We already know that there will be a limited amount of abilites that will be allowed at once. I think it is currently limited to 10. Perfectly fine.
My concern is with a limited number of hotbars though. Why do you need more than one hotbar with a limited number of abilites, you ask?
Let see where to begin....
- Toggling Auto Attach
- Toggling Range Attach
- Using consumables (if they will exist)
- Using clickies from inventory (if they will exist)
- Targeting a specific player in a raid you are constantly needing to heal by doing /target xyz instead of having to click their name
- Pet commands to avoid clicking icons in window. /pet sit. /pet attach, etc
- Innate abilites from classes, races, etc
I am sure I can think of more but that is off top of my head.
Keep in mind i am NOT in favor of marcoing or scripting. I want the game to be played but adding some simplicity for keyboard players would be nice.
Personally, in EQ2 on all of my chars I only used 2 hotbars (24 hotkeys). 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0,-,= and the Alt versions of them.
Sub Topic:
What Slash commands could be useful...
- /pet
- /target
- /useability x on y
- /useconsumable x on y
This is all from the perspective of me as a keyboard dedicated type player. Some of this is a non issue for mouse players.
I'd hope that they allow for tons of hotbars. My ideal setup has always been four 10-12 key hotbars centered at the bottom of my screen with one or two off-center utility hotbars. EQ2 unfortunately necessitated that I have 10 hotbars though just due to the sheer number of buttons required.
I agree though. I can see myself using dozens of hotkeys easily.
Liav said:I'd hope that they allow for tons of hotbars. My ideal setup has always been four 10-12 key hotbars centered at the bottom of my screen with one or two off-center utility hotbars. EQ2 unfortunately necessitated that I have 10 hotbars though just due to the sheer number of buttons required.
I agree though. I can see myself using dozens of hotkeys easily.
With a limited number of abilities you can use at once, what happened in EQ2 won't happen in Pantheon. We know that much. Thankfully.
We still need some wiggle room though and some customization to facilitate it. That is the heart of what I am getting at, I think. Playability for keyboard users.
There won't really be a need to have an insane amount of hotbars and keybinds in Pantheon as they did mention going with a limited amount of abilities/spells active at a time kind of system. And even then I feel 99.9% sure that extra hotbars will be a thing and already are a thing as seen on the stream.
Shaman from stream:
Cohhcarnage from stream on rogue:
In fact I think this answers many things as what I see is the mentioned. Ranged Attack, Melee Attack, Pet Control. Only thing is having all those be bindable and maybe have macro's which would allow you to do stuff like /target [party 1], but to tell the truth I think there will be keybinding available for that in game and no need to make a hotkey for it using commands. (I actually thing even WoW has party target keybinds)
I feel positive that from the keybinds point of view you will be satisfied.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
I dunno. Pantheon seems to utilize /commands as a primary means of interacting with the advanced functions of the game client.
If there are functions like these:
Hidecorpse All, Hidecorpse None, Hidecorpse Always, Hidecorpse Looted, /corpse, /corpsedrag, /corpsedrop, /assist, etc.
Also, clickable items which can become pretty numerous.
EQ had the first 6 function keys assigned to party targeting. F1 was self, then F2-F6 for your groupmaters. However, there are a finite number of keys on a keyboard. I genuinely hope we have the option to open several hotbars.
I pretty much agree with Liav.
To add to the list - macros, perhaps. I know and share the opinion on combat macros but who can say at this point that there won't be clickable macros for chat. Hello, good night, congratulations and the like are all useful macros in a large guild. Not to mention combat chat such as "Pulling in 10 seconds be prepared" or even "Ogre you are so ugly I can't backstab you. Can't tell your face from your arse!"
Im confident the game will have extra hotbars. Not only the ones that Youmu screened but I specifically remember there being a right sidebar on the UI. You can see the bottom icons (wolf) on the right of Youmu's first screenshot. There was another hotbar looking thing on the top of the screen but I think that was (hopefully) a placeholder buff/debuff bar.
Kayo said:Im confident the game will have extra hotbars. Not only the ones that Youmu screened but I specifically remember there being a right sidebar on the UI. You can see the bottom icons (wolf) on the right of Youmu's first screenshot. There was another hotbar looking thing on the top of the screen but I think that was (hopefully) a placeholder buff/debuff bar.
You're right, I just watched the stream myself for the first time. Definitely seemed like secondary/tertiary hotbars already existed but it's difficult to tell 100% what we're looking at. I hope it's true!
I really hope we can add extra hot bars, and to make macros like you could in EQ to personalize things like heal or inc messages
/pause 5, cast 1 (the pause is in 10ths of a sec iirc and it comes after the cast even if listed first)
/cast 1 (you do the double cast and pause incase of a fizzle your hot key just recast the spell)
/g Inc CH on %t in 10 secs and counting
Thats just a basic from memory social key...hell I had a million of them on my bard
Backin said: Pause/wait commands must not exist. That is macro/scripting. It ruins games. They already said no to that. That much we know. Not what i was going after
Pause has existed in EQ for years and it hasn't ruined the game.
You say "macro" like it's a bad word. There are plenty of legitimate, non-game breaking uses for macros. It also has nothing to do with scripting. The developers haven't commented on this at all.
