Best part of a new patch? Third party tools not working.

[Joven]

That's such a Gamer thing to say.

Because wanting to keep Western politics and ideologies out of entertainment is wrong apparently.

[Saranade]

What was I trying to gain with this post? To answer the conversation surrounding "should third party tools be allowed?" - by third party tools i simply mean additions or add-ons that are not native to the game (this excludes voice chat protocols). Programs that were not intended by the developers to be used, specifically ; Parsers, "Triggers", etc - when someone gets on the game on a PS4 its not ethical or fair any of you have these advantages. Their is simply no argument against that. If you find that your own human intelligence needs to be supplemented by AI or plugins then you are not playing the game as intended. it is indeed obvious that during every patch 3rd party tools rarely work, and I am simply giving kudos to players who continue to clear content without them. Peace out.

[PredatoryCatgirl]

"Triggers"

Someone certainly is triggered.

[CelestiCer]

Programs that were not intended by the developers to be used, specifically ; Parsers, "Triggers"

Cat's out the bag - It's somehow " Specifically Raiding plugins only " for the OP that's unfair.

Glamour Plugins to bypass not paying for Mogstation Fashion and Mounts? Race-Swap with a button to bypass not needing to pay for Fantasia's everytime? Selling Prebuild House decors with a Plugin? Body-mods to sell NSFW Gpose on Twitter for Dollars? That and so many more things, all somehow less worse then Raiding Tools? No-no, no nitpicking. Usage of All Third party tools are prohibited

Square's ToS and Yoshi made it very clear. Scrutiny on just specifically for Raiding Tools? makes no sense. It's All third party tools. Now you might find something more unfair like Raiding tools vs another plugin, but it doesn't matter. It means All third party tools.

That this bothers you, is the best part though cause it shouldn't affect you xD

[Shurrikhan]

Mm... yes and no. The issue is that given how the hotbars work, it would likely have to be a second copy of the entire combo... or you would need a sort of hotbar action abstraction system (which I suspect is how the mod that consolidates combos in PvE likely works).

The latter would be the better approach, honestly. Especially because you could then functionally make it a 'build your own combo' system; instead of "here is a pre-made button that is your entire chain", you would just have a little hotbar-like list you could drag actions onto, then you'd drag the icon for that list onto a hotbar.

So, mods actually do... both. The consolidation macros, moreover, are just prepackaged forms of the second (in which you can consolidate whatever you want in whatever order you want, including both oGCDs and GCDs, even based on conditionals like targeting enemy, targeting friendly, or targeting nothing). (The super cheesy ones go further in conditional scripting, but the more basic ones are merely this.) They're effectively just how macros work in WoW, if not for WoW's own familiarly arbitrary restriction (against priority order GCDs -- whereas oGCDs, for whatever reason, are still allowed to be done all in one key), much like virtually any decent use of macros is arbitrary reemed in XIV.

That said... both would work fine. Having a separate per combo key or just... not screwing over macros.


I give you four buttons: Hard Slash, Syphon Strike, Souleater, and Souleater Combo. Maybe the last comes in its own "Combo Actions" section, or maybe it's just part of the same basic skills page.

Let's say, for the sake of fairness between those using consolidation or no consolidation, Syphon Strike and Souleater themselves are no longer trap buttons; instead, they literally can't activate until you reach their step.

If you put fewer than n steps of the combo on your bar including the combo key or n-1 buttons after starting placing discrete steps alongside the combo key in the missing one's place, the Actions and Trait menu will flash the remainder at you to remind you to slot them, but you could always just, say, do Hard -> Syphon -> {Combo} so that you could just default to hitting button 3 if you like. You can use both at the same time; it just reminds you to put in the combo and/or the missing steps if you're screwing yourself over.

(The only thing you can't manage under this new baseline functionality are conditionals, such as to cause Bloodspiller to replace your other weaponskills if you would otherwise overcap on your Blood Gauge.)

At base, only Hard Slash and Souleater Combo start off available, the latter of which literally shows Hard Slash.

