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  1. #41
    I can tell you honestly that I never had the need for any addons. Nor did I ever feel that they were even necessary. I honestly think the interface is fine the way it is.
    Last edited by Trollsbane; 2011-10-28 at 01:50 PM.

  2. #42
    My main in WoW is a healer, and I *was* intending to make a healer in SWTOR, since healing is far and away my favourite class.

    Unfortunately, from what I hear there are no mouseover healing bars in SWTOR. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this means that I will have to keep changing my target when healing people. I will not be able to keep an eye on the boss (to see if it is targeting me or casting something which I will need to respond to).

    I have tried healing without mouseover, and it turns out that is isn't fun for me at all. So if things are how I think they are in SWTOR, I won't be playing a healer. Sadly, this means that I won't enjoy SWTOR as much as I was hoping (to the extent that it is likely that I will only play it for a few weeks before returning to WoW).

    It's a shame for me, but of course I understand that other people don't have these concerns. I do wonder, though, if the number of healers around in SWTOR will be lower than it could be as a result.

  3. #43
    This discussion can be broken down into a few different sections and addressed separately.

    Combat Logging
    Macros
    UI Customization
    Add-Ons


    Combat Logging – A necessity for any game that wants to have competitive end game raiding and progression. Logs can be parsed by a parsing program such as (ACT) to give encounter data to be used for analytical purposes. Combat logging will be in game on release, and a parser will surely be available to download and set up.

    Macros – This one is a double edged sword and is truly a quality of life issue. Macros will not be available at launch and will be added after the fact, the macro system they use is a pretty vital decision and that in itself is a debate which I am going to create a thread to discuss. However, mouse over macro’s are a staple for a majority of players who play healing classes and not having at least this soon after launch would just simply hurt the game.

    UI Customization – The TOR UI cosmetically looks great, IMO it fits the Star Wars game and allows you to move around some pieces as Trollsbane described. I would agree that the lack of customization is disheartening and players should be allowed to make more changes to more parts of the UI. WoW’s UI out of box is horrible but there are a plethora of add-ons to change this and Rift’s UI customization out of box is pretty amazing. Hopefully UI customization is in the works and will allow more player choice in how the game looks.

    Add-Ons – All other 3rd party additions to the game that don’t fall into these 3 categories. I don’t have anything against add-ons but IMO they are not even in the top 10 things I would want to see post launch. Why? Because I would like to see the first months of game development focused on fixing known issues post launch, balancing the game, and implementing promised post launch features (dual spec, rated warzones, more content, macro system) then worrying about 3rd party add-ons which will cause issues without a doubt, eat up in game resources (GMs), and In the end cause frustration to the players trying to use them.

    Overall I think the game is in a good place without “Add-ons” but there are some functionality issues that need to be added in order to make players transitions into SW:TOR go smoothly.

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by jearle View Post
    UI Customization – The TOR UI cosmetically looks great, IMO it fits the Star Wars game.
    It's Cyan. Not sure I'd agree that the Cyan really fits. It's the whole style is kinda "techy", sure, but the cyan is too bright - it's okay in light areas, but in dark ones, it's so bright that it actually makes it harder to focus on your surroundings, and a lot of the areas in TOR are Dark as you can see on many videos.

    Quote Originally Posted by luccadeo View Post
    NDA Breaking Opinion
    That's cool and all, but you aren't allowed to post that.

  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by Raeli View Post
    It's Cyan. Not sure I'd agree that the Cyan really fits. It's the whole style is kinda "techy", sure, but the cyan is too bright - it's okay in light areas, but in dark ones, it's so bright that it actually makes it harder to focus on your surroundings, and a lot of the areas in TOR are Dark as you can see on many videos.
    That is why people have opinions. Also the darkness issue might simply be a video settings issue or a player being in alot of "cave" type areas. With proper settings I don't think the game is dark by any means.

  6. #46
    I personally think that DPS meters are as near to a must-have as can be. I've played games without them, but of the three staple roles, the defender and healer always know when they do things right: Nobody dies. Defenders and healers have a clear view of their personal progression: Nobody dies, while encounters get harder and harder. The less people die, the better they did their jobs.
    DPS, however, don't have a personal quality indicator other than the DPS meter. So they can't tell as easily where they are on the quality curve, or whether the new choices they made are actually working.

    For this reason alone, I think DPS meters are important. Of course you'll always get people who like to prance around waving their uberdups. Of course you'll always get people who belittle others when other people perform less than they do. But hey; if not for dups numbers, these people will use something else as an excuse. Probably gear, since that's generally an indication of progress.

