QoL and reducing number of the buttons suggestion

[Ardeth]

I'll never understand the more buttons=better game people. They always get so offended like you're asking for 1 button to press when it's almost always this job has 30 skills and like 3 of them could be turned into traits and the job wouldn't change much. And it's like you've shot their grandmother. It's ok to find redundancys and ask for them to be removed or streamlined. As an example, you used to have to get a crank out and turn your engine over with it to drive it. Now you can start it from your phone. I got a new car recently, and I barely have a key. Losing, like, let's say, True North because they removed positionals isn't that massive of a deal. Most bosses don't have positions anymore. And most players don't even do the positionals. Also, True North trivializes a great deal of it as well. They've gone from if you don't do them, you break your combo to eh I lost some dps or gauge. And if you don't use a meter, you wouldn't even notice it anyway. That's a redundancy. Granted, that % of damage adds up in a fight, but if that % was just added back to the skill even at a fraction of what it was, nobody would even notice. Well, except the meter people. But honestly, that's not remotely close to everyone who plays this game. It's like keeping it for that 10% or whatever the real number is.

I just think people take change too seriously. Unless they go full World of Warcraft, you have 6 buttons to press you're gonna be fine. Btw I played back then, and it sucked. So having next to no buttons also isn't the awnser, but losing 1 or 2 isn't the end of the world.

Just open your mind a little is all I'm asking.

[TheDustyOne]

Okay, this post ended up a little longer than expected.

The biggest problem with the modern fights is the lack of dynamic mechanics and job kits that have diverse tools to react to those dynamic situations.

Neither 1-2-3 combos or 1-1-1 combos makes the combat interesting, they both represent a single choice in a larger part of a jobs kit out of what should be a multitude of choices. PvP works because of the dynamic nature of the fights requiring you to not think in a parse-brained manner where something has to be used on cooldown or it's going to waste, where it's worth using that weaker stun attack because the rest of the group is going to down this straggler as long as they can stay still. Jobs there only have a single hotbars worth of skills, but they require far more thought in their usage than PvE does. If you hated the idea of 1-1-1 in PvP, you could technically just copy the same action on the hotbar 3 times and emulate the PvE experience if you really wanted to, either way that isn't what makes PvP exciting, what makes it exciting is the need to make on-the-fly decisions that if made poorly, can cost you the fight.

PvE completely lacks this kind of dynamism, fights are incredibly scripted and lack any kind of random variance that could heavily disrupt rotations. There's only add phases about once, maybe twice an expansion, and there's no need to kite or CC them. Bosses don't need positioning anymore, they're strong independent bosses that don't need no tank and will decide where they want to be themselves, which is going to be the center of the arena where they'll put their static mechanics that will never change position outside 2 presets chosen at random. The other preset is possibly used for the second half of the fight.

Because of this kind of fight design, CC is an afterthought on jobs and only exists because of older raids that made use of them. Tanks are just melees with defensive cooldowns and don't have to make any concessions on keeping aggro, positioning, or their mitigation. Tankbusters are also not that frequent and so you almost always have a cooldown ready for when they eventually pop up, meaning there's not much need to think out cooldowns unless you're planning to optimize. Most DPS cooldowns are pretty unremarkable as they're just use-on-cooldown, I'm not making some super-smart decision on saving them for that special moment, I'm just wasting them by not using them. Gauge abilities can at least be saved for burst phases, so they're not entirely brain-dead.

Don't even get me started on healers, I've already spent enough time complaining about them on the healer forums. If 1-2-3 combos actually added any kind of depth and made a job enjoyable, you wouldn't see healers groan at someone suggesting to add them to their kits. What healers instead argue for are extra job-based mechanics; gauges, stacks, buffs, debuffs, procs, etc.

Okay, so what does this tirade about fight and job design have to do with combo consolidation? Because dumbing down comes from the removal of meaningful choices and interactions between mobs and players as described above, hitting 2 before 1 is something that occurs only when fat-fingering, it's not a meaningful choice that you consciously make, instead it's shoved into muscle memory during the leveling process. The choice to use the combo is meaningful, but it's a single choice split needlessly over 3 buttons. The only job that would be affected by this is MNK, which shouldn't be consolidated anyway since it technically has its own combo system and actually has good reason to use skills outside of their combos. Removal of positionals is a far better candidate for describing something as dumbing down.

If more buttons on a job somehow made it more enjoyable just because of the fact that it has more buttons, then the easy way to fix SMN is to remove Gemshine and Precious Brilliance and put the elemental abilities on their own hotbar slots. Do the same for Astral Flow, Enkindle Bahamut, Astral Impulse/Flare, Fountain of Fire/Brand of Purgatory, and boom, fixed, SMN now has 39 buttons. It doesn't change how it plays, it's still choose a colour > press the colour 3 more times > Demi summon > spam the only attack that actually lights up > repeat, but hey, it's not dumbed down because it has the most buttons out of any job!

SMN is bad because the choices don't feel all that different from each other and it's a very easy job. The only interesting choice you might have to make is "Can I get away with using Ifrit?". MNK I find more technical than the other melees and yet it has the least amount of buttons amongst them, so as far as I'm concerned, button count != complexity.

The reason I argue in favour of consolidated combos is because it's literally free hotbar slots, that's it. Jobs still have the same amount of choices they normally have, they don't suddenly lose out on any output, they don't lose any APM, and they still have to choose what combo path they have to follow down. It just doesn't waste 2-5 hotbar slots.

Figured I'd at least better explain my thoughts on something being considered dumbed down and how it relates to this topic in particular, I think the reaction to the suggestion for consolidation is mostly knee-jerked and not really thought through as to why it's dumbed down. Mostly I just want better explanations for why current combos are better than consolidated, because the only reason I can think of has to do with tactile feel.

