[Suggestion] Consolidating Equip Macros

[Zerich]

No, how are you continually not getting this. They get the point, stop rattling on about it, as it's not going to help you.

The devs and community reps are not going to come out of the wood works to wet your panties and say, "Oh dearest OnionKnight! You doth well in the dearth of compliments for mine ruling. I thank you, oh fair and noble knight!"

[cidbahamut]

No, how are you continually not getting this. They get the point, stop rattling on about it, as it's not going to help you.

So to answer my question: yes.

[0nionKn1ght]

The devs and community reps are not going to come out of the wood works to wet your panties and say, "Oh dearest OnionKnight! You doth well in the dearth of compliments for mine ruling. I thank you, oh fair and noble knight!"

They also aren't going to come out of the woodwork and yield to your incessant trolling by going OK OK STOP PLEASE HERE HAVE 200 LINES PER MACRO JUST PLEASE STOP TYPING INSULTS TO PEOPLE IN A TEXT BASED CHAT ON AN ONLINE FORUM! PLEAAAASE!

To this day I will never understand why unless people are raging up against the bit for whatever issue is mentioned in the OP, they are considered White Knights. Me not agreeing, or not going along with your droning is all part of the process of forum debate. This is a fan forum, why do you people seem to want to hate so much? Surely we should just be happy that enough of us exist to keep this game running based on our want to play it, but no, im sure im going to get that quoted and taken out of context too, because it's so much more fun to try to antagonise each other than it is to find common ground and discuss what we all want to do, see, and have done to the game to improve it, without it diverting into moron rugby.

Right, now that us 2 total strangers have had that out over this medium, anyone want to get back on track and continue pointlessly complaining about an issue we already have a CS response on pages back? No? More sarcastic attempts to wind me up then?

[cidbahamut]

When you come out swinging you should expect a few punches in return.

Why are you so adamant about defending SE and demanding that everyone quietly accept terrible game design? What is so taboo about calling out bad game design and requesting that it be changed?

[0nionKn1ght]

I wouldn't be surprised if that was their reasoning, seeing as how their reasoning is almost always wrong. They don't seem to realize that it still happens, only it forces people press three macros instead of one.

You know, SE can be so ostrich-like at times, it's not funny.

You can't seriously tell us you don't know that a large number , possibly the majority by now, of PC players use the universally-known third-party add-on that makes swapping entire gear for every attack possible using a single key; many use it just for a decent macro capability, not the pseudo-botting it also allows.

Yet you stubbornly refuse to accept this fact and provide an official means of doing this for the minority (I expect) of PC players who don't want to cheat and those playing on consoles where such cheating isn't allowed.

/shakeshead

Personally I don't need that capability but it would be nice to have for occasional use, but I also recognise that many people think is absolutely required for tackling the high-end end-game content. The fact vast numbers have that because they're willing to cheat isn't fair to the rest who aren't; even FFXIV has a more usable macro system, how about even implementing THAT???

When you come out swinging you should expect a few punches in return.

Why are you so adamant about defending SE and demanding that everyone quietly accept terrible game design? What is so taboo about calling out bad game design and requesting that it be changed?

I am not expecting no one to fight back when I disagree.

I am not agreeing that the game design should just be accepted.

What you should understand though is that the mechanic has already had a statement in this thread on the issue raised, and for the time being their development team aren't able to change it. This has been the case with many now changed functions ingame. Continually antagonising that fact won't change the function.

The problem here though is that this thread is so lost in the twisting trolling forests, I cannot discern an actual post from a trolling one, so I think ill just give up trying to take part in this one.

[Jerbob]

The position of the developers on this topic is completely unacceptable. In a game that (for a lot of people) relies so heavily on macro-controlled equipment changes, the system should be as streamlined as possible. There's so much potential to make the macro system better with just a little time investment.

I understand the rules that the development team apparently use (thanks to Okipuit for brining this thread to their attention), but really they do not prohibit the kinds of enhanced functionality being proposed. Complete automation would obviously be a negative thing, but that doesn't mean that there can't be failsafes in place to prevent more than, for example, 6 macros from being called in a row. It just takes a little thought and willingness, and quite frankly it is not our job to tell the developers how to make these things work. I already pay them to do that. If complete autonomy is a negative potential concequence of enhancing macros, deal with it! Don't use it as an excuse.

