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Is it possible to play without a mouse?Follow

#1 Sep 28 2013 at 4:18 PM Rating: Good
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I played FFXI without a mouse. I want to play this game without one. At first I was dealing with it ok, but I'm developing some serious mouse related wrist problems. I'm a designer, so I spend all day every day on the computer, so this isn't just game related. I hardly play sadly, but when I do, I want to avoid the mouse at all costs.

So is there a way to map the keyboard to do this? Such as getting the camera to behave like it did in FFXI using the arrow keys. Right now moving the camera doesn't affect my character direction and it always springs back. This is a minor issue. More important is the inability to target and initiate conversation with NPCs without a mouse. Hitting enter initiates chat. Is there a way to change that? Hoping someone's successfully mapped their keyboard to play mouse free. I'm not accustomed to using a controller at all.

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#2 Sep 28 2013 at 4:37 PM Rating: Excellent
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Under the system keybinds, there's an option to set keybind cursor move up/down/left/right. I've set those keybinds to be Shift+Up, Shift+Down, etc., so I can quickly move the cursor/target through any targettable item without the mouse. It's something at least.
#3 Sep 28 2013 at 4:55 PM Rating: Good
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While you CAN use a keyboard setup without a mouse... I don't advise it.

If using a gamepad isn't an option for you, try one of these for your mouse hand: http://www.amazon.com/Innovera-Softskin-Wrist-Rest-Black/dp/B0012YS744/ref=sr_1_31?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1380408812&sr=1-31

Or something similar. I picked up a gel one at Micro Center once for like 10 bucks and it was the best thing ever. I used to get wrist pain using a mouse a lot too, until I got a pad for it. I've been using it for about 4 years now and it's been glorious.

Btw, the reason I don't recommend going mouseless keyboard is because it forces you to turn your character and camera with the keyboard... which... no... just don't do that.
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#4 Sep 28 2013 at 5:02 PM Rating: Excellent
I use this: Vertical Mouse 4

At work and at home. It's kind of expensive for a mouse but the one I've been using at home is now over two years old and the only issue is that the silver paint has flaked off where my thumb sits, so it's a good quality product. It seriously helps my wrist. What it does is relax the lower arm bones into a more natural position, which relieves the pressure on your carpals and lets your hand sit in a "handshake" position instead of clenching a hockey puck.

Frankly, I could not play XIV if it wasn't for this mouse. As it is, I'm the one in beta who kept whining about having more mouse-less options, which is why we can craft without having to click the "synthesize" button and can just spam the target button to get to it instead.

I try to use the mouse as little as possible, but unfortunately it's still needed in a few circumstances because targeting sucks.
#5 Sep 28 2013 at 5:43 PM Rating: Decent
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Oh, that vertical mouse looks divine. <3 Expensive, but I'm sure cheaper than surgery. Right? Thanks for the link. Everything I do relies so much on the mouse, it's starting to take its toll. Thanks everyone.

Quote:
Btw, the reason I don't recommend going mouseless keyboard is because it forces you to turn your character and camera with the keyboard... which... no... just don't do that.


I thought it worked quite well in 11. I use a laptop with a full keyboard. The arrow keys would move the camera and my character would turn with it, which was wonderful. I used the directional keys for more precise movements. I don't know, it just felt natural and smooth. I never could master that in other games, including this one. I loved the ability to play without a mouse. Hot keys/macros were quicker and in general it was more comfortable for me. Ah well. I might invest in both of the items above. That mouse looks amazing and the rest would come in handy for when I don't have access to that mouse.
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#6 Sep 28 2013 at 6:04 PM Rating: Good
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Quote:
I thought it worked quite well in 11. I use a laptop with a full keyboard. The arrow keys would move the camera and my character would turn with it, which was wonderful. I used the directional keys for more precise movements. I don't know, it just felt natural and smooth. I never could master that in other games, including this one. I loved the ability to play without a mouse. Hot keys/macros were quicker and in general it was more comfortable for me. Ah well. I might invest in both of the items above. That mouse looks amazing and the rest would come in handy for when I don't have access to that mouse.


