Macros - ETA?

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

>use macros

>'play' a video game

 

choose one.

 

> Sit in driver's seat.

> 'Drive' a car.

 

choose one.

 

If you knew what you were talking about, you'd understand that the two don't conflict with one another, but in fact compliment eachother quite nicely.

 

That is, of course, unless you store the driver's seat in the trunk, ala Rift.

 

Anyway, I'd encourage you to actually read the OP; currently you are one of the folks mentioned at the start of it.

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

You're doing this all wrong.

 

People are arguing with you because you've used the term macro which means 101 different things to different people. It doesn't help that you keep saying macros are completely fine and theres nothing wrong with them (but as long as it's not done like Rift/XX/YYY). Drop the disclaimers and ambiguous terms and just ask for ui upgrades instead and you'll get a better response. Ask for enough upgrades and BW will give you macros so they don't have the hassle of coding them for you

 

People are arguing because they are ignorant, and too lazy to change that condition; the cure is right in the OP. So long as BW can see through all the muck that's been posted here by imbeciles, all is well.

 

As for the actual subject it's not something I'd be likely to use. The point at which they become necessary is roughly the point at which I lose interest in playing the game (ultimately it's a sign the combat has been poorly designed) . I quit WAR the afternoon I managed to complete a "challenging" boss fight with repeated presses of a single button /zzzz

 

Don't try Rift.

 

 

As for poisonous communities, go drop by Eve sometime

 

Never tried Eve, and that's exactly why. A sandbox game focused on space combat sounds freaking awesome, but throw a bunch of cancerous players into it and it suddenly becomes crap. Eve's community has so much notoriety that I'm surprised the servers are still up - they can't be roping in new players, or holding on to existing ones with any significant amount of success.

 

I don't know if the SWTOR community is bad enough to sink the ship, but it's definitely getting bogged down. Atleast the in-game community seems alright.

 

Makes me feel bad for BW... reading these forums is often like watching a swarm of two-year-olds shred apart the mona lisa.

[CarverX]

This thread is amusing.

 

Half of this community is super casual, they haven't played many MMO's, and certainly not competitively (high end pve / pvp)

 

 

The other half clearly have. Have a firm grasp on what needs to be done for this game to succeed.

 

It's quite amusing seeing the differences in responses. Those who oppose things like macros and addons, all say the exact same things. It makes me cringe, and it's borderline embarrassing to read.

 

Please... sit back and let the real players help sculpt the game.

It would be like, if Nike designed their shoes around the fat lazy slobs who don't jog much less run, but still buy their sneakers. Instead of the world class athletes who wear and actually 'use' their shoes.

 

I have confidence that Bioware isn't so silly.

 

um...yeah I don't think thousands of people are going to sit back and let a few people with too much time on their hands change the game to their specific likings, sorry.

[princey]

Macros are against the ROC, so I would say...never.

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

um...yeah I don't think thousands of people are going to sit back and let a few people with too much time on their hands change the game to their specific likings, sorry.

 

In regards to macros, those who'd like to see them in SWTOR amount to a hell of a lot more than a few. Seems that the only folks really opposed to macros have no idea what they are; every one else is either in support, or indifferent (because they don't intend to use them when implemented, but understand that that won't have an impact on their own gameplay).

[nitaant]

The game doesnt need macros at all, you can play fine without them and it takes more skill

 

Most certainly does not. In these games, skill comes down to how good a player is, does it not? How good his choice of attacks, timing, placement - target choice, self protection/healing/buff/cc/debuff. Macros as WoW has them allow you to do none of these things.

 

It does allow you, however, if you are a healer for example, to one press self target and cast a shield, while remaining targetted on your target so you can heal them without dying - or allow a healer to heal himself and attack his opponent at the same time. Or condense the buttons from 5 on the limit keyboard (even with a g400 gaming mouse, and using shift click options, I am only level 23 and nearly maxed out on my abilities on the keyboard in comfort), prevent nervous twitches from having to click target yourself constantly to shield, then find your heal target somewhere amidst the portraits or amidst the small and thin character sprites in the game which are too thin to target manually. It prevents me from getting carpel tunnel and getting irritable for playing a computer game which should not be so physically exciting or disturbing - or painful especially - which is so when you have a full keyboard of keybinds and have to manually target everything in a fast paced game like this.

 

Which class do you play, incidentally? Oftentimes people with simpler class mechanics are the ones that say they don't need macros.

 

And the truth is you don't 'need' them. Many of the top tier WoW arena players play with a near default UI and with minimal macros - or none at all. Hows that for not giving an unfair advantage?

 

Blizzard bans everything left right and center. If they allow addons and macros in the game - there must be a reason - and they have tweaked the macro system significantly to address the same issues that are being here. So there is a macro system in place that transcends everything the folk here are troubled about - and in one of the most popular games that ill bet more than half the community here has played or still plays. I don't see why so many still like to sit and say no to macros when it doesn't at all affect them and saves other players a lot of difficulty and grief.

