Musician Archive
Thread: A little item in yesterday's patch notes...
Of course, I know not everyone is at that same skill level, but when someone has to resort to AFK'ing, or just sitting there dawdling with a Macro running to do their bidding...I just dont like it.
Now, I'm not putting all Macro people down, using them has some advantages at times, but...if you see from my viewpoint, you kind of understand. Even though it would put a damper on all of the professions, it would make the people work a bit harder, so they can produce on their own more quickly, and efficiently. I could easily continue my Musician Career without Macros.
Imagine what the game would be like if we didnt have them. No AFK Buffbots, No AFK'ers, more input by the player, and finally a way the Entertainer profession can come back up from where we are.
I already know there's going to be a rebuttal against this, but anything you can do with a Macro, you can easily do in the overhead taskbar yourself. Macros arent required for the game to run efficiently, and from how I see it, they are the key problem to many things.
Bronski113 wrote:
I take this change as more of a statement than a real change.
Of course it doesn't solve things. But its something. Who knows, maybe next update you'll see something that applies to entertainers. Then the next patch a little more.
Its better than nothing. It also shows that someone is looking at how macros are being used to afk.
You are correct. I take it as a statement more than anything that will actually effect anything. They are saying Combat AFK is different than any other AFK. They have singled out combat AFK and made a bad attempt to fix it.
So in other words, a buffbot could come here and say, "See SOE allows AFK entertainer play."
and they could give the example of them only trying to get rid of combat afk.
Aiobi wrote:
Well, then as another idea...why dont we remove Macros completely?
I'm totally with you on this.If I were making the designdecisions around here that would be first on my agenda (and I've never objected to all the times people have called me the ATK Nazi, either here on the forum or in game).But oddly..there are a lot of people who seem to be playing the performance professions because they want to be doing something other than playing a game. Someone actually..and quite sincerely..told me not long ago that she was trying to break her AFK habit after attaining master dancer but was having a hard time doing it!?! You gotta wonder...
As for using macros when I perform..I don't. I do use charts for specific passages..just as when I'm performing guitar.
At any rate, macros have done us (entertainers) a lot more harm than good.
Message Edited by Esharra on 03-04-2005 10:02 AM
Aiobi wrote:
Well, then as another idea...why dont we remove Macros completely? I've never had any use for them, and the music I choreograph using the flourishes is timed up manually myself.
Of course, I know not everyone is at that same skill level, but when someone has to resort to AFK'ing, or just sitting there dawdling with a Macro running to do their bidding...I just dont like it.
Now, I'm not putting all Macro people down, using them has some advantages at times, but...if you see from my viewpoint, you kind of understand. Even though it would put a damper on all of the professions, it would make the people work a bit harder, so they can produce on their own more quickly, and efficiently. I could easily continue my Musician Career without Macros.
Imagine what the game would be like if we didnt have them. No AFK Buffbots, No AFK'ers, more input by the player, and finally a way the Entertainer profession can come back up from where we are.
I already know there's going to be a rebuttal against this, but anything you can do with a Macro, you can easily do in the overhead taskbar yourself. Macros arent required for the game to run efficiently, and from how I see it, they are the key problem to many things.
Congratulations for being able to time your flourishes by hand. I have tryed to do this many and many a time and have never been able to get the timing right. My dance routines are even harder to time than music as the different dance flourishes are of different lengths.
If they did away with macros entirely, I would have to quit... and not just entertaining, but the game. You see, not only do I depend on my macros to get the timing right in my routines, but I also depend on them for my pet/droid commands, my melee combat attacks, taming baby creatures and sampling DNA for my CHs and BE... you get the idea. Macros are more than just a convinience for me. At least half the time if I type something, I make typos. This means that doing anything but the basic special effects would be out without macros... even if I were able to do everything by the toolbar and get the timing right... after all, a macro can be asshort as aone line command (and the majority of mine are either 1 or 2 commands).
I have no problem with non-recursive macros... I have been going over each ofmy various macros that had looped before and making them non-recursive... since I am at my keyboard, it's no hardship to restart them every few minutes when I get the /echo line that it's time to restart the macro. But I would not be able to do it at all if macros were not there for me to use at all.
Just because you are so skilled that you are able to time your flourishes perfectly, does not mean that even a majority of the ATK entertainers can do the same.
It's the dance routines that I have had absolutely no success at macroing. I can easily pull off macroing songs but that is boring and leaves little room for experimentation and variety. But timing dance changes and bandflos by a macro has completely been unsuccessful for me. I prefer changes to be seemless. I don't want to see whip in my exotics. With calling the changes by hand, I can compensate for lag..not to mention when someone says "oh my..do that again!"..I can.
Maisland wrote:
Congratulations for being able to time your flourishes by hand. I have tryed to do this many and many a time and have never been able to get the timing right.
I could certainly live without macros but would prefer not too. I'm not here to just push buttons. I could live with them eleminating recursive macros but even that is a cheap work around on the devs part. If the data going to the server included the source (i.e. macro, chat window, button, etc) then they could eliminate AFK easily. Simply don't reset AFK timers unless a command is seen originating from a chat window or from a button/key. Even the ui commands have to originate from one of these three sources so macroing UI commands would not work since the source is a macro.
Honestly removing macros would also put the game at a competitive disadvantage as all the games have some level of macroing available today. What is broken is the fact the system can't differentiate between live and automated input. Ignoring 3rd party programs and devices is legitimate here since removing game supported AFK play would make true AFK an offense and big trouble if you are caught.