Hardcore Gamer Dealing With Disabilities

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1

I need ideas.

My new GF is a hardcore gamer who has been active in WoW since shortly after Vanilla release.

Almost ten years ago she had a stroke and lost all use of her left hand.

I’ve been trying to work out ways for her to play at her former level but it’s very difficult for me to set up things like “strafe left/turn right” which is how I circle targets as a hunter, for instance, with only one hand to work with.

She’s had to switch to being a clicker not only for abilities, but for movement, and with ONLY the mouse hand to work with, I’m struggling with how to get her full use of her abilities AND full mobility.

I’ve got one foot pedal I think I can repurpose as a CTRL key and I can get a second for ALT (SHIFT isn’t really necessary - I manage a very large suite of very complex macros with no SHIFT key and I’ve got both hands to work with).

But it’s that movement issue that’s killing me here.

I set up some controls for a disabled Tank in Houston a few years ago, but this is different. Tanking isn’t so much about dancing around mobs and zapping them from a safe distance. It’s about YOU controlling where THEY go (for the most part - that’s an oversimplification, but it’s essentially correct).

I want very much to get her back up to speed.

She was enough of a legend in her day that there was an NPC named for her back in Wrath - Krenna.

Any ideas would be helpful.

2

I once knew a player who had to play only with the use of a straw due to being paralyzed from the neck down. He’d tilt his head to hit the keyboard and used a specially designed trackpad, it was the first time I realized disabled players needed a way to play too. I wish I knew more about how to help your gf, have you considered setting up one of those mouses with additional buttons other than just left and right click? I know you set keybindings to additional mouse buttons and with things like healbot (bad example if she is tanking or dpsing) can set the click to use abilities. It sounds like you might have already tried that but I’m still sure there are ways to optimize mouse play and hope it works out so that she can get back into pushing high level content. Best of luck.

3

http://www.abilitypowered.com/ might be a useful resource.

Have you looked at the in-game MovePad? (esc.\Interface\Accessibility\Show MovePad)

There’ also some enhancements for it at:
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/move-pad-plus

4

I’ll take a look at mpp and see if that has some sort of strafe/turn combo available.

I’m looking at everything. Thanks, guys.

How do you invoke Move Pad? I’ve got the addon installed, but I can’t seem to find the slash command.

NVM Found it.

Is it possible to keybind to any of those? Particularly the “turn and keep turning” or “strafe and keep strafing” buttons.

Oh, sweet.

/click MovePadStrafeLeft

That works just fine.

I can combine that with…

/click MovePadRotateRight

…perhaps or something akin to it. This looks promising.

Here’s what I have so far for strafe left/strafe right (no turning yet).

/click [mod:alt]MovePadStrafeLeft;[mod:ctrl]MovePadStrafeRight
/click [nomod]MovePadBackward
/click [nomod]MovePadBackward

That allows me to set up a single button, plus the alt/ctrl keys to control persistent left or right strafe and to shut that off by hitting the same button with no mod key pressed.

I’m working on fitting in some rotation with that, adjustable on the fly, that will allow for narrow or wide circles around a given target.

I also ordered a two-pedal foot control - she’ll use that for alt/ctrl buttons.

5

Some of the MMO mice have tons of extra buttons. You get all 12 skills, regular left/right buttons, mouse wheel plus other buttons you might be able to re-purpose into mod keys. Between those and multiple foot pedals (strafe left, strafe right, forward, jump) you should have even complex combat covered.

6

She’s got (my) G600MMO now, but the issue is really dealing with strafe-and-turn WHILE shooting. We tried some instances and she can already manage her rotation, but she can’t do that and stay out of the fire at the same time.

It’s simple enough to tell MovePad to strafe-left-turn-right until further notice, but you have no control over how wide the circle is and the default is a VERY tight circle (not really usable).

I’m still working on it. But every button I have to use for THIS means one less I have for her to use for her rotation, so I’m working hard to find solutions that cram as much functionality as possible into as few keys/bindings/shortcuts as possible.

7

How the hell are there no right hand gamepads? Spent like 30m looking for one yesterday.

