22 Macro Books, Please?

[Wolfe]

I've looked over the site and I don't see anyone else mentioning it, so I'm going to bring it up.

There are currently 20 jobs.
There are currently 20 macro books.

We are about to have 22 jobs.
We still only have 20 macro books.

I don't know about anyone else, but the first thing I did when they released more macro books was set one to every single job. I love have them all listed by job.

My Summoner macro book could do with at least 1 more page (making it 11 instead of 10), but I would much rather have 2 more macro books instead. Each of my jobs has their own list of pages depending on what gear I have, what I'm doing with that job, and numerous other factors.

Anyone else have any opinions about this idea?

[Economizer]

Note: This is not an agreement with the quotation.

Greetings,

Good observation regarding 20 jobs and 20 macro books but these matching numbers are actually by coincidence and we never intended to have one book per job.
We can understand that creating one book per job would make things easier to organize but we would need to continue adding them every time a new job is introduced. We feel that 200 macros are sufficient and for that reason we do not plan on adding more books at this time.

[Concerned4FFxi]

Note: This is not an agreement with the quotation.

Dear Moogle,

Many things in this game were an oversight, because the game wasn't orginally intended to last this many years and still be in service. But, happily, we are all going strong, so please add the books its required by your players to play better with your already six line limited macro pallet; especially after breaking xp with abyssea and making it possible to level all jobs easily. This type of dedication those subscribers show to your product can best be returned by adding the two books. Thank you.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Yeah, and you know how they like to release new jobs every other month or so.

[RAIST]

oh how quickly we have become spoiled, eh? Doesn't seem all that long ago we had only one set to work with, so we had two or sometimes even 3 jobs sharing the same macro bars at times. Used to have to use the save slots (remember, we have four slots to save/load from at the login screen?) to load either an all-melee macro set or a mage friendly one at login, based on what I planned to do that night.

Probly have to look at combining some of the melee jobs into one book I guess? I rarely use more than 5 or 6 pallettes on a few melee jobs. Now the mages... those are some nightmarish books, and not much wiggle room there--but you could probably combine some melee books to make room, or as mentioned earlier, run different saved profiles.

[Wolfe]

If this is indeed how SE feels about taking suggestions from the fan base (read: the people that PAY for the service), I may look into running some of those third party apps out there that will allow me to have 2,000 macros. Not to mention, customize them any way I see fit, without ANY restrictions at all.

Seriously though, how can SE be satisfied with this answer?
We feel that 200 macros are sufficient and for that reason we do not plan on adding more books at this time.

Really? You are going to tell us what is acceptable and what isn't? Aren't WE the ones that keep telling YOU what should be included in the next updates? YOU give US what WE want. That's how this works. WE pay YOU for stuff that WE want. If WE don't get what WE want, WE don't pay YOU. It's very simple logic, I assure you.

Ever wonder why the FFXI fan base keeps shrinking? It's because SE keeps trying to tell us what we want. 200 macros is enough. I say it isn't.

Furthermore, why is adding more macro books for every new job a bad thing? SE makes it sound like this would really be that hard to do. I thought it should have been a given. Whether it was a coincidence or not. I don't believe that, I think someone, somewhere at SE, thought about the idea of 20 jobs / 20 macro books, it just makes sense (there's no way everyone at SE is that stupid that no one thought of this before).

[Zarchery]

Furthermore, why is adding more macro books for every new job a bad thing? SE makes it sound like this would really be that hard to do. I thought it should have been a given. Whether it was a coincidence or not. I don't believe that, I think someone, somewhere at SE, thought about the idea of 20 jobs / 20 macro books, it just makes sense (there's no way everyone at SE is that stupid that no one thought of this before).

The original implementation was one macro book. When they expanded it to 20, there were only 18 jobs. There's no intentional correlation between the number of macro books and the number of jobs. That's just a coincidence that came to be when they added Dancer and Scholar.

I always enjoy it when this happens:

Player: Please give me this.
Square Enix: No.
Player: I pay money so I should get whatever I want!!!! *throws temper tantrum*

It boggles the mind that you can't make do with 4000 macros. That really sounds like your problem. Be honest, do you seriously have 200 macros for all 20 jobs? I can't fathom any melee job using more than 40, tops.

Hint: You can put more than one job on one macro book. I have a macro book labelled "Other" that contains macros for 10 different jobs.

[Wolfe]

The original implementation was one macro book. When they expanded it to 20, there were only 18 jobs. There's no intentional correlation between the number of macro books and the number of jobs. That's just a coincidence that came to be when they added Dancer and Scholar.

I always enjoy it when this happens:

Player: Please give me this.
Square Enix: No.
Player: I pay money so I should get whatever I want!!!! *throws temper tantrum*

It boggles the mind that you can't make do with 4000 macros. That really sounds like your problem. Be honest, do you seriously have 200 macros for all 20 jobs? I can't fathom any melee job using more than 40, tops.

Hint: You can put more than one job on one macro book. I have a macro book labelled "Other" that contains macros for 10 different jobs.

Each job has my standard set of macros. Now, when I am on a job that has to proc for Abyssea, Void Watch, Dynamis, etc., I switch to a different macro set that allows me to gear swap sufficiently. Do I use all 10 macro sets for each job? Just about. I can't give you an exact number for each one, but I'd be lucky to have 1-2 macros for 1/4 of the jobs. Pet jobs are all filled up, fully. Even Dragoon, which has attack/support and numerous variations. I was actually amused that I managed 7 macro sets for it, with one set that is all kinds of messed up, just for fun (which you SHOULD have, since it IS a game).

