Addon support

[Decrescendo]

I'm not sure where everyone has seen them say that they won't allow addons, as I've seen the exact opposite. /shrug

 

^this they even said at the guild summit they want to make more and more things themselves.. which is a bad idea for them to make.. allowing add-ons/macro would allow bioware to make there game better in other places and stop having them spend there resources on a UI that a third party player can do a much better job on .

 

Also a parser that takes more time to use in the long run then a damage meter that only takes a second to update every major patch they put out..

Eventually bioware will let these come into the game, they just feel with them people will get pointed out for not being good, but when in reality its easy to spot who is bad, ( if you back peddle to move out of something your bad, if you cant research any fight or your class your bad, if you think add-ons/macros make a game worse.. your bad), all top players pve and pvp use them because it helps them min/max there dps and heals on a character, among various other things add-ons allow you to do..

[Frostvein]

the game engine can't support or handle chat bubbles and you want third party addons.......really.....

 

This.

[GalacticKegger]

i honestly believe that the depth and availability of Addons in WoW has contributed to it's success.

 

They allow people to play how they want to without giving themselves an unfair advantage and even give older players something fresh when they start to get bored.

 

I'm in full support of Addons.

Blizz's business model operates on the idea that they can release an expansion worthy of 6 out of 10 stars by itself, where the PvE storylines can be completed in less than a week. (Think Cata.) They don't set the bar very high for themselves because the mod community will come in and fix everything that is broken with the game.

 

The mod community will release tools to take the all the guesswork out of end game for everyone but the true progression guilds. They'll simplify the game by complicating the interface. They will do everything that Blizz is too lazy to do themselves. Blizz could be polishing content after it's been released while keeping new & dynamic content flowing for all levels of characters while the modding community dictates the game's fight mechanics. But they aren't.

 

Pull addons out of WoW and the game crumbles.

 

Nice to see Pandaville is expanding to include a legacyesque system, as well beefing up pets with combat abilities. Gee ... how original. Next thing you know, every class will have gearable combat-capable companions who can farm and do background missions.

Edited May 11, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[CJ_SAX_MAN]

Are there any yellow posts on this recently, if so can someone link them, i want to know biowares stance on them as of late Edited May 30, 2012 by CJ_SAX_MAN

[JollyRogers]

my opinion is its really big minus mmo with no addon support.

 

I'm pretty much the opposite. No addon support is a good thing, in my opinion.

[DarthTHC]

I doubt they are going to give the players the ability to create in-game add-ons after launch, either. The devs have access to the actual game code which means they can create better integrated tools than the players ever could without the players having to constantly ensure all of the add-ons are compatible with the most recent client version. That's one thing from playing WoW I don't miss: having to ensure all of my add-ons were updated after the patch which sometimes was a couple days or so depending on how fast the add-on author was about updating their add-on (some were faster than others).

 

Yes, it was sort of painful in WoW to make sure your add-ons were up to date. I quickly learned which authors were on top of things and which weren't and chose my add-ons accordingly.

 

But the interesting thing is, for all the good you say can come from the developers managing the UI, add-ons in WoW were and still are incredibly popular. One popular add-on site has over 5,000 add-ons listed. The most popular 5 of them (combined) get downloaded more times per month than the number of SWTOR active subscriptions.

 

If the developers were doing things that "right", add-ons wouldn't be nearly as popular.

Edited May 30, 2012 by DarthTHC

[Marak]

To everyone singing Blizzard's praises for their addon support-- the devs came out and said that they regret not having enough restrictions with their addon support. They feel like they opened Pandora's box and the game became an arm's race which required WAY more work for them to balance classes and content. One could argue that this lead to a more polished game as the community didn't allow for too big of a margin of error, but it also created a mechanical experience rather than a more organic one. The wizard's curtain was pulled back, as it were.

 

Personally, I think some things are okay. Generic UI replacement is fine (action bars, auction house, bags, etc). BossMods is not. HealerMustDie (PvP addon for targeting healers) is not. Original Healbot (where you just mashed the button and it would auto target the raid member with the least amount of health) is not.

 

If I had to choose between BW or Blizzard's approach, I would err on the side of caution and not allow them at all and just implement UI features that the public wants into the base UI.

[Darth_Bond]

the game engine can't support or handle chat bubbles and you want third party addons.......really.....

 

lololol

[psi_overtake]

addons make me feel like i am no longer playing the game..but running a sophisticated grouping of programs to run the game for me.. Sure it may be more efficent in the long run.. but i play the game for fun, not efficency.