FFXI is the only game where it was practical to do that.

Modern MMOs require movement that's quick and precise, and you just can't have that with keyboard turning. I don't even know if it's possible to set up XIV to behave the way XI did, but I'm sure it'd get you in trouble.

The vertical mouse looks really interesting. I only have three questions...
- Only three buttons? I can't see if there are extra thumb buttons there.
- Does clicking the buttons cause the mouse to shift?
- How much room is provided at the bottom for your pinky finger? The thought of sliding the side of my hand around on a mousepad while the bottom two fingers are jammed together isn't super exciting to me.
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#7 Sep 28 2013 at 6:50 PM Rating: Good
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My performance in fights has gone up since I eliminated my dependence on the mouse.

I remapped to legacy controls, to allow me to move backwards at full speed.

Then I remapped camera controls to ffxi, and remapped the keypad to the ffxi default.

I had to change the auto-run key to the / key, which eliminated the run/walk key, but I haven't needed it since I remapped it.

I use the 1 and 3 keys on the keypad for tab control left and right to interact with objects. t for target of target and f11 for nearest enemies.

Yah, I've pretty much eliminated the mouse. Need it for some drop down menus still, like picking the level 20 leves from a npc that offers both 20 and 25 levels leves.

But this is far more comfortable for me, since I have a decade of ffxi controls I'm used to.
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#8 Sep 28 2013 at 7:33 PM Rating: Decent
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A mouse isnt neccessary at all except for anything that uses the large orange target circle.

I switched my my key bindings to feel exactly like ff11 did, so i dont use a mouse besides what i described above.

I use the number pad to move, cycle through enemies left to right, pull out/ sheeth weapon, lock/unlock target, first person, jump, auto run, walk, and maybe something else im forgetting.

I use the default 123 for the skill, alt 123 for second row and ctrl 123 for third row.

My WASD is used to cycle through the menu or shift WASD to change my targeting mode.

the arrow keys beside the number pad adjust my camera. This allows me to move and adjust the camera at the same time.

Maybe theres a better way to set up yourself, but at the very least this felt familiar to me so im findig it really easy to do things.

Im also using an MMO keyboard from razor. The anansi. It has additional keys so i can easily press buttons that may be hard to reach such as 7890 etc.

Edited, Sep 29th 2013 1:51pm by Keysofgaruda
#9 Sep 28 2013 at 7:54 PM Rating: Excellent
Archmage Callinon wrote:
Quote:
I thought it worked quite well in 11. I use a laptop with a full keyboard. The arrow keys would move the camera and my character would turn with it, which was wonderful. I used the directional keys for more precise movements. I don't know, it just felt natural and smooth. I never could master that in other games, including this one. I loved the ability to play without a mouse. Hot keys/macros were quicker and in general it was more comfortable for me. Ah well. I might invest in both of the items above. That mouse looks amazing and the rest would come in handy for when I don't have access to that mouse.


FFXI is the only game where it was practical to do that.

Modern MMOs require movement that's quick and precise, and you just can't have that with keyboard turning. I don't even know if it's possible to set up XIV to behave the way XI did, but I'm sure it'd get you in trouble.

The vertical mouse looks really interesting. I only have three questions...
- Only three buttons? I can't see if there are extra thumb buttons there.
- Does clicking the buttons cause the mouse to shift?
- How much room is provided at the bottom for your pinky finger? The thought of sliding the side of my hand around on a mousepad while the bottom two fingers are jammed together isn't super exciting to me.


1. Thumb has two little buttons above and below, and there's another button just behind the middle finger button, for a total of six with a 7th wheel click. All buttons customizeable with their software.
2. Nope, the mouse has a really responsive click. Nice and satisfying, and the mouse does not move when you click.
3. There is a tiny little wing that hangs out of the side for your pinky finger to rest on, so it's not being dragged around on the mouse pad or shoved around. This was an improvement over the mice 1-3 which is why it's better to just buy 4. I have unusually large hands for a female, and I have plenty of room. Smiley: laugh

It takes a day or so to get used to, but once you get comfortable with it you'll regret not buying it three years ago.
#10 Sep 28 2013 at 11:30 PM Rating: Good
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Yup, it's possible. I have all my settings set so that I don't need to touch the mouse to play the game. Granted, I still use it to navigate the main menu and sometimes during gameplay, but it's not needed for me at all.

