Addons?

[Blznsmri]

O_O whhaaa? No, no. *covers location with hands* LOL. Nice to see more texans here! :3

That's what, four (including myself) people that live in San Antonio?

[rhandric]

The "clutter" present in the screenshot is very much overdone. Most people have elements of UI around, rather then in the center. This is no different in GW1, where you have a lot of extremely important elements of UI easily accessible. You complaint is about "this guys taste of UI doesn't match mine".

In GW1, I knew of several players who played with huge compass near center of the screen, because for top end play, compass was far more important then battlefield view.

This need isn't going away in GW2. You will still need big party frames, skills frame, skill usage frames, compass, etc.

The "clutter" I was talking about had little to nothing to do with that screenshot. Regardless of how you organize it, there's certain information you just can't get from WoW without certain layers of addons, while GW2 is designed for you to get any important information through the minimal UI or the game world. In GW2 party frames will be unimportant, possibly even useless, since there is no party-targeted skills; the most they would tell you is whether it might be a good idea to switch to a different weapon set to use support skills, and possibly how far away they are like in GW1, and as such you don't need big party frames. The fact remains, the overabundant need of addons in WoW comes from a need of more information.

[Glytch]

Same here, and also Kaelwryn

lets all go hang out and play guild wars and stuff!

---------- Post added 2011-10-23 at 11:14 AM ----------

You may wish to scroll up and read what original disagreement was about before putting your foot in your mouth next time.

attacking a strawman argument with a strawman argument isnt a very good way to get your point accross

[Blznsmri]

lets all go hang out and play guild wars and stuff!

/agree, keep it on the north east side of town though... I don't have a car...

[Kaelwryn]

lets all go hang out and play guild wars and stuff!

Y'all would never see me though. :< Hiss, socializing it burns meee. And the sun light.

[Lucky_]

The "clutter" I was talking about had little to nothing to do with that screenshot. Regardless of how you organize it, there's certain information you just can't get from WoW without certain layers of addons, while GW2 is designed for you to get any important information through the minimal UI or the game world. In GW2 party frames will be unimportant, possibly even useless, since there is no party-targeted skills; the most they would tell you is whether it might be a good idea to switch to a different weapon set to use support skills, and possibly how far away they are like in GW1, and as such you don't need big party frames. The fact remains, the overabundant need of addons in WoW comes from a need of more information.

The need for information is obviously diminished when you're working with 4 people at most instead of 24, you lack healer role and friendly targeting function completely, and boss encounters are far simpler when it comes to player mechanics (as far as we know).

This doesn't change the fact that arenanet themselves seem to admit: information is important, and needs to be displayed prominently. Source: Default GW2 UI with it's uselessly huge (imho) health bubble, large quest UI overlay, large skill bar, large party windows. I'm very interested in seeing how larger scale PvP will be played, as in GW1 you were forced to memorize a lot of things which felt fine to me back then before I played WoW. But when I came back to GW1 a few weeks ago after WoW, it stroke me as how silly it was that I didn't even have a basic debuff timer so I could focus on the actual battlefield instead of memorizing who has what buffs/debuffs and for how long as a higher priority then what actually occurred on the battlefield. This lack of information supply is severely detrimental to my ability to play the game, as I am not limited by my skill of playing the game, but by the information crunch that results from crippled (for me) UI bottleneck.

It's also worth noting that GW1 had a TERRIBLE UI for over 8 people in a group at a time even when you were used to it, as was the interface for 8 man groups with large amounts of pets. The first attempt to make 12 man battleground in factions was scuttled in part by UI's inability to cope with high amount of players, and they had to rework the entire thing to make entering said battleground as three groups of four players who could only see their own party on UI, severely limiting teamplay.

It's one of those great examples of how "simple" UI cripples the game by its lack of functionality and/or information throughput.


Finally, I really don't want to bring this up in the way it's going to look, but ability to "crunch" through a sea of information and use only pieces that you actually need is a skill - one that you need in real life even more then in games. So what may look like "horrible clutter" to someone incapable of effective dissemination of information in real time is an efficient UI to someone capable of this. At the same time a "simple" UI will have that person not being able to use his abilities to their full extent because he/she is limited by UI rather then their skill.