 

I doubt one pvp healer would say no to macros here. Any one that takes pvp seriously.

Edited January 26, 2012 by nitaant

[nitaant]

If macros are needed... does it mean some of the abilities need to be tied into one ability? Honestly, if they need a secondary program system to link them anyways, doesn't it point to this?

 

 

-Mouse over? Isn't this about the same thing as our healer pets are doing? With a slightly better AI why would we need a healer at all then? The pet could just take the stats and status of all group members and heal/ debuff/cure the party members appropriately at that point.

 

Actually that is a pretty good idea looking at it. Give the pets better AI and the 'mouse over' program.

 

Have you played a healer? As a DPS character you pick a target and unload. Sometimes you switch targets to cc or hit somebody with lower health to take them down. You don't really need macros for this, I agree.

 

As a healer, you have to keep switching between targetting yourself to keep yourself alive, your teammates to heal them (and you have to keep switching. As dps you usually hold one target till its dead. As a healer once your target is healed, there is no point in keeping it targetted. You switch to another target that needs healing. As dps you don't need to select your next target wisely - although you may, if you are intelligent, pick a character with low health, low resolve, or no CCs on it at the moment. As a healer you need to keep looking for targets that need to be healed.

 

Then you need to target enemies to CC them as well. Further, to add some dots and add to the damage when nobody needs healing otherwise you are just sitting there wasting time. Do you see the complexity of it? It is physically tiring to play this way if you have to manually click target everything. Also, since the sprites are so thin in this game, and there is no mouseover targetting, you end up playing with the portraits of other characters and don't have much time to look at the game anymore. It no longer remains a rich 3d world that you are playing in, but some kind of a rudimentary 2d one - just watching player bars in the portrait screen and healing them when they drop.

 

With mousover targetting or healing, you can target sprites and/or heal them in a simpler way. It is still a difficult job and requires a lot of attention and the need to determine which skills to use when and proper character placement and maneuvering to keep yourself out of trouble, but I don't have to sit on the edge of my seat to target people and heal, or play the game with portraits rather than with a richer, deeper 3d world.

 

Most of these mmorpgs, SWOTR included, are modeled in their gameplay after older mmorpgs. It is not, by far, a 'totally new' mmorpg. Try Age of Conan battle mechanics for that, or perhaps Tera online. The combat system is very akin to WoW, and without simple macro utilities it is very cumbersome and downright unplayable in fast paced pvp environments (I have never raided so I don't know much about it, leave me out it if you will)

 

So, when you as a dps have to choose a character - maybe cc another - and then burst it down, I have to heal a character - bubble myself because I am focused, find the target I was healing in the portraits again and keep a watch on both our hp bars - heal myself, then heal him, then heal the third guy because hes about to drop, target the other enemy coming in and CC him. If I could press a button to self target - bubble - and return to previous target, keep my main target targetted and heal him as he needs, and off heal that other other guy with a mouseover - (I will still have to switch targets to CC that other enemy that came in, then switch back to my main target through portraits), this would save me a lot of carpel tunnel and allow me to actually look at the 3d game world instead of portraits for 3/4ths of the my spent in the warzone.

 

It requires more skill to do this without macros? Yes, and simply requires you to be a more jumpy and physically intense person while playing. This is a kind of skill - but not really - and it is not relevant. It is not arm wrestling - where the stronger arm wins. This is physically cumbersome. It is not the kind of skill this game or other mmorpgs are about, especially in pvp. It is just painful. Understand?

OP, You spent the time to create mythical examples of what they don't do.

 

Please post some examples of what you want macro's to do.

Walk us through what you envision with examples.

 

Nothing mythical about those examples, imho. Instead of a macro that casts all your abilities in sequence, here are some simple macros I would like

 

/target Self

/cast Force Armor

/targetlasttarget

 

As in the aforementioned response to the guy, instead of losing my target to target myself - which dps do not have to do - I can remain on him and shield myself.

 

/cast buff1

/cast buff2

/cast buff3

 

if they are not on the same GCD, and the system doesn't allow sequencing which wow's doesn't, I can hotkey this macro and press it three times to buff myself with the three buffs I have, saving me screen space, saving me from clicking which is a cumbersome way of playing an mmorpg, and saving me from having to hotkey all three buffs to one key each.

 

Also,

 

/say CCing marked target

/cast Force Lift

 

so that my cc isn't interrupted by other players. It is a quick communications issue, and as you know, gameplay is too fast to manually type out this stuff.

