Mount Keybindings

[Astralporing.1957]

Then there's the case of skyscale skill 2 that does not use any of the keybind settings. Its binding is just hardcoded and cannot be changed at all.

[Shuzuru.3651]

1 hour ago, Panda.1967 said:

The binds have no reason to be mutually exclusive. The abilities they affect occupy the same skill slot on the UI and will never be present at the same time as eachother. They just need to fix the code so that Weapon Skill 4’s bind on mounts isn’t ignored if Mount Skill 4 happens to use the same keybind… they should NOT have a conflict. They only have one right now because of poor coding.

No, that's a problem even if you don't see it, I didn't try it, but I guess right now, it would be possible to keybind weapon skill 1 (the engage) and any of the mount abilities, that would cause the exact same problem, but with the engage skill of all mount.

That's for the same reason why you can't bind weapons skills and dodge on the same key, that's should be the same with mount abilities.

[Shuzuru.3651]

1 hour ago, Panda.1967 said:

 

 

Edited August 23 by Shuzuru.3651
Double post bug

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

No, that's a problem even if you don't see it, I didn't try it, but I guess right now, it would be possible to keybind weapon skill 1 (the engage) and any of the mount abilities, that would cause the exact same problem, but with the engage skill of all mount.

Still bad coding/planning. The developers didn't think it through properly or couldn't do it better because of the (old) code in the client.

Anet could have made a state machine in the client and then activated/deactivated keys and their key bindings depending on the respective state. As an example: If the client/player is in the state "mounted", all weapon keys including heal, utilities, elite and their keybindings are inactive (and it then doesn't matter what they are bound to) and instead all keys and keybindings that you have with a mount are active. The result would be, for example, that mount skill 2 and weapon skill 4 never get in each other's way because both are never bound to a key at the same time.

There would be no conflict in the example you described either, because the engage skill keybind would not be active at the same time as a weapon skill.

 

1 hour ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

That's for the same reason why you can't bind weapons skills and dodge on the same key, that's should be the same with mount abilities.

No, that's different. weapon skill and dodge are in the same client state active. You can dodge at the same time if you are carrying a weapon.

 

[Pifil.5193]

I first encountered this problem with the Steel Warband's tank in IBS or is irritating and I hope they do something about it. I had my mount skills on 2 and 5 before (felt great for griffon on an mmo mouse) but rebound then to 4 and 5 when the skyscale got fireball, now I'm using the warclaw and those bindings are incompatible with the lance skill.

It seems like it would be easier/best to let people bind the mount skills 1-0 freely and to treat Mount Skills 1 and 2 as Skill 4 and 5.

[Shuzuru.3651]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

Still bad coding/planning. The developers didn't think it through properly or couldn't do it better because of the (old) code in the client.

Anet could have made a state machine in the client and then activated/deactivated keys and their key bindings depending on the respective state. As an example: If the client/player is in the state "mounted", all weapon keys including heal, utilities, elite and their keybindings are inactive (and it then doesn't matter what they are bound to) and instead all keys and keybindings that you have with a mount are active. The result would be, for example, that mount skill 2 and weapon skill 4 never get in each other's way because both are never bound to a key at the same time.

There would be no conflict in the example you described either, because the engage skill keybind would not be active at the same time as a weapon skill.

 

No, that's different. weapon skill and dodge are in the same client state active. You can dodge at the same time if you are carrying a weapon.

 

That state behavior you are describing already exists. While mounted, the dodge keybind is desactivated, and while not mounted, mount abilities keybind are desactivated too, so you Can bind all those on the same keys without issues.

So why are weapons, heal and utility keybind active while on mount? Well, simple... because we need them. Your mount skills are bound to them, disable them, and the mount is unusable.

So, the same way weapons skills and dodge are exclusive while on foot , mount skills and abilities must be exclusive too

[Zok.4956]

2 hours ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

That state behavior you are describing already exists. While mounted, the dodge keybind is desactivated, and while not mounted, mount abilities keybind are desactivated too, so you Can bind all those on the same keys without issues.

