It is Time to Ban WoW Addons

[SolasSlyM3]

They don't need to ban all addons, but there are several that really need to be dealt with.

The bigger problem is the social reality around raiding. RL's have a really bad habit of making addons mandatory-and some of that I understand, but I've never liked the transition from BigWigs to DBM, and then layering WeakAuras on top of that. WeakAuras in particular with its custom scripting has, in the words of the best tank I ever had the pleasure of tanking with, 'allowed me to be a mythic tank.' When he said that, I was shocked-but I knew exactly what he meant.

So long as the possibility exists of squeezing out extra performance out of a person exists, the overwhelming number of RL's will demand these addons. I'd like to see the game more default playable, but the things addons are doing make that a moving target at best. It's gotta' stop.

[Swnem]

I... agree.

But, it's a wall difficult to climb. You can see on the replies how dependent players are of them to the point they can't imagine playing without them.

[Caprias]

I don’t really think 99% of them or even most of them are made because of “short comings” of the game. I think they are just made to make your life easier in a way that isn’t necessary but people do it anyway.

Like dps meters. You don’t need them. Auction house addons. Don’t need them. Ui addons. You don’t need them. These are all things people just want. Most online games don’t even allow for custom addons, you just deal with the base ui and that’s it.

The ones that are the issues however are things like DBM or any other combat addon that has the bosses fight patterns memorized and will give you a heads up on what you need to do at a specific point. You for sure don’t need those.

-Dps meters/parsers are naturally wanted to improve and gage performance (which will always be necessary as long as there are dps/hps checks in a game.)
-AH has gotten better but addons where/are certainly wanted to navigate it and sell stuff without wasting time, navigating the older AH iterations was infuriating.
-UI addons are not needed? Well maybe I should throw that 30" screen out but I'd like to track my important CD's and procs without eye cramps.

These things are not "mandatory" obviously but my enjoyment would have drastically tanked without them, if there are other games who would not allow addons/workarounds at all and had very rough edges like mentioned above I might even drop them completely.

As for DBM I agree, timers are so ingrained into endgame as something baseline and natural when they're just really OP bye themselves.
Forget pattern recognition and carefully watching the boss, forget internalizing the boss timeline while you progress, dbm/bw/wa will tell me 15+ seconds beforehand anyways...
I'm pretty sure if timers are banned blizzard would even have to slow down encounter mechanics a bit since there's no reason right now to include something like reaction time into encounter design and balancing, that's kind of nuts.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

I kinda agree. Game should provide things we need within its interface, we don’t need Addons. They cause lag and errors and it takes a lot of effort to set them up.

[dewd]

im all for at least trying out disabling addons for a patch cycle. but only if they start making dungeon and raid bosses accordingly with like 2-3 well defined mechanics and not a dungeon journal the size of the bible.

[Kralljin]

I just disagree.

I think this discussion is largely driven by Streamers who laser focus on this singular issue without seeing the bigger picture.

Addons (at least Bossmods) are doing what they've done since forever:
1. Tell you timers
2. Tell when you stand in bad shit

When you remove the boss mods, you basically have to find other ways to communicate timers with the player, which is going to be very difficult because you can't add multiple energy bars to a boss.
Crux is, Boss mods present that information in the most customizable and disgestable information, if you remove the boss mods, you have to find other ways to communicate that information with the player, which will be very difficult in the long term.

If you want to get rid off Bossmods because timers, you basically have to rework how WoW encounters work because they are largely timer based.
And that's not a new development, that's been a thing since late Classic.

Of course, there is the occassional Weakaura that trivializes a certain mechanic, but that usually comes into play only in the upper echolons of Mythic raiding.
But even there, the encounters usually prove to be that challenging that even the trivialization of that one mechanic still leaves you with one tough fight.

It's not like Mythic Azshara became 10 Pull boss by getting the WA and putting up the marks in the right place.

