20mil downloads for DBM alone no matter how you cut thats a lot of people using DBM

 

10mil for healbot

 

9mil for omen

 

8.8mil Auctioneer

 

 

 

Are these downloads by all individuals or do those numbers include the ones who redownload it after every patch?

 

Isn't 20mil more than the subs that WoW has and has ever had?

 

I don't think these numbers mean what you are trying to make them mean.

Check earlier as we went over it

Check earlier as we went over it

And?

/10char

Without a damage meter, we'll be having things like "LFM for Eternity Vault, must be able to kill the First on Dromand kass in 45 seconds while we watch".

that'd be awesome for backstab classes! can i have a tank too?

I'd pay to see that become a standard for groups

 

Edit: Check the new Sig

I feel special now.

FIRST: This is not advocating that TOR continue to deny addons. This comes from seeing the MANY posts for addons and getting frustrated at the posters for how they ask for something.

 

#1: Keep in mind that the majority of players will never use addons. Even in WoW, more players just log on and play without a single addon than those that use them.

 

#2: To the "Then don't use them crowd": There are two things wrong with this argument, though it sounds good in theory. First, is that if addons are added, they will become required for raiding. This is because they're useful and end up helping. No problem there in my mind, just remember this when saying that not everyone has to use them. Second, most folks cite a few core addon needs but forget that if BW allows 3rd party addons, then all shapes and sizes of addons will come in. Many of which I'd bet BW is currently unprepared to deal with. People WILL try to exploit/bot/etc with addons if enabled. They exploit without them too, but its just something that will happen in MMO's. That crowd is very few people compared to the player base but I bring this up because this is something BW will be concerned with.

 

#3: "A lack of addons will help the bad players stay bad." Some addons can help so much in improving game play (I miss power auras) but my main issue with this argument returns to #1 in a way. Most the rather bad people are going to stay bad and never try to improve and along the same lines, most people concerned with improving will find ways to test it without addons if they have to. The addons are probably the most accurate way to cover this but it will not do anything for those that already don't care about getting told they're fail.

 

 

My request here? Look into your argument more when you make it. I use addons in WoW, I would use them if they come to TOR, but be a little more open than just screaming for them and screaming at anyone against you. Maybe there is a compromise that players can make with BW? Maybe we can get them to implement the core things we want into their UI, and continue to improve upon that as time goes on. Of course, this is all a pipe dream as many forum goers are lucky to complete a sentence correctly, but I will continue to dream because this fantasy land of people using their brains to achieve something is a very shiny place.

The bold part is a mistake made by you based on WoW. No, addons doesnt mean they are going to be required. And actually once addons are launched, we must convince BW to not design and code with the premise of their use.

You can choose to use the addons or not, so the content must be made with the asumption of no addons being used.

If you want to make your life easier, then use the addons, if you dont, then dont.

And people must learn and not call the content easy while they are using half a dopzen addons to help them.

This is a community problem, not an addon problem.

I want addons because they help me test builds, customize the UI to my preference and heal properly without the limitations of a poor UI. I dont want addons to race against others.

If the community is bad, addonjs or not we are doomed, we must teach the community to be a good one, then adddons or not we will be fine.

I wonder

If a company made a game with hundreds of abilities and practice dummies how many of the pro dps crowd would play it?

I wonder

 

If a company made a game with hundreds of abilities and practice dummies how many of the pro dps crowd would play it?

You don't understand the mindset at all. They're a means to an end, not the end itself.

Saying something then asking others to prove you wrong is not a logical argument. I could say "most people use addon's" and it would be just as valid.

The whole scientific world is based on that principle, though. Some1 shouts something, backed by 1 or 2 arguments/results. This stays valid untill the rest find an experiment that proves the OP wrong. So far I still have to agree with the OP. I see the stats from Curse are removed, but I remember that the number 1 add-on was DL'ed 20M times. Which logically means that the chances are biggest that a maximum of 1M people use it (20 DL's per person because of all the patching, is a very reasonable assumption, an maybe on the low side). Considering a 10M playerbase, it means that 90% (!) does not use that add-on. It therefor logically follows, that over half of the playerbase does not use add-ons in WoW, and since in it's basis SW:TOR and WoW are the same game (MMO RPG with endgame raiding content), it's save to assume that the same percentages go for SW:TOR. THAT proves the OP's argument. Ofc, that is my opinion. I do like to see an argument similar to mine, that disproves is.

