This game badly needs mods and macros.

[ironix]

I'm willing to bet most of the people who are against any type of macros, including mouse-over healing, aren't playing a character with a primary healing spec.

 

Spend about 40-odd levels healing groups and then tell me you wouldn't like a quality-of-life adjustment. As a poster above quoted, click-to-heal, mouse-over macros, and customizable unit frames are NOT modifications that suddenly make you a better healer. They just make the task more fluid and not focused around "look up, target boss, cast debuff, look down, click on tank, cast heal, look up, target boss, interrupt, look down, click on dps, heal dps, click on other dps, heal that dps, look up..."

 

I swear, I've never spent so much time looking at the bottom of my screen than I have with this game. It is making healing less fun and I can imagine it will be even less so in a raid environment.

 

I am currently in the process of trying to choose between Concealment or Lethality. At least as dps I look at the boss and macros of any kind be damned.

 

People wonder why finding a healer is becoming more difficult in this game.

Edited December 20, 2011 by ironix

[ironix]

Bottom-lines: Healing with the built-in UI is miserable.

 

That's the word I was looking for earlier. Yes, healing with this UI is quite miserable indeed. Going to DPS for a while. I need a break.

[Kamay]

I'm playing a healer atm as my main and yes the locked raid frames are kind of annoying. But here's what I did...I adjusted to them. I didn't need plugins or macros to play WoW's end game content and I don't need them now. I'll admit I didn't read every post..threads too long and I'm lazy...I am sure they will make frames movable at some point but it's probably not at the top of their list. oh and if **** is dying, congrats you are dpsing correctly, if ***** not dying congrats you aren't dpsing correctly.

[CrayonOfDoom]

I'm playing a healer atm as my main and yes the locked raid frames are kind of annoying. But here's what I did...I adjusted to them. I didn't need plugins or macros to play WoW's end game content and I don't need them now. I'll admit I didn't read every post..threads too long and I'm lazy...I am sure they will make frames movable at some point but it's probably not at the top of their list. oh and if **** is dying, congrats you are dpsing correctly, if ***** not dying congrats you aren't dpsing correctly.

 

Have you tried discerning curable debuffs from incurable debuffs yet? No amount of scaling or adjusting helps discern what I can or cannot cure. Cure isn't just a GCD or we'd only be looking at wasting heat for a mis-cure. A missed cure could mean a wiped raid. And with tiny icons, non distinguishing borders/icons, it's not very fun.

[AlpsStranger]

As usual the anti-addon crowd spouts vague nonsense while perfectly reasonable points are made time and time again by the sane. This is why we'll see addons in SWTOR before we know it.

[darthjerro]

I have to disagree. Providing too many numbers turns the game into a number cruncher, excell-online game, instead of an semi-action RPG that it is supposed to be. We have enough with EVE to take the spreadsheet-online game types. If you have so many bars and meters as a tank, you'll end up paying more attention to those, instead of what is going on.

 

I would prefer to watch the game and react to what a mob does, instead of reacting to what a little bar with a number tells me.

 

personal preference, but I would still prefer all that stuff out. I want a game, not some kind of simulator.

 

Im going to go out on a limb here and say you dont raid or do flashpoints much.

im also willing to bet you dont tank nor heal. Just a pure dps , mash buttons, stuff dies.

 

Sorry mate, in the big boys world, we need number crunching. I play a jug tank, i would very much like a threat metre and a recount kind of mod to tell me whoes slacking or not interupting etc, you get my point. I would also like this mod to get my rotation downpat for maximum dps.

 

Your here ONLY for the story, but not for any real challenge. Myself and many others, challenge comes first , then story.......

[OrionBurger]

Lot of people here seem to think that damage meters take perfectly normal people and turn them into slavering, profanity screaming animals.

 

Personally, I pugged hundreds of 5 man dungeons in WoW, and I don't think I ever saw anyone get kicked for doing low damage. Not once.

