Addon Management in Battle.net App

Community General Discussion
1

tldr;

  • The difficulty of the game is based on the existence of addons
  • The game itself no longer provides an interface enabling specializations to properly perform basic rotations.
  • This as a whole makes even normal raid not doable without addons or just over gearing it.
  • If addons are going to be a core portion of the game design, they should be provided through the game/tools from the business, not requiring external technical knowledge.
  • Other solutions listed, but have other adverse effects.

The Gist

We have to face a fact: the difficulty of the game as it exists today revolves around addons. The raid has become exceedingly more difficult because there is an expectation that people have all the information on the screen in front of them, whether it’s for a boss mechanic, or to perfect your rotation for optimal damage output.

I could be wrong, but this seems to be an extremely unusual circumstance within gaming as a whole. Many people seem to expect to pick up a game and play it, and the only technical capabilities required is that to download and install the game. However, as an MMO, other people are actively affected by your performance, and if the game itself does not properly provide the tools, you directly affect not only the individuals who are not as technically savvy, but also the people around them. External addon managers provide a high level of risk to one’s computer, and those not technical enough can easily fall prey to the many cruel realities of the internet.

My scenario: the casual raid lead. I try very hard to assist my raid with getting everyone to ~50th percentile for their dps: either for their gear level or overall. I’ve wanted to believe this would be good enough overall to push AoTC. While we have been successful for the last few years, we’ve always had a few people pulling 75th+ helping along the way. That number has decreased, though we get some help from some here and there. There are three different focus areas I work on when it comes to helping people:

  • Mechanical: Understanding boss mechanics to stay alive
  • Understanding of their Rotation
    • Basic Rotation
    • Finessed Information (optimizing)
  • Information: Using addons to get what you need to know on the screen

Mechanical is pretty straightforward, takes a lot of deaths and wipes, but people learn it. Per the topic of this: becomes significantly easier and many times completely trivial with addons, forcing the implementation of harder and more confusing mechanics, pushing for more addons to fix the increase in complexity. In many cases, this just makes my life harder calling name more and more often… this tier in particular, I’m way more focused on raid calling than ever before.

Understanding their rotation

This one seems basic, but the amount of people I’ve worked with that did not realize the idea of keeping their pet’s frenzy at 3 stacks as a beast mastery hunter will always astound me. Keeping DOTs up, knowing when and how to utilize cooldowns, etc. is many times just assumed people know, but many will not comprehend their flaws until they are pointed out or actually read a guide. This one is easy enough to fix once I’ve done a bit of basic research.

Of course, then comes part 2: Finesse. This generally takes a more in depth knowledge that takes much more research than what I can usually provide, many time parsing timelines in warcraft logs trying to figure out where people are doing wrong, and takes a pretty significant amount of time utilizing additional technical out of game knowledge to enhance people’s performance.

Information

Both mechanical and Understanding end up leading to the same solution: addons. The game itself does not even provide a proper UI for basic rotations. Using the beast mastery example: frenzy buff is at the top right of the screen, your barbed shot charges and cooldown is at the bottom of the screen. Mechanics are in the middle. This is fundamentally impossible for the human eye to do, and yet many consider this one of the easiest specializations to play. The ability to migrate ALL of the information to the same place, either through rotation helpers or weak auras, has become fundamental to being able to play the game. For many, it’s not even just about knowing your own cooldowns, but also those of the rest of the party/raid, which is not provided by the game at all.

To many, this has just become a habit. But for many casuals, addons are not assumed, and will only be downloaded if required/extremely helpful (pet battle mods are awesome!). I just worked with someone who finally updated DBM after months. After all, going to the curse forge website and downloading manually takes time and is an annoyance. Yes, people still do that, and NEVER update unless something breaks. Most I play with completely avoided Overwolf due to lack of trust, and I personally use Cursebreaker (which we have actually taught a few how to use a CLI).

Potential Solutions

There is a lot of above, and I’m sure many solutions can be found, but the reason the first solution I bring up is to provide the download manager (which the battle.net app would be perfect for) is because of the history of direction which has been shown in the past: simplification of UI options and let the community do what they want (because they will anyway), along with not fundamentally changing the difficulty of the game.

Alternatives that may be of use:

  • Update the UI configurations to at least allow movement of UI entities (similar to move anything/FF14).
  • Update so rotations are properly managed in the base UI in a visible location
  • Dumb down the content with the expectation of no mods. This would simply make the high end players completely bored out of their mind and would probably cost the game a few too many players… so it’s a no go.
  • Enable long term/overtime “overgearing” or “overpowering” the content. “Overpowering” has been done by simply providing flat buffs over time (Icecrown). “Overgearing” has been done via Titanforging (and yes, I really, really, really miss Titanforging as a casual raid lead). The current conduit system is just not providing enough to qualify for “overpowering”.

