I love MMO’s, and I only just recently started playing WoW again. After a long break, something I’ve noticed many other MMO’s prioritize is “visual communication” of boss mechanics.
WoW is still the gold standard when it comes to engaging boss fights, but the sad truth is that if you don’t ALREADY know the mechanics, then this game is borderline unplayable. For my own part, I’d completely forgotten the mechanics behind any of the Mythic+ bosses, and it was abundantly clear that the game makes zero effort to distinguish what is a “good circle” or a “bad circle” to stand in. Hell, in LFR it’s even LESS apparent.
While addons certainly do exist and can make things easier (and yes, I am now running addons), the fact is that a well-designed game shouldn’t REQUIRE addons. I’m sure that’s probably an internal debate Blizzard faces with every boss encounter, but this is the first time I’ve found it so particularly frustrating.
It concerns me, because I have a buddy who is trying WoW out for the first time (who would’ve thought a gamer in his 30’s wouldn’t have even TRIED WoW before?!), and considering he’s totally unaccustomed to WoW-style MMO’s, it’s just got me looking at things in a different light. And as much fun as dungeons can be, I’ve just realized coming from other MMO’s that WoW makes it pretty difficult to actually UNDERSTAND boss encounters, simply by playing them.
you really can’t, especially not competitively. there are also so many QoL addons that playing without them is ridiculous:
Postal - should have built into the game as part of the default gui from launch
Bar addons - almost every class needs more hotkeys than available on the default gui
Bag addons - the default bag system is outdated. a one bag/customizable bag should be part of the default gui
movable unit frames - and actually movable everything : i’ve played indie mmorpgs that have this feature, why not WOW?
as for raid addons: the countdown bars, the automatic target marking, the ‘in/out of range’ indicator, automated raid warnings etc either need to be blocked, or made part of the default game mechanics. there is no denying there is an advantage to these addons that a clueless non addon user doesnt have. any returning player who doesnt use some type of raid addon is going to have a much harder time learning raid fights than if they have an addon holding their hand along the way. yea the default game is ‘playable’ but no on in mythic+ has zero addons installed.
This is true, however without actually seeing and playing through the fights it might as well be written in Chinese if you don’t have an addon screaming at you to “do this now” or “move now”.
It’s written like “when X happens, the dps should move to Y or else Z happens.”
And the game does a poor job of telegraphing some of it’s abilities so without an addon you don’t know when X has happened until you mess up and cause Z to happen.
I dont buy into the idea that “boss fights are more mechanically intense now because people are better” Its not like the iq of earth is increasing over time. It is simply the arms race between addons and instance devs. i used to raid in bc and all through wotlk when 2 mechanics at once was essentially unheard of. Maybe on lich king. These days 3 or more mechanics at the same time is the norm because the complex addons have everything covered with bars, timers, voice alerts, markers on heads, interupt call outs etc.
Anyone remember when blizz actually nerfed addons directly because they would even spell out where to run certain mechanics too, thereby completely nullifying any actual thought effort required by the player?
I never had dbm untill i started raiding again in wod because it wasnt required in bc or wotlk (i skipped a couple raid tiers, dont hate me! lol)
edited for typos and awful punctuation, still probably terrible but somewhat legible now
Yep. For some people this isn’t for lack of trying to understand what the dungeon journal is saying, either; some have a hard time visualizing what the journal is saying without first wiping a few times to fill in all the various contextual information gaps, so even if they read the guide it doesn’t do them much good.
In my case I often still need to flub it a time or two even after watching a guide video.
You don’t need addons to play. It’s not too complicated, you just need to practice more. You’ll eventually know what to do unconsciously, just like playing an instrument. You can’t expect to just jump in and already know it like a pro.
The only addon I ever perennially use is some variety of coordinates. I wish they’d just show coordinates in the base game already. 14 does it and is good to go.
I rarely use addons as a general rule. I may use a few in classic, I did in vanilla when I could literally peel aggro from the tank, knowing that was about to happen was Need To Know info.
In the modern game though it just feels like mild convenience and not much else. I don’t play enough nor do I engage in difficult content to the point I feel I need to keep up with them. If I’m doing something where coords would really help maybe I’ll go download it and use it until it breaks or the thing I’m using it for is done, whichever comes first.
Is 14 anti-addon? Because other than the best ideas getting baked in over the years, I to this day couldn’t tell you if I genuinely like or dislike their use.
I played WoW for so long without add-ons that I function just fine without them. I do appreciate them though.
I think maybe things like arena and raiding might get complicated without them, or Mythic + but I also think people can excel without them. Just uh, not as well as they would with them.
I remember years and years and years ago when add-ons would seemingly be broken for days (or maybe that was my perception) after big patches and I’d be awestruck at how many peoples brains melted when they couldn’t use them. I told myself back then that I’d never be SO reliant on add-ons.
The problem is not too complicated, the problem is the fights are designed around them. If they designed the fights to visually represent more of what is happening, then you would have a better clue as to what is going on. Or you could use more sound clues. A big roar from the boss means an aoe is coming etc. Not just a random spell bar that lists the ability name.
Antros, ZM world boss, is a semi-example of visual representation. There’s a dark cone. You move out of it. Easy to see it, easy to see where you need to move.
Imo DBM makes makes players lazy. I used to play Rift a long time ago and I became the “call out” person for our raid group. Calling out all mechanics etc whenever they happened. All the bombs, bad stuff etc. At first I enjoyed it because it was fun having the responsibility of success or fail dependant on me calling stuff out in time, but I quickly realized the more I called stuff out, the less people learn mechanics and instead just listened to call outs to get them out of bad stuff.
Add-ons aren’t going away anytime soon unless they start banning them or completely rework code etc, but they DO make people lazier. You become reliant on an add on to tell you what to do.
From the other side though, yes wow ui would need a major overhaul and fights would have to give much better indicators of what is happening. But that requires more development time, resources etc. It’s easier just to throw in abilities and let people’s addons figure them out.
Bullcrap.
Almost every spec is totally fine with 2 full bars.
Maybe Prot Warriors could use 3.
The game provides… 5? Without paging through them.
And there are plenty of specs that barely need 1 bar.
Just because you’re keybinding 7 situational PvP macros for Frostbolt on your Fire Mage doesn’t mean the game actually needs 10 bars to be playable. That’s on you.
Eh. I’d argue that the addons do more to help you time your abilities efficiently more than anything else. They don’t really teach you the fight itself any more than reading the journal or checking your death log when you die to something unexpected does.
