Evidence that Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay or Lost Casts

[Collin_Sky]

Clearly you can't, otherwise the in-game timers would support your claim. The actual timer in the game is more reliable than your eyeballs. Speaking of which...


Are you sure you didn't intend to send this message to yourself? Because it's your own advice, and yet you don't seem interested in taking it, even when your human eyeballs think they see something that is contradicted by the software timer.

There is a massive difference between noticing a lack of smoothness/brief pause in the GCD rolling correctly than trying to time a 0.4 second difference by eye. There's a reason I brought up the example of how some people can and can't tell the difference between 30FPS and 60FPS. You can notice the difference, but you can't time exactly how many frames are actually displayed per second by eye.

Can you be more specific about which website you'd like me to use, and how I would go about uploading data to it?

You know exactly what website I'm talking about.


Again though, you deflect from criticism to any point you can dismiss. There is a 100% certain way to prove it and you ignore it. I figured you'd want the ability to finally prove to everyone you're right in terms we can't deny?

It's really tiring, honestly, to debate this issue with you for you to fall back on "LOOK, I MADE A VIDEO IT PROVES I'M RIGHT" when we have ways that can identify, to the exact millisecond, when every single ability fires as determined by the game.

[LilimoLimomo]

There is a massive difference between noticing a lack of smoothness/brief pause in the GCD rolling correctly than trying to time a 0.4 second difference by eye.

You're right, there is a massive difference: the 0.4 second difference is 24 times larger than the 1-frame clipping you claim to be able to see. To pretend that you wouldn't be able to see any difference in 24 frames when you claim to be able to see a difference in only 1 frame is disingenuous.

I don't doubt that the UI might look different than your local UI, but that can be explained by many factors that are unrelated to macros clipping, one of which I've already suggested. If the aesthetic difference was due to macro clipping, then there would be at least a 0.4 second difference in the results of the macro and non-macro tests. Thus, basic logic states that if that difference isn't there, then there's no clipping, and the explanation for whatever you think you're seeing is something else.

The video evidence provided and the math contradict your claim. If you can point out a genuine, measurable flaw in my rebuttal, I welcome that. But "my naked eyes see clipping in a way that's mathematically impossible" isn't going to cut it.

You know exactly what website I'm talking about.

I'm pretty sure I must not. Because if I did know what you were talking about, that would mean that you were encouraging me to use a 3rd party tool that violates the ToS and thus puts my account at risk.

I figured you'd want the ability to finally prove to everyone you're right in terms we can't deny?

See, that's the funny thing. You can have all the evidence in the world, and there will always be people who won't be convinced. People still believe the Earth is flat. People still believe that vaccines cause autism. People believe all of that and so much more, even though there's a bountiful body of evidence that demonstrates otherwise.

There is no amount of data I could provide to convince someone who is truly invested in the narrative that "macros are bad" to change their tune. In fact, contrary to what you'd think, research shows that this would be more likely to cause folks to double-down on their previously held beliefs than to adopt new ones. Human brains can be weird like that.

Because of that, my focus will never be on trying to convince people who aren't open to being convinced; that will always be a losing battle. Instead, my aim is to reach the people who are capable of taking an unbiased and critical look at the data, and then following that to its logical conclusion.

Thankfully, that's a fairly straightforward task, because all those people have to do is read this thread. They can read my comments, read your comments, read everyone else's comments, and then they can employ their own critical thinking to determine who has the most convincing arguments and where the data leads.

[LilimoLimomo]

I found this: [en]Macrology(the Third Edition)

It seems outdated by now, but very comprehensive! The translation is rough in some areas since it appears to be translated from Chinese originally, but I was able to follow it well enough. It includes the method posted earlier of swapping hotbars to an identical one with a queue-able action which then resets on a timer. This seems to be the most clever "compromise", but has very little room for mechanical imprecision (not masher friendly!).

I finally got finished reading this, and I'm really glad I did! The author and I don't see eye-to-eye on a few things, but thanks to that they've invented an entirely different method of queuing actions from macros. It's incredibly interesting!

In particular, I really like the way they use macros like this...

