Combat add-ons gone in Dragonflight?

[anon5123]

Screw those addons, you can play without your super specific UI. You’ll be just fine. Don’t be a snowflake.

Imagine advocating for less control over your gameplay experience. Mega yikes.

[Jastall]

The real big one that comes to mind is weakauras. That shit has gotten out of control. I think the base idea of the ability to track procs / trinkets / and cooldowns is fine and I think that is where it started. But man.. that thing now can tell you where to move, what to click, how to do your rotation, and every boss ability with now to react to it all rolling at the same time. Top end guilds have weakaura departments with staffs. That tells you its a problem. If you invest real world money into paying a staff to create addon strings for your raid to progress more efficiently it tells you that those without that probably are going to have a bit of an issue. That shouldn't be part of the arms race in a video game no matter how degen of a level someone is playing it for their job.

Yeah, it's the one addon that I do think is getting silly. Weakauras are a PITA to manage but at the same time ludicrously powerful when used right.

Devs making fights a bit less complicated and kneecapping WAs really wouldn't make me lose sleep.

[Temporaldrift]

I'm not saying games without add-ons can't work... You have an entire triade against a point I didn't make.

Removing add-ons that allow for customization which has been part of the game for the entire existence is not gonna be met with praise.

People don't like removal of customization options that has been part of it for so long. Which I believe is true. Taking things away aren't met with joy.

Only at the end you seemed to touch upon my argument... But only with anger, no arguments.
Not sure why I'm a snowflake because I recognize issues and make a theory that it won't be good to remove add-ons.

Changing how they design encounters I'm all for it. So I even agree with most of your post. But damn, calm down.

I didn’t say it with anger, if you read it like that then I apologize. I’m saying it as a matter of fact as possible. What I said does touch on what you said, you said it would kill the game by removing them, so your argument (whether you meant to say it or not) is that the game cannot survive without them, and I think that’s absolutely ridiculous. I went on an explanation of how addons are inherently a bad thing for wow overall, attempting to make my argument showing you how I believe the exact opposite of what you said. Your stance is the game can’t survive without them, my stance is the game is being hurt by them.

I layed out very specific examples for my argument whether or not you think it was just anger, it wasn’t.

And I’m not saying they need to change how they do encounters, I’m saying they shouldn’t have to change how they do encounters. I’m saying they shouldn’t have to design the game around addons. I’m saying if the bump in the road is addons when it comes to game design then it’s better that they just nuke them rather then tip toe around it.

Customizations aren’t my enemy by any means, but if customizations have to go in order to make the game better then so be it imo.

In a perfect world if they can find a way to just kill combat addons specifically (raid/mythic/arena) that make the game easier or basically turn your play into an automation then great! But from what Ian said it doesn’t seem possible so I think if that’s the case it’s better to just forget about the roadblock and just nuke them.

[dragonflight10]

I don't have WoWup or any launcher installed to be honest but all of these steps to play a game SHOULD NOT be necessary, to say but its only a few clicks is defeating the purpose of being able to play a game out of the box.



Pretty much this, MODS should NOT be a necessary edition to enjoy the game.

They shouldn't but thats the way it is, you people think way too much over this

[Temporaldrift]

Imagine advocating for less control over your gameplay experience. Mega yikes.

If it means the gameplay becomes less automated and has better less cluttered boss mechanics, then yes. Idk why this is even considered a hot take

[ONCHEhap]

FF content is a joke in difficulty so dont lie about it being difficult especially compared to mythic raids in WoW.

saying that FF content is a joke is simply and demonstrably untrue. Savage raid tiers are on par with the first half/first 75% of a mythic raid,while ultimate raids are on par with mythic end bosses (some will say it's harder due to the extremely long fight length,but this is more about personal abilities than anything objective) and require up to a month even for the best players to clear.

Of course if you're looking at normal raids it's not very difficult,but that's about as sensible at looking at WoW's LFR and saying that WoW is piss easy (and normal raids in FFXIV are still a couple of leagues above LFR)

[kenn9530]

saying that FF content is a joke is simply and demonstrably untrue. Savage raid tiers are on par with the first half/first 75% of a mythic raid,while ultimate raids are on par with mythic end bosses (some will say it's harder due to the extremely long fight length,but this is more about personal abilities than anything objective) and require up to a month even for the best players to clear.

Of course if you're looking at normal raids it's not very difficult,but that's about as sensible at looking at WoW's LFR and saying that WoW is piss easy (and normal raids in FFXIV are still a couple of leagues above LFR)

FF raid difficulty is no more than heroic level from WoW, players in FF dont play for hardcore raiding mainly they play for all the other things it offers since FF excells at offering a more rounded amount of content, its dungeons and raid content however are not up to par with what WoW does best and thats dungeons and raid content.

