This game badly needs mods and macros.

[zarberg]

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.

 

I don't have a right to play anything, but I have the right to not spend money on a product I don't like. What happened to game programmers listening to what people want and providing them with that?

 

I ask once again because you never answered, would the ability to change the UI and use mouseover really affect you negatively that much?

 

What if I was colorblind and needed something big and bright to react to? What if I wasn't an icon-driven person and needed text? Not every person is you (thank goodness, we'd all have nerdrage anger management problems getting our panties all in a bunch about how others want to enjoy a video game differently), and customization speaks to different people.

 

If you don't want to customize, don't do it, but why are you getting so bent out of shape abut others wanting to? Do you have proof that it will "create an unlevel playing field"? If you don't have actual proof, you're just starting to look like the angry old nerd yelling at people to get off your virtual lawn.

[Chewpaco]

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.

 

I am ALL FOR Improvements to the current UI. Target of Target. Rescalable, move chat boxes and party frames where ever you want.

 

What I am NOT FOR - is 3rd party development and deployment of these types of tools.

 

I would love for BioWare to upgrade these things in a future patch. But the tools are given to everyone - and you have no other choices. Everyone sees and hears things in the same way. Everyone executes actions within the game in the same way.

 

The "Ala Carte" attitude that people seem to have towards games these days is astounding.

[zarberg]

The "Ala Carte" attitude that people seem to have towards games these days is astounding.

 

So is the "my way is the only right way and if I can't have my enjoyment no one can" attitude.

[TurdFergusonn]

wow is that way --->

[ialsoagree]

Chewpaco, IMHO, it would be better to allow the community to develop mods under rather strict regulations, similar to WoW's method. This provides the advantage of allowing players to customize in a way developers cannot anticipate:

 

For example, I use a G13 (and, during my WoW days, a n52) and have a rather odd hotbar layout. It's extremely unlikely - unless the developers agree to let us have totally dynamic hotbars, including custom number of rows, custom amount of buttons in each row, custom coloring for buttons and rows, custom placement of the rows - that BioWare will be able to meet my demands for hotbar UI layout.

 

In fact, their current system is so subpar, I've reached level 18 and have run out of convenient hot bar space. Yes, there's more hot bars avaialble, but none that I can sensibly access from my G13 due to the UI layout and my complete inability to customize it.

 

In WoW, I had access to 12 buttons per hot bar, and 3 hot bars (for a total of 36 hot keys that I could hit with ease using a single hand, no mouse). Despite the fact that my G13 allows me to increase that number to closer to 16 per hot bar (for a total of 48 hot keys), the TOR UI limits me to only 10 easy to reach hot keys due to layout.

[Chewpaco]

I don't have a right to play anything, but I have the right to not spend money on a product I don't like. What happened to game programmers listening to what people want and providing them with that?

 

I ask once again because you never answered, would the ability to change the UI and use mouseover really affect you negatively that much?

 

What if I was colorblind and needed something big and bright to react to? What if I wasn't an icon-driven person and needed text? Not every person is you (thank goodness, we'd all have nerdrage anger management problems getting our panties all in a bunch about how others want to enjoy a video game differently), and customization speaks to different people.

 

If you don't want to customize, don't do it, but why are you getting so bent out of shape abut others wanting to? Do you have proof that it will "create an unlevel playing field"? If you don't have actual proof, you're just starting to look like the angry old nerd yelling at people to get off your virtual lawn.

 

Yes - it does change my gaming experience. A developer cannot assume what add-ons someone will have and what they will not have. The develop class skills based on the way THEIR current UI presents the information to the end user. Not how HealBot or Decursive, or how any other custom UI presents the information.

 

Example: I'm playing 10 man Warsong Gulch as a Disc Priest. I don't have Decursive. Roots, sheeps, freezes, fears - are hitting my teammates. Some i see right away. Some I don't. I download decursive or another UI that makes tracking these things "easier so i can spend more time looking at the combat instead of staring at health bars".