 

Raiding is a different story. When you have to work together with 9/24 other people to achieve your goal, you need to pull your weight. Otherwise you are wasting their time, and yours. And yet still it was very rare to see someone kicked from a raid due to their dps.

 

The fact is, d-bags are going to be d-bags, whether they have a damage meter to quote or not.

[ironix]

Lot of people here seem to think that damage meters take perfectly normal people and turn them into slavering, profanity screaming animals.

 

The only logical reason I can come up with for this is that they either grouped with some idiot who liked to spam them, or they got booted from a raid for bad performance.

 

In either case, it wasn't the mod itself that was to blame. Having access to such data doesn't suddenly make people become ******es.

[Jack_The_Jackal]

Im going to go out on a limb here and say you dont raid or do flashpoints much.

im also willing to bet you dont tank nor heal. Just a pure dps , mash buttons, stuff dies.

 

Sorry mate, in the big boys world, we need number crunching. I play a jug tank, i would very much like a threat metre and a recount kind of mod to tell me whoes slacking or not interupting etc, you get my point. I would also like this mod to get my rotation downpat for maximum dps.

 

 

oki i cant help but comment this i am a tank i do tank i do heal i did it in wow as well and in raides as well yes in wow i usede a thretmeter and i can see how it whod be usefull hear but i dont want a recone meter and i dont belive that number crunching is requirede to aturaly tank or heal just have fun i wish that biowear dont allowe mods in eney way shape or form and if you use one i wishe it whod be the same levle of punishment as hacking the game i do think thou that the ui needs work but hey thay have allready tolede us thay are working on it so ther give it time and see what happens

 

but this is just my two cents

 

Jack

 

PS

sorry for spelling errors i suffer from dyslixa

Edited December 20, 2011 by Jack_The_Jackal

[AlpsStranger]

if you use one i wishe it whod be the same levle of punishment as hacking the game

 

This doesn't make sense. We are arguing that Bioware should open up scripting specifically so that we can mod. If they don't want us to script mods they simply won't open it up. I don't think you actually understand what we're talking about, frankly.

[Malleable]

Its the lack of simple macros that bother me.

Come on not being able to put a /target with a /assist or /follow?

And given the HORRIBLE status of Follow in the game now you need to hit the jump key, then target then follow; because you get hung up all the time.

 

I dont need all the stuff that some people want. But at a bare minimum you need to be able to combine targeting and follow and targeting and assist into one macro.

 

This is easily the worst implementation of a UI in any game I've played. Even Age of Conan had a better UI.

 

Mal

[Skullncross]

well its a massive refresh from not having macros in a mmo as it was in wow i could watch tv tank and spam one button got alittle boring and wasnt a challenge at all but having to think what skill to use next in swtor gives me something to think about with a challenge also addons i never used in wow and I raided alot I didnt see the point of them and I was never kicked from a group in 7 years of playing wow so I guess its possible to play without addons and still progress only for those who have the knowlage and skill can all those who relie on macros and addons suffer but with the dark side you to can privail and be stronger and learn the new way of fighing your foe and also stops the bots which is always a good thing.

[Chomag]

I agree UI is horrendous.

 

Working out a rotation is simple due to fly text and watching health bars

 

I understand your concern with macros. Maybe simple macros but I would not like to see the game turn out like Rift. Bunch of 3 button rotations.

 

I certainly hope it's not like Blizzard macros that really don't help at all.

 

Rift macros were great. They allowed the player to focus more on the environment and less on watching the keyboard.

 

Do you play this game for fun OR for using complicated rotations and think you got skill ?!?

[Mishmashmoo]

fix this crappy IU

[archifikoss]

I sorely underestimated just how poor the UI would turn out. It is so uncustomizable it isn't funny. Health bars, buffs, debuffs, and the power bar are all WAY too small. You can't move or resize anything, I HATE having the chat box up the top.

 

Not having a damage meter or even a freaking combat log is ridiculous. Why shouldn't we even know how much damage we're doing? I want to know what the best rotation is for my character and I have absolutely no way of working that out.

