Can Traditional MMORPG Combat Work On Consoles?

A staple of traditional MMORPG combat is the use of a large number of buttons. More recent games, such as TERA, Skyforge, and Elder Scrolls Online. have streamlined the system down to a core set of skills—closer to those of MOBAs—but they also make use of action combat systems. More traditional MMORPG combat systems still maintain hotbars of ten or more skills. Some even extend all the way to the equals sign or make use of multiple bars that can be used with a combination of Ctrl-1, Shift-2, or similar combinations. But console controllers typically don’t have that many buttons. So the question then is, if games like Final Fantasy XIV are put on consoles, and they even share servers with PC players, how does combat work?

Having grown up with consoles I have always felt more comfortable with a controller in hand. Controllers put all of the buttons in easy to reach places around the device. There’s a reason that the overall layout of your average controller has remained relatively consistent throughout the years. It works and works well. Personally, I’ve always found that movement using a control stick felt more comfortable, with the best games allowing for variable movement speeds based on how far the control stick is tilted.

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I had already played a number of MMORPGs by the time I had played my first console MMO. I had heard a great deal about Final Fantasy XI and decided to pick up the Vana’diel Collection 2008 for Xbox 360. If you have played Final Fantasy XI in the past, you are probably aware that it is relatively unique in its combat system. It’s slower paced, more closely replicating the active time battle system seen in the later single-player RPGs. It’s also completely menu-driven, meaning that the move to consoles was fairly easy, being heavily based in the single-player RPGs. It was easy to simply select a target and then use the menu to select combat options as your battle played out in its slower-paced manner.

Action combat MMORPGs like Elder Scrolls Online have found that their controls are easily mapped to controllers as well. With the ability to attack and block firmly mapped to the right and left triggers respectively, and only five abilities to map, the controls sit comfortably in the space provided. The only button combinations needed—exempting your ultimate—are for advanced actions that had similar combinations on PC such as interrupts and dodging.

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Final Fantasy XIV did not adapt the way the previously mentioned games had. The fourteenth title, and second MMORPG in the series, has a staggering twelve slots per hotbar, more in line with MMORPG tradition. To compensate, the developers created a system where players hold either L2 or R2 and press any of the face buttons, or any direction on the d-pad. There are technically sixteen slots per hotbar in this manner, but only eight may be used simultaneously. You must actively let go of one trigger and hold down the other in order to make use of your other eight skills.

Changing hotbars works in a similar manner. You hold R1 and press any of the face buttons or any direction on the d-pad. This effectively gives the player eight hotbars with sixteen slots each. This is compared to the ten hotbars of twelve slots each that PC users are given. While this may seem like an advantage in favor of console players, these players can make use of only eight at a time, using the controller equivalent of Ctrl and Shift modifiers to use extra hotbars on PC. If the setup were to be compared to PC directly—where PC allowed two hotbars to match the controller’s forced L2 and R2 modifiers—PC players would end up with a staggering 150% of the slots that the console players could make use of and expend half the effort or less. Console players would be stuck with their sixteen slots while PC players would be allowed up to 24. By contrast, in total, a console player could make use of up to 128 slots while PC players would only be given 120 at most.

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The console setup has other stark disadvantages. Due to use of the face buttons being second nature,I personally map my most-used skills to the face buttons. My most used skill is set to the "O" button and they proceed clockwise in order of use. The O button, when you don’t hold a button to activate the hotbars, is the “deselect target” button. Imagine if you had to hold Shift and press the 1 key every time you used the skill in your first skill slot. Imagine that not holding Shift would result in deselecting your target. I’ve ended up doing exactly that numerous times in the heat of battle and it can be quite frustrating.

Additionally, due to the menu-driven nature of MMORPGs—often requiring multiple windows open at once—consoles are at a distinct disadvantage. On PS4, Final Fantasy XIV gives you several options for selecting different windows. The first option is to activate the mouse by scrolling around on the PS4 controller’s touchpad. You can then faux click on each window. Alternatively, you can click in the touchpad to switch between windows, essentially tabbing between them. The first click will always bring you to the chat bar where pressing X will activate text entry. The map is unique in that it can be tabbed into and out of but it can also be pulled up, made opaque, and subsequently closed by simply repeatedly pressing the square button, whereas other menus will require you to press O to close. The control scheme is fairly awkward and it’s not uncommon to tab right through the window you wanted to get to. Of course, you have no control over the size of each window, so multiple windows will quickly endeavor to make it impossible to see past them.

The truly unfortunate part about it is that I don’t see much of an alternative. Unless an MMORPG is built from the ground up for consoles there will always be some manner of awkward control scheme. The current generation of MMORPG relies far too heavily on the player’s ability to access a large number of keys at once, as well as a mouse. Alternative mice such as the Razer Naga were created specifically to condense the keys most commonly used in MMORPGs into one area. It is unlikely that a console MMORPG will find a way to condense the controls in quite the same way while retaining enough space for the rest of the game’s controls.