    Now; me: I'm not a DPS player. Not in any kind of game, really. I like to defend and take care of people in a much more direct way, so I like tanking and healing. But I can still see how a DPS meter is important, and even as a tank/healer, I have used DPS meters in the past as reference on certain fights that simply had to be finished before a certain amount of time had lapsed, just so I could talk to DPS, ask them what's wrong, what their position was, and maybe come up with personal strats that fit the needs of these players better, and allow them to perform better.

    As for UI: What I've seen so far, the UI's colour in TOR is indeed dreadful, and the UI's design looks incredibly inelegant. So an option to change the colour/design would indeed be awesome.
    For all the rest: I can't actually comment on that, much. It depends on how the game works, mechanically. WoW simply works very well with things like DBM, and a lot of the things DBM warns about are already shown in the game itself; DBM just clarifies them (castbars and such). In a game such as 3rd edition d20, it really paid to have a party member with a high spellcraft skill who could warn the rest of the group of incoming spell effects and such; a vastly different approach to attain more or less the same thing in a vastly different game system.
    One could argue that DBM is simply metagaming through an encounter, but we'll have to remember that we're talking about a computer game, where gear, specs and all that are all simmed to create best-in-slot cookie-cutter builds... It's a computer game, so metagaming is probably the least of your worries, and all in all rather normal.

  7. #47
    From early vanilla WoW, the community has helped to further the native UI within WoW through providing addons that provided a higher performance than the UI that WoW programmed. User generated content always provides a wide array of benefits that have been implemented by game companies into the game itself.

  8. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by jearle View Post
    That is why people have opinions. Also the darkness issue might simply be a video settings issue or a player being in alot of "cave" type areas. With proper settings I don't think the game is dark by any means.
    Bolded bit isn't necessary to the discussion - I didn't claim an opinion as a fact, nor did I insult you or anything of the like, I merely disagreed with your opinion, having one of my own, but I do think it shows one point clearly - people do have different opinions of the UI, and as such, how do you please them all? :P

    On the issue of lighting, there are indeed a lot of "cave" type areas, or underground, or even night time areas. For sure they aren't all like that, but I never implied as such. As I say, the brightness of the UI is not an issue for me in light areas, just in dark areas, and they do make up a big portion of the game, obviously too when something is considered "dark" or "light" is quite subjective and this whole issue for me I realise is also down to eye sensitivity, my eyes tend to ache a lot in those sort of situations is all, and as such, the UI is not helpful for me being that colour, but I am sure I am not alone on this point - although of course I'm not trying to imply many or everyone has the same issue.

  9. #49
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    The only addon I REALLY like is a UI mod, I hate side-bars.

    But outside of that I really don't need any addons to play, though I'm fairly suck at healing without some kind of VuhDo-type mod.
    Human progress isn't measured by industry. It's measured by the value you place on a life.

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  10. #50
    Deleted
    Personal Opinion !

    Addons are cool .
    Recounts at the other hand , can help u to increase ur rotation-perfomance , but some ppl get obsesed with them , and demant from the companies to <<ballance>> the numbers .
    At the end , efecting pvp (the classes with the best cds-spells , dominate it)
    Last edited by mmocbeb563a6f8; 2011-10-28 at 06:45 PM.

  11. #51
    Quote Originally Posted by luccadeo View Post
    I can tell you honestly that I never had the need for any addons. Nor did I ever feel that they were even necessary. I honestly think the interface is fine the way it is.
    For being a damage dealer, the UI is fine. For being a tank or a healer, there's a couple of things that they'd need to add still. But honestly, what's there is about 75% fine even then. I would like to see a game with no mods so that people have to learn to play the game instead of the game playing for them.

  12. #52
    The thing for me with Addons is that I'm a minimalist. I want to see as little of the interface as possible. Everything is hidden when not necessary. I use key-bindings for everything. I don't care how beautiful the best UI is in the world, I just don't want to see it. I want to see the game. That's why cosmetic UI Addons, like Bartender (Lets me skin and hide most bars.), Move Anything, and others, are so pivotal for my gaming experience.

