Should they just break addons?

[Maruka]

It feels like a feed back loop at the moment. Addons have so much power to dictate fights that blizzard has to make the encounters super intricate which makes addons more important and more of the focus of the fight.

Id like to see them block a lot of addon functionality and then dial back the insane mechanics slightly to compensate.

[minteK917]

It feels like a feed back loop at the moment. Addons have so much power to dictate fights that blizzard has to make the encounters super intricate which makes addons more important and more of the focus of the fight.

Id like to see them block a lot of addon functionality and then dial back the insane mechanics slightly to compensate.

Its not really that the mechanics are insane, its that the game itself does not justify these mechanics often. This is especially true of mechanics on timer, those just shouldnt be a thing. Make mechanics queue an ingame thing, may it be animation, cast bars/time or hp. Something that is intuitive to gameplay. The only reason those mechanics exist is that we run a bunch of addons telling us when the timers are about to go lol.

They also end up stacking too many mechanics at once, warranting addons. Because you are human and sensory overload is a thing. You can pay attention to like 2-3 things happening at once, when it goes over that you need the addon to warn you. You cant think that many things at once.

Number of mechanic =/= difficulty. All those discussion are about quality of fights. The add ons that warn you about everything makes worse fights, they are fights made for the add ons in mind. Addons that solve for you the sensory overload that shouldnt be in the game. I could make you the hardest fight in all of wow with only 2-3 mechanics and no overload. By simply making them hard to execute and require coordination. Or i could make you an easier fight with 8 overlapping mechanics, and if you had no addon would feel harder. The latter is just a shit fight. The former you will probably feel like you are mastering something upon execution.

[Playintrafic]

Weakauras needs to be annihilated.[/B]

Nah, it just needs to be strongly curtailed.

It was fine when it was just being used to track Cooldowns and procs and stuff.

[cparle87]

For what its worth, I think they are adding native mouse over keybind support. I remember seeing something about that, not sure if it ever made it live yet or not though.




The rest of that is just stupid.

That's been live for a few weeks.

[Sugani]

The 1% bring in more revenue than the 99%, so no they shouldn't. Unless you're in a world where you think subs are the primary income for the game these days. There is a bottom line sub limit that I'm sure the CFO knows that they can't hit, but that doesn't somehow mean that subs are more important than the big name gamers and guilds. I mean man I love how Mr Joe Casual is bringing in millions of dollars via YouTube and Twitch contracts that Blizzard makes..... oh wait it's the 1% bringing those in.

Yea and without the 99%, the 1% won’t stick around. Great logic there numb nuts.

[gaaara]

It's player choice.

[Daffan]

addons are amazing

the only big 'problem' ones are those that interact with combat log very heavily to change gameplay

[dragonflight10]

i think it would be a good idea, but only for instanced content. Addons offer far too good QoL for things like AH i would not like to part with.

so only remove addons for things you don't like and keep ones you like lol ? that bias can't believe some gamers think like this in 2022
your opinion is so stupid lol

- - - Updated - - -

I feel that the game went way too far with addons again.
It was like that in late WoD too.
I was always playing the game with as little addons as I could, I didn't had to have a boss mod yelling at me every 5 seconds to get out of damaging floor or something. I managed to beat all of MOP raid tiers on mythic (or back then - heroic) without any boss mod installed.
First tier of WOD was manageable as well. But the second tier (on mythic), well... not quite. I had to have an addon for Kormrok (hands), and another one for Iskar (cos passing the ball fast enough with default UI was nearly impossible) and yet another one for Archimonde (lazer beams).

Then in Legion and BFA they again toned down this bullshit a bit, I haven't raided all tiers but most were manageable without DBM or weak auras. Mostly awareness mechanics, you know what's coming and how to deal with it.

But then Shadowlands came and another round of clusterfuck fights that have mechanics which require addons. And any kind of mythic guild i was in was mandating weakauras from players. I mean fuck off, do i have to have so much trash on my UI on every damn fight? I clearly don't, I was fine without that for years.

