Gamescom Developer Interview - Addon Changes in Patch 7.1

[kurn1701]

the addon's were always going to be broken as soon as they started putting arrows on the screen.
this isnt the first time blizz have done this.
for those old timers back in wrath they broke a addon called AVR.
i had been thinking that the current dbm/ert looked almost the same as AVR did back in the day.
it was only a matter of time.

[Palemoon]

The team wants something to feel epic, even at a larger zoom distance, so they scale things up. Things have been huge throughout WoW's history.

Ah, yes. As a Melee, I can tell you all about those epic fights that boil down to "Black feet, green feet, grey feet, blue feet!". Truly, not being able to zoom out much farther than navel height greatly increases my enjoyment of those battles.

[Deleted]

If I read between the lines, all I see is a decision by Blizzard devs to break some addons, to make their life and work simpler. Of course they should've had foresight and not enable these functionalities in the first place. They should have learned their lesson from AVR.
While I understand their decision and agree with it, also commend them for notifying the community in advance, the way they handle it is poor. They just give us the result, not the real reason. All this talk about vision, but we don't know what they want to do with this game. Push it more into competitive gaming/esports? Or just regulate it, like olympic comitees regulate sports?

The other thing is, that while a lot of people find it positive, that they can use so many addons to customise WoW, it's apparent, that on the high end, you cannot play WoW "straight out of the box". We can all agree, that after a certain level you cannot play this game effectively without keybindings, macros, addons. But after all this is done, you don't play the game as the devs envisioned it, it's not their fantasy anymore.

Blizzard will never double down on addons, because that would be suicide. As they won't come out and give us their design goals and vision for the game. So they will be stuck in this place, where they try to juggle their vision vs the community.

[Noradin]

The kill was fair, but the fact that one guild used an addon to make a mechanic minuscule and one guild didn't on a top kill says a lot.

Yes. One group understood the game and used their head and the other tried brute force until they got lucky.

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Because those non TOP 100 groups will actually have to improve instead of relying on external tools to progress ? You know getting better at the game ?

Those aren't external tools, external tools are banned for a reason addons are part of the game.

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You are an absolute liar. NOBODY has that kind of motion sickness...... WOW's zoom distance is *exponentially higher* than almost any other video game. Did you even play Crash Bandicoot?

That might be because bosses that fit on the screen at a normal zoom distance are exceedingly rare in WoW.
Most of the time you are lucky if oyu see one foot and a lot of sparcles.

If they do not want radar addons then they should work on providing the thing that allows us awareness of what is around us in the real world: Auditory Clues.
But that would make headsets mandantory so they won't.
They'd have to scale back all that noise and sparkling they love so much, too.

[Zots]

it's apparent, that on the high end, you cannot play WoW "straight out of the box". We can all agree, that after a certain level you cannot play this game effectively without keybindings, macros, addons.

While I agree with what you've said to some degree, I would not add talk of keybindings and macros to your argument, as they have always been in the game since the very beginning and it just puts a hole in your statement. What I really wanted to bring to the attention of others is that World of Warcraft is an extremely functional game with or without addons, across all levels of play. I believe it's a pretty foolish claim to boast that someone couldn't complete end-game content without addons. Do they make it easier? Sure. Are they required? No. Are they something worth looking into? Quite possibly. Just like how if I wanted to deal better DPS as a Warrior, I'd look up a guide or a video, but that doesn't mean I've not honed my skills in game from what I know and what is allowed by the game.

It certainly is a tricky subject, but I'd have to agree with Blizzard. GPS/Location Assistance addons should most definitely not be allowed in the game.

[Seramore]

Yes. One group understood the game and used their head and the other tried brute force until they got lucky.

Or to flip things around, one group gave up on a mechanic and took the easy way out by using an addon and another group faced on the mechanic and beat it as intended without any help from an addon. Again, the kill was completely legit. The scenario just puts various things into perspective.

Auditory cues aren't necessary. Timers are and still will be an imperative feature for boss mods.

