This game badly needs mods and macros.

[HeatherRae]

In any serious progression guild, there's someone capable in vent calling out the cues regardless.

 

True. And I don't know why, but it really works. Having someone say over vent, "Burn boss, burn boss" just seems to jar people into pushing harder.

[Benzian]

The repeated argument from those opposing addons and macros is the "2 button game play" newsflash… Macro's can be implemented with limits to eliminate sequencing. Your argument is busted.

"I like it the way it is” because you've never had better… Busted

Most addons allow customizable game play that suits your style, if your style is basic, stick with it and suck badly--that's your choice--there is plenty or RP in the game for you. If BW wants to continue making enough money from the game to keep it from going down the lotro path, they will have to either add a significant amount of ui and game play customizable options or open it up for the players to make their own.

If you don't want addons or macros in swtor ask yourself this one question. Would you rather play a game with people that can control the style in which they play with the fairness that you can achieve the same results at no extra charge, Or would you rather play a game where whoever spends the most real money has the best advantages? Those are ultimately your options.

Oh and someone a ways back said something like “if you want to know the best rotation just watch the health bar go down” – You’re the guy no one wants to group with because your dps sucks.

[Selestian]

I have 4 bars up on my UI (level 50) and I have 3 buttons without a skill (or consume/clicky). Thats 40 something buttons.

 

We need macros to reduce that amount of keybinding.

[GalacticKegger]

More like having a program that shows the opponent's stats and percentages. Last I checked, not only was such information commonly used by baseball teams, but some of the main stats are displayed right there on the scoreboard.

 

Heck, there's a movie out now about how a baseball general manager put together a successful team based mainly on computer analysis of statistics.

I agree completely when players get paid to study videos and statistics of an opposing team's players to get a competitive edge. Would definitley be a need then because careers are on the line. In continuing that analogy MMOs are sandlot pickup games by comparison, where tendencies are studied and exploited in-game right up to where the players shake hands and the keg gets tapped.

 

The use (and often abuse) of complex statistical analysis tools to win at a video game is not necessary except for purposes of putting phat loot repositories on farm at the quickest rate possible. Which is usually followed by complaints that the game is too easy and there's not enough content.

 

Having said that I'd love to see a built in combat log (to learn where I screwed up), UI customization (so stuff will actually fit on my monitor), a robust search function for the GTN, and guild banks. I see no reason to use tools whose sole (albeit subliminal) purpose is to expedite the process of hammering a game into submission.

Edited January 10, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Gabyzz]

The macro should be in here, look if you dont wanne use it then don't use it.

But for other players liek meself im tired of all the 598 keybinds i have now and i really dont wanne press 4 times a diffrent button when IF there was a macro option, i could just press one.

 

Im sure there are people here that want the same thing, others not, but the one's that aren't willing to use macro's please consider it.

It will help you improve your gaming style, alot of people that play MMO's will agree on this on.

It can be helpfull and also useful in times ( or always).

 

As with the mods, please please please allow it i cant stand this UI its like its made in a rush, upper right are the Q and in the top the char and game settings bottom right map etc.

Give us an decend Ui instead of adding a new planet?? my main isn't 50 yet or one of my friends aren't either and now BIOWARE is putting a new planet and the game isn't out for like 4 weeks.

 

please fix the game first UI, (macro) game setting( Anti-alising) and other well known bugs.

[donnajuan]

I think macros and a custom LUA should be released for this game. The reason being is that simplification is needed with so many buttons available. Also the interface is the MOST important part of the game, in my opinion. It is the way in which players interact with the game, and not everyone interacts in the same. I, personally, hate sidebars. I think they look clunky and tacky and I often associate them with "clicking".

 

Also there are some basic elements missing in the UI, such as the fact that NUM 1 registers and 1 above Q. I like to use key binds, so I don't need large buttons I often had 4 bars of buttons at the bottom of my screen this frees up a lot of screen realty to basically take in the awesome worlds, which clearly there was a lot of effort put into. Also I play a healer and find it some times that the normal part frames do not register clicks. The raid frames do not seem to have this error, but there are no party frames. I also find it irritating that boss/and player ground targets are not the exact size of where they end. It is kind of a visual lie and leads to guessing. There are also no target of target frame, or ToToT. Makes assisting annoying and watching the aggro of mobs. Many of these seem to be just basic elements. When part of the frame and ui cover other elements it looks sloppy.

