I still click the little power buttons in the tray
By
Ad Astra,
Posted on: 2009-06-03 09:47 in Player Questions
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What are better ways to play? Should I force myself to use the number buttons? I've heard of using the numpad, but I don't want to take my hand off the mouse.
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About my 4th year into gaming I got sick of the hand cramping over a keyboard and got a Ideazon Fang. Probably the best gaming investment I ever made. Also a standard gamepad with native computer support can be used. The game software has innate emulation for those types of controllers.
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I still click the powers too! Nothing wrong with that.
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I still do this too, nothing wrong with it.
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I still click the powers too! Nothing wrong with that.
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Same here.
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Me also
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I click all the non tray 1 buttons
alt+1 and ctrl+1 seem more of a hassle than clicking
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Add me to the list of people who likes to click the power buttons. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one either. Maybe it isn't the most optimal way to do it, but it's what I'm comfortable with and I seem to do just fine, so why change? Don't feel you have to force yourself to change.
I have a friend who was suprised to find I click the buttons and said I should use the number keys. But I watched him playing once and it didn't seem like he fired off his powers any faster or easier than I do. I never noticed a difference when teaming with him, either.
The only real problem I have with it is that sometimes I'm too frantic and I'll click a button while the mouse is still moving. Instead of activating a power, it'll move the button to another place in the tray. Seems very sensitive about that. But with practice I'm getting better at avoiding that.
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In the options menu, you can lock the powers in your tray.
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Thanks. I didn't know that. I'm sure it will come in very handy.
Add me to the clickers.
I'm a clicker also. 3 trays. Primary on one and 2ndary on the other. Travel, Oro, etc. on 3rd.
I have always been amazed to hear of people who play with the keyboard and / or mouse only. I personally have always used a joystick and the keyboard and mouse. I do sometimes find myself speed clicking on the icons in the trays. (3 total,the rest are hidden) 
About my 4th year into gaming I got sick of the hand cramping over a keyboard and got a Ideazon Fang. Probably the best gaming investment I ever made. Also a standard gamepad with native computer support can be used. The game software has innate emulation for those types of controllers.
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How exactly does this help with keyboard-related hand cramping? I am having that problem recently and am looking for something to help. It looks like your hand would be in a different position, but it still involves key clicking. I don't understand how it helps.
I still click them too sometimes, I also used to have that issue. I'm not sure if it was my window scaling or whatever, but anyway, this is how I got around it..
Put Hasten (or another power you usually have on Auto) into the first slot, so you wont ever have to click there.
And/or a power you rarely use (Rest, Knife, Ouro Portal, etc)
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About my 4th year into gaming I got sick of the hand cramping over a keyboard and got a Ideazon Fang. Probably the best gaming investment I ever made. Also a standard gamepad with native computer support can be used. The game software has innate emulation for those types of controllers.
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How exactly does this help with keyboard-related hand cramping? I am having that problem recently and am looking for something to help. It looks like your hand would be in a different position, but it still involves key clicking. I don't understand how it helps.
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Because your hand is resting on one position and all your buttons are in an ergonomic format instead of poising your hand in an unnatural way to reach keys that are spread horizontally across the keyboard.
I haven't had a wrist or a hand cramp since I got it.
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I only click powers that have no chance of ever being vitally important for me to hit RIGHT NOW!
This includes things like nifty props and temp powers, catchphrase macros, and the macro I keep around that informs people that no, I am not going to SK you up, it gives me epileptic seizures.
I use the numpad for the bottom tray, Shift+Numpad for the second row, and Ctrl+Numpad for third tray. Fourth is non-vital stuff. Numpad+ is autorun and Numpad- is autofollow. WASD, like everyone else, is my movement stuff, however I actually use the strafe buttons. Most people seem to bind over those, and it drives me nuts. How can you live without strafing?!
I familiarized myself with the targeting system (Tied for the award of "best one in any MMO I've played". About equal to the targeting in Guild Wars, also excellent), and have Tab for cycle to next-furthest target, and C for target nearest on-screen foe. For spot-targeting, I hit C and then tabtabtabtabtab, or in some cases, mouse-target. (but not usually)
I've trained myself to be able to jump my right hand from mouse to numpad and numpad to mouse in a fraction of a second, with literally unerring accuracy. It is REALLY nice to be able to do that. I can activate a power, queue another, and adjust the camera to juuust the right position before they finish activating. And of course, check behind me for the things beating up the squishies (REAL squishies fight up close!)
