Combat Add-Ons Disabled in End-Game Content in Midnight

[Relapses]

It's also the easiest to design and use for casuals and elitsts alike. It presents information cleanly and accurately, so it makes sense why it's so popular. Declutters and still represents information you need. I also think it's soulless, especially since most people just end up doing this:

[Player Info]      [Target Info]
[CD TRACKING]

[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]

I feel personally attacked by this post.

[Xilurm]

Most of UI's I've seen people post are very soulless.

No wonder why Blizzard went for a mobile-esque UI when they redesigned it for DF, when everyone just makes theirs look like that. And then people complain and Blizzard is confused.

[PenguinChan]

I feel personally attacked by this post.

I'm not much better tbh lol.

[JohnnyCasual]

I'm not much better tbh lol.

I'm sorry. Off Topic! But Jesus, how wide is your monitor?

On topic? I am also personally attacked with the statements, I guess?

[HoboBro]

especially since most people just end up doing this:

[Player Info]      [Target Info]
[CD TRACKING]

[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]

I'll do this no matter what UI I use though lol.

Edit: I did this way back before Elvui existed! (I think)

Do you guys remember SpartanUI? I think that was my first UI kit

[PenguinChan]

I'm sorry. Off Topic! But Jesus, how wide is your monitor?

On topic? I am also personally attacked with the statements, I guess?

32:9, odyssey g9 monitor. Great purchase, had it for years now. Really love it for MMORPGs, isometric games and such. It's alright for FPS games.

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I'll do this no matter what UI I use though lol.

Edit: I did this way back before Elvui existed! (I think)

Do you guys remember SpartanUI? I think that was my first UI kit

I do. I just make my own UI's - I actually made a super dynamic one back in BfA for my Demon Hunter. It mostly relied on WA though, so it wasn't the most reliable.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

I truly believe Hekili, much like the old CLC addons, just makes you a worse player because it teaches tunnel vision and just makes you press a button instead of knowing *why* you're pressing it - fundamenally this logic also applies to WAs as well - it's good they are gone

Except that you can just do that in game now with the rotation helper or one button, so they didn't actually remove this

(Oop other people answered this)

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Most of UI's I've seen people post are very soulless.

This is one of those words that doesn't mean anything. Jibberish made a ton of UIs with elv, do these look soulless? They don't seem particularly functional to me, but a ton of work went into them

https://www.reddit.com/user/jiberishift/submitted/

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I feel personally attacked by this post.

It is not surprising to me that there's a general consensus on the best ui positioning, I don't even see why this is remotely strange tbh

[vindicator782]

It's also the easiest to design and use for casuals and elitsts alike. It presents information cleanly and accurately, so it makes sense why it's so popular. Declutters and still represents information you need. I also think it's soulless, especially since most people just end up doing this:

[Player Info]      [Target Info]
[CD TRACKING]

[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]
[Action Bar]

Funny thing is this is almost identical to how my default UI is laid out

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Funny thing is this is almost identical to how my default UI is laid out

Elv just gives you an easy way to change a ton of base elements and skin the game, it's not really about frame positioning.

Same thing with BetterBlizzardX mods (both of which are actually surprisingly great and light-weight)

[PenguinChan]

Funny thing is this is almost identical to how my default UI is laid out

I can sharpen my pencil with how much grain there is lmao

But yeah, I mean, it's literally the defacto default at this point.

[vindicator782]

I can sharpen my pencil with how much grain there is lmao

But yeah, I mean, it's literally the defacto default at this point.

Yeah I shrunk the image so as to not fill the thread page

Yeah I don't change much past the scale options which are goofy by default - I really hate big UIs

[Alroxas]

Or, they could just add those features into the game themselves? A way to alert the entire raid already exists, without addons. It shouldn't be that hard.

Sure but do you trust Blizzard to actually add those features? And specifically add them in a way so that it has functional parity with existing addons?

Here's another comparison -

Clique addon allows you to assign spells/macros to perform click-casting and hover-casting which Blizzard did eventually add into WoW BUT it has several limitations. As of writing, with the Blizzard in-game click casting, you can't easily assign mmo-button mice (i.e. Corsair SCIMITAR RGB ELITE) with it's multi-button side buttons with doing some crazy long process. Additionally, you also can't assign scroll wheel casting either with the Blizzard in-game version (but that's allowed with Clique).

Maybe eventually Blizzard will get around to coding that in but who knows when that might be. Meanwhile, the function already exists in an addon that is likely to be trimmed out of functionality when Midnight launches.

For something that "shouldn't be that hard", it's certainly a step backwards when we're going to be handicapped with all the available tools being removed for the "sake of progress" that Blizzard wants to have.


