It's not a problem with tanks or DDs, or even healers other than Operatives. That class requires significantly more sustained clicks per second than any other in the game. Most of the time the target switch while tanking or dealing damage is limited in comparison, and when you have to switch targets you just move the camera and hit "tab" or click the target once. Holding the curser over a mob for mouseover would be a disadvantage more than in any way helpful.

 

It seems you're trying to make it about me when it isn't, hence my edit earlier. Just because my tendonitis is more advanced, anyone who uses a mouse to click that much is in danger, and even if it doesn't hurt now you are still damaging your tendons over time by engaging in that activity.

 

Reducing the overall number of clicks it takes to execute a single thought is just good design.

You are taking what I said as a personal attack, and it’s not. I’m sorry if you think it is and I’m sorry if I gave offence, it was not my intent.

I hear what you are saying and I don’t disagree that to much clicking with a mouse, wether in a game or in the work place, is a cause of tendonits and should be minimised.

What I’m trying to point out is if you want to include mouse over or addons or macros, then you need to include it for every class, wether they benefit from it the most or not. You cannot add a feature for one and not another.

I can tell you as someone who has played the game for 6 years and has also played competitive pvp on all advanced classes and specs, that saying operatives require significantly more sustained clicks or key presses than any other class is absolutely not correct.

I know you are forming your opinion solely on your pve raid experience, but things are different in pvp and require faster reflexes, swaps, clicks, key presses, rotation changes, etc.

In pvp you do not have the luxury of scripted fights where you can do full rotations, know where and what the bosses and adds will do. So often the clicks or key presses are at a much more hectic pace than a normal pve boss confrontation.

My point is, that if you were to add mouse overs, addons or macros to healers in pvp, they would become to easy to play vs other classes who wouldn’t have those features. Which means they would need to be added for all classes.

On top of that, this game has always been anti addons and macros as a way to stop people from cheating or hacking. It is extremely unlikely after 6 years, that Biowares attitude or policy on such things is going to change because some people want it now. Especially considering this was something asked for after launch and was discussed heavily.

But let’s say they were even thinking about relaxing that attitude, there are so many other things that need fixing in this game before this. Things that have been on the list that are borderline urgent or should have been done 4 years ago list and the reason they haven’t been done is because they lack the funds and technical resources.

The reality is, what you are asking for is never going to happen. There have been discussions asking for other improvements for people with much more severe medical conditions than tendinitis and Bioware have said they can’t do it or have ignored it.

Basically it comes down to the players choice to either play or not play the game, knowing the current limitations of the game’s ability to accommodate medical conditions. If it causes the players health to deteriorate, then the player needs to decide wether they can live with that and live with taking extra medication just so they can play. It is not the game developers responsibility.

snip

Admittedly I base my preference for mouseover healing as opposed to DPS or tanking on raid experience. I play PvP, but not nearly as much, and even there I tend to use tab targeting and target-of-target and focus target hotkeys rather than clicking, partially because sometimes I just find it impossible to find that !"§$%&/ cursor in the middle of all the graphical effects, haha. But you make a good point, I can definitely see the benefit it would offer for quickly stunning or interrupting without switching targets, and would also not be opposed to this being implemented. Again, it's the same thought process involved and is not automating anything, it's simply offering the ability to accomplish something with less clicks.

I agree that it's not something that's likely to occur; the reason I'm arguing in this thread is because of the people who are opposed to the idea entirely, especially those comparing mouseover to macros or automation, or something else that would make the game easier, and that's not what it is about at all.

I've long since found a workaround by reprogramming my keyboard's firmware to allow me to click the mouse with a keyboard key, spreading the strain around a bit so I can click with any one of several fingers depending on what feels comfortable at the moment. This allows me to play any class comfortably, but it's still a major PITA compared to simply having the mouseover mechanic available in the first place. While I can accept that there are more pressing issues the game faces, this would be nothing but a positive addition were it to occur, and I just hate to see people requesting it be ridiculed because of a misconception of what the feature is and why it's important.

You've been very respectful in this discussion aside from the "learn to play" comment I first quoted, and I didn't mean to come off as offended by your arguments. That "honor" goes to another in this thread, but I digress.

 

Admittedly I base my preference for mouseover healing as opposed to DPS or tanking on raid experience. I play PvP, but not nearly as much, and even there I tend to use tab targeting and target-of-target and focus target hotkeys rather than clicking, partially because sometimes I just find it impossible to find that !"§$%&/ cursor in the middle of all the graphical effects, haha. But you make a good point, I can definitely see the benefit it would offer for quickly stunning or interrupting without switching targets, and would also not be opposed to this being implemented. Again, it's the same thought process involved and is not automating anything, it's simply offering the ability to accomplish something with less clicks.

 

I agree that it's not something that's likely to occur; the reason I'm arguing in this thread is because of the people who are opposed to the idea entirely, especially those comparing mouseover to macros or automation, or something else that would make the game easier, and that's not what it is about at all.

