Many games these days allow for user-generated custom UI mods or addons of this sort. If the game allows for any kind of modification via addons, players are going to take advantage of it. There’s an entire subset of the community that bursts based off modding alone. It can be fun & useful, it can be cumbersome, and it can even be game-breaking.
A lot of MMO players are bound to have experience with Custom UI mods based on World of Warcraft alone. Blizzard has allowed a lot of freedom when it comes to addons, and there is a whole plethora of Mod sites you can now visit that are bustling with their own little communities.
In fact, some features in WoW started out as addons, Scrolling Combat Text being the biggest one that comes to mind.
Some Star Wars fans choose to 'mod' their money, for example - this Dollar is now a Bantha.
Mods aren’t always a benefit though. Sometimes they are cumbersome in how they are utilized or too burdensome in their functionality. This lack of easy use can sometimes break your game, making your UI unplayable as you may not even be able to see your action bars, health, etc.
With that in mind, it’s not too surprising that BioWare has no plans for addons at the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Here are Georg Zoeller’s words on the subject:
“What we’ve said is, regarding the question ‘Will there be addons at launch’ is “no, not at launch”.
This statement indicates nothing more than that there will not be addons at launch. Nothing more, nothing less.”
So there you have it, no addons at launch. Will BioWare ever implant addon functionality?
It’s hard to tell, but there certainly is a ‘market’ for it. There always is the argument that it could be game-breaking for some individuals, or perhaps cause a feeling of disconnect between players, and of course – there’s the fear that there will be addons created that give certain players an unfair advantage, which is a big no-no.
All fair concerns, but to those of us out there that are familiar with WoW, I can’t imagine life without a bag addon. So there certainly is a bonus to allowing these kinds of addons, usually involved in making something quicker or faster for the player.
So TORWarriors… What do you think? Would you like to see addon functionality added to SWTOR? Do you have bad or usually good experiences with addons? Drop a line, let us know!
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Please no addons!!! Like to play the raw game in all it’s difficult… To see who really is hard and not who bought(made) the best addon…
xD
Absolutely ‘NO NEED’ for add on’s in SWTOR. If they decide that a combat logger/parser/add on should be made available please for gods sake make it part of the game.
Why i dissagree is quite simply, ive cleared all content in wow (up to tier 11) and rift and aion.. Ultimately the playability was higher on rift ‘pre’ add on’s.
Add ons allow a different skillset which alot of people do not have. Why not allow everyone to play and be judged on their own ability to play the game on same basis as everyone else.
In wow i found i was playing the add on;s with 1 eye and screen positional with other eye(metafore. I want to play the game, NOT the add on’s. if they are implimented in ANY format, make them part of the game content not independantly programmed.
So…you don’t need metters (to see who does and who doesn’t is job), you don’t need frames and UI addons (because swtor original frames are very, very good…actually they sux, they are to big and they have no editing chances at all), you don’t need MACROS!, wich facilitates all roles in game…ofc you have to be smart and cleaver to understand macros and use those…and i’m not talking about copy/paste macro, oh right….you dont need target of target….because nobody cares about wich player the boss/mob is targeting, also you don’t need a threat viewer, because no one needs to know when they are reaching the tank threat level.
Addons imho are very useful to separate bad from good players.
I remember very well vanilla wow when among 40 persons if someone sucked, was easily hided behind the others, because you simply couldn’t see what healing; dps; interrupts; threat…etc…that player was doing.
So yes! we need addons to swtor…unless Bioware provide us all those tools ofc.
Simply put, what Python says in conclusion is a pile of rubble, since it`s skill, not addons, that separate good players from bad ones. A perceptive player/group leader/raid leader can see when someone is slacking or isn`t good enough to participate in a raid. That`s how it was in my guild back in vanilla WoW times. So it is not true that one has to have addons in order to be an efficient player. Brains is just enough.
PS: I understand however that around 90% of the population these days are brainless
You do not buy/make your own add ons. Most are free and its equal opertunity for all players. Add ons improve the game far past where the oridginal developers could take it themselves. There were approx 300 people involved in the development of SWTOR… there will be hundreds of thousands playing and some of those people might have a creative idea about how to improve the game. 10000000 people thinking about a problem will come up with a better solution than 300.
Its not about the raw difficulty of the game, it has to do with the addons that allow you to move the action bars, or creat WORKING macro’s, it about making the screen cleaner and placing the items is a location out of the way to enjoy the game. Its NOT about making the game easier in anyway.
kk…thanks…bye
This issue doesn’t effect me one way or the other until I see how the game plays at launch with the final UI.
Customization of UI is important to me, and I think most people that have tasted mods would never want to give up that level of customization afterwards. That being said, RIFT’s UI was largely customizable at launch, and if Bioware incorporated that level of customization, it’d keep me happy for a long time.
I think Mods were generally a good thing for WoW. Blizzard certainly has made good use of incorporating other peoples’ designs into the game. But I also think that in some cases improvements to the base UI were much too long in waiting and Blizzard should’ve much more actively incorporated improvements so all users could make use of them. Maybe Blizzard rested on mod developers’ laurels too much.
