NO Addons please. There is another solution!

Then remove the "inspect" tool as it is currently used in the same way.
/fail.

I honestly don't understand why people are so upset with addons. I used to be the main tank for Vodka during Burning Crusade and addons did not make the game any easier for us. We never made any requirement that forced people to get addons. To be honest, the only addons that people mainly used were Omen, Grid and a dps meter.

Did these addons help? Of course they did but they did not make the game any easier and I would say it had the opposite affect. What do I mean by that? Well, believe it or not they actually made us play better. How? It's quite simple really, Omen was a addon for threat and therefore people could see how much threat they were doing. This was a great addon because it actually improved a lot of people like myself. How? I was now able to see my own threat and to see just how much threat I was doing. I was then able to figure out how much threat my spells were doing. Therefore, I was able to change my tanking rotation so I could do more threat. It then led on to people doing a lot more dps on bosses.

The following addon was a dps meter that we used and I can't say enough how useful this addon was. The dps meter did not make the game any easier in my opinion. The addon only made people play better because they were now able to see their dps. How did it make people play better? The dps in Vodka were now able to see their own dps and their dps rotation. They could now work on figuring out the best rotation for the most dps because of the extra information that the dps meter had. And the dps did just that and were able to improve their dps greatly. Its amazing how a simple addon like a dps meter can actually improve ones skill and dps.

Those are just two examples of how addons can make players in general better at the game. I understand that not everyone has the mind set of using an addon to help improve their skill as a player. I guess my point is that not all addons make the game easier. There are a lot of addons that can actually help and make a player better than they were. I also know that there are addons out there that do make the game easier for the general player. And I agree that it's not a good thing because it only makes people play worse.

Anyway, I understand why there are a lot of people against addons because of how they can make the game easier. However, there are a lot of addons that do a lot of good and can help players improve their skill. Please keep that in mind and that not all addons are bad. Please give me your thoughts about this idea I had if addons are finally allowed. The idea I had is that we should have some sort of review process for new addons. What I mean is this,

Bioware should create a new department that only deals with addons. That means for every new addon that is made by someone, they would have to submit their addon to the new addon department. That way Bioware can test each new addon and to make sure it doesn't make the game any easier by having the player play less skillful by not doing something they normally would have to do. Also, there should be a new forum section where players of swtor can review an addon that someone makes. That way we can get input from the community about how they feel about someones new addons. I think it would be great to have a forum section where people can share idea's and review addons.

I think that idea would work really well but I'm not sure what everyone else thinks about it. Please share your thoughts!

I stopped reading at Vodka and then fell to the floor in laughter.

*ahem*

Anyways, L2P without your crutch. When people refer to add-ons forcing other to use them, they are not referring to just PvE. Add-ons can and will give an extreme advantage to PvP players, thus forcing specefic add-ons to be used for content in the game.

Add-ons are nothing more than a crutch, simple as that. If you want your precious add-ons then go back to WoW.

I think this is a great idea. The only problem is where do you set the limit? As far as submitting to Bioware for approval, this could be avoided by having Bioware restricts in which ways users can create addons. You are absolutely right about most addons, they are fantastic TOOLS to learn to play better and on top of that, this leads to more development time on other features of the game, since the addons are there to "fill the holes" in less than optimal features. It can also lead to new features implemented directly by Bioware if they have a way to track what addons are really popular and massively used.
I don't think a GS addon has its place in any MMO, but it is a small price to pay(especially in this game), IMO, to get all those really useful and amazing addons.

His idea to have the devs monitor what would make it or not in the game is a very good compromise to everyone. Before insulting someone, why not try to make your points valid instead of making empty statements? Saying addons are a crutch, simple as that, doesn't make your point any valid, that just shows you have an opinion. So what, I have an opinion too and last I checked, it is just as valid as yours. So instead you can point me where I am wrong (without insults, of course), why would I agree with you?

P.S. If you are really good at the game, and you have learned to play without addons (as you probably since you call him out), you won't need addons to beat all the "baddies"that use addons, right?

Arguing that the current UI is so bad that giving players access to a clean and responsive interface would give them an unfair advantage is a pretty strong argument in favor of addons, not against it.

Addons do nothing that we can't already do in game, they just make the information easier to see/decipher.

Gearscore? We can already inspect you.
DPS meters? Once we get combat logs we will be able to parse them anyway
Raiding? The game already tells you what to do, or your raid leader will.
Healing mouseovers? Macros? They just mean we need less clicks to do things, we still have to use the skills ourselves and decide when and where to use them.

Addons are simply for convenience. They don't magically make you a better player or play the game for you, they're just a different way to process the data the game provides you already.

Sorry so being able to accuratley compare which Build/spec/rotation does more dps is a crutch?

Personally i'd prefer difficult content that you need to minmax for if you want to push fast progression, not patheticly easy content that you can faceroll with 16 half decent players regardless of spec/build/rotation.

add-on = raid timers

thats what ruined the game most about add=ons in wow.

there were programs that told you when to do things as opposed to having payed attention.

they just need them. If the game is playable without them then why do you need them

if anything wow ruined it for other games because they have to include add on custimization

which wouldnt be a problem except people look for exploits and then that is a huge problem.

i dont mind addons it just makes people who care, make other people who don't care have to do it to raid and such.

i just figure if there is a problem it will be addressed. instead of if you have add ons then people who dont think to go to add ons then have to go to add ons instead of just playing the game.

idk it wouldnt matter but i just dont see the point as someone who used as little as he could in wow.

Ignoring the trolls who think that wanting to be able to remove chrome from unit frames, have a GTM interface that isn't utterly terrible, be able to tell which debuffs on a target are mine, accurately visualize debuff/buff duration and or perform meaningful postmortem analysis during encounters are a crutch....

There's no point to this. If there's things that an addon should not be able to do, then the developers just do not expose the functionality required to enable that in the first place or alter the hooks they provide to break said unintended functionality.

Having to add more staff or increase the workload on existing staff just to "audit" what would more than likely be a large number of third party contributions would negate one of the positives from their point of view.

My inner cynic also says that turn around time for something like this would be unacceptably long, as evidenced by people's reported interactions with the publicly accessible side of Bioware, but I understand that it would be a different department and may end up being ok.

There are companies that do things like this software wise, so I'm not saying it won't work, but with a reasonably well designed programmer interface, I don't see it being necessary.

This is a good idea. As a developer I'm overjoyed to get feedback/bug reports for products I develop.

Sorry if it comes off as negative. I agree with the other stuff you wrote, but adding (in my opinion) unneeded complications doesn't seem like a great idea.