Btw, I use a trackman marble mouse so I don't have to move my hand around when I use it.
http://www.mousearena.com/logitech-trackman-marble-mouse/



Edited, Sep 29th 2013 12:35am by Threx
#11 Sep 29 2013 at 2:35 AM Rating: Good
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Quote:
Btw, the reason I don't recommend going mouseless keyboard is because it forces you to turn your character and camera with the keyboard... which... no... just don't do that.

I always see this come up when people talk about keyboard camera manipulation, but it always strikes me more as a mix of performance anxiety and discomfort with the idea.

Realistically speaking, playing from a 3/4 overhead view at max distance or close to it is probably the most optimal way to position your camera. You can see floor dangers and even a fair bit behind you unless the terrain itself adjusts your camera. Like this, actual camera rotation isn't needed very often, but I can understand there are times where it's needed.

From here, we have a few additional facts to consider. The first is that ability use can auto-face you to a target. There's also a text command to do this if you want to wiggle it into a macro for whatever reason. From here, a simple button press can reposition the camera behind you. As well, there's a means to quickly look behind yourself. At best, arrow manipulation would never require moving the camera beyond 45 degrees by some combination of this. I could see some argue this might be disorienting, but I'd also say using the mouse to rapidly turn the camera can cause the same. In the end, it's simply a comfort thing and those claim they faceroll keyboarders perhaps overlook the fact that who they were beating might not have been a very good and responsive player in general.



Maybe one day I'll settle down and try to emulate the XI scheme, as I honestly prefer that for reasons of hating how my right hand does so little at the mouse, but for now I feel like it isn't entirely feasible due to tab-targeting inefficiency and how stupid the camera can be with dictating LoS.
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#12 Sep 29 2013 at 3:13 PM Rating: Excellent
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Seriha wrote:
Quote:
Btw, the reason I don't recommend going mouseless keyboard is because it forces you to turn your character and camera with the keyboard... which... no... just don't do that.

I always see this come up when people talk about keyboard camera manipulation, but it always strikes me more as a mix of performance anxiety and discomfort with the idea.


No, that's not it really.

It's actually a physical limitation on the keyboard depending on which you use. There's only so many circuits a manufacturer will utilize when making a keyboard and it can only take one input press from that circuit. The chances of something happening, consistently, are something that's literally beyond your realm of control and why full keyboard control isn't suggested. You're *going* to run into issues when you're trying to do abilities, move, and other things at the same time. Keyboard and mouse takes away that hardware limitation and prevents it from becoming an issue in the first place.

Plus, as to why you could do this in FFXI? FFXI is a stationary MMO with very little movement involved during combat (I played FFXI with keyboard only as well). FFXIV is the exact opposite.

Possible? Yes. Dependable at all? Not by a long shot.
#13 Sep 29 2013 at 10:52 PM Rating: Good
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While it's true you can't just palm press your entire keyboard and get the keys to all pop up, I don't believe general play will hit that limitation, especially with the GCD in place. Depending on whether or not you strafe, direct movement will require 2 keys at once tops. Camera manipulation is pretty much similar, where ideally you shouldn't be fudging with the vertical positioning much. Ability input then comes to down to the numbers with ctrl/alt variations. Yes, XIV is faster paced than XI, but it's very rarely "never stop moving" or otherwise I'd never get anything done on BLM due to cast times. :/


Like I implied, I'd like to see a few more UI tweaks before I'd give it a more serious shot. I haven't done it in other games because they seriously don't allow you to navigate various windows without point-and-click. At that point, shifting your hand back and forth just becomes a hassle unless you know you'll be doing something for a long period where you wouldn't need the mouse.
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#14 Sep 29 2013 at 11:21 PM Rating: Default
Change your posture.... If using a mouse is hurting you then your doing something wrong O.o If anything; the way the hand sits on a keyboard tends to be worse for your joints than the way your hand sits on a mouse. Certainly changing to keyboard-only isn't a solution to hand pain.
#15 Sep 30 2013 at 7:38 AM Rating: Excellent
HatPower wrote:
Change your posture.... If using a mouse is hurting you then your doing something wrong O.o If anything; the way the hand sits on a keyboard tends to be worse for your joints than the way your hand sits on a mouse. Certainly changing to keyboard-only isn't a solution to hand pain.


