QoL and reducing number of the buttons suggestion

[Mr_Gyactus]

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

I believe it's not.
it would ruin the whole flavor of the jobs: starting from the openings (flats), making positionals and various abilities useless (form shift and perfect balance for example), and finishing with the management of dots and buffs.

[CelestiCer]

It has been bothering me for the longest time.
Why assign individual keys for simple 1,2,3 combos?

Oki Doki, so I am going to imagine this

• My Keyboard setup now: 123/145/1Q
• Vs what People want to suggest: 111/111/111

Mhm mhm, okey Searching for Japanese venue so I can RP Seppuku there...

[Shougun]

I like condensed bars, but in context of nifty abilities. Like while I don't mind the roleplay duties I'd not want a job like that lol, however heading towards the PvP kits- I tend to think of those as pretty neat (though the PvP kits tend to also have more thematic feature flavor anyways so that probably impacts why I like them, our normal kits have mechanical cadence flavor, but not so much in features generally). IMO jobs core that fits on two bars is handy. Three bars gets a bit gangly (imo), and is usually easy to imagine it having the same features an interesting choice opportunities (and number of 'abilities' while having two bars rather than three).

[CelestiCer]

You gotta ask yourself, why was Kaiten removed when this option was on the table the whole time?

For the same reason so many good changes aren't happening with other Jobs... " The Dev's are out of Touch ". Consolidation of AOE buttons should have come first, but they didn't. Showcasing how out of touch they are. They turned Samurai into a 1-Button-OGCD-Spamming Job as Hissatsu: Shinten now is 1/5th of my gameplay that adds zero flavor.

Just cause something is easy? is not a good argument to remove it, as what is easy varies per player. Less for the sake of Less is not great unless its given or is replaced with substance... of which Square has zero track record of doing once they remove anything. I have no issues on Samurai, hell they can even add 1 button to the Job. I believe it's called Hissatsu: Kai...

[CaptainLagbeard]

Monk is really the only job you couldn't condense combos into singular buttons for due to how everything on it works with the different Forms and the Blitz system.

While simplifying the gameplay would be an effect of it, it would also help with some of the dreaded button bloat.

Aside from the combos, some other things on various Jobs that could be done for that also exist as well...

BLM, Fire 4 and Blizzard 4 can only be used with Astral Fire and Umbral Ice respectively, so they might as well be under 1 button. Same with Freeze and Flare. And Between The Lines could easily be moved to replace Ley Lines while they're active.

DRG, Wheeling Thrust and Fang and Claw being only usable with their respective buffs could be just 1 button and not 2. Or just worked into 1 button combo buttons.

SAM, Tsubame-gaeshi could probably be worked into the Iaijutsu button. Ikishoten and Ogi Namikiri probably could also just be one button.

[TheDustyOne]

Oki Doki, so I am going to imagine this

• My Keyboard setup now: 123/145/1Q
• Vs what People want to suggest: 111/111/111

Mhm mhm, okey Searching for Japanese venue so I can RP Seppuku there...

Condensed combos on SAM would be 111/222/33, not 111/111/11 as you suggest. The point of it is not to remove the depth of a job, but to remove the bloat.

Samurai during ST gameplay has 4 choices with its main GCD loop; Gekko combo, Kasha combo, Yukikaze combo, and Iaijutsu. I'm ignoring the burst GCDs here since they're only used a few times every 2 minutes. Why should 4 choices require 7 buttons when 4 does the job without sacrificing any gameplay depth? You yourself have agreed with other options for condensation to facilitate bringing back Kaiten (something I very much agree with you on), so how does condensing the combos dumb the job down? Conversely, would separating Ogi Namikiri and Kaeshi: Namakiri somehow make the job less dumbed down? What about splitting Iaijutsu into 3 separate buttons? Why would condensed combos lead to a worse result compared to say, having Ikishoten transform into Ogi Namikiri?

About the only thing lost is the possibility of restarting a combo intentionally, which is something so incredibly niche that only a handful of jobs even consider it in the most obscure optimization situations. The only job that would be actively made detrimental from condensed combos would be Monk, as it's the only job that can make meaningful decisions outside the usual combo order, and as such is the only job I don't want to see condensed combos on. If the fear is that more jobs would "be more like healers" because they'd only press 1 button 12 times before pressing something else, then it already plays like a healer and it only has the illusion of being more complex (looking at you DRK).

