I hate to bother you with this trivial point, but most people don’t even read the mechanics in the adventure log /raid info. Addons present an opportunity even for the most mediocre and casual player an opportunity to improve. I don’t see how you can blame addons for peoples inability to do simple mechanics. I mean most fights have what, 2 or 3 mechanics at heroic level? Maybe 3-4 on mythic?
If you’re not learning your class, or you lack dexterity, or an ability to focus, it will seem harder. Try organizing a raid sometime with pugs, its like herding cats, this is only going to narrow the margins for raid recruitment.
I don’t use any of Blizzards addons for good reason. I prefer having control over who is screaming in my ear, better a friend then a toxic random who barely knows mechanics.
Yeah, good luck removing DBM or any similar one, you’re going to even raise the barrier to entry in an already META centric community.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
The ‘Adventure Log’ is far and away the most horrendous in game info tool I think I’ve encountered, especially with how hard it is to tell what’s what in the actual fight based on the info in that clunky, pain in the butt to navigate book that you have to close and open repeatedly at times to get the info to display right again after going to some sub sections
I wasn’t going to even mention that because it might lead to a derailing into blizzards inability to write with clarity, but you know, these “Evil” addons.
As someone who doesn’t use addons I don’t see the need to ban them, nor do I understand the massive push for it.
If players want to use the tools at their disposal to make life easier for them and making information more accessible go ahead, that’s their choice. It doesn’t affect you in the game, and you also have the same choice that they had.
Getting a debuff in an encounter for the first time and having to quickly mouse over it to read the tooltip isn’t for everyone, and that is almost literally what not using an addon comes down to.
They didn’t used to be, but I think around Legion or maybe BfA they actually went back on that ruling.
If I recall it was something to do with the interaction between play on tournament realms vs live where either people had to play without them live and be at a disadvantage, or have a dramatic shift when playing in a tournament format and suddenly losing access to their addons and having that additional mental input. (Ie cd counting etc)
That’s fair in a way, but also with the given topic being what it is, is also disingenuous to the totality of the situation and what has caused addons to be so needed by the community to do things reasonably
To be fair though, this game is 18 years old, sure addons may have contributed to mechanic creep, but you have to also consider the game would have still evolved in this manner anyway.
What is the degree in which addons have accelerated this is not something anyone can answer.
In fact there is the argument that players not relying on addons forces them to improve, so after 18 years of higher improvement who is to say players would not be skilled enough to require this degree of mechanical challenge anyway.
That is an issue going back to vanilla days. If for example people didn’t know their class, didn’t know other classes, had to know all the GCD’s, CD’s, Trinkets and more cooldown times in their head, and keep track of their teams GCD’s, CD’s, Trinkets, and what not, that is too much info for one person to retain, all at the same time reacting within seconds, and incoming information from teammates on game plan etc.
The dependency opened the doors to a broader middle ground, rather than closing it off.
IF you have ratings of “Bad” players, “Average players” , “Good players,” and then the top 10%, you will end up losing at least the two middle categories over not knowing GCD’s or CD’s by heart.
There’s nothing especially bad about add-ons but I’d definitely set the precedent that add-ons that make raiding too easy should be removed. And consequently raids should be made easier in general, with ultra-niche mythic raids added only once or twice per expansion.
The problem with raiding add-ons is that it encourages the devs to get into an arms race with their player base which then leads to the same problem anti-virus software has; one company will never have the resources to compete with every single hacker who decides they want to break their software. No amount of tuning will make a raid beat an add-on and in the meantime it makes that raiding obnoxious for everyone who didn’t download those addons.
A GAME should not require you to invest 18 years into it to improve and get better to put it at a reasonable place.
Then, there are the, quite serious, accessibility concerns that most addons are designed to help address (like how some things only have visual or audio ques, or how somethings require such precision to dodge that if you aren’t aware it’s coming, if you have ANY kind of impairment your SOL) and it throws that argument ENTIRELY out the window.
It is an easy object to scapegoat for all of their woes. I mean, addons have opened the door to casuals if anything. “You” can’t blame an addon for lack of skill, that is purely down to the player to learn (1-60). After a point the unkind reality of bell curves will be mentioned and the uncomfortable facts (for some) that not everyone is equally capable of the same ability. Everyone is different, tools like addons are only that and do nothing more.
So what you are saying is mechanics should never have progressed past Vanilla?
Day 1 difficulty should be year 18 difficulty because you can only expect a player to have been playing for a day?
That is an argument for addons though, as yes people have accessibility impairments and do need addon assistance. That would be the case regardless of how many or few mechanics there were.
I don’t see how that is an argument against addons?
I don’t think that is what he meant in that context. Each expansion has been different, has offered new challenges. By default, growth comes out of it, it opens the door to new opportunities to improve as a player. Those who refuse to do mechanics, or any content not casual are welcomed to do so. Learning your class based on changes is a regular event. In part a lot of that goes back to the extra borrowed powers they continuously implement.
What I’m saying for that is, many of the mechanics in ‘current’ release itterations, and with how laughably pathetic the in game resources for understanding them are is that it is designed to EXPECT you to have that prior experience from prior expansions for things to make sense in modern dungeons and raids.
Case and point one of the Better raids for new players in recent memory. The Castle from SL. Even without DBM attacks are clearly telegraphed and mechanics are clear and understandable. Take the waltz fight, find your dance partners tells you exactly what to do, find the person you are connected too and get close to each other, same with find your places, very clear, very understandable, and if you mess up the mechanic, the direct impact to the full raid is minimal. Now, lets compare to another raid, same expansion, that also requires forced movement. The Fate Loom. Here, you need to go to a spot and walk with a ring, but nothing really tells you that clearly in either the guide, or the implementation. And if you mess up it’s a raid wipe. If you came into SL new, and Castle was your first raid, with how few of the ‘don’t make any mistakes at all or restart’ things it has, unless you were raiding in prior expansions that had similar mechanics, you’d be completely unprepared and unaware.
That is the big problem I have with people saying ‘ban all addons’ or things like that, or who think that all the raids are designed well. From a ‘joined during this expansion’ stand point, raids are very inhospitable due to the fact that alot of things that can and will happen in them you cannot adequately prepare for unless some one in your raid takes the time to explain the mechanic or you have been playing the game for a few expansions and got to experience similar in the past.
I agree more addons should be baked in to the base game. I disagree that all addons should be removed, not allowed, banned whatever. And I highly doubt you will find a lot of support for it.
While I’m not against the idea, WoW still an old PC game with a skills/spells design which should have been reworked eons ago in order to make addons useless.
I used 2-3 back in Vanilla and 1 in WoD & Legion, I still prefer have hotkeys all over the keyboard, to me addons feel like cheating and/or make me feel such a aged dinosaur having fun with fossils
Many PC gamers like to optimize utilities, function adequacy, to have more efficiency about few to many details, addons allow them to do that. Not good, not bad, it’s just a PC gamers thing
