Addons are certainly making things easier. If you are a raider, you must have raiding addons. If you are a pvper, you must have pvp addons. If you are trying to sell your items , you must have auction addons. Yes we need them.
But how much of it controlled by Blizzard? Some? None? Ofcourse we can’t answer it directly. Letting community run the design of addons certainly have advantages and disadvantages. I feel like disadvantages are winning this fight. Less control more problems. You all are playing the game so you know the problems. Some restrictions to addons could be a solution or Blizzard starts designing their own addons. Control must be maintained at this area.
So , I ask the questions, how do you feel about addons? What could be done? Should it stay like how it’s right now?
All of it is controlled by blizzard through the WoW API. No matter how dramatically you phrase it, this is just software and blizz is the owner.
The state of addons is the result of the evolution of gaming culture, not the other way around.
You can make the argument that there’s an “arms race” between addon developers and blizz that results in encounters becoming too complex to handle without addons, but I think this is a false take.
Addons don’t play the game for you and anyone who thinks installing liquid’s all-in-one weakaura will carry them through mythic is kidding themselves.
All they do is make it easier to learn a fight and reduce the gap between players of different skill levels, so no, they’re not mandatory. At least not in PvE.
An unpaid intern should make a list of the 30 most used addons, and Blizzard should turn them into base UI elements.
Stuff like Omnibar and BigDebuff are obvious ones.
Addons are fine.
You don’t wanna use them - don’t, stop trying to impose your obsessions on other people.
Well I’m using almost all of the usefull ones. Problem is people are abusing it. Let me give a simple example. I was posting 10 items with my character, yes I was using TSM but other guy posts every second. I couldn’t sell so I undercut and he whispers and start cursing. Imagine if I would be a newcomer to this game. People who starts this game wouldn’t have any idea of those usefull addons. Even with addons most things are not fair.
So? Any game must be learnt step by step, not automatically downloaded into a player’s brain.
Blizz has been improving the AH recently so if you have any suggestions that would eliminate the need for using TSM, feel free to make a suggestion in game. I personally don’t use it and can list items just fine, without being cursed at.
You remember Star Augur Etraeus right? We didn’t have weakaura and we couldn’t even pass 1st phase back in those days. Then we had the weakaura of Method’s I assume. We started to progress faster and killed in 30 attempts. So yes it makes you kill mythic bosses.
No because I didn’t play that raid. Glad to hear addons helped you learn the fight faster (as I said before). I’m sure you would’ve killed it eventually anyway, considering there’s a zero % chance that a developer would design a fight that can only be beaten using addons.
Addons are 100% cheating so that bads can win and should not be allowed.
It might be. What I’m trying to imply is there is no standards. Game experience changes immediately with different addons. Put some standards, kill the addons that leads to automation, equalize the game experience for everyone. This way game will be much competitive.
There are standards and principles. When blizzard feels that addons go too far and paint circles on the ground or modify friendly name plates, they disallowed those functions from the API.
I’m guessing you’re talking about weakauras that show a big arrow pointing left if you get a debuff and right if you didn’t. If you want to prevent this level of interface customization you’ll have to disable addons altogether, which will never happen.
Let me summarize the next 100 comments you’ll get:
STOP TRYING TO CONTROL THE GAME EXPERIENCE OF OTHER PLAYERS
It shows you arrow but you still have to go with your keyboard to there. So it’s not automation.
Addons like Hekili wont help you become the top DPS in your server.
But they will help to not be bellow the tank in damage in single target
As opposed to the players deciding to quit the game because they couldn’t get past a certain point of the game?
Addons are optional, if you feel so strongly against them, then don’t use them.
I use WAs for Dungeons and Raids
it made this game from complete chaos to perfect order.
I think it depends on the type of Addon we’re talking about. Clearly there is a step between addons like Narcissus and others like TSM and DBM about the impact those addons have on your way to approach the game.
i personally dislike and don’t use the second type. I consider them harmful for the game and the player investment in it, while forcing Blizz to consider the player base use them in their design. I consider it as a good thing that Blizzard is starting to look at it to restrain their usage when they feel like it should be (protected aura).
On the other hand, some interface addons are a net positive, without ever affecting your way to play the game or to interface with the community, and others, like Console Port and Dynamic Cam do complement optional console features that Blizzard made as very side projects on patches.
While i can say some addons should be remove from the game in order to improve the overall feel of the game, i cannot condemn them cause it would probably indirectly harm other project that are really improving the game in every way.
Spellstealer for Mages and any classes with purge and dispell. This should have been done YEARS AGO.
True, but often the game has not been playable without WeakAuras.
It is not an arms race though because Blizzard quite literally owns all the cards. They could just ban addons and that would be the end of it.
That’s not a good idea though. But I do think there are some things addons should not be allowed to do, most notably talk to one another across clients. If that were fixed a lot of this problem would go away.
Spamming in chat is another obvious example. It should not be allowed to try to circumvent the restriction of friendly nameplates by using speech bubbles.
This can easily be done and would have s massive impact.
In the end those addons mostly exist because the game majorly lacks in visual clarity. Sometimes there’s just too much visual clutter, other times enemy abilities are just not clear enough. Debuffs are just this general thing and at first glance you have no idea if it’s a DoT, slow or something else.
Also to some extent people don’t want to learn and memorize every boss mechanic.