That's fine, you don't have to. But the reality is, they both are shortcuts to avoid clicking individual abilities. That is simply a fact, and doesn't require your agreement to be true.
It is also a fact that keybind usage covers way more than simply firing your weapons. Denying the difference of scale here is a bit disingenuous.
That's fine, you don't have to. But the reality is, they both are shortcuts to avoid clicking individual abilities. That is simply a fact, and doesn't require your agreement to be true.
It is also a fact that keybind usage covers way more than simply firing your weapons. Denying the difference of scale here is a bit disingenuous.
I'm not saying keybinds don't do more, I am saying they do more of the SAME thing.
Removing keybinds just has so many cons to be worth even considering at this point.
- It makes the game inaccessible for those with disabilities. - It won't do anything to accomplish what the OP wants (lower DPS) - It'll only make the mid casual players suffer thereby increasing the DPS gap further - It'll be easy to circumvent anyway - It's been a feature for so long that the backlash would probably be worse than DR.
Again, I don't use any keybinds (don't even know how to make one). The only times I've even attempted to make a keybind was to raise renderscale up and down automatically to take screenshots and to activate/deactivate combatlog and both attempts failed.
While I prefer the micromanagement of manual clicking on top of manual firing, I can see why it isn't for everyone and I can't fault people for using binds.
4 years is before my time Equinox. Only been here since free to play.
Did you guys actually have to click every weapon icon to fire off a volley ? Seriously ??
I mean, ill take your word for it. But I can't even imagine what that would've been like tbh. It does color my perspective a little differently ill admit.
And Nagus my issue with your statement wasn't so much the similarities between Autofire and macro, it was that you stated macros give no advantage. And that is false, at least in terms of Abilities activated per second. Someone getting a higher return on ability uses per second by using macros, is by definition, using a feature that is providing them with a quantifiable advantage.
More abilities used per second = More buffs, more damage, more DPS. If that's not a distinct advantage then I don't know what is.
4 years is before my time Equinox.
Only been here since free to play.
Did you guys actually have to click every weapon icon to fire off a volley ? Seriously ??
I mean, ill take your word for it. But I can't even imagine what that would've been like tbh.
It does color my perspective a little differently ill admit.
No. We did not have to click each weapon per fire cycle. But there was no 'autofire' as you know it now. Basically you could assign the space bar to fire all weapons, and you had to mash it periodically to make sure it kept firing.
When it was suggested that you should be able to press the space bar 'once' and then weapons would continue to fire, there was an uproar on the forums, many predicting doom and unfairness. Many stating 'lazyness' (like yourself) as being a defining factor in the ultimate decline of the game.
The rest is history of course. You can now right click each weapon, press space once, and it will auto fire to your hearts content. No controversy any more... but it used to be quite a boiling point for many.
What you suggest regarding macro's is in the same arena... is it 'lazyness' or is it just convenience?
You have benefited from the previous outcomes (auto fire is now part of the game) and yet are protesting against a similar function...
Would you protest against autofire, or ask for it to be removed?
Semantics are interesting... but it all boils down to 'how much I am willing to do and 'what I think is fair'.
I personally don't care if somebody wants to fly like a zombie with 100 contingency key binds, or if they fly 'manual' and click each and every icon. To each their own. No skin off my nose.
I've played many an.mmo where macros determined your overall ability to play at endgame content. If you didn't macro you would struggle constantly! Macros are a good thing and I personally don't care if someone sets up a loop on spacebar where they tap it once and all they have to do is pilot their ship till everything explodes. If they do it good for them! If you don't like it don't do it or if you think it's unfair do it yourself!
Removing keybinds just has so many cons to be worth even considering at this point.
- It makes the game inaccessible for those with disabilities.
- It won't do anything to accomplish what the OP wants (lower DPS)
- It'll only make the mid casual players suffer thereby increasing the DPS gap further
- It'll be easy to circumvent anyway
- It's been a feature for so long that the backlash would probably be worse than DR.
I was gonna weigh in, but this pretty much sums it up.
