Addons & Friendly Nameplates in Patch 7.2

[masterhorus8]

https://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/17615133023#1

With Patch 7.2, we’re disabling the ability for addons to modify the appearance of friendly nameplates while inside dungeon and raid instances.

While, for the most part, we’re impressed with -- and encourage -- the creativity that addon authors bring to the game using the addon API, occasionally an addon goes too far in terms of automating or trivializing elements of gameplay that are meant to be highly challenging. Recently, we’ve become aware of a couple addons that were using visual adjustments to friendly nameplates as a method to automatically coordinate complex positioning requirements. This caused what was intended to be a difficult test of a group’s ability to identify positioning requirements on the fly to instead become a simple matter of following a visual marker.

In order to prevent this from continuing, we’ve had to disable the ability for addons to modify how friendly nameplates appear while inside of dungeon and raid instances. Nothing has changed outside of dungeons and raids – addons will still be able to customize the appearance of friendly nameplates everywhere else (most notably in PvP, where they’re most commonly used in ways we don’t consider problematic).

We also don’t anticipate that addon authors will need to update their code to accommodate this change; customizations should simply stop working once a player zones into a raid, and start working again once they’ve left. However, if you’d like to double-check, this change should now be active in the current 7.2 PTR environment.

Well, so much for actually having an addon that made friendly nameplates looks good for once. Kui friendly plates, you will be missed. #RIP

[grexly75]

Blame the addon authors that in a way exploited that part of the addon API to give some people an advantage.. And because of what they have done has now affected everyone just so they could have an edge in a raid encounter..

[Kagthul]

... my eyes are going to bleed out of my head.

Guess ill just stop leveling my Resto druid.

- - - Updated - - -

Blame the addon authors that in a way exploited that part of the addon API to give some people an advantage.. And because of what they have done has now affected everyone just so they could have an edge in a raid encounter..

More like..

If blizzard doesn't want the API to do that, they can disable it. That simple.

[Aquinan]

... my eyes are going to bleed out of my head.

Guess ill just stop leveling my Resto druid.

- - - Updated - - -



More like..

If blizzard doesn't want the API to do that, they can disable it. That simple.

...and so they did.

[cFortyfive]

Too bad they can't design ui elements themselves that don't cause cancer.

[Kagthul]

Too bad they can't design ui elements themselves that don't cause cancer.

No shit, right?

The default UI is so fucking ugly it makes my brain bleed.

Theyve got guys that can do a good UI.. they just dont work on WoW i guess.

- - - Updated - - -

...and so they did.

No, they disabled a whole bunch of other shit, too, because they are too lazy to just fix the API.

Now i have to stare at giant ugly bars that provide me with no relevant information.

What baffles me is, Blizz of old used to fix this sh it in days.

Now, with a team twice the size, we get told it cant be fixed so well just disable it.

Fuck that.

[Drish]

No shit, right?

The default UI is so fucking ugly it makes my brain bleed.

Theyve got guys that can do a good UI.. they just dont work on WoW i guess.

- - - Updated - - -



No, they disabled a whole bunch of other shit, too, because they are too lazy to just fix the API.

Now i have to stare at giant ugly bars that provide me with no relevant information.

What baffles me is, Blizz of old used to fix this sh it in days.

Now, with a team twice the size, we get told it cant be fixed so well just disable it.

Fuck that.

With the amount of anger part of me hopes that second sentence comes true.

The fun thing is i'd assume this is directed at star augur? The execution of doing the fire nova and then having the whole raid team spread with limited room is harder than the actual color touching mechanic. It doesn't seem like that much of an issue but it makes me wonder whats to come in the next raid tier.

[Relapses]

With Blizzard systematically removing API functions from the game, by 7.3 we'll be playing an unironic version of World of Warcraft: The Molten Core.

[ls-]

No, they disabled a whole bunch of other shit, too, because they are too lazy to just fix the API.

Now i have to stare at giant ugly bars that provide me with no relevant information.

What baffles me is, Blizz of old used to fix this sh it in days.

Now, with a team twice the size, we get told it cant be fixed so well just disable it.

Fuck that.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

They disabled any way to anchor/parent anything to new so-called forbidden nameplates, this means: no lines between to nameplates, no smart circles around player characters, etc. However, it also means that nothing else can be attached to such nameplate either. A texture is a texture, one may be used maliciously, another one may be a piece of artwork, however, code-wise they are exactly the same thing. The same goes for frames.

And you're a bit confused, Blizzard of old used to NOT FIX anything for months.

[stevenho]

Are they really breaking the possibility of having class-colored, actually visible names instead of unreadable default garbage?
What a fckn disaster.

[Deleted]

Blizzard is so fucking useless.

[Deleted]

R.I.P KUI Nameplates

[Deleted]

More like..

If blizzard doesn't want the API to do that, they can disable it. That simple.