Not only did mods help evolve Blizzard’s UI, I think they affected how encounters have evolved. I wouldn’t want to do the final phase of Chimaeron without a threat meter. I also doubt WoW’s endgame raiding could be tuned to such high difficulty if players didn’t have mods constantly alerting them to react to fight mechanics. Maybe on that front, mods have had a negative impact. It seems like that difficulty is artificially high when it’s close to essential that raiders have these mods to help them.
But all in all, I like mods. There’s an eager community out there, a large portion of which are design-savvy folks who’d like to add new ideas to the game, and I think that would be a good thing for BioWare to harness.
I agree, as long as I have some customization, then Mods aren’t too much of a concern for me in terms of UI Customization – but having that option to customize is important.
I think you also touch on a good point, that the community is eager and design-savvy and they are just waiting to make little tweaks and updates, but as stated, there is certainly a risk involved with mods & addons making the game ‘too easy’.
I’m just hoping the UI isn’t heavily locked down, but with the current MMO market trends; that seems pretty unlikely.
(No and Yes!)
I would like to see how the healing plays out for the full time healers, I know that Heal Bot was an amazing healing addon for the healers in WOW and I am wondering if Bioware will give the full time healers something simular in TOR?
I sure hope they give us something better then their default UI system when it comes to healing. Especially considering how clunky the movement mechanics are for the game (at least in BETA). I’ve healed for years in WoW and love the ability to use a multi-button mouse in combination with a healing addon (healbot or vuhdo) to make the healing more about decisive, proper, intelligent choices, rather then click A, click B, hope you’re fast enough.. oh wait, gotta strafe and 5 seconds have now passed and your party member is dead.
If we don’t get addons, I do hope Bioware will give us a macro system that allows the mouseover functionality. Not as clean as an addon, but at least a little better then the current default.
I don’t see anything wrong with changing the layout of the interface… but a lot of addons for WoW as just plain cheating, that you cannot really play without at higher levels, and I think it’s wrong to basically require players to use third party software or mods.
You know just because your bad at WoW doesn’t mean you have to ruin it for others add-ons help extremly well, Your meters like Recount help too no end, kgpanels, move anything, shadowed unit frames, the list goes on, the defualt UI is in place for incompent people like you that do not have the mental capacity to make a custom UI.
Ahem, I’m an amazing tank in WoW, and I only use the Titan panel addon so I don’t have to keep opening my bags. All the others are well, pointless frankly since you can get the same information from using this thing called a brain. All you have to do is look at the bosses health, and look at your parties health, and you know if you need to pop a cooldown. With pvp, it’s even easier since you just need to keep hitting and call where enemies are in chat (something that most people don’t do, even if they do use add ons). Mouthazar out.
Good question. I wonder what kind of threat-calculation system SWTOR is going to use, and if it will be sufficient enough. Same goes for healing.
I think the main reasons why Bioware wants to hold back the use of addons at launch are:
1. Possible cheating. It would also require alot of extra management teams to follow up on what is going on, what that should be allowed and what that should not. And at launch, I think they rather would use that capacity on keeping the servers up, fixing gameplay bugs they have overseen etc.
2. As some wow developer once said; if you give access to all kinds of features and addons right away, the player won’t appreciate them as much as they would, if they already were used to not having them (addons/features) to begin with. “Got to see the dark to know what is the light.” or something like that
I find the type of UI customization available in EQ2 quite good. It allows for reskinning the UI, some control over hotkey bar shapes, bag placement and other annoying things; however, it doesn’t provide access to any functionality not exposed by the stock UI (at least this was true in the initial customizable UI).
I think something like this and a sufficiently detailed combat log written in close to real time should be sufficient in SWTOR.
A bag addon? Possibly the only addon I never had in WoW out of some 30 odd. Hardly important.
As for game breaking addons, Bioware will block them, just as blizzard does. As for ones that obscure the UI, well, duh, nobody would use them.
If there are to be no addons EVER, there had better be some way of monitoring threat and getting more bar space for abilities and shortcuts. As a raid tank, these were the most important addons for me. In fact, I could have lived without any other addons except Omen, Threatplates and Bartender. Customisable battle text is nice, but not acsolutely essential.
I really think that this game is going to work a little differently than your regular “tank and spank”. You will have tanks, but your “squishies” aren’t going to be all that “squishy” either.
As I have been watching the raids and other flashpoints, it appears to “share the damage”, “share the healing”, so most of the mods you are used to in WoW for instance, are most likely going to be moot, because you “want” someone to take aggro from you, rather than trying to keep the damage all to yourself. That’s technically going to be the biggest argument for and against mods.
Well, I’ve played DDO but never WoW.. I find it hard to see why people think they NEED threat-meters, damage-meters or any other such things. We never had it and still, if something went bad in a raid or quest, you knew why, very quickly. It’s not rocket-science and it didn’t take more than a single run to figure it out.
I can see that if you’re used to those things, you can’t imagine games without them. But to say they’re essential is a mistake. It all depends on the game and the players.
Now that said, I can well imagine that in a game with 40 or so people in a raid and 10k plus in DPS, it gets hard to figure out without the game telling you the numbers.. DDO used 12 people in raids and damage where in the hundreds, perhaps with a crit, it came up close to a thousand or sometimes above that… That is a major difference..
