Give Macros the Light of Day?

[Rongway]

WoW
Rift
Tera
Aion

This isn't one of those games, nor does it need to be.

Back to your original complaint, what do you feel is so difficult about NIN that you don't think you can do your job properly without having the game play itself for you?

[XiXiQ]

I agree on the issue of macros, there are just so many buttons now they seriously need to allow us to employ them for no other reason than curing the button bloat - the irony here is ninja would benefit less from such a thing, and ast as well probably. Word is we won't be seeing any more come SB (to be honest, I am doubtful of that claim), but staying the same does not solve the issue either. You do not need to be stuffing about with 32+ buttons, that's just ludicrous.

[dragonseth07]

This isn't one of those games, nor does it need to be.

Back to your original complaint, what do you feel is so difficult about NIN that you don't think you can do your job properly without having the game play itself for you?

You're right, it's not those games. But, you're allowed to take good ideas from other places. And a good macro system is a great one.

[Niwashi]

People who can only see negatives to combat macros haven't played a game with a good system. Even WoW's macro system is miles ahead, and it is an amazing tool. Everyone uses combat macros, because they actually work.

And that IS precisely the negative SE is trying to avoid — the fact that everyone ends up using combat macros. They have made a design decision that they don't want everyone to be using combat macros. This game's combat system isn't as fast as some, but it's more strategic instead. Automation limits that, and therefore detracts from the game's overall design. It's not that they (or those of us who support that decision) don't understand the alternatives and what they can do. It's that they don't want those alternatives.

The macro system here isn't weak because it was sloppily designed. It's weak because it was deliberately designed to be weak. The most obvious example is the /wait timing. That was originally developed with support for decimal numbers, but the macros were too powerful that way. So that decimal support was removed, making /wait work in whole seconds only, in order to make the macros slower. And that was done specifically to avoid having players use them for combat.

[Acidblood]

It's not as simple as just allowing .1 second interval wait times, as marcos still wouldn't work with the ability queue system (i.e. how you can press an ability half a second early and it will go off as soon as the GCD is up) and they're subject to lag, so short of re-building the marco system from the ground up, they are never going to be great for combat, and nor should they be...

While I do sometimes miss certain macro capabilities (and UI mods) from WoW, Rift, etc. I sure as hell don't miss the time it takes to set everything up just so I can play effectively... Are there some shortcomings in FFXIV that 'could' be fixed by awesome macros (and / or UI mods)? Hell yes, but I would rather they spend time making improvements to the abilities, combat, and UI that benefit everyone than waste time making a macro (or UI mod) system so that players can just automate everything and watch Netflix.

[Rongway]

You're right, it's not those games. But, you're allowed to take good ideas from other places. And a good macro system is a great one.

You're right about taking good ideas from other places.

The problem with near every macro discussion we've ever had on the forums, however, is people arguing that we should have a better macro system with no better reason than "yyy game has a better macro system." Then when asked why we need a "better" macro system, they avoid the question by calling people whiny elitists and offer no argument beyond "XIV has too many buttons," and "it would be nice to have the button change to the next ability in the rotation."

The first complaint is really a complaint about the game's combat system, which, though it involve more buttons than some games, is a matter of design choice. This is not a two button shooter. Combat requires an elegant navigation of the keyboard or controller, playing chords, scales, and arpeggios, each trial or raid an arrangement of the fight in the party's key.

These two complaints in mind, surely people can see how requesting an immitation of the macro systems from other games just because those games have a more feature-rich macro system screams of either laziness or a lack of familiarity with one's job, neither of which can be fixed with a fully featured macro system.



In contrast, I offer this example from a different request thread

Currently when using ground targeted skills you have to click them, aim them and then click again. This can be problematic as the game sometimes doesn't recognize it fast enough, especially when it's an oGCD like salted earth, when you're also clicking other skills in quick succession causing the skill not to go off.
...
GW2 does this already as you can see here and it's extremly useful.

where Alsar addresses what's wrong with the subsystem in question and shows how a different game's implementation eliminated that problem.



The macro system as it stands handles all the things it needs to.

• It can send quick canned messages: /p (Provoke)(Just used it.)
• It can accommodate different targeting styles: /ac (Aspected Benefic) <mo>
• It can swap in Pet- or Stance-dependent abilities: /hotbar action (Inner Beast) 3 3
• It can cancel specific status effects without risking right-clicking the wrong effect: /statusoff "Ewer Drawn"
• It can automatically activate DoL buffs that should be always on: /gs change 31 <wait.1>; /ac (Triangulate) <wait.1>; /ac (Truth of Mountains) <wait.1>; (Truth of Forests)
• At the cost of time effectiveness, it can select from a priority list of actions: /ac (Misery's End) <t>; /ac (Bloodletter) <t>; /ac (Heavy Shot) <t>
• At the cost of time effectiveness, it can perform series of actions.

Macro requests not in this list fall into two major categories: requests that address issues with a different subsystem (e.g., ground target abilities) and requests that address issues with players (e.g., one button gaming), and the latter category is far more populous than the former.

The reduced effectiveness of macro sequences is the price of convenience, and the devs levy this price with purpose.

In the other category, macro capabilities that allow us to work around the issues (such as the addition of a <ground> target) would be amazing, but ultimately they could be addressed better with changes to the affected subsystems instead (e.g., allowing ground abilities to activate on a second press of the ability button, so that nobody has to write a macro to take advantage of the feature).

[Anthus]

Rift uses Cool-down Priority, where it will go down a list of ability, and use the next one that isn\\'t on cool-down.

Respectfully, the current macro system does this just fine if you set it up correctly. I use one for like buffs when tanking and the only issue is it only shows one icon, which isn\\'t a problem as I know what\\'s on it and in what order.

Fair warning, it would from HW, so it might need tweaking now and is not really ideal usage, but works for purposes of description:

/micon "Thrill of Battle"
/ac "Thrill of Battle" <me>
/ac "Convalescence" <me>
/ac "Bloodbath" <me>

This would let me use Thrill the first press, Convo on second press, and if Thrill is off cool down before I press it again, it goes again instead of bloodbath.