Some of us have wrist injuries that make gripping a regularly mouse for extended periods of time very uncomfortable. People can have ergo keyboards, so why not ergo mice?

I personally type correctly using the "float" method so my wrists are just fine on the keyboard - I don't even need a wrist rest since my wrists are properly arched and not bent downward. But using a standard mouse for a long time makes me long for my wrist brace.
#16 Sep 30 2013 at 9:12 AM Rating: Excellent
Buffylvr wrote:
I remapped to legacy controls, to allow me to move backwards at full speed.


Bingo. Best Improvement I've made.

You can't beat the speed backwards out of AoE with Standard set. The best you can do is swing the camera halfway and strafe. With Legacy set it's just full speed "RUN AWAY!".
#17 Sep 30 2013 at 9:18 AM Rating: Excellent
Courtelise wrote:
Right now moving the camera doesn't affect my character direction and it always springs back. This is a minor issue. More important is the inability to target and initiate conversation with NPCs without a mouse. Hitting enter initiates chat. Is there a way to change that? Hoping someone's successfully mapped their keyboard to play mouse free. I'm not accustomed to using a controller at all.


First it sounds like you want to go into the Character > Movement menu and change the"Camera Auto-adjust" to either "Never" or "Only when Moving".

Secondly, at the very top of the "Keybind" menu is "Enable Direct Chat". Uncheck that box.

Now you can keybind the entire keyboard. Under Chat Keybinds, I changed the one that says something like "Enter chat box" to be the Spacebar.
#18 Sep 30 2013 at 9:23 AM Rating: Good
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It is so wierd to think that someone could play this game with a mouse and keyboard. I haven't played a PC game since Spore, and am so engrained into the controller that I couldn't see it any other way.
#19 Sep 30 2013 at 11:03 AM Rating: Good
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I used to play FFXI like you with numpad and arrow keys while doing macros and such with the left hand. I also work with PCs all day and like to game without a mouse at home.

For FFXIV, I have the following setup:

numpad keys to move
arrow keys for camera
numpad enter to confirm, numpad . to cancel and numpad 0 to jump
spacebar for chat
wasd for menu interaction / target selection

It might seem a bit wierd to righthanded people but as a lefty it works rather well :)

Edited, Sep 30th 2013 1:03pm by kasumisan
#20 Sep 30 2013 at 11:47 AM Rating: Excellent
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kasumisan wrote:
I used to play FFXI like you with numpad and arrow keys while doing macros and such with the left hand. I also work with PCs all day and like to game without a mouse at home.

For FFXIV, I have the following setup:

numpad keys to move

What's weird about this is, when going forward, it makes your char learn forward for a bit before running. But with a controller, it doesn't.

Side note: If I didn't need seperate chat boxes, I'd have a FFXI-like UI.

Edited, Sep 30th 2013 1:48pm by TwilightSkye
#21 Oct 01 2013 at 1:28 AM Rating: Decent
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Callinon wrote:
Modern MMOs require movement that's quick and precise, and you just can't have that with keyboard turning. I don't even know if it's possible to set up XIV to behave the way XI did, but I'm sure it'd get you in trouble.

No, this is inane drivel that was brought about by WoW and the many following games that copied its movement scheme completely. If the game isn't lacking in the proper functionality you can easily perform movement that is quick and precise without a mouse. WoW and many other games did not have this functionality. FFXIV has almost all of the functionality, but the targeting system is currently not efficient enough to allow you to abandon the mouse in battle yet.

Viertel wrote:
No, that's not it really.

Yes, it is.