But again, it is a difference in how the game works and with those numbers, we never needed meters to tell us, if we did wrong.. It was plain obvious, if somebody caused a wipe.. or.. what is usually the case, if it happens, the DPS isn’t up to it.. But meters wont help people, who don’t want to learn and the ones who do, usually already know how to do things right, when they get to the difficult part.
I’m just afraid that if these things are implemented, it will be immersion breaking and people will start thinking in numbers and mechanics (Some will always do so, I know), rather than clever tactics and team-spirit. Just seems wrong to me.
My 2 cents.
I think that a basic understanding of how the game works first of is needed to see do you really need addons. Most of us have not really seen the game and have not played it to its extent. I am hoping that Bioware does not give in to the pressure of changing the game from what they think it should be to allow the game to be easier or allow changes right away. I can see that if someone loves the game they should be allowed to say what they think and if enough people say that the game should allow addons to limit it like LOTRO did. You can customize the UI but not change the ability of the UI to change the way the game is played or allow advantages to game play or PVP or PVE etc. I think that somethings like a reminder you forgot to buff yourself or a reminder that your companions are not working would be awesome (again not seen the game yet so I don’t know if it is there yet or not.) The kind of things to help you to continue to use the maximum resources or abilities that you have available to you would be a great thing. I love to explore and do all that you can in a game. I love the achivements that you can obtain in WOW and hope that something like that is in SWTOR (I think I saw that alot of what I am looking for in this type is in game.) So something to remind me that I am almost complete on that would be awesome.
Just my opinion again based on not seeing the game as of yet and just from what i have read or watched on youtube.
I am definitely of the no-numbers persuasion. I feel like Wow has really become a huge addon in a sense. All people cared about (the majority) was how they could get their little meters to show more zeros.
On the other hand I am very pro-customizability. I like to have lots of action bars and have the ability to resize things and move them around.
A threat meter would be fine in my opinion but i would tell Bioware to keep it real, and by real I mean if I were really a Jedi battling for my life or for glory or whatever I wouldn’t be like “would you exuse me mr. rancor, would you mind telling me the exact amount of damage I am doing to you in measurable units? Oh, and can you keep a running total of that for my damage to you as well? Hope that not too inconvenient while I stab you with light saberz…”
Just saying, I would really like to see people grow to rely on observation of their team and surroundings on the screen rather than largely ignoring the environment and keeping eyes glued to a little number box in the bottom corner or the display.
This game is so beautiful, would be a shame to put the focus on statistics like Wow.
There is only 2 addons that is important, and that is a healling addon, that show the whole group, and the % of thret you have. Nothing else.
Is a butifull game, good play time and inspirering in is artwork.
Thanks B
Healing addon. What you asking is a nice UI for healing. BW can enable UI configuration without introducing addons. Mouse over heals and other stuff that plays for you are not needed, so not important. Afterall i don’t think you want to pay a montly fee to have an addon to play for you.
Treat Metter Addon. You have one already. When the monster starts attacking means you have more threat than the tank. Threat reduction skill -> Slow down your dps/hps.
You see, why do you need any addons?
Just because you do not want to take the game super serial doesn’t mean kill all mods. Imagine how much longer it will take the game to improve and develop when the theory-crafters are figuring out rotations with graphing calculators, tanks have no clue whats happening, gauging dps is impossible, ext. Banning mods pisses off WoW players and hurts competitiveness. I want to play a game that can be hardcore so give the pros their tools.
I’ve been leveling in the beta two toons, Knight & Counselor. I have been watching Chat, and Playing myself. I’ve played WoW for 5-6 years, and I’ve played in Rift, Wizard101, LotR, Age of Conan, etc. Thus far I have always ended up back in WoW, and each time it was because of a lack of mods.
WoW’s unique diversity in this territory means that any little annoyance in the game can be modded out. Bags don’t do what you want, change it, outfits aren’t easily managed, change that, can’t tell what combination of spells is more effective, get a meter. AND so on.
Thus far in ToR:
I want key combinations that I don’t have yet. (open/close chat window), (camera angle up/down), key mapping onto other bars. worldmap transparency, and big/little zooms
I want scale for the UI, and the ability to move elements around.
I want a topbar that I can put status elements on that I want, and eliminate the ones that have hotkeys.
I want better focus control, better companion control, and better quest control.
I haven’t played with crafting yet, but I am sure there will be things there that will need, want, tweaking.
I want a dps meter, like recount, that lets me track, and tune, my spell choices.
do I have to have these things to play, and be a good player, no.
will little annoyances add up to me leaving, eventually, yes.
Addons should be available within half a year i hope, cause it’s nothing about what coiso so simply stated.. have aggro slow down dps, that’s all and well, but if endgame is going to somewhat similar to wow, that could mean a one shot deal, where as a threat meter could have prevented sucha slip up.
Dps meter? Off course we need one, how else can you fine tune your rotation to the limits of the class? I’m a min maxer, so such things matter to me. Not just mindlessly bonking on the keyboard untill its dead… i want it dead within the best of my abilities.
