NO Addons please. There is another solution!

First of all, there are absolutely no arguments against non-combat addons. I want a gear management addon to manage my four sets, and more freedom in arranging my chat screens and stuff wouldn't hurt. The GTN interface could use a little something too. Whenever looking at an item tooltip, I want to have it compared to what my companion that I don't have with me has. I don't see how this could possibly affect your game experience. If you are afraid of gearscore, I can live with addons not having access to inspect information, but I'll also point out that you can always be inspected, and that group leaders will always be free to choose their members based on whatever criteria, be it gearscore or the color of your eyes.

As for in-combat addons, I want the relevant information to be displayed in exactly the way I want. If I asked one of the HCI people in my company about awkward information display and told them I wasn't allowed to change that, they wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry. However, asking players the same, I'd get "noob", "l2p", "adapt" and all that. Some DPS specs are hihgly dependent on procs, and trying to figure out exactly how many stacks of a buff you have from the constantly shifting buff bar is stupid. I play at 2560x1440, and those buff icons are tiny and away from the game action. Does anyone really think the challenge of this game should be in looking at a dozen small icons with numbers on them, shifting around wildly? Wouldn't it be good to have the information readable and close to the action so that you can focus on the action itself? Would it really be so bad that, out of the four DOTs of the same name on the target, you actually knew which one was yours?

Also, I don't play a healer (yet), but I don't want to heal without exactly configurable ops frames and mouseovers. Again, hiding the information should not be how the game is challenging. Information should always be available in the format I want, and the challenge must be in the decision of how to make the most out of the situation.

In combat, I don't want an addon that makes an action do different things based on the situation. Whatever you do must be your own choice, but the information that you base that decision on must be readily available.

All this thread tells me is that half of the SWOTR population is made of people who couldn't cut it in WoW. There are no rational reasons for not allowing add ons. All reasons stated are just smokescreens for "I don't want to be held accountable for my performance". That's it. That's what it boils down to. If people didn't want to use add ons, they wouldn't, but this thread is saying "Don't even allow them in game" because what they're really saying is "When we wipe I don't want them to see it was my fault".

To those against add ons, wanting to hide in anonymity is not only immature, it's pathetic. Spend time learning your class, practice, and then you won't have to fear the meters. It's as simple as that. Bioware, if you don't allow add ons, you will have an empty game faster than you could even imagine.

I want real time data, not end of Operation data. That might be fine in PvP due to the nature of PvP but it isn't fine for Operations, esp for guilds like mine who make it a point to clear the most difficult content as quickly as possible just for the achievement of doing so. And while we have accomplished completion of all 16m Nightmare content, I would really love to know how I was doing during our wipes, or what the hell was killing me when I would suddenly explode out of nowhere.

Just fun to see people say you cant manage raids without meters, I wonder how we managed to raid hardcore content 6 days a week in everquest for 6 hours at a time. We had no add ons at all. Addons that tells you to move to the left, to the right, push button a, push button b just sickens me.

And now to the dps meters and threat meters, same there, never needed that stuff in other games, you actually watch what other ppl do in your grp and you will see whos a good player. Paying attention is a wonderful thing.

I do agree with being able to change your UI a bit is not a bad idea, but why addons? Just make it doable in game. Not that hard.

Patience, like the game as it is, some stuff are meant to be different if all was the same in all games, why then even play other games...

Out of curiosity, how would you deduce someone's threat generation just by observing them? By watching how many attacks of each kind they perform? I can't even see my own damage numbers when I tank, all I see are the boss' balls. I have NO way of knowing what kind of damage I do. Not to mention how I died when I just get one-shot out of the blue.

its not about making things easier... its about making things less painfull like a dot tracker where u can actually see which dot is yours and what time it will run out. or a dps/heal meter if u wanna see which class may be more effective for job x y z. or a freakin targets target.

if u raid "hardcore" most addons wont be finished till u already killed them / on many encounters u have to write your own timers (yes SOME timers will become very important if they actually make pve hard e.g. timers/cd trackers on spells u may want to avoid)

You know, you can continue to insult me but at least I'm trying to offer a solution to people who have different opinions on whether addons should be in the game or not. Thanks for those who did read my post about the idea I suggested, I appreciate it.