First, no one is requiring anyone to raid. No one is requiring anyone to join a guild that requires addon's. If you want to be in those guilds, you follow their rules. So saying that people need addon's to raid is a falacy.

 

And DBM vs UI tweaks and damage meters are not the same level of addon. Also, yes, Blizzard has made functionality that allowed for gamebreaking addons (IE Healbot that auto healed the lowest health person, the Wrath addon that put red circles on the ground where you shouldn't stand, etc), and they were easy to break. You disable their info stream.

 

DBM works because there is a WoW API that tells the client when the fight starts and when an ability was used, along with the graphical means to display timers. Without those hooks, DBM doesn't work.

If you're serious about raiding, but believe that raiding does not require add-ons (which basically it doesn't) or if you want a challenge in the raids, there is nowhere to go. Guilds demand add-on usage, and we all know that PuGs are not an option. Again, I agree more with the OP on this one.

People are making this argument, I agree. However, it's a valid argument. Without a damage meter, you have no idea if you wiped due to the guy with awesome gear going AFK for 2 minutes while the guy with bad gear worked his butt off, or if someone is just bad.

The reason we don't have damage meters in-game right now isn't some moral, principled argument, it's that Bioware didn't put them in, and wanted to ship the game before Christmas. For raiding in this game to survive, you'll need 2 things:

 

1. Content is so easy that it doesn't matter if you can tell if people are bad.

2. A way to tell what you need to improve.

I have to agree with the OP partially on this one: It will be harder to spot a bad player, though experienced (raid-)players are able to pick them out of the crowd without add-ons (yes, they can). That said, I personally disagree that add-ons make bad players better. In some cases, they do, because a bad player can more easily access the numbers, and then do some number-crunching to improve his game. Also, some bad players are unable to use the wrong rotations, cause the add-ons do it for him some of the time. This doesn't improve the player, though, but makes him less bad number-wise. Part of this group is bad just because they don't know their class the way the should, if they want to be good @ their roles. Add-ons, imo, take away the chance for them to truelly learn their class. I may be wrong @ that, but for me it works best to learn a class without add-ons that tell me play the game. Some basic UI customization, macros & keybinds are then needed to improve my playstyle, and that way I know that with other add-ons, I can top my game and be able to come along with the top-raiders (which gives me choice in the guild I want).

Furthermore: please stop blaming Bioware for the release. Especially if they're part of the EA-consortium. EA has been known for forcing a release, where developers know the game is not ready. EA has already destroyed several games that had the potential to be good, if not great games. Can't blame Bioware for that.

"Also, some bad players are unable to use the wrong rotations, cause the add-ons do it for him some of the time."

Yeah, about that. The few mods out there that did do this for a short amount of time, don't anymore. Even when mods like that did work, they didn't last long. Honestly, where do you people get your info from?

The whole scientific world is based on that principle, though. Some1 shouts something, backed by 1 or 2 arguments/results. This stays valid untill the rest find an experiment that proves the OP wrong.

.

That's about as wrong as it gets. The guy you quoted had it right.

That's about as wrong as it gets. The guy you quoted had it right.

I'm not wrong, that's how it works. A theory that has @ least to valid arguments in favor of it, has to be disproven first before the theory is considered false.

Besides, as I stated as well, logic alone is enough to prove the OP's point, as I made clear in the rest of that part of my post. If you can show me that of the 20 million downloads from curse, the average times a single person downloads it is less then 4, I retract logical explanation why the OP was right. If you can't, I may not be right, but LOGIC says I do.

"Also, some bad players are unable to use the wrong rotations, cause the add-ons do it for him some of the time."

 

Yeah, about that. The few mods out there that did do this for a short amount of time, don't anymore. Even when mods like that did work, they didn't last long. Honestly, where do you people get your info from?

There are plenty out there that will try to help tell you what skill to use next, just not activate it for you. I see countless PowerAura's setups that people export and share for this exact use, so the player never learns the mechanics behind their rotation, they just follow the flashing icons like a "complicated" game of Simon. I love PowerAuras, just giving an example.