 

or for example, that person that posted about the macro of the insta-shot cooldown (I am not familiar with the class or its abilities, pardon me)

 

/cast (Off GCD instashot skill)

/cast (Skill that is now insta-shot)

 

The off GCD skill is off GCD so that response time can be quick as you want, and that you don't have to waste a GCD to activate the ability - otherwise the skill would just be on GCD like any other.

 

But instead of turning the game into a physical response time battle and having people twitch in their seats to hit the second skill as quickly as possible after the first one, one can comfortably play the game and get the shot off as quickly as anyone would - which it should be because the game is not about physical ability or reactions but a computer game meant to be played mentally.

 

See my point?

 

Macros are needed for utility. Nothing more.

 

Cheers

Edited January 26, 2012 by nitaant

[Omnifiend]

Massive skill bloat, no macro's, and an insane number of abilities you need to use depending on the situation.

 

I would love to be able to macro my pvp trinket to fire on shift + T, my defensive cooldown to fire on ctrl + T and for my knockback to fire on just T. And, I would like to remove all these abilities from my bar and just simply stick the macro in the appropriate space. That would help clean up my gameplay area dramatically, because there are a lot of abilities I would do this for.

 

I KNOW THAT I CAN ALREADY DO THIS BY CHANGING THE HOTKEY FOR EACH ABILITY. I still have A BILLION ABILITIES ON MY BAR AFTER I DO THIS. Not acceptable. This UI is hands down the worst UI I have ever seen on an MMO. The sheer number of abilities are stupid. They need to change the functionality of some of these abilities and roll them into each other, or just remove some period.

[Dharst]

Hopefully the ETA is never

 

Well you live without then... me I'm getting a gaming keyboard... so I can make a "Hardware" Macro... which theorectically will give me an advantage over you.

 

In-game macros would provide a level playing field and if you don't want to use it...fine; but with-holding them isn't going to keep everyone from finding a way around it. Then it'll be a question of who can afford it and those that can't.

[raptors]

Seems to me if people have all these special mice and keyboards, macros would do more to even the playing field than create an unfair advantage, as they would be available to everyone who owns the game.

 

I personally really enjoy writing macros, and setting up my character around them. It makes the character feel more like it's mine, a nice custom fit. So I am probably biased on this issue.

 

But I would really like to see them in game, and I think they would be a great edition especially for marauders and other complex classes which at the moment seriously infringe on your ability to watch the action and buffs/procs/cooldowns at the same time.

 

dude im with you having no macros i run out of keybinds and at the point of feeling just plain weird adding new keybinds so much to clikc and bind. macros would make my ui life much cleaner

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

Personally, I don't see a reason to watch the game play itself for you. You might as well just look at stat spreadsheets.

 

Stay on topic. The game playing itself for you has nothing to do with this thread.

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

To the top!

[GalacticKegger]

Not a priority so not for a while ... http://tor-talk.com/exclusive-interview/ Edited January 31, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

Not a priority so not for a while ... http://tor-talk.com/exclusive-interview/

 

The points in that link are paraphrased from the interviewers... and I suspect it's a bit out of context.

 

Mods and Macros aren’t off the table and may be implemented in the future and UI customization remains one of BioWare’s highest priorities

 

To say macros 'may be' implemented and that UI customization is one of the highest priorities in the same sentence is a bit of a contradiction.

 

It's like saying you're in a crazy hurry to get to the other end of a city; 'maybe' you'll even use a car instead of walk.

 

I'd like to see the exact wording of the BW rep. BW devs have specifically stated previously that they intend to include macros post-launch; to say they 'may be' added is misleading.

[ShooterX]

100% of the responses opposing macros make my eyes bleed.

[GalacticKegger]

 

The points in that link are paraphrased from the interviewers... and I suspect it's a bit out of context.

The link is to a podcast interview with Stephen Reid from last Thursday (located beneath the article bwteen the article and the video.) The article itself is just a synopsis of the interview. Should listen to it because it has BioWare's direct answer to this very question as well as many others. No paraphrasing, just Stephen's killer accent. Edited February 1, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Seehorse]

Truly I can't understand the attitudes in this community. The basic UI functionality here is pathetic and once you get a character into the 30's it's nearly unplayable unless you strip many of your powers out of the bars. Some of the most basic things I take for granted are completely missing like the macro issue and even a "target thru" function. By target thru I mean you have the tank (or whoever for that matter) targeted and when you fire an offensive power you hit the tank's target and firing a buff hits the tank.

 

I'll admit I've never played WoW beyond about level 5 but I've played City of Heroes (which by the way has far and away the best community I've ever seen or heard of in the MMO industry) for 7 years now and those are things that it had at launch in 2004... as well as a very robust and flexible keybinding function. It's macro/keybind (which were actually functionally identical, one put a button on your quickbar and the other just added that function to a key) function most emphatically did NOT allow for botting... you could only activate one power per button push. What you could do as a buffer is set up your numeric keypad (or any keys for that matter) to target teammate #1 - #8 (8 man max team size there), then fire off a buff on that player. For example, you could hit keypad 1 and target the team leader, then hit keypad 1 again and hit him with a shield. You could shift+keypad 1 and hit him with another buff. Buffing the team went "key1, key1, key2, key2 etc."

