A Plea for Consistency in Action Ordering

[Ysharros]

First off the usual disclaimer: I love VG, I'm having fun, I like the crafting system despite what (to me) are some pretty serious flaws. Yadda yadda.

That being said, I've noticed something in the last few weeks which makes an already click-festish crafting experience even moreso:

Crafting actions aren't ordered in any consistent or coherent way, and their ordering varies not only across professions but even across sub-specialisations. Since I have several crafters on Live and several more on Test, this is becoming an increasing daily irritant.

Here's what I mean. Blacksmithing Tool Actions family at my skill (note the ordering of the action buttons):



And now the Weaponsmithing Tool Actions family:



I set up {stepXActionY} macros for myself when the endless click-step, move mouse, click-action routine became too stressful for my injured shoulder & wrist. Now, however, I have to double check when I start a recipe, just to make sure my Step+Action macro is actually activating the action I want.

I've noticed that the Station actions are similarly inconsistent between blacksmithing and (if memory serves) Outfitting -- in the former they're arranged in the order they were recived; in the latter, they're arranged by action cost.

Similarly, the opening "use resources" step seems to be unable to decide which is the first action and which is the second. Until recently ALL my blacksmithing/weaponsmithing resource actions had "use supplied fake resource" first and "use your own resource" second. Now it seems to be one for blacksmithing, the other for weaponsmithing. If this were to happen to the ending actions we'd see a lot of peeved crafters who accidentally used the 0-cost quality-loss action instead of the one they expected to use (this was the case for some profs back in beta but as far as I know it's been fixed?).

Even if you don't use macros to lessen the clicking & mouse-moving load, many many people I know use visual memory of button positioning to do their clicking, rather than stop at each step/action combo and make sure they're getting it right. There is enough repetition and drudgery in crafting as it is, for all its other qualities.

It's confusing. It addles my already overstretched tiny gamer brain. Someday I'd like to see these sorted out so that they're consistent across the entire crafting spectrum.

I realise this is a relatively minor issue considering what else is on the crafting table at the moment, pardon the pun. I'm not asking to have this "fixed NOW!!11oneone!" nor am I saying "zomg the whole system sux!" (and so on). I *am* trying to bring it to official attention because, in the long run, I'd like to see consistency across these actions families.

[Shinto]

The reason is that this makes it more difficult to bot. My solution is to have a macro for step, and a separate macro for action. It takes more buttons, but it works.

By the way, the actions will always be consistent for a particular recipe, and there are only certain orders used for the actions. That doesn't help much if you are doing singles, but for batches it is nice to know.

[SwordMage]

I agree that the ordering bug is very annoying. I can't imagine it would stand in the way of a botter for long; if indeed this is anti-bot logic then I think it is ill-conceived (all it does is make the game seem slapped together and makes it harder for normal players).

Another place that really annoys me is in selecting the type of enhancement to put on Mangled leather armor (one list, hand IIRC, is out of sync with the others). That is just sloppy and makes one wonder about the quality of the game as a whole.

[Dread Quixadhal]

Security through Obscurity is what we used to call it. The DEC VAX/VMS system was a great example. They had an exhaustive help system which was available online and as a "wall of manuals". However, if you didn't already know what you were looking for, you'd never find it.

The problem is, the folks writing bots know exactly what they're looking for. I'd imagine they spend a few weeks playing as crafters so they knew what to expect and wrote their bots to map around ordering inconsistencies by recipe. Afterall, how often will they need to add new recipes?

Taking out the slash-commands to handle complications was a good way to hurt to botters, and even though I hate having to use the mouse for it... I don't mind because I think it does help. If the ordering shuffle is intentional, I hope someone reconsiders, because I can't see how that will help.

[Ysharros]

Argh, I hadn't thought of that, and I'm an ardent anti-botter.

Blast! Foiled into having to use my brain again.

And Shinto -- ya, I originally had a separate macro for step and action, and combined them awhile back when I a) got serious about my work orders for a while and b) this coincided with higher shoulder pain. Anything that cut down on motion while allowing me to satisfy my gaming addiction was good. However, if it helps the botters it hurts me in the long run, so I'll take it on the chin. Just means I'll have to go out and kill stuff a bit more often. Life is tough, ain't it?

[Rithrin]

I do hope they change this, regardless of the botting issues. It is the same with things like crafting wood boards, the "5 Boards"/"3 Boards"/"1 Board" skills will be mixmatched and it ends up with me accidentally starting the wrong number. Annoying when I am trying to add a dust.

[Shinto]

Originally Posted by Rithrin

I do hope they change this, regardless of the botting issues. It is the same with things like crafting wood boards, the "5 Boards"/"3 Boards"/"1 Board" skills will be mixmatched and it ends up with me accidentally starting the wrong number. Annoying when I am trying to add a dust.

Don't be offended when I say this; it is meant constructively. I had the same problem, and I solved it by paying more attention to what I am doing. There are very clear patterns to the action orders. I have only seen perhaps two patterns per action group combination per tier, and those are always the same per recipe. It is annoying at first, but I think that it was meant well, and that it isn't too much to get used to.

[Hungkung]

what shinto orginanlly said..then what he said later too.

I've zoned out into the great world of banging my widdlehead only to find I got start the order all over...and may have to drop/reget the WO. I hope I'm smart enough when I'm doing regular crafting I'm smart enough to put on barry manilow or something and not waste the materials.

I don't know if what sigil has done will really cut down on botting, the scripts that can be done now are sophisticated enough to recognize where the "adding dust" phase is and act accordingly. I mean it's a dumb example but the gnome in Flintlocke wasn't that far over the line of what can be done all with nothing but notepad and a little skill.

I keep hoping for a silver bullet that will put cheaters down for once and for all, but I think we just are going to have to accept no matter what you do, 1 drop of blood and bammo Ole Redeyes is going to be back up at the castle lurring innocent women into a biting expierence. the flipside is there are fewer and fewer innocent women so mebbe he'll starve one day.

which is why I keep preachign player-driven standards on behaviour just like we have in the real world. I know this isn't a popular concept but we do it by default from the time we are in shorty pants. It is the participants within an arena of action refusing to reward any individual who seeks to subvert or cheat the arena of action. To put it in a more simple ways, we never play twice with the kid who steals 100 dollar bills in monopoly. We don't do business with the resturant who serves boiled cat as quail. We don't buy the products made to be "pretty close" to specifications. We don't shiv the guy wearing newspaper armor in the yard. In short we already do this everyday in our real life it maybe time to think abotu doing it in a collective way in our online lives too.

[SwordMage]

Originally Posted by Rithrin

I do hope they change this, regardless of the botting issues. It is the same with things like crafting wood boards, the "5 Boards"/"3 Boards"/"1 Board" skills will be mixmatched and it ends up with me accidentally starting the wrong number. Annoying when I am trying to add a dust.

I think you have hit on the killer example of when this bug affects game play. After clicking 5/3/1 board, there is no visual indication of which was chosen so that you can indeed wind up blowing a dust on one board and not realize it until it is way too late.

If they don't fix the ordering bug, then the least they can do is provide some fail-safe for this example (even if it is only a change in the window title to show the number).

[Druilan]

This is a noobish question, but how do you setup a macro to minimize clicking in crafting, because the tediousness of the click click is getting to my wrists!! UGH