Remove the MACRO attack limitations

[Razorcat]

i tried to create a very simple macro / keybind, so that when i press "1" on my keyboard, it will use an heavy ranged attack, and when this attack is in cooldown, it will use a light ranged attack that have a faster recharge rate

it did not worked, and when i tried to ask for help in this forum i was disappointed to discover that the game limits this

is possibile to create macro to make you dance after you kill an enemy, and makes you fly like superman, but not macro that reduces the number of keys you have to activate when you fight, as explained in this guide: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/The_Incomplete_and_Unofficial_Guide_to_/bind#Neat_Things_You_Can_Do_with_.2FBind

this makes the game pretty awkward for many classes:

the game was first designed to have a level cap of 40, no prestige powers, no temporary powers, no incarnate powers

in this conditions, the 20 powers a character gained from level 1 to lvl 40 were enough to be slotted in 2 lines, and be used in an effective way

but today a character at the top level have:

24 powers

4 incarnate powers that require activation

2 running powers

1 jetpack power (if you dont have fly)

3 prestige attacks (that come controllers still need at lvl 50)

1 power to rez when defeated

1 mission teleport

1 team teleport

1 secondary mutation, power

1 read the luck

1 vanity pet

1 animal form

many accolade powers that you can earn...

is a bit too much, for a game were you must activate each of this powers one by one

sentinels, tank, scrappers, brutes, stalkers, have many auto powers that dont require activation, and many toggles that you only need to activate once, then you can forget about

but dominators, controller, blasters, can be a mess

honestly, i don't see any reason to limit the game, and keep its control system awkward while it could be improved

[Starhammer]

It requires a little work, but can be done with keybinds instead of macros. You need multiple .txt files with keybinds that load each other.

For instance: c:\[BINDS]\CoH\TORCHBEARER\Destroyo\attack1.txt

 

1 "powexec_auto Lunge$$powexec_name Impale$$bindloadfile c:\[BINDS]\CoH\TORCHBEARER\Destroyo\attack2.txt"

and the 2nd file: c:\[BINDS]\CoH\TORCHBEARER\Destroyo\attack2.txt

 

1 "+down$$-down$$powexec_auto Air Superiority$$powexec_name Barb Swipe$$bindloadfile c:\[BINDS]\CoH\TORCHBEARER\Destroyo\attack1.txt"

With those two files in place, when you press "1" Destroyo cycles both Impale and Lunge, and when you release, he cycles Barb Swipe and Air Superiority. You can increase the number of files in the sequence to increase the number of powers in the rotation (preferably putting longer recharge powers in the auto space on the odd numbered files).

[PaxArcana]

9 hours ago, Razorcat said:

not macro that reduces the number of keys you have to activate when you fight,

That is intentional.  The goal was, and IMO should still be, to not make it easier to script automated or semi-automated combat.

[Razorcat]

26 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

That is intentional.  The goal was, and IMO should still be, to not make it easier to script automated or semi-automated combat.

from what Starhammer said, automated combat still can be done

and the kind of automated combat keybind he showed is crazy complicated, compared to me, who wanted just 1 key for 2 ranged attacks 😕

 

honestly, i can understand that a game that allows too much auto combat is no good, but the designers (the original designers) should have understood that "control" a controller or a dominator at lvl 50 gets crazy whitout some kind of automation

i did not played mmorpg for years, cause no one was as good as coh, but even if they were bad, or had mayor flaws that made me dislike them, all the modern games i saw limited the number of powers (and keys) you had to activate in combat to allow a better control of the character

Edited August 23, 2019 by Razorcat

[DSorrow]

9 hours ago, Razorcat said:

the game was first designed to have a level cap of 40, no prestige powers, no temporary powers, no incarnate powers

in this conditions, the 20 powers a character gained from level 1 to lvl 40 were enough to be slotted in 2 lines, and be used in an effective way

but today a character at the top level have:

24 powers

4 incarnate powers that require activation

2 running powers

1 jetpack power (if you dont have fly)

3 prestige attacks (that come controllers still need at lvl 50)

1 power to rez when defeated

1 mission teleport

1 team teleport

1 secondary mutation, power

1 read the luck

1 vanity pet

1 animal form

many accolade powers that you can earn...

is a bit too much, for a game were you must activate each of this powers one by one

sentinels, tank, scrappers, brutes, stalkers, have many auto powers that dont require activation, and many toggles that you only need to activate once, then you can forget about

but dominators, controller, blasters, can be a mess

honestly, i don't see any reason to limit the game, and keep its control system awkward while it could be improved

Honestly, most of those powers are needed so infrequently I can't really see a need for macro changes. Most of my characters run an attack chain of 3-4 attacks with 1-3 AoEs and then another handful of clicky powers on top of that. Even my most click intensive character manages to fit every frequently used clicky in easily available slots (1-5, Alt+1-5). There's a saturation point when you should start considering if you actually need all the clicky powers you have, at least if you care about making good builds. If it's something like the Ouro portal, I can just get that from a sidebar with a mouse every 15 minutes.