I love that you think you can reduce my arguments to that of a child throwing a temper tantrum. I'm offering my point of view and when people like you start attacking me, I'm going to get more than a little upset.

You can't fathom any melee job using more than 40 macros, seriously? You must really suck at this game. I don't see any ONE job using that many, but all of the jobs out there, combined, yes. I have a few friends whose macros exceed mine, by far. My macro sets are looked at as pathetic because I don't gear swap for every little bit of extra damage. Some people take this game seriously and want to squeeze out every bit of extra damage they can muster.

[Chilloa]

You must really suck at this game.

I don't gear swap for every little bit of extra damage.

1) Just wanted to point that out.

2) If you don't gear swap, then why are you complaining about macros? When I first entered the topic I had assumed that you were uber into macros and swapped gear every time you used one. But if you're not even swapping gear and you're just using macros for quick JA, Spells, or WS (which all only take one line per macro) then there's no way you need more than 20 books.

I'm all for giving the fans what they want, but I highly doubt anyone is using all 4000 Macros we currently have access to.

[Zarchery]

I love that you think you can reduce my arguments to that of a child throwing a temper tantrum. I'm offering my point of view and when people like you start attacking me, I'm going to get more than a little upset.

See, your response when told that you don't get 22 macro books was not "Oh okay. I'm disappointed, and here are the reasons why maybe you should reconsider." or something like that. It was this:

Really? You are going to tell us what is acceptable and what isn't? Aren't WE the ones that keep telling YOU what should be included in the next updates? YOU give US what WE want. That's how this works. WE pay YOU for stuff that WE want. If WE don't get what WE want, WE don't pay YOU. It's very simple logic, I assure you.

I classified it as a temper tantrum because that's what it is. When you were denied what you wanted, you immediately started crying about how you are the customer and you are unconditionally entitled to what you want.

You can't fathom any melee job using more than 40 macros, seriously? You must really suck at this game. I don't see any ONE job using that many, but all of the jobs out there, combined, yes.

See this is odd. In your first sentence, you tell me that I am stupid for not believing that any melee job could use more than 40 macros. Then in your third sentence, you acknowledge that no one melee job would use that many, and you have to combine all jobs to use them.

Why would you need a different macro book for a job just because you're in a different location? Is there some magical property to Dynamis that says that a gear set optimizing damage for, say, Steel Cyclone, works differently there than it does in a Voidwatch battle out in Lower Delkfutt's Tower?

You have FOUR THOUSAND macros at your disposal. If you were saying that the 6 line limit per macro was too limiting, I'd agree. But if you can't fit everything you need to do inside those 4000 macros, the problem is on you. I would love to hear an actual breakdown of someone using 200 macros on one melee job. It would take 12 lines, or 2 macros, to switch out every piece of gear that doesn't reset TP, and another 2 to switch them back in. That's 4 macros in what seems like a pretty extreme case to me. 5 if you then include the actual weapon skill. Are you doing that for every single weapon skill and job ability? On every job? Why aren't you putting some of those into the body of the job ability macro itself? You can equip and unequip 2 pieces of gear in one macro for any job ability or weapon skill. I've got a Chakra set on MNK that switches in 8 pieces of gear for Chakra. 6 come in on their own macro and then switch back on a separate macro. 2 more switch in and out on the same macro that activates Chakra. It's a set of 3 macros pasted onto two different macro bars (one for DNC sub and one for WAR sub).

I've still got 160 macros left for MNK alone. If I wanted to follow the same structure and do a big time gear swap for all 12 hand to hand weapon skills, that's 60 macros. Great. I still have 100 macros left at my disposal, even after making an entire 12 piece gear set for stuff like Combo and One Inch Punch and so forth. ONE HUNDRED MACROS. On ONE JOB.

Now suppose I want to, for some reason, do the same thing on every job ability. MNK has 12 job abilities, if you count Hundred Fists and the two merit unlocked job abilities Mantra and Formless Strikes. As far as I know, Mantra just gives a straight percentage boost to max HP based on the number of merits you dumped into it, so no gear would ever help it. But still, 5 macros for every job ability is still 60 more macros. Add that in, and you still have a whopping 40 macros remaining on one job. Remember that we have gone out of our way to waste macro book space here.

I have a little more trouble with macro space on my mage jobs. BLM for example has the magian trial staves for all elements. I squeezed every spell of a certain element into one macro (so like Fire 2, 3, 4, and 5 are all one macro), which works okay for straight damage but sucks for procs. It only uses 50 macros. I've been meaning to expand that out, so that, like, Fire IV and Fire V are on different macros. Straight offensive spells only take up 18 macro slots out of 200 for BLM. If I expanded those out, we'd be up to 72, but still well under the 200 macro limit without spilling over into another job. I could conceivably see a mage job pushing up against that 200 limit, but not even a freakishly macro obsessed melee who does this for every single job.

This complaining about the limitation of macro numbers is a lot like someone who doesn't use porter moogles or claim slips or mules complaining about the lack of inventory space. It's like... inventory space is an actual problem we can talk about, but some people don't even try to work with what we've got. I propose that I don't suck at the game, but rather that you suck at organizing and you want Square Enix to rectify that, and that they are duty bound to do so because you are the Almighty Paying Customer.