8

If you have MPPlus enabled, try combining the strafe with ClickToMove (the flying boot)? Click Strafe to start, later, right click on the ground in the direction you want to adjust.

It might take some figgerin’-n-practice but it might also be useful.

ClickToMove is also available on it’s own under the Mouse options in the interface settings, the button MPP gives you is just a convenient point to turn it on and off.

9

This looks interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-3D-Pro-Joystick-Windows/dp/B00009OY9U/

Six buttons on the joystick PLUS the 8-way hat.

I can set up forward/backward, strafe left/right on the tilt of the joystick itself and rotate on the twist of the joystick and STILL have all six buttons available for tactical use plus another 8 if the hat works the way I think it does.

There’s another six buttons on the side of the thing for tactical-but-not-combat abilities.

With the foot pedals I already have ordered for her, this would give her 18 abilities (macro’d in triples with alt/ctrl/nomod conditionals) on the six normal buttons, an additional 24 on the 8-way hat with the same conditionals, and and additional 18 with the 6 buttons on the side of the base with the same conditionals.

G-ds, if that isn’t enough, she needs to play a simpler class I think.

My last question on this is - has anyone attempted to use this device with WoW? What was your experience if so?

Update: I’ve made some progress on this but there are issues still.

First of all, that joystick is brilliant. I understand that there are reliability issues with the potentiometers used in its construction, but for $35 I can buy a new one every six months if I have to.

I’ve mapped move forward/backward to the “Y” axis, strafe left/right to the “X” axis, turn to the “Twist” function, and I used the trigger for “Jump”.

The hat can be set to either 4 or 8 buttons (I’ll probably go for 4 for her because setting up a “NW” click is a little rough if you don’t want to accidentally click a “North” or a “West” by accident, for example (multiply that by all four of the “diagonal” directions and I think it’s likely to be more trouble than it’s worth)). The 4 cardinal values (N, E, S, W) plus the five other buttons on the joystick, in conjunction with the alt/ctrl keys (foot pedals) gives me the ability to set up a tactical rotation with 27 abilities, enough for any DPS class. Even if, say, “ctrl” generally means “use this same attack, but on the Focus unit”, that’s still a nine-button rotation for target unit, a nine-button rotation for focus unit, and nine MORE for buffs and untargeted stuff (think “Bestial Wrath” for hunters for instance). Still likely to be plenty and that’s if I don’t isolate her targeting to its own macro with all the modifiers there and give her all 27 abilities to use globally (well, I suppose it would be 24 if I took one of the buttons and used it for "get me my target (modified by alt/ctrl/nomod status).

The x, y, twist, and throttle controls all have the ability to be set up in zones and I set up a huge unused zone on x, y, and twist so she will be able to sort of lean into the flight stick during . . . um . . . enthusiastic combat and not have herself running, strafing, or spinning out of control.

The throttle control, I’m considering setting up a 15% zone at the bottom that is the shift key held down so I can provide an entirely separate set of actions - these will likely either be emergency get-out-of-dodge stuff or something equally useful and not subject to quick change in tactical situations.

I could set up secondary zones that are “alt + ctrl” or some other such combo that would allow me to build some special purpose branches in her macros so that stuff that might be needed in a tactical situation but that is very rare could be branched to by dropping her hand to the base of the flight stick and shoving the throttle lever all the way to the other end (or perhaps to just the middle - I’ll have to play with this a bit).

The biggest issue I’m having is that when the game starts up or when she zones the x, y, and twist axes don’t seem to register right away and I’m unclear what could be doing that.

I’m hoping someone out there has experience with this flight stick and can offer some insight.

It may be as simple as I already HAVE a joystick AND a mouse on the PC I’m testing this on and there’s some sort of collision and negotiation between drivers about who gets to send signals. I don’t know and I don’t want to turn this over to her until I do.

Thanks for your help on this to date. We’re narrowing in on a reasonable solution, although watching her play WoW with a Flight Stick seems a little odd to me.

Probably not as odd as it feels to her to actually be playing that way, though.