Macros, please fix them or indicate if you will not.

Date & Time: February 10 2019
Frequency: Random but consistent
World name: Coeurl
Character name: Yoda Moo
Class/Level: Red Mage 54
Party or solo: Both
In-game time: 9:25 p.m.
Area and coordinates: All
Steps:
1. Make a useful Macro
2. Use the Useful Macro
3. Useful macro doesn't work properly so it is not Useful and is therefore broken

If this is working as intended then by all means move it to the "Working as intended" section. This, however, does not belong in the "Not a bug" section as it is definitely either a bug or working as intended when a macro does not start by using the first ability listed in it.

Furthermore, if you guys have time to move it, then you should have the time to take a minute and reply to it. I pay to play the game like everyone else and I would appreciate knowing if the devs give a crap about my issue and if they have any plans at all to look into it. Moving it to a "Not a bug" section shows me that you are not even listening and don't care about what I am saying at all.

Here is a Copy/Paste of the post I made last night which was since moved to the wrong section as well as a link to it because it was elaborated on in subsequent posts.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...of-the-Game%21

I intend to continue repposting this here until it is either responded to with a useful, informative Dev reply, or it is moved to the "Working as intended" section, indicating that SE has no desire to fix this sadly broken system.

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So, to put it simple, Macros in this game are all but useless in combat. There are plenty of fun macros you can make to help out with unimportant and non time sensitive abilities though... The biggest complaint I see on forums is that they offer no queue up like you get when using an ability without macros before your current cast is done. This is already a bit of a dps loss but manageable if not for the worse issue.

Here is what I want to see. Macros that do what they should. A huge example for me is on my Red Mage. I have a macro that looks like this:

/micon "Verfire"
/ac "Verfire"
/ac "Verthunder"

The Idea is that when I get a proc of Verfire, it will use Verfire since it is obvilously first in the macro. Then when there is no proc, but I have a Dualcast proc on, it will cast an instant Verthunder. This still takes a good amount of paying attention and can still be screwed up easily enough, but for a player who is used to it and does it well it is quite nice!

Unfortunately, due to some weird way that macros run in this game, often times Verthunder will start to hard cast even with a Verfire Proc on and Verfire being first in the Macro. Fixing this would be a huge way to make macros more useful! As it is now, I can use this macro and it will do the job I want, but occasionally at a huge dps loss due to having to cancel my hard cast and hit the button again to use Verfire sometimes.

If the game even had some sort of "/stopcast Verthunder" type macro command, I could put that at the start and it would fix my issue too for the most part. There are options to making it work and I really see no downside. There are many examples like this on other jobs too and quite frankly I just use it because there are sooo many buttons on most jobs that any way of combining them into less buttons with smart macros would be a huge help.

The last thing I want to see in this game is Macros like in WoW where you can bind one mouse macro to spam all your buttons for you and be the best Ret pally on the server...But at the same time, some freedom to combine buttons and manipulate the macro system for Quality of Life would be amazing! I know there is a new expansion coming out and the devs probably have big important things to work on, but it would be so nice if they could just have someone working on ways to make macros better, more useful, more rewarding, and more fun!

Oh and while you're at it... /micon is nice and all but we really need macros to show the abilities Tooltip, not just it's icon. And make macro use the Queuing functionality of abilities. Sure it probably has some complications, maybe even related to why the macro sometimes caste Verthunder when I have a Verfire proc, But I know you guys have some smart devs who can figure it out and program it to work. Again, I don't want a cloned system of other games, but I will say, if they can do certain things in other games, I know you guys can do it too, so "It's not possible in FFXIV" doesn't fly as a response :P

Hopefully someone important glances at this and finds some validity in it. I love the game so much but, as someone who loves programing and code, Macros are so fun and useful and not being able to use them in an effective way is saddening and frustrating!

When it comes to combat classes/jobs, most players will advise not to use macros for queuing up actions as they are not reliable and/or susceptible to lag/ping, (the latter being something difficult to fix). Sure there are some exceptions but seeing as RDM doesn't particularly have any button bloat, consolidation isn't really necessary for the job (aside from a possible Jolt II and Impact merge in the future). It's not really a DPS loss either once you master the job, just a matter of practice and things will flow doing them manually. Of course I'm not against macros, if they work for some players that's fine, but don't rely on them too much.

