Need help to play Summoner

[ItMe]

Once you actually have to press 12-18 buttons regularly on top of movement and camera management an RTS setup works way better.

What is an RTS setup?
The only RTS I've played is StarCraft 64.

[Grimoire-M]

What is an RTS setup?
The only RTS I've played is StarCraft 64.

Most RTS binds focus on making the middle two rows (QWERTY/ASDFGH for most keyboards) handle as many context sensitive actions as possible (for buildings its upgrade/unit queues, for units its attacks, movement, and special abilities) then dedicate Ctrl/Alt/Shift and the number and F-number bars to handling camera hotspots and control groups, but the general case is that whatever's on ASDF is usually filling the role of your core controls, and everything else is segmented according to what the designers thought would be intuitive, and generally you don't want to be deviating from that unless you're doing something specific.

How that translates to my binds personally is I assign the most generic action I'm expected to press often to F (for healers I usually put Cure I equivalents there despite this game discouraging their use, for everyone else its their default attack) and I clamp sections of my rotation that fill similar roles to each row or column based on how little I want to move my fingers. Usually that means anything on 56/TY/GH/BN gets assigned to oGCDs while longer cooldowns go on 1-4 and QWER and I generally avoid using alt/ctrl/shift until it's strictly necessary, or for actions I want to keep in the same place across characters, like Role Actions and Limit Break/Sprint. I keep the same F-number key and Tab target setups as the default and have Shift for the Pet Hotbar, focus target, and Duty Actions.

[LeonKeyh]

I can honestly say that playing this on controller is amazing.

It still has its own issues, but in terms of ability use, I wouldn't play it any other way. I would heavily suggest that people look into trying out playing with controller, leveling a new job is a perfect time to do it. A few jobs have some ability bloat that makes it tough, but overall it's easy enough to get around.

[Ariel_Valmont]

... 80 rotation is a lot more important to learn.

The setup is still subjective to user preferences. And what your suggesting really comes down to user preference as well.

Some people learn better by having it explained to them and setting it all up before hand, others would rather just dive in play the game and set it up along the way.

I can see where someone who is completely new to MMOs might have trouble at first with setting up the bars. And some of those suggestions may work for them.

[Rongway]

The setup is still subjective to user preferences. And what your suggesting really comes down to user preference as well.

User preferences can be, and often are, wrong.

For example, someone who plays with only one hand on the keyboard would be wrong to assign their core combat actions to a 12 button hotbar bound to ctrl+alt+1 through ctrl+alt+equalsign.

A healer who clicks the party list to target and clicks their actions to execute them would be wrong to put the party list on the left edge of the screen and their action bars on the right edge of the screen.

I don't want to contribute to derailing this thread further. If you want to continue arguing with me about UI customization, please take an undergrad intro to human-computer interaction and start a new topic and I'll be happy to reply to that one.

[Ariel_Valmont]

Well to be fair the default WASD controls are an active detriment to most rotations just because they forcibly combine the hotbars and movement/camera binds in a manner that makes both feel cramped. In pretty much every MMO I swap it out immediately and use the same setup I have used since I was a kid.

The reason WASD remains popular is purely because it overlaps better with action games that copied their standard controls from 90s FPS titles. Once you actually have to press 12-18 buttons regularly on top of movement and camera management an RTS setup works way better.

I’d never really thought about moving the movement controls over into the central part of the keyboard, I can see where that could help some people.

I was playing those 90s FPS titles and used to controlling the camera with the mouse, a multi button mouse & modifier keys go along way for making 12 to 18 buttons extremely manageable without a lot of awkward effort.

[Ariel_Valmont]

User preferences can be, and often are, wrong.

For example, someone who plays with only one hand on the keyboard would be wrong to assign their core combat actions to a 12 button hotbar bound to ctrl+alt+1 through ctrl+alt+equalsign.

A healer who clicks the party list to target and clicks their actions to execute them would be wrong to put the party list on the left edge of the screen and their action bars on the right edge of the screen.

I don't want to contribute to derailing this thread further. If you want to continue arguing with me about UI customization, please take an undergrad intro to human-computer interaction and start a new topic and I'll be happy to reply to that one.

Seems like an aweful a lot of assumptions and hypotheticals. What works for you isn’t necessarily going to work for anyone else. You don’t need an undergrad human computer interaction to discuss UI customization, get over yourself.

[darcstar62]

Summoner is very difficult to get useable due to the amount of massive button-bloat it has. I reconfigured my hotbars 3 times before I finally got to a layout that felt natural and efficient. As others have said, if you're having trouble "getting it", https://www.akhmorning.com/jobs/smn/ has a lot of helpful information.