Here's a screenshot that gives a good idea of how my trays look:
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/3366/cohdefensecap.png
So yeah. I'm not a power button clicker. But I DO use a hybrid of keyboard and mouse play, so I feel ya.
My UI...it's the same on every single character...even brand-new characters open up tray4 and tray5.
Tray 5 is exactly the same for every character, though it's out of date in this shot. Mystic fortune top left, self destruct top right, PPD suit left of SD, clickie accolade/dayjob stuff in between...36mo pet bottom left, other pet summons to the right of it.
Tray 4 is the same except for travel powers (all the teleporters on the bottom, travel power/jump jet/other travel bits).
I type almost everything. I only mouseclick things on the far right and things in tray4 and tray5 (if they are not bound; travel powers are bound to f, for instance).
I am upgrading to a 28", widescreen monitor once I get my new computer, so this UI will change again soon.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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WASD, like everyone else, is my movement stuff, however I actually use the strafe buttons. Most people seem to bind over those, and it drives me nuts. How can you live without strafing?!
[/ QUOTE ]I re-bound A and D to strafing. I use the mouse to turn the camera/character, so I don't need turning bound. Q and E get rebound for useful things, depending on the character.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.
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I still click 'em. I don't think I'd do much better with a bunch of binds, I'd probably end up forgetting what they do.
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WASD, like everyone else, is my movement stuff, however I actually use the strafe buttons. Most people seem to bind over those, and it drives me nuts. How can you live without strafing?!
[/ QUOTE ]I re-bound A and D to strafing. I use the mouse to turn the camera/character, so I don't need turning bound. Q and E get rebound for useful things, depending on the character.
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I'm the same way, except I use Q and E along with the mouse for super fast camera turns
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I still click the powers too! Nothing wrong with that.
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Same here.
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That's how I do it. 
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WASD, like everyone else, is my movement stuff, however I actually use the strafe buttons. Most people seem to bind over those, and it drives me nuts. How can you live without strafing?!
[/ QUOTE ]I re-bound A and D to strafing. I use the mouse to turn the camera/character, so I don't need turning bound. Q and E get rebound for useful things, depending on the character.
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I do the same with strafing and using the mouse.
E is Follow, and Q is target next foe. Tab is target nearest foe.
It's just easier for me.
Heh, my wife clicks on all her powers.
I use the arrow keys for movement and press the number keys for power activation. I'm so used to it it would take me months to adapt to using a mouse. I also play on a laptop with no external mouse, so clicking on things isn't even an option. For location powers I use the little cursor pad.
Since I usually use Shield Charge on my tank as an extra AoE rather than for movement into amob I usually leave my cursor at my character's feet at all times. If I'm not playing that character I leave the cursor hovering slightly off to one side.
Numbers for tray 1, Alt+Numbers for tray 2, tray 3 is for rarely used powers I don't want to hit by accident (Self Destruction, I'm looking at YOU) I click on them using the cursor pad dealy.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Well, I'm certainly glad to hear I'm not alone. Obviously all the people spending time on the forums are CoX's best players, so this is comforting news.
And I've heard a lot of great UI handling ideas! Thanks everyone.
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I used to have trouble with my Blasters (and I'm a 30-month vet) because of all of the Power buttons. About a year ago I got my first 50 Blaster and I was determined to make it work so I began mapping a portion of the Powers to the numpad. I also keep 3 trays open at all times and the right-most three keys of all 3 trays are now mapped to my numpad (8,9 and 0 on the bottom tray to Numpad 1,2 and 3 for instance). The visual similarity between the 9 Numpad buttons and the 9 Power buttons halps to remind me what goes where. I usually use these for Aim, BU and the Secondary. My Controllers use these for short-ranged attacks and Empaths bind Heals to them.
I also have trouble hitting anything after 4 on the top number strip so the first 4 are the attack chain and then it gets into the weird stuff. I still click some things with the mouse though.
It it makes things any easier I slaved the Tilde key to Target Nearest and I can reach that with my left pinkie.
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Here's a couple of my layouts I use...
