Remove the MACRO attack limitations

[Burnt Toast]

The community is full of people who have played from launch to sunset... that doesn't mean we have to agree with every suggestion made. Your suggestion would lead to many more issues than it would solve. If you cannot take others not agreeing with your wishes/desires/suggestions... then you may not want to make suggestions in the forums. No suggestion has ever received 100% support from the forum community. If you cannot take others telling you why they don't want your suggestion...that is on you. Do not try to make this out to be a "bad community" because we don't agree with you - that says WAY more about you than it does the actual community. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

My main on live and here is a psi ment blaster. I keep a full 6 power bars up on screen and I mainly activate my powers via mouse clicking the power trays I really only tend to use the 1-6 thumb keys on my mouse for quick casting my two main attack chains a single target and aoe chain depending on the need of the moment.

 

6 power bars mind you I have zero issue manually activating as needed. And as others have pointed out even if they could remove the limit all it would lead to is people making bots to farm with. Perma hasten a nd perma dom eh I just keep hasten perma and keep an eye on domand re click before a fight if needed. Same with my SR scrapper whom I keep elude on perma and activate hasten before fights if its not up.

 

I am trying to not see your post as trolling but your general tone through this thread makes you sound very trollish to be honest.

 

Oh wrong community really? this community is like 90% die hard coh fans that are over joyed to have this game back. You seem overly combative in your tone, and ill prepared to find your ideas negatively received by the general community. So then we become the wrong community. Bud thats not how reality works ok. If you want to take the high ground you need some serious active game play to back you up. Like I do when i stand firm on certain blaster topics based not on theory but hard in game practical active game play.

 

Your gripe is what oh no after you fire one attack you have to fire another? I mean really? That is such a non issue. This game is all cool down attacks, no active attacks like say in a modern game like warframe. Sure Warframe only has 4 abilities but it is also an active combat 3rd person shooter/melee fighting game that is very fast paced and intense. A game like CoH is so slow in game play as to nearly be a turn based game to someone like myself.

 

So yes I will say it sounds like your preferred way to control your character is not ideal for how you want to be playing.  Your tone and tude on display here is unlikely to garner allies to your cause, nor do I think it likely even possible for the HC devs at least not timely

[Razorcat]

23 minutes ago, Burnt Toast said:

The community is full of people who have played from launch to sunset... that doesn't mean we have to agree with every suggestion made. Your suggestion would lead to many more issues than it would solve. If you cannot take others not agreeing with your wishes/desires/suggestions... then you may not want to make suggestions in the forums. No suggestion has ever received 100% support from the forum community. If you cannot take others telling you why they don't want your suggestion...that is on you. Do not try to make this out to be a "bad community" because we don't agree with you - that says WAY more about you than it does the actual community. 

one of the first replies to this suggestion, already stated what you said, about creating other problems, and the difficulty to modify the system as it is now

i could agree with that, as i can respect different opinions about how useful are wishes/desires/suggestions.

 

the "problem" started LATER, with comments about the way i play, the way i seem to not understand a game i played for almost 10 years, or about the number of toggle/auto powers a character can take (sure i could create a tank/scrapper/stalker/sentinel/brute with no toggles or auto powers. I am even free to have a mastermind that have no pets)

i just replied to people, with the same "language" that people used to me

please understand this 😉

[PaxArcana]

55 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

or about the number of toggle/auto powers a character can take (sure i could create a tank/scrapper/stalker/sentinel/brute with no toggles or auto powers.

That's not what was said.

Ignoring Pool, Temporary, and Prestige powers, Brutes, Tanks, Scrappers, and Sentinels tend to have roughly 6 powers that are Toggle or Auto.

 

On average, Controllers look to have roughly 3 such powers.

 

There is only a difference of three powers there.  To put it another way: within theor Primary and Secondary powersets, the Controller might have ~15 "click" powers.  In the same, exact circumstances, the Brute is going to have ~12 "click" powers.

