the initial action (as in Draw->Play), they should (have the unencumbered option to) be consolidated.
  
  If a skill is only technically usable (as a trap) outside of a particular sequence (see true "combos"), then there should likewise be an unencumbered option to consolidate that sequence into a single key.

My $0.02, skipping what's already been mentioned:

• Allow all actions to properly queue, including even Potions, Sprint, and the first contextually-usable action within any given macro.

  This allows for players to set up their macros as they wish. While macros are not the most intuitive of designs compared to button consolidation, they are also far more flexible. While this provision will not better (i.e., without loss of queuing ability on actions after the first) allow for multiple actions to be used with a single button-press, it will fully allow for multiple actions per button, so long as only the actions are effectively mutually exclusive (one can only be used in melee range, or when off cooldown, or on party members, or when procced, etc., while successive alternatives are increasingly less constrictive).

• Grant Minimum Item Level runs proportionately increased drop chance for each potential reward from the given instance based on the Party's average Item Level (and therefore, expected throughput) lost in syncing down to said Minimum Item Level. Allow players to queue for Roulettes as they would for specific duties (e.g., up to 5 options selected among Roulettes and/or Specific Duties). Allow for Minimum Item Level runs of a given instance or roulette to be queued separately from and simultaneously with their normal versions (new check-mark in the main duty pane).

  If a mount had a 1% chance to drop before, and the party lost 30% of its theoretical throughput for syncing down from using the Minimum Item Level setting, that drop chance would increase to 1.3% chance. This is on average only faintly more reward-efficient (except where the party might otherwise have disproportionately saved time in skipping a phase) due to spending a higher portion of total time in combat and due reward rather than in loading in and exiting, and mostly just stands as a balanced option for higher difficulty.

• Provide visible/audible confirmation of successful positionals (and/or warning of failed positionals).

  Provide four independent options in this regard for <On Successful Positional> | <On Failed Positional> | <Neither>: Floating Combat Marker, On-target Visual Effect, Discrete Sound Effect, Filtered Sound Effect of the Original Skill.
  
  These simply better allow for players to actually notice whether they are succeeding in hitting their positionals, which can thereby promote engagement with and improvement in doing so.

• Add Filtration Options also to your Target's and Focus Target's Status Effects.

  In addition to your status effects always being shown on targets, there are now four additional and independent [Show | Hide] options for what Status Effects from other players are shown on Friendly Targets and Non-friendly Targets: <Effects Which Can Affect or be Affected by You>, <Periodic Damage or Healing Effects>, <Other Harmful Effects (Stunned, Damage Down, etc.)>, and <Other Beneficial Effects (Damage Up, Defense Up, etc.)>. The player may also reorder these options to affect the order in which they are shown.
  
  Where the categories overlap, the effect will be shown if any of its relevant categories are shown. For instance, if you can cleanse, then cleansible damage over time effects will be shown if either <Effects Which Can Affect or be Affected by You> or <Periodic Damage or Healing Effects> are shown, and if an effect has both increases damage dealt and impairs the target, it will be shown if either <Effects Which Can Affect or be Affected by You> or <Other Harmful Effects> are shown.

• Improve/increase the options available for controllers to quickly and intuitively target specific units (especially, specific party members).

  For example, allow for the DPAD to select a particular party member directly (wherein each party member, including self, has a customizable set cardinal or semi-cardinal direction) or a button to repurpose either joystick from camera turning or character movement to instead moving between filtered potential targets based on angle and depth of the joystick's push.
  
  Ideally, go further, allowing for spells to be retargeted mid-cast, and allow for the spells and abilities themselves to filter the relevant targets. Also allow casted spells to act automatically as a repurposing key for the movement joystick while being held down (if released, they no longer stop movement).

Less Essential...

• Slightly simplify and standardize reward-efficiency across content types.

  Merge Poetics and endgame non-weekly capped tomestones, but increase their cap to 5000. Automatically convert excess rewards (such as weekly-capped tomestone once capped) to the next-lesser reward form (e.g., Poetics). Slightly reduce the reward-efficiency of outliers like Hunts and Expert Roulette to bring them more in line, while increasing the reward efficiency of other content types likewise to match.
  
  This is just a very simple, easy, pretty uncontroversial leveling of the playing field such that player participation might better scale with players' intrinsic interest in each content type, and thereby giving a better representation of players' intrinsic engagement with(in) each content type as to better inform later content creation.

• Minor UI Adjustments to increase visibility of other's actions.

  Have non-casted actions, too, briefly show on the Party Frame and (Focus) Target castbars ("progress bars"), revealing one's last action taken. Allow players to include their GCD timer and last GCD action used within their own Progress Bar. This will show the remaining time until one's next action is available and will apportion cast times to the global recast interval ["GCD length"] (a 3s cast on a 2.5s GCD would extend the cast bar beyond its normal maximum length, while a 1.5s cast would start from 60% down the Cast Bar).
  
  This is a quick, simple, initial step for giving ostensible weight (especially to/for new players) to being aware of one's party members' actions while also giving more veteran players an easier time of helping to track and thereby advise new players' actions.