I'm not wrong, that's how it works. A theory that has @ least to valid arguments in favor of it, has to be disproven first before the theory is considered false.

Besides, as I stated as well, logic alone is enough to prove the OP's point, as I made clear in the rest of that part of my post. If you can show me that of the 20 million downloads from curse, the average times a single person downloads it is less then 4, I retract logical explanation why the OP was right. If you can't, I may not be right, but LOGIC says I do.

Look up the distinction between a priori and a posteriori, then you will be on the path to figuring out why this is terribly naive.

Look up the distinction between a priori and a posteriori, then you will be on the path to figuring out why this is terribly naive.

Even with it helping to counter my point, I have to agree with you here. Sorry Sneen.

My statement came from my experience and belief which I have no way of putting into physical evidence and no accurate evidence will exist upon this for either side until someone figures out a way to take a truly accurate survey on 10 million people (or until Blizzard takes a note of every client accessing with 3rd party addons. Even if they are able to, I would think they are unlikely to as it serves them little purpose for a great deal of effort)

Furthermore: please stop blaming Bioware for the release. Especially if they're part of the EA-consortium. EA has been known for forcing a release, where developers know the game is not ready. EA has already destroyed several games that had the potential to be good, if not great games. Can't blame Bioware for that.

Fair enough

History has shown that game mods have extended a game's life well beyond the expiration date. Prove me wrong.

Prove yourself right?

This is simply not true. People can't make addon's that aren't supported by the game's API. If BW doesn't want a DBM type addon, they simply don't make that info available to the addons. if they want a damage meter style addon, then they CAN make a combat log available.

 

Right now, we have no addon's because we have no information. Information is the faucet that controls what addon's can do.

 

 

The biggest problem with implementing addon's is that it wasn't planned for from the beginning. Re-inventing the client to support addon's will be a monumental undertaking. My guess is we'll be lucky to get just a combat log in the next 3 months.

The game tells you when they are doing a major ability so no DBM is needed at the moment.

Prove yourself right?

WoW.

That was hard. Now you.

@op: You're drawing conclusions with data that does not support those conclusions.

Addons were crucial to raiding in WoW because the content was not intuitive. Spells had esoteric effects that you could only figure out by combing combat logs, videos, and datamined information. Many spells effects were auras and they did not have a clear graphic effect on your character (on top of there being more characters on the screen). There were many hidden timers that you needed to know.

To date in TOR, these things are not true (with few exceptions, like Bulwark). Graphics for auras on you are very clear (e.g. Annihilation Droid random target missile). Clear raid warnings are already present in the UI. The health bars, cast bars, and auras are centralized, rather than in far opposite corners of the screen. If the developers continue this trend (and especially after combat log implementation and improved data mining), then addons will not be "necessary" for raiding.

Furthermore, the interface developers will never be able to create a UI that is adequate for all players. Custom interface design isn't just about adding more things, in fact it's not even primarily about adding more things; It's about rearranging and reformatting available information. Individual people process information in distinctly different ways. Some people can more easily interpret text than bars. Everybody has a different focal point in their UI - that is the area where their vision is while neutral to outside information; This is the place where you want to display important information, and how the information is displayed changes based on the position.

There are dozens of popular replacements for core features (unit frames, action bars, chat) that basically do the same thing, but have different options and slightly different displays, yet they all still get used. If you looked at all of the WoW addons used with arbitrary criteria (say, more than 5,000 users or whatever number, and excluding boss mods) then you literally have thousands of development hours from hundreds of developers.

BioWare cannot fund that kind of production. No company can fund that cost. The fact is that Blizzard did not (and realistically could not) start making notable improvements to their UI until they outsourced the ideas (and in some cases, the code itself) to the community, working for free because they enjoy it.

To claim that BioWare is incapable of policing addon development means you're completely unfamiliar with addon development. Blizzard had some problems with addons doing too much, but they fixed their framework many years ago. BioWare now has Blizzard's lesson to learn from. In the WoW addon environment, it's extremely secure from addons that in any way play the game for you. A secure environment does not require constant policing, and BioWare is not treading new ground; They can literally look at the WoW UI environment code (as could you or I) and learn what needs to be restricted. Exploits in post-2.0 WoW addons are almost completely unheard of, and any that are found are usually reported discreetly directly to Blizzard before they can be abused.