I mean, 3 melee combo abilities, the 4 main Ver spells, holy and flare, Jolt, Impact, Scatter, Moulinet... That's 13 abilities right there that are generally part of the main "rotation" and that's already more than the 12 buttons that 1 - = can handle. I'm already using Q and E as well as the Grave key and several bound mouse buttons to activate cooldowns...Not sure what you consider "Bloat" but RDM has enough buttons to want to consolidate some. Especially the examples I gave due to never ever wanting to use Verthunder when Verfire is usable...

But the main point is that I can make a macro to do Verfire and Verthunder, but it sometimes uses the second ability in the list instead of the first one...That is not how it should work! The macro system is designed in a way that does what it should do...but sometimes doesn't do it, and that is the problem!

How macros work is they play them line by line at set intervals of time, and dont add the ability to the queue, so if you don't time it right, say you press your spell just before the gcd has rolled back it, the first line will fail and it will move onto the second.

Related not, you shouldnt be running macros in combat, especially on rdm because it has the least buttons by a fair margin, macros will also lose you casts over the course of a fight due to their clunk/ slowness.

RDM has 33 actions (including role skills) at level 70, in comparison to PLD which has 38 or AST with 37, the lowest I think being WHM at 31 actions. As I'm on controller and use the cross hotbar (XHB), I'm comfortable with two hotbars filled up with actions (so 32), but as some jobs take me over that and require a third hotbar so this is what I would call bloat something that takes me over the comfortable limit. Now I can still play even if a certain job has bloat, but some actions could really do with either being removed altogether or merged with something else as apposed to being macro'd.

As for the Verfire x Verthunder example, well they offer differing results so although Stone and Fire might be cheaper to cast, they also give less Mana and have less potency than Aero and Thunder so you may not always go for the processed action when you are trying to balance your Mana or dealing damage. In PvP though what you want actually happens and the actions switch automatically when it processes, but Stone and Fire upgrade to Aero and Thunder with the last two doing more damage but have the same Mana gain as the previous two, also neither of the four have any MP costs so there is less management involved in this case to begin with. Unfortunately it was confirmed the PvP style actions are not coming to PvE, apparently so the latter requires more skill to do content or something like that.

Macros are still too unreliable though, a little information below which can be found online from the game's Wiki.

"Macros are incompatible with skill queuing. When you press the button for a skill normally on your hotbar, it hands that to the game's system to execute right after the current skill completes. With a macro, however, it just dumps those text commands into your chat box right when you press the button/Key. This means that even if you're 100% efficient about pressing the buttons/keys at the right time to have it execute the skill with minimal delay, there will still be more delay than if you had queued up the skill. In practice, it's usually a lot more than just a little tiny delay, and over a long fight this downtime where you're doing nothing can really add up.

The other reason is lag. When you execute a macro, it sends all those text commands in rapid succession to the game. Sometimes, though, one of them won't be able to execute, which can cause problems."

Reaching my hand to weird places on my keyboard to hit buttons is not a measure of skill...Also, listing the total abilities that each job has doesn't mean much. Abilities outside the "Normal rotation" don't matter. They can be bound anywhere and macro'd and they don't really matter with regard to any of this. As for the difference in Mana from Verthunder vs Verfire, it is never going to be something that should matter when deciding which ability to use. There are far better ways to make sure your manas aren't equal than hard casting a 4 second ability and you shoudl never want to cast a Verthunder when you have Verfire Ready on...

As Rei explained, macros work in a weird queuing way that makes them go down the list, relatively slowly, which can cause them to line up poorly with the end of the GCD and cause them to use the wrong ability. This seems to be where the problem lies. Fix this way of macros functioning and there will be no problem. I know for a fact that it can be fixed because it isn't an issue in several other games. And the exact same thing goes for the lack of macro ability queuing. They need to rework macros altogether and get over this ancient system that basically uses the chatbox for everything. Make macros independent commands that function on their own and get away from the chatbox. Again something that is entirely possible and is how it works in many other games.

The argument that "other jobs have it harder" isn't valid either because what I have given is mearly an example that happened to come from RDM....Obviously this applies to many other jobs, if not all of them. Macros as a whole do not work as they should.