As for customization, what is ruined if you are able to customize your ui into something that fits you better?
I’d like something to customize my questing aswell, at the moment of the last beta weekend the tracking system just cluttered my screen.. I could turn of the tracking in the menu, which isn’t helpful at all.. i just want customization.
Addons for me are a must have, starting off with my mouse, the Razer Naga. in WoW I have an addon to help me customize my mouse buttons without having to deal with the cumbersome key bindings.
Damage counters are also vital if you’re raiding, be it casual or hard core, you need to be able to keep track of who is dealing what damage and who is working out and who is not in a group… Even for self exploring how to max out your dps in a way other than licking your finger and stiking it in the wind. From what I saw in the beta, there is no native way to see this.
Crafting… let’s not even start going there. In WOW i wouldn’t even start to imagine crafting my scribe or jc without addons. Or posting on the AH. I literally had THOUSANDS of things at a time in the AH daily. this wouldn’t have been possible without an addon.
I really do hope this becomes available for SWTOR in the future. my playing the game long term would certainly be influenced by it.
First off, I have been a WoW player for over 5 years. I have heard all of the arguments for addons and for a pure game the way the Devs intended it to be. As a Tank and Healer in WoW, People live because I have all of my spells visable with the aid of Bartender and Healbot. I love bagnon. If only these 3 were avail in SWTOR, I would be in heaven. Anyone who states that all addons are good for is to have an unfair advantage or are for cheating is a moron. Not all people are keyboard users. Some like myself are clickers (Yes, Clickers unite!). I hope I can find a Collectors Edition, oh wait, that is an unfair advantage to those who only get the tier 1 or tier 2 software packages… And cheers to ZAM for Torhead, I am big fan of Wowhead, great work!
Been playing wow since the first beta and mostly as a tank.
I do agree with you some addons are pritty awsome when it comes to tanking like omen threat etc. These addons is there to give the tank added support but they are not necessary, sure this makes your average tanking harder but also more fun in my perspective. And if you as a tank to a good job and the party you’re in does focus their dps on your marked mob you would not need to have addons like omen etc.
i would be happy with a auto grey seller, and a way to get my “target next enemy” key binding to work.
add-ons… i don’t like em. There is no fun in autamting a game that i play. And i would be better off with things that bash the right buttons for me. but why stop there? lets autmate it all. then we don’t have to do anything! it’s almost like a movie! no better! lets make a movie! just push start and anjoy the show.
no i rather die ingame then start a mod. it’s soo annoying if people start trashing you because you don’t have mod/macro bla bla bla… and you should have done this or done that. well i’m not a very good player, but what i do i do myself. and thats what i like. thats why i am playing.
I agree with you, haveing a healing mod that allows you to one button everything takes away the joy and skill req of the game. But the devs can choose to just relese a partial API so that would limit what addons will be available.
But I only want a custom ui i can play around with rest i’ll leave up to the devs.
my god, and my typing is awefull. automating… Automating… AUTOMATING… sheezzz…
Addons in a game can be good, it gives the player the opinion to customize the game to their liking. Now don’t get me wrong i don’t want addons to impact the general gameplay but rather modify the ui to the way you like it. In many games the devs bind things to the way they like it and it’s not always that the player base agrees with the devs.
For an example in skyrim the sprint ability is bind by default to the alt key and while some might like that i do not so to be able to change that to the more original shift key is golden.
I don’t mind that you wont be able to add addons at the release i think the ui work great and so forth however for later in the game i would like to change up a few things to make the game suit my gameplay.
I’m not a heavy addon guy i like to use the original setup however i also like to be able to put additional bars and be able to change where the minimap is going to be even if you could do this ingame i would love the ability to change how the ui scales and looks in a diffrent configuration. Remember if some of you don’t like addons you don’t have to use them.
This comment isn’t directed at average gameplay but end game progressive raiding (Or operations in this cause).
I’m sad to see SWTOR won’t be having add-ons off the bat. I’m also surprised at the amount of hate people have for addons for some reason. I agree excessive combat automation add-ons should be banned. But most addons that raiders use are merely tools. Tools to inform, or tools to help you make split second decisions. They aren’t required, but they can make decent players masterful.
I’d say the area this hurts the most is healing. A majority of the best raid healers use addons like Vuhdo or Healbot which contrary to belief don’t heal for you. They merely allow the healer to make quick healing decisions in stressful environments by allowing click and macro based actions. It’s not fun for the healer or the raid when a wipe happens because they were too busy scanning an inefficient UI or couldn’t get the cast off fast enough due to target selection (Before people argue the healer should just play better, I’m aware of predictive healing by knowing the encounter, but things can still go wrong.)
Threat meters are mostly a rear-view mirror for tanks or a tool to help high burst dps classes from wiping the raid from things like procs. Many a raid has been saved by knowing which target is next on the threat list for cooldowns and healing when a tank dies.
DPS meters are a curse and a blessing. Showboating and posting parses are extremely annoying yes. However having a barometer for how well a person performs each encounter is priceless, as a good DPS can instantly tell when they’re missing something (buff, item, broken weapon, etc).
No powerauras
. Best addon ever.
