Button Bloat

[OogaShaka]

It's getting silly the almost 2 rows of attack-ish skills , just make rank 2,3,4 and so on of like 3 buttons for single and maybe 2 buttons for aoe. Some classes will need a few more for buffs and dispels, also 5 or 6 defensive buffs are dumb just have like 2 and lower timer on em.If Square ever looked at the unused skills they would know there is bloat and that game money could be put to better use like cotton tails on Viera or fixing the male au'ra's run animation so it doesn't look like they have rickets when running.

[Jeeqbit]

Square Enix faced the issue for button bloat in Heavensward. They addressed it by removing unused, useless skills and merging them. Over time, they created an "upgrade" system so that older actions didn't need to be on the hotbar when level syncing, and made better use of traits to adjust the rotation as you level.

They have aimed to keep the button bloat about the same in every expansion, so if you think it's bad now, it would have been much worse after 4 expansions if they hadn't been keeping it balanced.

Many people tend to be critical when a job has as few buttons as you are suggesting. Take Summoner for instance. It's a well-designed job that plays well but a lot of people attack it on the basis of it having few buttons in regular use overall.

If Square ever looked at the unused skills they would know there is bloat

No, there is not, or barely. There used to be in Heavensward and Stormblood, but by Shadowbringers they had removed almost all of it. You appear to play Paladin, so sure, there is Shield Bash still, but mostly there aren't unused actions anymore (unless you just don't know how to use them).

Role actions are maybe kinda unused, that's been a thing with role actions since they were added because you usually don't need Leg Graze and stuff like that.

[rawker]

Many people tend to be critical when a job has as few buttons as you are suggesting. Take Summoner for instance. It's a well-designed job that plays well but a lot of people attack it on the basis of it having few buttons in regular use overall.

Well-designed isn't exactly the best description to give on current SMN for a myriad of reasons. Some of it, and probably more, are:

• oversimplification to the point that no thinking is required. EW WHM is simple and straight-forward but it is not insulting as EW SMN. WAR, also a smooth brain job, has even more buttons to press than EW SMN.
• removal of a mechanic instead of embracing the original design and just continue to improve on it.

[TheOperator3712]

It's getting silly the almost 2 rows of attack-ish skills , just make rank 2,3,4 and so on of like 3 buttons for single and maybe 2 buttons for aoe. Some classes will need a few more for buffs and dispels, also 5 or 6 defensive buffs are dumb just have like 2 and lower timer on em.If Square ever looked at the unused skills they would know there is bloat and that game money could be put to better use like cotton tails on Viera or fixing the male au'ra's run animation so it doesn't look like they have rickets when running.

I quite like my running animation thank you very much. Leave it alone. As for buttons, the amount of buttons is fine. If anything many if not most jobs could handle having a few more. And if you have unused buttons, you're #doingitwrong

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Many people tend to be critical when a job has as few buttons as you are suggesting. Take Summoner for instance. It's a well-designed job that plays well but a lot of people attack it on the basis of it having few buttons in regular use overall.

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I'm not sure a job that can be macro'd into a single button can be called well designed. Especially when that macro actually allows you to play at a fairly high level. Other than that, +1.

[CidHeiral]

There was another thread about this fairly recently and almost everyone who complained about button bloat in the thread later exposed themselves as having no clue how to bind their abilities properly.

For reference, here are the number of buttons for each job currently. Every job has around 30 buttons give or take, with SMN having the least at 25 and SCH having the most at 35.

[rawker]

SCH having the most at 35.

Does this cover pet commands? 3 hotbars is not enough for me. Yes, i also have Repose on my hotbar and i find ways to use it.

[CidHeiral]

Does this cover pet commands? 3 hotbars is not enough for me. Yes, i also have Repose on my hotbar and i find ways to use it.

Not sure, but the post says this: "Scholar (+2) - As a pet job, SCH has a ton of actions that are not assignable to hotbars. SCH gains two new abilities in EW: Protraction (like a targeted Thrill of Battle) and Expedient (AoE mitigation + Combat Sprint). SCH's hotbar is going to be somewhat difficult to manage with 35 unique actions. On the plus side, Summon Selene and Summon Eos are essentially the same button, and one can be removed. You can also consider removing Repose, which sees little use in high-end combat currently."

[ZiraZ]

Does this cover pet commands? 3 hotbars is not enough for me. Yes, i also have Repose on my hotbar and i find ways to use it.

Probably, its the only way it could reach 35 keys. I'm guessing they are only adding the 2 useful pet abilities since the rest are completely useless.
As for bloat I don't feel like there is bloat on any job right now, some spells rarely ever get used but I would not consider them real bloat, it's more like the upgrade system failed those abilities and left them to rot when they should have been merged into something else by max level and can just be ignored. 30 abilities seems like the golden spot for me.

[Moqi]

It's so weird that they have the ability to merge combos but would rather delete abilities than do that in PVE. The only reason I can come up with is that they don't want to do it because it'd make the leveling experience lackluster (more than it already is) by not having a new shiny button on the hotbar, which we only get more dynamic abilities at later levels.

[Somnolence]

They addressed it by removing unused, useless skills and merging them.

Yet Cure I and Benefic I still exist and require a slot in case you ever down-sync to low enough level...