Evidence that Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay or Lost Casts

[AmiableApkallu]

Can you clarify whether by "over and over again" you mean once per cast, or mashing repeatedly?

Once per intended cast. (You specifically complained about mashing buttons in the original post. So, why would I mash the buttons?)

This is covered in my first post. When using programmatic queuing, macros will have a shorter queue window than normal actions. Because of this, the timing of when you press them is different. That needs to be taken into account when performing this experiment. Naturally if you press any button outside of the window it's capable of queuing in, you're not going to get the results you're after.

And this is exactly why your striking dummy demonstration is of limited value.

In the heat of actual combat, the larger window of time in which I can push a button and expect it to go off is of immense value, especially when I refuse to push more than once per intended cast, because the larger window means I can be less precise with my timing. Furthermore, tossing in macros means I have to remember that my buttons now have three different windows in which they can be pressed (GCD, oGCD, macro).

Hopefully these explanations can provide the guidance you need to give the test another go by performing it the way I did! If it helps, there's a visual effect that happens on the crosshotbar when a button is pressed, so you can watch my video to get a better idea of when I'm pressing the button.

I already did.

Anyone can consistently get the timing correct when there's nothing else going on and they're interested in only a single button. It's like the old meme, "Assume a frictionless, spherical cow."

It's great in the classroom or laboratory, but what matters is how it translates to the real world, to actual combat.

[LilimoLimomo]

In the heat of actual combat, the larger window of time in which I can push a button and expect it to go off is of immense value, especially when I refuse to push more than once per intended cast, because the larger window means I can be less precise with my timing. Furthermore, tossing in macros means I have to remember that my buttons now have three different windows in which they can be pressed (GCD, oGCD, macro).

I've already stated how my tests don't cover the area of "user error"; they cover how the actual software functions. That said, I will address the topic of user error once again for you so that you don't have to scroll back and find one of my other posts on the topic.

You say you find the larger queue window to be of immense value. That's awesome! But that's a subjective opinion. Personally, I find the value that macros provide to be greater than the value of that larger queue window. Different strokes for different folks.

You say that you are burdened by needing to remember different windows of button timing. Personally, I don't find that to be a burden; I'm accustomed to playing games with all sorts of different timings. I find that if I play a game long enough, I start to build muscle memory and it becomes second nature. It sounds like that's another way that our experiences differ: something that you find challenging, I find easy, while there are things that you find easy that I find challenging.

I can't provide you or anyone else with information on whether you will or won't find that macros improve your experience; all I can do is try to provide you with the best data I can so that you understand how macros work, and then you can use that information to aid you in the subjective process of determining whether or not macros improves your personal play.

[LilimoLimomo]

Bro are you serious right now.
You pick and choose what to respond to in each post

Like everyone else in these posts, I don't reply to every word or even every sentence. But I do my best to reply to the overall ideas that a person is talking about, and I do my best not to omit important details.

But I'm far from perfect, so it's entirely possible that I might have thought something that you feel is important was simply an aspect of another point I responded to. So if you think there are important details that I didn't respond to, simply bring those details to my attention and I'll reply to them.

You refuse to provide any further evidence when requested
You dismiss criticism any made

This entire thread is full of evidence to the contrary. When people bring up salient criticisms, I engage with those. Numerous times throughout this thread people have brought genuine issues to my attention, and in response I have made adjustments to the thread and even done further tests. Your post is literally on the same page as one such example; just scroll up ever so slightly.

You make up your own excuses of what other people see in order to justify your correctness

You're clearly just talking about the time that you were sure you were seeing clipping when what you were actually seeing was caster tax, even though the in-game timer and math based on frame data provided solid evidence that you were wrong.

You are the one arguing in bad faith.

I encourage everyone to go back and read every post Collin has made in this thread, in order.
(Be sure to double-check whether they were edited after they were replied to.)

[LilimoLimomo]

All im simply asking for is evidence of macros being used in actual content.

My mind is open to the possibility of macros being used, but I'd like to see them being used first. Even just in easy fights like the 93 trial or the first lv100 normal raid. Just to really see if "Macros Do NOT Cause GCD Delay or Lost Casts"

You know the saying, "practice what you preach". I don't think I'm asking for a lot here, so it should be simple enough.

When doing scientific research, before you gather any data, you first go through the rigorous process of deciding how you will actually perform your data analysis. You don't want to do this after you gather the data, because that introduces opportunities for bias into the actual process of parsing the data.

As I've said before, it would be trivially easy for me to just give you a video of myself doing any kind of combat. But you have yet to provide any details about what you would do to determine how macros were or weren't impacting the combat. For example, your analytical process will need to be designed in a way so that when you see some kind of imperfection in output, you can reliably differentiate between "issues caused by my being a mid player" and "issues caused by macro use". How are you going to go about that? That's a non-trivial challenge, and if you genuinely want to gather unbiased data, you need to be prepared to handle such eventualities before you set eyes on the data.

