I’m not for or against addons personally. I use them because they are here but I would get by without.
Would the game be better if blizzard disabled the majority of addons like DBM/DR Trackers/CD trackers and basically went bare bones with an ingame DPS meteor being only thing.
I’ve played MMO’s without addons and never thought the game was worse for it.
A couple of pro’s would be less raid difficulties since a raid without DBM/weak auras would be much more difficult.
PVP would also be much different without the ability to track cooldowns/drs/trinkets.
I think the base game ui for PVE/PVP would be need to be upgraded significantly to allow for it to be this way though.
That being said Do addons make the game better or worse, and if its worse would the game be much more enjoyable without?
They make the game better but at the cost of also basically needing them to have the same edge/advantage as other people. That can easily be considered detrimental but I don’t think it’s worth trying to rip it out due to how ingrained they are as well as losing all the upsides of having add-ons in the first place.
imo it makes the game better.
but there should be a base level that the game should provide, similar to how they are revamping the ui.
wow should have a basic DPS/HPS meter simply because it gives that numbers feed back. people like to see numbers.
knowing trinket/ major CDs for pvp can allow for some amazing set ups and coordination that otherwise devolves into face rolling your keyboard and doing things without ever planning.
there are a few other basic addons everyone and their cat that sits on the keyboard uses. those should also be part of the base game as an option.
wow isn’t other mmos. it was designed with addons being a thing from the very start.
Killing addons would kill the entire game. Not much more to say than that.
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I think it’s important to distinguish exactly what’s being talked about, because “addons” is a ridiculously wide range.
UI addons that are mostly cosmetic pose no issue. That’s all up to individual taste and it’s good that players can tailor their UIs that way.
Addons that manage to influence how dungeons and boss encounters are designed on the other hand are a lot more dodgy. Not because they make PvE easier, but because it means that the devs are designing around anything but the base UI, which is just a bad idea.
So in short, I think the devs should incorporate their own versions of “essential” raid addons into the game and design around those. Players would be free to continue to use the original addons that were copied, but the advantage to using those would most often fall into the category of diminishing returns.
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I use DBM in its barest forms. Become accustomed to FFXIV having that same functionality baked in. If WoW followed suit, which they have started already, I could finally delete it.
I would be incredibly sad if they disabled WA. I love my custom UI, and all the custom art I made for it. I like how I can make it so my cd tracker only show in combat so my screen is completely clear when running around.
Also I play mostly on RP servers these days and addons like TRP3 are kind of mandatory these days. It’s the one addon that I’d say improves a part of the game astronomically.
One of the best things about this game is the level of customization you have available for your UI and key bindings.
Yes and no. There are a lot of addons that do things the game already should do it self. Which is part of the issue. The game interface/UI needs updating, which they said they are doing so guess we will see.
Considering they designed a lot of content expecting people have addons, I’d love to see them go away. The combat ones, anyhow.
The UI ones are fine.
i just wish certain stuff was built into the game by default.
they are going to try to give us an elvui type ui in 10.0. thats great.
dps meters are great to have but im on the fence as to whether they should be allowed in the game and/or used.
i really wish we could customize nameplates alot like the addon plater.
i can live without dbm. they would either change boss mechanics to be more apparant or build some dbm into the ui during fights.
the only thing i realllly dont want to live without are my weakauras. only the ones for tracking my dots/hots/resource/cds. im ok with losing all other kinds of weakauras. they could technically build something into the ui that would allow me to track these things like i can with weakauras. if they did that then im ok with having weakauras removed.
to answer the question. addons make the game soooo much better. default ui and interface is complete garbage. addons are those things thats like ‘with great power, comes great responsibility’. only downside to addons is that people use them to be toxic to each other and it forces blizzard to increase the difficulty of encounters.
I personally prefer the game with the least amount of addons possible, because I don’t think the game needs extensive UI changes from the base-game. But; as said before this is a personal preference. As far as it goes visually and capability the base UI works fine for everybody, anyone who says otherwise has probably used addons for years and has a bias towards UI modifications and that’s fine too.
Other things, DBM/Trackers/etc… they’re not really “needed”, but with the years of growth of WoW and more complicated mechanics / visual clutter; they become more necessary. Some guilds even require these addons. For the majority of boss encounters though, I still don’t believe you don’t NEED the addons to complete content on a high-skill level. I say this because I typically in the past have avoided using such addons. But, every player is different. I’m understanding that not every player is focused, or they may just have no knowledge of a fight and the addons can help them get by.
There’s not really a place for the game to not allow addons to help players. Although I do think the UI could use some work with improvements so that such UIs aren’t really a potential necessity. Whether Blizzard wants to pay an employee to develop such systems is up to them.
One major factor I think why WoW wouldn’t ever release to console is the sole fact a ton of players depend on such addons and they’re not willing to develop these addons themselves. Although that’s trailing away from the topic.
Addons do not make the game worse, unless they hinder performance of your PC, or they don’t fit your personal preference of play. They can make things better, there is some quality of life to gain through addons via questing, etc… But Blizzard has gotten better over the years to make such addons not necessary.
I don’t think WAs will ever lose that ability. Cooldown/proc tracking is pretty benign no matter how you slice it.
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Yes for raiding dungeon ui it sounds like its a problem. Makes a high barrier to entry. I’d like to keep the smaller add-ons I use like bagnon, action cam, just minor ui upgrades. Nothing that gives an advantages
I enjoy using addons because they make the game more enjoyable / less stressful for me.
What I respect most is that they are 100% optional. I don’t need any of them to play but they do make the game better for me.
If they were removed, iʻd be bummed about it, but it wouldn’t be a deal-breaker as I rarely do content where iʻd need that edge to be competitive.