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Friday, February 17, 2006
Robot healing
World of Warcraft has a very powerful scripting language, which allows programming all sorts of add-ons and macros. And like everybody else I use quite a number of add-ons. For example Gatherer, which marks all the herbs I find with Raslebol on the map, so I don't need to write down the locations on a piece of paper. Or Telo's Infobar, showing me information on the main screen which I would otherwise need to press a couple of buttons to see. Or even Tacklebox, which reduces the number of mouse clicks necessary for fishing.
Unfortunately that is a slippery slope. You get lazy, install more and more of helpful add-ons, and in the end the macros play the game for you. Somebody just recommended ClickHeal to me, for use with my priest. Now I'm certainly impressed by the description of what this add-on is doing, that must have been many hours of programming. But I'll be damned if I'm going to use this. With ClickHeal you can basically put your priest on auto-follow, and just hit ONE button over and over, and the add-on decides which of the many priest activities to perform: Buff, remove debuffs, heal, it does it all, and even prioritizes what to do first. Turns your brain into mush, and your character into a heal-bot.
Now somebody is going to tell me that in a raid a priest *is* a heal-bot. And the better he "functions" in removing debuffs, healing, and buffing people, the better. Can't hit the different buttons fast enough? Install an add-on to do it for you. And please don't chat in a raid, it could disturb somebodies concentration. *Bleh!*
I refuse to play a MMORPG on that level. And a large part of my antipathy towards raids is coming from the tendency of raids to reduce people to the function of their characters. I'd rather go on a 5-man group or small raid, where it is me who is making judgement calls on who to heal when. Yes, there is a risk that I might mess up, but what fun is a game with no risk? The famous definition of Sid Meier, defining a game as a series of interesting decisions, is true for MMORPG as well. Hitting only one macro button repeatedly is not an interesting decision, even if it ends up keeping the raid alive and earns you some epic loot.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:55 AM Permanent Link
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Games are generally a test of skill as well as a story telling experiance. I suppose for some people though utilities such as ClickHeal is a great leveller. For those without the skills to manage playing one of the most demanding classes in any RGP, the healer, such utilities are probably a god send.
Its easy to be flipant and tell them to go play a class more suitable to their skills. But maybe they want simply play a priest and don't care how they go about doing so.
I guess its simply their choice, at least so long as the utility isn't against the ToS.
Where I strongly disagree with applications like this though, is in a competitive environment, such as PvP. Not much you can do about that though, other than getting the same applications yourself and joining the arms race!
The only time I've used a macro utility that cast spells for me, was in Asherons Call 1. In that game, buffs lasted a mere 30 minutes, and you pretty much needed tons of them cast on you at any one time. Buffing itself could take 3-5 minutes of continual casting and resting (ie, LOTS of mouse clicks). In the end it was more convenient (and easier on the wrists) to use a plug in to cast all buffs for you. I would never however use the unattended macro's that were available. now that IS going too far!
Its easy to be flipant and tell them to go play a class more suitable to their skills. But maybe they want simply play a priest and don't care how they go about doing so.
I guess its simply their choice, at least so long as the utility isn't against the ToS.
Where I strongly disagree with applications like this though, is in a competitive environment, such as PvP. Not much you can do about that though, other than getting the same applications yourself and joining the arms race!
The only time I've used a macro utility that cast spells for me, was in Asherons Call 1. In that game, buffs lasted a mere 30 minutes, and you pretty much needed tons of them cast on you at any one time. Buffing itself could take 3-5 minutes of continual casting and resting (ie, LOTS of mouse clicks). In the end it was more convenient (and easier on the wrists) to use a plug in to cast all buffs for you. I would never however use the unattended macro's that were available. now that IS going too far!
/ditto
And yes I WILL go all Che Guevara with you over this. I play healing classes exclusively and I take great personal pride in my ability to keep a party alive.
Macros are for PUSSIES!
The Se7en Samurai
And yes I WILL go all Che Guevara with you over this. I play healing classes exclusively and I take great personal pride in my ability to keep a party alive.
Macros are for PUSSIES!
The Se7en Samurai
# posted by 
: 17/2/06 14:29
: 17/2/06 14:29
Totally agree on the PvP comment. Especially coming from a warlock, because I know that the PvP fun for warlocks took a big hit when people started using Decursive in PvP. Debuffs are the strong point of the warlock class, and automatic instant dispelling of debuffs makes warlocks a lot less fun in PvP.
I do have Autobuff running, for self-buffing in solo play. As I said, this is about taking interesting decisions. And casting Inner Fire on me every 3 minutes is not an interesting decision, so I can automate it.
I do have Autobuff running, for self-buffing in solo play. As I said, this is about taking interesting decisions. And casting Inner Fire on me every 3 minutes is not an interesting decision, so I can automate it.
I used autobuff when I played. As a Shaman I needed to have my lightning shield up all the time. It sucks to have to stop and recast it all the time.
So I bound the cast key to my jump button and when I jumped if there was no lightning shield it would cast one for me.
Now that seems fair to me.
The Clickheal is just over the top and hopefully Blizzard removes such functionality.
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So I bound the cast key to my jump button and when I jumped if there was no lightning shield it would cast one for me.
Now that seems fair to me.
The Clickheal is just over the top and hopefully Blizzard removes such functionality.
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