Anyway that’s my two cents. I’m certain the game is completely playable like any game with its default UI. But progressive endgame in things like heroic content is very much a performance (like professional sports) and tools help people play consistently.
You compare raiding and endgame content to professional athletics. When’s the last time you saw a football player with a “speed meter” projected on his helmet visor telling him how fast he was running? Or a soccer player with a HUD showing the exact positions of the defenders?
Any MMO player who hasn’t had the crutch of add-ons knows on an almost instinctual level what the current threat distribution is like. Any healer who is worth his salt doesn’t require fancy mods to help heal. Don’t blame Bioware for you inability to cope. And if you’re going to rage from SWTOR and go back to that W-game, please, do so now and don’t bother telling everyone else about your failure to observe the game.
I got a chance to play in two of the beta tests and the only thing i would want an addon for is to be able to move the chat box. But that may only be me as ive gotten used to warcrafts chat being in the lower left. time to get used to something else i guess
Actually I wasn’t “raging” at SWTOR, nor was I cheering for WoW as I stopping playing awhile back. I also wasn’t comparing raiding to professional athletics, though many parallels can be drawn. The last statement was about peak performance. I was pointing out the benefits of addons in a high-end raiding environment.
As I said in the first post I’m sure the game is completely playable without addons, as people will just learn to cope. But if Bioware tunes heroic level content to the same standard and difficulty as Blizzard does then players may experience a lot of frustration as they try to determine the reason for failure on bosses. You may have a bunch of people who stand in the right spot all the time but put out shit dps, but how would you know without measuring metrics.
In answer to your mild flame. Quarterbacks can directly hear the coach in football to change plays. And every single metric and statistic is tracked and reviewed after the game; the proverbial dps meter. But any pro team “worth their salt” doesn’t need that crap right?
I beleve they will.
Raids in swtor comes in 3 flavours so to speak.
Normal, hard and nightmare so should reflect the way heroic raids work in wow.
As a raid leader in WoW i find the use of Meters to be essential in making informed decisions while in a raid. When encounters come down to slim margins of error, you NEED a metric to know whether to continue trying an encounter or to call it for the night. Any raid leader who has consistently hit an enrage timer at 1-10% and wiped can tell you that the difference between the pull where the boss was downed and the one where you wiped at 1% comes down slim margin of performance that is essentially indistinguishable without careful analysis of each player performance. At times the difference between a down and a wipe on progression encounters simply comes down to fine tuning small aspects of gameplay from each player to get that extra 1-2% better performance. Being able to get that extra bit of juice comes from analysis of the data collected by mods such as recount or world of logs which you and your team have earned through each wipe and subsequent refinement.
Only noobs need add ons to play, soon you gonna need a mod to tell you to go take a shit
Did anybody every stop and think why Blizzard has made some of the most popular and continually played games ever? Aside from the years of development, they allow the player community to mold the game in such a way that it unlocks its full potential. Addons are generally created to allow a player to understand the game/encounter better. Does anybody remember doing quests before there was any kind of quest tracker? It was brutally painfull. Some of us dont like reading 6 paragraphs of text just to go collect 8 spider eggs.
Dps and threat meters are crucial for any endgame encounter. How do you know if you are maximizing your dps or threat if you cant actually see your numbers? And customization of interface is a must. If I cant align my interface so that it matches up with my mouse layout (16 buttons) I struggle. I dont want to have to look at my action bar…ever; so I want to customize it how I have it memorized.
Regardless if they have addons ad launch, I hope that they wise up and allow third party addons.
I’d like to chime in with my two cents.
Addons are something that can really make a game great, if kept in check as far as what they can do for you. WoW is a great example. The addons available for that game make it so much more fun, so much more customizable, and, as far as end game content goes, so much more playable. Not everyone is playing with a playstyle that requires things like damage or threat meters, but for some these are essential. In a raid environment, it is impossible to tell who is struggling with encounters and who knows their stuff just off of the base UI. There’s no way to know who’s putting out the damage you need and who isn’t without a meter. Addons are an important tool to be able to get the most out of MMORPG’s, and more importantly out of your character. Lack of addons won’t completely kill off high-end raiding and high-end play in general, but it will make it much more of a pain and will prevent a decent portion of the fan-base for such content from really being able to get into the game the way they’ll want to. I don’t see TOR being as successful as I hope it will if they don’t implement addon support at some point.
I would like to at least see a dps meter, that way i can plan my rotation.
Sure is going to suck trying to find info online since database websites won’t have addon functionality.
I, like many others don’t really see a need for any addons, but I would like to see a chat bubble over the heads of the PC characters. I am not fond of looking at the chat box all the time for local and party chat.
I hope they do allow addons. I want to be able to use a Damage meter so I can better work to improve my playing by seeing which kind of a rotation gets the most out of my Smuggler or my Jedi Shadow’s skills rather than just hitting which ever ‘big’ hit skill is off cooldown. I want to know if I’m close to drawing attention from the tank in my group in a Flashpoint or heck even which out of the 3+ enemies he’s targeting before he attacks (which seems to have been forgotten so far in SWTOR). I want to be able to make my UI look how I want it to look.
