The advantage of built in mouse & keyboard macros.

Qhival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZa4c-WZoE

I've used this software, and it can do much more than this. In my opinion it's a huge advantage and slightly annoys me. What do you guys think? skip to 2 minutes if you want to get to the point.

EDIT: A surprising amount of people seem to think this isnt an issue because they think weapon switch is unreliable. You guys are missing the point completely. This thread isnt about weapon switching, it's about animation canceling. With this same software and software like it you can set up light weave and block animation canceling.

If you don't know what i'm talking about, watch the video below. he's not very good at it, but he does a good job explaining it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTb2YpuRsP4

I also want to clear another misunderstanding. You don't have to have a special mouse or keyboard to do this, and you can set it up for any keys you want, and more. Third party software is third party software. Because animation canceling exists, it opens up a huge can of worms.

Zenimax has no third party software detection for macros, and even if they did, it could easily be avoided. The problem is animation canceling.

Gyudan

I fully agree with OP. Animation canceling / block-casting need to be addressed. These "instant" cast times make no sense and are leaving too much room open for macro-ing.

driosketch

Not sure how they would guard against something like that. But you are running pretty smoothly here. How do they handle in high latency? My weapon swap, mapped to one thumb button, sometimes fails to register while I'm running, moving, blocking and casting. These macros are sending 3 commands per button push. Can they screw up?

Qhival

driosketch wrote: »

Not sure how they would guard against something like that. But you are running pretty smoothly here. How do they handle in high latency? My weapon swap, mapped to one thumb button, sometimes fails to register while I'm running, moving, blocking and casting. These macros are sending 3 commands per button push. Can they screw up?

in the past I artificially raised my latency and it starts screwing up at around 150 ping, but if you're at 150 ping you are going to be having issues playing normally anyways, only weapon switching get messed up though. Your light weave and block canceling still work at 500+ ping

TehMagnus

It is, but ZOS prevents this by introducing huge lags & frame drops to the game which allows those macros to fail in fights where a lot of [snip] is going on.

Gilvoth

finally an honest man in the crowd.
your a good guy @Qhival , i have watched your live streams and i have seen alot of your work. good stuff and i recomend it to any and all people who love eso.

Deheart

Yea, in a way it does provide unfair advantage, since you would need to buy special hardware to get the software. And some of us can't afford the flashy toys. Not only that but the software, being able to cast faster than a human could, is pretty much morally against the TOS.

By morally I mean that it goes agains the intent of equal play. In the end, they might just make exceptions for that like World of Warcraft does. Allowing botting software for multi boxing. Again, that to me is against the moral intent of fair play, to others, it might be ok.

Of course, the techky kid in me goes, AWESOME! I WANT THAT!

ExiledKhallisi

It gives an extremely unfair advantage. Imo its not the players fault...its poor oversight by the game companies.

AssaultLemming

That is definitely an unfair advantage. It doesn't really matter where the software comes from, third party macro software is still third party macro software.

jackyd

The thing is with these kind of macros is they only work in a lag free no frame drop environment. Try running these kind of macros in Cyro during a larger siege or even during a trial run and you'll see how quickly they fail.

FYI I do own a N52g, instead of using 3 fingers for WASD I use the D-Pad on the device with my thumb for movement, does that make me a cheater?

Another thing is the way skills are triggered on KeyRelease instead of KeyPress is something I cannot cope with and therefore all my keys are configured to simulate the pressing and releasing of the key by simply pressing it, does that make me a cheater?

As I said before: for optimal play doing it manually is the way to go as the second you hit lag your macro gets thrown off and you either loose DPS or loose the fight because the macro doesn't respond as it should.

ferzalrwb17_ESO

If you have low latency and nimble fingers (or macros) you can churn out skills much faster than people with higher latency and much, much faster than people who don't animation cancel.

If you have 30ms ping you have a major advantage over someone with 100ms and a ridiculous one over someone with 200ms - if you animation cancel. It's an unfair advantage since the latency, while still a handicap, wouldn't be such an issue in this game if clipping didn't work.

For that reason I think animation cancelling macros are an outright cheat since they turn a slight advantage into a huge advantage by exploiting an unintended mechanic (and yes they've said it's unintended and are still trying to think of ways to address it).

Manual animation cancelling isn't much better but at least it takes some effort.

khele23eb17_ESO

Qhival wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZa4c-WZoE

I've used this software, and it can do much more than this. In my opinion it's a huge advantage and slightly annoys me. What do you guys think? skip to 2 minutes if you want to get to the point.

Sure... if only weapon swap was this responsive and reliable in actual combat.

Syntse

I would not say exploiting or cheating but maybe bit not good sportsmanship. There's nothing that could not be done manually only that macros allow more precise and faster execution.