• You hit Hard Slash or Souleater Combo [Hard Slash] and... Syphon Strike lights up and becomes available, Hard Slash desaturates, and Souleater Combo then shows Syphon Strike. Souleater remains locked.
• You hit Syphon Strike or Souleater Combo [Syphon Strike] and Syphon Strike, too, desaturates and again becomes locked, Souleater lights up and becomes available, and Souleater Combo then shows Souleater.
• You hit Souleater or Souleater Combo [Souleater] and you return to the base state.

Those can work simultaneously. One can have one or the other, for any particular combo, or technically both. Want Ley Lines separate from Between the Lines, then just slot those two separately instead of using the pre-build consolidation.

(Sorry, accessibility is a thing I have come to take very, very seriously in game design.)

Same. I just think having no easily seen and graspable system could a missed opportunity for accessibility.

I'll gladly take a not-gutted macro system, but I think having some buttons/macros that are already there, quick to drag and drop, would not only create an easier alternative, but also a sort of welcoming mat for those later improved macros. (Naturally, also let players choose also to automatically drop in the consolidations instead of discrete keys (toggleable separately by type -- e.g., Necessary Sequences, Natural Sequences).

[Packetdancer]

So, mods actually do... both. The consolidation macros, moreover, are just prepackaged forms of the second (in which you can consolidate whatever you want in whatever order you want, including both oGCDs and GCDs, even based on conditionals like targeting enemy, targeting friendly, or targeting nothing).

I should clarify a little bit what I meant there. (I am still deep in migraine-land, so I do apologize if I either ramble or am not as clear as I could be.)

From what I can see of how the hotbars work from a bit of cursory poking, there's no (rational) way to constantly swap actions in and out on in series. The PvP action buttons appear to work sort of like macros behind the scenes, where the actual ID of the action on the bar doesn't change, but the icon (and other metadata, like tooltip et al) and the code executed by that action ID do.

Now, in PvP, there's no way to put the individual pieces of the combo on separate parts of the hotbar. (At least, not without some trickery.) But to have the option of both the individual 1-2-3 actions on the bar and to have a PvP-style single-button-combo, you would either need to make a new copy of that combo (e.g. something with a separate action ID than the actual individual actions), which could also be dragged from something -- say a "Combos" tab of the Actions & Skills list -- or you would need a more complicated/abstract system which could basically just take generic 'this is the combo sequence' lists of actions to be executed in series.

That's all I mean: basically, if the devs wanted to pull one-button combos a'la PvP into PvE, they either need to define every possible combo folks would use (and make pre-made 'combo sequences' that could be put on a hotbar) or they need to make a tool in the game that lets players define those for themselves. The latter is more work, but -- in my opinion -- also the 'correct' approach.

But if that's a QoL change they intend to make as part of their (demonstrable) effort to take QoL hints and lessons from the modding community, given this game's wonky input system and code cruft, it's probably not one that we'll see land in the client in the immediate future.

Same. I just think having no easily seen and graspable system could a missed opportunity for accessibility.

On this we agree entirely.

(I'm actually in the middle of writing up a guideline document on "designing for accessibility" for the gamedev team I lead in my spare time, because -- as said -- I do feel fairly strongly about accessibility issues. So, migraine or not, this topic in a general sense is all fairly front-and-center in my thoughts right now.)

[Shurrikhan]

...

Just to reiterate for clarity, I guess the way I'm thinking about it is simply:

1.

I want to see the macro system un-gutted largely because I'm tired of getting a pretense of depth in place of actual depth, especially considering that that pretense quickly becomes a challenge only of physical dexterity.

If there's, for instance, no reason ever to use another Burst Shot over Refulgent Arrow, then one can already simply key-swipe RA->BS every time without checking the proc anyhow; there's no cognitive task or point of engagement there, only a slight added physical challenge that only affects a small group of players, and not in a good way.

Now, I'd be fine also with Refulgent Arrow being bankable and leveraging that depth --I'd even find it preferable-- but so long as it's to remain braindead, there is just no reason not to let people consolidate it at will. And even if reason to bank it were added... why not let people take the less optimal option if it'd better suit their needs anyways?

