From what I have read in that tweets explanation, that change would essentially kill any real incentive to use add-ons like “TRP3 (Extended)” due to roleplay profiles being slowed down in transfer up to 2+ entire minutes for a single roleplay profile per player.
If that change goes live and I have to wait 2-5 minutes just to wait for the IC names of other roleplayers to load, I will just quit WoW instead since I only joined the game for its RP Realms, not its gameplay/endgame.
I’m not going to pay a sub for a game that focuses on killing an integral part of its community interactions on RP servers by slowing down the add-on loading speed into lengths that feel worse than Youtubes Ad system…
Addons like TRP3 make a gigantic difference in having the world more alive and providing hooks for RP. They are probably the only single thing that makes WoW a good MMORPG where to roleplay at all.
Definitely would like to hear from a blue on this, because this is a quite serious issue. Prepare for an uproar unless you deal with it swiftly…
The reason why there’s so much automation in the game now is because addons can talk to each other, sending messages that coordinate the players automatically. The death of this would make a huge positive impact on the game, but it’s far from enough.
As for TRP3, I’m sure it can be rewritten to use fewer messages by packaging the data. If not, I’m honestly not that bothered. RP cannot be allowed to break combat the way it has for the last 10 years.
I’m actually really surprised and delighted that they did this.
RPG does not imply going up to someone with a profile full of text and saying “Hello and good morning Sir Knight McDuggan, I wish to vendor this fresh produce!”
opens inventory with no items, but has written in text field I have fruit
everybody pretends I do anyway
“Thank you for your patronage sir!”
Like… if you wanna do that, that’s fine, but it’s not what RP in WoW was designed to mean (obviously, which is why you need that addon)
The way WoW was an RPG is down to one of its core design pillars - the sense of community and identity, which is that it puts you in direct control of a customisable character and creates a 1-to-1 correspondance between it and you, walking into other players, which in turn results in other players seeing a combination of your personality and your character’s body. Of course you are free to modify your personality for the game to anything you want as well, enhancing the roleplaying further.
If you allow yourself to forget that the character and the person behind the keyboard are two separate things, you can create very immersive roleplaying experiences where you can experience social interactions as your character in a more direct way. On an RP realm, as an example, I would expect to be referred to as a Pandaren on a personal level - not just when discussing racials, but on a non-RP realm I would not.
The unique rules in RP realms is that you are strongly encouraged to do that suspension of disbelief, and even punished for making it hard for players to do that by calling your character something ridiculous or running around making constant real-life references.
I don’t mind the addon, but its functionality was never part of this game’s design. Ever.
Man, then with this it will take me forever to read y’all trp profiles in goldshire inn especially in that one coner where everybody is silent and only move when they acquire a target.
As long as devs don’t play the same game as we do, they’re in no position to tell us what tools we should use. If this sounds insane, consider having to coordinate movement through discord callouts within a 2 second window, then repeating it several times per pull throughout 2-300 pulls.
Devs play a nerfed version of mythic raids during testing so they never experience the burnout and frustration.
Sure, it would be possible to tackle these difficulties without coordination through addons, but it adds RNG to a content that requires eliminating variables.
The reason for these mechanics is that they know you’re going to use addons, so they design the encounters to be challenging with addons and, since the addons give you great power boosts, designing them around the addons, and that’s where the problems arise in their design.
It’s sort of like designing a shooter around aimbots. Can you do it? Yes you can. But is that what you want to make, is the question.
So Blizzard has to make their mind up; are they going to allow addons to react to so many external inputs? You know; reading the combat log during combat, reading communication with other clients, sending automatic chat messages - things like that.
Or are they going to nerf all that into the ground to restore a more world-oriented gameplay experience.
They play it on retail. All the raid designers are in high-end mythic guilds, playing the encounters they have designed. Every last one.
You’re telling me they implemented private auras (like on smolderon) for the sole purpose of breaking addons, and then circumvented them with addons during their internal testing?
I really hope they revert this change. TRP3 is an excellent addon and I can hardly imagine roleplaying without it. If it’s taken away, I might legit just stop playing altogether, since RP has been the only reason I play WoW since Cata.
No, I’m telling you that they managed to do that part of the communication, but let’s be honest: 90% of the encounter still relies on addons to be performed correctly, anyway, which is my point.
But yeah I mean they’re clearly trying to find ways of making raid leading important again.
I think devs play a nerfed version of mythic raids during their testing, which means they can beat them without addons by making callouts on discord “I’m soaking next”, since they spend fewer wipes on them and don’t burn out.
I think during release they buff all the bosses to compensate for the fact that they’re not world first raiders (I believe they even said this in the past), and end up nerfing them once their teams get stuck on them on live.
Our raid leader burned out years ago and refuses to raidlead because of the obscene amount of callouts he had to make throughout hundreds of wipes. Not just in recent expansions but overall.
So again: I’m perfectly OK with blizz limiting or removing all combat addons (even though I know it’s impossible), but then I want to see video footage of their devs beating all mythic raid bosses, during testing, on the same tuning as it will go live, WITHOUT any addons.
Okay, you’re free to think that. I know you’re wrong, and I know because I used to know people on the dev team and in CM (they all left now)
So… yeah. Feel free to not believe me.
Oh yeah, I know the feeling. I did it for nearly 5 years with a guild called Silverblade.
I think verbal communication is part of the experience. What burned me out was 9.1 dailies.
It’s not impossible at all. All you do is just say “Player is in combat, the combat log can no longer be read” - and then afterwards the client will play the entire combat log for the addon one action at a time, with a timestamp. That way the addon can’t react for you, but you can collect stats.
I absolutely agree, as long as it’s non-repetitive high level instructions like strategic callouts in a battleground. But using soaks on smolderon as an example there’s no way humans could coordinate that through discord during the ~100 wipes it takes to progress it.
Ok, can I please see the video footage of them doing it on live tuning without weakauras that bypass private auras on smolderon?
Addons sending messages to one another allows for addons to perform communication and coordination on behalf of the players in the middle of combat. It is a big part of the reason why there are so many combat-focused addons and the raid encounters are so difficult as a consequence.
If abused it can also cause server instability, which I guess is part of the reason they chose to throttle it.
It’s also a big part of the reason you keep getting reminders to update your addons. Have you never noticed how BW or DBM constantly and relentlessly complains about updates because it needs to coordinate with other players? Well, this is why.
No? Firstly I don’t know anyone there since early Shadowlands, secondly why would they send video of their internal testing process to me? The best I can do is tell you what they told me, and if you won’t believe me there’s nothing I can do. You have apparently decided that I lie. Your prerogative.
I just want to discuss WoW in honest conversation, so I am not going to waste any more text on this.