Most gaming mouses come with extra buttons and even the cheaper ones can have software with it that allows creation of macros. So it's not like someone has to buy 150$ mouse and 200$ keyboard to be competitive though those people who aim to be competitive usually will get the gear that they are most competitive with.

Deheart

Qhival wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

Not sure how they would guard against something like that. But you are running pretty smoothly here. How do they handle in high latency? My weapon swap, mapped to one thumb button, sometimes fails to register while I'm running, moving, blocking and casting. These macros are sending 3 commands per button push. Can they screw up?

in the past I artificially raised my latency and it starts screwing up at around 150 ping, but if you're at 150 ping you are going to be having issues playing normally anyways

wow, I'm usually at 250-300.......

PBpsy

No. From now on I only want healers that have that mouse.

Sleep

Deheart wrote: »

Qhival wrote: »

driosketch wrote: »

Not sure how they would guard against something like that. But you are running pretty smoothly here. How do they handle in high latency? My weapon swap, mapped to one thumb button, sometimes fails to register while I'm running, moving, blocking and casting. These macros are sending 3 commands per button push. Can they screw up?

in the past I artificially raised my latency and it starts screwing up at around 150 ping, but if you're at 150 ping you are going to be having issues playing normally anyways

wow, I'm usually at 250-300.......

I'm usually at 500 to 999+

Valymer

jackyd wrote: »

The thing is with these kind of macros is they only work in a lag free no frame drop environment. Try running these kind of macros in Cyro during a larger siege or even during a trial run and you'll see how quickly they fail.

FYI I do own a N52g, instead of using 3 fingers for WASD I use the D-Pad on the device with my thumb for movement, does that make me a cheater?

Another thing is the way skills are triggered on KeyRelease instead of KeyPress is something I cannot cope with and therefore all my keys are configured to simulate the pressing and releasing of the key by simply pressing it, does that make me a cheater?

As I said before: for optimal play doing it manually is the way to go as the second you hit lag your macro gets thrown off and you either loose DPS or loose the fight because the macro doesn't respond as it should.

This. You will lose more dps and/or die from macros NOT working than you will gain from them working in real situations like sieges or instances.

I wish weapon swapping worked this smooth normally, maybe if they finally make it cancel everything (like block) it would become a problem but with the current state of the game I really don't see how it could be a widespread issue.

Qhival

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

Qhival wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZa4c-WZoE

I've used this software, and it can do much more than this. In my opinion it's a huge advantage and slightly annoys me. What do you guys think? skip to 2 minutes if you want to get to the point.

Sure... if only weapon swap was this responsive and reliable in actual combat.

if you think the focus of this thread is weapon switching you're missing the point completely. you can easily macro light attack weaving and animation canceling this way as well.

@jackyd
@Valymer‌

i'll add this to my original thread since some people aren't connecting the dots.

Armitas

Well this explains why I am seeing several Players who never animate their attacks. I was playing with a friend who had just died in front of me and he asked me how many impulses he just died too. I said 0 because I never saw any despite being right beside the guy. He said at least 4. So I think one way people are using it is to hide the attacks they are using.

Qhival

@armitas
recently a lot of people started doing it in pvp. it's really obvious who is using a macro and who is doing it by hand, but there's no way to prove it and reporting them gets you nowhere.

Erock25

Qhival wrote: »

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

Qhival wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZa4c-WZoE

I've used this software, and it can do much more than this. In my opinion it's a huge advantage and slightly annoys me. What do you guys think? skip to 2 minutes if you want to get to the point.

Sure... if only weapon swap was this responsive and reliable in actual combat.

if you think the focus of this thread is weapon switching you're missing the point completely. you can easily macro light attack weaving and animation canceling this way as well.

@jackyd
@Valymer‌

i'll add this to my original thread since some people aren't connecting the dots.

Macroing your light attack weave into an ability then a block animation cancel does not fire these skills any faster than is realistic to manually input. Just like I can easily reproduce what is in your video without a macro. There is a built in internal cooldown to both abilities and light/heavy attacks that you can not bypass with any 3rd party system. Macros just make certain things easier (1 button instead of 3) and they aren't worth it because they fail in more often than not in PVP/Trials.

michaelb14a_ESO2

Erock25 wrote: »

Qhival wrote: »

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

Qhival wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpZa4c-WZoE

I've used this software, and it can do much more than this. In my opinion it's a huge advantage and slightly annoys me. What do you guys think? skip to 2 minutes if you want to get to the point.

Sure... if only weapon swap was this responsive and reliable in actual combat.

if you think the focus of this thread is weapon switching you're missing the point completely. you can easily macro light attack weaving and animation canceling this way as well.