 

Not one player on my team that is within range spends more than 2 seconds in a dispellable cc. Does Blizzard lower the mana cost of all these CC spells of other classes, knowing they will have to cast it 3x as much in order to be effective, because I dispell it with lightning speed because of the new UI I downloaded?

 

No they don't. Because they CAN"T ASSUME I have Decursive. They base their skills on their own UI.

 

That is what happens when you change the way information is displayed from one player to the next.

[CeLeRiTaSs]

wow is that way --->

 

Exactly. Funny how spoiled so many people are now because of wow. They can't have fun and play a game without mods and macros winning everything for them. And adding 3rd party mods does screw everyone else because it then becomes a requirement to participate in anything group related. If bioware doesn't add it in, then it shouldn't be in. simple as that.

 

And people that have a stick up their's about the ui need to relax. Its not that big an issue.and if your wife was whining about it six months ago and you hate it enough to to stop playing, then you're long over due.

[ironix]

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"

 

You tell me if it is trivialized when you're looking at who to dispel among 16 people with those teensy-tiny icons when each debuff lasts 4 seconds, but can do a massive chunk of their health in damage.

 

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.

 

That one paragraph right there makes it completely clear to me now. You're a PvPer. You're not viewing any of this from the standpoint of an end-game or even moderately competitive raider. You're viewing this completely along the lines of the tools your opponent may be able to use to get a leg up on you during PvP.

 

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.

 

From what I've gathered among healers on the forums and those I play with in game. No, it is not unplayable. However, is it enjoyable? No. Three of us have respec'd to DPS to have some fun instead of the grunt work we have been doing. Also mind you, in all the other MMOs I've played, all my chars have been healers. Every single last one of them. This MMO's UI is making me not want to heal.

 

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.

 

So, EQ released an API to developers to produce mods for use in the game and said mods were used to hack instead? They must have had horrible API developers. Really horrid.

 

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.

 

I suppose you have yet to even understand that nobody is asking for faceroll pew pew... Our demands are simple and few. There is no need for an extensive mod API like Blizzard or Rift, just the simply ability to make UI modifications. Quality of life issues for healers like me who would enjoy the game much more if we could move some bars around, resize some frames and have extremely simple mouseover macros.

 

Hell, even something like what existed in Warhammer where you target a boss or whatever for dps and a second target for healing. Your dps abilities dps the mob and your healing abilities heal the friendly target. That wouldn't even require any type of macro system, just a new feature.

 

But there's no point in even trying to get that across to you. You'll vehemently proclaim we're all bad for wanting healing to actually be fun and fluid. Unfortunately, without some sort of substantive UI improvement, many long-time healers will simply stop rather than do something they don't find at all engaging or enjoyable.

 

You may now proceed to tell me how what I said translates into a one-button easymode healing setup that my cat could manage while I watch a video.

[zarberg]

Yes - it does change my gaming experience. A developer cannot assume what add-ons someone will have and what they will not have. The develop class skills based on the way THEIR current UI presents the information to the end user. Not how HealBot or Decursive, or how any other custom UI presents the information.

 

Example: I'm playing 10 man Warsong Gulch as a Disc Priest. I don't have Decursive. Roots, sheeps, freezes, fears - are hitting my teammates. Some i see right away. Some I don't. I download decursive or another UI that makes tracking these things "easier so i can spend more time looking at the combat instead of staring at health bars".

 

Not one player on my team that is within range spends more than 2 seconds in a dispellable cc. Does Blizzard lower the mana cost of all these CC spells of other classes, knowing they will have to cast it 3x as much in order to be effective, because I dispell it with lightning speed because of the new UI I downloaded?

 

No they don't. Because they CAN"T ASSUME I have Decursive. They base their skills on their own UI.

 

That is what happens when you change the way information is displayed from one player to the next.