 

I've long since found a workaround by reprogramming my keyboard's firmware to allow me to click the mouse with a keyboard key, spreading the strain around a bit so I can click with any one of several fingers depending on what feels comfortable at the moment. This allows me to play any class comfortably, but it's still a major PITA compared to simply having the mouseover mechanic available in the first place. While I can accept that there are more pressing issues the game faces, this would be nothing but a positive addition were it to occur, and I just hate to see people requesting it be ridiculed because of a misconception of what the feature is and why it's important.

Something Bioware could do, is reduce some of the ability bloat in the game. There are some classes that just have way too many abilities. I don’t think they should make the game easier, they shouldn’t, but they could combine some abilities or make others passive. That in no way makes it easier, it just makes the keyboard more manageable.

If a class needs more than 2 task bars to put in all the abilities (including medpacks), there are too many.

And when 2 bars = 24 abilities, I still think it is too much. IMO, the max shouldn’t exceed between 16-20.

This alone would reduce problems people can have with clicking. Mainly because they could keybind more easily and not rely on the mouse so much.

I have small hands, like most women and even lots of guys, so when I keybind I have to use more multipliers than most because I can’t reach as far or I have to semi click. Since I pulled a tendon in my left hand, I’ve had to click more than I used to. I’ve got 4 of my mouse buttons hot keyed, I click about 8 abilities and I have the rest hot keyed to my keyboard. It’s a real Frankenstein way of doing it.

What is Star Parse?

A parser program for a variety of different uses.

http://ixparse.com/

here's the hot tracking overlay described.

http://ixparse.com/features/#hots-overlay

Personally, I don't mind the absence of mouseover healing or macros, but it is a fact that the raid frame doesn't show the required info for the decision making process of a healer. And it has always been that way.

As has been said in the thread numerous times: it's not about addons. It's about a non-terrible healing UI.

The SWTOR UI can be configured to approximately clone the Grid based UI that was all the rage among progression raiders in Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK. It's not quite as granular in terms of fine tuning every aspect of the UI, by I got my current SWTOR UI by just copying my WoW raiding UI as much as possible.

Greater buff/debuff display customization would be very nice (especially timers), but for a long time my chief problem with SWTOR was that there were no profiles that could be saved for UI, keybinds, and gear. Still could use some work in those areas.

Able to copy a healing UI that could handle Illidan when every rogue was drooling over the prospect of his weapon drops (for the stats) is pretty solidly non-terrible as a healing UI.

What it's not is easily likeable if you come from the Clique side of the Grid/Clique healing style divide from WoW. It definitely doesn't support the mouseover macro style of healing.

Perhaps the anti-macro strain of thought at BW overrode the "ease of use" tendencies. I like the Grid style because I think it's faster and more precisely controllable if you've mastered it, but really the mouseover style would have been what I would have bet on if you had asked me, "what healing style matches the rest of the design style of SWTOR."

I personally wouldn't like it if that were the only UI option, but in a lot of ways mouseover seems like the more, "SWTOR-ish," style.

Of course, now they probably don't have the resources to add it in, even as an internal non-moddable option in the UI.

The SWTOR UI can be configured to approximately clone the Grid based UI that was all the rage among progression raiders in Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK. It's not quite as granular in terms of fine tuning every aspect of the UI, by I got my current SWTOR UI by just copying my WoW raiding UI as much as possible.

 

Greater buff/debuff display customization would be very nice (especially timers), but for a long time my chief problem with SWTOR was that there were no profiles that could be saved for UI, keybinds, and gear. Still could use some work in those areas.

 

Able to copy a healing UI that could handle Illidan when every rogue was drooling over the prospect of his weapon drops (for the stats) is pretty solidly non-terrible as a healing UI.

 

 

What it's not is easily likeable if you come from the Clique side of the Grid/Clique healing style divide from WoW. It definitely doesn't support the mouseover macro style of healing.

 

Perhaps the anti-macro strain of thought at BW overrode the "ease of use" tendencies. I like the Grid style because I think it's faster and more precisely controllable if you've mastered it, but really the mouseover style would have been what I would have bet on if you had asked me, "what healing style matches the rest of the design style of SWTOR."

 

I personally wouldn't like it if that were the only UI option, but in a lot of ways mouseover seems like the more, "SWTOR-ish," style.

 

Of course, now they probably don't have the resources to add it in, even as an internal non-moddable option in the UI.

I actually love the GUI customisation in this game. Even using addons in WoW isn’t as good as this GUI to customise where you want things.

The difference isn’t the GUI, but the extra features those WoW addons have. ie, like mouse over, which isn’t an actual GUI, but a combat addon.

I actually wish WoW would implement their own customisable GUI that is the same as swtor. They could still have the addons, but you wouldn’t need 3 addons just to get it to look like my swtor GUI. It one of the major turnoffs I have with WoW.

I only have one gripe about the swtor GUI, and that is the group window can’t be customised the way I like it. The best I can get is 2 stacks of 4. I would prefer to be able to move each team member separately or at least have the in twos so I can stack them two high ontop of my task bars and not have this massive 8 man block.