@jackyd
@Valymer‌

i'll add this to my original thread since some people aren't connecting the dots.

Macroing your light attack weave into an ability then a block animation cancel does not fire these skills any faster than is realistic to manually input. Just like I can easily reproduce what is in your video without a macro. There is a built in internal cooldown to both abilities and light/heavy attacks that you can not bypass with any 3rd party system. Macros just make certain things easier (1 button instead of 3) and they aren't worth it because they fail in more often than not in PVP/Trials.

This. Especially in PVP where the very idea of macroing completely removes the flexability that when done right, animation canceling and weaving DOES give you. Macroing by definition requires you trade convenience for your ability to be responsive, and that alone will get you PWND in pvp. Fights are just too dynamic and the use of counters and ult timing is what matters. Using macros is like handicapping yourself lol.

PBpsy

Armitas wrote: »

Well this explains why I am seeing several Players who never animate their attacks. I was playing with a friend who had just died in front of me and he asked me how many impulses he just died too. I said 0 because I never saw any despite being right beside the guy. He said at least 4. So I think one way people are using it is to hide the attacks they are using.

This is another problem entirely. In large battles in both PVP and PVE depending on the lag and your PC and graphic settings some high particle effects from spells such as impulse will simply not appear every time and canceling has nothing to do with it. If you try canceling impulse in a low latency area with little action you will clearly see all individual pulses.What is canceled is the animation of the character body finishing his casting.

Qhival

If you think macros handicap you, you have no experience with macros or how to properly create them, and even create them to accommodate for lag.

or

you don't want animation canceling fixed and are just spreading misinformation.

When you create a macro, you aren't forced to use it all the time. you can set it to any key. Hell, you could even have everything work normally, then hold down alt to trigger all your keys to activate the macrod versions. This handicap bull is complete hokum.

Valymer

Qhival wrote: »

If you think macros handicap you, you have no experience with macros or how to properly create them, and even create them to accommodate for lag.

or

you don't want animation canceling fixed and are just spreading misinformation.

When you create a macro, you aren't forced to use it all the time. you can set it to any key. Hell, you could even have everything work normally, then hold down alt to trigger all your keys to activate the macrod versions. This handicap bull is complete hokum.

Explain this to me then.

The macro demonstrated in the video involves three "actions," i.e. key presses.

1. weapon swap
2. use an ability on the second bar
3. weapon swap back to first bar

I don't know about you, but my weapon swapping often fails to work even without using macros. I end up having to press the button a second time to actually swap weapons like I want to.

If I was using the macro in the video and this happened on the first step listed above, the initial weapon swap would fail but the ability in the same spot on that bar would fire instead of the intended ability on the second bar. Then the macro would swap weapons on the third step, only instead of swapping back to the primary weapon it would instead swap to the secondary weapon because it failed the initial weapon swap.

So what this means is that using this macro caused me to do two things: fire off an ability that I didn't intend to, and end up swapped to the weapon which I wasn't expecting. That outcome would prove deadly for me in hectic situations such as boss fights, DSA, or Cyrodiil.

Is this wrong?

Qhival

Valymer wrote: »

Qhival wrote: »

If you think macros handicap you, you have no experience with macros or how to properly create them, and even create them to accommodate for lag.

or

you don't want animation canceling fixed and are just spreading misinformation.

When you create a macro, you aren't forced to use it all the time. you can set it to any key. Hell, you could even have everything work normally, then hold down alt to trigger all your keys to activate the macrod versions. This handicap bull is complete hokum.

Explain this to me then.

The macro demonstrated in the video involves three "actions," i.e. key presses.

1. weapon swap
2. use an ability on the second bar
3. weapon swap back to first bar

I don't know about you, but my weapon swapping often fails to work even without using macros. I end up having to press the button a second time to actually swap weapons like I want to.

If I was using the macro in the video and this happened on the first step listed above, the initial weapon swap would fail but the ability in the same spot on that bar would fire instead of the intended ability on the second bar. Then the macro would swap weapons on the third step, only instead of swapping back to the primary weapon it would instead swap to the secondary weapon because it failed the initial weapon swap.

So what this means is that using this macro caused me to do two things: fire off an ability that I didn't intend to, and end up swapped to the weapon which I wasn't expecting. That outcome would prove deadly for me in hectic situations such as boss fights, DSA, or Cyrodiil.

Is this wrong?

and once again you are focusing on weapon switching. read my original post for christ sake. weapon switching is ONE thing you can do with a macro. It's not a requirement for macros. Please stop being so dense. It's incredibly frustrating.