 

In terms of addons, people should be allowed to customize their experience. I am sure a lot of players do not care for "themed" interface elements and prefers simplicity. Also the fear of mods "ruining" the game. One game in particular has set a precedent and basically starting the "MMO 2.0" series. UI modification is one of those things. Damage meters are only annoying to those who do not succeed at them, I do understand that on the other you do not want to have the constant balancing that comes with the territory, but I am sure that people will simply create and develop parser that will not be part of the UI and you will just have a sloppy version of what could simply be added to the game. UI modifications keeps people in the game, know wants to stay in a house if you can't paint the walls.

 

Most people do not want to see this game move in the direction of their "hated" easy MMO, but a large majority of the people in my experience are just a lot of talk, have never completed a serious encounter and just want to complain. If they don't want to macro or use addons, they don't have to that whats make them awesome the freedom to make your experience as unique as your character.

 

LFG needs to be completely changed especially seeing how there are 2/4man groups on every planet and basically all everyone ends up doing is just spamming general and waiting. and because each planets channel is seperate people can be anywhere so its hard to group everyone together, I don't know how this game made it out of beta without summoning, its just silly. Sucking time spamming LFG isn't fun not questing while waiting for a group on the Republic Fleet is not fun. Even the GTN, is simply clunky...no search? It kills the economy. I have placed 2 items on there, and just vendor everything else because I am just don't want to deal with the annoyance of attempting to compare price. There are a lot of interfacing elements need to address and these annoyances really put a damper on the game because they are unavoidable since it is how we interact with the game.

[GalacticKegger]

But for other players liek meself im tired of all the 598 keybinds i have now and i really dont wanne press 4 times a diffrent button when IF there was a macro option, i could just press one.

That's probably more Playstation FPS than PC MMO. Edited January 10, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[DagobahDeez]

Being new ish to the game, and a former WOW player...I can see the pros and Cons for Mods fr SWTOR.

 

Personally though.... I think that some sort of customisation for the UI, and more than just 24 quickslots is needed.

 

I also agree with the mouse over option...

 

I'm sure we'll see them though, but at this stage...its early days...hell the game has only been released for a month or so...

 

May the Force be with you!

[dargor-]

Onward to 100th page

[Wraiven]

I sorely underestimated just how poor the UI would turn out. It is so uncustomizable it isn't funny. Health bars, buffs, debuffs, and the power bar are all WAY too small. You can't move or resize anything, I HATE having the chat box up the top.

 

Not having a damage meter or even a freaking combat log is ridiculous. Why shouldn't we even know how much damage we're doing? I want to know what the best rotation is for my character and I have absolutely no way of working that out.

 

Macros are a staple in every MMO, how can you just not have them? There's a nice focus target but it's practically useless without focus macros.

 

These should be top priority for the next patch.

 

I do agree with the HUD option you request. What I do not agree with is the creation of macro's. People tend to abuse these by macroing powers together in order to combo them in ways that make them unfair in PvP scenarios. Just my two cents.

[EcGBorn]

I'd like to see some visual mods added. I do not have enough hot bars for all of my common used buttons. (Yes I'm a clicker) 2 hot bars just isn't enough. And it seems that everything is overlapping. I have a 27 inch monitor let me tweak my own stuff and make some things scale down. a 6 inch button is useless let me make it much smaller and get more screen space.

 

By not allowing us to set the game up for us I think your hurting the growth and retention.

[Hairless]

True. And I don't know why, but it really works. Having someone say over vent, "Burn boss, burn boss" just seems to jar people into pushing harder.

 

Oh hell yea I love those moments. My adrenaline starts flowing and I start spamming my keyboard at 10x the speed and my situation awareness increases by 300% for some reason.

[Tylown]

What most of the community out there doesn't realize about add ons and macros is the majority of players posting on this, are simply trying to have fun in an environment that they can cope with. We aren't complaining that the game is too hard, or that pressing this and that button is complicated it's the fact of convenience.

 

ADDONS: I was a beta player of WoW and currently still have my WoW account mainly due to a majority of irl buds still playing it. I have done much end game content. I never used any addo ns that I didn't want, nor did i use an add on i didn't need. DBM was there for random situations you never would have saw without paying extreme detail to your surroundings. For players that managed to get into end game raiding on Low graphic setting i dought they could see some of the random environment miss-hap's going on. As for recount it was for seeing how i was doing compared to others not bragging and saying u can't do this. These where here to make the game more goal oriented rather than a dead drop off when you hit max level and though i'm only level 30 i'm seeing the issues beginning already.