 

Macros are a staple in every MMO, how can you just not have them? There's a nice focus target but it's practically useless without focus macros.

 

These should be top priority for the next patch.

 

I agree that the UI could use some tweaking, but 3rd party mods are, in my opinion of course, not needed (provided Bioware improves their current UI). Don't care for macros either.

 

I don't mind the stuff being allowed later of course even though I'll never use it, but I just hope that Bioware doesn't need to rely on 3rd parties to do their work for them.

[Chewpaco]

Let me add that anything that makes the game more fluid and allows the player to focus more on the action is a good thing.

 

Anyone who thinks Mouseover is some kind of cheat or exploit is seriously deficient. It's an alternate targeting system. Maybe the genius you were posting will argue against F key targeting next. ROFL.

 

That genius is me. This game is built to make healing your playing partner, a 2 step action.

 

Step 1 - target him

Step 2 - heal him

 

Do you think these Devs are stupid? Do you not believe that they have done tons and tons of market research on other games? Do you not believe that they have played other games that allow macro's - played a period of time without them, then played a period of time with them - and saw how the content was trivialized? How misguided are you?

 

F targeting - your example. Is still a 2 step action. F2; KB 1

 

Mouseover macro's allow you to heal faster and more efficiently. You crybabies wouldn't be crying for them if they didn't make your jobs easier.

 

And I will repeat:

 

When we play video games - all we do is press buttons in response to how we are stimulated visually, or auditory. That is it. We press a button to execute an action.

 

With custom UI's - we are hyper-stimulated in both senses. Prompting faster action. With Macro's - we simplify the execute function by combining what should be a 2 or 3 step process into a 1 button action - prompting faster results.

 

I am sick and tired of arguing this FACT with defenders of these issues. 3rd party add-ons, and macros trivialize content. Period. End of story.

[Oriont]

Agreed this game needs mods and UI customization.

I am almost level 50 and I can already tell as a sentinel operations are going to be horrendous without being able to use mods to time cauterize ticks, skill renewals, target bar position etc. I find I am looking exclusively at the bottom of the screen and not seeing any combat.

[jakarra]

The UI is mostly fine. I like that I could switch party frames to be raid frames and resize. What I am hugely missing though, is a target-of-target frame. How can this not be included? That's a bit mind-boggling to me.

Focus frame is also quite buggy, I'd take a fix on that too.

[Scelerant]

 

When we play video games - all we do is press buttons in response to how we are stimulated visually, or auditory. That is it. We press a button to execute an action.

 

With custom UI's - we are hyper-stimulated in both senses. Prompting faster action. With Macro's - we simplify the execute function by combining what should be a 2 or 3 step process into a 1 button action - prompting faster results.

 

I am sick and tired of arguing this FACT with defenders of these issues. 3rd party add-ons, and macros trivialize content. Period. End of story.

 

 

Your statements, not facts, create a problem though. If people want UI modifications and macros to effectively play the game, that means that what they require of the game is more than the game is able to offer. In my case, I'd love to have a proper in-combat flytext, because I think the game should tell me when I get CC'ed in way that doesn't require me to look down on my character portrait and then mouse over the various debuffs I have.

 

Let me put it to you like this, if a Chinese person opens up a Restaurant in the middle of London, their entire staff is Chinese, they only serve Chinese food and so on. They will still need to have their menu in English, their waiters need to speak English, they need to have knives and forks for those who are unable to eat with chopsticks.

 

The exact same thing is true for an MMORPG. In my case I'm asking for Flytext that actually shows debuffs, buffs and other combat related things affecting my character.

 

If I was a healer I'd ask for mouseover healing as well, because healing sucks enough to begin with and without mouseover healing my odds of seeing anything except healthbars throughout any group content drops massively.

 

People do not want mods and macros for no reason what so ever, we want them because Bioware has failed when making the UI for the game. No target of target, no ablity to move windows around which means the game is unplayable in eyefinity. The Scrolling combat text problems I mentioned above and so on.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Scelerant

[zarberg]

That genius is me. This game is built to make healing your playing partner, a 2 step action.