I just wanna echo previous statements, binding everything to your spacebar is almost always a dps limiting factor and is not even close to good practice. Throwing everything on one button and mashing away generally limits you to about 30k-40k, probably not the range of people you are really trying to hurt here.
I play on a laptop with a mouse pad. It's actually kinda hard to play this way and not use some form of keybind macro. Don't really see what the issue is with them tbh, one long keybind only holds back dps.
I don't mind them really tbh, I'm just discussing. Partly out of boredom at work. Lol But I do take issue when people say it doesnt provide an advantage. As mild as that advantage may be. But I suppose it really is just a convenience issue though. It doesn't affect my game in any negative way.
There's also been some comments here that give good examples why they are useful and better to have, then to be without.
And STO is my first MMO so I never got familiar with using them, or even the need for them. Perhaps that's why I'm a little biased towards them.
I mean.. here's the kicker, if I wasn't so lazy (theres that L word again lol) I'd probably use them myself So I guess the Lazy card can go both ways. So I should be more careful in throwing it around.
But interesting discussion. Ill have to rethink my stance on their usefulness.
4 years is before my time Equinox.
Only been here since free to play.
Did you guys actually have to click every weapon icon to fire off a volley ? Seriously ??
I mean, ill take your word for it. But I can't even imagine what that would've been like tbh.
It does color my perspective a little differently ill admit.
No. We did not have to click each weapon per fire cycle. But there was no 'autofire' as you know it now. Basically you could assign the space bar to fire all weapons, and you had to mash it periodically to make sure it kept firing.
When it was suggested that you should be able to press the space bar 'once' and then weapons would continue to fire, there was an uproar on the forums, many predicting doom and unfairness. Many stating 'lazyness' (like yourself) as being a defining factor in the ultimate decline of the game.
The rest is history of course. You can now right click each weapon, press space once, and it will auto fire to your hearts content. No controversy any more... but it used to be quite a boiling point for many.
And it should be possible to do that with all abilities.
It should also be able to stack multiple actions on a single button, or a keybind that doesn't need to be mashed to go through them all.
As it is, these functions aren't possible. So mash-on keybinds are the next best thing to simulate having a crew with something remotely resembling human cognitive functions.
We're supposed to be commanding a starship, with a crew of supposedly intelligent beings following our orders, not playing an LCARS version whack-a-mole to boost ship performance. A crewman should be capable of performing a series of actions without each step being separately ordered, and repeating an action without needing the order to be repeated every 15 seconds.
Removing keybinds just has so many cons to be worth even considering at this point.
- It makes the game inaccessible for those with disabilities.
- It won't do anything to accomplish what the OP wants (lower DPS)
- It'll only make the mid casual players suffer thereby increasing the DPS gap further
- It'll be easy to circumvent anyway
- It's been a feature for so long that the backlash would probably be worse than DR.
Again, I don't use any keybinds (don't even know how to make one). The only times I've even attempted to make a keybind was to raise renderscale up and down automatically to take screenshots and to activate/deactivate combatlog and both attempts failed.
While I prefer the micromanagement of manual clicking on top of manual firing, I can see why it isn't for everyone and I can't fault people for using binds.
Then again, can we be certain that the rise in the use of macros is not a contributing factor in the ongoing latency?
Same thing for parsers, they seem to be on the rise and may actually contribute to the lagg.
This program, though reasonably normal at times, seems to have a strong affinity to classes belonging to the Cat 2.0 program. Questerius 2.7 will break down on occasion, resulting in garbage and nonsense messages whenever it occurs. Usually a hard reboot or pulling the plug solves the problem when that happens.
And it should be possible to do that with all abilities.
It should also be able to stack multiple actions on a single button, or a keybind that doesn't need to be mashed to go through them all.
As it is, these functions aren't possible. So mash-on keybinds are the next best thing to simulate having a crew with something remotely resembling human cognitive functions.
We're supposed to be commanding a starship, with a crew of supposedly intelligent beings following our orders, not playing an LCARS version whack-a-mole to boost ship performance. A crewman should be capable of performing a series of actions without each step being separately ordered, and repeating an action without needing the order to be repeated every 15 seconds.
