It happens constantly. You go back to town after a public Nephalem rift or GR and you see another player’s toon auto casting and looking stupid like they’re having constant seizures. I just cannot wrap my head around the fact that players think juggling the cooldowns of only 6 skills – usually, 2-3 skills given many skills like mantras/war cries, etc are set it and forget it skills, is simply too much work.
Okay, off my soapbox, but I really do hope Blizzard makes it impossible for lazy players to have their keyboard autocast in D4.
For that matter, having a fully customizable UI would be a major plus to the game. I would be down for that.
Let us decide what we want to see, have the option to disable interaction from the mouse except by hotkey (if we want) things like this. I know many of you would love that, would eliminate the chat window clicks, the skill/paragon accidents, etc., when in the heat of battle.
There are many days that I wish I could drag the paragon available button to some other part of the screen that doesn’t interfere with my gaming. Better yet, a paragon checkbox to auto allocate paragons to the stat you want all future paragons going to would have been great.
Also have the option to disable other player character animations for OP’s sanity.
That should have been done for D3. The feature makes lots of sense for skills like WotB, AC and Vengeance where you can achieve 100% uptime and simply want the skill to autocast on cooldown. Really, all cooldown based skills should have a checkbox in the corner of their skill bar icon to enable autocast on cooldown expiration.
That way a player would not need to actually think and constantly glance at their skill bar to know when to press buttons, right? Put them on autopilot. Make them robots. Uh, no. Not for me. I want to be in control. When I die this season it’s typically because I spaced out for a few seconds and was not in WOTB for my Barb. Go start up your Roomba vacuum and have it vacuum your house. It’s programmed to know what to do. D3 is a game needing player choice and whether there should be consequences for not pressing buttons, etc.
It’s funny that you think autocast on cooldown makes players into robots. To me, having to monitor a set of buffs (yes, that’s buffs, they’re not action skills) in order to hit a button in order to keep them up makes me feel like a robot. It’s not even like FnR where I need to hit something with an attack to keep the buff up. With numlock, at least I’m free to focus on tasks that require what I find more human thought.
Here’s another group of players that wouldn’t mind an autocast on cooldown feature… people who are partially paralysed. A mate’s bro can’t use the left side of his body. He loves D3 though and can only play with his right arm. Trying to use 6 buttons on his mouse is painful so atm, he sticks to builds that he can get at least 3 skills on numlock or can get by with just using 3 active skills.
Personally, I think that cooldown based skills that only buff you ought to be made into passive skills that you can either buff via passive skill points to improve their duration/potency and be able to change the trigger that activates them. Then make the 6 active skills actual attacks of utility skills like leap, vault, etc… we can still make builds that only rely on 1 attack if we want but we can have more interesting builds that use multiple attacks that all do decent damage.
You obviously feel different about it… that’s cool. The game can be designed to cater for both crowds… not just the “I’m more elite because I’m better at pressing 6 buttons” crowd.
Thanks for not going off the rails just because someone has a different opinion. It’s greatly appreciated. I can see how Numlock would benefit a physically disabled player.
The world is heading to automation and AI in almost every aspect and yet here is one guy who wants us to go back to stone age. No?
Back to the topic. Actually, don’t make these absurdly-long-cooldown-but-can-always-be-up skills to be back in D4. Or better still, make CDR hard to achieve, like max 15-20% only. Throw away things like 60% CDR or stupid items such as obsidian ring of zodiac, or passives with similar effect. We need a healthy game with good cooldown/CDR relationship, like a buff skill that has 30s cooldown, but only 10s duration, and max CDR is only 20%. There can be 1 or 2 legendary items to increase duration of that buff by 2-3s, or reduce its cooldown by similar duration, pick one, but the idea is that the up time should be around 40-60% only, not 100%. Use it strategically to add more depth to the game.
I once worked for a Government organisation that refused to design their manuals in colour as, besides being more costly to print, coloured manuals are harder to read for colour blind people. All graphs used different dotted or dashed lines to differentiate different lines instead of colours. Something I’d never have thought of.
Physical disabilities can take a variety of forms and technology/smarter design can make a big difference.
Personally, I don’t like cooldown based buffs taking up my active bar. It’s a waste of a slot that could have housed an active skill IMHO.
I’d prefer to see buffs and debuffs linked to an active skill of some sort so that some sort of action with that skill triggers the buff… e.g. not getting hit for 10sec activates WotB or getting 20 consecutive hits with Bash triggers Warcry.
For players who like 1 attack skill builds, you should be able assign multiple buffs/debuffs to activate off that skill. But for players who like multiple attack skill builds, perhaps the potency of the buffs increases the more you rotate through different skills… both can be effective whether it means an easier time or more damage/buff duration.
What you describe is good for melee and assassin builds. But I don’t see the same vision for caster builds. Unlike melee, casters are much less tanky and shouldn’t stay put firing magic missile like a Gatling gun. It should somewhat revolves around casting spells that have medium cooldown, but either have long spell duration (such as meteor rain), or huge AoE (blizzard, chain lightning) or both, while running around to avoid getting hit. It’s logical that there are spells beyond human capacity for insta cast, thus requiring to borrow elemental force from the surrounding. And that force takes some time to recover, thus the cooldown. In the meantime, you can go shoot your single target firebolt that costs little mana and can instacast.
Last but not least, skills that regen mana on cast are stupid and defy any common logic. Even as small as a fire bold, snow ball or lightning spear, it should cost some mana. Primary skills from D3 should be thrown away.
Yes, if they are powerful and impactful, they should be up for around 40-60% time only, even with CDR items. Make buff meaningful. Of course the weaker buffs can have their permanent up time.
Hence, if those things is something that should exist (and I am not exactly convinced they should) then add support for it in the UI. So there is no need for Numlock. In either case, the Numlock trick can be removed.
I’m just not into killing-off main characters. No matter how you serve auto-cast, auto-buff, or UI manipulation, it does not change the fact that the skill will be on in town.
The most annoying build ever is the Condemn, to my ears. I ran a crusader into the top 10, can you imagine how I felt? Well…After turning down the sound a bit, and de-locking the skills before teleporting to town, it became bearable to some degree.
Getting rid of a mechanic that is built into the game is like asking to have legendary gems go away. Evolving games do not move in a vacuum. They are competitive with other games in their genre and class. So, in the history of gaming, things change.
The best mage in gaming, IMO, is the Battle-Mage from Asheron’s Call. Through the powers of magic, in that realm, a mage could magically imbue cloth, leather, or any defensive material with the armor of varying degrees.
Num-lock does not break any rules. I do not want to go back to turn-based DnD.
Neither should you.
" Arcane Spell Failure was a complicated and pointless mechanic. It only served to confuse newbies and slow down the pace of gameplay."
This was considered during the birth of a Battle-Mage, for sure.
Which is why you design the combat so numlock casting is not desirable or needed.
The idea that you need to push a button non-stop is an immense failure in game design. How the heck do you even end up there.