15 is not so very much more than 12, that we need to introduce more potential for automating combat, and risk opening a Pandora's Box.

[Chuckers]

I guess I am one of the odd players out there considering everyone else with whom I have discussed power use.  I am a keyboard player. Movement is WASD and powers are number pad. Rarely using my mouse for powers. I have 3 trays for all my main powers and I have bound tray 1 to numpad1-0, tray 2 is alt+numpad1-0, and tray 3 is ctrl+numpad1-0.  (Alt and Ctrl are hit with my left hand because I am never moving while firing off my powers) Recently, I started with tray 4 as a standalone next to my 3 primary trays. Tray 4 contains my vet powers and if trays 1-3 fill up, I'll move any toggles to tray 4. Those I'll activate with my mouse since they normally only need to be hit when I rez. 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Chuckers
grammar

[Profit]

Razorcat, you need a bind not a macro. Make your bind like this,

 

/bind <some key you want to press> "+$$powexec <some power you want to activate>$$powexec <some power you want to activate>"

 

So what happens is you get a press/release on a key, when you press down on the key one thing happens when you release the key the other thing happens.

[Starhammer]

19 hours ago, Razorcat said:

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 😕

So, what I described is not really "automated." It still requires the player to press buttons. It just makes it easier to cycle a predetermined selection of powers in a desirable order (and bypass those that are still recharging).

Star Wars Galaxies had a macro system that could be automated, because you could do things like incorporate pauses into the command sequence. City of Heroes doesn't allow that. Technically, no matter how long the command string is, the game attempts to process the whole thing at once. It does follow a certain order, with commands at the back of the line being processed first, thereby ignoring any that use the same command earlier in the bind.

For instance:

1 "powexec_toggleon Sprint$$powexec_name Brawl$$powexec_name Punch$$powexec_toggleon Ninja Run"

When this is executed, if you do not have Ninja Run turned on, it will be turned on. Nothing further will happen, because "powexec_toggleon" is essentially the same as "powexec_name" with the limitation that it will not turn off toggles (you can use powexec_toggleoff for that). If Ninja Run was already active, it will then execute "Punch" (presuming you have a target in range, and actually have that power of course). Because it can only activate one power at a time and it tries to process the entire sequence at once, Brawl and Sprint will be ignored, and never activate using that keybind. If you change it though,
 

1 "powexec_auto Brawl$$powexec_name Punch$$powexec_toggleon Sprint$$powexec_toggleon Ninja Run"

 

Now the 1st time you press 1 it will activate Ninja Run if it is not already active, activate Punch, and set Brawl to autoattack (or if it is already set to autoattack, cancel that setting). If Ninja Run was already on, it will turn on Sprint. If you want it to always set the autoattack to active instead of turning it on and off, add powexec_abort to the beginning of the bind. Also, just as an example of good timming in these binds, it's better to apply auto to the slower power. Finally, if you want to save endurance, turn movement toggles OFF when fighting, like so:

1 "powexec_abort$$powexec_toggleoff Sprint$$powexec_toggleoff Ninja Run$$powexec_auto Punch$$powexec_name Brawl$$powexec

By the way, while powexec_toggleon can only tun on one power at a time no matter how many you have in the same bind, powexec_toggleoff is not limited to once per process. So the above example will turn both Sprint & Ninja Run off, attack your target with Brawl, and set Punch to go off whenever it is recharged.

If you want anything more automated than keybinds allow, you need to look into external applications like Auto Hot Key, or some hardware macros.

 

[Razorcat]

3 hours ago, Starhammer said:

If you want anything more automated than keybinds allow, you need to look into external applications like Auto Hot Key, or some hardware macros.

 

Thanks for the help

I tried some of the commands you suggested, but it still didn't worked like i hoped.

The keybinds can acivate first one power then the other, when they are ready to be used.

But if the first power that should be activated is in cooldown, the second power doesn't work.