Yes, it exists partially and incompletely/inconsistently. 

2 hours ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

So why are weapons, heal and utility keybind active while on mount? Well, simple... because we need them. Your mount skills are bound to them, disable them, and the mount is unusable.

Do you know the specific internal structure of the GW2 client software? I don't. Nevertheless: If some mount skills were tied to weapon skills, from today's perspective that would be a design error that would make the client's code even worse.

The basic principle of how it would be correct (just a small example):

If mount is active

• mount keybinds are active
• mount skill icons are shown in the UI (slots 1-10, F-key, special actions...)
• weapon skill icons (1-10, heal,utility,elite,Fx) are not shown in the UI
• weapon keybinds are not active

and vice versa (if mount is not active). This could all be done at the same level of a game loop, without creating dependencies between these elements that increase complexity and errors. There is NO reason from a game function perspective why it would have to be implemented differently in order to be able to use all game functions.

There are only "historical reasons" why it is the way it is now. Because nobody has had the time to properly clean up and restructure/refactor the increasingly expanded client code in this area. 

In the past, it only affected a small number of players. But now that the Warclaw has been upgraded in PvE since JW, for example, it is more important to find a better solution than before, rather than blaming the players who in fact didn't make any mistakes when remapping keys. 

 

Edited August 23 by Zok.4956

[Shuzuru.3651]

28 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Yes, it exists partially and incompletely/inconsistently. 

Do you know the specific internal structure of the GW2 client software? I don't. Nevertheless: If some mount skills were tied to weapon skills, from today's perspective that would be a design error that would make the client's code even worse.

The basic principle of how it would be correct (just a small example):

If mount is active

• mount keybinds are active
• mount skill icons are shown in the UI (slots 1-10, F-key, special actions...)
• weapon skill icons (1-10, heal,utility,elite,Fx) are not shown in the UI
• weapon keybinds are not active

and vice versa (if mount is not active). This could all be done at the same level of a game loop, without creating dependencies between these elements that increase complexity and errors. There is NO reason from a game function perspective why it would have to be implemented differently in order to be able to use all game functions.

There are only "historical reasons" why it is the way it is now. Because nobody has had the time to properly clean up and restructure/refactor the increasingly expanded client code in this area. 

In the past, it only affected a small number of players. But now that the Warclaw has been upgraded in PvE since JW, for example, it is more important to find a better solution than before, rather than blaming the players who in fact didn't make any mistakes when remapping keys. 

 

You're making that way more complicated that it is.

Skill on the left part are weapon skill, may you be with a weapon, bundle, music instruments, siege weapons, mount, etc...

Skill on the right are heal/utility/elite, same as above, it's for any state : weapons, bundle, music instruments, mount, etc...

So, those keybind should be active in almost any case, and then have exclusive keybind.

Then, you've got more situationnal keybind, like the dodge, it's not availaible in mount or siege weapons, for exemples, same for mount abilities, only availaible on mount. Those are not forced to be exclusive with other specific action, because they can't be encountered at the same moment.

And that's it, there is no need to create more pointless keybind than will only make the game harder to configure for basically no value.

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

You're making that way more complicated that it is.

Skill on the left part are weapon skill, may you be with a weapon, bundle, music instruments, siege weapons, mount, etc...

Skill on the right are heal/utility/elite, same as above, it's for any state : weapons, bundle, music instruments, mount, etc...

So, those keybind should be active in almost any case, and then have exclusive keybind.

You are mixing software architecture with UI design. There is no fundamental technical difference (apart from their individual functionality and their scope) between the skills in the skill bar - that's just UI design.

Edited August 23 by Zok.4956

[Shuzuru.3651]

4 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

You are mixing software architecture with UI design. There is no fundamental technical difference (apart from their individual functionality and their scope) between the skills in the skill bar - that's just UI design.

