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.


Quote Originally Posted by OogaShaka View Post
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.