Blizzard: "Addons shouldn't make a difference in how good a player is"

[Glorious Leader]

As I said before, I think it is kind of a best of bad options problem. You can't gut the game to super simplicity without deleting most of what makes it popular and special (particularly on streaming platforms), but you can't leave it alone without making it impenetrable to a lot of players.

This is so insanely contradictory. Apparently complexity makes it popular but also doesnt
... you know streamers would STILL make content if they dumbed it down to vanilla levels... this is a band aid at best. leaving cancer but merely abating the symptoms...

[Wyrt]

This is so insanely contradictory. Apparently complexity makes it popular but also doesnt
... you know streamers would STILL make content if they dumbed it down to vanilla levels... this is a band aid at best. leaving cancer but merely abating the symptoms...

Go play classic then. It's right there, you don't have to turn retail into classic.

[Ghostile]

As I said before, I think it is kind of a best of bad options problem. You can't gut the game to super simplicity without deleting most of what makes it popular and special (particularly on streaming platforms), but you can't leave it alone without making it impenetrable to a lot of players. So we'll get this instead.

If people aren't familiar, another example of this in another game is the Oakensoul Ring in ESO. Without going into the weeds, it is an item they added to essentially "raise the floor" for casual players without having to fundamentally change the game's basic combat mechanics. You had a situation far worse than in wow where people with the same gear would literally do an order of magnitude more DPS than other players. But with this ring, it both shaves off half the buttons (from 12 to 6) and gives a player nearly every buff in the game passively, meaning they can use almost any skills and be reasonably effective.

This was also super controversial in ESO when it came out! But they've kept it so that it is not the best DPS option in difficult content, and basically no elite players use it. Yet it is a huge boost to more casual players who just want to do world content and solo.

To me, this is a similar goal to the rotation helper

Did they boost how to get Oaken or is it still a clusterfuck of one box with a hundred guys opening it?

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This is so insanely contradictory. Apparently complexity makes it popular but also doesnt
... you know streamers would STILL make content if they dumbed it down to vanilla levels... this is a band aid at best. leaving cancer but merely abating the symptoms...

The cancer is people like you pretending like there are no simple builds and the because of this the "elite" (everyone who disagrees with you) is gatekeeping you from the endgame, meanwhile in reality you are the only thing keeping you from playing the endgame.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Did they boost how to get Oaken or is it still a clusterfuck of one box with a hundred guys opening it?.

I only went back recently and didn't have an issue, the one lockbox you can steal from the guy's hut had the thing. Leveling the archaeology skill thing was the most annoying part, mostly cuz it's tedious.

[Ghostile]

I only went back recently and didn't have an issue, the one lockbox you can steal from the guy's hut had the thing. Leveling the archaeology skill thing was the most annoying part, mostly cuz it's tedious.

Nice! been playing ESO with the missus and Oaken seemed like the logical thing to get for some low effort playing.

[Soon-TM]

All these things shouldn't be a factor in "skill expression" and there is no comparable other popular online game where they are, yet they've been for arguably over a decade because Blizzard has been very slow and lazy updating their UI.

This is the root of the problem. Blizz has been going balls to the wall crazy with raid design encounters because of 1) muh skill and 2) they didn't give a flying #$%& about whether those encounters were actually doable without 3rd party software, which resulted in the absolute mess of a raid that was Sepulchre.

They have since restrained themselves a bit, but at the price of trivializing anything that isn't Mythic raids - and even on Mythic, they say now that they cannot implement certain mechanics such as coordination phases because addons make them trivial.

I love arcane mage since the shadowlands iteration even with it's stupid a.barrage conditions (not so bad now but last season.. lol)

Still, I would not touch that spec without addons/WAs.

Exactly. I have been playing Arcane since freaking BC, and even then I would be unable to play it properly without a bunch of WAs telling me what to do - and that without a heavy DPS penalty (quite the opposite, in fact) such as in Ion's proposed "rotation helper". It frankly feels like cheating.

I can only imagine what Arcane (or basically anything that isn't UH or BM hunter) must feel like to a new or long-returning player, I can almost smell the WTF faces before saying " screw this". Now imagine those guys trying to heal or to tank on top of that.