[cparle87]

If they introduced ways of telegraphing certain abilities better in game, the need for them could be diminished.
Obvious stuff like the boss saying a specific phrase followed by a specific action. Or the boss flashing before an ability is cast.

Imho what plays the use of addons in hand is bosses having scripted abilities on a fixed timer. That's an open door for addon makers, and quite logical. Track time and pop up a notification on time-stamps. This doesn't have to change, but they could make that sequence more obvious by just looking at the boss/fight. An add running over to a specific place, the boss starting a certain animation.

One thing I really wish for is adding outlines to stuff on the ground and cone attacks. I really dislike the "am I in the fire or out the fire if I stand here? Can't really tell". Margrave Stradama is a good example of that. The tentacle slam visual on the floor is actually smaller than it's hitbox. If you where to stand just next to the graphic on the floor you'd get clapped even tho visually your character isn't in the targeted area.

Very much agree about the attack telegraphs. Another thing I'd like is them to copy the half-eaten donut selection circle from FF14 so you can see which way tour target is facing. Not as huge a deal in WoW since we have fewer positionals but it would be helpful when there's a ton of mobs and one of them has a nasty cleave and you can't tell.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Very much agree about the attack telegraphs. Another thing I'd like is them to copy the half-eaten donut selection circle from FF14 so you can see which way tour target is facing. Not as huge a deal in WoW since we have fewer positionals but it would be helpful when there's a ton of mobs and one of them has a nasty cleave and you can't tell.

That does indeed exist already in WoW, it just is very hard to see and use in a practical manner due to how insanely visually cluttered the floor gets. Spell VFX from players and enemies tend to make it impossible to see, as well as some floors, and just some boss models outright obscure the facing indicator too.

Edit: Realized I failed to properly specify I'm talking about the facing indicator. It was added as part of the default UI with Legion, it just isn't very usable most of the time.

[cparle87]

That does indeed exist already in WoW, it just is very hard to see and use in a practical manner due to how insanely visually cluttered the floor gets. Spell VFX from players and enemies tend to make it impossible to see, as well as some floors, and just some boss models outright obscure the facing indicator too.

Edit: Realized I failed to properly specify I'm talking about the facing indicator. It was added as part of the default UI with Legion, it just isn't very usable most of the time.

Yeah, that super itty bitty teeny tiny arrow that I had to open up the game and target the nearest town guard and look twice to see. Yeah, they could totally make the arrow bigger and/or make the back half down like FF does so you can actually tell. Not lying, legit had to open game and check to make sure you weren't pulling my tail.

[Swnem]

They don't have the balls to get rid of addons. This dev team is still being held back by values of the past and are still convinced that that is the way. It is very difficult to change their minds on anything.
It took 6 years to walk back the borrowed power systems.

They never added high elves (just a modified version) or ogres, they have not added housing, they have not added any popular class request such as Tinker and Necromancer or blademaster.
The only time when they listened was when they added Vulpera instead of the nazjatar goblins. They literally don't listen to the community. Only when forced. How many millions of players did borrowed power cost? Most teams would've seen major lay-offs.
It's miraculous to me that they still have jobs. Added shop items saved their hides. But, they still hold to the old ways. I guess classic didn't help with that.

[Rubim]

They don't have the balls to get rid of addons. This dev team is still being held back by values of the past and are still convinced that that is the way. It is very difficult to change their minds on anything.
It took 6 years to walk back the borrowed power systems.

They never added high elves (just a modified version) or ogres, they have not added housing, they have not added any popular class request such as Tinker and Necromancer or blademaster.
The only time when they listened was when they added Vulpera instead of the nazjatar goblins. They literally don't listen to the community. Only when forced. How many millions of players did borrowed power cost? Most teams would've seen major lay-offs.
It's miraculous to me that they still have jobs. Added shop items saved their hides. But, they still hold to the old ways. I guess classic didn't help with that.

Nothing to do with that.

There's a bunch of work that needs to be done to just remove "combat addons".

There's no proper telegrah, no proper timmings.

[Zardas]

Is my dream becoming truth, no more combat addons in Dragonfight? Would be so nice because the difficulty in the raids and dungeons would be designed without the addons.
I never used addons and so for me dungeon runs in Dragonflight would be much better and hey maybe even M+0 possible for me tanking.

Asmongold Confronts Blizzard on youtube , Asmongold interview with Ion at 15:35

While I'm all for the deletion of combat add-on, you can totally tank in mythic+ without add-ons

[bloodmoth13]

Boss mods are awful, it's an add-on literally yelling at you how to play, basically puts tutorial mode on for competitive players which is terrible design.

Of course it's necessary because without it you have little idea on what is happening because skills and mechanics aren't clearly communicated or convoluted. There probably needs to be some standards set for enemy abilities so that you have a decent idea of what to expect.

