Idea: Expand /Autoskill Function

Actively using 11 hotbars, plus 3 I that I scroll to for illusions / clickie buffs / vet aa, combat ability window.

Have several empty/spare hotbutton slots for things like quest clickies raid clickies etc I might need during play that I clear off afterwards..

I am often my guild's Raid MA so I have a few target macros hotkeyed that I use for priority mobs etc or things that are difficult to manually target.

Nothing is really redundant either, and a lot of stuff is macroed so 3x 12 second CD abilities on one hotkey, 4x 30 second CD abilities on another, Dicho with Braxi on its own hotkey, 2x120 second CD abilities on another hotkey and my disc burn setup is a series of macros with paired or more discs & aa together. And I use /Timer on most of it.
I do pretty much top tier dps vs my peers with my set up so it seems to be working well & using a "spam bar" or keybind setup might get me a small % performance boost but nothing I'm going to lose sleep over and that would only aggravate my carpal tunnel syndrome to be constantly mashing a keyboard key for a bind key set up - not gonna work for me.

If I was designing an EQ UI though I would probably be asking the coders to make a few AA that can trigger constantly cycled multiple abilities/aa/spells & discs all from one hotkey to reduce the need for all this macro-set up without replacing it so players could opt for a "cleaned up" UI via the reduced volume hotkeys that could enable. It wouldn't be automation just streamlining the UI.

Only things I'd want an /autoskill type solution for are Frenzy/Kick/Flying Kick/Bash on one autoskill timer as we already have - another separate one /autoskill2 for intimidation forage & begging (and allow forage to be used in combat along with begging so you don't need to turn attack off).and maybe an /autoskill3 for things like sense trap on BRD/ROG so it is continually checking for traps - or possibly that last one could just be made an always on passive ability actually.

Some of the things people mention can be solved by simply binding the action to a keystroke; my ranger always has Forage bound to forward movement, so I never have to worry about attack on/off with that. Same thing for any class using Sense Trap. If I'm not in a raid event I do just fine with three hotbars, and if I am in a raid event there are always custom things to be set up for that specific event since it's never the exact same group of people. There is certainly useful functionality along these lines in the unmentionable software, which I wouldn't mind being added to the actual game... but as well all know, dev time is extremely limited lately, so I'm not holding my breath for any changes to this anytime soon.

Mabey /timer could be 'tweaked' so if you put it on the same line as an ability but have no number it uses that abilities cooldown ?

e.g.
/timer 100, /doability 1 <-- has a timer of 100 after whatever ability 1 is.
/timer, /doability 1 <-- uses ability 1's cooldown timer.

Any ability that you just spam every 10 seconds or less should be on autoskill. Pushing a button as soon as it is up isnt real game, especially considering so many just put it on multibind and mash it anyway.

I'd go for consoladation over adding to /autoskill, there are already too many melee attacking mobs and afking.

Really? And they are allowed back in raids? Your guild is VERY tolerant. AFK on a raid and you are removed from the DZ.

Yes, please fire off every ability automatically.

I'd really like to see the hotkey functions improve in the game.

Specifically add the ability to call other hotkeys within a hotkey and add a /repeat option.

Currently we are limited to 5 lines with each 1 action and 1 pause. As a druid a hotkey I may have might look like:

1. Assist MA
2. Cast AA Fire Debuff
3. Cast AA Seasons Debuff
4. Cast Fire DoT Spell
5. Cast AA Snare

It would be nice if this one hotkey could go to another at its culmination:

1. Assist MA
2. Cast AA Fire Debuff
3. Cast AA Seasons Debuff
4. Cast Fire DoT Spell
5. /Do Hotkey 2

1. Cast AA Snare
2. Cast Magic DoT Spell
3. Cast AA Magic Nuke
4. Cast Fire DoT Spell 2
5. Cast AA Fire Nuke

Hotkeys in game already have many downsides like not being able to cancel them out if going through their steps and not being able to use certain abilities between steps. But improving them slightly to make boxing in an ever complicating game a bit easier would be nice.

Plenty of the people posting here already use much more useful 3rd party programs that don't have these downfalls, have far more checks, and better timing. It would be nice if players who aren't relying upon 3rd party programs are put on more even footing by expanding and improving the in game hotkey macro system.

I would guess one of the problems with letting hotkeys trigger other hotkeys is you could make a loop allowing you to automate play with the final hotkey triggering the first hotkey to keep a cycle going.

"It's a 100% you problem", "move some stuff over to GINA". When you need to move stuff to an outside program to manage things then it is no longer a "you problem".

No one...not one person in this thread is advocating that every ability should be fired off automatically.

I would like to see some customizability. An expansion of the /autoskill command to allow other things to be automatically triggered (a topic I believe you are familiar with) benefits everyone.

I'm sure there is no way a player could cause their client to crash horribly with an endless recursion by allowing this.

Stop Action will cancel a social, spell, song, AAs(with a cast time). You can made a key bind for it, it can be found in options, keys, all. Mine is set to x

Ooh, I did not know about this for socials. Thanks!

Exactly this, pretty sure the devs are very well aware of the ways that this could be abused & that's why they just won't do this.

I will say though that if we keep adding to how many abilities melee etc are having to trigger during combat that it's going to hit bloat status & individual abilities will lose their impact - I don't want us needing to have to macro over 5 abilities on one cd timer (like us having 6 or 7 on a 12sec cd) because that gets stupid - some consolidation might be needed already or we would all be asking for social macro keys to have more than 5 lines which I don't want.

I think many classes are already running into whack-a-mole territory & that was one reason I found EQ2's combat unattractive sure you have dozens of abilities but they all felt bland as a result as none of them really felt like they stood out.
Dichotomic abilities stood out to begin with but they are atrophying already & at their present rate of decline vs other abilities by direct comparison they will be just another meh ability eventually.

I guess a lot of this boils down to how much DPS the devs want you to do just by turning attack on and hitting no other buttons.

It's awesome. I bound mine to D because back in the day we had to duck to interrupt casting so it was natural. Unfortunately, there is no slash command to invoke it. There is /stop song and some others but no /stop action.

If airplanes were built like EQ .. Cockpits would be filled with nothing but buttons and switches and pilots that don't know how to fly .. Ohh err ..

Well at least EQ safer to play, than taking a flight ..

I want a command that kills monsters so I can loot the items and plat plz

I use two hot bars because I do know how to play the game. Also macros can link other hotbars and macros can activate other social keys so, I'm pretty sure he doesn't. My warrior has a cascading taunt macro that links three hotbars and six social keys.