 

Besides, knowing how much of the code is literal spaghetti, it would probably be a huge undertaking for marginal benefit.

[PaxArcana]

20 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

honestly, i can understand that a game that allows too much auto combat is no good, but the designers (the original designers) should have understood that "control" a controller or a dominator at lvl 50 gets crazy whitout some kind of automation

... try a Mastermind, sometime.  Because honestly, al archetypes require a great deal of attention at the uppermost levels.

[Burnt Toast]

Talk about a first world problem - ugh my game makes me push buttons and click things too much!!!!! This game is already super easy...so gonna have to say no to this suggestion. 

[Razorcat]

57 minutes ago, Burnt Toast said:

Talk about a first world problem - ugh my game makes me push buttons and click things too much!!!!! This game is already super easy...so gonna have to say no to this suggestion. 

easy for a scrapper or a tank, half powers are auto or toggles

what you say is not even funny

[Burnt Toast]

1 minute ago, Razorcat said:

easy for a scrapper or a tank, half powers are auto or toggles

what you say is not even funny

I don't play scrappers, brutes, or tanks - Mainly Corruptors, Defenders, and Controllers. And still... gonna say No to this... it's not needed. 

[PaxArcana]

1 hour ago, Razorcat said:

easy for a scrapper or a tank, half powers are auto or toggles

No, not really.  Of the secondary set's nine powers, typically six are Auto or Toggle powers (give or take one) - and thus, three are not.  Six, out of eighteen, is one third, not half.

Controller EPPs typically have one, sometimes two toggles; most Scrapper EPPs have none at all (a couple have 1 or 2).

 

Beyond that, no archetype has more, or less, toggle powers than any other, because they share access to the exact same power sets.

 

...

 

So, I'm still gonna have to say "nope - working as intended", and add a nice side of /JRanger as well.

[Razorcat]

20 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

No, not really.  Of the secondary set's nine powers, typically six are Auto or Toggle powers (give or take one) - and thus, three are not.  Six, out of eighteen, is one third, not half.

Controller EPPs typically have one, sometimes two toggles; most Scrapper EPPs have none at all (a couple have 1 or 2).

 

Beyond that, no archetype has more, or less, toggle powers than any other, because they share access to the exact same power sets.

 

...

 

So, I'm still gonna have to say "nope - working as intended", and add a nice side of /JRanger as well.

Working awkward as intended... Sure

You forgot to mention that a tank can gain another auto and 6-8 toggles from other power pools.
And this possibly brings the total to more than half.

My tank have 10 toggles that run all the time, and one automatic power from the ancillary set.

This makes his total more than half.

 

What i said still remains:

This control interface was designed when the game had 20 powers + running, rest and brawl

Now the number is almost doubled,the interface was never improved, and this makes some archetypes way more easy to play than others.

You don't belive me?

Sorry is math, not an opinion

 

[PaxArcana]

4 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

You forgot to mention that a tank can gain another auto and 6-8 toggles from other power pools.

You seem not to realize:

1. So could the controller
2. just because it's an autopower, and in a pool, doesn't mean you should take it ... on ANY Archetype

6 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

My tank have 10 toggles that run all the time, and one automatic power from the ancillary set.

... only five to seven of which are specific to that character being a Tank.

 

6 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

Sorry is math, not an opinion

Sorry, is not math, is just laziness.

[Razorcat]

You seem to not realize, that this proves that what i originally said was correct: some archetypes can take more than half of their powers as auto or toggles, and control them is way easier than others.

 

First you tried to deny this, and now you switch the subject still saying you are absolutely right.

 

Sorry, I'm not wasting time in replying seriously to you anymore

Is not laziness, just that talk to someone who's deaf, is a waste of energy

[Apparition]

13 hours ago, Razorcat said:

the game was first designed to have a level cap of 40, no prestige powers, no temporary powers, no incarnate powers

 

That's not accurate.  The game was designed to have a level cap of 50 from the very beginning.  The developers capped it at level 40 at launch because they simply ran out of time to meet their investors' launch window, but fully intended to expand to level 50.  IIRC, there were temporary powers as well, but I may be mistaken about that.