Wow has far too much information that isn't communicated well. Players need guides and add-ons to understand what is going on which is piss poor in this age. Players should be able to learn mechanics by playing, one solid way to do this is giving enemies in patch content watered down boss abilities with the same telegraphing so that players can practice the mechanics in the open world as they play the game. The world content should prepare players for the raid by introducing mechanics, not just by getting benefit gear.

[cocomen2]

they don't even need to balance classes, just block dps-tracker addons so that other players would not knowing who is better than them or worse, perfection. /s

[Dorothyjean]

I disagree, I find having to install mods to play a game more offputting than actually playing the game, The content is only as difficult as the Devs make it and FF has some of the most brutal content in the game for those seeking it should they want too, to say its easy is disingenuous but I suppose you'd rather a mod tell you how to play the game instead, That's not freedom.

In a strange sort of way you know about what others do is ruining your own experience in the game because you are looking outside of the game and complaining about something that has no real relevance to you. Like I get you don't like addons or mods but that is your individual opinion about them and you are aware of them because you are reaching outside of the game and ruining your own experience.

Why not just focus on yourself and the way you want to play the or a game and allow others to play the game they wish to play. This sort of thing exists in almost every game out there from Chess and Go to modern games. Chess grandmasters have to do so much above and beyond the game of chess in order to become Grandmasters and by extension that is outside of the purity of the game. If you tried to become a Grandmaster at chess without reading what others have done you simply would never become a grandmaster ever and you would be holding yourself back for the "purity" of the game.

Your problem is that you, as an individual, want to play the game a certain way but instead of just enjoying it by yourself you want to force others to play the game you want which is not what the majority of players want in this game. You are in the minority on this topic of the game and you should just enjoy the game the way you want it and stop forcing your opinion onto others because you are ruining the way they want to play the game by having to read your negativity.

[PenguinChan]

It's a good thing they're making more addons baseline, but even the developers understand that addons can be overbearing if not down-right automated and defeat the purpose of the game part in video game. Then there is the entire issue of harassment because of these addons that can happen. I'd like to believe making such addons built in will help reduce that factor - so people can't just chew you out for not having it.

Your problem is that you, as an individual, want to play the game a certain way but instead of just enjoying it by yourself you want to force others to play the game you want which is not what the majority of players want in this game. You are in the minority on this topic of the game and you should just enjoy the game the way you want it and stop forcing your opinion onto others because you are ruining the way they want to play the game by having to read your negativity.

They also amused it as a what-if scenario and didn't really push it onto someone. Sounds like you have beef with the 'no-addon' crowd.

[Grax]

Blizzard doesn't need to do anything to break or otherwise disable any addon specifically or addons in general. They need to improve the UI and add clarity to encounters through animations, audio cues, spell effects, and/or indicators, thereby making such addons redundant. Changing gameplay from the current rigid, twitchy rotation order and allowing a little more player input and creativity wouldn't hurt either. DMB, WeakAuras, and the like only exist to try and solve a problem Blizzard created.

[lordjust]

What fight in the last few raids have been designed with addons in mind?

A lot of them are designed with add-ons in mind. You have like lords of dread or the rune boss in sanctum that are very hard or near impossible without a weak aura but also other fights and mechanics are designed with add-ons in mind to make them harder meaning shorter timers like the bomb timer on halondrus mythic that was recently nerfed. The 10 second timer was brutal and you needed a weak aura to tell you when to drop so you can concentrate on other things.

It's all these small things that are stacked on top of each other that you can keep track of with add-ons but are very hard to keep track of without. Should they they nuke combat add-ons? I don't think so. A big benefit of dbm or bigwigs is the better visualisation of buffs and debuffs. Marking people with a raidmarker, adding yells and countdowns, tracking debuffs with a weak aura. Dasaugne halos are so much easier with a weak aura to track when you can step through the next one instead of counting in your head or looking for the debuff in you buff bar or player unitframe.

[Dorothyjean]

It's a good thing they're making more addons baseline, but even the developers understand that addons can be overbearing if not down-right automated and defeat the purpose of the game part in video game. Then there is the entire issue of harassment because of these addons that can happen. I'd like to believe making such addons built in will help reduce that factor - so people can't just chew you out for not having it.



They also amused it as a what-if scenario and didn't really push it onto someone. Sounds like you have beef with the 'no-addon' crowd.

Nah, could care less about who does what in the game because it's what they want to do. They also didn't "what if", there are numerous posts about it from the same person and each one is pretty PO'd about addons in the game and mocking people for using them. I'm cool with whatever someone wants to do in-game but pushing your non-sense onto others and mocking them for it is a bigger problem in the game than addons. :P