Backin said: Pause/wait commands must not exist. That is macro/scripting. It ruins games. They already said no to that. That much we know. Not what i was going after
/pause commands and macros were in eq from the very begining. You could only have a max of a few commands on each social. Like I said they were used to personalize inc or heal messages. This is in no way automation of the game (this is what they have said no to) you still have to push the button, you still have to play the game to know when to push the button.
There are moments when macros can be almost automation. As was the case when playing some, but especially Paladin of the Retribution spec back in the day in WoW. Because the "rotation" of that specific class and spec was a priority system you could in a way pretty much create a 1-button-macro to execute the entire thing. This was fixed though with tweaking to the spec making such a macro be pretty useless. It was more a design flaw of the class than a flaw in macros. But I do believe tha amount of abilities capable of being present in one macro should be limited.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Youmu said:There are moments when macros can be almost automation. As was the case when playing some, but especially Paladin of the Retribution spec back in the day in WoW. Because the "rotation" of that specific class and spec was a priority system you could in a way pretty much create a 1-button-macro to execute the entire thing. This was fixed though with tweaking to the spec making such a macro be pretty useless. It was more a design flaw of the class than a flaw in macros. But I do believe tha amount of abilities capable of being present in one macro should be limited.
Vanguard also had a relatively unfortunate macro system where you'd have like 8-10 lines of abilities and item use per button. Something I'd like to avoid.
EQ's "macro" system could never really be used that way however due to how limited it was in general.
I also think with the limited amount of abilities and slowed down combat in general these types of macros would not be very effective. Althoug I loved playing the Retribution Paladin back in those day(properly, no macro) and I find the priority system "rotation" very fun my understanding and belief is that EQ was not that type of game and neither will Pantheon be.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Sevens said:Yeah, in Rift you could run your entire rotation off one button, was so broken it wasnt funny
EQ macros you could do five lines with a couple of big restrictions, dont ever seen anyone automating the game from what you could do there.
Sure you can. Depending on the class, just like Rift, you can pretty achieve the same functionality with a combination of in-game macros and multibinding your abilities/skills to a single key (including macros).
Sevens said:Yeah, in Rift you could run your entire rotation off one button, was so broken it wasnt funny
EQ macros you could do five lines with a couple of big restrictions, dont ever seen anyone automating the game from what you could do there.
Sure you can. Depending on the class, just like Rift, you can pretty much achieve the same functionality with a combination of in-game macros and multibinding your abilities/skills/macro to a single key.
Youmu said:There won't really be a need to have an insane amount of hotbars and keybinds in Pantheon as they did mention going with a limited amount of abilities/spells active at a time kind of system. And even then I feel 99.9% sure that extra hotbars will be a thing and already are a thing as seen on the stream.
Shaman from stream:
Cohhcarnage from stream on rogue:
In fact I think this answers many things as what I see is the mentioned. Ranged Attack, Melee Attack, Pet Control. Only thing is having all those be bindable and maybe have macro's which would allow you to do stuff like /target [party 1], but to tell the truth I think there will be keybinding available for that in game and no need to make a hotkey for it using commands. (I actually thing even WoW has party target keybinds)
I feel positive that from the keybinds point of view you will be satisfied.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
What you have pointed out is the Rogue stances not a second hotbar. I forgot the exact word they used for them but they were non-operational for the stream.
Reht said:Sevens said:Yeah, in Rift you could run your entire rotation off one button, was so broken it wasnt funny
EQ macros you could do five lines with a couple of big restrictions, dont ever seen anyone automating the game from what you could do there.
Sure you can. Depending on the class, just like Rift, you can pretty much achieve the same functionality with a combination of in-game macros and multibinding your abilities/skills/macro to a single key.
RIFT is a special case because of the Global Cooldown-based combat system. Trying to translate that to other games that aren't GCD-based is just fundamentally incorrect.
Liav said:RIFT is a special case because of the Global Cooldown-based combat system. Trying to translate that to other games that aren't GCD-based is just fundamentally incorrect.
That has nothing to do with what i am saying. I am talking about a functionality that is perceived as unique to Rift, not comparing or contrasting systems. I am very well aware of the differences between Rift's GCD system and EQ's spell refresh timers and how they work. However, you CAN mimic Rift's macro functionality in that you can set up certain classes in EQ to be played by using 1 button pressed multiple times in succession through keybinding spells, abilities and macros (which can be used to cast AA abilties during spell refresh - just being able to use Rift abilities that aren't effect by GCD during GCD) to the same key (multibinding).
They still seem categorically different to me.
For instance, barring use of MQ2, I have a mouse macro that spams the F7 key which is then bound to 3 separate spammable skills on my bar. That would be the multibinding example you're using.
AA abilities that are castable during spell refresh, to my knowledge, aren't dependent on a macro to be able to do so. I'm going to be completely honest and say that all of these factors need to be controlled through the combat system. Whether or not macros are included in the game is, quite frankly, irrelevant. You can emulate a lot of these behaviors in any game already without the need for an internal macro system.
If the way you interact with the game is limited to a certain number of simultaneous inputs, that helps. If the way macros are setup doesn't allow you to have multiple abilities in a single macro, instead only allowing you a maximum of one ability and a chat message, that helps.
None of your concerns are intrinsic in a macro system, only in the macro systems within the games that you're talking about.