Why people still USE ACT knowing their breaking TOS ??

[Wolfsbane706]

It may or may not be telling that console players very rarely get brought up whenever the parser discussion pops up.

[Rilifane]

They did a far better job on the controller than they did with the PC stuff I can tell you that. Gunbreaker is a complete headache on a gaming mouse and keyboard because even if you have the button grid on the mouse, it's really hard to rope memorize all the buttons on the mouse and you end up with a lot of skills ending up on keys that are not reachable by hand, so you have to basically click them using the default layout. I managed to fix the issues by heavily modifying the hot bar layout and keybindings, but it's ugly. There are a couple of jobs that are survivable on the default horizontal bar layout like whm, warrior, paladin, samurai, and red mage.

I think you need to work on your setup then.
I heard so many horror stories about Gunbreaker having insane amount of buttons, being a pain for your hand and that it's impossible to bind everything and the only class that requires constant clicking etc. but when I played it to 80 I didn't notice any difference to several other classes. It's all a matter of how you use your m/k and you don't even need fancy hardware for it.
Just to give you a few ideas:

• use modifiers like shift, alt. etc in addition to your regular keys
• use keys around your movement keys like A/D or Q/E and RTZFGHYXCV
• change your movement keys to something more centered, e.g. from WASD to TFGH to comfortably reach keys in both directions

I have relatively small hands so some keys are naturally harder to reach for me than most people. I currently have 3 hotbars filled and don't click anything (not even rarely used things like pots).
I know I could make it work without an MMO mouse because I have played classes with similiar or even higher amount of buttons in the past and fairly recently aswell when my mouse broke down but if you do have an MMO mouse it's extremely easy to bind everything. Pretty much everyone can comfortably use 9 of the 12 buttons, with alt/ shift that's a whooping 27 keybinds on your mouse alone.

[Payadopa]

It's a very "don't ask, don't tell" rule. So long as you aren't being a jerk with your parser SE won't do anything about it. If they actually enforced it and somehow got rid of all parses the raiding scene in this game would die overnight.

Don't want to sound mean or anything since I don't particularly care but I will say that the so called raiding scene has harmed the game enough for my personal taste. So much so that 'balancing' has negative connotations for me now. haha

To be fair, nobody has ever 'called me out' on my DPS so it can't be that bad, but maybe I just got lucky.

[Colt47]

Are you using shift modifiers or anything at all? I play mouse/kb and don't even have a gaming mouse, and there are only really a few classes where I have trouble reasonably keybinding everything and needing to click. Even then it's mostly tanks and healers, which I don't play as often as dps, so I really just haven't sat down and taken the time to really organize my hotbars very well for those classes. I bind and use 1-6 and f1-f5, RTYZXFG, and three mouse buttons (I do have two side buttons, and the middle button to bind), and then I have shift 1-3 set up, and that pretty much covers me on most of the classes I care about.

Ofc I do have carpal tunnel and other issues so I'm usually playing with a wrist brace on and can't reach as far as some others could. I could probably have a better more usable setup if I didn't already have hand and wrist problems.

I wouldn't complain if they condensed some things where reasonable, maybe combined some abilities to one button where it makes sense, but I wouldn't actually say FF is too much worse than WoW in terms of hotbar usability. It at least has a better base UI (for hotbars, if literally nothing else) even if there are definitely some mods in WoW that give much more flexibility and a generally better experience overall.

Yeah I'm using shift and ctrl modifiers. The issue is really the default setup in the game for PC which is awful. On Controllers they have one bar and the ability to hold down a trigger to swap that bar with another bar, so they decided this was the way to go with the default version of the controls for the PC. Basically, we end up with Shift + (pick number) sets the bar you see as Hotbar 1 in the default setup. I don't think the CTRL+Number triggering abilities on hotbar 2 was default (some of the things I had set up ages ago before returning). Having anything bound to "7" to "=" puts them out of reach for a lot of peoples left hand due to the maximum reach of the left hand without losing the neutral positioning. Soooo...

