Auto-SS feature requires a real redesign. The current implementation is simply cheap. I estimate, the programmer has spent few hours actually building this feature into the client software (it IS just a client software change).
There are 3 problems with this:
1. What I still do not understand is - why SS/SPS is charged direct AFTER the skill use? Shouldn't it be charged direct BEFORE the skill use?
2. Another problem that there are skills that DO NOT require ss/sps charge, like Body to Mind, Corpse Life Drain. Those skills are used very often in chain/mix with ss/sps required skills (like nukes). And using this "handy" auto-ss/sps feature really beats the hell out of my adena pocket, wasting about 33% of my sps (actually just for nothing).
3. Third problem is stability. Sometimes ss/sps are skipped because of <censored> (server lag, client lag, etc). For me as a nuker, charge of sps sometimes decides between my life or death.
In general, the auto-ss/sps feature is simply NOT ready for production (I work in software company, I clearly see when software is ACTUALLY buggy).
So suggestion is:
Do not spare resources and implement this feature as it should be implemented.
In details:
1. Extend la2 client/server protocol, enchance existing skills commands to include ss/sps charge info.
So instead of sending 2 commands:
a) charge ss/sps (which could be lost during transmission, adds lags and takes system resources)
b) attack / skill use
only improved b) command is required. The improved version of attack/skill command includes auto-ss/sps enabled flag. All processing is done as before on the server side. This approach saves half of the all "attack" traffic, because command a) is removed; adding more server throughput; reducing attack delay and improving game responsiveness in general.
2. Extend la2 server to support these enchanced commands (add checks for ss/sps availability etc).
3. Extend la2 client to support drag & drop of ss/sps icons over the existing skills icon (per skill auto ss/sps switch), adding some special sign, that skill has auto-ss/sps-feature turned on, persist this info on the server or client side (so I shouldn't reassign that every time I login).
The feature how I described in this suggestion will significantly help the game, including better customer satisfaction and real server load improvements. But this suggestion has to be taken seriously, better say, delivered direct to developers.
3. Extend la2 client to support drag & drop of ss/sps icons over the existing skills icon (per skill auto ss/sps switch), adding some special sign, that skill has auto-ss/sps-feature turned on, persist this info on the server or client side (so I shouldn't reassign that every time I login).
try makro system, it realy works ;)
Drag your's shots on a separate shortcut bar and make a makro by draging it and whanted skills (nukes, sleep, ets) into lines on the makro.
1.) Drag your bsps/ss to a spot on one of the toolbars. ex bsps on bar 10 slot 1 or 10 1
2.) Open you macro manager.
3.) Create new Macro.
4.) Name macro ex. huricane + bsps
5.) Select unique icon.
6.) Now in first line type: /useshortcut 10 1 (this loads bsps BEFORE your cast as you requested)
7.) Now open your skill list and drag the Huricane skill Icon into the second line or type /useskill Huricane
8.) Save macro.
9.) Drag icon of macro to main tool bar.
10.) Press to load a bsps then cast huricane!
I get what your saying but theres ways players can make macros to do several things instead of waiting for NC Soft to reprogram things. I understand on my SH I wasted a LOT of bsps on btm and corpse drain. So I made macros for the skills I wanted to load a bsps before I use (huricane, bone spike, vampiric touch, shadow flare, cdl etc) and had the noraml skill icons for the ones I didnt need a bsps for (surrender to wind, btm, corpse drain, sleep, silence).
3 things:
1.) Keep macros simple. When you press a macro if you do ANYTHING at all it interupts it. Keeping it simple will reduce the amount of time you cant do something else. With a simple load bsps and cast macro there really is no differance in how long you have to wait.
2.) For some reason, some skills will not work right in a macro combination. Two I know are bsps then sleep, and bsps and silence. I can not get macros to work for those. As result I still have a spot on my toolbar for bsps so I can hit it manually and use those skills.
3.) One thing I noticed is the first macro you use will work fine. After that first macro be sure you "double tap" the F key (or double click if you use mouse) the next macro. For some reason if you use one then press a second one nothing happens.,..then you press again and it works. Figured out to beat that is just to double tap.
Since I did this I have saved alot of bsps by not wasting on btm, corpse drains etc. Try it out...will do what you want much faster than waiting for a code change.
Nah, that's too easy Kieva. Let's have the devs invent a new artificial intelligence to read our minds for when to shot and when not to. Like I hate it when it uses SS and the mob has just a sliver of hp left. Or when you use bsps on a heal that would have maxed the guy out with a sps heal. It's no wonder the line age ecomony is wackd.