What's up with blizzard? Did their UI Design team just gave up because everyone just uses ElvUI/RothUI/GennUI? AH took 10 years to fix, prior to BFA patch 8.2 it was unusable without some sort of UI addon such as TSM or auctionator. They're basically telling the players to fix their damn game for them. And the result is having to install a hundred fucking addons and have 15 LUA errors pop up every login. I'm through tolerating this.

wow how did you raid mythic and not know you can alter addons to be much less distracting and noisy, your exaggerating of how addons yell makes you look like a tool lol
anyways goodjob being a burden and refusing to put simple addons when raiding xD i got CE 2 times with DBM/details/some light weak auras when needed

- - - Updated - - -

I'd personally like to watch a RWF race without dbm/bigwigs/ to see just how 'good' the players are

if you think addons is what makes those players world first then you don't know shit about raiding xD
your comment feels like something ppl would say in vanilla

[Battlebeard]

Another reason I prefer Classic over Retail, you don't need addons to take part in all content, so I don't use them. Feels FAR more mandatory in retail sadly

[Kittahsmash]

The default UI in WoW is godawful, from the bars to the nameplates...it's just not good. As long as we can modify that, I'd be all for preveninting computational or raiding addons completely!

[GotNoRice]

They addressed addons in a recent blue post or developer interview (can't remember which) where they basically said that the big issue with modern addons is that they have become too computational. As in, some addons have gone beyond customization and are actually doing things automatically which they intended the player to do manually.

If they were to ban these more computational addons, I would not have a problem with that, as long as encounter difficulty and mechanics are adjusted accordingly. For example, trying to do Lords of Dread without the WeakAura that allows you to vote would be like something out of a bad comedy movie.

But the addons that I would have the hardest time living without really are not very computational in nature. I've played a healer since Vanilla and I've always used the Healbot addon (which is not a "bot", simply a customized raid-frame addon). If they banned that and forced me to heal using only the stock raid frames, that might very well be enough reason for me to quit the game. It would be like being forced to drive a car using a joystick instead of a steering wheel.

Another reason I prefer Classic over Retail, you don't need addons to take part in all content, so I don't use them. Feels FAR more mandatory in retail sadly

I was already using plenty of addons back in Vanilla, BC, and Wrath. Many of the same addons that I still use today. Why would you think there is no use for addons in Classic?

[Royru]

They addressed addons in a recent blue post or developer interview (can't remember which) where they basically said that the big issue with modern addons is that they have become too computational. As in, some addons have gone beyond customization and are actually doing things automatically which they intended the player to do manually.

I don't have a big problem with this, as long as encounter difficulty and mechanics are adjusted accordingly. For example, trying to do Lords of Dread without the WeakAura that allows you to vote would be like something out of a bad comedy movie.

But the addons that I would have the hardest time living without really are not very computational in nature. I've played a healer since Vanilla and I've always used the Healbot addon (which is not a "bot", simply a customized raid-frame addon). If they banned that and forced me to heal using only the stock raid frames, that might very well be enough reason for me to quit the game. It would be like being forced to drive a car using a joystick instead of a steering wheel.



I was already using plenty of addons back in Vanilla, BC, and Wrath. Many of the same addons that I still use today. Why would you think there is no use for addons in Classic?

The addons back then for raids were kinda shit. That and even if you had them they weren’t needed at all. I think they were saying they prefer the raid environment where you could go in there and not be required to have them at all

[Gorsameth]

Early WoW had addons far more powerful then what exists today. Being able to determined to most injured raid member, select the appropriate rank heal for their missing HP and cast it on them all with a single button? Vanilla addons could do that, modern ones cannot.

Automatically decurse/dispel anyone in the raid with a single button, no looking at the screen required? Again vanilla.

Those modern 'computational addons' largely exist because the devs make raid fights that 'require' them. Encounter design drives addon development much more then addon features drive encounter design. Outside of some generic egregious shit like when addons were painting safe or soak zones on screen that can apply to any fight a lot of the 'features' exist only because encounters ask for them.

Stuff like Archimondes beam assignments or the Lords of Dread voting exists because the encounter tries to make you solve a 'complex' problem in a few seconds while also doing the rest of the fight.
If the designers don't try to make the players juggle 20 balls, the players wouldn't be looking so hard to cheat at juggling.

Raid bosses don't need 6 pages of abilities and overlaps to give the 'elite' a challenge while pushing out the more casual players more and more with its complexity.
I'm not saying we need to go back to 1-2 ability bosses like in 'ye old days, but there is a middle ground to be found here.