[Ghostile]

This is the root of the problem. Blizz has been going balls to the wall crazy with raid design encounters because of 1) muh skill and 2) they didn't give a flying #$%& about whether those encounters were actually doable without 3rd party software, which resulted in the absolute mess of a raid that was Sepulchre.

They have since restrained themselves a bit, but at the price of trivializing anything that isn't Mythic raids - and even on Mythic, they say now that they cannot implement certain mechanics such as coordination phases because addons make them trivial.

Addons aren't trivializing heroic, it's just not that hard until the last boss where you can't ignore bombs or soaks.
Heroic is the old normal from before flex was added in the game and normal was never a tough nut.
You can get few bosses into mythic before you run into a boss where an addon makes it easier to see your buff color.

[Echeyakee]

In the new WoWCast (click here) Ion Hazzikostas mentioned, from 8min-9min, that he likes to see a WoW where addons no longer makes a difference between a good or a better player.

What do you all think about that?

I think blizzard is starting to forget the whole classic wow and diablo immoral thing. Back to huffing own farts and thinking they know best.

[Dezolacer]

I think blizzard is starting to forget the whole classic wow and diablo immoral thing. Back to huffing own farts and thinking they know best.

They do and they were thinking too highly of their playerbase when they were assuming nobody gonna pay for bandwagon nostalgia trip. Eventually it spiraled into retail lookalike vanilla with a bunch of extra spells and stuff. World of Warcraft community do not know and never knew what they want. World of Warcraft community want it to be "good" but noone comes to terms on what "good" actually is. Number one reason why they should rely on data research statistics of what people actually do, rather than considering anything that neckbeards holding the game hostage are having to say about the game of their youth. If you don't like it that means you probably don't like WoW and it's most likely not for you anymore, move on with your life. Things are not what they used to be and you will never relive it with another re-re-relaunch of classic.

[Al Gorefiend]

My unwillingness to download weakauras and set it all up or even more dehumanizing, copy+paste over someone else's work onto my UI shouldn't be my barrier of entry into high level content

[Ghostile]

My unwillingness to download weakauras and set it all up or even more dehumanizing, copy+paste over someone else's work onto my UI shouldn't be my barrier of entry into high level content

It isn't.
Don't listen to the crowd who has created a fantasy world where high level pve is impossible without addons and that's why they aren't in hall of fame, they wouldn't know as they've never tried.

[Biomega]

My unwillingness to download weakauras and set it all up or even more dehumanizing, copy+paste over someone else's work onto my UI shouldn't be my barrier of entry into high level content

It depends on what you mean by "high-level content". There's plenty of content you can comfortably do without all that which a good number of people would call "high-level content". However there is also content where this would be while not impossible then at least quite an impediment to performance - and there's also a good number of people who'd only call that high-level content.

It also depends on what you mean by "barrier of entry". Some people use that as a "do this or you can't go in" term; others use it as "do this or it'll be much harder" (with varying definitions of "much harder"). It is not an absolute barrier as in you literally can't do it unless we're talking about the absolute peaks of content - like, it'd be impossible to actually compete for a win in the RWF or an MDI without WAs, say. But just doing a +15 key or something? I believe there's even a dedicated guild that clears mythic with no addons. Is it a lot harder than with all the WAs and addons and whatnot? For sure. And that could well be called "a barrier" and unreasonable.

However, it becomes difficult to negotiate a solution that would curb this. Blizzard can't realistically bake in all the functionality of the entire addon ecosystem into the stock UI. They could do SOME, and they are; they've already said they're looking at making a DBM-like addition, for example. But that'll always be less and fewer functions than a community-made addon. Blizzard can't compete with addon creators - they're thousands of people working for free (or nearly free) with practically zero oversight or accountability. If their addon breaks or doesn't work? Who cares, people will get mad on some addon website or go cry on Reddit #BFD. If Blizzard breaks WoW's stock UI? Massive numbers of paying customers complain to a company they are in an economic relationship with.

I feel your frustration and to some degree I share it. Addons have massive downsides and create lots of barriers. However, they also solve certain problems and add certain features that are very positive. So it's not as easy as just turning them off tomorrow for an easy W. It's a very complicated situation.