Basically what i said, you are overcomplicating thing there, I talk about ui design because that's an ui design problem before.

I was simply mentioning the fact that the game use contextual action as one of it's core foundation, that's why when you wield a weapon, pick a bundle, control a siege weapon or mount, control are in the same place using the same keybind, and that's a good design.

The part where they messed up is when they added actions tied to a different category (mount abilities, basically the fonctionnal equivalent of dodge or jump, but for mount) to the space usually reserved to weapon (or bundle, siege weapon, etc) skill. The usecase is fine on every case except one, the Warclaw spear.

Basically, I suggested to repair the design, other people are basically suggesting to broke it even more by completely separating the keybinds. So yeah, hard disaggree for me.

And i don't care about the technical detail of their software architecture, no one there know how it's done, so that's completely pointless.

[Panda.1967]

13 hours ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

So why are weapons, heal and utility keybind active while on mount? Well, simple... because we need them. Your mount skills are bound to them, disable them, and the mount is unusable.

This is actually the root cause of the whole problem in the first place... Mounts never should have been using Weapon Skill binds to start with... they should have just given us Mount Skill 1-10 and never had a crossover with weapon skills. Mount Skill 1 & 2 exist simply because Arena Net wanted to create a different default bind for mount skills than 1-0 and use the same UI elements. For the first few mounts, this wasn't a problem at all... but when they added the Warclaw to the game for PvP this problem sprang into existence...  they decided that because the Warclaws abilities are more combat oriented, they should ALL use the weapon skill binds... which made sense... but it created a problem for anyone who disliked having C & V as default mount skill binds and preferred to return them to 4 & 5 to match the UI skill slots.

This whole problem wouldn't even exist if mounts by default used a whole separate set of keybinds from weapon skills... they could have still even had the Warclaw use weapon skill binds and had no problems by simply coding the Warclaw mount to ignore Mount skill binds...

[Panda.1967]

3 hours ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

The part where they messed up is when they added actions tied to a different category (mount abilities, basically the fonctionnal equivalent of dodge or jump, but for mount) to the space usually reserved to weapon (or bundle, siege weapon, etc) skill. The usecase is fine on every case except one, the Warclaw spear.

Basically, I suggested to repair the design, other people are basically suggesting to broke it even more by completely separating the keybinds. So yeah, hard disaggree for me.

The "solution" you've been suggesting, litterally fixes nothing and actually would just make the problem even worse.

If you want a solution that doesn't involve fixing the code for the keybinds to actually work properly... then maybe they should just move Sniff to slot 4 and put the Spear on slot 2 where Sniff was... then set Sniff to use Mount Skill 2 instead of Weapon Skill 4, so it'd be more in line with other mounts.

FYI this is only an issue with Mount Skill 2... Mount Skill 1 never has this conflict with Weapon Skill 5... (which is still a very odd arrangement... Mount Skill 1 uses Skill slot 5, while Mount Skill 2 uses Skill slot 4... who designed this?)

[Shuzuru.3651]

1 hour ago, Panda.1967 said:

This is actually the root cause of the whole problem in the first place... Mounts never should have been using Weapon Skill binds to start with... they should have just given us Mount Skill 1-10 and never had a crossover with weapon skills. Mount Skill 1 & 2 exist simply because Arena Net wanted to create a different default bind for mount skills than 1-0 and use the same UI elements. For the first few mounts, this wasn't a problem at all... but when they added the Warclaw to the game for PvP this problem sprang into existence...  they decided that because the Warclaws abilities are more combat oriented, they should ALL use the weapon skill binds... which made sense... but it created a problem for anyone who disliked having C & V as default mount skill binds and preferred to return them to 4 & 5 to match the UI skill slots.

This whole problem wouldn't even exist if mounts by default used a whole separate set of keybinds from weapon skills... they could have still even had the Warclaw use weapon skill binds and had no problems by simply coding the Warclaw mount to ignore Mount skill binds...