To fix the HOT BAR I ended up having to change it to Hot Bar 1 = 4x3 and Hot Bar 2 = 4x3 to maximize the usage of the 1-6 keys, which are the easiest keys for a human hand to reach and also reasonably easy to memorize if someone is using an MMO mouse. ALT, CTRL, and SHIFT determine which vertical level I'm accessing on bars 1 and 2, and this covers most of the abilities you need since it hits 24 slots. However, Gunbreaker requires Continuation to be constantly pressed in a pattern during the gnashing fang combo so there has to be another button that is easy to reach, thus I now add a 6x2 bar on the left side that is bound to keys on the keyboard near the hand controlling the movement. F gets bound to an ability slot along with C and V. Now I've got Continuation on F, so at least I can get gnashing fang working. Amusingly, it looks like a game of space invaders down on the bottom of my screen...

[Colt47]

I think you need to work on your setup then.
I heard so many horror stories about Gunbreaker having insane amount of buttons, being a pain for your hand and that it's impossible to bind everything and the only class that requires constant clicking etc. but when I played it to 80 I didn't notice any difference to several other classes. It's all a matter of how you use your m/k and you don't even need fancy hardware for it.
Just to give you a few ideas:

• use modifiers like shift, alt. etc in addition to your regular keys
• use keys around your movement keys like A/D or Q/E and RTZFGHYXCV
• change your movement keys to something more centered, e.g. from WASD to TFGH to comfortably reach keys in both directions

I have relatively small hands so some keys are naturally harder to reach for me than most people. I currently have 3 hotbars filled and don't click anything (not even rarely used things like pots).
I know I could make it work without an MMO mouse because I have played classes with similiar or even higher amount of buttons in the past and fairly recently aswell when my mouse broke down but if you do have an MMO mouse it's extremely easy to bind everything. Pretty much everyone can comfortably use 9 of the 12 buttons, with alt/ shift that's a whooping 27 keybinds on your mouse alone.

The fact we have to modify the HOT bars so much in this game to simply get it working is bad enough when we have to also determine where the abilities have to go on the HOT bar, as they simply add them in sequence to the nearest available slot when leveling. If the placement on the hotbar were done right, it wouldn't be a juggling act where we all have to redo the setup each time we install the game. Of course, at this point if they did get it right the only people who would reap the fruits of it would be new players since everyone else would have their own setup saved. It's basically a muscle memory thing.

[Rilifane]

The fact we have to modify the HOT bars so much in this game to simply get it working is bad enough when we have to also determine where the abilities have to go on the HOT bar, as they simply add them in sequence to the nearest available slot when leveling. If the placement on the hotbar were done right, it wouldn't be a juggling act where we all have to redo the setup each time we install the game. Of course, at this point if they did get it right the only people who would reap the fruits of it would be new players since everyone else would have their own setup saved. It's basically a muscle memory thing.

Are you... are you really saying that it's SE's job to arrange the hotkeys and skills in a good way so the player isn't "forced" to costumize? That the standard setup for both hotkeys AND skill arrangement should be sufficient to work with on all classes?

Everyone has different preferences, everyone clusters skills in a different way, has different hardware and different physical capabilities and limitations so of course you need to build your own setup, not just in FFXIV but every MMO. Things like fixed hotkeys with automatic and good skill arrangement might work in games like LoL, HotS and OW because you only have a handful of skills and the game's focus is a different one but for MMOs it's a completely natural thing that after gaining a couple of skills you notice which one you frequently use and how you would prefer your hotkeys, so you make your own setup. The skills are placed in the same order as you get them, how you prioritize them is up to you, not for SE to know in advance.
You have the option to costumize for a reason. The standard layout just gives you a general idea about how the UI can look like but things like differently sized and placed party windows for the different roles, hotbar settings, hotkey arrangement and general sizing and placement of other UI elements is of course completely up to you. As it should be. The standard UI and seetings work for almost nobody and that's not because it's so bad but because everyone wants it completely to their liking and their prefered settings vastly differ from each other.
I know as many people who would NEVER bind skills to A/D or Q/E as people who only use QWE for movement and bind the rest. Or people who feel completely fine using only mod keys + 1-9 while others abhor it.

