EQ2: Hotbars and bind keys

[Frosty]

Ok..I really don't think I missed this before..so did this just get added?
A few of my key mappings on the original 3 hot bars got moved around, and when I went to Options -> Hotbar Keys, I now see options to bind keys to all hotbars!

If this is new, then it's going to be a HUGE improvement to multi-boxing the game.

(Please note, I suck at finding the patch notes for EQ2).

[Noxxy]

just introduced with gu51

next time you start up eq2 - you see the big red button with updating or play - scan down 4 button - update notes

[Frosty]

just introduced with gu51

next time you start up eq2 - you see the big red button with updating or play - scan down 4 button - update notes
Ah hah! Thanks. :P

Also notice /follow works a ton better while swimming. :thumbsup:

[Khatovar]

Follow should also allow you to climb walls {whoohoo!!} and make for easier facing for melee combat. Haven't logged in to test it, yet. Been waiting sooo long for these changes. :)

We also got a threat meter and some changes to the UIBuilder, so maybe we'll get lucky and see some nicer interface mods come out soon.

[Frosty]

I saw the threat meter. It took me a while to notice it because it popped up behind my hotbars. :P

I moved it over where I could see it and used it quite a bit. Granted everything died before I could really test it.. but hey, it's there and it seems to work. :thumbup:

[moosejaw]

In the patch notes they said the person with the highest hate can now see who is right below them on hate. Since the hate value has never been possible before I wonder if would be possible to have a threatmeter type addon now. It would be great to have as a fight tool but I am sure good dps/healing technique is still better than relying on the meter.

Anyway, 3 cheers for binding keys to any hotbar now.

[moosejaw]

BTW here are the newest patch notes ('http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=446940').

[HomersDonut]

Personally I find the perceived changes to auto follow to be complete suckage. :( Now while on auto follow I cannot use my turn keys to move the follower in a small, smooth circle around the leader. Instead they just spin on the spot. If I use the strafe keys, the follower toon has to move in a wide orbit around the leader just to make a minor position change.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what are you doing to adjust to it?

Regarding the initial post about the extra hotkey bindings, have you had any luck getting them to bind and work? I wasn't able to get them working :S

[Frosty]

Personally I find the perceived changes to auto follow to be complete suckage. Now while on auto follow I cannot use my turn keys to move the follower in a small, smooth circle around the leader. Instead they just spin on the spot. If I use the strafe keys, the follower toon has to move in a wide orbit around the leader just to make a minor position change.Can you give me a scenario where you would need to move the followers around the leader in a small circle? I'm having trouble thinking of a reason that would be needed other than pretty formations...but I've only slept for 3 hours too so that could be it. :P




Regarding the initial post about the extra hotkey bindings, have you had any luck getting them to bind and work? I wasn't able to get them working What keys are you trying to bind to what hotbar? I'll try a few myself and see.

[Frosty]

Ugh, ok I have seen a problem with the hotbars and keybinds.

When you set a keybind that already belongs to something else..the nice little warning isn't telling you that it will be unbound from another location.
It is telling you that it will ALSO be bound to that same hotkey...
The only way I have found to fix that is to find the key in the options and disable it first, then bind it to the hot bar.

BUT..I haven't been able to get a CTR+Shift+# key to not swap banks on my hotbars...even after deleting the keys. :S

[Frosty]

Until something else, this similar problem may be the workaround:

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=443560

To fix the problem I was running into:
binding Ctr+Shift+1 to hotbar 6 bank 1 -> clicking resulted in a hotbar swap AND the button click.

1. Go to your EQ2 folder then into the Keyboards folder.
1.a - If you are on Vista -> Scream and pull out your hair until you get the folder AND file permissions to allow you to save/edit files.
2. Instead of the file in the link I provided, you want to FIRST make a backup of your eq2_keymap_United States.ini (unless you are in another country???)
3. Edit the file in Notepad or some other editor you are 100% sure is a pure text editor (don't use Word!).
4. Comment out the following with the "#" sign like this:


#Select Bank
#keydown KEY_1 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_0 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_2 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_1 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_3 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_2 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_4 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_3 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_5 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_4 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_6 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_5 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_7 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_6 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_8 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_7 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_9 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_8 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_0 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_9 SHIFT
#keydown KEY_1 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_0_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_2 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_1_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_3 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_2_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_4 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_3_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_5 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_4_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_6 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_5_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_7 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_6_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_8 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_7_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_9 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_8_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_0 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_9_ALT SHIFT ALT
#keydown KEY_1 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_0_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_2 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_1_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_3 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_2_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_4 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_3_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_5 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_4_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_6 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_5_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_7 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_6_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_8 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_7_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_9 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_8_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#keydown KEY_0 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_9_CTRL SHIFT CONTROL
#Hotbar Selection
#keyhold KEY_LALT UI_ALTBANK
#keyhold KEY_RALT UI_ALTBANK
#keyhold KEY_LCONTROL UI_CTRLBANK
#keyhold KEY_RCONTROL UI_CTRLBANK

Save the file and you should no longer get the hotbar swapping when you set hotkeys.