 

A developer also can't possibly fathom the way one individual will enjoy/play the game, and leaving things rigidly set according to what they see as right might detract from enjoyment for some.

 

You'll notice I've said a few times I actually don't want macros, just UI customization (moving things around and resizing them) and mouseover. That's it. I don't care about any other macros or mods. I wouldn't think it too hard to implement mouseover without macros.

 

As it stands right now, when I play in a group as a healer I spend the majority of my time staring at the small part of the screen that contains my teammates, making sure I click on the right one (or my F1-F4 choice was the right now) and then I press the appropriate button. I don't get to enjoy all the pretty graphics.

 

They copied so many things from WoW, what's wrong with UI customization (unit frames, skinner) and mouseover?

[Kurnea]

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?

 

Few mods or macros I see nowadays trivialize a game anymore than stuff like keybinding. I have third-party hardware like my Naga that makes gameplay far easier than any macro or addon does. If anything, macros and addons help bridge that gap between people who can and can't afford such options.

 

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?

 

If you want to play just the base game, that's largely what console games are for. The PC community anticipates and often expects some kind of open-source experience from PC games nowadays.

 

As for everybody playing on the same playing field, that's never going to happen simply due to hardware and other options available outside the game. Someone with a 12-button mouse is going to have an advantage over someone with a 3-button mouse. Someone with a great internet setup will be able to perform better than someone with rather shoddy internet. Someone with a programmable, customizable keyboard will have an advantage over someone with a basic keyboard.

 

What's nice about macros and addons is that they're available to anyone who has an internet connection.

 

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.

 

Often what's being trivialized is bad game design. In early WoW, addons like Deadly Boss Mods where all but required because otherwise noticing what the boss was doing and when was very difficult to notice. Compare that to nowadays, where bosses make is clear when they're about to do something, and DBM doesn't really do much.

 

I see addons like buying an arcade joystick back in the day of the NES. Sure, having a multiple button joystick made playing Street Fighter II easier than playing with the standard controller, but is that really where one wants challenge to come from?

 

Pressing 1 button is faster than pressing 2

 

Pressing 3 buttons takes longer than pressing 2, should all actions take 3 button presses to work? How about 4? If I use a healing ability, should it require me typing out up up, down down, left right left right ab left-mouse click to do so?

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

 

So restrict the addon api so it can't do it to that extent.

 

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

 

Hardware advantages are already a reality in this game. Addons and macros help bridge that gap free of charge.

[Axemar]

wow is that way --->

 

 

 

These are by far the most clever comments on this forum.

 

Throwing around psuedo intellectual quips about "WoW Kiddies" and "Addon Baddies" doesn't actually make you more intelligent. BTW.

 

I don't see how taking any content from another MMO with an enormous player base, only seconded so far by RUNESCAPE, and with an incredible seven years of enormous popularity is such a bad idea.

 

I also will never understand how being forced to look at portraits and green bars, and manually switch a target before you press your ability bound keybind makes the game VASTLY more challenging.

[Kurnea]

Exactly. Funny how spoiled so many people are now because of wow. They can't have fun and play a game without mods and macros winning everything for them. And adding 3rd party mods does screw everyone else because it then becomes a requirement to participate in anything group related. If bioware doesn't add it in, then it shouldn't be in. simple as that.

 

Too bad they already confirmed at comic-con 2011 that addons are being added in as a post-launch feature.

[Axemar]

Too bad they already confirmed at comic-con 2011 that addons are being added in as a post-launch feature.

 

 

Oh snap! Looks like all of us baddie, mouth-breathing, wow-kiddie fan boys will be getting our recount and bartender after all!

[FunkyOne]

I'd settle for Auctioneer, an Autofollow that works, and a simple social/macro maker for assist and other /slash commands.

[Eldren]

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.

