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The More You Know #1: Switching Jobs on the Fly
rwyan
Member UncommonPosts: 468
Did you know you can switch jobs/classes/disciples on the fly? Its actually relatively simple. You will first have to become accustomed with some commands that allow you to eqiup/unequip items and equip/unequip actions.
1. Equipping Items:
/equip "[Gear Slot]" '[Gear Name]"
The brackets are unnecessary, but you will need the quotes.
Example 1 - Equipping a weapon:
/equip "Main Hand" "Weathered Gladius"
This will equip Weathered Gladius in my Main Hand.
Example 2 - Unequipping a weapon:
/equip "Main Hand"
Because I didn't provide a reference to an item in my inventory, this will unequip whatever is equipped in Main Hand.
2. Equipping Actions:
/eaction [Slot #] "[Action Name]"
The brackets are unnecessary, but you will need the quotes.
Example 1 - Equipping an action:
/eaction 2 "Thunder"
This will equip the Thunder spell into action slot 2.
Example 2 - Unequipping an action:
/eaction 2
This will unequip slot action slot 2 of the action that is slotted there.
Macros:
FF14 allows you to build macros (a sequence of text based commands) and associated the with either the ctrl or alt button. You will notice that if you hold ctrl or alt, your hotkey bar turns into a bunch of blue squares. These blue squares are empty macros. Press the up arrow or down arrow keys will cycle through each macro row.
1. Finding Macros:
Press either the minus key on the numpad or the home key to bring up the in game menu. Look for the settings/configuration option near the bottom. You should see Macros listed as the last option in the settings menu.
You will notice rows of squares and the Ctrl and Alt tabs. Note which one is active.
2. Creating Your First Macro:
Note which tab is active. Is it Ctrl or Alt?
Click on the first square of the first row. Notice in the bottom you can give it a name and even give it an icon. Neither the name nor the icon are not required, but will be useful if you start to take advantage of the macro system.
For now, give it the name Hello My Darling. Notice how the macro is limited to displaying 4-5 characters?
Click on the empy box below name. This is a list of text commands. Make sure you have the first row selected.
In it, type /say Hello My Darling
Close out the Macro and settings menus.
Remember the active tab from before? Hold down that button and you should see your recently made macro appear in action slot 1. Press the 1 key and you should see in your chat log that you say, "Hello My Darling".
3. Creating The Job Switch Macro:
Go back to Macros. If you get the idea, you should be able to create a macro that lets you switch jobs very quickly.
Example 1 - Equipping Gladiator:
/equip "Body" "Weathered Gladius"
/eaction 2 "Red Lotus"
/eaction 3 "Cure"
Important Note:
When switching jobs, the action bar does not reset itself. It only clears out actions that you're current job is not allowed to equip. So, you will need to create an action clearing macro that you use before switching jobs. This insures you are equipped with the correct actions where you want them.
Action Clearing Macro
/eaction 1
/eaction 2
/eaction 3
/eaction 4
/eaction 5
/eaction 6
/eaction 7
/eaction 8
/eaction 9
Comments
So it's like FF XI all over again. To expect from new players to programm macros from the get go is a kick in the balls right there. Unbelievable. Macros should be ADVANCED techniques for experienced players not a mandatory chore to achieve the simplest of things all other games handle either automatically or with one button. What the hell where they thinking? It's 2010!
I guess they were making an ADVANCED game for ADVANCED people. Got to love "barriers to entry". Of course WoW does not have any and it has millions of subs, but SE decided to for whatever reason make their game this way.
I love snails.
I love every kinda snail.
I just want to hug them all, but I cant.
Cant hug every snail.
I am glad that this game is too hard for stupid people. They already make MMO's for them.
This is so incredibly stupid from every possible point of few that one doesn't even know where to begin with. I'm beginning to think, that the FF XIV community will consist of delusional pseudo-elitist, who think of themselves as "advanced" because they prefer to eat with their feet, because a Spoon is "for stupid people", am i right? Priceless.
LOL@ people who think the lack of features means their more "hardcore" or "better" than the rest of the MMO community. Guess what? World of Warcraft has advanced macroing and also has the ability to switch weapons/armor on the fly using their UI!
The lack of features doesn't make you more hardcore, its just lazy.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
Why on earth Square decided to change a simpler commnad like /ma "spell" to /eaction?
This is the problem wit hmacros,the yare needed but Square does NOTHING to educate players on their use.
I am going to file this under the LAZY Square act once again.Sure perhaps people might be expected to wander the net to find the commands,but really they SHOULD have made it a less cumbersome idea by allowing players to drag icons into the command slots.Instead you have to type it in via old school FFXI,i would have fully expected Square to advance this archaic design ,this time around as there really is no excuse.
I was also under the assumption,they were not going to allow on the fly,but only after you exit combat mode?So is it actually on the fly or not?