So you would ironically save everyone involved some time by just not trying to develop mechanics that "beat" weakauras, the encounters are hard enough even without these mechanics.

When talking about encounter difficulty, people really need to broaden their spectrum and also recognize:
1. Blizzard has to design encounters around 4 difficulties, with two of them having a flexible amount of people.
With the "one size fits all" approach, it becomes increasingly difficult to design decent boss encounters.

There's fun, but difficult and there is just plain difficult and fun in my opinion can absolutely fall short when your design faces these huge restrictions.

2. Class power creep
Because classes have gotten increasingly stronger, the encounters simply have to follow suit.

Back in the day, a regular "get the fuck away" mechanic was sufficiently difficult, nowadays every class has some easy tool to avoid or trivialize mechanics.
What's the result?
More complex mechanics designed around these superior tools.

It's like giving you a literal toolkit, consisting out of a saw, some wood and nails, there's a limit what you can do with it.

When i give en entire shed full of tools and other supplies, the sky suddenly becomes the limit, but it's not like anyone but the most skilled people can fully realize the potential of these increasingly complex tools.

Side note: When players rely on 3rd party tools to tell them they're standing in bad shit, then maybe classes also have become too complex and take up too much of your attention in order to play them at a high level.
I wouldn't get caught standing in bad shit in TBC even without addons, because most classes require absolutely no thought process at all to play and you can pretty much focus on everything else around you.

There is some truth to this discussion, but i think too many people just fail to realize how much collateral damage something like this would cause.

Just for example, if Blizzard would ban Addons tomorrow, i'd just stop playing the AH, because TSM is frankly critical to that.
If Blizzard then wants to solve issue, they not only have to rebuild TSM for themselves but also continously maintain that into the future.

And that's just a single addon, now think about all the other addons that exist and many players rely upon, Blizzard either has to give these players the middle finger or provide an alternative on their end, which
1. They have to build
2. They have to maintain
3. Has to come with at least similiar customization options

Now this entire addon issue moves past design issue and into resource issue for Blizzard, which naturally is a huge game changer for them.

One of the big reason is the addon. Ion said in recently interview, Blizzard has to make the encounters harder and harder, because combat addons are more and more intelligent. This is just a vicious circle.

He didn't explicitly say that, he however pointed that some mechanics are being trivialized by addons.

However, his chosen example was in my opinion extremely poor because there are two addons Blizzard will never get rid off:
1. Google Docs
2. Second monitor

I'm raiding in TBCC right now and when something needs to be assigned and i'm not sure whether those in the raid can handle it without guidance, i make a sheet, put the assignments there and share the link.
Boom, problem solved.

And that's something Blizzard literally cannot beat.

[Iain]

It's mainly the warning addons in pvp and boss encounters that undermine the gameplay. Because these addons hold the player's hand, Blizzard has to balance in ways through other means which aren't as fun as forcing the player to pay close attention to a fight.

Without those, addons mainly provide a great laboratory that developers could consolidate into the main game eventually.

[StillMcfuu]

Nobody loves to download, upgrade, set their addons all the time on every computer he plays WoW. It is just a hassle and it should not be necessary.

The recent Overwolf and WoWup issue shows again how messy third parties are, from curse to twitch to wowup to overwolf to whatever in the future. Players don’t deserve this.

.

Why do people bring this up, do people not back up their WTF and Addon folders? All you have to do is load both where ever you want wow, or if you delete wow and come back months later, reload the files and start the client. Then shutdown and update your addons.

On the subject of getting rid of Addons, unless Blizz wanted to seriously up their stock UI game; I don't want to play the game dumbed down for the stock UI. There are just a ton of class interactions that aren't tracked well in the stock UI that I don't want to lose that class depth.

I know this thread and the discussion has been coming from FFXIV but just in general FFXIV combat systems are not as complex as WoW's and I don't want to lose the depth. If you really don't want a UI Mod experience, just play FFXIV. I think ultimately this just serves to show you want WoW to be more FFXIV like. Which I respect that you like FF that much and want some of those elements in WoW, probably because you are more invested in the Warcraft setting, but you should just look inward and say to yourself do you want to play Warcraft or FF.

