add ons in gw2

[Zem]

Why I don't like addon:
1. My dps meter says your dps is low so I'll have to kick you. [Reply] Yeah that's cause I was running out of the fire.
2. You just die cause you didn't run out of the fire why didn't you. [reply] I think my DBM is not working.
3. I just die why didn't I get any heal. [Reply] My Healbot is not working.

[Deleted]

Why I don't like addon:
1. My dps meter says your dps is low so I'll have to kick you. [Reply] Yeah that's cause I was running out of the fire.
2. You just die cause you didn't run out of the fire why didn't you. [reply] I think my DBM is not working.
3. I just die why didn't I get any heal. [Reply] My Healbot is not working.

do you raid/party with people who would be considered remedial?

in any self respecting raiding guild if your dps is low "running out of the fire" is not an excuse, because you can "run out of fire" and still pull world ranking numbers. no healer uses healbot anymore lol. also you dont need dbm anymore because of blizzards own announcements and everything is pretty damn obvious :') ... "Deathwing is about to roll"

[lvlark]

There's really no need for Add-Ons in Guild Wars 2.

Not having played it yet, nor having looked alot into class/fight mechanics, I still doubt this. Notwithstanding the fact that people shouldn't flex their epeen with high dps, or really 'play the UI', responding to an addon calling out things instead of responding to something that happens in the game world. I guess there may still be a bunch of things to track (buffs/debuffs/cooldowns) and unless ANet provides a very strong way for tracking them (preferably rather customisable), people will feel the need to have addons help them focus on the important information. And if there isn't enough going on to need a smooth, informative UI, I guess it'd be rather boring.

And to the whole 'play the game, not the UI', I'd like to say this: A smooth, customised UI helps play the game. Different people have different tastes/strong points/weaknesses, different professions require different approaches, different screensizes need different setups. (Bigger screens need important things close to the center, smaller need their screens not be too cluttered and can better have such things at the sides.) The level of custamisation you can reach using addons is immense.

Now ofcourse, it's not impossible for any game developer to make a proper UI themselves.

[rhandric]

Not having played it yet, nor having looked alot into class/fight mechanics, I still doubt this. Notwithstanding the fact that people shouldn't flex their epeen with high dps, or really 'play the UI', responding to an addon calling out things instead of responding to something that happens in the game world. I guess there may still be a bunch of things to track (buffs/debuffs/cooldowns) and unless ANet provides a very strong way for tracking them (preferably rather customisable), people will feel the need to have addons help them focus on the important information. And if there isn't enough going on to need a smooth, informative UI, I guess it'd be rather boring.

And to the whole 'play the game, not the UI', I'd like to say this: A smooth, customised UI helps play the game. Different people have different tastes/strong points/weaknesses, different professions require different approaches, different screensizes need different setups. (Bigger screens need important things close to the center, smaller need their screens not be too cluttered and can better have such things at the sides.) The level of custamisation you can reach using addons is immense.

Now ofcourse, it's not impossible for any game developer to make a proper UI themselves.

Considering all abilities that apply a buff or debuff of a given type apply the same debuff (compare the "deal 10% less damage" debuff in WoW, which all tanks provide, but all apply a different debuff that does the exact same thing), then the big issue is identifying which debuff is which - which can take some time, but that's part of the learning curve, and someone has already created a minigame online (one of the threads in the last few days has a link to it) to practice learning and identifying them (both boons and conditions).

The only thing that should be done to the UI is the ability to move and resize (independently) the UI components (you can, however, scale the UI).

[Pavlovich]

Not having played it yet, nor having looked alot into class/fight mechanics, I still doubt this. Notwithstanding the fact that people shouldn't flex their epeen with high dps, or really 'play the UI', responding to an addon calling out things instead of responding to something that happens in the game world. I guess there may still be a bunch of things to track (buffs/debuffs/cooldowns) and unless ANet provides a very strong way for tracking them (preferably rather customisable), people will feel the need to have addons help them focus on the important information. And if there isn't enough going on to need a smooth, informative UI, I guess it'd be rather boring.

