If the content gave clear signals the average player could respond to in time, then add-ons like DBM would not be required. The tiny debuff icons on the raid frames of the basic UI are a start, but Decurive, Healbot, and VuhDo are popular because the basic UI is inadequate. Ideally, the game should show you EVERYTHING you need to play successfully, but it doesn’t and 3rd-party add-ons fill a gap by WoW enthusiasts that don’t cost Blizzard a dime in dev $; that’s not likely to change except once in a blue moon (e.g., Gear Score being added to the base UI character sheet for item-level, Raider IO Score being incorporated as M+ Score, etc.).
I do kind of wish that they would institute a FIFO “market” queue for commodity items that is automatically priced by the imbalance between supply and demand, much like how the WoW Token is auto-priced every X-hours. People could place “limit” order instead of “market” orders if they want to set their own price with the understanding they may not get a trade executed. While any listing for sale should still be able to be canceled, relisting the same item needs a cooldown period of Y-minutes.
If that was baked into the base UI, then TSM and other AH add-ons might still serve a use to tell give me a popup on tracked items when there’s a deal (ask price is below my threshold as a buyer or bid price is above my threshold as a seller).
Add-ons exist in FFXIV - though on the other hand, most things in FFXIV are telegraphed better and consistently, with the only ‘skill’ learning the dance moves, making them not as necessary as in WoW.
if you take a bad player and give him all the good addons he wont be much better.
if you take a great player and take away all his addons he will still be great.
Competitive players use addons to re-arrange how they receive information and highlight the details they want to focus. Same as my job uses GIS to generate custom maps that highlight details we care about. GIS doesn’t go out and do our fieldwork; it just helps us pickout where the work needs doing. Addons don’t play the game; they just help you sift through a sea of information to focus the bits you really care about.
It’s ironic how a huge portion of the playerbase still uses them. If you don’t say anything ingame, they have no way to detect.
I personally don’t mind it, and I did use third party software when I played - XIV Alexander - because the game is impossible to play at a competitive level with the ping from my country. Not even a VPN helps a lot.
It works both ways. I bet the vast majority aren’t continuing to clear the fights without their addons and especially their cheap auras either.
Again, it would be quite telling to see how the RWF goes with the same brutally tuned fights but on a tourney realm with no addons or 3rd party tools of any kind are allowed.
I cleared savage this tier, I’ve never managed to achieve CE. What now? WoW raiding is just more intricate. FFXIV has almost 0 variance from pull to pull. The exact same thing happens at the exact same time every time. Memorize the choreography and win. Easy.
Add-ons are less about Skill and more about Quality of Life for the user. The add-on is like one of those front end collision detectors in most new vehicles. You might not need it, but it is there because someone else finds comfort in it. Add-ons cannot play the game for you. You still have to click buttons and move. Automation violates the ToS and EULA, and suggesting otherwise is just disingenuous. Plus, if add-ons played the game for you, ALL of us would be pushing +20s in Mythics right now.
Oh, and one final thought: Comparing FFXIV with 30M accounts to WoW’s 100M+ accounts (10 years ago) just reminds people how uninteresting every other MMO really is.
And addons in wow are a response to developer pressures. Too many critical things to track, so addons are required to play at any appreciable level.
You can tell it’s intentional (no matter what they say) because they made the BRD raid perfectly. Lots of bosses that don’t require dbm and are still challenging if you ignore the mechanics. The mechanics are just super visible and obvious. BRD is, unironically, the best raid they’ve released since Legion.