I think the main notion is that this isn't a bug and is working as intended. Macros are inherently bad for combat due to the inability to queue them, and you're better off acclimating yourself to not using them than trying to force them to work.

Hmm what I would try is maybe just adding a short delay after the verfire cast in the macro to see if that prevents the issue. Something like...
/micon "Verfire"
/ac "Verfire" <wait. 0.5>
/ac "Verthunder"

Obviously that's not ideal but it might work as a band aid for the time being. It's really too bad that there aren't any exception commands, like a "cast this unless this is available" type thing.

Quote:

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Fix this way of macros functioning and there will be no problem. I know for a fact that it can be fixed because it isn't an issue in several other games.

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XIV is working on spaghetti code from the original 1.0 game, so it's hardly like the modern games you see in the market today, hence why we have so many constant limitations and long delays before new things can be introduced or existing things adjusted. A non-existent issue on one game can't always be replicated in another.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Yodamoo

Reaching my hand to weird places on my keyboard to hit buttons is not a measure of skill...Also, listing the total abilities that each job has doesn't mean much. Abilities outside the "Normal rotation" don't matter. They can be bound anywhere and macro'd and they don't really matter with regard to any of this. As for the difference in Mana from Verthunder vs Verfire, it is never going to be something that should matter when deciding which ability to use. There are far better ways to make sure your manas aren't equal than hard casting a 4 second ability and you shoudl never want to cast a Verthunder when you have Verfire Ready on

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You are the one that was asking about button bloat, and me telling you the number of actions available for certain jobs was to highlight that. RDM has it so relatively easy compared to some other jobs, you just need to get used to it like the majority of players have already. Some abilities shouldn't really be macro'd either depending on what they are, but regardless as long you use most of your job's toolkit you'll find only a very small number never get used (perhaps 4-5 out of 33 actions in RDM's case) so still manageable.

With the Mana thing the point was the actions still give different results, hence why they would'nt work like the example mentioned about PvP. I also never said you should hardcast Veraero or Verthunder (you would never do that), but they would be instant through dualcast if a player actually wanted to use them as apposed to Stone or Fire for whatever reason. Anyway I'm sure you might adapt better to the job at level 70, you'll have a few months till it all changes to lvl 80.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ephryos

Hmm what I would try is maybe just adding a short delay after the verfire cast in the macro to see if that prevents the issue. Something like...
/micon "Verfire"
/ac "Verfire" <wait. 0.5>
/ac "Verthunder"

Obviously that's not ideal but it might work as a band aid for the time being. It's really too bad that there aren't any exception commands, like a "cast this unless this is available" type thing.

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Unless they’ve changed it, you can only do whole second delays, so you will have to do <wait.1> instead—which will add up over time and result in lost casts, which results in lost damage. That being said, I recommend not using macros for combat classes except for things like <tt> abilities that are generally placed on a tank (e.g., Palisade, Nature’s Minne, Apoc, etc.). Some mouse-over macros for heals are fine as well, from what I’ve seen. But, even then, they can be wonky; those are not as bad as trying to macro entire combos, however.

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Originally Posted by Yodamoo

Reaching my hand to weird places on my keyboard to hit buttons is not a measure of skill....

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I am confused by this argument since you can customize your hotbar and skill placement. PEBCAK?

It makes me sad that so many people just say "You shouldn't use macros because..." then they proceed to lost off why macros are bad... In fact, we should all be able to use macros that are functional and helpful and they should be programed to work properly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kurando

XIV is working on spaghetti code from the original 1.0 game, so it's hardly like the modern games you see in the market today, hence why we have so many constant limitations and long delays before new things can be introduced or existing things adjusted. A non-existent issue on one game can't always be replicated in another.

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This is definitely the reason and is exactly what i'm talking about. If macros can't work they way they should and will always be a DPS loss, then clearly they are broken and need to be fixed. Why leave a system in the game at all if they can't make it viable to use? If this means updating the programing in the game to make it work then so be it. Obviously this is not a simple task but as a game that is growing so well and attaining so many players from other games lately, it seems to me that modernization should be at the top of the list of things to do, next to releasing good new content, which they seem to be doing well!