As for your comment about addons being a crutch? I would have disagree with you, if a player is skillful at the game than addons are not going to do much for them. They are not going to get any extreme advantage in pve or pvp. For example, these are the addons I used during World of Warcraft. I used a total of 4 addons and I never felt left out or had a disadvantage in pve or pvp. I had X-perl for Unit Frames, Omen for threat meter, a dps meter and the Titan bar that listed my money, mail, location and gear at the top of my screen. I used the blizzard bars for my abilities with key bindings.

Addon List
X-perl Unit Frames
Omen
Dps Meter
Titan

Can you please tell me what advantage I really had over other players? Come on, where is this huge crutch you're talking about. For the record, I was also a gladiator on my warrior for arena's. I don't understand what this huge advantage in pvp you're talking about that addons give? Can you please explain what addons you think give a huge advantage in pvp?

Anyway, I hope you realize that most people use addons so they can improve their UI from the standard one. Hell, we can't even move our UI and it would be so useful if we could and replace it with something that looks better. The second reason that people get addons is for information that they use to improve their skill and to learn more about their class. Such as the dps meter and Omen, most people get those so they can learn information on what their dps is like in their current rotation. They then theory craft to improve their skill and dps by coming up with a new rotation. The same goes for threat with me theory crafting how to do more threat with a new rotation.

This thread reminds me of an incident from WoW. During WotLK, around the time one of my alts was closing in on level 80, and I was beginning to get into the pre-heroic end-game 5-mans, I was thrown into an Occulus PUG with a level 80, raid-geared paladin tank. We fought our way through the first boss fight without much trouble, when this tank noticed he had done something like 50% of the damage, and we had the following conversation:

Overgeared tank: ***?!!! DPS GET YOUR GAME ON!

DPSer 1: What do you mean?

Overgeared tank: I’m doing all the friggin’ work! Just because you’re 80 doesn’t mean you belong in heroics! LEARN YOUR CLASSESS! GET SOME GEAR!

DPSer 2: We’re not all 80 yet.

DPSer 3: And this isn’t a heroic.

Overgeared tank: Huh? Ohhhhhh craaaaapppp. I meant to join a heroic….

[Overgeared tank has left the party]

This Overgeared tank wasn’t really doing anything more than his usual 9-6-9 rotation (or whatever it was called), but when he checked his DPS meter he decided he was being over-worked and we were all leeching off him. You might say that was a special situation, but the core truth is that this kind of thing happened all through the game. Remember back when even our alts had T-9 badge gear? And even the lazy players were pulling 3.5K in heroics? And then some newbie in green/blues would find his way into our PUGs and do something like 1.5K? We probably all managed to complete those instances in full groups of 1.5K dpsers at launch, but now that we were all pulling 3.5K in our T-9 badge gear, suddenly this guy in his blue/greens wasn’t doing his part and consequently the rest of us were being overworked! Well, of course someone had to say something! And someone always did, right?

Overgeared DPSer 1: I don’t pay $15/month to pull newbies through PUGs, brother.

Overgeared DPSer 2: Join a guild group if you want help.

Overgeared Healer: Your DPS is holding us up, so we’re gonna boot you now. Be sure to use the free time to check out Elitist Jerks so you can get some proper idea’s about spec and rotation.

Overgeared Tank: Seriously, dude. At the very least, you gotta be able to out-dps the tank!

[Newbie has been removed from the group]

I don’t miss any of that….

How I see that? Easy if you group with ppl and they overaggro often its kind of obvious they arent playing there clas right. Like if I see tank charge mobs and gets stunned, then I dont hit full ae or go full out, then I take it slow, cause playing stuff controlled is way better than some crazy go full out dps all the time cause I want to top a meter...

Some DPS classes easily out-threat me while we're both playing our classes right. But they have no way of knowing if they're about to do so. What you listed are trivial cases. Luckily, so far we haven't really had mobs or even bosses that one-shot people, and getting aggro isn't too dangerous. But really, some of us have little if any way to gauge our performance, because we don't even see our damage numbers.

Oh, and if you say we're obviously not playing right, give me the meters to prove it? Oh wait, you can't.