The amount of addons in game now are ridiculous, from every single dungeon/raid having addons telling you where to stand/ get out of the fire, to every quest being routed for you so that you can literally just follow a giant arrow on your screen for the most efficient leveling route -
Since this is a Season of Mastery, why should there be addons helping everyone along the way, if this is for mastery then why dumb down the experience for everyone?
There is an addon that lets you see the vendor price of items, so upon completing a quest you can see which item is more expensive, choose that item, complete the quest and then vendor it rather than using their own judgement on which item is better/would sell for more.
An addon or multiple addons on TBC have shown just how badly they affect the game, take a look at the auction house on any TBC server, if you post an item someone will post the same item below you by 5% or a percentage they have set their addon to undercut by and can post the item or multiple items to remove your item from even the first page with the click of a button rather than having to type in a bid and buyout amount.
People using addons to undercut auctions frequently cause the prices of said item crashes very quickly. Someone using an addon can also buyout all of a single item or multiple items incredibly quickly, they even have full auction house scans which can be done at the click of a button to see if anyone has put any items on under vendor value. If any of the addons could be removed it should be any to do with the auction house as players will bulk send items to their alt/banker character, instantly open all mail (using an addon) and then post it all on the auction house (using one button), it takes the fun out of the game. Not to mention removing addons like this would deter bots.
To sum up, removing addons may be annoying to some players because it makes their life more difficult but as this is a season of mastery - aiming to make the game more difficult for players but to also last 12 months is the goal.
Lol, op no one is forcing you to use addons. If you want to go around and look for a lvl 7 quest a couple hours thats fine, but dont try to force others to play as you do.
The game is designed around addons so you canāt really remove them without lots of changes in UI, visuals and some content.
Retail mythic raiders from Echo and few other guilds went to play FF14 and they quickly became āno addonsā team - but that game is constantly designed with no-addon style. In Classic you have a threat meter addon while in FF14 you have threat indicators built into the game.
I understand no one is forcing me to use addons, I personally donāt use them but other players using causes a negative experience for other players, not to mention bots.
This is a Season of Mastery, if you wanted to use addons you could play TBC or retail.
Any feed back on this is appreciated.
While I agree that there are plenty of addons that contribute to making the game a lot less enjoyable, such as some weak auras and ah addons, removing all addons wouldnāt be much fun either.
Using a stopwatch to keep track of boss timers was never fun. Changing gear one slot at a time or setting up several macros for it was never fun. Needing a script to link an item you donāt have in your bags was never enjoyable. Not being able to check if you have an item on a bank character without relogging or keeping an inventory list ouside of the game has never been fun. If people arenāt capable of reading a quest, or donāt know them already, let them use addons to make leveling more enjoyable for them.
I agree certain addons that have no impact on gameplay such as a stopwatch would be beneficial but it would likely be an all addons enabled or all disabled decision. And the positives of all addons disabled outway the negatives.
A macro can be made to change your gear, and just relog onto your bank char if you donāt remember what items are on there.
With this season they are wanting to make the game harder for players and disabling all addons would do that while simultaneously increasing the time it will take people to level up apart from people who have āmasteredā the game/use external helpers
A stopwatch is available in game already. DBM does however remove the need to use (several) stopwatches to keep track of them. It also reduces the reliance on voice communication significantly, which is important for many players who for whatever reason struggle to use them.
For you it does, but not for the vast majority of players.
Why not go all the way and ask for a 1.1 release instead? Talent changes, working unstuck functionality and not falling through the world on a regular basis when charging all contributes to making the game easier and less time consuming. How about removing some flight paths? Disable quest/loot/reputation credit from group kills while dead? Unlike disabling all addons however, none of those things would make it impossible, or near impossible for some people to participate in all aspects of the game.
I would say remove combat addons specifically - addons such as DBM, Gladiatorlossa or Weakauras. I wouldnāt take away other UI, non gameplay addons since it would require immense work from Blizzard to implement their own hyper malliable UI.
You cannot speak for vast majority of players, they donāt get a say as they quit/moved on from WOW due to the game becoming too easy/player boosts/Addons such as Deadly boss mods that you mentioned streamline the game to a point at which you donāt even need to communicate with other players in a raid/dungeon and causes the game to slide towards being more of a solo game.
Your comment about 1.1 release and flighpath removing etc is a little extreme -
Having addons disabled would be as equivalent as possible to a first time play through where most players didnt even know addons existed, people would communicate more, it would just be a better community in general + with less bots.
Iād be all for the removal of addons like Spy and any addon that informs you of any enemies near as well as being able to click on the name to auto target them. I wouldnāt mind if they removed the auto target when your casting in WPvP if you managed to get the sneak on them it informs them instantly your there.
Add ons for bars, cast bar animation, raid frames, bags/bank alts etc donāt really effect the experience so in an ideal world Iād be on board if they kept these in and disallowed the use of any addon that automates an action or displays information like opponents CD timers, showing enemy buffs and other addons like Decursive, TSM, Spy etc
Iād say let addons like questie stay as people will just turn to Wowhead if they donāt already know most quests by now.
While they are trying to make this sound enticing for us letās not forget how much theyāve added to the store since TBC Iām wondering how they plan to profit from this - boosts?
If they really want to create an enjoyable game then they simply need to tackle the bot issue, you can retune boss encounters and everything else but realistically most players would rather play the game with no bots running around devaluing the experience.
Iām also hoping they remove instance boosting so people actually play the game rather than AFKing and hitting 60 while doing nothing but watch Netflix.
End of the day though with how disappointing TBC ended up being with them adding the character boosts and making several changes Iām fairly certain this sounds better than itās going to be.
What is stopping them from stating the reason they quit? Blizzard even asks your reason(s) for cancelling your subscription when you do so. If there was a significant portion of potential players cancelling their subs due to addons making the game too easy Blizzard would most likely have introduced more addon restrictions.
Why? Unlike your suggestion it would not block people from the game, or parts of the game due to their disabilities. Itās nowhere near as extreme as your suggestion.
The game, including raids were designed with addonsupport in mind. They have been in common use for keeping track of/announcing boss abilities since before BWL was released. If the devs thought addons had a too big negative impact on raid difficulty they would have limited what they can do, just like they did with the original decursive.
Should we remove the colour blind mode?
I ask because itās a convenience that didnāt exist in 2004 and we seem to be going after other impairments.
Yeah why not. Itās not like they cant play anyway.
Also having no damage meters or raid logging would be nice. I usually do well on the meters, but at some point its no longer interesting. Using it to identify poor players is also sort of bad. They should be identified by keeping an eye on them instead. Think it would create a better environment where players can cover each others backs and talk about mistakes instead of moaning about numbers.