More like...

blizzard wants you to put a nice texture or w/e on your friendly name plates.
blizzard doesn't want you to to put a texture thats 20x the size of the regular texture.

so now as a quick fix they sledgehammer the entire thing so everybody is stuck with default frames.

hopefully they took the sledgehammer approach because there is not enough engineer time available for a more elegant solution, but hopefully we will get one in the future.

[Relapses]

hopefully they took the sledgehammer approach because there is not enough engineer time available for a more elegant solution, but hopefully we will get one in the future.

I mean, we've been waiting 12+ years for a somewhat decent default UI with easily programmable and customizable options, what's another 12 years?

[ls-]

More like...

blizzard wants you to put a nice texture or w/e on your friendly name plates.
blizzard doesn't want you to to put a texture thats 20x the size of the regular texture.

so now as a quick fix they sledgehammer the entire thing so everybody is stuck with default frames.

hopefully they took the sledgehammer approach because there is not enough engineer time available for a more elegant solution, but hopefully we will get one in the future.

That's not a sledgehammer approach though...

it's tech to add controls for us to make any unit's nameplate forbidden, there will be an official post coming shortly,
the goal is to allow addons to continue to customize nameplates, but give us controls when/if it goes too far, i tried to make it as seamless as possible from the addon author end, there's nothing you should need to change assuming you weren't insecurely hooking our nameplate functions

and by going too far he meant

it's subjective, but essentially abusing nameplates for raid encounters or pvp or what have you

So right now it's used only for friendly nameplates in instanced PvE.

Obv if someone creates fucked up nameplate addon for instance PvP, we'll get them there too

[Deleted]

That's not a sledgehammer approach though...


and by going too far he meant


So right now it's used only for friendly nameplates in instanced PvE.

Obv if someone creates fucked up nameplate addon for instance PvP, we'll get them there too

i'm really curious to know your definition of a sledgehammer approach if disabling an entire feature in a core part of the game because a few use it in unexpected ways causing collateral damage for everybody else that uses it because it's easier then fixing the specific issue (scalpel approach) doesn't qualify.

[ls-]

i'm really curious to know your definition of a sledgehammer approach if disabling an entire feature in a core part of the game because a few use it in unexpected ways causing collateral damage for everybody else that uses it because it's easier then fixing the specific issue doesn't qualify.

It'd be a sledgehammer approach if they disabled entire nameplate customisation beyond tweaking available CVars, but they decided to do it selectively As I explained earlier, there's no way to programmatically determine what a texture is supposed to do. That's something we, humans, decided.

As an SE in general, and addon dev in particular, I think that collateral damage doesn't matter, prevention of undesired behaviour > customisation. That's why we have various SecureTemplates, that's why Blizz code can be "tainted" by 3rd party code, that's why we can't do many things from Lua while in combat, and that's why we can no longer customise friendly nameplates in instanced PvE.

In Vanilla, when we had none of these restrictions, and we even could replace stuff in "\FrameXML", it's REALLY easy to create a one button UI that would toss everything under your cursor, alternatively you could create one smart button for all actions/abilities

[Holyknight3000]

Its just so sad, you would have thought they would make some basic ui style options from their end but nope that would be too much work...

[Deleted]

It'd be a sledgehammer approach if they disabled entire nameplate customisation beyond tweaking available CVars As I explained earlier, there's no way to programmatically determine what a texture is supposed to do. That's something we, humans, decided.

As an SE in general, and addon dev in particular, I think that collateral damage doesn't matter, prevention of undesired behaviour > customisation. That's why we have various SecureTemplates, that's why Blizz code can be "tainted" by 3rd party code, that's why we can't do many things from Lua while in combat, and that's why we can no longer customise friendly nameplates in instanced PvE.

In Vanilla, when we had none of these restrictions, and we even could replace stuff in "\FrameXML", well, it's possible to mess w/ those files, but it's bannable offence now, kek, it's REALLY easy to create a one button UI that would toss everything under your cursor, alternatively you could create one smart button for all actions/abilities

If they can make friendly nameplanets forbidden, why can't they make debuffs on friendly nameplates forbidden?

would solve the problem.

[stevenho]

As an SE in general, and addon dev in particular, I think that collateral damage doesn't matter, prevention of undesired behaviour > customisation. That's why we have various SecureTemplates, that's why Blizz code can be "tainted" by 3rd party code, that's why we can't do many things from Lua while in combat, and that's why we can no longer customise friendly nameplates in instanced PvE.

While this might be true, what exactly are they trying to fix? Like, give me specific examples what is broken at the moment that requires spending development time on this change. I can only think of one thing - Star Augur mythic encounter, aka the one taking hundreds of wipes for the 0,1% of the raiders that actually reached him by now. Baffling.

Myself I don't care about icons/auras over friendly nameplates, I do however care a lot that we are going back to the unreadable shit that default names are.