Hum... You're so wrong.

Little history lesson, until like 2 years ago, the mount ability 1-2 weren't on the skill bar at all.

So most or the mount got 1 skill, the engage, on weapon skill 1, and Warclaw got 4 on weapon skill 1-4, litterally everything on the game worked like this, so that's working as designed.

Mount abilities were treated like the dodge or even target nearby, no visible skill but a keybind.

Those were added quite recently to the bar, like post EoD (31 march 2020 , times flies... my point still stand, that's way after Warclaw and Skyscale addition, but before turtle), probably as some QoL, I guess. For some reason, they decided to add them on the 4 and 5 weapons skill place. Probably for some reason as "there are space there, shouldn't bother anyone". That's probably the moment some people may have decided to bind them to weapon skill 4 and 5 "because it made sense, ui wise", I mean, no one in their right mind would have choose those 2 bind specificaly if it wasn't on the ui. That's only at that point that problems started with keybind.

Edited August 24 by Shuzuru.3651
Did some wiki search for a patch

[Shuzuru.3651]

31 minutes ago, Panda.1967 said:

The "solution" you've been suggesting, litterally fixes nothing and actually would just make the problem even worse.

If you want a solution that doesn't involve fixing the code for the keybinds to actually work properly... then maybe they should just move Sniff to slot 4 and put the Spear on slot 2 where Sniff was... then set Sniff to use Mount Skill 2 instead of Weapon Skill 4, so it'd be more in line with other mounts.

FYI this is only an issue with Mount Skill 2... Mount Skill 1 never has this conflict with Weapon Skill 5... (which is still a very odd arrangement... Mount Skill 1 uses Skill slot 5, while Mount Skill 2 uses Skill slot 4... who designed this?)

So you mean that the solution to make weapon skill and mount abilities exclusive the same way weapons skill and dodge are wouldn't solve the problem?

You do realize that the exact problem is that those keybind are not exclusive, right? right?

[Panda.1967]

12 hours ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

You do realize that the exact problem is that those keybind are not exclusive, right? right?

They don’t need to be exclusive. Mount Skill 2 & Weapon Skill 4 already are mutually exclusive abilities. There is not now, nor will there ever be a mount that has both. The same holds true for Mount Skill 1 & Weapon Skill 5, except that the coding for those binds actually works. I have both Weapon Skill 5 & Mount Skill 1 bound to 5 and there is zero conflict. The issue is literally an error in the code governing Mount Skill 2.

[Shuzuru.3651]

19 minutes ago, Panda.1967 said:

They don’t need to be exclusive. Mount Skill 2 & Weapon Skill 4 already are mutually exclusive abilities. There is not now, nor will there ever be a mount that has both. The same holds true for Mount Skill 1 & Weapon Skill 5, except that the coding for those binds actually works. I have both Weapon Skill 5 & Mount Skill 1 bound to 5 and there is zero conflict. The issue is literally an error in the code governing Mount Skill 2.

Try to bind weapon skill 1 and any mount abilities to the same key and tell me again if you think there are no problem.

And if you think "but no one will do that", we had exemple of people binding mount abilities to weapon 2 or 3, causing problem with Skyscale fireball. So that a plausible scenario.

[Panda.1967]

14 minutes ago, Shuzuru.3651 said:

Try to bind weapon skill 1 and any mount abilities to the same key and tell me again if you think there are no problem.

And if you think "but no one will do that", we had exemple of people binding mount abilities to weapon 2 or 3, causing problem with Skyscale fireball. So that a plausible scenario.

You are not listening. Of course binding weapon skill 1-3 or to the same bind as either mount skill would create a conflict. Those abilities are NOT mutually exclusive. You can have weapon skill 1 & mount skill 1&2 on the same mount. What you cannot have is weapon skill 4 & mount skill 2 on the same mount, these abilities are mutually exclusive to eachother. You also cannot have mount skill 1 and weapon skill 5 on the same mount as these abilities are also mutually exclusive to eachother. That has never been in question. The people who ran into issues when binding mount skills to 2 & 3 with skyscale ran into an expected conflict.