To repeat - the minimum bar that Blizzard needs to clear is functional parity if they want to remove all these addons that we've grown accustomed to.

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You should still be able to do that since they said Addons will be able to change the appearance of combat information just not access it. So combat text addons like that should still be possible but will obviously have to be remade.

Well that's questionable at best.

If we're talking about applying a style across the entire screen, then probably yes -> Something like changing the font to Comic Sans across the board.

But if we're talking about making critical hits also display a WHAM! BOOM! POW! with a graphic or sound effect (like that Owen Wilson WoW Crit WA), then No. Because that would require the addon to make a logical interaction with the information stored inside the "secret value" box.


So let's take your HP bar as an example - In Midnight, you could probably code an addon to reskin the HP bar to use a different color - say Horde Red as the Fill color for the HP bar instead of the default green. But you probably could NOT tell the addon to say as my HP bar decreases in value gradually lower the opacity from 100% down to 0% as my HP decreases to 0%, or change the fill color to Yellow when I reach 50% then to Black when I'm sub 25%. Those would require some sort of logic function to interact with the combat API to query the HP status during combat which is blocked.

[Stickiler]

To repeat - the minimum bar that Blizzard needs to clear is functional parity if they want to remove all these addons that we've grown accustomed to.

This actually isn't true at all. Blizzard doesn't need to reach functional parity for their solution to be fit for purpose, they just need as much functionality as is required by the content. And given that we KNOW the content is becoming less complex with more forgiving timers, the bar for what is required for the content is currently unknown, though it can be posited that it's much lower than it was previously. That'll be part of Alpha testing, making sure that the provided solution meets the requirements for clearing the content.

[Daedius]

No, actually, that's not at all why it's bad. I know that I'll be able to adapt to whatever the fuck Blizzard does with the game. Unfortunately, this is a team game and I can't imagine that the rest of WoW playerbase at large will as quick to adapting to the information glut in a post-add-ons world. What this means, invariably, is that the game gets harder for everybody as people adjust to the growing pains of Blizzard intentionally nuking one of the most important aspects of the game which has been consistently a part of its identity for two entire fucking decades.

I can already imagine healers becoming harder to find in the pug scene.

[Relapses]

I can already imagine healers becoming harder to find in the pug scene.

Over time, add-ons have given healers quite a bit of agency that they didn't have before. The role has always kinda sucked, but it felt like the world at large was starting to come around to welcoming healers into the fold in recent seasons. I know the community likes to joke about healers not being real people, but the way healing works in the alpha right now demotes them from barely personhood to straight-up gimp suit adorning masochists.

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This actually isn't true at all. Blizzard doesn't need to reach functional parity for their solution to be fit for purpose, they just need as much functionality as is required by the content. And given that we KNOW the content is becoming less complex with more forgiving timers, the bar for what is required for the content is currently unknown, though it can be posited that it's much lower than it was previously. That'll be part of Alpha testing, making sure that the provided solution meets the requirements for clearing the content.

This argument only works if we take Blizzard at face value and assume they're going to tune the game at roughly the same difficulty it is now. Given everything that they're taking on all at once, on top of the item level and level squish, I just don't see that happening for the first (or second) season. I'd love to stand corrected, but this math just isn't mathing.

[Stickiler]

This argument only works if we take Blizzard at face value and assume they're going to tune the game at roughly the same difficulty it is now. Given everything that they're taking on all at once, on top of the item level and level squish, I just don't see that happening for the first (or second) season. I'd love to stand corrected, but this math just isn't mathing.

Eh, I fully expect the first season to be a bit of a shitshow, but I also don't really care if it is. Either my raid team will smash Mythic, struggle but eventually get like 4/8, or it's going to be fundamentally impossible to get past Heroic, and any variation of that is fine.

The game survived Shadowlands, one bad season in an otherwise great expansion isn't going to affect things.

[MrLachyG]

World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion Midnight is introducing major changes to add-ons (especially combat-related ones) that are stirring up player unease. Here’s a breakdown of what’s happening, why it matters, and how likely things are to go sideways or not.

Bot alert!! Haha

[schippie]

I honestly just hope that we get more customization options for the default unit frames. I absolutely hate having the picture (frame) next to the health bar. And I really don't understand why we still cannot easily detach the target cast bar from the target frame. Or for that matter all frames like target of target / focus. I know (and use) other addons that make this possible. But sometimes I feel like the default customization is far to bare still. Layer on top of that the almost windows settings like manager experience where configuration is starting to be placed all over the place I do fondly think back to ELVUI. Where things are put in one place easily configurable etc.
Really hope blizzard improves the UI rapidly throughout the course of Midnight and doesn't just tack more and more onto things while completely forgetting the whole user experience.