So if you're down, share the details of your analytical method with me, and we can iterate on it together to see if we can actually design a method that is capable of taking a gameplay video as input and outputting meaningful data.

[LilimoLimomo]

AmiableApkallu's Avatar
Quote Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu View Post
But the real point of contention is the following:

That latter point is a quirk of the few jobs and actions that feature actions with "cast time >= recast time." If you want to make a convincing point about macros and performance, you need to demonstrate the value for the more common case where "cast time < recast time."

This is a genuinely good point; it's entirely possible that the whole "caster tax" thing might mean that such actions aren't impacted as meaningfully by macros as actions that more strictly depend on the GCD. That's well worth doing another round of tests for! Thank you for pointing this out.

Just a quick update on this, I did a round of tests last night, but this morning I woke up and thought about some ways I can make them more thorough. So I'm going to do some more tests throughout the weekend. I hope to be able to share both the evidence and the results sometime around Sunday, but that's just a guesstimate. So even if they're not up by then, know that they're on their way.

[DeltaCyan]

For example, your analytical process will need to be designed in a way so that when you see some kind of imperfection in output, you can reliably differentiate between "issues caused by my being a mid player" and "issues caused by macro use". How are you going to go about that?

With my eyes. It would be painfully obvious to tell the difference between macros causing clipping or not working and a player making genuine and understandable mistakes.

[Collin_Sky]

I've already stated how my tests don't cover the area of "user error"; they cover how the actual software functions. That said, I will address the topic of user error once again for you so that you don't have to scroll back and find one of my other posts on the topic.

You say you find the larger queue window to be of immense value. That's awesome! But that's a subjective opinion. Personally, I find the value that macros provide to be greater than the value of that larger queue window. Different strokes for different folks.

You say that you are burdened by needing to remember different windows of button timing. Personally, I don't find that to be a burden; I'm accustomed to playing games with all sorts of different timings. I find that if I play a game long enough, I start to build muscle memory and it becomes second nature. It sounds like that's another way that our experiences differ: something that you find challenging, I find easy, while there are things that you find easy that I find challenging.

I can't provide you or anyone else with information on whether you will or won't find that macros improve your experience; all I can do is try to provide you with the best data I can so that you understand how macros work, and then you can use that information to aid you in the subjective process of determining whether or not macros improves your personal play.

Then prove it by showing a video of you playing a real, instanced piece of content with macros lol
If it's such second nature it shouldn't take you long or be too difficult
literally anything
go do a trial roulette or an expert or something

[Collin_Sky]

I encourage everyone to go back and read every post Collin has made in this thread, in order.
(Be sure to double-check whether they were edited after they were replied to.)

No need. I did it for you.

Here is every post I've made that I have edited and you have replied to.

I circled the timestamps so you and everyone else can see why I'm saying you're arguing in bad faith when you literally make up easily verifiable ad hominems.

Just because I spend time editing my posts after hitting reply to clarify my thoughts does not mean I'm trying to cheat in this discussion.

Honestly at this point it's obvious to me you're straight up just trolling

I'm done with this thread, at this point all replying is doing is bumping its visibility. I encourage everyone else arguing with OP to stop replying. This thread will die very quick if you do.

[AmiableApkallu]

I can't provide you or anyone else with information on whether you will or won't find that macros improve your experience; all I can do is try to provide you with the best data I can so that you understand how macros work, and then you can use that information to aid you in the subjective process of determining whether or not macros improves your personal play.

To be quite blunt, the "best data you can provide" has thus far proven to be 100% useless and meaningless, because you've provided no evidence of "here's me in real combat without macros", "here's me in real combat with macros", and "here's why you should believe the macros were an essential part of the difference in my performance (or personal comfort or whatever)."

That is how you counter the orthodoxy of, "Combat macros be bad." Because ultimately...

I've already stated how my tests don't cover the area of "user error"; they cover how the actual software functions.

If you can't be bothered to deal with the game and its players as they actually exist, then you don't have anything to say of practical value.

The ivory tower where all is perfect and sanitized, and the cows are frictionless and spherical, is besides the point.

[LilimoLimomo]

Here is every post I've made that I have edited and you have replied to.

But notably it's not every post you've made. Interesting choice to omit those. Even more interesting that you've trimmed the posts you've included so that you can't actually read their content, instead deciding to try to make the entire focus the editing timestamps.

Because I didn't encourage users to look at "every post that Collin has edited and I replied to". I encouraged users to genuinely read "every post that Collin had made in this thread".

The only reason I mentioned editing and timestamps is on the off-chance that like Alt, you might at some point try to scrub your history. But it's the original posts you made that are incriminating, not their timestamps.