Your original suggestion of moving mount skills to the class mechanic bar would also be an acceptable solution by the way… that solution would remove the mutual exclusion from mount skills & weapon skills 4&5, as well as open up the possibility of  more mount skills in the future.

 

Anyways, my point still stands that Mount Skill 1 & Weapon Skill 5 have no issues sharing a keybind, they both occupy the same UI skill slot as eachother, so the expectation is for no conflict since the skills are mutually exclusive. This is working as expected.

By contrast, Mount Skill 2 & Weapon Skill 4 experience an unexpected conflict when sharing keybinds. Both skills occupy the same UI skill slot, and are mutually exclusive to one another, the same as Mount 1 & Weapon 5, and yet if they share the same keybind the Weapon 4 doesn’t work when it is present on a Mount. The expectation is the same here as it is with the other two, there should be no conflict since the skills will never be present at the same time on one mount. This is NOT working as expected.

[Shuzuru.3651]

1 hour ago, Panda.1967 said:

You are not listening. Of course binding weapon skill 1-3 or to the same bind as either mount skill would create a conflict. Those abilities are NOT mutually exclusive. You can have weapon skill 1 & mount skill 1&2 on the same mount. What you cannot have is weapon skill 4 & mount skill 2 on the same mount, these abilities are mutually exclusive to eachother. You also cannot have mount skill 1 and weapon skill 5 on the same mount as these abilities are also mutually exclusive to eachother. That has never been in question. The people who ran into issues when binding mount skills to 2 & 3 with skyscale ran into an expected conflict.

Your original suggestion of moving mount skills to the class mechanic bar would also be an acceptable solution by the way… that solution would remove the mutual exclusion from mount skills & weapon skills 4&5, as well as open up the possibility of  more mount skills in the future.

 

Anyways, my point still stands that Mount Skill 1 & Weapon Skill 5 have no issues sharing a keybind, they both occupy the same UI skill slot as eachother, so the expectation is for no conflict since the skills are mutually exclusive. This is working as expected.

By contrast, Mount Skill 2 & Weapon Skill 4 experience an unexpected conflict when sharing keybinds. Both skills occupy the same UI skill slot, and are mutually exclusive to one another, the same as Mount 1 & Weapon 5, and yet if they share the same keybind the Weapon 4 doesn’t work when it is present on a Mount. The expectation is the same here as it is with the other two, there should be no conflict since the skills will never be present at the same time on one mount. This is NOT working as expected.

I'm listening, and also, i'm not stupid and i know that Warclaw only have 4 skill and 1 mount ability.

My point there is that taking that state and doing some exception because in that specific case, it could still work is both messy and not future proof.

The guy that decided to set his to mount abilities to 2 and 3 couldn't have predicted that at some point, there would be a Warclaw using up to 4 skill.

The person that didn't use Warclaw couldn't have predicted that the Skyscale fireball would break that exact same configuration.

That's why you separate them, mount abilities are the mount equivalent to dodge and jump for normal combat, mount combat skill use weapon skill similarly to every skill in that bar.

And voilà, you both made the system consistant again and future proof it.

Edited August 24 by Shuzuru.3651

[FallFoliageFreek.4925]

Yes! Please! My Warclaw skills are not working properly! As someone with carpal tunnel in both wrists, I would prefer to set my own keybinds to decide what is comfortable for me - many of which I changed long ago to fit my needs but since JW came out (excellent xpac btw!) I am having issues using the warclaw. Since I don't PVP, the associated keybinds are useless to me. I could be mistaken but it seems as if the PVP keybinds are shared with PVE skills and abilities, without either effecting the other. Why can't we have the same with mount skills/abilities? Please make it so. It would really help my wrists!