Nah, that's too easy Kieva. Let's have the devs invent a new artificial intelligence to read our minds for when to shot and when not to. Like I hate it when it uses SS and the mob has just a sliver of hp left. Or when you use bsps on a heal that would have maxed the guy out with a sps heal. It's no wonder the line age ecomony is wackd.
Yeah, more automatic fighting please! pfft
No, just make a macro, if you worry about it too much...do it like how it was in the 'old days' manually, without any of this fancy dancy automatic stuff...lol
Please, keep this topic out of the flood. Or read what is suggested before suggesting your macros.
Ss/Sps macros have the same problems like auto-ss feature itself. They are not working as expected/intended. They are interruptable. Means, if you want to put into the control queue 2 blessed nukes, you cancel the first macro - gg. Sometimes ss/sps charges are missed. Just missed/ignored/forgotten/eaten/sold to farmers (j/k). Icons are messed up. 4 cryptic letters on my toolbar are the really good UI touch. Each nuke command takes 2 roundtrips to the server. 1 for sps charge, second is for nuke itself. It is your traffic and server load (read lags).
What I suggest is that one can drag&drop SS/SPS icon from my inventory on my skill icon. Skill icon is changed (small bsps icon is overlayed) to indicate that sps-feature is enabled. Now, when I use this skill, the skill uses ss/sps automatically (on the server side).
What we are saying is that NC Soft will not waste resources on mondane issues. Theres a macro system in game to automate some functions. They will not do any more work than they have to so they can develop or fix bugs that they list as a higher priority.
In the perfect world yes there are many things that could be made cleaner, better, more effective. There is no perfect world so you end up using work-arounds.
No; it's just that you are suggesting to take out even more human interaction from the game instead of bettering it; they added the [censored] autorun button alreayd, what else do you want?
Given the insane ammount of whining about botting, I fail to see how automating anything will make it better. I even frown everytime I look at the macro screen... God why not make it so that you don't even have to log in to see how your char is doing? let's beg to NC to make an AI so that our toons play by themselves and have competitions of "my bot is better than your bot". Sheesh. :mad:
Auto SS/SPS fix has nothing to do with bots, since they don't use ss/sps anyway (except raid-boss farmers).
I agree, there are lots of improvements in la2 could be done, but with this approach "if they do this feature, why shouldn't they implement this one as well" you'll never change something. To improve the game you have to start from something anyway. And it should be something really difficult to implement (like trading summon or offline stores for example), otherwise it goes down in the next-to-implement bugfix/feature list.
How is constantly having to click SS take any skill? The best feature in the game is this, the auto-ss/bsps.
obviously the op can't do it. so it must take some skill.
and the best feature of the game is far and away the hotbar itself ;) can you imagine not haveing one?
It works great like it is. If youre having a problem with your BTM, then dont use it. And yes, SS/BSPS do load for skills, like it should...
i'm haveing np... in fact i do use bsps with b2m at certain times during cdl... i need to b2m fast so i beat the respawn... at such times i use bsps.... i guess I wouldn't have added the feature if i was a developer as I see it as unnecessary... i guess i do love it on my bd... i just don't get why this guy is complaining about it.
/edit: yeah I did say it should be removed... i retract that statement... it shouldn't be removed, but it is hardly necessary....
Hmm when I was leveling a DW, one of my many rerolls, I used to exp until I was out of mp, turn off auto bsps, and run a btm macro (btm>sit>delay 4>stand>btm>repeat ad inifinitum) Works great, and was easier for me than constantly btm>corpse draining after each mob...the macro ran about 5 btm cycles...I would pop a potion and hit the macro again. Then when full mp, turn on bsps and go back to exping...dunno why it is such a big deal O_o (also, bsps/sps is fairly easy to load on a mage character imho, click to load bsps, click skill, maybe twice per mob? Fighter without auto ss sucks though.
Ok, and before you ask why sit, I could get maybe 14+ mp back during the sit and 4 second delay, while much less just standing.
Easy way to deal with SS not loading or loading at times the first poster thought were not needed would be to go back to the old school style of using SS and manualy click it everytime you need it. When i played my SE this is pretty much what i did. and when i played my SH i manualy hit sps so as to not bsps a BTM or a battle heal. but most people are to lazy to use the old way T.T
Fighter classes may not understand the idea of this suggestion because of naturally low INT stat.
Imagine, that player kills a mob with 2 nukes. Then he sometimes does BTM/CLD. This chain takes about 5 seconds to perform. It take 2x more sps than one actually needed when auto sps turned on.
So the player kills 12 mobs in a minute using keyboard to nuke and mouse to select a target.
