You are doing the equivalent of playing classic wow at level 10 and complaining you have a limited skillset.
By level 10 in classic WoW I would already have my core skills and have an understanding on how that class is going to play. Things would change as I got higher level abilities of course, hell you don't get your talent capstones til like 40, but you'd have the core abilities down. For example by level 10 in WoW you have Charge, Rend, Hamstring, Thunderclap, heroic strike, and sunder armor. You'd have a rage cooldown (blood rage), a buff (Battle Shout), a racial or two on long cds, and you'd have defensive stance introducing the stance switching mechanic and taunt. Each of those skills did something, they had an impact on gameplay. There really isn't some "ideal" rotation at level 10. You use the abilities you need to use to impact the game world as the situation warrants.
By level 10 in FF14 I had, 2 abilities that actually did something, and by that I mean they don't actually do anything. the First one is auto-attack+50% damage, the second one, if used after the first, is auto-attack+150% dmg, otherwise it just does auto attack damage. and 2.5 seconds between each button press to weigh that "decision" of which button I was going to press next.
Also level 10 in classic WoW takes all of about 1 hour of gameplay. I'm approaching 20 hours and level 30 and i'm up to 5 real abilities that aren't situational with long cooldowns? 3 of which are just variations on "auto-attack+% dmg if used in a row", 1 ranged attack to pull, and 1 aoe.
So no, the apples to apples comparison is, it's equivalent to getting to level 30 in WoW and still only having those 5 skills I had at level 8 in WoW, after having leveled to 25 with only 2, heroic strike and hamstring. All I asked is how long did it take til I actually got some skills? And do the skills actually every feel like they do anything, have any impact on game play other than slight variations in how much health they remove? Hell a level 1 Rogue has more complexity in WoW than I have so far, even with only Sinister strike and Eviscerate. It's still only 2 skills, but I can choose how many times I stack Sinister strike before using eviscerate, and it impacts how much damage eviscerate deals. I can look at the mobs health and make a decision on when I use eviscerate, nevermind that I'm also managing a resource (energy, rage, mana) which in FF14 i'm not doing that yet either.
On the bright side, I am starting to pick up more abilities though I wouldn't call it a core kit yet, and I should be able to unlock the actual Warrior class now, hopefully that helps.
If you’re actually interested in playing still, I’d just buy a level boost but really no guarantee you’ll like combat at max level either. Yes, the rotations get more complex, but the difficulty isn’t in doing the rotations, but keeping them going while mechanics are happening. There is not really going to be “choice” in combat even at high level. Your rotation is your rotation and that’s kinda that. Unless you’re doing some higher end stuff, your gearing is whatever the highest iLvl you can acquire is.
If you read back through this thread, we do rave quite a bit about the game, but I think you’ll notice that it’s never really the combat itself. Raids and trials are fun and cool, the settings and music, etc. are amazing but if depth of combat is what you’re looking for, I don’t think you’re going to find it here, even at max level. I personally still enjoy it; I absolutely love my DRG and it feels satisfying for me to play. The long GCD does allow for some very nice attack animations to play. What it lacks in depth, it makes up for on spectacle.
I will agree that as the game has gone along, the abilities have been strung out more and more among the levels, so there are classes that really do take a while to get going and I think it’s something they should try to address as that definitely will put off some players that otherwise would have enjoyed it. Josh Strife Hayes has had a few videos talking about this where it obviously should not take 100 hours for your game to get good.
I don’t know if you’ve looked into Lost Ark at all, but I believe it is coming out soon and many folks from here have praised its combat, so it could be more up your alley. It’s also free unless you want to splurge on a founders pack.
Honestly I don't care about rotation complexity, when I said rotation before that's not exactly what I meant but was the most easy way to explain it in terms of MMOs. I hate games with massive ability bloat that require 15 hot bars and a full keyboard on the side of your mouse and shit, EQ2, I hear WoW went down this path later on, Early SWTOR before they revamped it, Vanguard. Fuck that noise. That's not what I meant.
My favorite MMO combat of all time is Neverwinter, where you only get 7 abilities at once, that you choose from a slightly larger pool. New World basically directly copied it even down to the default key bindings, except New World doesn't have dailies (Ultimates). 2nd runner up is probably Blade and Soul (limited ability bar that branched into combos) or Black Desert (limited abilities from keystroke combos). Hell EQ1 limited you to only 8 memorized spells out of a much larger collection, and swapping spells for different situations, sometimes rapidly, was part of that core gameplay experience. btw by level 10 in EQ you knew what your job was. You may have had weak ass versions of your abilities but you had them. Wee little enchanter still had Tash, Slow, mez. You knew what that class was going to do, as you leveled you just got more powerful versions of those spells.
Every game has a core gameplay loop. Doesn't matter MMO, RPG, FPS, RTS. fucking solitaire. all I wanted to know is how long it took before I got to see this game's actual gameplay? When does the game start? (Yes i fucking get it, the story starts at level 1!! it's a shit story so far but whatever, i'm talking about gameplay here) because i've seen pics and videos of people with multiple hotbars and end game fight videos and they were doing things more complex than pressing 2 buttons.
Imagine playing COD for 30 hours with only primary fire, move forward, and crouch. You had to unlock left, right, back, jump, secondary fire, cycle weapons, manual reload, and interact slowly over a very long quest chain that took 100 hours. That is this game so far.