I want all this because I want the game to be fun for me. If I can see just from playing ways that it could be better I should be able to make those changes. For those of you out there who don’t want Add-ons just don’t install them, play the game how you like.
After playing in the Beta and now at launch I really could use a way to see if I am doing my job – not other people. After doing numerous group quests there is no way to see if the tank is tanking, the healer is healing and the dps are hitting the right mobs – let alone to see if I am using the “correct rotation”
I also need more buttons. (And lets face it the default buttons are rather large)
I understand wanting to play “as intended” but I do think that some kind of log that you could check afterwards could have been built in – just so I can measure MY OWN performance.
“In fact, some features in WoW started out as addons, Scrolling Combat Text being the biggest one that comes to mind.”
Sorry. I think raid frames take the cake. Vanilla wow didn’t even have raid frames.
I really would like to see a DMG METER! I hate it, not to know how much dmg per second i am doing. I can live without a bag addon and i like the standart ui, but i NEEEED DMG METER!!
I hope they implement a proper threatmeter, because the hate system seems really dodgy right now. If they don’t introduce one, we WILL need addons. I can also see plenty of other things that addons could help with, such as timer bars for dots, cooldowns and most importantly, for Sap (yeah, you can’t actually see the debuff and thus how much time is left on it), etc..
Also, many have said it already, and I agree that a DPS meter would be lovely.. not for bragging rights, but for minmaxing purposes
I really like TOR but I hope that they will allow ADDONS… Dps meter is really good for the dps class to work on the talen three & improve performence, addons are also absolutely needed to see many important things for the raid lead… Spell interupt etc… If they don’t allow it, they must do their job and provide us a correct UI because the one we have now is not really good… Hope they will take the right decision.
Many people would say that add-ons are necessary! My experience showed that neither dps meter nor agro meter is need. More, it is bad imo, cos instead of focusing on game, their story ect, pps glorified themselves and nothing more. Heal bots are Myth for me; been playing healer at WoW and WAR and honestly did not need them at all when my results were still decent. Moreover, where is fun clicking one button, go make a coffee and see how “my decent dps/heal is going on” – what a delusion of playing games?!
So, actually we have all we need as speaking about add-ons. Even range meter included. Only what I would like to have in game is a tool to moderate UI – no new patterns but possibility to move bars, add an extra or target HPs.
To sum up, when I play I don’t need “helpers” as I enjoy learn mobs’ movements and playing with intuition which good game can provide.
My vote is to say NO for addons.
A lot of you said “no addons” but a fucking dmg meter would be nice
I want to be a great gamer who also change his rotation to deal max. dps – without an addon is it impossible -.- think about it
@Quicker – can’t you just observe how your abilities affect environment and based on it know how good dps you have?
Obviously there are some people which play as solution advices at forums ect. Then all combinations are worth to consider. Then dps meter is essential but only if play for show off
More, without add-ons the gamers will have a same chance to be good or great. Then we will have a possibility to find out who and which Guild is the best.:)
Addons are a must have. Threat meter and Damage meters mainly.
I just want to know how my damage is so I can improve/change my rotation and I want to see how it compares to other people.
People will stop playing at endgame if there is no addons, guarenteed.
Why not allow addons? If you don’t like them you don’t have to use them.
I played WoW as a healer i can’t imagine trying to heal a 10/25 man raid without an addon. Think of the process. Check heath meters, whats the boss doing, what phase is comming, what attack is it telegraphing. Who needs healing, choose a spell select target and caste. As well is the movement i need to do.
Some of the posters have mentioned that addons do or don’t allow you to seperate the good players from the bad players. It’s a video game not an aptitude test my friends who cares in PVE if you would be better than me or i would be better than you if one of us wasn’t using an Addon. We’re supposed to be working as a team. Games are supposed to be fun.
Both sides seem to put up a good argument, yes threat meters and healing add ons and a few things would be great for SWTOR but at the same time, there is also the fear that some add ons will make it unbalanced in some way, so honestly it seems to me like BW should make it so that all the add-ons would have to first be subjected to them, prior to being allowed in the game, this would allow for BW to see if it was merely something like a threat meter or something that would just make it unfair for certain players. I know of course this would require the creation of a new department that will simply focus on analyzing the add-ons that are submitted to them and then allowing those add ons to be placed on a site similar to curse client that is capable of being downloaded into swtor online. They would have complete control over everything and at the same time would allow for the players to enjoy the add-ons that help them enjoy their games more, while at the same time safeguarding them from having to deal with unbalanced duels and what-not. IMO a lot of players would definitely develop a new level of respect for BW if they did so.
I’m not sure how anyone can call addons unfair seeing as how everyone has open access to any addon that would be available. Since it is the individuals choice to use them or not there is no call to say that a person choosing to use any addon(s) would be said to have an unfair advantage.
Im pro addons first of all. Second for all you addon haters where do you think that some of the patch ideas come from, would you rather them leave the game completely the same for the next 5 to 10 years…it wouldnt last long and once again blizzard would be back on top. Third your threat monitoring and dps monitoring addons help identify whos causing 9 or 24 other people to wipe and waste there time. Majority of the people playing are here to complete all the game content not let some addon nazi cause them to wipe over and over just because he likes the way his lightsaber looks or the way the animations look from his pointless force power when he hits his one or two low dps buttons over and over. Fourth if someone creates a addon that causes a unfair advantage it will get banned just like in any other mmo. And last for the ones saying that addons take away from there gaming exp. you really need to step away from the game and realize that life is all about customization.
