Addons: Cheating Within the Rules

Community General Discussion
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Addons have always been cheating.

Cheating means, by definition: acting dishonestly or UNFAIRLY to gain an advantage.

Addons create inherent unfairness WITHIN the context of the gameplay itself. Let me explain this with a hypothetical scenario.

Someone goes to a fight with a gun against someone with a knife. This is fair when you put the contextual bracket OUTSIDE of the fight itself. The rules were just that this is a fight, so bringing a gun is fair.

HOWEVER…

Move the contextual bracket to the fight itself, and the imbalance becomes clear.

THIS is what i mean when i say unfairness within the gameplay itself.

I’ve seen people try to cheat around addons being unfair with the argument: “We can all use the same addons, so it is fair!”.

Yes; if you move the contextual bracket to include things outside of the gameplay (that are not your skill as a player).

NO if you’re talking about the gameplay itself.

We should be aiming for fair GAMEPLAY. This is why addons are a HUGE problem and needed to be dealt with.

Why should fair gameplay be the aim? Because in competition, we want to find out the best PLAYERS, not the best UI/addons. This is why people care about class balance.. This is why balance matters to people in general. Fairness.

If there was a class in the game that could just press one button and instantly win any duel; would you feel like you’re really seeing a representation of the player’s skill? Would you really feel they won because they are more skilled than you? No. In turn, you’d feel this was unfair. That they have an unfair advantage.

“it is possible so it is fair!” is the rationale of the addon user; but it is the same rationale of a cheat.

This is the WRONG way to design your game if you want fairness between players when it amounts to the gameplay itself.

It should be fairness as it amounts to the GAMEPLAY; not fairness as it relates to things OUTSIDE of the gameplay; like addons and your UI. Otherwise you’ve got a situation of infinite variation on your hands, which becomes near impossible to balance around and extremely unfair as it relates to gameplay.

Anything else is a pursuit of unfairness.

Addons were always just cheating within the rules. They were fair overall, but resulted in unfairness in the gameplay itself. THAT is why they have to go.

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Addons which allowed by blizz = cheating.

Here we go again…. Sigh.

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Which was covered in the post. You should’ve read the argument before posting.

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Just when you thought you had read enough idiotic posts about add ons. Along comes Faxia to not just lower the bar, but use a wrecking ball on it.

Cheating lol… Well thank god no Blizzard exec ever used add ons…

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That is entirely incorrect.

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A lot of text in op that in the end it doesn’t even matter :wink:

This is because the premise of it is wrong. If addons don’t violate the rules and are allowed by blizz, that’s not cheating and neither dishonest.

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I love how you didn’t actually present a counter argument, and just went straight to attacking the person making it.

Attacking the person making the argument is an invalid argument style, and so you’re essentially conceding by doing so.

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You qq about addons =cheating.

Bet u never did any high content where addons mattered to give advantge. Like the rest of the 99% anti-addon andies.

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This was covered in the original post; and in the title of the post.

I literally said “cheating within the rules”.

That means they’re fair in the broader contextual bracket, but unfair in the context of the gameplay itself. PLease read the post before making an invalid counter that was already addressed.

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If it doesn’t violate the rules, it’s not cheating. Simple as that. If it does violate them, then it’s cheating.

And no, I won’t read a lengthy post and waste my life on it when you’re wrong in the opening sentences. It offers no value for me at this point.

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And as i explained; i agreed with that.

This doesn’t change the fact it results in unfair gameplay. Simple as.

For something to be cheating, it just needs to give an unfair advantage, as expressed.

You are again claiming i’m wrong in the first line, yet, i’ve already corrected your error. I’m now doing so a second time with this post.

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No less to threads like this being a cry for attention.

No one likes an attention seeker… but good job wasting your time writing up something no one’s going to read. :+1:

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This is an attack on the person, not the argument; also.. This isn’t my main account.

Either attack the argument, or you conceed your point. Attacking the person making the argument is an invalid argument style, and isn’t considered legitimate.

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Addons exist, because Blizzard could never properly make certain aspects of the game well, it shows again now, with their flawed and rushed CDM, UI, etc…

It has nothing to do with “fairness”, it’s about picking up the slack, which Blizzards was fine with for two decades.

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And here I was, thinking we should aim for fun gameplay. Silly me :smiley: But more seriously, fair gameplay is a valid aim but only to a point.

If you make this the central aim above everything else, you would also e.g. have to nuke all class differences, racials, etc because they will never really be equally balanced.

I would argue that some degree of unfairness is required to keep a game like WoW fun.

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don’t know witch addons you are referring to that gives unfair advantage but the game has a built in rotation helper now that does what hekili already did. Highlighted assistance. pretty much shows you the best abilities to spend in order for highest damage.

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You didn’t correct me in anything. You are just deluded in thinking you did.

The reality of it will be that you will mute this thread because soon people will prove you wrong again and again. Then you will prefer to ignore the thread and still delude yourself.

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Of course, fairness to an extreme results in homogeny.

Addons represent the far opposite end of this spectrum, with too much variance it becomes impossible for the devs to quantify and balance.

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The most outlandish statement i’ve ever heard

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Your argument is that i’m deluded when it comes to correcting you, which is not the case.

You made the point that “blizzard allow it, so it is fair”.

However, fairness is relative to the contextual framing. I quite thoroughly explained the point you’re trying to make in the post; because i know this argument all too well.

It is like saying someone bringing a gun to a fight is fair, against an opponent who brought nothing, because the fight doesn’t specify that no guns can be used.

However, in the fight itself? it will be unfair, because one participant has a gun, and the other does not.

So you see; move the contextual bracket to the fight, one person has an unfair advantage. You want to move the contextual bracket to something OUTSIDE the gameplay; i’m saying the bracket should be about what happens WITHIN the gameplay.