Heavensward!Follow

You only have two hotbars until you start enabling them, and unless I'm missing something, you can't really resize the hotbars and they take up a good chunk of screen real estate and the game likes to "snap" them to some invisible grid so you can't squish the 'bars closer to each other to save some room so you actually have something you could call a "viewing area" on lower resolutions (such as 1360x768).

Not everybody runs the game on 1900+ resolutions, you know.

Also, only 12 of those buttons are quickly accessible (1 through =). 12 more could be accessed via shift/control keys, but I never really liked doing that, the reaction time is a lot slower.

With that in mind...

My WHM is already maxed out on Hotbar #1 and #2 and has 3 buttons in #3. Hotbar #1 cannot really be condensed at all unless I start using separate #1s for Solo and Groups (I have Stone2 and Aero on it) and even then I only save two buttons by removing those two spells.

We got Cure, Cure2, Regen, Medica, Medica 2, Esuna, Cure 3 and I leave Sprint on the bar for those times a stupid boss likes to throw something on the ground when I'm in the middle of casting an important spell and/or I want to make SURE I don't get hit with the stupid thing. Add Stone and Aero onto that, along with that water spell that pushes enemies away from you (I've saved my own life a few times with this) and there's 11 (and I'm forgetting a button that I can't remember for the life of me, but I *know* the bottom row is filled completely).

Next bar up, things like buffs and things you use rarely. Since we cannot keybind the Mount function that I could see, I put that up there as well as Gyshal Greens (because who feels like fishing that out of the inventory every time they need their choco?). Cleric Stance, Protect, Raise, Surecast, Swiftcast, Holy, Divine Seal, Benediction, and Stone 1, Aero 1 (for low level dungeons) fill Hotbar #2.

So now I have a 3rd hotbar up there and I put a couple buttons for dismissing the choco and/or telling it to Follow for those annoying times it decides to chase after an enemy that broke off me and I don't want it running three miles across Eorzea to go back to it and pull it again.

Point is, as a WHM, I don't really need any more must-have buttons because where the *bleep* am I gonna put them?.

I suppose "Ability Bloat" is different for each class; WHM feels Ability Bloat, but my BLM doesn't. I have plenty of room on my BLM's bars (but then it is only 30, but 30-50 is only 20 levels which means at most, 6-8 abilities not all of which are gonna be bottom bar potential).

EDIT: Some things I wish SE would do:

1). Let us Keybind the Mount/Mount Roulette functions (or if it is already keybind-able, explain it a bit better in-game because I never saw the setting for it)
2). Have Smart Buttons for spells of similar type: Stone and Stone2 could be condensed into a single button that the user can select which they want and/or if one is unavailable, the other is chosen automatically (Level Sync). Do the same for Aero 2. Also allow the user to split these up into separate buttons if so desired.
3). Give us a Pet Hotbar when our Chocobo is out, a small one that just has 5 buttons (Free/Healer/Attacker/Follow stances + Withdraw)

The above suggestions would alone get rid of nearly a full hotbar of buttons.

Edited, Oct 20th 2014 7:41am by Lyrailis

I am actually looking forward to the expansion and level cap upgrade. Love dragons.
Would not mind some new abilities and spells if they are useful...


I do agree that I dont understand why all gear becomes obsolete every major upgrade, its not just the expansion... I posted this before.



Really not even a ring is good after upgrades. Yes I know you dont actually need the latest gear to do the content.. I liked in FFXI where something like the black belt or the torques were good from 50 to 100...

To me this is the most boring part of the game constantly have to get new gear and everyone having pretty much the same gear.. I prefer upgrades or some exclusive gear or some rare gear.

Too me other than a cap increase I am not hearing anything really new to the the game, it is still early and I am sure more will be announced. If it is just a new area with more fates, 3 new dungeons and a primal it is not much different than the expansions lately with some new land. I want something to do that is completely different..




Edited, Oct 20th 2014 11:15am by Nashred

Ability bloat is something that will eventually come up. But if we take a hard look at that, it took WoW 10 years before it mattered to the point that they felt the need to do something about it. I play MNK and DRG, some of the buttoniest classes available. I suspect NIN, with its mudra system, might even be buttonier than that. I'm not concerned about ability bloat at this time. In the future? Probably. But not now.