Since my intentions were to create a macro that makes me use first an heavy damage / slow recharge power, and a light damage / fast recharge power when the heavy one is in cooldown, guess that this simply cannot be done with CoX.

I guess i will give a try to the programs you suggested, just for curiosity ^_^

 

6 hours ago, PaxArcana said:

15 is not so very much more than 12, that we need to introduce more potential for automating combat, and risk opening a Pandora's Box.

Should have said Dominators (1 toggle power from primary/secondary pools, and +1 click power compared to any other class) instead of controllers. My bad

I agree on the pandora box risk, didn't mean to say:

"i think this game is broken if you don't improve the interface like i suggest"

I don't agree with the:

"using a dominator is as easy as using a tank, more or less all characters are the same"

Adding an average of 3 powers and 3 keys to press in a mmorpg during its development is no big deal.

Keep adding them for 10 years, until you have 6-10 more powers / key to use in combat is a bit more complicated.

I'm sorry that this can't be solved by macros/keybinds to not create bigger problems.

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Razorcat

[PaxArcana]

3 hours ago, Razorcat said:

Adding an average of 3 powers and 3 keys to press in a mmorpg during its development is no big deal.

Keep adding them for 10 years, until you have 6-10 more powers / key to use in combat is a bit more complicated.

Except, really, they haven't been adding for 10 years.  Some, yes, but not a huge quantity of them.  And, here's the part you seem not to have grasped:

Every non-toggle power added after Issue 1 (and aside from the Villain-vs-Hero Epic pools), was added to all archetypes in equal measure.

 

Five (or nine, or however-many) click powers added to Controllers or Dominators?  The exact same number were also added to Tankers, Blasters, Masterminds, etc.

[Razorcat]

27 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

And, here's the part you seem not to have grasped:

Every non-toggle power added after Issue 1 (and aside from the Villain-vs-Hero Epic pools), was added to all archetypes in equal measure.

And the part you  seem not have grasped is:

Adding 10 click powers to an archetype that used mainly 5 clicks in combat can be fine.

Adding 10 click powers to an archetype that already had to use a lot of click powers, can be a bit complicated.

That's all i had to say

Edited August 24, 2019 by Razorcat

[PaxArcana]

13 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

Adding 10 click powers to an archetype that used mainly 5 clicks in combat can be fine.

Adding 10 click powers to an archetype that already had to use a lot of click powers, can be a bit complicated.

So if we go with your claim that "half" of the powers Tankers (etc) have are Toggles, at the point when the Tanker has 5 clicks and 5 toggles, and none are Travel or Pool powers .... the Controller has 9 clicks and 1 toggle, the Dominator has 10 clicks.

Add 10 click powers to ALL of those?

Tanker (etc): 15 clicks, 5 toggles
Controller: 19 clicks, 1 toggle - difference: +4 click powers
Dominator: 20 clicks, 0 toggles - difference: +5 click powers

.... 4 or 5 extra powers is still not a crisis.

 

And that is, seriously, what you're not getting: every click power to add to one archetype, you add to all archetypes.  The margin of difference, in absolute number of powers, remains constant.  Given the same character level throughout ... X extra click powers now, will be X extra click powers next week, and still be X extra click powers three years from now.  Not Y, not X+Z.  Just X, whatever that number might be.

Edited August 24, 2019 by PaxArcana

[PaxArcana]

Seriously, Razorcat.  This is not an Archetype issue, this is a Razorcat issue.

[Razorcat]

1 hour ago, PaxArcana said:

Seriously, Razorcat.  This is not an Archetype issue, this is a Razorcat issue.

Seriously, if you don't get the difference, is not my issue

Yesterday i said there was no point in talking to you anymore, thanks for proving me i was right

But think positive, we play in different servers, and probably even live in different continents 😄

 

[PaxArcana]

54 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

Seriously, if you don't get the difference, is not my issue

Oh, but I absolutely do "get" (read: understand) what you are saying, Razor.