 

For me, efficiency is fun. I had a great add-on (and then another one when that stopped getting updated) that added a button that allowed me to sell all my junk to the vendor with one click. It also kept track of what was most and least valuable in my inventory. This isn't as relevant in SWTOR, but little things like that are what I would use add-ons for.

Edited May 30, 2012 by psi_overtake

[GnatB]

The Devs have already stated that they WONT be available as it takes the focus away from the game in regards to people actually having to PLAY THE GAME to win other than relying on third party mods to give them the edge (paraphrasing but thats the gist of it).

 

Who cares about "an edge". If the other players in my party/raid can fight that much better, GREAT. This is an RPG, player skill is SUPPOSED to be fairly irrelevant. All about character stats and whatnot.

[mangarrage]

Nice to see Pandaville is expanding to include a legacyesque system, as well beefing up pets with combat abilities. Gee ... how original. Next thing you know, every class will have gearable combat-capable companions who can farm and do background missions.

 

Don't worry by the time GW2 is out everyone will say that wow originated the concept lol

[Adderdin]

oh gods no, no addons or even macros ... total game killers, in my opinion.

im still on the edge about key bindings.

why people cant play a game based on the original design, i'll never understand

 

you know what is the real game killer? people like you.

 

People who will be the "nay sayers", those who refuse others to even get options of using the new features or not by simply not giving them any.

 

 

Because of people like you, this game is a failure, seems like there is alot of you, working for bioware.

[vojinsa]

add ons are for pansies and male blood elves.

[rhirne]

Devs have already stated that add-ons will eventually come at some point in the future. The thing they are trying to determine is just how much of the SWTOR-API to open up to the User-Community. Open too little, and add-ons become useless, open too much, and you've now exposed quite a bit of your game mechanics to the user-Community.

 

There's a fine line to walk there. You want them to be able to be usefull, but not all-inclusive. Then you have to think about patches - how much will they support the add-ons and if so, which ones and what would determine it? Patches tend to break mods, which can then break the game for you (and others depending on the add-on). Now you have a bunch of people - some with, some without the add-on experiencing problems; if you think they are slow tracking down issues now, wait til then.

 

Things such as UI add-ons (change how your UI looks), how PC / NPC characters look on your screen only are probably no biggie; but things such as damage calculations, re-spawn timers, etc... would probably be no-no's for them.

[Ranid]

Are there any yellow posts on this recently, if so can someone link them, i want to know biowares stance on them as of late

 

No yellow post, I don't think there were yellow post were made stating that they were not going to allow addons either.

 

This is from a recent expo Q&A.

Q: Coming from a previous big MMO, I quite like numbers and I find it quite hard in SWTOR, for example, without having any addon support. Damage meters are invisible so I actually don’t know how well I am doing and it is very hard to diagnose for example, if you are dying in a group situation to find out where the problem is. Are you plannin to let on addons into the field or implenting damage/healing meters.

A: We released in 1.2 a way for players to build damage meters, it is not instantaneous – it is not something you can see while you play but basically we have introduced a kind of format where all the combat logs is outputted to the hard drive. Within days, the community has created really good tools to analyze not only your own damage but share the files with your guild mates. There are now fan made apps that overlay damage meter on top of your game so you guys are doing the work for us! Seriously the players are going to be able to define what they want much better than what we could.

 

As for addons, it has always being our plan to do that and that is something we being plugged at it. It is fairly complicated, there is a lot of security and fairness issues in the sense (i.e. if someone made an addon that is so good it gave you an advantage then everyone has to play with it).

 

http://www.twitch.tv/gamespot/b/319398572 - Link to Vid

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=466178 - Link to SWTOR thread discussion.

Edited May 30, 2012 by Ranid

[ThiborF]

oh gods no, no addons or even macros ... total game killers, in my opinion.

im still on the edge about key bindings.

why people cant play a game based on the original design, i'll never understand

 

Because what's intuitive to person A can feel counter-intuitive to person B leaving person A with an advantage in an direct competition like PvP.

[bandraoi]

I doubt they are going to give the players the ability to create in-game add-ons after launch, either. The devs have access to the actual game code which means they can create better integrated tools than the players ever could without the players having to constantly ensure all of the add-ons are compatible with the most recent client version. That's one thing from playing WoW I don't miss: having to ensure all of my add-ons were updated after the patch which sometimes was a couple days or so depending on how fast the add-on author was about updating their add-on (some were faster than others).

 

Surely your not implying these devs can create better if so ...rofl

[JollyRogers]

you know what is the real game killer? people like you.

 

People who will be the "nay sayers", those who refuse others to even get options of using the new features or not by simply not giving them any.

