"This could undermine the success of the AORUS K9 Optical among professional gamers, many of whom use macros a lot. Casual gamers who do not use macros, on the other hand, will certainly appreciate the look and feel of the keyboard, but they will hardly notice its improved performance, unlike professionals."
As far as I know most major esports titles follow essentially a 1 button 1 action rule unless it is inherently configurable in the game itself.
Those programmable macro keys (as well as feature rich keyboards and mice) are actually targeted at casual competitive gamers.
Without programmable buttons is basically a piece of junk, even my trusty 12 years old logitech membrane KB have those on the media keyboard and all the F ones. LOL
You know there's this handy program called Autohotkey that turns any keyboard into a fully macro-capable keyboard.
Not bundling some janky shit piece of software that doesn't have the capability of AutoHotKey isn't a downside.
Bundling some janky shit piece of software to control lightning (even just to turn it off) without user community support, and pre-made macros already developed for by other people is, however, a downside.
There's a whole host of community made stuff for just about every game in some kind of AutoHotKey script/macro. My favorite so far is Path of Exile's PoE-TradeMacro (https://github.com/PoE-TradeMacro/POE-TradeMacro) just because player-to-player trading and pricing of items is just awful without having a built-in UI in the game to help the user gauge the value and listings of similar items on the market. And it's constantly updated and getting new features, so it's not some abandonware macro nor something that the user themselves innately has to update when the game updates.
What weird symbol keycaps - the shifted values are printed *below* the ordinary unshifted output. Even with the bolder, bigger type for the unshifted output that's a definite ergonomic no-no right there, totally counter-intuitive and breaking fifty or more years of helpful conformity. That disqualifies it immediately whatever its other qualities.
No doubt someone will claim that's a brave new "thing" for these new upmarket keyboards, though, not just confusing difference for the sake of trying to be being clever, or for branding. :(
I think that's done on purpose because under dim lighting conditions, the key's RGB LED will always shine brighter for text on the top side of the keycap (the primary output of that key, or the numbers) and duller on the bottom side of the keycap (the secondary/shifted output of that key, or the symbols).
Uneven keycap backlighting is an issue systemic to all Cherry MX stem keyboards. It wasn't designed from the beginning to allow per-key backlighting, and even when it was implemented, the LED was placed on the top-side, leading to uneven key backlighting. That's why lots of backlit keycaps are showing the numeral and the symbol side-by-side on the top side of the keycap, such as for example: http://d2fu7qgd3tdbcc.cloudfront.net/images/thumbn...
Apparently, Logitech's Romer-G switches were designed from the get-go to allows for relatively even key backlighting, and the central key column allows light to pass through natively from a single central LED.
Yeah, I had an otherwise nice mechanical keyboard that did this and I HATED it. I got rid of it 6 months later because I still wasn't used to it, and it was especially confusing switching between it and my laptop keyboard.
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limitedaccess - Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - link
"This could undermine the success of the AORUS K9 Optical among professional gamers, many of whom use macros a lot. Casual gamers who do not use macros, on the other hand, will certainly appreciate the look and feel of the keyboard, but they will hardly notice its improved performance, unlike professionals."As far as I know most major esports titles follow essentially a 1 button 1 action rule unless it is inherently configurable in the game itself.
Those programmable macro keys (as well as feature rich keyboards and mice) are actually targeted at casual competitive gamers.
Lolimaster - Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - link
Without programmable buttons is basically a piece of junk, even my trusty 12 years old logitech membrane KB have those on the media keyboard and all the F ones. LOLJoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - link
You know there's this handy program called Autohotkey that turns any keyboard into a fully macro-capable keyboard.Not bundling some janky shit piece of software that doesn't have the capability of AutoHotKey isn't a downside.
Bundling some janky shit piece of software to control lightning (even just to turn it off) without user community support, and pre-made macros already developed for by other people is, however, a downside.
There's a whole host of community made stuff for just about every game in some kind of AutoHotKey script/macro. My favorite so far is Path of Exile's PoE-TradeMacro (https://github.com/PoE-TradeMacro/POE-TradeMacro) just because player-to-player trading and pricing of items is just awful without having a built-in UI in the game to help the user gauge the value and listings of similar items on the market. And it's constantly updated and getting new features, so it's not some abandonware macro nor something that the user themselves innately has to update when the game updates.
asmian - Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - link
What weird symbol keycaps - the shifted values are printed *below* the ordinary unshifted output. Even with the bolder, bigger type for the unshifted output that's a definite ergonomic no-no right there, totally counter-intuitive and breaking fifty or more years of helpful conformity. That disqualifies it immediately whatever its other qualities.No doubt someone will claim that's a brave new "thing" for these new upmarket keyboards, though, not just confusing difference for the sake of trying to be being clever, or for branding. :(
JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - link
I think that's done on purpose because under dim lighting conditions, the key's RGB LED will always shine brighter for text on the top side of the keycap (the primary output of that key, or the numbers) and duller on the bottom side of the keycap (the secondary/shifted output of that key, or the symbols).Uneven keycap backlighting is an issue systemic to all Cherry MX stem keyboards. It wasn't designed from the beginning to allow per-key backlighting, and even when it was implemented, the LED was placed on the top-side, leading to uneven key backlighting. That's why lots of backlit keycaps are showing the numeral and the symbol side-by-side on the top side of the keycap, such as for example: http://d2fu7qgd3tdbcc.cloudfront.net/images/thumbn...
Apparently, Logitech's Romer-G switches were designed from the get-go to allows for relatively even key backlighting, and the central key column allows light to pass through natively from a single central LED.
siuol11 - Friday, December 1, 2017 - link
Yeah, I had an otherwise nice mechanical keyboard that did this and I HATED it. I got rid of it 6 months later because I still wasn't used to it, and it was especially confusing switching between it and my laptop keyboard.