And to the whole 'play the game, not the UI', I'd like to say this: A smooth, customised UI helps play the game. Different people have different tastes/strong points/weaknesses, different professions require different approaches, different screensizes need different setups. (Bigger screens need important things close to the center, smaller need their screens not be too cluttered and can better have such things at the sides.) The level of custamisation you can reach using addons is immense.

Now ofcourse, it's not impossible for any game developer to make a proper UI themselves.

Well said. Just as a small group of devs cannot anticipate the ingenuity of a large group of players when dealing with encounters and finding loopholes in the mechanics, which then require patches, they also cannot provide a UI to suit all those different players.

How many people buy a house or car and do absolutely nothing to personalize it?

[Deleted]

Add-ons are created because they are needed. Think about it. Take ThreatMeter in WoW as example.

Correction: Addons are created because they are wanted, not needed. Someone somewhere thought "this would be good", and then they made it, or had someone make it for them. The Bejeweled addon for WoW wasn't needed, but it was wanted.

[Elim Garak]

Correction: Addons are created because they are wanted, not needed. Someone somewhere thought "this would be good", and then they made it, or had someone make it for them. The Bejeweled addon for WoW wasn't needed, but it was wanted.

I said "Think about it" not "Say nonsense".
Bejeweled is not an addon, not in the sense we are talking about here. It's only technically an add-on. It's an advertisement from PopCap. No one wanted it.
And you have no idea how add-on ideas come to life. No one sits there and thinks "I have to create my own add-on. What will it be?".
As I said, think about it. ThreatMeter was NEEDED. Because DPS couldn't tell how much aggro they had. DamageMeter was NEEDED, because in-game combatlog was impossible to read in a meaningful way. Default raid UI sucked, new UI was NEEDED.

Of course there are add-ons that are not needed, but wanted for aesthetics purposes and customization. But the first add-ons were needed. And I can even argue that customization is more of a NEED than want for some people, same goes for aesthetics. It may be a major turn off.

[Deleted]

I said "Think about it" not "Say nonsense".
Bejeweled is not an addon, not in the sense we are talking about here. It's only technically an add-on. It's an advertisement from PopCap. No one wanted it.
And you have no idea how add-on ideas come to life. No one sits there and thinks "I have to create my own add-on. What will it be?".
As I said, think about it. ThreatMeter was NEEDED. Because DPS couldn't tell how much aggro they had. DamageMeter was NEEDED, because in-game combatlog was impossible to read in a meaningful way. Default raid UI sucked, new UI was NEEDED.

Of course there are add-ons that are not needed, but wanted for aesthetics purposes and customization. But the first add-ons were needed. And I can even argue that customization is more of a NEED than want for some people, same goes for aesthetics. It may be a major turn off.

Make up your mind. First you say that they are created because they are needed, then you argue my point that addons are made for convenience and not because they're required to play the game, and then you agree with me that addons aren't made because they're required. And then you go back to saying that the addons are required.

Here's a page to glance at if you still want to insist that addons are created because they are needed:
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/category/minigames

And that's just an example.

The truth of the matter is that addons have never been required. Never. I was able to play WoW fine without them, as did many others. The choice to use addons, and to make them, are entirely convenience-based. ThreatMeter, for example, was created because it was a convenience feature. Someone out there thought "hey, sure I can just hold back on my damage when the tank hasn't assured his aggro yet, but if I had a tool to show my threat compared to his threat, I could push the line closer and do more damage." Notice how this is pretty different from "I need to see how close I am to pulling aggro, otherwise this game cannot be played." And that is the difference between want and need; between convenience and requirement.

PS. Calling different views "nonsense" is nonsense.

[Elim Garak]

nonsense.

If you treat "need" as in "life or death" - we have nothing to talk about here. I treat "need" as in "fun no fun" to play the game. So if something in the game denies me fun - I NEED an add-on to fix that.

You know nothing of how tanks-aggro-dps worked in vanila - when the first ThreatMeter was created. There were no such thing as "tank has aggro - its fine to go all the way". There were no MD nor ToTT. There were "2 sunders" rule so it was OK to start dpsing without taking aggro from tank right away. And you had to hold your DPS back ALL the time - to not risk it. No fun.