[Ereb]

My unwillingness to download weakauras and set it all up or even more dehumanizing, copy+paste over someone else's work onto my UI shouldn't be my barrier of entry into high level content

Dehumanizing? Maybe try to keep some perspective here friend lol.

Yall are so scared of "high end content" in this thread you will use any excuse and say anything to not have to interact with it. Nothing is holding any of you back except yourselves and some effort, which some of yall seem to be allergic to.

[NerdAssassin]

even more dehumanizing, copy+paste over someone else's work onto my UI

Damn son. Congrats. You must live a very happy and secure life, if this is your level of perspective. Looking at world news daily, I feel a bit jealous of your oblivion.

But just to clarify something. High level PvE does not require that.

[Al Gorefiend]

Dehumanizing? Maybe try to keep some perspective here friend lol.

Yall are so scared of "high end content" in this thread you will use any excuse and say anything to not have to interact with it. Nothing is holding any of you back except yourselves and some effort, which some of yall seem to be allergic to.

Literally just time, no amount of addons or total removal of addon can get me raiding again. My contributions to the thread are completely irrelevant, I couldn't sit down and raid until midnight since I was a teenager from BC to SoO. I don't play with social settings on either, so I don't even know if people are whispering me.

WoW to me is a collection game, and guess what I use to keep track of all my collections?

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Damn son. Congrats. You must live a very happy and secure life, if this is your level of perspective. Looking at world news daily, I feel a bit jealous of your oblivion

I didn't ask to be born upper middle class, we all play our parts.

[Echeyakee]

They do and they were thinking too highly of their playerbase when they were assuming nobody gonna pay for bandwagon nostalgia trip. Eventually it spiraled into retail lookalike vanilla with a bunch of extra spells and stuff. World of Warcraft community do not know and never knew what they want. World of Warcraft community want it to be "good" but noone comes to terms on what "good" actually is. Number one reason why they should rely on data research statistics of what people actually do, rather than considering anything that neckbeards holding the game hostage are having to say about the game of their youth. If you don't like it that means you probably don't like WoW and it's most likely not for you anymore, move on with your life. Things are not what they used to be and you will never relive it with another re-re-relaunch of classic.

No need to project, I don't care for classic one way or another, nor do I have any intentions of quitting the game. And ignoring the effects nostalgia has, especially nostalgia for things you could not always have a kid, on the on purchasing power of adults today is the dumb behavior here.

And the hard reality is that classic wow ultimately made blizzard obscene amounts of money for, as you pointed out, very little effort and some internal shuffling of people.

[Asrialol]

Let's take a step back here for a moment. Do you really think it's possible to raid Mythic right now, LoU, without any add-ons?

Sprocketmonger, just as one example, has 4 bombs each cycle that can only be blown up by the same color charge. Extremely hard to tell which one they are without addons, and which one you're assigned to during each cycle. Long, or short.

There aren't enough audio or visual queues to let the players know every single mechanic that is happening, outside of debuffs your player gets.

Is it possible, maybe, but I would bet money it would take 2-3 times longer to clear without any addons at all. And would be a very interesting challenge to see Blizzard pull off.

It's probably worth noting that bosses today is built around the fact that addons exists. If addons weren't a thing, a boss like Sprocketmonger probably wouldn't have the same mechanics it has today.

[Ghostile]

It's probably worth noting that bosses today is built around the fact that addons exists. If addons weren't a thing, a boss like Sprocketmonger probably wouldn't have the same mechanics it has today.

I dunno, you get a 3 meter wide circle of light around you which glows with the same color as the mine does.
In no way does this sound like it was designed with addons in mind, more like with eyes in mind.

[Soon-TM]

It's probably worth noting that bosses today is built around the fact that addons exists. If addons weren't a thing, a boss like Sprocketmonger probably wouldn't have the same mechanics it has today.

As far as I am concerned, I'd like to see what a "no (combat) addons allowed"-compliant boss fight is like, especially in HC/Mythic difficulties. It would probably be better than the SFX vomit all over the screen that we have today.

[Ghostile]

As far as I am concerned, I'd like to see what a "no (combat) addons allowed"-compliant boss fight is like, especially in HC/Mythic difficulties. It would probably be better than the SFX vomit all over the screen that we have today.

Considering all bosses are doable without, probably just the same.