I look at this discussion the same as say complaining about Total War: WH because it's not RTS enough in the vein of AOE. Choose your game/world and enjoy it for what it is, don't criticize it for what it was never meant to be.

[Goat7]

I agree but Blizzard would have to put in A LOT of effort into making the default UI better. They would have to take some of these mods and put them directly into the game. At that point they could then ban addons.

[Rinnegan2]

wow addons made it possible for gamers to create the best possible gaming UI over the past 20 years. but I get your point. every single part of a modern wow UI needs to be part of the base UI. updating your UI and downloading from third party sites is obviously not ideal. take the UI of a pro raider and implement it <- which is something they have started doing in 10.0

2004 ui will obviously still be a skin of the modern UI if players liked that better.

[CalamityHeart]

I'm somewhere between 2 and 3, closer to 3. If Blizzard could find some way to soften all the hate boners over combat addons while leaving me and my harmless roleplay and QoL addons alone, that'd be perfect. But I don't use combat addons, as I don't play at a high enough level where I need them, so my opinion on them in general don't particular go one way or the other. I can't really say in good faith that I myself would want such addons banned or made less viable/desirable, because I don't really care.

[Super Dickmann]

No, this is a non-issue popularized exclusively by e-celebs.

[ashblond]

Hard disagree on banning, agree with WoW improvements.

Your original post seems to target three different issues:

1) World Firsts are becoming a fulltime job. That's true. I'm not seeing how that relates to addons. Even without them, the World First Race would still exist. People would still watch. Sponsors would still sponsor. So... the two don't really have a lot to do with each other.

2) How is raiding too hard? Raid Finder and Normal Mode raids are relatively tame, and still fun experiences for players of varying skillsets. Many might not even use addons. I know quite a few people who don't. On Heroic and Mythic... I agree. Without addons to announce mechanics... it can be quite difficult to survive encounters. But... it's still rewarding and fun.

As far as WoW making the game better... sure. I agree. And with DragonFlight's announcement of UI changes and such... yeah they're listening to player feedback. Should add-ons be banned as a result? No. They're giving WoW Devs ideas of what players want, and what tools need to become part of a standard toolset.

Addons make the game and community better. Either by adding QoL changes that keep players interested in the game or encouraging collaboration with development teams to meet issues WoW Devs haven't addressed.

I agree that WF will always exist in a hardcore way because of its nature of competition, just like other games. But esports games like CS, SC2 are purely based on players game skills without any 3rd party addons, while WF constantly having guilds/players creating, writing, modifying codes and addons.

Why would Blizzard make a complex fight, when players can use non in-game skills but 3rd party addons to counter it or give them an advantage? It is just counterproductive.

[Onikaroshi]

Nope FFXIV has no addons and it doesn't make raiding better and it definitely makes the UI worse

Well, it would be better to say "FFXIV doesn't develop around addons" but it definitely has them.

[Iain]

No, this is a non-issue popularized exclusively by e-celebs.

When even Ion himself acknowledges that he designs encounters around addons it's clearly no longer something just e-celebs care about:

https://www.wowhead.com/news/ion-haz...ail-wow-326897

Having WeakAuras or having DBM is pretty much required and it creates this artificial gap between causal players and hardcore players. It's kind of a two-part question; number one, does like the team design these Heroic and Mythic encounters for addons, same with Mythic+, and the second part is, are we going to see more of these features incorporated into the game?

That's an awesome question, it's something we spend a lot of time, especially recently, debating. We design acknowledging the existence of addons - I think we have to. Sometimes we're actually designing and implementing mechanics in ways that are going to try to work around addons - whether it's entering the code to disarm the bomb on Mekkatorque, or the Among Us game on Lords of Dread, and fixing stuff to plug loopholes that people've found, because we know that we have this idea which could be really fun gameplay, but if an addon solves the whole thing for you, then what's the point? So we have to acknowledge its existence.