Now imagine, that every 5 seconds you have turn on/turn off auto-sps with your mouse? Or you have to charge sps manually twice pro 5 seconds? Your kill rate drops at least two times.
The main point here is not only convenience, but also network traffic and game server load. Could you imaging that your game becomes twice as responsive as it is now, because every ss/sps charge is merged with attack/skill request?
Fighter classes may not understand the idea of this suggestion because of naturally low INT stat.
Imagine, that player kills a mob with 2 nukes. Then he sometimes does BTM/CLD. This chain takes about 5 seconds to perform. It take 2x more sps than one actually needed when auto sps turned on.
So the player kills 12 mobs in a minute using keyboard to nuke and mouse to select a target.
Now imagine, that every 5 seconds you have turn on/turn off auto-sps with your mouse? Or you have to charge sps manually twice pro 5 seconds? Your kill rate drops at least two times.
The main point here is not only convenience, but also network traffic and game server load. Could you imaging that your game becomes twice as responsive as it is now, because every ss/sps charge is merged with attack/skill request?
Now I have played a BD, a DW(almost SH),An Assassin, and a OL.
I understand the idea of turning it on and off for skills such as btm. But I said that it is easier for a Wizard type to manually load bsps/sps than it is for a melee to load ss. Most mystic types/nukers hunt things they can 1 or 2 shot. So it is click sps, click skill, click sps, click skill....try pounding f10 for ss while leveling a fighter...I use ss on auto load on my OL, and will manually load bsps/sps whenever I need to use a drain or something....really manual loading is **** easy when you are 2 shotting things, no need to put it on auto load for 2 skills.
Also why not try a different way to regen mp? Namely my idea...sure gives you some downtime, but that regen is fast and easy to manage your bsps/sps that way. And if you are that worried about money that small amount of downtime would be worth it imo.
Please, don't heal me with your advices. I've been playing la2 since prelude and I know how to play my class best.
Just try to understand the reasons of the suggestion. Imagine that you are the fighter. And every third hit for some reason, you don't need to charge ss. And you hit really fast. So it works only with auto-ss turned on. It's not possible to manually charge ss with some f-key, because it's too slow. Remember, you hit fast.
Is it becoming clear now? That every third ss charge is just a waste? Just a hole in you pocket. That is my feeling too. But in my case this hole is spiritshots for B2M/CLD.
Please, don't heal me with your advices. I've been playing la2 since prelude and I know how to play my class best.
Just try to understand the reasons of the suggestion. Imagine that you are the fighter. And every third hit, you don't need to charge ss. And you hit really fast. I works only with auto-ss turned on.
It's not possible to manually charge ss with some f-key, because it's too slow. Remember, you hit fast.
Is it becoming clear now? That every third ss charge is just a waste? Just a hole in you pocket. That is my feeling too. But in my case this hole is spiritshots for B2M/CLD.
lmao you obviously don't if you can't handle the way sps works.
1. What I still do not understand is - why SS/SPS is charged direct AFTER the skill use? Shouldn't it be charged direct BEFORE the skill use?
It is not charged direct AFTER skill use. It is charged every single moment. Fortunately, they added some filter for sps spam, but still it's implemented as "try-to-charge-think-forget" in cases you have improper weapon type, charged weapon or item usage blockage.
Some time ago, when the feature was not fixed, we have got message spam of inability to charge weapon whenever we tried to trade with auto ss on. Now I don't remember the annoying message at all. Looks devs "fixed" the bug in most obvious way - removing message without functionality change.
Let's come back to second question. As you probably know, item server is a laggy thing. So using ss/sps takes time. Meanwhile game client uses ss/sps in a separate execution chain, not in skill chain. You can use sps and then skill, but get the oposite order as a result. All thanks to item server lag. That is, program has to make sps load in advance or wait until server reaction (it's current implementation, not your suggestion).
3. Third problem is stability. Sometimes ss/sps are skipped because of <censored> (server lag, client lag, etc). For me as a nuker, charge of sps sometimes decides between my life or death.
It's another issue, dude. It's plain and obvious item server lag. I get it now even though I don't use auto-ss function at all. At times I get 1 second lag in usage of bsps. Several times it made harsh situations in hunting (nuke finishes before sps charge even though I try to charge sps before I press nuke shortcut button).
So I made macros for the skills I wanted to load a bsps before I use (huricane, bone spike, vampiric touch, shadow flare, cdl etc) and had the noraml skill icons for the ones I didnt need a bsps for (surrender to wind, btm, corpse drain, sleep, silence).
Macros has several drawbacks - quite obvious, to be honest.
First thing - you can't use macro in a macro. Combat chains are not possible.