It looks like we will have to resort to editing the ini files until they get a fix in for this. :S

[Noxxy]

Personally I find the perceived changes to auto follow to be complete suckage. Now while on auto follow I cannot use my turn keys to move the follower in a small, smooth circle around the leader. Instead they just spin on the spot. If I use the strafe keys, the follower toon has to move in a wide orbit around the leader just to make a minor position change.

Yes - totally and utterly - I move my followers in exactly the same way you described and it's now an utter pain to get them into position (use a lot of rogues) - it only seems to work now whilst in combat

Another thing which doesn't seem to work very well lately - tabbing to target next npc - the way it used to work was closest to furtherest - now, it's more line of sight - which leads me often to sending the groups pets charging off to attack mobs which aren't in the current encounter leading to all sorts of mass AOEing to calm things down - real pain in the @ss

[HomersDonut]

Personally I find the perceived changes to auto follow to be complete suckage. Now while on auto follow I cannot use my turn keys to move the follower in a small, smooth circle around the leader. Instead they just spin on the spot. If I use the strafe keys, the follower toon has to move in a wide orbit around the leader just to make a minor position change.Can you give me a scenario where you would need to move the followers around the leader in a small circle? I'm having trouble thinking of a reason that would be needed other than pretty formations...but I've only slept for 3 hours too so that could be it. :P

As Noxxy mentioned, it is for easily positioning scouts in combat. More often than not circling around the tank will put you behind one of the mobs they are attacking.

And thanks for mentioning the keyboard files (ie, your eq2_keymap_United States.ini). I'll try and set mine up manually :)

[Ellay]

so it's harder now than ever to utilize classes that need to be behind the mob or easier?

[Frosty]

As Noxxy mentioned, it is for easily positioning scouts in combat. More often than not circling around the tank will put you behind one of the mobs they are attacking.
Ah, this is probably why I hadn't noticed any change. Coming from WoW it actually works pretty great in my opinion. :P

But since I never got to see what it was like to move a scout around in combat, I guess I don't know what i'm missing.

In WoW, if you wanted to get your rogue in the back, you reposition with the tank...but again, I'm not that experienced with it.


so it's harder now than ever to utilize classes that need to be behind the mob or easier?

In my tank + caster type group, I would say it works exactly like WoW (execpt it's harder to break follow).

[HomersDonut]

I've tried out the new hotkeys for bank 4 by manually setting up the eq2_keymap_United States.ini file. Unfortunately while the game displays these keys in the settings panel, it doesn't recognise them enough to actually use them. :(

[Frosty]

I've tried out the new hotkeys for bank 4 by manually setting up the eq2_keymap_United States.ini file. Unfortunately while the game displays these keys in the settings panel, it doesn't recognise them enough to actually use them. :(
What keys are you trying to use?

I went up to 7 bars on mine and used:

Ctrl + # keys
Alt + # keys
Shift + # keys
Ctrl + Shift + # keys
Ctrl + Alt + # keys
Shift + Alt + # Keys
Ctrl + Shift + Alt + # Keys

A few of them won't work with certain #'s, but I'm assuming that's because they are still bound somewhere else.
You might want to check the other ini files.

The only thing I did was comment out the keys that were being used for the hotbar bank swapping in my example.
If you are using other key combos that are set somewhere else, you'll need to remove/change those as well.
I also went back into the game -> options and used the UI to set the key bindings for the hotbars instead of trying to manually add them into the ini file.

[HomersDonut]

What keys are you trying to use?Since I was only trying to confirm they worked, I only went to the 4th hoykey bank. I was using shifted number keys and had removed the previous key bindings used for hotkey bank switching (ie, changed "keydown KEY_1 UI_QUICKBAR_BANK_0 SHIFT" to "keydown KEY_1 UI_HOTBAR_4_BUTTON_1 SHIFT" )

Not sure why some work for you and none work for me - I'll do some more poking.

[Frosty]

That is weird. My Shift + numbers all work.

I do remember going into my options and deleting the keys before I edited my ini files.

That would be kinda silly if it worked, but it could be that they are storing additional, redundant info somewhere else.

[HomersDonut]

Ahhh. It all becomes clear... :)

It wasn't my key bindings that were wrong - it was the hot bars themselves :) If you go into hotbar settings, they all now have a drop down list for which keymap you'd like to use them for. Without them being set, they won't work :)

[Frosty]

I remember seeing that setting, but I guess mine were set right by some lucky chance. Who knows. :P