Sonnenblume has implemented a 5th tray due to her temp powers, Day Job accolades and various props she accumulated during her rise to 50 (made it about a week ago).
Never-Moore has not needed the 5th tray just yet. He will get there though.
Generally, I use the first tray for primary attacks, second for secondaries (if the character is mostly ranged, then ranged attacks go in the first tray and melee goes in the second. Reverse that for melee characters.
The Hammer/Slammer/Blammer temp power trio usually goes in the right side of the first tray (Aim and Build Up if applicable occupy slots 9 and 10 of tray 1.
Control powers typically occupy some of try 2, and summoning and assorted miscellaneous tools go in tray 3 (that includes stuff that gets used infrequently) Heals and buffs may also go into tray 2, and will often supplant the secondary attacks. That is, if there are not many secondary attacks anyway, those will either go up to tray 3, or go into the beginning of tray 1.
Lastly, there is the Travel Tray. All travel powers (including temp powers) go there.
These aren't real hard and fast rules though. Trays 1 through 3 will always have a lot of variation depending on AT and powers (duh).
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These are almost EXACTLY how I line up my powers and trays. Only I keep the objective bar and the map shrunk on my right, and the level bar in the middle.
Oh, and I make all my trays completely transparent.
And I'll join the army of Still Click The Powers - with the exception of speedboost, I don't bind anything. I even /macro all my Kheld shift powers.
Currently playing:
The Domestic: Broom/WP
Shadowhex: Dark Control/Dark Affinity
Defenestration Lass: Grav/Kin
"See, this is what happens when you have to shove all this stuff into your pockets: it's easy to misplace a suborbital warhead." -Arcanaville, on how crowded our power trays are getting lately
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I'm pretty sure this isn't the optimal way to play. Actually, I know it's not. There's a lot of times I hit the "Next tray" arrow instead of the first power and likely end up dying as a result. I just can't seem to get my fingers used to reaching up to hit the 1 through 5 buttons with any kind of accuracy. For some of my most used powers, I have binds on q, e, t, g, v, and c, but those powers are usually the things I don't want in a tray, like fly and leadership pool powers, or pet summons. I just started a kheldian (yay 50 club) and I know I'll be using the q and e keys for shapeshifting binds.
What are better ways to play? Should I force myself to use the number buttons? I've heard of using the numpad, but I don't want to take my hand off the mouse.
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Like many before me I still click my powers. I used to accidently click the arrow too and had many an aggravating moment getting the next tray. Now I have all power trays showing but leave the first slot in each empty. This seems to work fine for me but I find as I hit the higher levels and the trays fill up I need to slot Tray 4 with my least used powers such as movement, Oro, team recall etc.
I'm certainly not tempted to use a game pad as I'm pretty sure I would be all fingers and thumbs with that. 
There is always a lot to be thankful for, if you take the time to look. For example, I'm sitting here thinking how nice it is that wrinkles don't hurt. ~Author Unknown
I wish that the pet status powers were lockable when you drag them to a tray on your MM.
But they are NOT, no matter how I try. That gets annoying.
Currently playing:
The Domestic: Broom/WP
Shadowhex: Dark Control/Dark Affinity
Defenestration Lass: Grav/Kin
"See, this is what happens when you have to shove all this stuff into your pockets: it's easy to misplace a suborbital warhead." -Arcanaville, on how crowded our power trays are getting lately
i useLogitech Rumblepad 2
Left stick movement. right stick camera. buttons 1, 3-8 powers. button 2 jump, button 9 previous tray. button 10 next tray. 4-way button for targeting.
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Add me to the list of people who likes to click the power buttons. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one either. Maybe it isn't the most optimal way to do it, but it's what I'm comfortable with and I seem to do just fine, so why change? Don't feel you have to force yourself to change.
I have a friend who was suprised to find I click the buttons and said I should use the number keys. But I watched him playing once and it didn't seem like he fired off his powers any faster or easier than I do. I never noticed a difference when teaming with him, either.
The only real problem I have with it is that sometimes I'm too frantic and I'll click a button while the mouse is still moving. Instead of activating a power, it'll move the button to another place in the tray. Seems very sensitive about that. But with practice I'm getting better at avoiding that.
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In the options menu, you can lock the powers in your tray.
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