The pace of gear going obsolete in FFXIV is indeed a problem. Getting gear checked out is a bigger problem in FFXIV than in FFXI, and that has side effects in player-player interaction (like returning or laid-back players falling behind too quickly). In FFXI, AF + a few nicer piece gear (purchased at reasonable price) "NQ" players can generally work along side with top of the line players with no major difficulty in many game content.

Anyway back on topic, I will be interested to see what will be the new jobs be. I think it is quite certain we will see a gun-using job, but after that I think it is all up for speculation. There is a few that I wanted to see be in included even if I am not playing (I would be satisfied watching the demo of them :-) )

Edited, Oct 20th 2014 7:07pm by scchan

No way. Not even close.

It's so much easier getting acceptable gear in XIV than XI.

To clarify, it's so much easier to get an entire set of acceptable gear in XIV than it is to get many single pieces of acceptable gear in XI.

Also, it takes a long time for gear to become obsolete. Myth gear has been in the game since launch, and you can clear most extreme primals and the first five turns of coil decked out in myth gear. In the meantime, there's very little stress in improving beyond the i90 threshold.

This. Someone doesn't remember what the "expectations" and "standards" for partying were like back then.

I actually use FFXI style keyboard config to play (keyboard only). WASD is utter garbage for FFXIV's strict dodging mechanics. I tried it, but moving and trying to manage skills on one hand = miss-press and ***** ups. The way I have it set up, I move with the number pad, which also does other various things not related to skills. My left hand is free to control all skills at all times. My right hand is basically movement with my thumb controlling the camera. For those who never played that way it may seem a little awkward, but i guarantee it is better than WASD. As I mentioned in my previous post, I'm also using a different keyboard designed for MMO's. My left hand handles these buttons also. I find this setup strikes the perfect balance between hands so errors and such don't happen much. And for the love of god don't bind first person perspective & walk to ANYTHING! Trust me on that one...

Edited, Oct 21st 2014 2:32am by Keysofgaruda

I can't say I'm having the same problems as you, although I tend to use ALT with my thumb and SHIFT with my pinky which I find quite a bit easier as I can use my ring finger to press 1. As such I don't notice any difference in speed. I would never use my pointer finger to press 1 either... Another thing to point out is that moving with the mouse makes sense to me. Since I haven't played ARR with kb+mouse I can't say whether the functionality is there but in other MMO's I move forward by pressing both left+right click. Of course if you only use WASD to move this can be troublesome, but I personally like having the option to move with my mouse too.



Not 16, but 32 buttons you can access pretty much instantly. It's like pressing ctrl+1 on a keyboard, with the exception that your pointy fingers are always resting on ctrl+alt (the shoulder buttons) making them instantly available. This gives gamepad users 16 skills. The other 16 skills come from pressing both ctrl and alt in either order (ctrl>alt for 8 skills, alt>ctrl for another 8 skills). Awkward is not the word I would use, brilliant is more like it. It comes down to using easily available button combinations, so it's not a totally different system from what you do with a keyboard anyway.

Nothing is stopping SE from having all 32 buttons on the screen simultaneously, but it is too bad that they haven't gotten down to implementing the option to do so. It's not a question of "style" but simply SE's inadequacy to fully support the feature to the extent that they support kb/m. Either way you need to learn the buttons by heart whether you're on a kb/m or gamepad.

May be I am still remembering being FFXI White Mage x_X

Trick question. If you don't have macros set up to trigger your readiness, you can simply have side bars that display your cool-downs just for their display.

Heck, I have both Controller binds and KB&M binds so that not only to do I see my cooldowns, but my lesser used ones, such as limit break, are simply a tap of the keyboard away, while I still have quick finger access to motions and skills.

KB&M hurts my wrists too much after long sessions. Controller's limitations are superfluous with intelligent planning of your sets and displays. And there's no added investment for comfort on my part either, as I honestly just hook up my Xbox360 Gamepad.

I'm sorry, I'm not exactly following what you mean in this.

Are you referring to the UI in FFXIV or FFXI?

In FFXIV you most defiantly can view multiple hot bars, my cross hot bar and my KB&M Hot Bar. (Here's a screenshot for reference, especially for those who were curious, especially those who are trying to hybrid.)

If you're referring to FFXI, that's a misnomer. The Macro Bar there isn't really a hot-bar at all, and the game is pretty much Menu based. A tribute to the slower style of the game, really. So yes, it would be ruled by playstyle.