 

Step 1 - target him

Step 2 - heal him

 

Do you think these Devs are stupid? Do you not believe that they have done tons and tons of market research on other games? Do you not believe that they have played other games that allow macro's - played a period of time without them, then played a period of time with them - and saw how the content was trivialized? How misguided are you?

 

F targeting - your example. Is still a 2 step action. F2; KB 1

 

Mouseover macro's allow you to heal faster and more efficiently. You crybabies wouldn't be crying for them if they didn't make your jobs easier.

 

And I will repeat:

 

When we play video games - all we do is press buttons in response to how we are stimulated visually, or auditory. That is it. We press a button to execute an action.

 

With custom UI's - we are hyper-stimulated in both senses. Prompting faster action. With Macro's - we simplify the execute function by combining what should be a 2 or 3 step process into a 1 button action - prompting faster results.

 

I am sick and tired of arguing this FACT with defenders of these issues. 3rd party add-ons, and macros trivialize content. Period. End of story.

 

That's your opinion, unless you've got documented fact in the form of a valid web link.

 

Heaven forbid people have a desire to play the game the way they want to play it. If I had a way to hover my mouse over a character in the UI and then press a button to make something happen, removing the step of clicking on that character, would that really diminish your personal enjoyment of the game?

 

Before you say I need mouseover or macros because I'm bad, I was the officer responsible for healing on a top 50 WoW guild (and I know you'll dismiss this too somehow, Mr Negative).

 

There's different playstyles. I'd really like mine to include UI customization and mouseover. I don't even need macros.

 

I just boggle how people can mock others as "needing macros and mods because they're bad" - I personally see it as improving efficiency and getting the computer/human interaction to function in a way that suits me.

[Chewpaco]

Your statements, not facts, create a problem though. If people want UI modifications and macros to effectively play the game, that means that what they require of the game is more than the game is able to offer. In my case, I'd love to have a proper in-combat flytext, because I think the game should tell me when I get CC'ed in way that doesn't require me to look down on my character portrait and then mouse over the various debuffs I have.

Let me put it to you like this, if a Chinese person opens up a Restaurant in the middle of London, their entire staff is Chinese, they only serve Chinese food and so on. They will still need to have their menu in English, their waiters need to speak English, they need to have knives and forks for those who are unable to eat with chopsticks.

 

The exact same thing is true for an MMORPG. In my case I'm asking for Flytext that actually shows debuffs, buffs and other combat related things affecting my character.

 

If I was a healer I'd ask for mouseover healing as well, because healing sucks enough to begin with and without mouseover healing my odds of seeing anything except healthbars throughout any group content drops massively.

 

People do not want mods and macros for no reason what so ever, we want them because Bioware has failed when making the UI for the game. No target of target, no ablity to move windows around which means the game is unplayable in eyefinity. The Scrolling combat text problems I mentioned above and so on.

 

And this is exactly the problem. The game is playable as it is. You seem to think because you have to look at your screen to see what debuffs are on you, for some reason - that should be trivialized - a big flashing light that says, hey "Remove Poison Now"

 

So now the class the relies on his cc's and debuffs so he can be effective, has his move trivialized by a 3rd party add-on that sounds a 3 alarm fire horn letting everyone know he just used one of his crucial moves. So what good is the move then, when everyone has this add-on, and the debuff never lasts more than 2 seconds? You know what it becomes? A broken skill, and a wasted GCD - that is all it is.

 

Believe it or not - there was a time in MMORPG's when Healers existed, and Macro's and Add-ons did not. Guess what? We still saw all the combat and content. We still had riad awareness. Do you REALLY BELIEVE that his game is unplayable with the current UI? I'm playing it. I know it is playable.

 

The entitlement that players feel in today's gaming world is a joke - TBH. When "mods" first came out for these kind of games around 2001 or 2002 in EQ - they wern't called "mods" - they were called hacks - and rightfully so. That word has a negative connotation.

