The Buttons & You

[Shougun]

Less buttons guy here, I don't think all jobs need to be exactly the same so not saying purge just cause but I appreciate more interesting skills over many skills. I can have a bloat bar if you want some nifty niche skills, like sleep or something, but hopefully make those niche skills clear. Slow fall, water walk, etc - they're cool and don't count to bloat.

Also chiming in with another post and saying I quite like the PvP kits for how punchy they are given so few skills. They also tend to have more interesting mechanics in and of themselves that lend better to roleplay. Easy for me to forget what job you are in normal content, but in PvP it's fairly important.

[Kuroka]

Yeah leveling all jobs i was there countless times... "why are these 2 bottons??" we dont need the same skill 1x aoe 1x single target, especially if the aoe is just "does 80% less damage after first target"....

[Espon]

I prefer to have less buttons that make me think of what I need to use next instead of having a set rotation of 30+ button presses. This game has too many strong damage abilities on a long cooldown that just make you feel sad when they don't direct crit. The main rotation of Dancer and Red Mage should be closer to what other jobs should strive for.

[LynxDubh]

feel like this is kind of a monkey paw wish.

When Viper released it felt like one of the most obtuse to understand jobs for me. With all the buttons transforming it was very hard to get a grasp of it. Once it clicked, I realized it was braindead easy. But, combined with the poor tooltip formatting, it was the hardest job for a me to get down.

I worry for how this button condensing would affect new players. I have all jobs leveled to at least 90 and have played since Heavensward. I can only imagine how awful it would be for a new player trying to pick up a melee if they were all like Viper. Not to mention I play on keyboard, learning this kind of stuff on controller would be awful.

[Mesarthim]

I can say that as a deep dungeon runner... when I get a no ability floor as Picto it is very smooth brain. 1 button smooth brain.

Though I have felt some things could be condensed on some jobs, IF THEY WANT. They give the option for a couple of skills but then ignore a lot of others.

[Aravell]

I'm in the camp of keeping the combo separate but not for a dumb reason like "skill expression", there's not much skill expressed by pressing 1, then 2, then 3.

No, why I want them kept separate is that there exists times when you want to intentionally reset your combo, like if you want to do a 1-2 and skip the 3 on GNB to keep refreshing the shield and keep yourself alive while the healer is hardcasting a raise. Or situations like how you want to reset your combo and take a minor damage loss for better alignment later on in the fight, that's an element ot skill expression.

All that said, I wouldn't be opposed to the option for people to condense the combo into one button for those who want it. As long as it's optional and not forced on everyone.

[Aco505]

Look no further than pvp kits with thrice less buttons and thrice more gameplay flavor and meaning.

Until you have to PvE the crystals in Shatter with the 1-1-1 combo and the 10-30s cool downs.

The PvP kits feel good because they were well designed for fighting players.


Moving that to PvE would feel miserable. And let's not get deluded into thinking that by condensing GCDs into less buttons, we will be able to have more in the jobs' kits. We won't, unless what they said about 8.0 actually materializes into something but I won't believe it until I see it.

[lolnotacat]

I'd prefer less buttons. I forgot how enjoyable a lack of bloat can be after taking a break and playing GW1 & 2 for a while.

I'm not saying go down that much, but I think around 15 different buttons (give or take a couple) makes sense.

[Azurarok]

I keep track of where I am in a combo based on what button I've pressed, so condensed combo buttons like PCT and VPR's makes it harder to do that, and I tend to overcap on gauge far more often on those two because of that. I don't know how I'd lay out VPR hotbars without it though.

That said, I see zero reason for the subtractive palette buttons to be separate.

[Jeeqbit]

Don't get me wrong, I'm alright with the concept of a small amount of buttons. We have that with PvP and it seems they've done similar things with Viper and Pictomancer where one button becomes another.

But the large amount of buttons is also how they've typically made the classes feel more complex. They can be made that way with fewer buttons if they make the buttons we do have strategic but they only have a limited amount of such ideas for that and some of them were cut down over time from the Role Actions due to lack of use.

I've tried macroing some jobs into just a few buttons (successfully btw), and it honestly does make them more braindead. So I don't really know if it's worth upsetting the players that like jobs feeling bloated and complex.

However, they could make it all configurable to a greater extent than they did in DT, so that all combos of any kind can be done this way. They know how to do it, because they already achieved it when playing as Scions in the MSQ with jobs such as: GNB, AST, DRG, RDM, WHM, BLM and SMN - all of which they reduced to about 4 buttons at various level ranges.