NO Addons please. There is another solution!

All the children screaming their little emotion based rants about banning add ons is adorable. I particularly enjoy these two arguments;

"People will yell at me when I am bad!" and "Addons make the game easier... but wait they also make it harder because I can't play any way I want to!"

I really love the dissonance in that last one. People are terrified of other people being better than them and that fear is coming out in full force today. Here's something that will hopefully blow all your minds. If you are playing a game where you can do what ever you want and still win, its not a good game. Any game that allows you to do that is a far too easy, skilless, and meaningless game. It would be akin to playing chess with just pawns just because that's how you felt like playing, and being able to win.

The people who feel like every else should put up with their style of play are far more egotistical than the people who expect their players to perform to the best the game will allow. I would be shocked to find anyone over the age of consent in the Vatican parroting these arguments.

^ Probably the best way I've heard it put. Quoting to bring attention to it

To believe whats in that quote to show an immense lack of vision and understanding.

Firstly, its folly to assume that the developers are inherently better decision makers than anyone else. You know the floating combat text in Swtor? That got its start in mmos in WoW from an add on. How about opening all your mail at once? That was an add on too. There are countless other examples but I want it to sink in how ubiquitous those seem and how stupid any developer would appear be to not include those, because they didn't before add on popularity made it obvious the players wanted those features.

Secondly, anyone who who assumes Gearscore did anything but make normal gear checking visible clearly has an extremely limited grasp of the world. As others have pointed out, people were checking gear in mmos before WoW, let alone Gearscore. All Gearscore did was make the process easier.

How do people take such short sighted dribble seriously? Rational thought goes by the wayside so easily in people.

Agreed, and I am so relieved to join a game without them.

because once they are everyone else expects you to use them. I have played in guilds where you can't join in anything if you dont' have certain addons...and as you said some of us don't want to use them

/agree

I have no problem with UI customization add ons, but I do not want anything to ruin gameplay. The game is perfectly playable without threat meters or healbots (as a healer I would hate a healbot in this game, it would just get boring). The tank and DPS I roll with seem to be able to manage agro perfectly fine, but then again we are coming from a game without meters where you had to know what you were doing to tank well enough and hold agro.

I really dislike anything that simplifies encounters (such as threat meters or that boss add-on in wow that told you when he was going to cast skills etc). I am not saying I am against add-ons, I would love something that made my ui no look horrible with 4 full bars of crap or even dps meters I am not against, but game simplifying add-ons are something I hope they keep out.

In the end, none of us will really have much input on the extent of what they allow. They are going to allow some, we can only wait and see.

The "other solution" is for Bioware to add the popular features provided by addons into the default UI. The most important improvements needed are a combat log, and a way to move and resize the default UI elements. I am looking forward to addons being implemented in TOR.

that attidute doesnt work and well know it

One of the things I've noticed is that SWTOR may have the 'holy trinity' of tanks, dps, and healing, but it's not nearly as specialized as other MMOS. Everyone's insistance on pushing that specialization is actually harming their play.

No offense, folks, but up through level 25, at the very least, your "non-spec'd" role is perfectly viable as an 'off play' option. My DPS Counsellor can heal quite well - oh, not as well as a heal-spec'd counsellor, but good enough to salvage a four-man team that couldn't find a healer. My Tank Jedi puts out solid DPS... and so on.

The point is that while the paradigm of Tank-Healer-DPS still exists, SWTOR seems to be deemphasizing overspecialization (at least so far). I have no desire to open the door on addons that will only further the notion that you have to put on one hat and keep it.

I have saved entire teams by stepping back and 'off healing' or tossing out an occasional 'bubble' to protect the tank or to spell a healer. I don't want the culture of this game to turn into the rigid and overdefined mess we've seen in every other MMO to date.. and that mostly comes from nonsense like Recount.