  13. #53
    the things I'd like to do to the default swtor ui are pretty much cosmetic.

    remove a lot of the extra art, portraits, cleaner fonts, get as much screen showing as possible without affecting my own gameplay. If you looked at my WoW ui, I have a 6 button bar with my rotational abilities (That changes page while shift is held down.) another, smaller 12 button bar that holds important cooldowns, and an "out of combat bar" that holds things like flasks, mounts, etc.

    that gives me 24 buttons while only showing 18; and it's paged to change with stances. these sit in the corner of my screen. If I have too much information in front of me (like what old-school healers used to have) I tend to tunnelvision on that instead of where i'm standing (or what i'm standing in)

  14. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Thornstar View Post
    yeah the one thing I hated the most about addons and I am sure everyone will agree was the 2 hours it took to set up a new characters UI :P
    I kinda agree, though my current set of addons takes less than 5 mins to set up afer a major patch (ElvUI ftw). The thing is though even if it takes two hours at least you have the option to customize your UI. I think Blizzard has pretty much the perfect line here, allow limited macros and custom addons but don't let them take over the game, like eg. has happened in Rift with their macro system. In the end I can't really see how anyone would see giving players more options to customize their UI as bad thing as long as its kept under control.

  15. #55
    I'm going to give a list of addons I use in other games, tell why I need them, and how I could live without them.

    DBM
    Why? Because you can't always tell when to start moving out of the spot by visual or sound cues alone. If that boss' special ability was given away when he raises his left fist into the air, then sure. If a bright light started glowing around him before he unleashed hell, yeah. Most of the time, it doesn't. You just don't know by what's in the game itself. Watching your feet is one thing, but a little latency could mean a sudden and dramatic end to an otherwise good attempt.
    Live without? Add visual clues. Add a DBM type in-game. I don't need a mod to tell me to run five paces to the left. I just need to know when/how the boss is doing shit I may not otherwise be able to see.

    Threat Meter
    Why? Pretty self-explanatory. It's not that I want to OMGMUSTDPSNAO! I just want to get the most out of my character.
    Live without? I could live without one, but wouldn't want to. In order to do so, I'd want tank aggro to be really good.

    DPS Meter
    The big one. The one that brings either vitriolic hate or fanboy-level love.
    Why? Just like with a threat meter, I want to get the most out of my character. Aside from that, I want to know everyone in the group is pulling their weight. I want everyone in the group to know that I am pulling my weight. I don't want to Lord my HUGE NUMBERZ over someone doing very poorly, but I don't want to have to invite the guy doing very poorly back again, either. I also don't want to carry people who are lazy or bad through content.
    Live without? Maybe, if there was another way to check performance. I wouldn't want to live without it, though.

    UI/Bars/Layout
    Why? Because a customizable layout has become necessary in gaming. I don't know when or how it happened, but it did and now I wants it all my way!
    Live without? Easily, so long as the UI's good and/or they add a way to change it around with the elements in-game, like Rift.

    Macros
    Why? These are very important to me. Macros allow you to take your character so far beyond someone who doesn't use them. I don't think it should be at the extent where you can one-button mash your whole rotation, but Macros are great within reason.
    Live without? Yeah, though it would make me a sad panda.
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  16. #56
    The only thing I'd love to have is some sort of mouse over system. Healing, or any other group type stuff, is a giant pain in the ass without it.

  17. #57
    i'm personally a huge fan of addons. i run a heavily modified UI

    i wouldnt miss healing/dps meters, or dbm/omen as long as the encounters are designed around those addons not existing.

  18. #58
    Deleted
    I will really miss my DHUD ... i like having my life and recource bar in the center of my screen (and the bars of my target and casting bars and petbars and whatnot^^). A damage meter is something that i use to monitor my own performance. Damage taken, healing done, damage done ... i know that a lot of people say "a lot of damage doesn't mean you're a good player" ... but ultimatly ... thats what damage dealers are for ... and though a lot of damage doesn't mean someone is good ... little damage is a sign for bad players (if they are not interupting, kiting adds and whatnot).

    Also a completely configurable UI and additional free movable bars would be really nice ... and buff addons ... i always forget to buff (RIP pally power ... i miss you ^^).

    But i suppose i could live without them.

  19. #59
    Deleted
    I am strongly against add-ons for TOR.

    The ideal must be to have a game so well made, that there is no need for add-ons. That way, everyone plays with the same terms. If the game is enjoyable without add-ons, I believe the devs have done a good job. If add-ons are needed, it will quickly go downhill. It must be hundred times easier to balance a game without add-ons messing with everything.

  20. #60
    Deleted
    I want threat meters - if I'm picking up a stray mob - I need to know if I can move on or gain some more threat. You might say that it is a quality of life issue. But I really don't think its too much.
    I want a recount feature - Recount or WoL: doesn#t really matter. When progressing hard - I need to know if someone is underperforming - so we can either put them in the right direction or simply replace.
    I want macros! to announce my cooldown being used - to make gcd n non gcd ability macros etc - and mouseover macroes (cus all ma healer friends im bringin is mouseover freaks)
    - Other addons i dont really care about.
    I dont want a DBM feature though.

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