 

UI: The UI here is deeply in need of customization. I stuck to WoW's standard UI, and still do. SW:TOR being an extremely amazing game i'm only actually seeing a fraction of my screen. large unnecessary icons being well, large and the things that matter the most being shrunk. Saying that add ons shouldn't be allowed is saying that if you liked a bright screen you have to play with it dull and dark, or that if you like playing with your number pad you have to play with a mouse full of buttons "razor:Naga ect". As for you i could not stand such things, and if you don't like those you shouldn't have to either. Saying "quit" because of that is a dull response, i like this game and though i do not currently like the UI i would like to be able to play the game to my best of standards rather than an over all struggle.

 

MACRO: Macro's are not full rotation on 1 key buttons. Those of you who believe so obviously have never used every set button on your key board. starting from the base amount of key-binds on this game 1-5 are the only ones still intact from the original bars. from then on the bottom middle and left bars are ALL bound to keys, and i still find myself running out of buttons. I'd love for macro's to reduce this cutter, for example having a macro so that: "press 1 i use project, press SHIFT 1 i use double strike" on one slot, having to separate that is a HUGE clutter of the already complicated UI.

 

Those of you generalizing on the "elitists" which I'm sure many of you are out there, no offense, shouldn't aim to cripple the population of players who just wish to play the game to the best of their likings, such as yourself. Your happy with the game, give others the ability to be happy with it as well.

[Radiatonia]

I think you people would be hard pressed to find a gamer that fully used and understood mods and macros and STOPPED using them, saying it was unfair and broke MMO's.

 

The fact of the matter is MOST of the people screaming NO MACROS AND MODS!!! Are the same people that did not use them or worse were those bull heads that REFUSED to use them for encounters and were left out.

 

Don't knock it until you actually know what your talking about.

 

I never used macros or mods up until WotLK. I typically topped the healing or DPS meters. The only reason I started using them around WotLK was because I realized there were so many mods out there that actually give people a nigh unbeatable edge if you yourself don't use them.

 

Like resource node maps, which data-mine the resource node data and load it into your map, then build an optimized farming route for crafting, taking days off of the grind to cap, and making it nearly impossible to compete with the people who use these sort of mods and camp all the good node locations in the zone.

 

Quit making assumptions about people.

 

 

Macros and mods are no substitute for actually knowing what you're doing. Especially things like Auctioneer and DBM. Which automate the usage, sale, and purchase of items in the AH (Ruining the economy too by the way. Ever wonder why gold inflation never fluctuates, and always goes up? This is part of the reason why.), and pretty much make it impossible to screw up in boss fights unless you're deaf, dumb, and comatose, respectively.

 

These are bad mods.

 

There's a difference between a mod that patches bad functionality in the UI, and a mod that plays the game for you. People that want these kinds of mods are not good players. They're wanting to circumvent the actual gameplay because they don't want to sit down and actually learn how to play the game.

 

Yes, it can be rough to learn the mechanics of something. No, that doesn't mean you deserve to have everything handed to you on a silver platter. There are tens of thousands of other people who are doing the same thing. Why should you be special amongst all those other people working towards the same goal?

 

That's not fair to the people who actually want to play the game itself, nor is it right to force someone to go out of the game to compete with someone who downloads two dozen mods to automate everything in his game from selling items for optimized prices, to crafting, to the combat itself.

 

And you're kidding yourself if you don't think this will happen. There's dozens of excerpts from people in this topic and others where people describe people who are basically itching for the opportunity to do this.

 

If they go this route with modding, i'm taking my money somewhere else. The game is awesome, but that's a personal sticking point for me. It's a crappy development practice that was ushered in by Blizzard being careless with their API. By the time they realized what they did, it was too late to fix it. That doesn't mean it's acceptable, intelligent, or right to give players access to mods like that.

 

Customizing the UI is fine. But i'm pretty sure the developers said that's already coming as a separate feature anyways. Even so, this UI is nowhere near as bad as WoW's. It doesn't have the ridiculous art bar with dragons blocking part of the bottom of the screen. Or all the artistic frills it has that clutter it up.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Radiatonia

[HeatherRae]

No, it just has giant crap all over my screen that I can't move or get rid of, a companion bar where I want my chat window, and buttons the size of Texas, and no way to tell who is targeting who. Nah, this UI is perfect...yeah...or something...