 

Where I disagree, is with the magnitude of that difference's impact and importance.

[Razorcat]

38 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

Oh, but I absolutely do "get" (read: understand) what you are saying, Razor.

 

Where I disagree, is with the magnitude of that difference's impact and importance.

whatever, i never said this game was unplayable whitout improving macros, i said that the interface did not changed since day 1, but many powers were added

the magnitude of this discussion is grown too much, so...

bye

[Jeuraud]

17 hours ago, Profit said:

/bind <some key you want to press> "+$$powexec <some power you want to activate>$$powexec <some power you want to activate>"

This bind does not activate two powers. It activate the last power, and then ques the last power... sometimes.

 

As for more Macro/Bind freedom, I used to play SWG, and worked swingshift at the time, and would see AFK characters that would activate when a MOB attacked them (I so wanted to Train these characters.), or would be Dancing/Music training in the Cantinas, while the player was asleep, so I know why the CoH Devs wanted to limit Macros/Binds.

 

This

On 8/22/2019 at 6:06 PM, Razorcat said:

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

would require an If-Then-Else statement.

Would it be so bad to be able to do this with each key, as long as it required a key-press to activate?

 

 

[Profit]

@Jeuraud that bind activates one power on key press down and one power on the up swing omg the key press. No it does not activate two powers at once, they are in succession but bound to one key.

 

edited to add that it may need two ++ at the beginning

Edited August 25, 2019 by Profit

[justicebeliever]

23 hours ago, Razorcat said:

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

I'm confused @Razorcat.  In fact I am a little sad...I went through some effort to help you with this and you can have 1 key manage X-ray and Neutrino Bolt.  It may not be super intuitive, but I went thru 15-20 min of my time to test it on Justin to ensure it works...

[Jeuraud]

56 minutes ago, Profit said:

@Jeuraud that bind activates one power on key press down and one power on the up swing omg the key press. No it does not activate two powers at once, they are in succession but bound to one key.

 

edited to add that it may need two ++ at the beginning

I knew what you meant but it does not work. With ++ it just activates the last power.

 

I even cut and pasted from this

 

1 "+$$powexec_name Brawl$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm"

 

to this

 

1 "+$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm$$powexec_name Brawl"

 

just to verify that I had not somehow screwed up the Brawl execute.

 

In the first one it activated Apprentice Charm, and then ques Apprentice Charm. And in the second one it activated Brawl, and then ques Brawl.

All the + does is que up the same power that was activated in the line, not all that useful.

 

And of course all of this still does not do a If-Then-Else.

Edited August 25, 2019 by Jeuraud

[justicebeliever]

10 minutes ago, Jeuraud said:

I knew what you meant but it does not work. With ++ it just activates the last power.

 

I even cut and pasted from this

 

1 "+$$powexec_name Brawl$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm"

 

to this

 

1 "+$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm$$powexec_name Brawl"

 

just to verify that I had not somehow screwed up the Brawl execute.

 

In the first one it activated Apprentice Charm, and then ques Apprentice Charm. And in the second one it activated Brawl, and then ques Brawl.

All the + does is que up the same power that was activated in the line, not all that useful.

You can do it...but you need different commands.

 

/bind [key] “powexec_toggleon Apprentice Charm$$powexec_toggleon Brawl”

 

I do know that neither power is in fact a toggle power, but it works (but only as a bind and not a macro)

[Razorcat]

26 minutes ago, justicebeliever said:

I'm confused @Razorcat.  In fact I am a little sad...I went through some effort to help you with this and you can have 1 key manage X-ray and Neutrino Bolt.  It may not be super intuitive, but I went thru 15-20 min of my time to test it on Justin to ensure it works...

thanks for your effort, i tried it and not even the bind worked like i wished

this command can activate power A, then power B, when both are ready to be used

but, if power A is in cooldown, the power B doesn't activate

since my intention for this key was: first use power A (heavy damage/long recharge) and activate power B (low damage/fast recharge) when A is in cooldown, this command does not work

[Profit]

22 minutes ago, Jeuraud said:

I knew what you meant but it does not work. With ++ it just activates the last power.

