Please Allow Skill Queueing with Mouseover Macros

In light of the recent discussion surrounding third party tools, I'd like to shine a light on what I believe is a glaring gameplay issue, Mouseover Macros.

In my opinion, there isn't enough player feedback about this issue for one reason; there are simple third party addons that correct the issue.

If you're unfamiliar with mouseover macros, they allow you to target your party members with abilities by only hovering your cursor over their names in the party list, rather than targeting them directly. However, the feature as implemented is flawed, as using the macro while casting does not correctly queue the action like other abilities do.

For healers, this is a big deal. To highlight why this is an issue, here's what the first 7 and a half seconds of the AST opener looks like without mouseover macros.

Fall Malefic

Lightspeed

--Pull--
Combust III
Target -> ally (mouse click)

Play

Draw

Target -> boss (tab)
2.5s
Fall Malefic
Target -> ally (click)

Play

Draw

5s
Target -> boss (tab)
Fall Malefic
Target -> ally (click)

Divination

Play

Target -> boss (tab)
7.5s
…

Within 7.5 seconds, an Astrologian performing the optimal rotation (with ideal RNG) takes 17 actions (roughly 2.2 actions per second), with over a third of these actions being target changes, actions where you’re not casting an ability at all! I commend those who are able to do input intensive combos like this, but for me it was too much, and led me to stop playing a job I very much enjoy.

Some may argue that the current mouseover macro solution is okay, but I strongly disagree. I play in a higher ping environment due to my location, and using mouseover macros without reliable action queueing leads to many of my abilities not casting at all. If there was an issue that caused your abilities to fail to cast 10% of the time, it would be a very high priority issue.

TLDR: Please, Square Enix, allow Mouseover Macros to queue like other abilities do.

And potions.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

And potions.

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This.

Also Sprint.

While this is more of a band-aid on the wound than an actual solution (healer metaphors!), I will note that you can bind the mouse wheel, along with various modifier keys, to shifting among targets. I have the normal mouse wheel bound to the target list, and then Shift plus the mouse wheel bound to the party list. (Alt + mouse wheel is bound to the alliance list for alliance raids, though I've found I don't use it often; Control + the mouse wheel is bound to the camera zoom in/out functionality.)

It took a bit of getting used to, but I can now move exactly where I intend to in the target or party list with just a quick twist of the mouse wheel, which is very useful for selecting things (without having to reach up and hit F1-F8 to select party members that way). And as an added benefit, in raids where the boss is large enough that tab-targeting won't always select them again right away, the mouse-wheel-through-aggro-list method will always select them, making it much easier to consistently select the boss again after healing someone.

I also agree that improvements to how mouseover targeting for actions work would be hugely beneficial to healers in general, mind you, though the macro system as a whole is kinda broken and I suspect they'd need to take another route (like a toggle for 'apply action to friendly targets on mouseover' and then just using the action outright) unless they just torched the macro system entirely and wrote something new. I just offer this note up in case it's useful to anyone else in the meantime.

Not worth implementing as a change to the macro system. They should add a global option to use mouseover as the target method for unmacroed beneficial actions when current target is hostile or invalid. Currently any beneficial action cast while targeting an enemy will coerce a selftarget and this sometimes undesirable behavior is why we have to change targets or use targeting macros. If instead an option could be enabled to allow all beneficial actions to cast on mouseover instead of self, changing targets or using targeting macros wouldn't be necessary in the first place and the macro issue would be moot.

Current:
Beneficial effects cast while targeting a valid friendly target cast on that target.
Beneficial effects cast while targeting an invalid or hostile target cast on self.

Option suggestion:
Beneficial effects cast while targeting a valid friendly target cast on that target.
Beneficial effects cast while targeting an invalid or hostile target cast on mouseover.
(Beneficial effects still cast on self if both target and mouseover are invalid.)
(Beneficial ground effects still cast using ground targeting rules.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rongway

They should add a global option to use mouseover as the target method for unmacroed beneficial actions when current target is hostile or invalid.

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Your proposed implementation would definitely be ideal! If they did exactly what you've described here I'd happily switch back to healing.

I only proposed the macro solution because, to me at least, it feels like the simplest fix for the time being. Especially since the current situation is quite dire.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Arcadious

Your proposed implementation would definitely be ideal! If they did exactly what you've described here I'd happily switch back to healing.

I only proposed the macro solution because, to me at least, it feels like the simplest fix for the time being. Especially since the current situation is quite dire.

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FWIW, as best I can tell based on the game's action system, I suspect Rongway's solution is actually easier under the hood than fixing the macro system's wonky queuing would be.

It would actually require making all macros function like using the skills directly for that to work.
Which honestly I'm all for. Not sure why macros necessitate breaking skill queueing to use.

I assume it's some insurmountable issue like everything else always is though

Mouseovers is something i sorely miss from other MMO's.

Abilities like BLM's Aetherial Manipulation would also benefit from mouseover..

I don't have the APM of a korean starcraft player to play AST.

I think the better solution is just to have a mouseover option that lets your actions use your mouseover target instead of the selected target, and have a hotkey you can press to make the action default to you if you have no target or your target if you have one.... similar to what WoW does...

Gosh big support. Mouseover macros are SO NICE but so annoyingly clunky at the worst possible times.

Btw, we should move this discussion over to Forum: User Interface where the possibility of it being relayed to a dev who cares would be just slightly higher than zero. Over here on General it's going to get buried after just a day or two and forgotten forever.

Redirect or Reaction.

They apparently won't add the features in until someone is banned for using the tools that provide them.

The lack of built in mouseover functionality is basically the reason why I don't really play AST.

Even outside of burst, the target swapping is way too much.