And when everyone has immediate access to those same capabilities immediately upon installing the game, with no special equipment purchases or game file editing required, you have my permission to stop referring to macros as a crutch.
Love the faith people have on the UI. If it responded when you click the 1st time, I wouldn't have to rely on an attack macro and click said macro 4 times to activate 1 ABILITY!!! The UI even struggles with macros.
Love the faith people have on the UI. If it responded when you click the 1st time, I wouldn't have to rely on an attack macro and click said macro 4 times to activate 1 ABILITY!!! The UI even struggles with macros.
But is the "quicker response" from macros placebo though? What makes it different to pressing 1-0 keys on your keyboard?
@azrael605 then you don't use buffs as often as I do.
No it's not placebo, you still have to click the macro button 2-3 times to activate 1 power depending on the UI lag.
Which is pretty much the same as pressing the numbers on your keyboard to activate tray powers right? Because some people are saying that the macros let you get through the UI lag, but what you state seems to be that the UI lag is the same whether you use macros or not.
Since I've never used macros and I am usually hit by bad lag, this piqued my curiosity.
***edited, see above***
And when everyone has immediate access to those same capabilities immediately upon installing the game, with no special equipment purchases or game file editing required, you have my permission to stop referring to macros as a crutch.
But everyone does have access to keybinding. It is built into the game. Keybinding is not some third party program built to bypass game restrictions, it it integral to the game and available to everyone right out the box. My powers tray, in fact, comes with keybinds built in, so that I can click the number, shift-number, ctrl-number, or alt-number, to access forty different abilities. I can customize my keyboard to trigger any of 1000 individual powers with a single button press.
But here is the thing: if I click an icon, there is a universal cooldown that prevents me from immediately clicking another. It is very short, but it exists. I cannot simultaneously click two powers with my mouse. The exact same thing limits how fast I can click powers off my keyboard. I cannot trigger any powers faster than one at a time, no matter if I am selecting the items directly with my mouse or with my keybind.
There are players out there with twitch control which exceeds the global cooldown. They can find the icon they want and click it whenever they want, constantly pushing the performance of the game. I am not so well endowed. I cannot hope to compete with players who grew up with a game controller in their hands. Keybinding allows me a chance to keep up without offering to them an advantage they can use to perform even faster.
If a macro could toss out seventeen powers simultaneously, then the game would go to the best macro-developers. If there were no ability to create macros at all, (a third party would make it possible somehow,) then the game would always go to the guy who can accurately click faster. Keybinding levels the playing field between the 'skilled' player and the player with twelve thumbs without giving an advantage to those who 'need the crutch' or to those who can point and click at the speed of light. Both types of players come hard up against the global cooldown which limits the speed at which powers can be used. It is the global cooldown shared between all powers that makes keybinding fair.
@azrael605 then you don't use buffs as often as I do.
No it's not placebo, you still have to click the macro button 2-3 times to activate 1 power depending on the UI lag.
Which is pretty much the same as pressing the numbers on your keyboard to activate tray powers right? Because some people are saying that the macros let you get through the UI lag, but what you state seems to be that the UI lag is the same whether you use macros or not.
Since I've never used macros and I am usually hit by bad lag, this piqued my curiosity.
I suppose it is the same as pressing all the buttons on the macro in terms of how the game interprets them, my understanding is that the commands in a bind file are the same as the ones used for single ability keys. It does tend to be a little more reliable in my experience up to a certain bind length, for example if you're flying a cruiser but you don't spam FAW you're likely to want two all weapon calls along with two shield balance calls (one at the start, one at the end), one call per weapon in the middle of the bind (I made this adjustment because my weapons weren't firing reliably when spacebar spamming) and then four skills, this works reliably but if you're running a faw spam cruiser then you have eight to ten skills in addition to all your weapon calls and it really does slow down your activations.
I run the latter principle on my escort and thanks to my keyboard I was able to split the one massive file into two, one for my weapons and shield balancing and one for the boff skills, both macros activate every 500 milliseconds so they don't interfere with my manual ability activation while not keeping me waiting for the automated ones, especially with the different global cooldowns between some of the skills on the bind.
