This I did not know.
I wonder if you could map the dungeon based on run speed, and have each player send each other their movement commands based on timing?
Honestly, I could care less about the exploits to altering nameplates with visual cues. What bugs me is that (with the addition of some abilities making it easy to heal world content with people not in your party, ie Beacon of Virtue), I find it actually fun and challenging to have set up my own mouseover macros and use the friendly nameplates to heal. THAT doesnt feel like an exploit to me and more of another form of gameplay. I find it more fun as a healer to actually look at the fight and not have to be jumping between my damn party frames and back to see whats up. Sure, I can still do that with the tiny little hairline nameplates Blizz thinks are acceptable but, it would have been nice to still be able to customize the LOOK of the nameplate (ie size/width (pertaining to addons). This is where I agree with the āBlizz took the lazy way outā comment. Instead of finding a solution to a specific problem, they just chopped the head off the hydra so to speak, disabling the API for nameplates entirely.
Again, Iām fine with the disabling of additions to nameplates. I just hate how my friendly nameplates pop to an ENTIRELY different look than what I was healing not 10 seconds before zoning into the dungeon. Healing players via nameplates, feels more like Iām actually IN the fight as opposed to sitting on-base in a comms room. I could heal via UnitFrames from a damn Ipad. I dont really care to stare at frames the whole M+ run.
Im sure there are counters to this rant but, surely you guys can see my point.
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That mentality is why modern WoW is a dumpster fire, and why they had to re-launch classic in the first place.
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I would understand some limitation to what data can be used by nameplate addons but completely prevent addon to function with friendly nameplates is bull****, you can have all the utility like displaying health, buffs and debuffs on enemy nameplate but you canāt have debuffs and health percentage shown on friendly nameplates?
Why you have to play healer in dungeons just by looking at the party UI in the corner of the screen all the time having little clue about what is actually going on around you if you want to keep an eye on health percentage and debuffs on teammates?
If I look at the nameplates I have better awareness about the current situation in combat, but without the utility from addon itās more difficult to spot debuff to dispel and itās also more difficult to time the healing spell cast properly to minimize overhealing.
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Can we get this fixed in Classic?!
Iām spending my whole time looking at the party/raid frames and itās boring as F!*k.
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The silly thing is, anyone who is capable enough to use nameplates to draw on the screen, is just as competent enough to send screenshots to each other through some network backchannel, analyze everyonesā position, and draw on screen using remote desktop software.
You are just ruining fun for normal players. The hardcore nerds have already beaten your game.
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I am a normal player, and never cared about custom nameplates. Why on earth is it this important to you?
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I am a normal player and I love custom nameplates. What on earth is wrong with you?
You literally are able to customize every part of WoW. That was the spirit of the game. Stop bowing down to your Activision overlords.
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What class with healing spec do you play?
If the answer is none, then you couldnāt ever understand.
As DPS you donāt care about any nameplates. You just do your thing and attack everything in the sight.
If you are smart DPS you set focus to your tank and attack only your tankās target to avoid pulling aggro.
As tank you care only for enemy nameplates. You just do your thing and attack whatever target have least HP as those are most likely to have high aggro from DPS.
If you are smart tank, you get addon that change size and color of the nameplate based on whether you hold the aggro or not, which usually goes with green = holding aggro, yellow = loosing aggro, red = enemy is attacking someone else.
As healer you care about keeping the HP of the entire party above 90%.
If you are smart healer, you look at combat situation around you rather than party/raid frames in the corner of your screen, and use @mouseover macro modifier for all your abilities.
That require you to have all the necessary information usually shown in party/raid frames to be displayed on friendly nameplates instead, which was done by nameplate addons before Blizzard decided to completely prevent those addons to function with friendly nameplates.
And while retail default nameplates does show harmful effects to dispel, classic does not and also donāt allow addons to modify friendly nameplates despite that was not the case back then.
Sorry for the late response and revival of this old topic, but thatās why itās important to those who play healer and itās making me upset up to this day, as I get reminded every time I do some dungeons in that role.
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OP - Iām really glad you brought this up, this has frustrated me for years now.
I remember when I first jumped back into retail, I spent literally all night trying to reconfigure and fix my nameplates.
I shared your confusion through the whole thread, it was weird to me to see people defend such a blatantly lazy decision by Blizzard so rigorously.
From a technical standpoint, I donāt buy for a second that this was the right way to solve the āproblemā. I understand why they wanted to shut down this kind of gameplay, but it was a knee-jerk lazy response.
So I was confused, just like you, but Dalteonās response really made it click for me
What class with healing spec do you play?
If the answer is none, then you couldnāt ever understand.
Weāre just a minority. Healers are a minority. Healers that use nameplates for situational awareness are a sub-minority. Healers that even want/care about custom nameplates, an even smaller minority still.
From Blizzardās perspective, this was an easy win:
A. They address something that makes their game look bad
B. They did it quickly and easily
C. They negatively impact very few players
Iām sure they knew exactly what their cost/reward was, and they made the simple choice. No meetings, no brainstorming - just disable the thing in .the dungeons
So yeah, it sucks. I was really disappointed when Dragonflight came out and there was still no change to the Nameplate problem. I would have thought by now theyād have eased the restrictions, even a little bit.
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