[Supersnow845]

Desynchronise a lot of the oGCD’s classes press for damage with no interaction from their nice cool-downs to reduce the impact of the two minute meta without having to redesign the jobs to hell and back

If say DRK had some funky CD’s for a lot of its random oGCD bloat that didn’t really align with the burst window (things like 50 seconds or 40 seconds etc) you could trim the burst APM and increase the out of burst APM without really changing the job design much

[Shurrikhan]

Desynchronise a lot of the oGCD’s classes press for damage with no interaction from their nice cool-downs to reduce the impact of the two minute meta without having to redesign the jobs to hell and back

If say DRK had some funky CD’s for a lot of its random oGCD bloat that didn’t really align with the burst window (things like 50 seconds or 40 seconds etc) you could trim the burst APM and increase the out of burst APM without really changing the job design much

So, to apply this policy in quick fashion (to check that I'm understanding you correctly):

1. Select roughly half of each job's offensive CDs with obligatory timings that are held for or inadvertently sync to the 2-minute window.
2. Decrease or increase the above's cooldowns to sync less often (inadvertently or per "obligatory" banking) to that 2-minute window, perhaps offering to multi-charge CDs at least one use per 2 minutes of flexible timing. Tune potency commensurately. (Perhaps prefer former timings where they already met these objectives.)

And if we were to apply this to DRK, we might get something like...

• Carve and Spit and Abyssal Drain moved to a 40s CD with 2 charges.
• Living Shadow moved to a 90s CD.
• Potencies adjusted accordingly, either from these skills themselves or by siphoning potency for their added frequency from actions which still remain banked for the 2-minute bursts, such as Edge/Flood.
• If this still decreases DRK's aRPG margin by less than the policy's application would to competing jobs in role, additionally attach an MP cost to Shadowbringer and perhaps Carve and Spit / Abyssal Drain while increasing MP generation accordingly, thereby shifting some further potency out of the 2-minute burst window.

Am I understanding that quick fix about correctly?

P.S. 40s aligns with the 120s [40x3] burst window but has one freely timeable use per 120s at 2 charges.

[Aravell]

I can think of 2 ways off the top of my head to improve the combat system:

1) Diversify self and raid buff timers across all jobs again
If you clump everything into one singular window across 2 minutes, it severely limits job design and makes the rotation across the other one and a half minutes to become an extremely barebones resource builder segment. I'm not saying a builder/spender job design is inherently bad, but having every job fill this type of design just causes the combat system to become infinitely stale.

Allowing a spread of timers also allows people to drift and align as convenient for them. For example, in E12S, MNK didn't want to pop their 90s on Basic Relativity, so they can choose to delay to align with 120s. After that, either the party as a whole can delay their own things by 30s so the MNK naturally realigns again or the MNK can delay their next two 90s by another 30s to realign themselves back at the risk of losing one use of their buff.

2) Remove the absolutely rigid design of some jobs
Let's take SMN and RPR for example.

SMN as it is now is absolutely incapable of delaying their rotation in any way without throwing away a lot of damage. Now let's say SMN gets a new trait, everytime they use up all 3 gemstones, they get a buff called Empowered Ruin V. Empowered Ruin V will increase the potency of Ruin III by 150, after which the buff changes to Empowered Ruin IV, which increases the potency of Ruin III by 120, and so on, reducing by 30 each time. This allows SMN to delay their loop with diminishing returns as it goes longer, which would be unoptimal in normal play but also not completely destroy their rotation flow if they need to delay for whatever reason.

Now RPR, RPR as it is now is extremely rigid, they absolutely hate downtime because it throws their gauges out of whack unless they overcap repeatedly during their builder phase. Some minor changes that could fix that would be if Soul Slice gave 70 gauge instead of 50 if your gauge is currently at 0, or if Slice/Waxing Slice/Infernal Slice gave 20 gauge instead of 10 if your gauge is currently at 0. Also Gluttony being a 55s CD instead of a 60s would help with bad alignment as well.

[Zairava]

[Resists inserting long winded DRK theorycraft for the nth time]

To be serious, I want our damage to be more spread out rather than too reliant on big meaty hits every 2 minutes. For raid buffs and cooldowns to be more spread out again. This should make it easier to make more jobs rotations have more distinguishable different flows.

I want [more] kit interaction within the tanks. There's a woeful lack of it at the moment. If they are going to move forward with the tank responsibilities they keep streamlining, then it would be nice to have our kits compensate for losing them.

Take for example, because it's easier for me to list, Dark Arts. It doesn't really exist now, but if they were to bring Dark Arts back and find a way to fit it in so that we have some meaningful kit interactions (modifying/empowering abilities or otherwise) and player agency, it would be a much welcome change. It would require some trimming, but it would be better for the job as a whole, imo.

[Zeastria]

[More reactive and responsive gameplay]

1) Improvent visual clues and less bright light/distractions that serve no purpose...

2) Remove scripted fights.. it should be RNG based, only few abilties, stages should be based on hp %.

3) Rework the whole infrastructure of the game engine, so we no longer have clipping issues.

4) Seperated global-cds ; None-dps (buffs,heals,defensives..ect) abilties shouldnt share globalcd with DPS abilites!