 

Customizability is a perk, not a requirement. Not everything is sandboxed in design. UI art is often very distinctive, particularly when dealing wit other peoples' (read: George Lucas) intellectual properties. If you have trouble seeing things, reduce your screen resolution and things will grow larger. It isn't to say we won't have customizable UIs in the future, but it's more important to get the game out and stable first.

 

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.

 

Ahhh, this again. You want to know how to improve your rotations? Try the same content (you can run the same Flashpoints and Operations more than once, you know...) with different rotations. See what makes things die faster. You don't need a third-party mod for this.

 

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.

 

New game, develop new methods of doing things instead of relying on old methods for old games.

[ironix]

Oh snap! Looks like all of us baddie, mouth-breathing, wow-kiddie fan boys will be getting our recount and bartender after all!

 

I shall start work on my 2,500 line game-beating excel-online ZOMG MEGA LAZORS pew pew macro post haste!

[Kurnea]

Oh snap! Looks like all of us baddie, mouth-breathing, wow-kiddie fan boys will be getting our recount and bartender after all!

 

Not necessarily, it depends on how restrictive the api is. Addons can only do what the developers allow.

[Rathelm]

I agree the Ui isnt great,but adding mods and macros to the game could be dangerous. DPS meters are the devil. Its prety much ruined wow

 

DPS meters are a tool. They cannot ruin a game. Annoying players ruin cooperative games.

[MadMustang]

For the life of me, I just do not understand why there are NO chat bubbles. How could they leave something like that out? Are we just supposed to watch "Barrens Chat" in the upper left-hand window scroll by at 20 point type in the hopes that someone will mention my name in the 4 seconds it takes for a new message to scroll by? It's ridiculous.

 

to fix this.

set the auto fade to 0 so the text does not fade.

create new chat windows called Messages, Party/Raid, Guild.

Then set each chat window to only show its corresponding messages.

 

Now when you get a Message or someone talks in Party, Raid or Guild chats that tab will light up and let you know.

 

I do this in every MMO I play.

[Aztian]

UI sucks

[Fende]

Macros would be lovely.

 

I'm ok with the current UI, not the best but it's workable.

 

As to addons, the only ones i want are UI reskins. I spent hours in warhammer tweaking it to be just about perfect. I don't need any added functionality, i just want reskins.

[Grammarye]

People will always find a way to complain that the game doesn't help them play in some way they're used to. Elitists will always find a way to brand other players as poor so they can feel better. This is MMO life.

I'm sorry but you've never played a MMO at a competitive level if you don't use addons.

Tell that to the EVE crowd, probably the most competitive MMO out there.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Grammarye

[Nassegris]

I don't want mods or macros at all.

 

I do want to be able to move my windows around though - it seems like such a basic thing and it's just... silly that the function isn't there. I can move my chat box but not my group members?

 

I hate having the party window on the left edge of the screen, ugh.

[ironix]

People will always find a way to complain that the game doesn't help them play in some way they're used to. Elitists will always find a way to brand other players as poor so they can feel better. This is MMO life.

 

Tell that to the EVE crowd, probably the most competitive MMO out there.

 

EVE Online actually has a good UI and provides plenty of info along with an API to access that data via 3rd party applications (not mods, but stand alone applications) to analyze said data.

 

And yes, I have used these applications to analyze my ship's fittings, my training schedule, optimal implant usage and neural remap points. There is no lack of information available to the end user in EVE.

 

Hell, you can even simulate the effects of battle given different fleet configurations and as such, optimize your ship's loadout and fleet's layout accordingly.

 

Now, how does that relate to this game?

[Dreislao]

I'm sorry but you've never played a MMO at a competitive level if you don't use addons.

Sorry but this simply isn't true. Have you ever done the LT of Dol Guldur on lotro when it was new? Did you ever do Thaurlach? Add-on's weren't even around back then. And this was competitive raiding. So yes,add on's are not required,and make it more challenging because you have to check things yourself,not have something doing the work for you. Same for macros,do it yourself if your that good.

Edited December 20, 2011 by Dreislao