 

A gaming company's goal isn't to make your playing experience a pew pew faceroll, easy, I WIN button. A SMART gaming company, just sets an equal playing field - provides the ruleset and forum for people to compete, and let the players decide who wins. No variations on tool sets WHATSOEVER. EVERYONE uses the same tools to play within the provided UI.

[Trux]

Mods create community, some games even take the ideas from modders and implement these ideas into the base game. They are healthy for the game when used responsibility and monitored by the game developer.

 

I raided in wow for the past 6 years and despite using a ton of adds on for both quality of life and cosmetic reasons I have also played without them on multiple occasions for various reasons.

 

I dropped threat meters about a year ago because threat is a non issue in WoW these days, I also raided Dragon Soul heroic without any dmg meter because there was some issues causing major fps drops due to how dmg meters handled a specific boss ability.

 

Ultimately I think the bad taste in peoples mouth stems from old addons that have since been outlawed even in WoW such as the infamous "decursive" or addons that create negative social experiences such as "gearscore" which is now completely unused since Blizzard put in their own Ilevel score for character sheets.

 

Simply put, the community creates bad addon experiences and the community has changed alot since the "bad mod" days of WoW. Everyone should open their minds and realize this is a major part of pc gaming and should be embraced by anyone stepping into the mmo market these days.

[Chewpaco]

That's your opinion, unless you've got documented fact in the form of a valid web link.

 

Heaven forbid people have a desire to play the game the way they want to play it. If I had a way to hover my mouse over a character in the UI and then press a button to make something happen, removing the step of clicking on that character, would that really diminish your personal enjoyment of the game?

 

Before you say I need mouseover or macros because I'm bad, I was the officer responsible for healing on a top 50 WoW guild (and I know you'll dismiss this too somehow, Mr Negative).

 

There's different playstyles. I'd really like mine to include UI customization and mouseover. I don't even need macros.

 

I just boggle how people can mock others as "needing macros and mods because they're bad" - I personally see it as improving efficiency and getting the computer/human interaction to function in a way that suits me.

 

Sorry - but there again lies the problem. Why do you feel you have the right to play a game the way you want to play it? Why do you feel you should be able to use customizable UI's that trivailaze other players skills?

 

What happened to buying a game, and playing with the tools given? All on the same playing field? Why is everyone always looking for an advantage in the form of alerts, display information - instead of just competing on an equal playing field?

 

Again I repeat:

 

When all we do is react to what we hear and see in a video game - then respond by pressing a button to execute a signle action.

 

How can anyone say that when you change what you hear and see, and you increase the amount of actions taken by a single click, that you have not trivialzed content. You cannot argue that.

 

Pressing 1 button is faster than pressing 2

 

Big flashing lights in the middle of your screen - or flytext or loud alerts - is easier to see than the current UI.

 

Lets play hide and seek in the dark. I get night goggle vision - you don't.

[ialsoagree]

I am sick and tired of arguing this FACT with defenders of these issues. 3rd party add-ons, and macros trivialize content. Period. End of story.

 

If your "content" is based on how quickly I can click on my companions portrait (or the portait of a party member) rather than knowing what spell to cast, on who, when, and in what order - you sir, lack challenging content to begin with and are making up for it in other ways.

[ironix]

The UI is mostly fine. I like that I could switch party frames to be raid frames and resize. What I am hugely missing though, is a target-of-target frame. How can this not be included? That's a bit mind-boggling to me.

Focus frame is also quite buggy, I'd take a fix on that too.

 

Switch to raid frames in a party with pets. You won't see them at all anymore. Additionally, notice those little teensy-tiny buffs and debuffs? Now you tell me how easily you'll notice when a debuff appears on a party member that A.) you can dispel or B.) you must dispel.

 

In current level 30ish content I had been finding myself staring at my bottom 1/4th of the screen most of each boss fight simply because I'm a healer (went DPS today to actually enjoy the view) who dispels, watches cooldowns and so forth. This is level 30's content... Imagine what it will be like when healers actually have to raid heal with this UI.