If you feel different than I do put in a request for bioware to make addon free servers but you’ll be reading from the rest of us what the end of game content is way before you’ll get there.
@Thatguy “If you feel different than I do put in a request for bioware to make addon free servers but you’ll be reading from the rest of us what the end of game content is way before you’ll get there.”
Such testimony sounds for me as a real shame. Did not know that MMORPGS ect are tools in the Big Rat Race.
The real shame is to believe that everyone plays MMO’s for the Role Playing Game aspect of it. Majority of gamers these days play MMO’s to complete all game content with while its still worth talking about and in hopes of maybe being there first for their server. Is it a Big Rat Race, no but it is a good feeling when you know your guild or group has their stuff together when they are constantly completing game content with few wipes.
For some guilds or groups wanting to take their time with game content do to preference or there schedule is fine with me because I understand real life takes priority over the game. For my comment “you’ll be reading from the rest of us what the end of game content is way before you’ll get there” is competitive nature and challenging those who actually look forward to being server first at game content.
No third party add-ons, scripts macros mods or whatever please.
If something needs fixing then it must be official and made by the publishing company.
I understand that for the majority of players that only have WoW as a reference life without heal-bots, damage meters, threat meters auctioneers, trackers etc. etc. may look hard but it isn’t.
UO, EQ, AO, DAoC, and a multitude of other successful games have proved that all the above helpers are not necessary just helpful.
But nevertheless if they are needed or not is not the main point of my argument, the main point of my argument is that if something is needed, for whatever reason, it must be Bioware that decides so and implements it.
I think addons are necessary and dont hurt a game. End-game, it’s almost a requirement. Addons such as recount to see your DPS, threat meeters, etc. These are critical stats that are not displayed and dont take away from teh game. Let the players decide if they want them. If those that think they give those players and unfir advantage, learn to use what’s available to you. There is no such thing as a level playing ground in an MMO, period.
It is much easier for MMO companies to make useful changes to their UI if they let a motivated third party figure out all the mechanics of the change first also since most programmers have better things to do than make changes to the UIs just because we ask for them such as creating new content, fixing bugs and keeping the servers up and running. So why should every addition to the UI be from them and only them? If we wait for the Dev team at BW to make all the changes to the game as a whole it’ll be sometime next year before we get a threat meter or any other useful addition to the game UI.
Also I’d like to point out that almost if not all the games your using as ‘successful games’ are on the brink of becoming free to play…
I believe it was Rift which I saw this done on but it had a Option which let you custom your UI…well Change Size of Target bar and Group and let you move your action bars and add some…should do that
You can macro without addons?
I have played WoW since closed beta and have 85′s in all classes. The only addons that are really needed is a threat management addon such as Omen and a healing addon such as Vuhdo. Honestly Bioware could slide a little cash to the developers of those mods and incorporate them.
Mods are nice, but really only 2 needed. However we do need the ability to scale the UI and move elements around.
Having played a healer now since release. OMG how I miss addons. I’m not talking mouseover heals or any of that. I’m talking about hotbutton management. I’m only halfway through the game and I already have 20 some skills that I use regularly. And I need the ability to have different layouts based on whether I’m group healing or soloing with my companion. And the “extra bars” that SWTOR gives us aren’t really extra bars — if you put up a bar on the side or an extra bar on the bottom they aren’t available to switch to on your main bar any more. It’s frustrating.
Personally, I prefer addons. It makes a UI so much more clean and allows for greater keybinding support. Plus, the TOR UI really looks like crap in my opinion. It gets the necessary information across, but doesn’t have anything in the way of beauty. It’s just… There.
Of course there should be addons. Maybe not to the extent that Wow has them but Half of the game to me and alot of other players is being able to customize the way that the game looks and feels. Its the equivalent of buying a new car and keeping it just the way the factory made it or being able to put new rems on it and or putting a different stereo in it. I like SWTOR but I would LOVE it if I could adjust the UI scale to be smaller and God I wish I had some kind of button addon (Dominos) So that I could get rid of that 1 or 2 strait 12 slot bar at the bottom and make it 3 rows of 4 to match my speed pad. Something like that would not give anyone an unfair advantage. Now there are alot of mods out there for WoW that are memory hogs and basically tell you what to do and when . I believe those are the types that shouldn’t be used. But “Do” allow mods that Just allow you to adjust the look and feel of the UI please. That will not give anyone an unfair advantage and satisfy Us gamers that like to ” Pimp our Ride ”
Thanks
Only level 28 and already run out of Action Bar space – of course we want Add-ons!!!!!!
I enjoy certain add ons. If anything, they should at least give us the option of in game add ons. It would be nice to have more bag organization and something like healbot. Franky stuff like recount , to me, is not needed or wanted as much as the trading/bag/selling add ons.
