No, you can’t. Every addon dev or content creator is saying the opposite. You can’t change that stuff. You can only change basic option Blizz provides even with addons. Blizz is giving the ability to show hp percentages in the new UI but not giving a way to change how that is presented. No font options. No resizing options. No decimal value options. We are losing options that do not in any way affect combat, but because those options got information from the combat log they are being affected.
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I’m not purposefully nor misunderstanding misstating anything.
I don’t know what the ELVUI devs have specifically said in great detail (I looked at the Reddit post, and I looked at the stuff folks are quoting them on) - because everything from what I have seen it is the same thing as the WA developers: “We can make changes, but we want to make use of computational logic, since we can’t do that, we don’t feel it is worth developing the addons any further.”
My source for more specific information, I’m relying on MysticalOS (DBM’s lead developer) because he’s pointing out why things are good they are changing, where Blizzard is going way overboard, and providing actual genuine feedback rather than just screaming “AAAAAAAAARGH! Me quit!”
Most addons right now are broken, because they have been developed to rely on API that is now fully or partially blocked behind the “secret black box.” What most developers from what I have seen so far are saying is that they could make changes to focus on UI customization … but the big ones who scream that they are quitting are saying that they won’t, because it is a lot of work, and that they really want to do computational stuff.
The computational stuff is the entire thing why this change is taking place and why all of this matters. None of this has anything to do with individual developers or the like, but rather what is the expected baseline experience for all WoW players.
With addons’ ability to make use of computational logic having repeatedly broken the game over and over again, and with developers having gone on record taking a “Water will find any and all cracks”-mentality. Meaning if it is possible, whether it should be or even if said developers know it isn’t supposed to be available, it is still used to circumvent things as far as is possible.
So… Blizzard is responding by fundamentally reworking what is possible. To which some developers are saying “No, we quit.” That’s it. If developers want to make addons, they have to comport to this.
Those who doesn’t want to have said that they don’t want to. That’s why I don’t view this as an issue.
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And that right there is your problem.
You are using information from a combat addon to judge ALL addons unfarily.
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Things a lot of things that they want to do would end up having combat uses.
You give access to read the health, combat uses
Buffs, combat uses
Debuffs, combat uses
You can’t even give access to if something is dispelable or guess what, decursive comes back
OK now do action bar padding.
Tell me how making zero space in my action bars is combat related.
Id love to see the mental gymnastics for this one.
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I dont use the addon so im unaffected. As well as the other millions who dont
As a veteran of WoW, I’m done. I’m losing all my customization I have built for myself over the years because Blizzard doesn’t know how to find a way to keep both ends of the spectrum happy, i.e., beginners/casuals through to those who enjoy more complexity.
It’s funny, as the current state of the game already has this: classes that are beginner friendly and much easier to play, and those that require skill and practice. Sure, get rid of some functionality to WeakAuras that are required to do some bosses. This comes down to Blizzard designing encounters that wouldn’t need such a tool if they want to dumb down the game. But it feels like Midnight is going to be a completely different game, solely designed for those who find it hard to play.
I have been using Elvui for as long as I can remember, I have tried the new Blizzard UI and hate it. Unsure why this is required. Perhaps the rumors of them changing the game for console are true.
Guess I’ll have to wait until they 180 on the following expansion, or maybe this is the catalyst to finally quit WoW.
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Some of this stuff is indeed starting to feel a lot like a game director is bored with their job and trying out some new vision, consequences be damned, OR financial reasons.
This feels like a double-teamed pull up jumper in basketball to me. Very low % shot selection from Blizz.
Whenever they pull a head scratcher like this I automatically assume it’s either hubris OR they went “how can we save money on game development? I know, lets pull dev time out of encounter development and tuning and say “we need to remove combat addons and complexity from classes.” Then we will have so much extra room for cost savings!”
Prove me wrong Ion. If your default UI customization isnt anywhere near Elvui, Tellmewhen, etc etc this is gonna be such a boondoggle.
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That’s one they could relax easily
And yet.
And thats why I am ticked.