Erock25

Qhival wrote: »

If you think macros handicap you, you have no experience with macros or how to properly create them, and even create them to accommodate for lag.

or

you don't want animation canceling fixed and are just spreading misinformation.

When you create a macro, you aren't forced to use it all the time. you can set it to any key. Hell, you could even have everything work normally, then hold down alt to trigger all your keys to activate the macrod versions. This handicap bull is complete hokum.

Maybe I don't know how to properly create them, but I've tried various versions of a light attack weaving macro with no delay anywhere to short delays between every step and I have tried every configuration in between those two extremes.

Show me a video of you macroing a light attack weave faster than is possible without the macro and you will convince me.

Just fyi I do not want animation canceling 'fixed' because I think macros have nothing to do with it and it is a small wrinkle to the combat system that makes it feel less dull.

Valymer

Qhival wrote: »

Valymer wrote: »

Qhival wrote: »

If you think macros handicap you, you have no experience with macros or how to properly create them, and even create them to accommodate for lag.

or

you don't want animation canceling fixed and are just spreading misinformation.

When you create a macro, you aren't forced to use it all the time. you can set it to any key. Hell, you could even have everything work normally, then hold down alt to trigger all your keys to activate the macrod versions. This handicap bull is complete hokum.

Explain this to me then.

The macro demonstrated in the video involves three "actions," i.e. key presses.

1. weapon swap
2. use an ability on the second bar
3. weapon swap back to first bar

I don't know about you, but my weapon swapping often fails to work even without using macros. I end up having to press the button a second time to actually swap weapons like I want to.

If I was using the macro in the video and this happened on the first step listed above, the initial weapon swap would fail but the ability in the same spot on that bar would fire instead of the intended ability on the second bar. Then the macro would swap weapons on the third step, only instead of swapping back to the primary weapon it would instead swap to the secondary weapon because it failed the initial weapon swap.

So what this means is that using this macro caused me to do two things: fire off an ability that I didn't intend to, and end up swapped to the weapon which I wasn't expecting. That outcome would prove deadly for me in hectic situations such as boss fights, DSA, or Cyrodiil.

Is this wrong?

and once again you are focusing on weapon switching. read my original post for christ sake. weapon switching is ONE thing you can do with a macro. It's not a requirement for macros. Please stop being so dense. It's incredibly frustrating.

Whatever, I really don't give a *** anyway. People can do whatever they want

ahstin2001nub18_ESO

i have a g13 which allows macroing. the thing that i think people need to know, is its not advanced-rocket-science-style macroing. wrath of the lich king and prior as a tank in wow, combined with the lower quality players, nearly required macroing via their macro system to be the quality tank that i was. my g13 literally records the keystroke including time the button is depressed, released, gap between one key stroke and another, and so on. its not so sophisticated that you could get away with mashing just one key to win. also the delays do far more damage if they arent executed properly- it just keeps going in a straight line through the script without regard to skill activation.

one thing i did find during beta to now, that macroing wont typically give you such an advantage as rift, lotro, WoW, because of the lack of abilities in eso. however, on the flip side since you have to weapon swap for more abilities it is kinda handy having the ability to macro- in other words i can set all 22 keys on my g13 to execute both weapon sets. i haven't seen a dire need yet to take the time to program them and probably will never take the time because of that. so i don't think it matters one way or the other if they worry too much about (for lack of better wording) dumb-macros. now if you were straight scripting out entire events with "if x happens do y, but if x doesnt happen do z, but then if this condition happens do 1,2,3 in conjuction with z and y combined" kinda bad ass macro, that should be a no-go.

that being said, by definition, if it is not honest gameplay it is considered cheating. i would say it sits on a grey area i don't like, but understand why animation canceling is in the game. back in the day games like WWF (now WWE) had an incredibly annoying quirk, that if an animation was in progress you could not stop it. so once your opponent started their finisher (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf4cmWG4FbU), you were stuck watching it without any ability to stop it. it got old FAST.... this is why animation cancelling is in the game- it's my opinion that its a benefit-of-the-doubt programing that says "well you wanted to do X but then noticed you had to do Y" and the animation stops, so you can follow through with what you wanted to do. now if you use this to over power your opponent knowing the theoretical good faith programing from ZoS and you opponent doesnt take the "immoral" advantage, then you have an "unfair" edge over them. id say its on the lines of cheating. you are manipulating the system...

keep it or dont; not too concerned with either. my beef with it is, i don't want to have to spend the time to macro-craft animation cancelling macros. i am more concerned with this becoming normal and expected behavior (like a gear check or level check), and ill end up having to master macro-craft again instead of just enjoying the game in the way it was intended.

rager82b14_ESO

Macros seem to be the way to play.

Karamis_Vimardon