 

That freed up TONS of room on your various trays (quickbars) for your other powers. It was impossible to set up a bind or macro to activate more than one power per button push... although you could deactivate multiple toggle powers at once.

 

It's all about quality of life, and you have to make things convenient or players will simply go play a game that's more fun. With all the problems this game has right now the last thing it needs is to lack the basic functionality players expect from an MMO in 2012.

 

Just a cursory glance around the net shows a really massive negative image taking hold, which I think is at least somewhat undeserved. This game has a lot of potential, but it's also lacking so many fundamentals that if the shortcomings aren't addressed it's going to loose a huge percentage of it's player base. No, I don't think it's likely to die in a year but first impressions are hard to overcome and lots of potential players are seeing only the negatives in the reviews and blogs.

 

Myself I'm on the fence about staying... I'll give them a couple of months to address issues then decide if I'm going to stay or not. I'm still playing and enjoying COH after all so this game has to offer something to make me play here instead of there.

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

The link is to a podcast interview with Stephen Reid from last Thursday (located beneath the article bwteen the article and the video.) The article itself is just a synopsis of the interview. Should listen to it because it has BioWare's direct answer to this very question as well as many others. No paraphrasing, just Stephen's killer accent.

 

Ah, I didn't see the little podcast bar before. Listening now.

 

*jams out to the vader techno*

[GalacticKegger]

Ah, I didn't see the little podcast bar before. Listening now.

 

*jams out to the vader techno*

Glad you found it. Edited February 1, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[mobywv]

Mouseover healing isn't something the game needs. 1-2 button presses after a click is easy enough already.

 

Macros would be a welcome addition though. Nice to have multiple set up to go with keybinds.

 

 

Boo, I want my healbot

[rexryan]

yes to macros...

 

i want something like this to save binds:

/cast [mod:shift] (spell 1)

/cast [mod:ctrl] (spell 2)

/cast [mod:alt] (spell 3)

/cast [nomod] (spell 4)

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

Glad you found it.

 

^_^

 

Sorry for the delayed reply.

 

Based on SR's exact wording, the paraphrasing mentioned previously appears to be accurate.

 

This is an unfortunate change; previously it was "we will" opposed to "we might" implement macros. I wish I could link a quote, but I think the source of that was from a dev post in the forums before the forums got reset at launch; so it's now lost. I think, anyway I was just as addicted to podcasts and swtor news vids prior to launch as anyone else, so perhaps it was from one of those...?

[GalacticKegger]

 

^_^

 

Sorry for the delayed reply.

 

Based on SR's exact wording, the paraphrasing mentioned previously appears to be accurate.

 

This is an unfortunate change; previously it was "we will" opposed to "we might" implement macros. I wish I could link a quote, but I think the source of that was from a dev post in the forums before the forums got reset at launch; so it's now lost. I think, anyway I was just as addicted to podcasts and swtor news vids prior to launch as anyone else, so perhaps it was from one of those...?

Ya, I think it came from ComicCon (or maybe it was GamesCom - don't remember) where that question was posed to Dallas Dickinson and he responded with something like they eventually would like to add macro and addon support in some form, and that they were looking into it but had no immediate plans to implement it. That discussion was then spin doctored by a handful of yahoos into forum paparazzi that addons & macros were on their way. Mere attempts at fabricating an expectation to create the illusion of demand is all it was.

 

Anyway, I'm sure dev will eventually complete a full feasibility study on it. Just likely won't happen until other higher priority items have been checked off their to-do list.

Edited February 2, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Bald_Haliaeetus]

Anyway, I'm sure dev will eventually complete a full feasibility study on it. Just likely won't happen until other higher priority items have been checked off their to-do list.

 

No problem with that.

 

For me, the lack of macros only becomes game breaking at end-game. So long as I'm distracted by the (awesome) story, I can forgive the archaic UI.

 

Having just finished the IA class story, I figure I've got about 7 more months of entertainment out of this game. If macros are in at that point, I'll stay with it; otherwise it'll be time to call it quits for me. Either way I'll have gotten my money's worth, so w/e.

[Phishums]

Wow. Didn't read the giant wall-o'-text entirely, but I would also like the ability to make macros. I like putting multiple abilities onto one key so I don't have to roam as far on my keyboard (making me look at my keys sometimes, which the anti-clickers will agree is a bad thing), and I love using mouseover macros for healing. That's all I've ever used them for, and it'd be great if I could do the same in TOR.