QoL and reducing number of the buttons suggestion

[Eraden]

As BLM Mao has lots space left overs on bars for more spells. For now. Mao nots sure if will stay that way when DT comes out and maybe is more spells. Mao will wait and see.

[Raikai]

Honestly, I think that merging 1-2-3 combos is great if the vacant keybinds are used to add stuff that actually interacts with the said combo or other filler actions (as opposed to yet another 120s action).

Of course, this doesn't apply to the jobs that have branching combos because there's decision making over there.

[Supersnow845]

Exactly, 1-2-3 isn’t button bloat, another 1000+ potency oGCD on a 2 minute CD you press in the burst window and fish for crits on is button bloat

I’d rather lose hyosha ranryu than lose NIN’s 1-2-3 for example

[Mr_Gyactus]

I simply don't get this logic. inevitably, you're still pressing the same buttons over and over because the combat is scripted. press cd every 120s? press hakaze to start a new combo? still hitting hakaze over and over.. why do people think they're better if they press 3 separate buttons? At least the plugin exists for those who want to optimize.

Because the timing and correct execution of a long sequence of inputs is part of the "DPS challenge" of this kind of games. An excessive pruning would remove the challenge and with it the fun and the satisfaction. Think about the HEALERS, where at 90 you click stone for the whole fight + occasional aoe heal.

why do you need to click 1,1,1? it's easy to make the character do only autoattacks and remove the burden of press a button at all.
why do you need to move? We already have the code ready, the NPC of duty support. SE could make the character move for you.
why do you need a burst damage window?
and we can continue to demolish until we do nothing, just watch the AI playing the game for us.
is it extreme? Not really, we already have android/Ios game like this.

My opinion would be very different if we were talking about an action RPG game, like ff7 remake, but ff14... is not.

[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.

[CaptainLagbeard]

I love how the first page of this forum currently has threads complaining that the game is too dumbed down and threads asking for the game to be dumbed down. Hats off to the devs that have to make sense of it all.

Going from pressing 1 2 3 to pressing 1 1 1 isn't really dumbing the game down much... And if they do it, they can bring in more skills to the freed up action bar slots that make it more complex. SAM and DRG are probably the two best examples of it, as SAM has 7 buttons to do what could be done with 3 for the single target combos, and they could replace those 4 buttons with new things.Same with DRG which has 7 buttons for it's single target combos that could be done with 2... Opening up room for 5 new skills.

[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.

[Gordita]

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.


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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sadly people come here to argue and troll more than to seek solutions, and they either ignore the obvious or don't know what they're talking about. I'm surprised you took the time to spell it out for them. Smh

[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?

[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.