AHK

I've read and understood the Devs' arguments for making AHK officially legal-- the proliferation of programmable hardware, the many clunky mechanics in the game, and the decline of an aging player base's ability to effectively use their extremities as they slide faster and faster through time towards their inevitable death. Essentially, as I understand the argument, it would become nearly impossible to police every case of macro use since the tech has become prolific, so instead they said "fuck it" and made it legal with the stipulation that no delays may be used.

How policing the use of delays is any easier than policing macro use in general is something I fail to grasp, and I think points to a fairly gaping hole in the logic behind the decision to allow AHK use in the first place.

Let's be honest about the current state of things. Pandora's Box has been opened and now the vast majority of the player base uses some sort of macroing. How many use delays? Personally, I suspect a large portion of them do. If you want to be competitive there is little reason not to. Just don't release a video that clearly shows macros that break the rules and you are home free.

I play a Reaver without using any form of AHK, and, as with many other classes, it is pretty obvious that I am at a huge disadvantage compared to someone playing the same class that does. There are simply too many keys (two dots, two LTs, three pulses, RAs, charges, pots, on top of a fairly large useable style library) and much potential min-maxing with weapon proc/damage type and shield swapping (small shield/large shield/procs). If I obsessed over eking out every last drop of potential, as most of the competitive player base seems to, I am obligated to not only AHK a large portion of my character's kit to effectively min-max, but also to reduce my total key strokes and thus allow myself to focus on abusing positional styles. I don't mind being at a disadvantage and occasionally losing fights I might've otherwise won if I was using AHK and abusing positionals, so this isn't the thrust of my argument. I don't find that way of playing to be enjoyable, and I can still be competitive to a personally acceptable level without it. The point is to show that it provides a very tangible benefit, and thus many players who might not have otherwise are going to feel obligated to use AHK to be able to match up against their opponents who do.

So we have a situation in which any player who is seriously concerned about min maxing is using AHK because the other good players are doing the same, and no real way to determine if someone is using an "illegal" macro.

The difference between standard play and AHK use, depending on the class, can be pretty obvious after some observation, but the difference between delayed AHK and "legal" AHK use is not nearly so clear.

So, imagine a Phoenix where AHK use was never made legal, and instead an effort was made to reduce the mechanics like Paladin chants that clearly require a macro to use effectively. As with Live servers in the past, the vast majority of the player base would simply follow the rules as the pressure to compete effectively as well as the need to adapt for garbage mechanics would be removed. As the competitive pressure would be relatively diminished most people would just play the game the way they always have. The small percentage of players that are willing to cheat to win would still be cheating, no doubt, but it would not only be more obvious to the observer, it would be an additional order of magnitude greater in terms of degeneracy. That is to say, adding delays to an already legal AHK is a much smaller step than going from not using any sort of macro to using it. Plus all them cheaters wouldn't be able to post shitty YouTube highlight videos with terrible music to attain the recognition they crave.

But now macro use is endemic to Phoenix. The Box has been opened and it is almost impossible to shut. The choice has been made to force most competitive players to use AHK or an equivalent, and hoping it will go away is just wishful thinking.

I hope other players enjoy having to use it, and I'm glad that I don't feel compelled to the way that some might.