The macro is a little quicker because you don't have to keep moving your mouse back to the ability you tried to activate, before you could click buffs in a row and they'd activate, now you have to constantly jump back to buffs that didn't activate. A macro cuts that out and you can click 1 button faster to activate 3 powers than 3 buttons repeatedly.
Proposal: An identifying tag next to the in-game user title of everyone who uses macros. Doesn't have to be anything overtly pejorative. "Macro User" would be adequate.
Comments
It is also a fact that keybind usage covers way more than simply firing your weapons. Denying the difference of scale here is a bit disingenuous.
I'm not saying keybinds don't do more, I am saying they do more of the SAME thing.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
But doing the same thing on a much larger scale undercuts any attempt to portray them as equivalent.
- It makes the game inaccessible for those with disabilities.
- It won't do anything to accomplish what the OP wants (lower DPS)
- It'll only make the mid casual players suffer thereby increasing the DPS gap further
- It'll be easy to circumvent anyway
- It's been a feature for so long that the backlash would probably be worse than DR.
Again, I don't use any keybinds (don't even know how to make one). The only times I've even attempted to make a keybind was to raise renderscale up and down automatically to take screenshots and to activate/deactivate combatlog and both attempts failed.
While I prefer the micromanagement of manual clicking on top of manual firing, I can see why it isn't for everyone and I can't fault people for using binds.
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Only been here since free to play.
Did you guys actually have to click every weapon icon to fire off a volley ? Seriously ??
I mean, ill take your word for it. But I can't even imagine what that would've been like tbh.
It does color my perspective a little differently ill admit.
And Nagus my issue with your statement wasn't so much the similarities between Autofire and macro, it was that you stated macros give no advantage. And that is false, at least in terms of Abilities activated per second.
Someone getting a higher return on ability uses per second by using macros, is by definition, using a feature that is providing them with a quantifiable advantage.
More abilities used per second = More buffs, more damage, more DPS.
If that's not a distinct advantage then I don't know what is.
No. We did not have to click each weapon per fire cycle. But there was no 'autofire' as you know it now. Basically you could assign the space bar to fire all weapons, and you had to mash it periodically to make sure it kept firing.
When it was suggested that you should be able to press the space bar 'once' and then weapons would continue to fire, there was an uproar on the forums, many predicting doom and unfairness. Many stating 'lazyness' (like yourself) as being a defining factor in the ultimate decline of the game.
The rest is history of course. You can now right click each weapon, press space once, and it will auto fire to your hearts content. No controversy any more... but it used to be quite a boiling point for many.
What you suggest regarding macro's is in the same arena... is it 'lazyness' or is it just convenience?
You have benefited from the previous outcomes (auto fire is now part of the game) and yet are protesting against a similar function...
Would you protest against autofire, or ask for it to be removed?
Semantics are interesting... but it all boils down to 'how much I am willing to do and 'what I think is fair'.
I personally don't care if somebody wants to fly like a zombie with 100 contingency key binds, or if they fly 'manual' and click each and every icon. To each their own. No skin off my nose.
I was gonna weigh in, but this pretty much sums it up.
I just wanna echo previous statements, binding everything to your spacebar is almost always a dps limiting factor and is not even close to good practice. Throwing everything on one button and mashing away generally limits you to about 30k-40k, probably not the range of people you are really trying to hurt here.
Lol
But I do take issue when people say it doesnt provide an advantage. As mild as that advantage may be.
But I suppose it really is just a convenience issue though. It doesn't affect my game in any negative way.
There's also been some comments here that give good examples why they are useful and better to have, then to be without.
And STO is my first MMO so I never got familiar with using them, or even the need for them. Perhaps that's why I'm a little biased towards them.
I mean.. here's the kicker, if I wasn't so lazy (theres that L word again lol) I'd probably use them myself
So I guess the Lazy card can go both ways. So I should be more careful in throwing it around.
But interesting discussion. Ill have to rethink my stance on their usefulness.
It should also be able to stack multiple actions on a single button, or a keybind that doesn't need to be mashed to go through them all.