5) More defined roles ( role responsibilities); not every role ingame should be a DPS with a tank/heal skin ..
Every role should be dependent on one another to succeed!!!!

[Supersnow845]

[More reactive and responsive gameplay]

1) Improvent visual clues and less bright light/distractions that serve no purpose...

2) Remove scripted fights.. it should be RNG based, only few abilties, stages should be based on hp %.

3) Rework the whole infrastructure of the game engine, so we no longer have clipping issues.

4) Seperated global-cds ; None-dps (buffs,heals,defensives..ect) abilties shouldnt share globalcd with DPS abilites!

5) More defined roles ( role responsibilities); not every role ingame should be a DPS with a tank/heal skin ..
Every role should be dependent on one another to succeed!!!!

On your 2nd point T7S is a perfect example of why that design does not work, T7S is a god awful fight that rivals the ultimates in difficulty and it’s all because of its phase push design

[Zeastria]

On your 2nd point T7S is a perfect example of why that design does not work, T7S is a god awful fight that rivals the ultimates in difficulty and it’s all because of its phase push design

Bad game design can ruin the concept ^^
So it isnt just one sided issue there

[Shurrikhan]

...

Questions and Critiques:

[More reactive and responsive gameplay]

1) Improvent visual clues and less bright light/distractions that serve no purpose...

2) Remove scripted fights.. it should be RNG based, only few abilties, stages should be based on hp %.

3) Rework the whole infrastructure of the game engine, so we no longer have clipping issues.

4) Seperated global-cds ; None-dps (buffs,heals,defensives..ect) abilties shouldnt share globalcd with DPS abilites!

5) More defined roles ( role responsibilities); not every role ingame should be a DPS with a tank/heal skin ..
Every role should be dependent on one another to succeed!!!!

1.
Could you elaborate?

Alternatively, here are some potential interpretations: (A) rather than only being able to choose which particle effects are drawn in at all, allow players to determine the opacity of those layers of VFX; (B) much like ally outlines being visible through walls in a team-based shooter, attach superseding opacity masks (of conditional strength) to enemies and perhaps allies, allowing their positions and their own visual tells to be visible even when prominent VFX are going off between them and the camera. Would any of those interpretations suffice?

2.
Wholly removing scriptedness from fights would largely mean removing most contribution to the rhyme, rhythm, or reason across fights and would likely result in a net decrease in apparent skill ceiling for most players. There is also the whole spectrum between 0% scriptedness and 100% scriptedness.

It's also worth considering what a mechanic even is as players perceive it. If a boss performs a "mechanic" that gives players no directed action or means of optimization to deal with it, players are not going to feel it, but by and large what players feel comes from interacting/synergetic sets of mechanics, or the transitions between them, where "Be at A" flowing to "Be at B" creates a limited window for player movement that may require CDs or banked procs to maintain uptime.

And that's all without accounting for your reducing every boss fight to "only few abilities"... I do not understand the motive for this request. Why so simplify fights in this way, regardless of whether it allows for randomization to that "Simon Says" among mechanics A, B, or C?

Finally, stages based solely on %HP tend to be unintuitive bottlenecked nightmares, as seen in almost any challenging fight that had such %HP phase shifts. You can do something similar, but it absolutely needs restriction.

3.
This likely would not require any change to the game engine. The effect can already be had via plugins already. The base game simply includes an extra command to reset one's animation lock timers (and without a reduced remaining value based on time spent in that animation lock thus far or based upon roundtrip ping) upon receiving a confirmation message from the server, causing one's animation locks to be extended by their roundtrip ping. Simply removing command (which does not appear to need to exist) fixes the issue entirely, as would a reduced duration on the refreshed animation lock based on the time between query sent and confirmation received.

4.
I do not understand the motive behind this. This seems like it would further cripple healer decision-making.

5.
You may need to give examples of your intended result, but this likewise does not seem like it'd be a "quick fix" even if the intended policy were more concretely clear.

Overall:
I suspect the game could manage certain cheaply/easily applicable policies that could make the game feel at least slightly more responsive or reactive, but I do not suspect that these are great ways to go about getting there.

Randomization of some aspects of fight design, for instance, tends to require relatively rigid contexts in surrounding actions (be those through bundled sets of actions, or certain actions being disallowed during or within X seconds of the one randomly selected, or total damage output being decreasingly restricted over time since a given damage peak based on that peak's height, etc.). That does not mean that you can't have randomization nor that it cannot be helpful; we've already seen a degree of that in a particularly iconic Shadowbringers Extreme Trial, for instance. But it does need to have its permitted contexts as rigidly mapped out as a script would, else you cannot finely tune the fight's difficulty, which will in turn likely lead to a far clunkier and less engaging fight than even a wholly scripted one.

For a quickly-applicable policy to be made, we'd need to know which mechanics ought to be varied, to what threshold of bundling, and within what parameters. Precision there will be essential if you want tight tuning, which, so long as there are quick follow-up requirements (of healing, movement, etc.) added after the landmark mechanics, will probably the more noticeable contributor to fights needing more "responsiveness".