Quote:
It's actually a physical limitation on the keyboard depending on which you use. There's only so many circuits a manufacturer will utilize when making a keyboard and it can only take one input press from that circuit.

The crux of your argument is "If you use a sh*tty keyboard, you will run into problems!" No sh*t. This does not occur if you have a quality keyboard.

Quote:
Keyboard and mouse takes away that hardware limitation and prevents it from becoming an issue in the first place.

And even in the case that you do have a sh*t keyboard, you're still wrong. Having a mouse does not all of a sudden allow keyboard combinations that didn't work before to work now. You simply have more lee-way, which would fall under the attack of the very argument you just tried to make.

Quote:
Plus, as to why you could do this in FFXI? FFXI is a stationary MMO with very little movement involved during combat (I played FFXI with keyboard only as well). FFXIV is the exact opposite.

I definitely wasn't moving at all during early Kirin or King Behemoth, nor was I moving constantly to be behind a party member, in front of a party member, behind the enemy, in front of the enemy, etc almost all the time while in a party. Nope, definitely just imagined doing these things. If you cherry picked specific situations and specific jobs you would be right, but blanket statements don't allow you to cherry pick.

-------------

If they could fix the targeting issues that stem from objects causing LOS problems based on camera position, I could make keyboard only more effective than KB+Mouse in battle. More text commands would help too, and they really need to fix their functions so that they accept FirstName LastName so I can stop being forced to use quotation marks.

For now I'll have to live with gathering/crafting being more effective and/or fluent via keyboard only.

Edited, Oct 1st 2013 3:29am by Deadgye
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#22 Oct 01 2013 at 6:05 AM Rating: Excellent
Yeah FFXI had a LOT of movement if you were a THF or a BRD. Huh, come to think of it, maybe that's why I like those jobs so much. Even WHM fighting an HNM was ducking into the fray every three minutes to toss a fresh bar spell on the tank.
#23 Oct 01 2013 at 7:09 AM Rating: Good
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Gnu wrote:
Courtelise wrote:
Right now moving the camera doesn't affect my character direction and it always springs back. This is a minor issue. More important is the inability to target and initiate conversation with NPCs without a mouse. Hitting enter initiates chat. Is there a way to change that? Hoping someone's successfully mapped their keyboard to play mouse free. I'm not accustomed to using a controller at all.


First it sounds like you want to go into the Character > Movement menu and change the"Camera Auto-adjust" to either "Never" or "Only when Moving".

Secondly, at the very top of the "Keybind" menu is "Enable Direct Chat". Uncheck that box.

Now you can keybind the entire keyboard. Under Chat Keybinds, I changed the one that says something like "Enter chat box" to be the Spacebar.


Excellent! I'll try this tonight.. if I get enough work done today. One of my clients cancelled on me today, so I can play catch up with the others and maybe sneak in a little time to play. Yay!
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#24 Oct 01 2013 at 7:50 AM Rating: Good
Catwho wrote:
I personally type correctly using the "float" method so my wrists are just fine on the keyboard - I don't even need a wrist rest since my wrists are properly arched and not bent downward. But using a standard mouse for a long time makes me long for my wrist brace.


I think it weird after some 25+ years of computer use I still use the chicken peck method of typing. And now I am too old and set in my ways to change...
#25 Oct 01 2013 at 8:12 AM Rating: Excellent
Magilicotti wrote:
Catwho wrote:
I personally type correctly using the "float" method so my wrists are just fine on the keyboard - I don't even need a wrist rest since my wrists are properly arched and not bent downward. But using a standard mouse for a long time makes me long for my wrist brace.


I think it weird after some 25+ years of computer use I still use the chicken peck method of typing. And now I am too old and set in my ways to change...


I learned to type fast and furious in the Compuserve chatrooms in the late '90s Smiley: schooled Nothing makes you learn to type faster than trying to keep a conversation going amidst a dozen other conversations.
#26 Oct 01 2013 at 9:05 AM Rating: Good
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Haha! I never learned to type the "right" way, but I can type pretty fast. However my "home" keys are AS&D. My fingers naturally rest there. If I tried to move them to the "correct" home position, I'd have typos all over the place.
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