The problem then isn't that addons become mandatory for fights. Blizzard can't do that either:

Do we want you to feel like you have to download third party addons to succeed in the game? Nope, none of that feels good.

The problem is that what could be interesting threats that increase the cognitive burden on a player during a fight, are now delegated to countdown timers, warning sounds and even mini-maps informing the player of the best spot to be in.

Addons erode the depth of these encounters.

[Royru]

-Dps meters/parsers are naturally wanted to improve and gage performance (which will always be necessary as long as there are dps/hps checks in a game.

Here is where we really need to be specific here. It is not necessary. You do NOT need these at all. Watching your dps meter, contrary to popular belief, does not increase your damage. I have absolutely no idea where you are getting this idea that you need this at all.

-AH has gotten better but addons where/are certainly wanted to navigate it and sell stuff without wasting time, navigating the older AH iterations was infuriating.

I don’t understand this either tbh, I always hear people saying this. The AH was always super easy for me to navigate. You search for the item, you display it by lowest price and you buy that item.

I will admit the newer version makes it much easier to consider things like price per item etc but I mean I don’t really find this stuff to be absolutely necessary in order to buy things or at least understand what you’re buying.

-UI addons are not needed? Well maybe I should throw that 30" screen out but I'd like to track my important CD's and procs without eye cramps.

You can turn your ui scale up my friend. It makes them massive. It’s the exact same size as on a normal monitor the ui itself just takes up less relative space on your screen.

These things are not "mandatory" obviously but my enjoyment would have drastically tanked without them, if there are other games who would not allow addons/workarounds at all and had very rough edges like mentioned above I might even drop them completely.

That was my whole point tho, you just said you don’t need them you just like them. That was literally my entire point lol.

I hate to be that guy, but if you leave a game because of its ui, chances are there is a problem with how much you actually like the game itself. Quitting a game because of UI seems very silly.

I'm pretty sure if timers are banned blizzard would even have to slow down encounter mechanics a bit since there's no reason right now to include something like reaction time into encounter design and balancing, that's kind of nuts.

That’s essentially my entire reasoning for thinking they should remove them.

Ion even mentioned that one fight in ICC where you have to bite party members right? That fight without addons at all gets extremely hectic. People HAVE to know what to do and when to do it. This mechanic in itself is simple but it can be extremely difficult to overcome as a raid. Throw in an addon and the fight is a literal cake walk. It’s a joke. They can’t ever make a fight like this again with addons being built in. But fights like this are always so much fun if you actually tried them without any assistance. So when they are designing fights with the addons in mind, they just become cluster fucks.

[Ilookfly]

They've removed certain addons and limited the api multiple times before. Your poll does not reflect this. Do better.

[Eli85]

No, it's not time to ban add-ons, but some add-ons do need to be reigned in. The biggest culprit here is Weak Auras. You can already code Weak Auras where it takes a complicated mechanic and tells you exactly what to do, and in some cases can outright replace the raid leader. I'm not suggesting that Blizzard break Weak Auras (as most weak auras do not go too far), but I think it would behoove Blizzard to take a long, hard look at the World First Race, and see how broken some of the Weak Auras are.

Outside of that, banning add-ons is just ... silly, especially considering how slow Blizzard is to implementing UI changes.

[Zelk]

Can you dimwits that have never touched xiv raiding with a ten foot pole not make comments about it? It makes you look stupid.
Every raider, every, single, one uses at the bare minimum ACT and likely a lot of other QoL plugins.

3rd party tools aren't addons, also they're not allowed as anyone who plays ffxiv will know after this week

[Celement]

Not ui...never ui the wow team can't make a single competent ui component...hell there extra action buttons rarely work less bound.

Combat mods...sure maybe not interupts since the default kinda sucks for that.