To fix the HOT BAR I ended up having to change it to Hot Bar 1 = 4x3 and Hot Bar 2 = 4x3 to maximize the usage of the 1-6 keys, which are the easiest keys for a human hand to reach and also reasonably easy to memorize if someone is using an MMO mouse.

Wether you want a 1x12, 2x6 or 3x4 layout is purely aesthetic and doesn't affect they way you bind or use hotkeys AT ALL.
You don't have to use 1-´ for one hotbar, you can set the hotkeys whichever way you like regardless of hotbar design. I'm starting to think you have some fundamental misunderstanding about how hotkey and hotbar settings work. You're not maximiszing anything by chosing 3x4 over 1x12 or 2x6. You could put a really tiny hotbar somewhere you don't even see it and still use the skills. Some people even do that because they don't need to see skills that don't have a cooldown.

[Mhaeric]

I don't get this hotbar complaint. It's a hotbar. You customize it to your preference. It's how hotbars work. The only fixed hotbars I have ever come across are for games that either have so few abilities that there's no reason to customize it (e.g. many action platformers come to mind) or for games that have lots of skills but with fixed skillslots based on game design and/or your build or equipment (Guild Wars 2 for example.)

I mean unless the real complaint is that people only want 6 to 8 buttons to press and that the game should place them on the hotbar for them in the order that they should be pressed... I guess I can see what the complaint is about? But that's not this game, nor will it ever be.

The fact we have to modify the HOT bars so much in this game to simply get it working is bad enough when we have to also determine where the abilities have to go on the HOT bar, as they simply add them in sequence to the nearest available slot when leveling. If the placement on the hotbar were done right, it wouldn't be a juggling act where we all have to redo the setup each time we install the game. Of course, at this point if they did get it right the only people who would reap the fruits of it would be new players since everyone else would have their own setup saved. It's basically a muscle memory thing.

Whenever I started a new job I opened the action menu, read through all of the abilities, and placed them on my hotbar where I felt they would be best placed for ease of use and to make sense with a rotation. There's nothing preventing this from being done right from the minimum level for that job. Every single skill, including quest rewards, are shown in the action menu and can be dragged to a hotbar even if you don't know it. A side benefit of this is that you become familiar with what all of your skills do before you get them since it requires reading the tooltips and thinking about them. As I leveled up, I might make minor tweaks to hotbar placement here and there as I got experience with using the skills and found they might be used more or less frequently than expected, but on the whole, there was very little need for juggling skill placements. And even if I didn't plan ahead like this and only placed a skill whenever it appeared on my hotbar after leveling, this isn't that big of a deal. It's not like it requires moving every single skill around every time a new one is earned. It is at most shifting a couple skills over to the right one slot to fit in a new combo move or moving a couple of skills to make space for a new commonly used oGCD in an easy to reach spot, for example. If it's a major juggling process every time a new skill shows up then that's just indicative of prior bad placement of skills since no single skill changes a rotation so much that everything else gets changed so radically as to warrant that.

Also, how many times are you installing the game that you have to place all of your skills again? And even if you do reinstall it, the hotbar settings are part of what is saved locally. The only time you should have to redo all your hotbars after a re-install is if you can't access that file for some reason. E.g. a complete hard drive failure and you're installing to a new drive. And even that can be prevented if you back up your files. This fits the definition of a classic "you" type problem.

[Jojoya]

It may or may not be telling that console players very rarely get brought up whenever the parser discussion pops up.

Probably because this is one of the few major MMORPGs (perhaps the only?) where computer and console are playing together.

WoW, SWTOR and RIFT are computer only. BDO is multi-platform but cross platform play is limited to XBOX and PS4 (computer remains separate). ESO has no cross platform play though there are rumors they may be working on it. When there's no cross play, then one segment having access to mods doesn't impact the game experience of the other segments that don't have the same access.