This is essentially a comparison akin to one between a basic crop sprayer plane and a high speed jet fighter. Crop sprayer is fine with basic controls and no real interface for pilot other then a few analogue meters for most important functions. Modern fighter needs multi-function displays and DARPA spent a huge amount of effort to convince Germans to let them study the on-visor HUD UI of Mig-29 (reverse engineered version of which is now touted as one of the biggest improvements on F-35).

In short: UI matters. UI needs are different for different people, and different types and levels of play. WoW's designers understood this, and allowed a major level of customization through add-ons, so that players would not feel that UI is the limiting factor. If arenanet chooses the same no-addon policy for UI, we will likely experience same information and accessibility bottleneck as in GW1, and people fighting against UI rather then against enemies that we saw in GW1. One that we did not see in WoW.

It's sadly going to severely reduce longevity and attractiveness of GW2 for people like me as well, and we're not that small of a minority considering how even basic ability to function in modern workplace requires ability to efficiently take information you need from the clutter of useless information.

[Lucky_]

First of all, yes, one man's trash is other man's treasure. We're looking at the very same UI.

Also, there is no clutter like gryphons around your skill bar, and the menu bar at the top left if a lot smaller than WoW.

I want to emphasize this part. This is why UI add-ons are brilliant. I didn't even remember that this existed in WoW - because I haven't used default WoW UI in years. My UI of choice included xperl for unit frames with fat health bars positioned in a way I like (my hp bar against targeted enemy health bar, etc). There were no dragons, no extra clutter, extremely large amount of information, and all of it positioned in a way that I find useful. For example, the "elite" enemy simply has a small color-coded "elite" text attached to his name part of UI.

[Fencers]

Are you really believe that DBM is optional in order to raid in wow?

Yea, I raided from vanilla up to Wrath without DBM. MC, AQ, TK, BT, Sunwell, etc.

Currently raiding in Rift sans addons as well.

Haven't ever happened to you to been asked by a guild to have certain addons in order to join raids?

Nope.

I was asked if I used DBM in a 10m (H) guild I joined for Wrath. Said no, raided fine. Addons I used were DPS meter and UI overhaul mods. WOW chat interface was/is the worse I ever seen.

Also have in mind that Blizzard admitt it that they design raids having in mind that people use addons like DBM and so they must make it more complicated or else may be a joke...admit it or not, addons have affected a lot the games and even the developers who many times make changes having in mind that you are using certain addons.

I am aware. Though I do not think this is detrimental. The opposite in fact, I think it has raised the sophistication of encounters.

Certainly, something like DBM would make encounters easier. It is still optional to the player to use them. Devs are aware a % of players use these type of addons, but there is no way any particular addon sees 100% use across the board. Devs couldn't realistically create encounters that depend 100% on a player having a certain addon. And to date, I haven't seen any encounter that was impossible sans DBM- for example.

So something like DBM is up to the player. Just like those rolling skill thing addons- I don't know what they are called.

[Lusitan]

If ArenaNet adds in the functionality to the UI that most people use/want (ie customization of the appearance and ability to track items across all characters), the use of addons shouldn't be needed. Otherwise, UI capable addons should be allowed but nothing combat oriented. While such tools as recount are useful when used properly, I don't want to see the GW2 community turn into the trolls and epeen wavers that permeate WoW through misuse of such tools.

The problem is that we can be sure that those sort of features wont be done by Anet, at least not for release, so by allowing us, the players, to do them at release will be much appreciated.

[rhandric]

The problem is that we can be sure that those sort of features wont be done by Anet, at least not for release, so by allowing us, the players, to do them at release will be much appreciated.

Which is why I said, if such features exist upon release, there will be little need for addons, otherwise that is the only type of addon (ie purely customization, nothing that affects gameplay) that should be viable

[Blackout15]

GW1 UI is nice....not extremely pretty or anything but im not bothered by it at all. The UI was also pretty customizable wihtout using mods and im sure it will be the same in GW2, considering one of their main points is customization. Only mods i ever used in wow was ones that changed my skill bars, made them smaller and fit more abilities, and since theres no need for that in GW2 i really dont see much need for addons.