Button Bloat

[vetch]

Game is absolutely jam-packed with inconsequential, barely-differentiated fluff skills. I simply cannot give a crap about the fine-grained distinctions between Dragoon Spear Thrust #4 and Dragoon Spear Thrust #5.

Or Red Mage Gauge Builder (Light Version) and Red Mage Gauge Builder (Dark Version).

I'm with the folks who think we're getting a bit too bloated. I use a gaming mouse and it's still only comfortable to use 1 hotbar and another with the shift modifier, adding ctrl\alt modifier means I'm losing speed and moving too far from the home row. So, probably 30 skills in a quickly and easily accessible spot, and I think even that is getting a little on the high side.

I feel like they made encounters as braindead as they could possibly be, and everyone's focus is on hitting their buttons in the correct order (and never stopping pressing them). I'd rather see more challenging encounters, with maybe fewer skills that were more impactful if they aren't used correctly\at appropriate times. I know that this design is possible, because many other games have very challenging encounters and nowhere near the number of skills any given job here has. Some of these OCD damage skills, well, what's the actual point of them except to have another button to press. Could be rolled up into the intended rotation.

What's that? You have small hands and would prefer a smaller number of core rotation skills so you can get them all under your hand along with the WASD?

What's that? You wanted to reserve hotbar slots for some macros so you can shot-call for a pick-up group without using voice comms?

You're not getting that, keep these 20 glorified auto-attacks on cooldown instead.

[ZiraZ]

Anyone saying the jobs are bloated should always post some screenshots of actionbars, we already know what happened last thread with all those people playing with absolutely vile binds like ctrl + 9 and other hilarious nonsense like not using a single modifier.
I just want to see if people are serious or if they are binding everything incorrectly because I feel like 2/3 of the dps jobs could use more keys, not less.
And also combos are fun.

[Emitans]

I like keeping my damage buttons on the first two bars. SAM has so many redundant skills I've got stuff on the third row because there's nowhere for it to fit.

[Dubont]

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.

You have unused skills on your hotbar? What skills are you neglecting to use and if they truly are not needed, why put them on your bar?

[Dubont]

Game is absolutely jam-packed with inconsequential, barely-differentiated fluff skills. I simply cannot give a crap about the fine-grained distinctions between Dragoon Spear Thrust #4 and Dragoon Spear Thrust #5.

Or Red Mage Gauge Builder (Light Version) and Red Mage Gauge Builder (Dark Version).



What's that? You have small hands and would prefer a smaller number of core rotation skills so you can get them all under your hand along with the WASD?

What's that? You wanted to reserve hotbar slots for some macros so you can shot-call for a pick-up group without using voice comms?

You're not getting that, keep these 20 glorified auto-attacks on cooldown instead.

Using the CTRL and ALT bars, that's 30 skills. Then, if you have a number pad, like I do, you can assign a bar to that. That's 40 abilities. My keyboard also has additional shortcut buttons on the left side which I have for my greetings Macros. I have my main 30 for combat related stuff and the number pad for emotes, target indicators, etc. I also use a Razor Naga 12 Number button mouse so I can usually reach all skills without every actually moving my hands off WASD

[Allegor]

One can just not put, say, Scathe or Repose in their action bar and be done with it, but then you have stuff like FoF and Requiescat, which is a pointless double weave and should merge, or Cure I and Benefic I which are nigh useless in Stone Vigil and higher fights, but still the default heal in lower level dungeons, etc.

There is indeed some button bloat going on on a few jobs and could use a little trim.

[Espon]

Having less buttons doesn't mean a job has to be too simplistic, it really depends on how the job is designed. Unfortunately most jobs in FF14 come down to memorizing a string actions you press in a certain order without changing a whole lot. I don't find 1-2-3 combos or using a skill that only does damage once a minute very fun and engaging. Adding some RNG into the mix would do a lot of good to a number of jobs. I think Red Mage is a good example of how a job should be designed as you need to pay attention to procs and job gauge to maximize damage. I know some people like to look at absolute extremes and will be like "What if my RNG is so bad nothing ever procs so I do low damage?!!?!" but that's an extremely unlikely occurrence for a 10 minute fight.

Personally I think World of Warcraft actually did this quite well. None of the classes needed more than 15 skills on your hotbars, yet if you wanted to be a good player you had to know how your small number abilities worked and when you needed prioritize using something over something else. There were no 1-2-3 combos, and while you might sometimes have to hit your filler ability 2-3 times in a row, that was typically because you were waiting for better abilities to come off cooldown or hoping a buff proc'd that allowed you to use something better. This is also a game that promoted the use of damage meters and DPS logs, so everyone knew you you were bad at your class if you consistently showed doing 20-30% less damage than other players.

The whole two minute meta also needs to go.

[Rosenstrauch]

Personally I think World of Warcraft actually did this quite well. None of the classes needed more than 15 skills on your hotbars, yet if you wanted to be a good player you had to know how your small number abilities worked and when you needed prioritize using something over something else. There were no 1-2-3 combos, and while you might sometimes have to hit your filler ability 2-3 times in a row, that was typically because you were waiting for better abilities to come off cooldown or hoping a buff proc'd that allowed you to use something better. This is also a game that promoted the use of damage meters and DPS logs, so everyone knew you you were bad at your class if you consistently showed doing 20-30% less damage than other players.

Speaking of, I miss Legion-era Arms Warrior. Proc heavy classes may get crap from people who don't like them, but fishing for Mortal Strike/Colossus Smash resets was fun. We don't have anything like that in FFXIV—not anymore, at least.

[Tethan]

Even if you procced freecure off glare it’s still useless above about level 45 because you would never want to cast cure 2 anyway

In general they should just drop the cost of cure 2 to avoid the problems of synced coils and then just have cure 1 upgrade to cure 2

My suggestion would be to have Freecure turn Cure 2 into a free instant cast, effectively making it like a lily you get earlier. If procced off Stone/Holy etc, it would be useful at low levels, I think especially for new healers who might be more comfortable dpsing if they know they have an instant cast Cure 2 in their back pocket whenever they need it. It would encourage "good" play, as opposed to current system.

[ReynTime]

As this is a Final Fantasy game, or so they keep claiming, they should be taking pages from other Final Fantasies, preferably not named XVI, if they ever do any kind of overhaul for combat, which they never will.

Role actions really should have been exclusively situational actions that you assign and replace based on what kind of encounters are coming, which would not be dissimilar to how pretty much every non CBU3 Final Fantasy handles combat loadouts. That would not only add some small degree of loadout planning but also discourage the exact same rotation being applicable to just any fight.

Not that it matters. They're never going to do anything of the sort in XIV. They can't even design healers right.