[Radiatonia]

No, it just has giant crap all over my screen that I can't move or get rid of, a companion bar where I want my chat window, and buttons the size of Texas, and no way to tell who is targeting who. Nah, this UI is perfect...yeah...or something...

 

How interesting. Apparently you didn't read through my entire post. Maybe you should read the point where I mentioned that the devs said they knew about that, and were going to address it.

 

Not sure how that absolutely requires mods to fix it, so long as they give proper UI customization like in other modern MMO's.

 

 

Have some faith.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Radiatonia

[DaxRendar]

Yes to officially implemented improvements to the UI or game

 

No to Mods/API

 

Careful, thoughtful, cautious implementation of Macros... maybe

[giantrocks]

What do all the macro/addon-hating players have against the disabled?

 

Someone missing a few fingers, or possibly an arm, could benefit from the use of macros. A deaf person could make sure they line-of-sighted a boss on time if an addon made a visual cue appear on screen. Someone that is partially blind could modify their UI so the Text and Buttons were larger.

 

Are you saying that people like this shouldn't be allowed to play and enjoy SWTOR?

 

Don't think of macros and addons as something Hardcores use to prove they are better than you. Think of them as a way to let the those with disabilities enjoy a fantastic game.

[CaptainHagbard]

What do all the macro/addon-hating players have against the disabled?

 

Someone missing a few fingers, or possibly an arm, could benefit from the use of macros. A deaf person could make sure they line-of-sighted a boss on time if an addon made a visual cue appear on screen. Someone that is partially blind could modify their UI so the Text and Buttons were larger.

 

Are you saying that people like this shouldn't be allowed to play and enjoy SWTOR?

 

Don't think of macros and addons as something Hardcores use to prove they are better than you. Think of them as a way to let the those with disabilities enjoy a fantastic game.

 

The minority-card in a MMO-discussion? That's rather new...

[Hairless]

What do all the macro/addon-hating players have against the disabled?

 

Someone missing a few fingers, or possibly an arm, could benefit from the use of macros. A deaf person could make sure they line-of-sighted a boss on time if an addon made a visual cue appear on screen. Someone that is partially blind could modify their UI so the Text and Buttons were larger.

 

Are you saying that people like this shouldn't be allowed to play and enjoy SWTOR?

 

Don't think of macros and addons as something Hardcores use to prove they are better than you. Think of them as a way to let the those with disabilities enjoy a fantastic game.

 

The world just exploded.

[Radiatonia]

What do all the macro/addon-hating players have against the disabled?

 

Someone missing a few fingers, or possibly an arm, could benefit from the use of macros. A deaf person could make sure they line-of-sighted a boss on time if an addon made a visual cue appear on screen. Someone that is partially blind could modify their UI so the Text and Buttons were larger.

 

Are you saying that people like this shouldn't be allowed to play and enjoy SWTOR?

 

Don't think of macros and addons as something Hardcores use to prove they are better than you. Think of them as a way to let the those with disabilities enjoy a fantastic game.

 

This argument completely ignores the fact that it's not about disabled people. It's that if you give too much freedom to modders, they will exploit or break the game in ways that give them an edge over normal players.

 

No one is saying that the disabled should be left behind because they're disabled. They're saying they don't want a repeat of the WoW add-on mess.

[mbernert]

How has this post even made it this far?

 

Addons, I can see these not being exactly "needed" some of them have been helpful ideas in other games, but I don't think they are "needed". It does make the Ui customization more fun to have these options though.

 

Macros , on the other hand, I am willing to bet are going to be put in the game, whether 5million people post here they don't want it or not.

 

I'm healing on my sorc. Just exactly how are you supposed to do it? Click on their unit frame, hit your key for heal, click another free, hit your key for heal?

 

How it should be: /cast @mouseover "heal"

 

If your in favor of clicking frames, there's no help for you.

[AlpsStranger]

We'll get mods and macros. Why? Very simple.

 

"Lacks mods and macros!" is a feature to a small handful of computerphobes and MMO-Luddites. "Just added Mods and Macros!" is exciting to the rest of humanity.

[Pergamon]

No. It doesn't.

[nerfAvari]

i used to use addons and macros in wow, id sit for hours always adjusting the settings, a huge time sink into addons from a 3rd party website is not my idea of fun. What we need to do, instead of acting like whiney little brats screaming for addons and macros.....is to ask bioware to implement popular ideas into their game. Edited January 10, 2012 by nerfAvari