/ac Shifu
/hotbar change 6
/micon Shifu

...to allow them to change hotbars and press the actual default Shifu button (on hotbar 6) with a simple double-tap, thus allowing the user to cleverly take advantage of macros while also pressing normal buttons to get that half-second queue duration when desired.

Personally, I'm not sure if I'd ever want to double-tap my buttons, but it's absolutely brilliant for those who do. And if I ever run into a situation where my macro queuing technique doesn't seem to be cutting it (like maybe if I age to the extent where I can't time my inputs so precisely) then it's nice to have alternatives.

But most of all, I'm just excited to see the creativity of my other macro users as they find interesting ways to make the most of macros and navigate around their limitations.

Finally, I had to share my favorite quote from the article:

There is no absolutely perfect macro, but you can find your own perfect.

It's such an elegant summary of how I think about macros. Thanks again for sharing it!

[PommesFrites]

I'm glad it was useful to you! I remember being very interested when I first found it, too...I wish it weren't left unfinished, I would really love to know what was supposed to go in the advanced sections. I think macros would not be in the game if they weren't meant to be used in whatever ways people want to use them, and no fights outside of maybe Ultimate difficulty are designed with such tight DPS checks that any imprecisions can't be forgiven. It does not matter and has not ever mattered to me to inflict this potential handicap on myself to make other, much more important and severe handicaps manageable in whatever way I am able to. It is a shame that there is such a stigma against them in the English-speaking web, otherwise I expect there would be a lot more development than this several year-old markdown document translated from Chinese to describe clever methods of working with them.

[Mikoko_Miko]

I searched Chinese websites using "最终幻想14 宏学" (Final Fantasy 14 Macrology) as keywords. I could not find updated public documents. Instead, I found some videos on bilibili.com (YouTube-like website in China). Hotbar changing macros seem to be widely used in Chinese community. They also use macros very creatively. I've not imagined to make board games nor adventure games using in-game macros.

[LilimoLimomo]

I searched Chinese websites using "最终幻想14 宏学" (Final Fantasy 14 Macrology) as keywords. I could not find updated public documents. Instead, I found some videos on bilibili.com (YouTube-like website in China). Hotbar changing macros seem to be widely used in Chinese community. They also use macros very creatively. I've not imagined to make board games nor adventure games using in-game macros.

Interesting, I can see how you would make an adventure game. Much as described in the Macrology text I read, you could use each hotbar as a "state", with different macros representing different actions to change that state, and presumably output text to the dialogue box to explain the new state as well as the new branching choices you have in the new state. That's neat! Kind of like making a game in Twine, but it's being made in FF14; I'm sure Yoshi-P never intended that kind of thing, and that's what makes it so creative and cool. ^^

I'm a bit confused about how to make a board game work, though. Maybe with Waymarkers (A, B, C, Triangle, Square, etc)? Or maybe lining up all the hotbars so they form a grid? Though that all seems like it would take more than 200 macro slots, unless they're using some very interesting techniques that I haven't even begun to consider yet. Does the way they do it make sense to you when you see it?

[LilimoLimomo]

I'm glad it was useful to you! I remember being very interested when I first found it, too...I wish it weren't left unfinished, I would really love to know what was supposed to go in the advanced sections. I think macros would not be in the game if they weren't meant to be used in whatever ways people want to use them, and no fights outside of maybe Ultimate difficulty are designed with such tight DPS checks that any imprecisions can't be forgiven. It does not matter and has not ever mattered to me to inflict this potential handicap on myself to make other, much more important and severe handicaps manageable in whatever way I am able to. It is a shame that there is such a stigma against them in the English-speaking web, otherwise I expect there would be a lot more development than this several year-old markdown document translated from Chinese to describe clever methods of working with them.

From what I've gathered, that stigma didn't always exist. I've seen videos from many years ago when prominent FF14 content creators made videos on macros. A quick skim of those macros shows that they weren't well-made and would probably result in significant frame loss, the kind that modern macro developers would easily be able to avoid. And yet, despite the flaws in those macros, these videos show that there was a time when such macros were more widely used and accepted by players.