[Royru]

Early WoW had addons far more powerful then what exists today. Being able to determined to most injured raid member, select the appropriate rank heal for their missing HP and cast it on them all with a single button? Vanilla addons could do that, modern ones cannot.

What you’re describing isn’t technically addons, but macros. There were addons that you could download to make this easier but all they did was make macros that allowed you to have inputs such as this. They basically played the game for you. They were also so buggy I’m pretty sure there was a warrior macro of some kind to glitch out your swing timers or something and cause you to do insane amounts of damage.



But that is an interesting thought, blizzard saw macros made the game too easy and they had to design around them until they got sick of it and nuked how the macros worked…. Seems they should do the same now as they did back then.

[k0nker]

What you’re describing isn’t technically addons, but macros. There were addons that you could download to make this easier but all they did was make macros that allowed you to have inputs such as this. They basically played the game for you. They were also so buggy I’m pretty sure there was a warrior macro of some kind to glitch out your swing timers or something and cause you to do insane amounts of damage.



But that is an interesting thought, blizzard saw macros made the game too easy and they had to design around them until they got sick of it and nuked how the macros worked…. Seems they should do the same now as they did back then.

It was literally a set of addons. HealBot, PallyPower, and many others, that only required the addon to be installed and the addon lua did all of the logic and casting for you.

Edit for clarity: What the addons used to do is take the unit that you are hovering over, calculate what spell is needed to heal them the most efficiently, and then cast that spell when you click by binding that spell to your mouse button on button press. You could also have a macro to just hit and heal the nearest person that needed it.

[Royru]

It was literally a set of addons. HealBot, PallyPower, and many others, that only required the addon to be installed and the addon lua did all of the logic and casting for you.

Edit for clarity: What the addons used to do is take the unit that you are hovering over, calculate what spell is needed to heal them the most efficiently, and then cast that spell when you click by binding that spell to your mouse button on button press. You could also have a macro to just hit and heal the nearest person that needed it.

Okay but hear me out for a second. Those addons used macros. The issue wasn’t the addon itself, it was how the macro system worked.

You could go into your macros and do the exact same thing that these addons did, the addons just made it easier to manage.

[Tiwack]

WA has become a staple of many players, more so than regular boss-timers like DBM or bigwigs - even to the extent that they're integrating it into the game with the UI-makeover of DragonFlight expansion.
As Ion said it's a question of how much should they allow players to track in terms of auras, abilities and cooldowns, addon-communication between players etc.
Information is power and makes cooperation easier as less things have to be communicated by the players themselves.
It may feel like it trivializes encounters but they just become less engaging as all thinking has been done for you, just requiring your input to act and do the safety dance to victory as it goes.
I think bosstimers and cd tracking helps you plan ahead and that feels good, players forget however that WA is useless without strats to go with the stuff it shows you in much the same way. It's just much closer to cutting things close and thus don't feel that way.
In the end players have fun playing their classes and most players are fine with MC levels of mechanics as the core attraction of wow always was the gameplay of your character in some cool dungeons playing along with your friends.
If they did a better job of baking some of this stuff into the game, I think it'd be for the better, but I'd really like them to host their own modding-workshop rather than ban it altogether or keep directing players to 3rd party sites.

[kamuimac]

what they hsould do is stop caring what world best guilds do.

nerf everythign but 40-60 % and let things go back to how they were in wolk - casual heaven .

who cares if method cleares raid in 3 hours. nobody sane cares about them in first place.

[Biomega]

who cares if method cleares raid in 3 hours. nobody sane cares about them in first place.

Yeah, let's just get rid of a regular event drawing in tens of thousands of viewers and reaching even more through ancillary info. Why would a company ever want free promotion on that scale, we all know advertisement doesn't matter for selling your product. AMIRITE?

[Th3Scourge]

Yeah, let's just get rid of a regular event drawing in tens of thousands of viewers and reaching even more through ancillary info. Why would a company ever want free promotion on that scale, we all know advertisement doesn't matter for selling your product. AMIRITE?

Maybe they should make a better product that draws in hundreds of thousands more subscribers over chasing 10 days of twitch clout for tens of thousands of viewers

aMiRiTe?~1