So FFXIV is in a bit of a unique situation, which is why many posters may be overlooking it. It's something I have brought up in other discussions and it's part of why I push for a parser to be added directly to the game. The hardcore raiding community is going to continue to use mods for parsing regardless of what SE thinks because it's something needed to analyze and maximize performance. PS4 players should have the same access.

I know one of the excuses YoshiP gave was that if they did include a parser there would be comments about things not matching with ACT. Not a big deal, WoW players have gone through the same thing with Recount not matching Skada not matching Details not matching Warcraft Logs not matching World of Logs, etc. I don't think it would be hard to get the community to accept a built-in parser as the "official" one since everyone playing would have it so at least that would give a consistent comparison between players.

[Colt47]

Are you... are you really saying that it's SE's job to arrange the hotkeys and skills in a good way so the player isn't "forced" to costumize? That the standard setup for both hotkeys AND skill arrangement should be sufficient to work with on all classes?

Everyone has different preferences, everyone clusters skills in a different way, has different hardware and different physical capabilities and limitations so of course you need to build your own setup, not just in FFXIV but every MMO. Things like fixed hotkeys with automatic and good skill arrangement might work in games like LoL, HotS and OW because you only have a handful of skills and the game's focus is a different one but for MMOs it's a completely natural thing that after gaining a couple of skills you notice which one you frequently use and how you would prefer your hotkeys, so you make your own setup. The skills are placed in the same order as you get them, how you prioritize them is up to you, not for SE to know in advance.
You have the option to costumize for a reason. The standard layout just gives you a general idea about how the UI can look like but things like differently sized and placed party windows for the different roles, hotbar settings, hotkey arrangement and general sizing and placement of other UI elements is of course completely up to you. As it should be. The standard UI and seetings work for almost nobody and that's not because it's so bad but because everyone wants it completely to their liking and their prefered settings vastly differ from each other.
I know as many people who would NEVER bind skills to A/D or Q/E as people who only use QWE for movement and bind the rest. Or people who feel completely fine using only mod keys + 1-9 while others abhor it.



Wether you want a 1x12, 2x6 or 3x4 layout is purely aesthetic and doesn't affect they way you bind or use hotkeys AT ALL.
You don't have to use 1-´ for one hotbar, you can set the hotkeys whichever way you like regardless of hotbar design. I'm starting to think you have some fundamental misunderstanding about how hotkey and hotbar settings work. You're not maximiszing anything by chosing 3x4 over 1x12 or 2x6. You could put a really tiny hotbar somewhere you don't even see it and still use the skills. Some people even do that because they don't need to see skills that don't have a cooldown.

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying and yes, it's possible to do. There's nothing wrong with people having preferences for their hot keys and redoing bars, but right now on the PC you have to do plenty of work rebinding hot keys to get it to act like other games in the genre. I mean doing something as simple as changing the hot bar 1 swap to hot bar 2 binding and just changing those to Shift + number to trigger abilities on hot bar 2 would be a good start. This seriously looks like arguing for arguings sake more than having a really good reason. That or we are talking around each other.

[Avidria]

Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying and yes, it's possible to do. There's nothing wrong with people having preferences for their hot keys and redoing bars, but right now on the PC you have to do plenty of work rebinding hot keys to get it to act like other games in the genre. I mean doing something as simple as changing the hot bar 1 swap to hot bar 2 binding and just changing those to Shift + number to trigger abilities on hot bar 2 would be a good start. This seriously looks like arguing for arguings sake more than having a really good reason. That or we are talking around each other.

I'm curious and have no intent to argue here, but do you have some example games you're thinking of? This game isn't so terribly different in terms of hotbar setup from most of the MMOs I've played, aside from BDO which has a totally different combat style. I took a long time to get my hotbars the way I wanted them in WoW, for example, and tried out several different UI mods and layouts over the years before I found a general setup I was happy with. I've gone through several setups here too, but in general my WoW UI actually looks fairly similar to my FFXIV at least in terms of hotbar placement and keybindings.

Also I may be wrong but I think you can change the bind that swaps between hotbars? I vaguely remember needing to rebind that because I kept doing it by accident at some point.