 

I even cut and pasted from this

 

1 "+$$powexec_name Brawl$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm"

 

to this

 

1 "+$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm$$powexec_name Brawl"

 

just to verify that I had not somehow screwed up the Brawl execute.

 

In the first one it activated Apprentice Charm, and then ques Apprentice Charm. And in the second one it activated Brawl, and then ques Brawl.

All the + does is que up the same power that was activated in the line, not all that useful.

 

And of course all of this still does not do a If-Then-Else.

I found my error. This should do it.

 

/bind 1 "+down$$powexec_name Brawl$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm"

 

 

http://mycoh.wikidot.com/advanced-bind-guide

 

Search for "Toggle Keys"

[justicebeliever]

43 minutes ago, Razorcat said:

thanks for your effort, i tried it and not even the bind worked like i wished

this command can activate power A, then power B, when both are ready to be used

but, if power A is in cooldown, the power B doesn't activate

since my intention for this key was: first use power A (heavy damage/long recharge) and activate power B (low damage/fast recharge) when A is in cooldown, this command does not work

Can you check your combat log while trying this...I wasn't sure at first either but the logged showed me both were working (as did the KO'ed Hellions in Atlas on Justin), whereas with the macro it behaved as you described...

[biostem]

Why not do something like:

 

/bind 1 "next_tray$$powexec_slot 1"

 

Then just arrange the powers in all your trays so you can keep pressing 1 to activate a power and switch between however many powers you want.  You could even use "prev_tray" in some to keep it between 1 or 2 trays, or use "goto_tray" after however many you want to take you back to the beginning, (like maybe each tray only has 5 powers in it, but the last has 6, and that one closes/restarts the loop)...

Edited August 25, 2019 by biostem

[Jeuraud]

1 "+down$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm$$powexec_name Brawl"

activates and ques up Brawl

Just for why not

1 "+down$$powexec_name Apprentice Charm$$+up$$powexec_name Brawl"

Put me on the bounce and activates and ques up Brawl.

 

1 "powexec_toggleon Apprentice Charm$$powexec_toggleon Brawl"

activates Brawl

Just to verify

1 "powexec_toggleon Brawl$$powexec_toggleon Apprentice Charm"

Activates Apprentice Charm, though once it activated Brawl as well, but could not duplicate.

 

I read this,

Quote

 

USING POWEXEC_TOGGLE

The second way to create multiple command toggle binds is to string together a series of powexec_toggleon commands in the bind script (eg., /bind <key> "powexec_toggleon D$$powexec_toggleon C$$powexec_toggleon B$$ powexec_toggleon A"). Powexec_toggleon commands only turn powers on and can not turn off a power. Conversely, powexec_toggleoff only turns powers off.

With the powexec_toggleon command we can successively turn on several powers using only one key, but with multiple key presses. The bind will execute each power command from right to left. Upon the first key press, the bind will attempt to activate power A. Upon the second key press, power B will activate. Upon the third key press, power C, and so on. Powexec_toggleon will IGNORE powers that are already on, and will seek out the next non-active power from the beginning of the chain onward with each successive key stroke. If all of the powers in the bind string are already on, no action will be taken. In addition, it appears that powexec_toggleon follows the same power activation sequence as powexec_name, with the one exception that it will not turn powers off.

 

 

from Profit's Link and tried it again, with a Double-tap.

 

Most of the time I could get it to work with one Double-tap, but if I tried to go back to back Double-tap, it just activates or ques up Apprentice Charm even though Brawl is available. It will not do what the OP is asking for.

 

Though this was fun to mess with it still does not do a If-Then-Else.

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Jeuraud