Now, there is of course a lot people can do about being physically affected by button bloat. When I badly sprained my wrist, I had to change my Caps Lock to an Alt key and then use 1234QWER, Caps-1234QWER, Shift-QWERASDF, Ctrl-ASDFZXCV (altogether just a column of keys in very easy reach so I at most had to move my index finger one key over) so I could still reach stuff without worsening it.

But I don't feel like that's terribly relevant anyways, as it shouldn't be a thing that requires so unique an extent of solution based only on physicality (still rather common differences therein), and --even making such fixes to a pretty deep extent-- one can still encounter issues under the present button count (especially if they want to leave their movement keys free).

2.

I do think there needs to be slightly more automatic or at least plug-and-play / pre-fabbed options for that accessibility.

These things need to be visible, obvious, and seemingly already integrated. It really ought to be a job better done than through, say, as provided by the still-kinda-obscure conditional macros in WoW that require looking through 3rd party sites just to figure out how to write them or a ReAction (plugin) macro here (far more intuitive, but still requiring creating a sequence of skills and targeting schemes for every damned ability set one wants to fix).



__________

Tangent/Aside, but still related to general accessibility (though related to healers and making room/time for the kind of button-pressing required that isn't related to separate action keys):

<See for ideas on improving the control scheme such that oGCD single-target buffing would be a non-issue anyways, even for controller players, while making the game smoother as a whole>

[LianaThorne]

What was I trying to gain with this post? To answer the conversation surrounding "should third party tools be allowed?" - by third party tools i simply mean additions or add-ons that are not native to the game (this excludes voice chat protocols). Programs that were not intended by the developers to be used, specifically ; Parsers, "Triggers", etc - when someone gets on the game on a PS4 its not ethical or fair any of you have these advantages. Their is simply no argument against that. If you find that your own human intelligence needs to be supplemented by AI or plugins then you are not playing the game as intended. it is indeed obvious that during every patch 3rd party tools rarely work, and I am simply giving kudos to players who continue to clear content without them. Peace out.

Life's not fair, just letting you know.

Also you need to direct your complaints to Sony and do some actual research into why consoles can't mod as easily. It's possible to do but is definitely not as simple as PC modding.

PCs shouldn't be handicapped or limited just because you chose a console to play on. Bottom line is, Yoshi already stated more times than necessary that they aren't going to put anything into the game to stop modding or plugin use from occuring. Kinda just gotta suck it up and deal instead of trying to ruin the experience for other people. Maybe upgrade to a PC too because your PS4 is gonna explode sooner rather than later with how old that gen is.

[Kuroka]

That hate is a little bit misplaced though, no?

Mods aren't inherently evil, neither is the majority of players using them. This player in particular is just an entitled outlier.

If theres a way, ppl will use it, if it has protection against abuse, ppl will overcome it. Its ALL or NOTHING and the rules already say nothing.

I want to see the macro system un-gutted largely because I'm tired of getting a pretense of depth in place of actual depth, especially considering that that pretense quickly becomes a challenge only of physical dexterity.

They dont want us to use battle macros, thats why its slow and not made for chaning battle stuff...

[angienessyo]

What was I trying to gain with this post? To answer the conversation surrounding "should third party tools be allowed?" - by third party tools i simply mean additions or add-ons that are not native to the game (this excludes voice chat protocols). Programs that were not intended by the developers to be used, specifically ; Parsers, "Triggers", etc - when someone gets on the game on a PS4 its not ethical or fair any of you have these advantages. Their is simply no argument against that. If you find that your own human intelligence needs to be supplemented by AI or plugins then you are not playing the game as intended. it is indeed obvious that during every patch 3rd party tools rarely work, and I am simply giving kudos to players who continue to clear content without them. Peace out.

I started on PS4 and most my time on the game has been on PS4/PS5. I truly don't care if someone uses parses/triggers/whatever. I don't feel superior doing content without 3rd party tools because there's still far better players than me out there.