More buttons =/= more complex gameplay.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I can't believe I feel compelled to sit down and actually type this out because of how many reactions to the combo button consolidation seem to be either complete kneejerk reactions or misinformed.

Using this logic, we can also ask why there are multiple buttons at all and why rotations aren't just 1 button like healers or in certain MSQ duties. The answer is so that, well, everything isn't just 1 button.

Because not every single key is a combo action, they ask specifically for combo action consolidation. Not your whole rotation.

What would be the point of having a combo at all if it's just one button?

So using the key multiple times actually nets you a bigger benefit and doesn't generate resources for tapping once. Combos wouldn't go away, just the way you initiate them changes.

I believe it's not.
it would ruin the whole flavor of the jobs: starting from the openings (flats), making positionals and various abilities useless (form shift and perfect balance for example), and finishing with the management of dots and buffs.

1.) Positionals would not go away, neither would the associated actions. You'd simply trigger them using the same button multiple times in a row.
2.) Monk is literally not affected by this because it doesn't use the combo system but rather a form system.

Oki Doki, so I am going to imagine this

• My Keyboard setup now: 123/145/1Q
• Vs what People want to suggest: 111/111/111

Mhm mhm, okey Searching for Japanese venue so I can RP Seppuku there...

Three separate combo keys for the Samurai combos were already a thing in PvP, namely Gekko combo, Kasha combo and Yukikaze combo. They don't ask you to 111/111/11/Midare here.

I am very sorry @everyone and @OP especially but I am typing this out in hopes that people might react less harsh about this suggestion.

Combos are actually a series of Actions with "Combo Action" in the tooltip.

Consolidating what we refer to as 1-2-3 combos does not infer to any actions that are in fact not combo actions. Actions that depend on a buff are not combo actions. This includes and isn't limited to, just to name a few:

• Every single Monk weaponskill
• Dragoon's Fang & Claw + Wheeling Thrust
• Bard's Refulgent Arrow/Straight Shot

So how many actions could actually be consolidated by this?


NOTE - actually WAR consolidates 4 buttons, not 3, I miscounted there.
NOTE 2 - clearly math is a bit hard and I miscalculated on SAM as well. Damnit.

Neither is the list negligible in terms of actual button space management nor does it actually impair any of the gameplay if this was, at very least, a choice we could have.

This list does not consider actions that logically should simply be on the same hotkey (for example "Ikishoten" automatically becoming "Ogi Namikiri" and then "Kaeshi: Namikiri") or should be an upgrade rather than a side grade (Shoha vs Shoha II). Those are all valid issues on their own, but all I wanted to highlight is how much impact such a combo consolidation would have.

[Limecat]

1. Vastly increase auto-attack damage. Potentially replace auto-attack with 123etc animations.
2. Give ranged classes a ranged auto-attack.
3. Remove every GCD. All player agency now resides in oGCD activation.
4. Add stance flip button to switch between single or multi-target.

• 4a. Alternately make all attacks AoE instead, skip the swapping.
  • 4b. Or take the true madman option and re-incorporate crowd control into the game, design all future encounters around attempted trash pack burns not being survivable at the intended iLvl, forcing people to pick off one or two targets at a time.

But really, the situation with combat is so long-since baked in that nothing can be done to "fix" it, it is what it is. They'd have to dumpster it and redo it from scratch, and at that point they should probably be making a new game instead.

[CelestiCer]

Condensed combos on SAM would be 111/222/33, not 111/111/11 as you suggest. The point of it is not to remove the depth of a job, but to remove the bloat.

That's how it's suggested to me on the DPS forum so I just copy pasted the suggestion made to turn into 111/111/111. Even 111/222/33 I don't find great at all and there are so many ways to remove bloat. That's like telling me how you want the game to be more bland without telling me you want the game to be more bland, personal opinion though.

[TheDustyOne]

I'm just digging in a bit; how does it make it bland? The choice is never intentionally made to press Jinpu before Hakaze, and, at least in my gameplay, fat-fingering happens once in a blue moon. Blandness would be more like, well, removing Kaiten, since that actually was a meaningful part of the kit. Even on the DPS forums I see it being asked for just the combos being condensed, not the entire GCD rotation.