[Chemii]

If I read between the lines, all I see is a decision by Blizzard devs to break some addons, to make their life and work simpler. Of course they should've had foresight and not enable these functionalities in the first place. They should have learned their lesson from AVR.
While I understand their decision and agree with it, also commend them for notifying the community in advance, the way they handle it is poor. They just give us the result, not the real reason. All this talk about vision, but we don't know what they want to do with this game. Push it more into competitive gaming/esports? Or just regulate it, like olympic comitees regulate sports?

The other thing is, that while a lot of people find it positive, that they can use so many addons to customise WoW, it's apparent, that on the high end, you cannot play WoW "straight out of the box". We can all agree, that after a certain level you cannot play this game effectively without keybindings, macros, addons. But after all this is done, you don't play the game as the devs envisioned it, it's not their fantasy anymore.

Blizzard will never double down on addons, because that would be suicide. As they won't come out and give us their design goals and vision for the game. So they will be stuck in this place, where they try to juggle their vision vs the community.

They don't really need to say anything though. What other company justifies changes any more than what they've told us or gives away it's long term strategy for a subscriber model? Blizzard gives out far more information than practically any other gaming company world wide and frankly, post 7.1 this change won't even enter players minds.

Practically all PvP players who take arena seriously do so without addons as its part of tournament rules. In PvE, other than some boss mod it is possible to play this game to a high standard with the default UI, you just make it harder for yourself. Most addons are designed in someway to make things easier, that is the whole ethos of the addon system.

[Deleted]

While I agree with what you've said to some degree, I would not add talk of keybindings and macros to your argument, as they have always been in the game since the very beginning and it just puts a hole in your statement. What I really wanted to bring to the attention of others is that World of Warcraft is an extremely functional game with or without addons, across all levels of play. I believe it's a pretty foolish claim to boast that someone couldn't complete end-game content without addons. Do they make it easier? Sure. Are they required? No. Are they something worth looking into? Quite possibly. Just like how if I wanted to deal better DPS as a Warrior, I'd look up a guide or a video, but that doesn't mean I've not honed my skills in game from what I know and what is allowed by the game.

It certainly is a tricky subject, but I'd have to agree with Blizzard. GPS/Location Assistance addons should most definitely not be allowed in the game.

Fair point, but macros don't exist in a lot of other MMOs. And while re-binding keys is available in most games, it's still not something that is required to play this game.
My point is, that if you want to be effective in this game (or any other), you do these steps. First you re-bind your keys. Then WoW gives you the option of macros and on top of that you can use addons. And beyond a level it's not optional for the 99%, but mandatory. Because numbers are tweaked with the expectations, that you have everythign bound, macro'd and an addon is giving you "recommendations" on what to press next. Encounter mechanics expect of you to see the timers on abilities, get proximity and position warning, etc.

[Nellyel]

To all you people complaining about addons play dark souls 3 a while you'll get a massive boost in awareness, boss patterns , ability to concentrate on various things at the same time. Then come back to wow and you'll see how no boss mechanic is hard to handle.

[Deleted]

Killing relative player position is fine and all, but it won't teach Blizzard not to design crap bosses with static player positions.
The arrow wasn't the game changer - placing people on a map was.

[Kaedis]

Because numbers are tweaked with the expectations, that you have everythign bound, macro'd and an addon is giving you "recommendations" on what to press next.

No class or spec requires macros to function, or even to perform optimally. In fact, many of them don't even see real benefit from using macros. Almost the entirety of the macros I have coded are there for convenience. The only real game-changers in combat are my mouseover healing and buff macros, and my focus-target macros for certain critical abilities (like interrupts). No real point in macroing beyond that. Castsequence macros are always a DPS loss.

Also, the specs are actually balanced around the assumption that you aren't using a rotation suggestion addon, because almost without fail you'll do more DPS by learning the rotation properly instead of blindly hitting whatever the addon says to hit. This is mostly because those addons have no look-ahead, nor can they account for boss mechanics and upcoming boss events. Literally no one at the top end of raiding (or PvP) uses those rotational suggestion addons, they exist purely for those that can't be arsed to learn their rotation.

