So, the button merging feature... did I get this right?

[mallleable]

I'm just glad we have the option to choose between condensed, and non condensed actions, and it's not being forced on everyone.

[justausername]

I 100% believe they mean you can put your 1-2-3 onto one button. They were talking about REDUCING button bloat. The way that twitter user explains it would only give the option to EXPAND button bloat, or keep it the same. Which based on what we saw with Viper and Pictomancer, is not the case. They also stressed that Viper and Pictomancer have the same number of skills as other classes, but the buttons are reduced because of the new system.
I do not believe for a second that they are giving us the option to UNLINK actions that ALREADY share a button, over COMBINING buttons to reduce them when the POINT is controlling button bloat, especially for controller players.

[Raikai]

I honestly don't think combo merging (when applicable, e.g. not a branching combo) is a bad thing. People often brand it as 'dumbing down', but 1-1-1 isn't much less mentally challenging than 1-2-3.

Monk's combo is decision making. You need to gauge timers to see if you should branch or not - now that's the perfect justified 1-2-3 that actually have your brain and awareness working.

[Reimmi]

I think this is a good change only if they take into accoutn that all the combos are 1 button now for the sake of adding new stuff to jobs.
I think they had a number of like 26 or something for the max amount of buttons a job should have, hopefully combos count as 1 now

if they don't, oh well at least it's optional

[Oizen]

I guess my take on it is I honestly don't give a shit if they ever add PVP combos to PVE, and with the game leaning so far into combo buttons with DT I feel like its inevitable it happens.

[Shikiseki]

Honestly good riddance to skills hogging 1 extra slot that can only be used after you used a specific other skill. That dragoon change back in the day where they split the high jump skills was a prime example - they should have introduced the system back at that point in time.
Now we only have to get rid of skills that have an exact copy of said skill but aoe... another additional button you could just update animation, add splash damage and have 1 free skill slot for unique job skills that isn't yet yet another 300potency ogcd damage/heal

That said I think healers won't really benefit from that change in the long run and they will have to come up with something that helps with their button bloat soon

[Unholychinchilla]

Popped my head into this thread to see how the discussion was going and what the heck did I just read?

[Nyxs]

No clue what that was above lol. I am happy that some people would appreciate this being a feature. Perhaps with more discussion they might consider it.

Pros:
less button bloat (especially for controllers)
Easier for people that have disabilities

Cons:
Everything is a combo so getting cut off mid combo might be unfortunate. Fix:Maybe a little wait and it restarts from the beginning would suffice

[SamSmoot]

I wonder if it will be locked to combos, or will it be more like WoW's castsequence macro command, where it can chain any group of actions together, one firing per button press. The icon on the macro button changes to represent each action, and it has a timeout feature that will return you to the start of the sequence if you don't finish the it in the number of seconds you specify.

To me, the merging feature is mainly a way of reducing button bloat IF it lets you marge them all onto one screen button and mapped key.

[Nihility]

the way i see it the vast majority of 1-2-3 combo's, if not literally all of them, are no more complex or involved than just hitting a single button over and over. They are a time gating mechanic, not a skill check. You get the resource to do the real thing on the 3rd part, I couldn't even imagine a situation where even a small combo efficacy bonus from resetting to 1 manually would outweigh losing the third part resource.
In my mind reducing them to however many buttons as their are branches would only accomplish a single thing, freeing up prime button real estate for the actually interesting parts of a jobs mechanics.

either that or cut out busywork stuff like the 60s buffs and just rolling the potency into the 60s skill rotation. they don't really serve any purpose either outside of a button that lights up to tell you start the burst without needing a stopwatch or somesuch
honestly, i don't really care how they do it. Button bloat is getting out of hand and my arthritis would far prefer a heavyhanded approach then back off a bit as necessary rather than pruning 2 buttons just to add 3 more