Seems the true endgame is cleansing my hotbar

Last Fantasy XIV has no scarcity of content material. Raids, dungeons, trials, mount farming, or simply good ol’ fishing, there’s at all times one thing to do. However between each exercise, I discover the one factor I carry on doing in Last Fantasy XIV is messing round with the interface.

Since beginning the sport again in December, I’ve managed to go from A Realm Reborn all the best way to Endwalker, the latest growth. (Sure, that tempo was fairly quick, although sadly not on par with Last Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi.)

Within the time since, I’ve realized a number of classes: eat meals to buff your stats, use retainers to promote undesirable objects, and know which ledges should not protected to Dragoon-backflip subsequent to. However in all of it, I carry on messing with my hotbars.

Slightly fine-tuning

It’s not that the interface of Last Fantasy XIV is clunky; removed from it. It’s truly extremely customizable and malleable, capable of do so much with little or no. Actions (learn: skills) will be set to your hotbars, and your hotbars will be specified by a large number of the way.

For a very long time, I used to be keen on the lengthy rows of skills. It feels actually good to have a look at an enormous lineup of sick strikes, and watch all of them tick away on cooldowns. It lowered the vertical litter on my display too, in alternate for some horizontal house.

Whereas the default interface (on mouse-and-keyboard) places the rows proper useless middle with large icons, I discovered myself slowly eking that lineup additional to the best as time went on. As I obtained extra comfy with my combo timings and rotations, I made the icons smaller and shoved them off to the best, away from the valuable middle of the display. Can’t have large buttons blocking the AOE markers, proper?

Quickly, I used to be utilizing Ctrl- and Shift- modifiers to unfold my rising arsenal of choices out, and forcing me to succeed in throughout the keyboard much less typically. Ultimately, my Dragoon format seemed one thing like this:

That was good, with a great development I knew. Core skills that I used typically have been on the farthest left, close to my WASD, whereas much less frequent abilities frolicked within the 5-7 key vary. This was the format that obtained me by means of raids, trials, and Endwalker.

However then a humorous factor occurred: I picked up a brand new class.

New lease on life

With Endwalker within the rear-view, I believed it was lastly time to shed my egocentric DPS methods and be taught to heal. Sage appeared like a rad alternative: it’s a healer that makes use of lasers. Who doesn’t like lasers?

However whereas Dragoon was all about progressive mixtures of skills and sneaking lengthy cooldown assaults into fixed strings, Sage required a bit extra consciousness. My cooldowns didn’t simply have an effect on my injury, however the tank’s chance of dwelling by means of that subsequent large axe swing.

So I went on-line to see others’ tackle their interfaces, and realized means an excessive amount of within the course of. Quickly I used to be binding skills to my letter keys, eschewing my pristine quantity line, and contorting bars to suit some Tetris-shaped monument to pointless buttons. Do you know you’ll be able to simply have a large button sitting on the aspect of your display, that will help you know when that cooldown is off? It’s helpful!

In any case, right here’s what my Sage bar appears to be like like, as of this writing:

Cleansing the mess

I do know that’s not a remaining product, however this journey sparked some curiosity for me. I began asking different gamers what their hotbars seemed like, or how they organized their layouts.

Controller gamers largely scoffed, as they’re dedicated to the particular crossbar format they get to make use of. However for the keyboard gamers, I discovered some attention-grabbing little nuances in the best way individuals laid out their abilities. What, for instance, they stored shut and at-hand, and what they might shift off to different keys. How they used particular buttons, hardware-specific ones typically, to make their rotations a bit extra comfy.

I’m getting nearer to being extra comfy with my new healer format (don’t ask me how the therapeutic goes although). However I’m unsure I’ll ever absolutely cease nitpicking the bars. Throughout a number of expansions of Last Fantasy XIV I stored altering my interface to higher optimize my Dragoon play. And now that I’m branching out much more, likelihood is I’ll carry on going.

Be at liberty to share your personal interfaces, Last Fantasy XIV or in any other case, down beneath!