Of course, at some point that changed, presumably because players started doing experiments and learning about the flaws of these simple macros. SaltedXIV's side-by-side comparison video (the one I debunked in my original post) came out in 2020, but I don't know whether their video coincides with the initial discovery of these issues, or whether it was uploaded afterwards and was just particularly effective at communicating their data. But I'd guess it was around that time at the very latest that more players started to entirely give up on macros. They saw the data, and it convinced them to change their behavior.

Part of what gives me hope for the future is that even though they didn't know the whole story, they made the best decisions they could with the data they had at the time. We've got even more data now, and the main challenge is finding a way to deliver it to more players in a way they understand.

But old habits die hard, and fear is a powerful motivator.

Regardless, the game has 10 more years left in it, and that's a lot of time for the status quo to shift. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

[Mikoko_Miko]

Here are the videos of in-game macro minigames I mentioned.

最终幻想XIV 宏学五子棋 (Final Fantasy 14 Macrology 5-in-a-line)
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1vt411Q7jN/

【最终幻想XIV】宏学劲舞团 (Final Fantasy 14 Macrology Audition)
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1vz411e7Hh/

【最终幻想XIV】宏学贪吃蛇 (Final Fantasy 14 Macrology Snake Game)
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1UB4y1P79k/

【最终幻想XIV】宏学密室 (Final Fantasy 14 Macrology Locked Room)
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ii4y1o7bi/

In the first video they play 5-in-a-line (a Tic-Tac-Toe like game) using hotbars as a game board. They say that mechanism is published on a BBS. Unfortunately the link is only for registered members, so some reverse engineering are required.

It is supposed to be implemented with the following macro for each row, each column, and shared / current job. In addition three macros are required for initialization by /hotbar copy. 9 × 9 × 2 + 3 = 165 macros are required.

/hotbar set item [item name] [row] [column]
/hotbar share 1 [on/off]
/hotbar share 2 [on/off]
/hotbar share 3 [on/off]
/hotbar share 4 [on/off]
/hotbar share 5 [on/off]
/hotbar share 6 [on/off]
/hotbar share 7 [on/off]
/hotbar share 8 [on/off]
/hotbar share 9 [on/off]
/hotbar share 10 [on/off]
/hotbar set item [item name] [row] [column]

Snake Game uses more tricky mechanism. It is supposed to be implemented with hotbar copy and hotbar set item. But I don't know how to make it within 200 macros and 15 lines limitation. I need further examination.

[Lck0ut]

Edit:

/macroicon "Glare"
/macroerror off
/ac "Glare"

A few suggestions I would make to this macro, if you really want to use it,

a) make the first line be '/mlock', which is shorthand for /macrolock. This will block restarting the macro, no matter how fast you mash, until the current instance of the macro has finished executing.

b) make as many lines of this macro be the action you want to be used as possible.

c) move everything but the /mlock and /macroerror off commands to the end, after the /ac commands.

I would still advise against macroing your gcds, as they do not get queued like pressing the gcd itself, same with your ogcds. However, there are niche use-cases where this can be useful. For instance, a macro of mine that I use a lot while playing DNC:

/mlock
/macroerror off
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>
/ac "Closed Position" <6>

I have 2 more of these for <7> and <8>, respectively, and they allow me to swap my dance partner in a single gcd (albeit with a microclip due to macros not queueing up), most notably WITHOUT needing to untarget the boss at any point.

Another niche use case for macros, a macro to make a certain variation of the fire/ice towers mechanic in Dragonsong's Reprise (Ultimate) more consistent:

/mlock
/merror off
/automove on <wait.1>
/automove off
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo
/echo

This macro allows you to move at just the right pace to bait the meteor drops so they don't detonate, for when you dont have enough room to walk without stopping.

[Mikoko_Miko]

From what I've gathered, that stigma didn't always exist. I've seen videos from many years ago when prominent FF14 content creators made videos on macros. A quick skim of those macros shows that they weren't well-made and would probably result in significant frame loss, the kind that modern macro developers would easily be able to avoid. And yet, despite the flaws in those macros, these videos show that there was a time when such macros were more widely used and accepted by players.

A long time ago, circa 2015 or 2016, there were several threads on macros here. I've completely forgotten them, but according to my post history I've posted pseudo-queueing macros and hotbar changing macros. They were not my own invention, so such tips were already widely known in JP community. At that time there were more macro users and less aversion in English forum than today.

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