NO Addons please. There is another solution!

Built-in modifiable interface and a combat log would solve most people's problems I think.

I sure would like to actually be able to look at a log and tell what killed me at least, even if not parsing the data for figuring out my dps.

I honestly am on the fence about this issue. Many addons created a rich environment to custom tailor the game to a specific persons need. Some addons were frustrating, especially when used as a tool to bully others and put themselves on a pedestal. Also I would be concerned that subscription based addons could come about. They are, in my opinion, an affront to the force. The only other issue i am concerned about is the push and pull of the gaming environment against addons.

Everyone has a very different opinion on how their UI should look, what features should be there, and how things should react to their input. If this were placed in the hands of the developer, it would distract them from much of the attention that they want to place on content and balance. If it was under their control they would almost certainly have to make the UI completely modular, so as to please the masses. Addons on the other hand, would allow changing of scale, color, transparency, position, and a great many other options for UI, along with alerts and monitoring of buffs, agro, and productivity. These features could greatly benefit the game, although some of them could also create arguments, such as damage meters, raid warning assists, and the ever furious Gearscore fight that took over WoW. This brings me to my next point.

When people want to put down others, they will find a way. Damage meters and raid warning assists are great features that allow the player to evaluate their performance, compare skill tree specs, or help keep them paying attention while dealing with content they have never encountered before.

With that comes the chance to better educate other players on what they could do if they feel they are not playing at the level they want to. On the flip side though, it can create scenarios where a player is ridiculed for their choices in their skill tree or rotations, discourages CC able players to use proper CC, for fears they might not make top tier DPS in the raid, and allow opportunities for people to become hostile when a given person does not "move out of the fire".

In much of my time in world of warcraft, I played a discipline priest. Much of the time in groups, I was commended for doing well. We would make it though instances without issue, often times encountering content no one in the group had before. Guild raids were very similar, but that took time also, due to the nature of my talent spec. Discipline Priests would protect their group/raidmembers though damage mitigation. Instead of healing incoming damage, I spent alot of my time stopping or reducing damage done altogether. Because of this, when I was still looking for a guild that I would enjoy, after a given raid (or after each major encounter) the DPS would spam their meters, as always. Then the healer would spam theirs, and to their surprise, the other healer had less healing done than some of the DPS who healed through procs! Without fail, I would be ridiculed with comments: "WT eff! I totally carried you though that...", "Pick it up or ill kick your sorry [insert favorite word here] out!"

If you remember, damage mitigation is the disc priests bread and butter. There was an issue that as far as when I stopped playing wow was never fixed. There was no accurate way to track damage reduction so I had no way to communicate through meters my contribution to the groups. It was estimated though, that about 2/3 to 3/4 of my productivity in a fight was through reduction/mitigation. After adding that to my healing done, my estimated heal+shield score would be, often times, at or quite above my attackers amount.

Eventually I found a group of players that understood this, and all was fine. Before that though, it was really hard to enjoy grouping without switching specs (which I really enjoyed how discipline played so I never did. I knew my worth.) All things considered, these tools can be amazing at evaluation, but it is in the hands of the playerbase to take the information and use it as a way to educate, and edify other players, rather than falling to the route of causing misery to others.

Now, many of the "required addons" became part of a compilation that certain addon developers bundled into "pay to receive addon libraries" where it was either required that you paid for the access to the addons, or paid for certain features that would make having addons without it, more trouble than it was worth (such as auto update). On average, raiding groups would require anywhere from 5-10 addon packages. Many of these had multiple addons that were part of them, making it up to 25 addons to configure sometimes. These addons would require updates on at least a weekly basis, sometimes even daily. If you had to update these manually, it was a bit of a headache.

While I understand alot of work goes into addon creation (I am going to school for software engineering) it is infuriating that greed comes into the picture while all you want to do is to get into the next Operation that released. I am a proud supporter of open source programming, but I do understand that peoples creations are their own and they can do what they want with them. For people that have to worry about upkeep, the $80 internet bill, $15 game subscription, $5 dollar addon package subscription among the many other bills we as adults have, starts to add up. Something to consider.

Now that all of the players have their UI looking spiffy specs conformed to what is accepted at the time, know if they accidentally stay if the fire once they will be kicked, have an empty wallet and are ready to take on the horde of rakghouls that are taking over the universe since last patch, they realize that fights are not engaging enough and that they are getting bored. The developer sees this and makes them harder. Addons get updated and people find their screen littered with warnings every second, get bored, gets harder, update, more warnings, harder, another update, more boredom.... you get the picture. Now those without addons can hardly level from 1-10 without having their Deadly Boss Mods on, let alone dream about raiding. But hey, at least you will have over 500k health!

With all of this, I still really dont know how I feel about their implementation. There are quite a few pluses and this game could greatly benefit from some customization and better feedback. With that comes many minor inconveniences and a few MAJOR complications. I think in comfortable guild / group situations, a lot of the major issues go away, but for the people who want to play the game, and enjoy the company of non guildies / pug runs from time to time, or even those new to MMOs in general, this can really hurt the populace.

tottaly agree's on this.

As a raid-leader I need to have ways to measure how well a person is performing. Currently this is not possible. Mods would solve this because people can add stuff to the game that can innovate.

That said, if Bioware adds a board similar to the PvP one for boss fights (per boss), that would be a step in the right direction. DPS-meters would be neat. Aggro meters could also help a lot of determine how far you can push before pulling aggro. If Bioware adds these things, the need for mods would be lesser.

But again, Blizzard has proven that add-ons lead to improving the game and later on they add such things to the game itself (granted, not always a good version of said mod).

Gearscore already exist in this game, it's called inspect. We have kicked multiple people out of our pug raid due to them having bad gear.


As far a healbot goes it would just be nice to enable click healing I think everyone will agree there are to many skills in this game and having a way of keybinding more via mouseclicks would benefit everyone except those already with a Naga.

Also improve the buffs/debuffs on the raid frames, make them BIGGER so we can actually see them.

Simple things like this do away the need for alot of bloated addons.

From what i saw on the gamesradar video about the legacy system and the ui customization, its clear that by not talking about mods and only showing ui moving and scaling, implementation of an addon system is far from being a reality in the short-medium term.

If everybody could learn to play, we wouldn't need a DPS/Healing meter.

Since there are a lot of people who play poorly, we need to be able to identify them.

Ever wonder why some PUGs are great, some are wipefests?

Meters don't change the game, they help us understand what is going on.

P.S. People who whine about not wanting damage meters/gear score in the game are usually the baddies I am referring to above.

THIs ^^

Its the biggest problem I have with the game. Supposedly its being looked into.

I'll be honest.

I was against DPS meters simply b/c how the community abuses them, and all the crap that comes along with them.

I pretty much said all along that unless BW makes enrage timers a big issue in the game, then we dont need them. Well, after a month of play, enrage timers are a big element in HM/NM so I do have to concede that I am beginning to change my mind on this.

While I still dont like the idea, if that is the road they want to go down, then I have to keep an open mind.

If only it were that easy but eventually if you want to participate in endgame you'll have to use them or you won't be allowed to raid...they are unnecessary, they take the skill out off the game and imo only lazy people who want to press one button while they watch something on tv as they raid want addons.

Exactly. Bosses evolved from Molten Core/tank and spank/tunnel your action bar to something challenging and actually requiring coordination, communication, and player skill to accomplish. Those are good things, they provide an interesting raiding environment. If you just want to tunnel find a target dummy. I mean come on, we all know what you're saying. You don't want things to get hard. Well, I hope Bioware creates content for both of us.