As a roleplayer, an RP description mod would be nice. While characters are much more customizable in TOR than in WoW, there are little differences that can’t be shown. There are more than four body types for an individual for example (where are my tall but stick thin characters? My short but a bit chunky characters?) and subtle nuances about the way someone carries themselves or any other scars or defining markings that they may have on their body are lost with the current models.
An RP description mod would also allow me to have more than one last name for my characters without overhauling the Legacy system. I guarantee you, my Miraluka consular and my Chiss agent are not related, and their personalities are far too different to share the same descriptive title without it being super generic.
There are different categories of addons. An argument can be made that addons like Gearscore and Recount turned the endgame into an E-Sport, and made breaking in difficult for casuals (read: bads).
That said, there are many legitimate shortcomings of the default UI which make using it painful. No Target-of-Target, no way do disable error spam when you attempt to use an ability on an out-of-range target, or without enough power or rage, terrible tradeskill interface that pops up companion results in the middle of combat, and forcing your hotbars to be visible to be used, keybound or not.
User-developed addons have always been lightyears ahead of the developer on addressing UI issues, and when someone with a little coding skill gets annoyed enough by a UI shortcoming, they can pursue a fix to it.
Once you enable one type of addon, however, you open the door to all of them. The “no-addons” folks prefer a level playing field. They want a world where everyone is constrained by the same limitations and liabilities. The “open customization” folks tend to to tweak their UI as much as they do their character’s gear, refining and polishing until they do have an advantage over the vanilla player because they’ve optimized their data presentation to get it. I will always come down on the side of more freedom. Open customization ends up driving the developers, and makes them better. It drives players to be better or be left behind. It adds richness to the game, and an entirely new avenue to keep the end user interested, as they have a hand in customizing their own gameplay experience.
The people who complain about addons such as DPS Parses, Gear Rating, & other performance mods are trolls.
They are afraid they’ll get found out and booted from the group.
Right now there is absolutly ZERO PvE competitiveness in SWTOR. We need to drown out the trolls, and let them hear the real community.
Rubbish – The trolls are the ones complaining they might lose their so called “leet” status cuz they can’t brag about how good they are or my dps is bigger than yours. Now you have to play along side of anyone who is the same level as you and leave your bragging to the chat channel. The “Real community” are the ones who play the game for what it is. Not the minority who want more more more me me me.
I’m with you: leave the game as it is – WoW was ruined by mods. I boot anyone who threw up a dps list during a run. If your leveled enough to get into the Instance your good enough to play and have a go. It’s only a game guys only a game – if you take it too seriously you need to see a Pardre or a shrink .
Addons or no addons, it doesn’t take long to figure out who belongs in the raid/group and who doesn’t. If a specific addon make life easier for someone then I am all for it. Especially if it makes them better at playing there character. All of you “im a pure player becuase I don’t use an addon” can get off your high horse already. Yes there are more fodder addons then extremely useful ones. For example: a Buff Bar addon VS GearScore. If they add a way to customize your buffs into the game…well guess what, its an addon. It is just apart of the whole game now. Just because people don’t play the way you do doesn’t make them wrong or even worse. It just makes them different.
Um. so let me get this right…add ons are ” essential ” for endgame play, and without it everyone will leave ? lol then perhaps you should go ask the gamers of EQ ( everquest ) and EQ2 what their doing because out of any mmo I’ve ever played, NO game has ever had the end game raiding of those. Who makes difficulty levels for raids anyway ? Raids are just that..a Raid…it should be hard from the beginning, not ” oh well we’ll do it on easy mode just so we can feel good about ourselves and get this piece of gear ” honestly that’s the most ridiculous approach to raiding it’s been my misfortune to see. here’s easy mode, enjoy patting yourself on the back so that you THINK you accomplished something. however the greater reward is in actually taking an endgame encounter down without having to resort to easy mode to do so. think your a hard core raider from wow, go play original EQ then you’ll see what hardcore raiding was about.
I love seeing a game that is not yet fucked up by addons
But 1 thing i do miss is a Marco maling system so i Can make
All My heal spells mouseover
Or bioware make mouseover heals an option in game settings
But i realy love the clean ui the game offers at presset time
First off to everyone who has posted on here about WoW… SWTOR isn’t WoW if you are soooo used to having all the addons persay that you 100% have to have to play the game then FFS go back to playing WoW. I do believe that Bioware and EA need to come up with very little improvements to their current standard UI system but key word there was very “LITTLE”. There is nothing better than having to do ur job while raiding and reading ur chat log to see who’s the target of a specific boss ability hell it even puts it across ur screen in big bold red letters so how is this different than DBM???? I am a sage healer and I swear if they ever implemented mouse over healing in the game then the game is trash… If you can’t look at raid frames to see who the heck is taking damage click their raid frame to target them and cast a healing spell to heal them… Then you are one LAZY ass person… That being said keep up the awsome job Bioware and EA the game is outstanding to play and is in many ways better than what WoW and all the other mmorpg could ever come to be stand ur ground and keep it mod free implement your own ingame systems that’s what makes the game fun and challenging!!! And for anyone who might say well this person never played WoW so he/she wouldn’t know what they are talking about I played WoW since the day of it’s release till SWTOR’s release date addons destroyed the game….