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Crass and an analogy that is far from relevant to all the barriers to entry that exist in the game that we are seeing being QQ'd about. Hardly priceless or witty.
And we prefer to eat with chop-sticks not our feet. And it takes skill but once you got the hang of it, its convenient and efficient.
I love snails.
I love every kinda snail.
I just want to hug them all, but I cant.
Cant hug every snail.
If you cannot follow the OP's instructions and write a couple of macros, then I don't want to game with you because you are a moron. The macro system allows for flexibility that is not available in other games. Is it a little harder than having dedicated buttons to push? Yes it is, but in exchange for having to use my brain, I get the ability to customize the game in any way I see fit. I made macros to change all my jobs and abilities in about 3 minutes, it's not even like it's actually difficult. You just have to want to play the game, and not have it played for you.
So why can't we have both of the features? So that newer players can fit in easier and veteran or more advanced players can customize their abilities. It really just seems like an elitist point of view when you're saying you DON'T want players to have help starting.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
It took me all of 5 minutes to look the macro commands up on the internet and enter them in. If that's what you call "Advanced techniques", then maybe you ought to start with coloring books and work your way up.
Yes that is what SE is saying, if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. So why are you still in the kitchen Benthon? Why the continual posting? You dont wanna play? No one is forcing you to be here.
I love snails.
I love every kinda snail.
I just want to hug them all, but I cant.
Cant hug every snail.
There is absolutly no skill invoved in FF XIV. You stand there tank and spanking mobs. The only complexity the game has, is lack of instructions. Its quite funny watching dare I say "fanbois" switching to elitism, in an attempt to justify such a poor game.
One shouldn't have to write macro for simple things, such as changing weapons. Its just bad/lazy design.
So far I have to agree with this sentiment. I've only made it to level 5, however.
First off and because every one just LOVES to bring up wow in every sentence, so be it: WoW has an advanced Macro-System. But there it is really for advanced actions, which means combining casting sequences, stance changes, assisting and what have you. What FF XIV does is making the simplest of tasks so cumbersome, that you need Macros to do it. The only reason for this is, that this is designed for Gamepads with a very limited amount of buttons. Thats all. This has nothing to do with "advanced" whatsoever.
The game has so little guidance you find youself needing to alt tab out all the time to look things up. I don't have a issue with this other then you can't alt tab out of the game without a crash and it ruins the flow of the game.
Every "moron" and their mother used scripting programs to execute macros in FFXI. It didn't take brains, everyone just copied everyone else. Writing macros is not playing the game, it's bypassing a poorly implemented system. Of course anyone that played XI would know that writing and maintaining scrips was half of the game, so perhaps SE is going that route again to a lesser degree of course.
Fact is, most of the testers aren't FFXI players, and are expecting a more intuitive and better designed user interface.
I have had no problem using macros, however, for a simple thing like a weapon change, I'd expect in.game tools. This game would be great, if the user interface wasn't dsigned, coded and didn't perform as badly as it does.
Believe it or not there are gamers out there who don't want their hand held for everything. I for one am glad to see macros back in a newly released mmo. When there's no learning curve to a mmo than it's just another snoozefest like wow.
you can also switch items and abilities manually, but if you switch alot you might aswell make a macro for it.
"You resist. You cling to your life as if it actually matters. You will learn."
How is it that a right click to equip a weapon having your hand held? I would prefer to be playing the game after my quick right click to equip my weapon then writing out a macro for it. I don't see this has hardcore but just bad game design.
First off, thanks to the OP for the info.
Secondly, it seems that these functions could have easily been integrated more seemlessly in the UI. Especially when class switching is part of the games core design.
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
Repeating this argument over and over again, doesn't make it right or even plausible. We're not talking about challenge here, just about basic functionality. MMOs should be about experiencing an epic storyline, epic quests, epic landscapes, epic Dungeons and Bossbattles. Theres absolutly nothing "epic", "hardcore" or "advanced" about battling bad UI-Design.
That was my point. Make the game fun to play and leave the complex and difficult things for the actual content. SE is still stuck in the mindset that making basic things as unintuitive as possible somehow makes the game more challenging and difficult. I'm about as stubborn as SE is but at least i've learned that the ability to put up with inefficiency does not make us oldschool players more hardcore.
Content difficulty is what it's all about, not basic gameplay difficulty.
Thank you for the read. A couple of quick questions.
Is there a reason you can not put the action clearing macro before the class switch macro all in the same macro?
Do you just keep adding numbers to the slots to access the 2nd and 3rd row of slots?
Can you put a macro on the slot (bottom) bar?
I think my first macro will be to target nearest NPC... ; )
100% agree. That's what i'm talking about. Thank you for summing it up in one sentence. And btw: One would really be surprised how few of the people who complain about wow beeing "eezee mode" never even touched Heroics, let alone Raids, or upper level PvP, while creeping their way up to lv. 80 doing green quests only. It's pathetic.