[Razorcat]

4 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

That's not accurate.  The game was designed to have a level cap of 50 from the very beginning.  The developers capped it at level 40 at launch because they simply ran out of time to meet their investors' launch window, but fully intended to expand to level 50.  IIRC, there were temporary powers as well, but I may be mistaken about that.

Did not know about that.

But i doubt that the incarnate system was designed from beginning as well 😕

And even if it was, i am sorry, but i still belive that this is a design flaw.

Not surprisingly, when Cryptic designed champions online, limited the number of click powers each character had to use. (too bad that they did other huge mistakes in developing that game)

[PaxArcana]

3 hours ago, Razorcat said:

Not surprisingly, when Cryptic designed champions online, limited the number of click powers each character had to use.

Not really, no.

 

They limited the number of powers you would ever have, Click or Auto or Toggle or anything else.

3 hours ago, Razorcat said:

You seem to not realize, that this proves that what i originally said was correct: some archetypes can take more than half of their powers as auto or toggles, and control them is way easier than others.

You didn't say "can".  You said "are".  There's a non-subtle difference between the two.  I'll try and be charitable and chalk it up to English not being your first language (because lord knows how badly I'd butcher anything but English).

So.  Yes, a Scrapper, Tank, Brute, or even Sentinel might have five, six, or seven toggles in their secondary.

But, Controllers can have as many as three in their secondaries.  Force Field, Nature Affinity, Radiation Emission, Sonic Resonance, and Storm Summoning all have three toggles.  That's 5 secondaries, out of 15.  Most of the rest have either one or two toggle powers.  So I'd say, 2 is a fair "average" number of toggles for Controllers ... plus, most of the Controller Primaries seem to haved a toggle somewhere in their lineup.

So the difference, on average, is about:

 

THREE POWERS.

 

That's what separates the typical Controller from the typical Tank (etc), in terms of how many powers are Toggles or Autopowers.  THREE.

 

Again, I say to you: not a crisis.

 

[Razorcat]

I really dont have time to waste

Some trollers have toggles?

Yeah oook

This CHANGES EVERYTHING

 

Now goodbye

 

[Shenanigunner]

The macro and bind system is quite powerful as it stands, and adding anything that further automates, bots or scripts gameplay is... something to be avoided, and for players who don't really get what CoX is all about.

 

If, for example, writing an attack bind that has to be pressed a whole two or three times for an attack chain is Just Too Too Much... you may be in the wrong game.

[Alpha One]

Yeah, there's no need for it, and as already stated it was designed that way intentionally.  Plus with /bind's I have....  17 powers one button press away on one hand, plus thumb buttons on your mouse.  On mine that brings the total up to 23 powers that don't need to be mouse clicked.  Seriously, you need a macro for multiple power activations?  Maybe you should think about your keybind layouts instead.

[biostem]

Heck, you could make a bind that activates a power then changes your power tray, then press the same number to activate the same slotted power and move to another tray again., so you're just pressing 1 button to activate multiple different powers, (if you don't want to access saved keybind files).

Edited August 24, 2019 by biostem

[Razorcat]

2 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

The macro and bind system is quite powerful as it stands, and adding anything that further automates, bots or scripts gameplay is... something to be avoided, and for players who don't really get what CoX is all about.

 

If, for example, writing an attack bind that has to be pressed a whole two or three times for an attack chain is Just Too Too Much... you may be in the wrong game.

i have played CoX since day one, i know what is about and i know it's defect very well

 

and sorry, i don't find too powerful to have 1 key to activate a X ray beam or a Neutrino Bolt, i find too powerful to be able to program a dominator to be in perma hasten / domination with a macro system that was supposed to prevent this

 

i am getting tired of this, i made a suggestion, stated the reason i suggested the change, and all i get is people that say i don't even know a game i have played for so many years

wrong game? probably i am just in the wrong community

Edited August 24, 2019 by Razorcat

[Shenanigunner]

So... just what is your ache, here?

 

[Razorcat]

7 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

So... just what is your ache, here?

 

i started this topic, what about yours?

[PaxArcana]

37 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

i made a suggestion, stated the reason i suggested the change, and all i get is

... people who *GASP!* dare not to love and adore your idea.

 

End of list.

[Razorcat]

39 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

... people who *GASP!* dare not to love and adore your idea.

 

End of list.

people who.... sorry, can't say here ^_^