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They are saying “no we quit” because the options available to the addon devs due to this change make the development and functionality of the addons so restricted that there is no reason in maintaining them. It will take a fundamental rewrite of the entire addon to point where it basically wouldnt be Elvui anymore because it wouldn’t have anywhere near the functionality or usability that Elvui users are accustomed to. You make it sound like they are sour and taking their ball and going home when its really more akin to saying “hey here is a base car you can add leather seats, a stereo, a hud, remote start, nicer rims and your choice of 15 colors of paint” to now saying “you can have any color you want as long as its black and thats it”
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Then tell them that, they’ve already changed a lot of things based on feedback
I am telling them that, by debating and shooting down all these excuses and rationales.
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And… wrong again.
No, his commentary is about whether something has an impact on combat or not. You saying this means that you are demonstrating you don’t understand anything because no, I’m not “judging all addons unfairly.”
I’m actually interested in the topic and since Blizzard is making these changes because of how it affects game design overall, I’m interested in those who speak about game design overall. MysticalOS does that and is one of the ones who are the most affected by this and still support it - while still calling out Blizzard for when they make some really dumb changes.
They are asking for genuine feedback and Mystical provide good constructive feedback. So yes, I’m more interesting in what he has to say than whatever developer going “We quit because we don’t like the change.”
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WoW is a 21 year old game sustaining itself on extremely long-term players.
Yes, there are always new players. But absolutely NOTHING like the kind of growth it’d need to actually be healthy. MMOs are not popular anymore. Lots of younger players are just kids of older players.
WoW should work on its new player experience, 100%, because it sucks.
But Addons are largely not a part of that. Getting people to even reach the endgame is a much bigger issue than addons being too relied upon.
I don’t think the addon purge will kill WoW, but I do think crapping on existing players in the hopes of making it easier to get into for the slow trickle of new players is a bad move for a game and genre in the state WoW and MMORPGs are in.
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Its actually more like “We quit because we have been lied to, and even if we DID continue it would be worse than what blizzard will offer because of the lockdowns*.”
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And you gave and example of a good thing for them to change, not all of them have been that
Yes, it’d be a hell of a lot of work and I don’t envy them in the slightest if they wanted to do it.
Because this is what they are doing … and it is fine of them to do that.
If they wanted to develop the addons further, they could, but it would require a lot of work - but they don’t want to do that, so that’s where it ends. But they have provided additional reasoning and their reasoning is based on “We want to do stuff that relies on computational logic, but we can’t do it anymore.”
It is fine for them to say “Nope, we are taking our ball and going home” - I’m not disparaging them for that, but it is exactly what they are doing. They could make changes to make the addons work in accordance with how addons and the new API functionalities are going to work in Midnight … but they don’t want to.
Their stated reasons being “It’d be a lot of work, and we don’t want to do it, because we can’t use computational logic to do it.”
This is why I said “Oh-kay, here’s my statement: this is fine and addon developers not wanting to develop their addons is also fine” in response to Vralok, and this was my response to the WA debacle as well.
If some addon developers, even for some of the most popular addons, don’t want to develop their addons anymore … that’s fine. I don’t get why players should be able to force them to stick around, since this is effectively what folks are actually talking about.
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If I were playing basketball, and the owner of the court suddenly come and warped the pavement so I cant dribble, can I still play basketball on that court?
TECHNICALLY yes.
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To say that our feedback is invalid or we are “overeacting way too much” is just bad faith arguing and trolling at this point, we all here pay to have access to this product and we do have our right to voice our opinions on whats going to happen in the next 4 months.
This is a scorched earth approach, while baking in certain addons/weakauras (i.e Damage meter, cooldown manager, ui edit mode) into the base game is nice but those default versions of said certain addons/weakauras are behind the curve compared to addon version of them and simply need time to make improvements first before we can even think about putting the addon version on the chopping block.
There are people that have Alpha/beta access, we can see this stuff before release and there are some UI stuff that we have on live right now.
If your a healer, The default raid frames is not good, if someone has a dispellable debuff, you have to squint to see the debuff icon, cant move it or resize it, as it stands its made for ants. I see that they are making changes to it but its a wait and see situation.
UI edit mode while nice, its still behind compared what Bartender offers.
Cooldown manager just needs some time in the oven.
As for the ones getting added in Midnight, Damage meters only track DPS, damage done, healing done and HPS while Details can track more then what Blizzard damage meters offers. I havent seen much of the name plate improvements and I think Blizzard’s dbm is alright but granted I dont have alpha so I’m seeing what I’m seeing from people that do have access.
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