People have been making lots of gearswaps in one go for years. Manually chaining macros is one (cumbersome) way of doing it. Cheating using third party tools is another - and one that I find particularly frustrating to see in others as it just demonstrates exactly how valuable such functionality is. The difficulty of the game is at least in part based on people who can already do this, as SE adjusts their "new" content to match the capabilities of the players - and this is before going into how unenjoyable it is to spam macros when you just want to be the best that you can be.

In short:
- There is no technical excuse for not enhancing macros because people have been doing it for years already.
- There is no botting/automation excuse for not enhancing macros because failsafes can easily be put into place to prevent this.
- There is no reason to look into breaking the rule of "one thing per line" - alternatives can be found.

I would appeal to our community representatives to put this general idea before the developers again. It would be a "quality of life" update unlike any other in the history of FFXI, as far as I am concerned, as well as a firm start on levelling the playing field between the people who use third party tools to gain an unfair advantage and those that do not.

...and we appreciate your understanding.

There is no understanding for you to appreciate. I am very annoyed to hear this. I had high hopes for the user interface updates, but no longer.

[Demon6324236]

What you should understand though is that the mechanic has already had a statement in this thread on the issue raised, and for the time being their development team aren't able willing to change it.

SE said no, it is our jobs as fans to speak out in outrage when the company makes bad choices by telling them what we as fans believe they are doing wrong, and how we think it would be best to correct these flaws. In this case, macros are messed up because you have to hit 3 for 1 action most players use, which is causing many players either annoyance or to cheat, which they should want to stop by fixing their problems in a way we are saying that allows no cheating and would cause less people to use 3rd party programs.

[0nionKn1ght]

I personally am hoping to see most of Windower's functions absorbed into the game client, but judging on SE's previous attempt (the built in one they added last year) and their lack of any kind of technical design ability, I am not going to put any stock into expecting it.

A permanent player TP viewer without the need for macro commands - Mandatory
Windowed functions without the performance drop the built in one gives - Mandatory
Extended Macro Functionality - Would be nice, but not mandatory
Drawdistance toggles - Would be nice, and should already be ingame, but not mandatory
Cooldowns displayed clearly - On the fence between mandatory and passive on this one

Looking at FFXIV, we can see their tech knowledge is verging on the non-existant. Playonline is a horrible login system to use, and they continued to use a similar one for XIV. Using WoW's launcher as a perfect example here. The launcher auto updates, takes minimal resources, and intelligently patches, rarely needing a full reinstall, but FFXI's requires a client and launcher patch, and then a second client patch after subscribing. The technical workings behind it are awful, and it takes roughly 4 minutes to get from desktop to game login screen every time. In WoW, Rift, AoC, I can be ingame in around 20 seconds.

Those are problems I would like to see fixed first.

[Cowardlybabooon]

Devs, let us make gear sets and keep your precious one command per line.

[Volarione]

I personally am hoping to see most of Windower's functions absorbed into the game client, but judging on SE's previous attempt (the built in one they added last year) and their lack of any kind of technical design ability, I am not going to put any stock into expecting it.

A permanent player TP viewer without the need for macro commands - Mandatory
Windowed functions without the performance drop the built in one gives - Mandatory
Extended Macro Functionality - Would be nice, but not mandatory
Drawdistance toggles - Would be nice, and should already be ingame, but not mandatory
Cooldowns displayed clearly - On the fence between mandatory and passive on this one

Looking at FFXIV, we can see their tech knowledge is verging on the non-existant. Playonline is a horrible login system to use, and they continued to use a similar one for XIV. Using WoW's launcher as a perfect example here. The launcher auto updates, takes minimal resources, and intelligently patches, rarely needing a full reinstall, but FFXI's requires a client and launcher patch, and then a second client patch after subscribing. The technical workings behind it are awful, and it takes roughly 4 minutes to get from desktop to game login screen every time. In WoW, Rift, AoC, I can be ingame in around 20 seconds.

Those are problems I would like fixed first.

We get it you don't need more macro space, but I for one would love just 4 more lines in my macro. If only so I can customize more. I for one don't care about draw distance or to veiwer but hey that's me, with more macro space I could echo a to check into all my spells and abilities.