As it is, these functions aren't possible. So mash-on keybinds are the next best thing to simulate having a crew with something remotely resembling human cognitive functions.
We're supposed to be commanding a starship, with a crew of supposedly intelligent beings following our orders, not playing an LCARS version whack-a-mole to boost ship performance. A crewman should be capable of performing a series of actions without each step being separately ordered, and repeating an action without needing the order to be repeated every 15 seconds.
Then again, can we be certain that the rise in the use of macros is not a contributing factor in the ongoing latency?
Same thing for parsers, they seem to be on the rise and may actually contribute to the lagg.
And when everyone has immediate access to those same capabilities immediately upon installing the game, with no special equipment purchases or game file editing required, you have my permission to stop referring to macros as a crutch.
I admire both your clicking skills, and you audacity
Parsers have nothing to do with lag. It can lag you out if you parse and your HD can't write fast enough but it won't affect the team in any way.
But is the "quicker response" from macros placebo though? What makes it different to pressing 1-0 keys on your keyboard?
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
No it's not placebo, you still have to click the macro button 2-3 times to activate 1 power depending on the UI lag.
Which is pretty much the same as pressing the numbers on your keyboard to activate tray powers right? Because some people are saying that the macros let you get through the UI lag, but what you state seems to be that the UI lag is the same whether you use macros or not.
Since I've never used macros and I am usually hit by bad lag, this piqued my curiosity.
| USS Curiosity - Pathfinder | USS Rift - Eternal |
The Science Ship Build Thread - Share your Sci Ship builds here!
But everyone does have access to keybinding. It is built into the game. Keybinding is not some third party program built to bypass game restrictions, it it integral to the game and available to everyone right out the box. My powers tray, in fact, comes with keybinds built in, so that I can click the number, shift-number, ctrl-number, or alt-number, to access forty different abilities. I can customize my keyboard to trigger any of 1000 individual powers with a single button press.
But here is the thing: if I click an icon, there is a universal cooldown that prevents me from immediately clicking another. It is very short, but it exists. I cannot simultaneously click two powers with my mouse. The exact same thing limits how fast I can click powers off my keyboard. I cannot trigger any powers faster than one at a time, no matter if I am selecting the items directly with my mouse or with my keybind.
There are players out there with twitch control which exceeds the global cooldown. They can find the icon they want and click it whenever they want, constantly pushing the performance of the game. I am not so well endowed. I cannot hope to compete with players who grew up with a game controller in their hands. Keybinding allows me a chance to keep up without offering to them an advantage they can use to perform even faster.
If a macro could toss out seventeen powers simultaneously, then the game would go to the best macro-developers. If there were no ability to create macros at all, (a third party would make it possible somehow,) then the game would always go to the guy who can accurately click faster. Keybinding levels the playing field between the 'skilled' player and the player with twelve thumbs without giving an advantage to those who 'need the crutch' or to those who can point and click at the speed of light. Both types of players come hard up against the global cooldown which limits the speed at which powers can be used. It is the global cooldown shared between all powers that makes keybinding fair.
All in One with distribute shields detected - and a lack of understanding what global cooldown is...
I suppose it is the same as pressing all the buttons on the macro in terms of how the game interprets them, my understanding is that the commands in a bind file are the same as the ones used for single ability keys. It does tend to be a little more reliable in my experience up to a certain bind length, for example if you're flying a cruiser but you don't spam FAW you're likely to want two all weapon calls along with two shield balance calls (one at the start, one at the end), one call per weapon in the middle of the bind (I made this adjustment because my weapons weren't firing reliably when spacebar spamming) and then four skills, this works reliably but if you're running a faw spam cruiser then you have eight to ten skills in addition to all your weapon calls and it really does slow down your activations.
I run the latter principle on my escort and thanks to my keyboard I was able to split the one massive file into two, one for my weapons and shield balancing and one for the boff skills, both macros activate every 500 milliseconds so they don't interfere with my manual ability activation while not keeping me waiting for the automated ones, especially with the different global cooldowns between some of the skills on the bind.
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