[Merrigan]

This may sound like a strange question, but how can you have problems with buttons? I mean, on a PC. On Ps it's probably another problem, but there are so many keys on the keyboard that I don't think it's possible to have problems with that?

[Mikey_R]

This may sound like a strange question, but how can you have problems with buttons? I mean, on a PC. On Ps it's probably another problem, but there are so many keys on the keyboard that I don't think it's possible to have problems with that?

Whilst your questions about controller space have been answered, there is one nit pick I do want to address. It isn't just a case of how many buttons/kays are available, but how many are easily accessible.

As an extreme hypothetical, I could have an input device with 1000 buttons, you have no problems with running out of room, however, they aren't all going to be easily accessible and practical for combat.

As someone who doesn't use KB+M I cannot make a comment from first hand experience, however, from what I have read/seen over the years, most people only use 2 modifiers, sometimes 3, which is a total of 4 hotbars worth of actions, however, they rarely, if ever use all 10 slots on each hotbar. They instead saving them for more obscure/out of combat things, just because they cannot easily access them during combat.

Again though, this might just be a case of people not setting up their settings right, or not making full use of the options available, I am wholly ignorant in that respect.

[Merrigan]

Whilst your questions about controller space have been answered, there is one nit pick I do want to address. It isn't just a case of how many buttons/kays are available, but how many are easily accessible.

As an extreme hypothetical, I could have an input device with 1000 buttons, you have no problems with running out of room, however, they aren't all going to be easily accessible and practical for combat.

As someone who doesn't use KB+M I cannot make a comment from first hand experience, however, from what I have read/seen over the years, most people only use 2 modifiers, sometimes 3, which is a total of 4 hotbars worth of actions, however, they rarely, if ever use all 10 slots on each hotbar. They instead saving them for more obscure/out of combat things, just because they cannot easily access them during combat.

Again though, this might just be a case of people not setting up their settings right, or not making full use of the options available, I am wholly ignorant in that respect.

But are there enough of them accessible?

[Erinellza]

I believe this will be a great QoL change and also a great way to reduce the number of buttons in the game.

I don't care as long as it's OPTIONAL at the game settings. I enjoy pressing MANY buttons and I want MORE! New Summoner and PvP make me fall asleep because I keep pressing the same few buttons. If they forced this button reduction on me I would quit the game. So if we ever get this change it must be optional, that way everyone will be happy. Please and thank you.

[Gordita]

I don't care as long as it's OPTIONAL at the game settings. I enjoy pressing MANY buttons and I want MORE! New Summoner and PvP make me fall asleep because I keep pressing the same few buttons. If they forced this button reduction on me I would quit the game. So if we ever get this change it must be optional, that way everyone will be happy. Please and thank you.

Tbh I can agree with both perspectives regarding this topic, as jobs like smn have become extremely boring to play and feel like they have no flavor. Other jobs though, while doing higher level or high end content , can be literally impossible to use your entire kit as needed 100% of the time due to having too many buttons all over the place. Speaking from a controller perspective. A lot of errors happen with controller input as it is, so if there's too many then it only causes problems for more than just the person pushing the buttons but also the people they party with. I personally think there should be a cap of 32 buttons on hotbar slots for every job. Having actions that auto change to others within that 32 is exactly what's needed to prevent the game getting overly clunky combat controls.

[Merrigan]

Tbh I can agree with both perspectives regarding this topic, as jobs like smn have become extremely boring to play and feel like they have no flavor. Other jobs though, while doing higher level or high end content , can be literally impossible to use your entire kit as needed 100% of the time due to having too many buttons all over the place. Speaking from a controller perspective. A lot of errors happen with controller input as it is, so if there's too many then it only causes problems for more than just the person pushing the buttons but also the people they party with. I personally think there should be a cap of 32 buttons on hotbar slots for every job. Having actions that auto change to others within that 32 is exactly what's needed to prevent the game getting overly clunky combat controls.

... Yet another reason why the use of a controller should not necessarily be permitted.

And I know my answer is rather unsympathetic, sorry. But let's just say that console integration is starting to become far too restrictive in a number of ways.

The big problem is that limiting the number of actions would force the devs to adopt a radically different gamedesign from what we've had in previous expansions. Lately it's worked like this: adding one or two skills, sometimes unnecessary, but without ever reviewing the system in depth, except for 'critical' classes. It's also quite dangerous when you consider the reactions sometimes... Strong, as soon as there's a change that goes too far.

[Gordita]

... Yet another reason why the use of a controller should not necessarily be permitted.

And I know my answer is rather unsympathetic, sorry. But let's just say that console integration is starting to become far too restrictive in a number of ways.

The big problem is that limiting the number of actions would force the devs to adopt a radically different gamedesign from what we've had in previous expansions. Lately it's worked like this: adding one or two skills, sometimes unnecessary, but without ever reviewing the system in depth, except for 'critical' classes. It's also quite dangerous when you consider the reactions sometimes... Strong, as soon as there's a change that goes too far.

Final fantasy was a console game first, so PC integration is becoming a problem with all the people on PC acting like they matter more as they all use bots to destroy markets and game balance etc.

[Merrigan]

Final fantasy was a console game first, so PC integration is becoming a problem with all the people on PC acting like they matter more as they all use bots to destroy markets and game balance etc.

The problem is not at all to define who is more important, console or PC gamers. In the same way, the fact that FF is a console game is irrelevant here - it's the MMORPG aspect that takes precedence.

The integration of consoles, or to be more exact, the desire to open up a game to various ports is problematic, yes. It forces you to take into account gameplay, gcd and sociability management that can't be the same - and potentially not to exploit a platform.
I'm a PC and console gamer, by the way. So it's got nothing to do with the old "pc master race" cliché that you seem so quick to pin on me.