[Elofyn]

On the topic of breaking addons, I think it's a positive change. I used to raid in Swtor and my personal opinion is that the raid mechanics in most difficult raid tears were considerably harder than HFC mythic. Then, on the other hand, Swtor did not allow any kind of addons. So the players had to know their own shit and the mechanics without a minimap popping up telling then how close they are from each other or where to stand exactly.

So while distance tools and location guiding systems are surely handy, it feels more rewarding to kill that boss without an a tool doing half the work. Just my cents tho!

[Mad_Murdock]

Because numbers are tweaked with the expectations, that you have everythign bound, macro'd and an addon is giving you "recommendations" on what to press next. Encounter mechanics expect of you to see the timers on abilities, get proximity and position warning, etc.

I'd like to see where Blizzard said they create and tweak the raid bosses on the assumption that players are being fed their rotation. And if players need to be feed their rotations, I'm not sure they are that good, so I don't know that I'd tweak a raid boss based around that. I didn't get that from What Ion said. If they are assuming that Players are beign fed everything via a add-on, why do boss still do their emotes?

On the actual topic. I think it's really great that they are cutting out the mods like AVR (never used radar). As Ion stated they didn't want to break mods like Gatherer, which is overall harmless in what it does. Once they determined they could break the raid mods without the world mods, they announced it.

[Lightwysh]

Honestly, This is a great change. You should be able to play the game 100% without addons. Positioning addons are a cancer on the game as they require stuff to be built around having that capability. It was an arms race. Make an encounter to be difficult > addons come out to trivialize encounter > make fight even more complex > more addons > and so on.

I'd even go so far as to say DBM needs to knocked down to just timers again.

[Cerus]

It's funny those who claim TomTom will be broken. It demonstrates they haven't read SHIT.

I read it just fine. What's actually funny is that you think what blizzard says and what they do is always the same. Hope ya don't get any shit on your face - with your head so far up their ass I don't see how that's possible though.

[h4rr0d]

Really wondering how many people from the git gud crowd in this thread even saw mythic Archimonde, let alone killed it (with or without addons) during actual progression.
If the fights become so trivial with the addons, how come less than 500 guilds were able to kill Mannoroth and Archimonde before ilvl upgrades became available? Truth is, even with these addons, the fights on mythic are so complex and unforgiving that even if you have all the information available (like how far you have to run before you won't get 1shot, or how far you have to move so you won't chain that 6 yd chain spell, while still being able to melee boss), there is still plenty of space for personal errors that can (and will) lead to wipe eventually.

[Farabee]

Haha, love how they just straight backpedaled on the token situation after all the uproar they got this weekend when it was announced they were dropping it in Legion.

[Deleted]

I'm more worried about the fact that this change will also (presumably) break the fight replay functionality on warcraftlogs making you unable to analyze what went wrong and who screwed up in your raid in a given situation.

[huldu]

Honestly, This is a great change. You should be able to play the game 100% without addons. Positioning addons are a cancer on the game as they require stuff to be built around having that capability. It was an arms race. Make an encounter to be difficult > addons come out to trivialize encounter > make fight even more complex > more addons > and so on.

I'd even go so far as to say DBM needs to knocked down to just timers again.

Should be entirely removed from the game. They're so lax over at blizzard it's not even fun any more. It should be 100% player skill to know every single part of the encounter and nail it down perfectly every time, not some addon telling you timers and crap. It has always annoyed me and just brings casual trash into mmos where they don't belong. I remember when mmos used to be hard and actually challenging. Wildstar was on the right path but obviously the outcry from casuals destroyed what could have been an amazing mmo.

[Stormwolf64]

WoW blizzard comes up as fucking retards. If you're going to lie about Zoom, stick to the fucking lie and don't change it. bunch of Fucking inbreds.

Does the zoom which you have to activate outside the slider come with patch 7.1 or is it already in the game?