Second - macro delays execution waiting for item server response. It's slow, always slow, at least for yoru ping (reasonable ping of 300 ms creates results noticable by users).
Third - we have only 16 macro slots at all. It's even less than all skills you have, not to say macro functions are used for many other things (trade, targeting, group interaction/warnings etc.).
Forth - macroses has lame icons, and only few icons avaiable. Not only they look bad, but they are not that much "readable" as distinct icons of skills.
By the way, there is a way to wield weapon+shield in one shortcut slot, without macroses at all.
I don't use auto-ss function other than for soulshots and raids/heal chains. Mostly I press charge button myself few milliseconds (well... 200-500 according to my reaction and mood) before I spell (or after spell if I want to charge bsps during casting). Nevertheless I'd appreciate sps+skill function implemented on server side as it not only will reduce traffic load, but will also make some other minor things - providing more convenient gameplay for this great game.
Easy way to deal with SS not loading or loading at times the first poster thought were not needed would be to go back to the old school style of using SS and manualy click it everytime you need it. When i played my SE this is pretty much what i did. and when i played my SH i manualy hit sps so as to not bsps a BTM or a battle heal. but most people are to lazy to use the old way T.T
Actually that is exactly what I do. I don't use the Auto since it is a waste of shots.
I hit the shot (it is on my F2 key) and then cast. The only time I ever use the autoshot feature is for raids when I'm just holding F1 down.
I've also notice some weird lag issues with the shot thing... including when I was on PTS and activated the shots only to notice that I could make several swipes without them working.
Sure... we could make a macro but it seems that that is a work around for something that should not be broken.
I am relatively new here >.> , but wasn't there no way to auto spam ss/sps (bsps did not exist until c2~c3 correct?) until sometime after prelude? O_o So you should remember the old way :) I just don't auto sps/bsps on my OL, I can handle an extra click here or there...but if pvp is going to happen it goes to autoload, need to be thinking about more important things than loading sps when that happens ;P
1. What I still do not understand is - why SS/SPS is charged direct AFTER the skill use? Shouldn't it be charged direct BEFORE the skill use?
It is not charged direct AFTER skill use. It is charged every single moment.
Warper :)
Q: What's a reason for ss/sps charge?
A: To improve power of the weapon.
Q: Why do you need the weapon?
A: To use your skills like attack/heal/etc.
Q: So the reason to ss/sps charge is to improve the certain skill?
A: Correct.
Q: Who decides which skill you want to improve?
A: Player decide.
Q: When does player decide wheither he/she should improve the skill power?
A: At least when player knows which skill he's gonna use.
Q: Why then in auto-sps mode sps is charged BEFORE even player knows which skill he's gonna use?
A: I don't know. Probably, that was the cheapest way to implement it.
Q: So the current Auto-SPS implementation doesn't fit well in "Player decides when to charge logic"?
A: Exactly. Moreover, it's inreliable, laggy & technically imperfect.
I am so glad we have the auto SS system we have. I remember my newb self in C2 just clicking away at SS I hated that so much didn't know anything about macro's back then. Was happy when it showed up in C3. I like your idea of being able to select which skill you want to use it with, without having to make a macro. But it really only affects magic class toons. most other classes woudn't have as much need for it.
The auto ss/sps feature was implemented for those who wished to spam without having to pound down a short cut key. It was MADE TO SPAM.
If you do a macro like what was suggested it works just fine, I did it with my sps and it was great. There is no long delay between the sps charge and skill use.
If you want to argue that the spiritshot spam on certain skills is wasteful to you, then this feature is not for you. Believe it or not, there are some who like to spam sps regardless of what skill for speed in pvp.
I would however agree with the suggestion to choose what skills to spam sps on, but that doesn't leave much to challenges. Might as well auto detect enemies in the region and automatically turn off transfer pain/vicious stance/accuracy when you lose combat stance too. Waste no mp yeah?
I am amazed by the people who wants to have clumsy and incovenient interface.
Auto sps/ss too(if you change weapons bow/dagger you lose charge ss as well) is simply designed and impleemnted in the easiest way. It's suffer ill-design and that's it.
Macros are another bad design due required response from the server. It's extremly easy to distict commands that can be sent bulk than waiting for server resopnse.
As a note I completely agree w/ Aladin and Warper.
It's charged after the skill/attack use because it charges as soon as it's not in effect - the feature ensures that when you swing or stab or sing your little magic chant, you always have a new shot ready on your weapon.
For nukers outside of PvP, it's a waste not to do your shots yourself (since you lose control over your reuse timer and utility skills), but whatever.
A new feature like this would mean a delay before activating skills (to load the shot) - fine by me, but I know I'd keep with manual spiritshots, just as I am now.