[Deleted]

If you treat "need" as in "life or death" - we have nothing to talk about here. I treat "need" as in "fun no fun" to play the game. So if something in the game denies me fun - I NEED an add-on to fix that.

You know nothing of how tanks-aggro-dps worked in vanila - when the first ThreatMeter was created. There were no such thing as "tank has aggro - its fine to go all the way". There were no MD nor ToTT. There were "2 sunders" rule so it was OK to start dpsing without taking aggro from tank right away. And you had to hold your DPS back ALL the time - to not risk it. No fun.

I will not participate in pointless pie-tossing; arguments where my counterpart is only interested in being right as opposed to having a proper discussion are more tedious than enjoyable.

I will say this, however: regardless if you think the definition of the verb "need" doesn't apply because you don't want it to, that still doesn't change the definition of the word. No matter how many times you call the dog's tail a leg, it'll still only have four legs.

[Elim Garak]

I will say this, however: regardless if you think the definition of the verb "need" doesn't apply

It doesn't apply in the sense you are applying it because you do not NEED to play the game. Therefore you can not NEED anything IN the game. Kapish? Even the critical bug fix is not NEEDED.

[Deleted]

It doesn't apply in the sense you are applying it because you do not NEED to play the game. Therefore you can not NEED anything IN the game. Kapish? Even the critical bug fix is not NEEDED.

Thank you for agreeing with me that addons aren't created because they are needed, they're created because they are wanted.

[Elim Garak]

Thank you for agreeing with me that addons aren't created because they are needed, they're created because they are wanted.

No they are created because they are needed. You are using the TERM "need" instead of a verb - you are doing it wrong, we are not talking about survival of the species here.

[rhandric]

No they are created because they are needed. You are using the TERM "need" instead of a verb - you are doing it wrong, we are not talking about survival of the species here.

Let's put it this way: You "need" addons as much as you "need" to get drunk

[Elim Garak]

Let's put it this way: You "need" addons as much as you "need" to get drunk

You are making the same mistake.

The more correct way is this: you need add-ons as much as you need a car.

[rhandric]

You are making the same mistake.

The more correct way is this: you need add-ons as much as you need a car.

Actually, I'd say it's more that you need addons as much as you need a Ferrari (or other high-end car, take your pick).

[Elim Garak]

Actually, I'd say it's more that you need addons as much as you need a Ferrari (or other high-end car, take your pick).

No, same mistake again. Just a car. A fucking car that gets you from A to B faster than a bus. Nothing fancy.

[rhinomatic]

No, same mistake again. Just a car. A fucking car that gets you from A to B faster than a bus. Nothing fancy.

But you don't need a car. So you don't need addons?

Your argument is confusing.

[rhandric]

No, same mistake again. Just a car. A fucking car that gets you from A to B faster than a bus. Nothing fancy.

O wise one, show me the error in my ways... /sarcasm

The point remains, (most) addons are only useful when you get the majority of your information from the UI, so you spend comparable amounts of time watching the UI and the game field. Some addons are fine, if they just allow you to customize the appearance while retaining the exact same amount of information. As soon as you start getting more information from a customized UI than you get without, then you're starting to play the UI and not the game. It is up to the developer to ensure that either that's not necessary (and if it's not necessary, then it's not possible) or it's necessary, possible, and ideally standard (ie, the way WoW's raid frames have been improved and the addition to threat meters built into the default UI). If it's not standard, but it is possible, then you can either develop around the idea of having it and make those who don't have it have to work harder, or around not having it and make it incredibly simple for those who do have it.

[Elim Garak]

But you don't need a car. So you don't need addons?

Your argument is confusing.

Nothing confusing if you would realize that generalization is a logical fallacy.
Just because you don't need a car, doesn't mean no one needs a car.

The point remains, (most) addons are only useful when you get the majority of your information from the UI, so you spend comparable amounts of time watching the UI and the game field.

Every piece of information is from UI. Those circles/sectors on the ground showing the aoe and time left (graphically) for you to run away? That's UI. It's not different from a text message with a timer that says "RUN AWAY! YOU HAVE 5 SECONDS!". Various visual effects that show active abilities or combo starters - that's UI too. It's just a different style of UI. More of AR kind. Everything you do in GW2 is UI based. You are playing UI all the time.