While providing the manager can clarify the expectation of addons when progressing through the game, I also feel there needs to be transparency/communication in terms of expected requirements for scaling difficulties. For example:

  • LFR: 15-20th percentile, no addons
  • Normal: 25th-35th percentile, no addons
  • Heroic: 50th-60th percentile, w/addons
  • Mythic: 80th-100th percentile, w/addons

Right now, if you expect AoTC to be doable without addons, everything needs to drop, particularly around dps and healing expectations. Right now 10 man heroic raid requires what is previously mythic quality level healing and dps, which is downright insane and seems fundamentally incorrect in scaling. Many of our raid only raid, they hate dungeons and pvp, yet the scaling of heroic towards finesse and other sources of gear feels like it’s hit an extreme.

In the end, if you are going to base the difficulty of the game around addons, then please support the download and managing addons within the game itself, or within the Battle.net app. Please don’t keep technology savviness a requirement behind heroic raiding. Thanks for listening!

P.S If you are about to follow up with “I don’t use addons and got AoTC”, I’ve love to see links to the logs of you not being carried, though you also wouldn’t be able to prove the entire raid isn’t using addons, which probably includes someone using an addon to call out mechanics so you didn’t need it. Pretty sure only Blizz would be able to get those numbers, but I’m guessing the number of raids with AoTC (or even normal raid complete) this tier would be 0.

2 Likes
2

You sir are dead wrong. The existence of addons has absolutely ruined this game beyond anything of a meme. All content can be cleared without addons, it just is more difficult.

For one expansion I wish they would ban the use of addons and I believe Activision would see their game is really not as bad as most players say. Addons have absolutely turned this game into a min/max, FoTM, composition specific lull of a game.

They will never do this because of the hissy fit players will throw. But I have no doubt that it would be best for the game in the foreseeable future

3

I often wonder how different the game would be if Blizzard had drawn a line it the sand with addons back in Vanilla. What if they had made it so they were only UI changes and maybe the DPS meter. No raid/instance mods, no cool down tracker, no rotation helpers and no weak auras.

3 Likes
4

Yeah. I absolutely think QoL addons should be allowed because some people have disabilities and may require them.

Dps meter is not really needed. Game is fine without it. All that turns into is players demanding you list your dps before you can join.

1 Like
5

DPS meters will always exist as long as we have access to a combat log. Even if it wasn’t in game, it would be trackable thru websites (like wow combat logs) or a desktop app. And to be fair, they have their purpose.

6

Always wondered why Blizzard didn’t buy Curse or at least the part of Curse that provided the repository for WoW addons when the company went up for sale. Maybe Blizzard didn’t want to compete with the others but they always seemed to be one step behind. Guess we know why in hindsight.

7

I highly doubt Blizzard would ever want to or take the time to monitor add-ons on the launcher. Especially when other websites are doing it for free.

Will likely never happen or even be considered. :confused:

2 Likes
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Not to mention the risk. You know the second some addon was broken the forums would be flooded with “Blizzard fix your addons!” :slight_smile:

2 Likes
9

Sounds like a nightmare. Lol.

10

Yeah but they shouldn’t be necessary. I remember when I had to download skada just to play BFA mythics.

I was able to pug up to certain key levels but starting at 10s players would start asking what my dps was. I would tell them enhance and I would continually get declined despite having cleared numerous 9s on multiple dungeons. Eventually I found out that they wanted my damage not my spec. I would tell them I didn’t know but knew mechanics and spec, but that wasn’t enough. They wanted numbers. Then came skada.

Point is damage meters are not necessary, they just make the game more selective and is definitely a reason the community has become more toxic over time

11

:rofl:

What

12

Really? When something is wrong with a lib or something posted on Github, does the community blame Microsoft?

13

There is a difference between Microsoft installing it and you doing it on your own. If Blizzard ran their own addon updater, you know there would be people that conflated the two.

14

When an addon breaks, people don’t blame Blizzard, they blame the addon author (unless Blizzard broke it in-game).

The updater is a script. That’s nothing unless they want to lard it up with extra ‘features’ and advertising.

15

I guess you missed the part where the OP suggested building it INTO the existing battlenet launcher. To use your Windows example. If windows updater started pushing out updates to third party apps or suggested new ones to you, it would appear to most users as they are official windows applications.

There is zero upside to Blizzard providing their own updater.

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Battle.net App?

reconnecting
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I just wish the dang thing would stay connected.

17

The updater is a simple script. It should be built into WoW, not battlenet. If Blizzard owned the repository.

18

That would be a horrible idea and would need an option to disable it entirely.

19

So your raid is trying to kill a boss, they’re wiping over and over to the enrage timer.

without dps meters you do, what? pick names out of a hat to decide who to sit? tell people to press their buttons harder? just tell the boss he won, pack up and go home?

explain how you would solve this problem.

1 Like
20

How?

That it? Tell them to download Hekili, gg :laughing:

I sit in the

Discord and help people with writing addons and finding addons and hear that so often :laughing: :sob: You know how some people check their phone impulsively every 5 minutes? That’s how I am with addon updates :rofl: I check about 2600 times a day so it makes me sad when people aren’t updating their addons :frowning:

No UI addons? Sir…no way lol. Use the default stock UI? No, I’d rather chug a bag of salt.