 

 

Because of people like you, this game is a failure, seems like there is alot of you, working for bioware.

 

I'd disagree, based on some of the add-on's I've seen in other games (coughWoWcough). Some of them are pretty much playing the game for the player, short of executing the actual command they're prompting the player to do. And they become "required" by the player base... No Deadly Boss Mobs, no raid for you! Or the ones that let players log on, go off to work, while their character is "playing" by automatically sniping and/or reselling stuff on the auction.

 

And that's not even getting into the bots.

 

No, the people who make game failures are the ones who take something "optional" and then mandate it become the 'standard' for other players. Those are the true destroyers of games.

[NasherUK]

Addons are not needed. Boss mechanics are usually pretty clear (e.g. big red text) and you can already alter the UI in-game. Addons just end up playing the game for you and trivializing everything, like they did in wow. Blizzard even admited they were a mistake and reduced their functionality by quite a lot during vanilla.

 

As they are made by 3rd parties they are also a security risk. A few times the popular mod sites were compromized with infected banner adds and mod files.

 

Chat bubbles were in beta but got removed. They said they would put them back in soon.

Edited May 31, 2012 by NasherUK

[ThiborF]

Addons are not needed. Boss mechanics are usually pretty clear (e.g. big red text) and you can already alter the UI in-game. Addons just end up playing the game for you and trivializing everything, like they did in wow. Blizzard even admited they were a mistake and reduced their functionality by quite a lot during vanilla.

 

As they are made by 3rd parties they are also a security risk. A few times the popular mod sites were compromized with infected banner adds and mod files.

 

Chat bubbles were in beta but got removed. They said they would put them back in soon.

 

I wish folks with your line of thinking would preface the word "Add-ons" with "Combat" because those are the only ones you are referring to. There's no reason to throw all of the other non-combat ones under the same bus.

 

Also would like to see source to where they (Blizzard) claimed addons were a mistake. In doing some searching I've found links to forums posts by players (none linking to a dev interview, article, etc.) and I've found an article where Pardo claims the way they implemented arenas was a mistake.

[Drakkip]

I doubt they are going to give the players the ability to create in-game add-ons after launch, either. The devs have access to the actual game code which means they can create better integrated tools than the players ever could without the players having to constantly ensure all of the add-ons are compatible with the most recent client version. That's one thing from playing WoW I don't miss: having to ensure all of my add-ons were updated after the patch which sometimes was a couple days or so depending on how fast the add-on author was about updating their add-on (some were faster than others).

 

Wait... so if the dev's can make the best addons clearly better than the thousands of competent programmers out there why on earth would you need to update your WoW addons...? I mean unless of course there are players out there that CAN make better addons.

 

Of all the things in WoW that they did or did not do, I think having 3rd party UI addons was brilliant. It served to create interest in the game while at the same time provides for hundreds of UI mods for which they had to pay programmers zero dollars to create.

 

Believe it or not there are actually some extremely talented people out there when it comes to programming that don't work for companies that produce MMORPG', and the contributions they make with their own time is huge.

 

It also allows for more variety. If I liked a particular layout for my UI chances are you could find someone out there who made a mod that allowed you to have it that way. I mean unless of course I can have any colour I want so long as it's black

 

Choice is a good thing

Edited May 31, 2012 by Drakkip

[Frostvein]

Addons would have greatly enhanced this game. So many of the broken things could have been fixed for and by the community while the devs focused on content/bugs/transfers.

 

Too late now, I'm afraid.

[Crawelc]

Addons would be fine, Macros just no. Dont remember which spec is was but I sat and watched my little cousin copy macros for a warior for like 10 mins. You had to have a macro for every move to stace switch etc to do maximum dps. That is just dumb.

[Reiano]

Exactly this, games are designed for fun. Plus if i tried having these fancy programs running while playing it would lower my FPS to unacceptable levels.

 

Everyone plays there way me I am a micro manager type addons will be optional and bring player back. This game is way to simple.

 

Me and my brother play he is very casual and is glad there is no addons because he was always booted from groups in wow cause he always plays dps and is horrible we group a a lot and no matter how I try to help him he just does not understand the basics of combat awareness and rotations.

[Drakkip]

Addons would be fine, Macros just no. Dont remember which spec is was but I sat and watched my little cousin copy macros for a warior for like 10 mins. You had to have a macro for every move to stace switch etc to do maximum dps. That is just dumb.

 

I hadn't considered other values until I considered people with disabilties and that macro's can sometimes facilitate their ability to play. Having features that allow for people with disabilites is a good thing imo.