Discussion: User Created UI Addons?

Yes, because people can't get it through their heads that when something is allowed by the TOS, it is by definition not cheating.

Many AddOns may not break the TOS but they walk a gray area that marginalizes content. One good example is HealBot for WoW which uses legitimately exposed API information to mostly automate playing a healer in the game. You can set it up in a way that all a healer has to do is click on a player bar and the AddOns auto-chooses and auto-casts the most efficient spell to heal or cure the player. Technically no rules are being broken and it's just using the information being exposed by API and auto-executing commands that are again allowed by both the API and TOS. It's also been the AddOns of endless debate where many claim it's now required for high end raiding while at the same time making a whole set of healers that use it incapable of playing their class without it.

This is the sort of thing that is concerning if you start opening up your UI to user content. It may not be breaking any rules but many will argue that it is something that should be prevented. But how do you do that when the AddOns isn't technically breaking any rules?

i dunno what kind of endgame you were involved in, with what kind of guilds- but in my guilds pushing for server firsts people using healbot were the exception... not the rule.

communities like elitistjerks sneer at stuff like that for a reason.

(that reason primarily being that holy paladins tend to use healbot more than any other class, and holy paladins are already completely faceroll... but i digress)

HealBot (and Decursive) created OnHover and OnClick macros, and re-skinned the raid frames. You could replicate that with the default UI if you wanted to waste a few hours writing your macros.

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Originally Posted by fusional

i dunno what kind of endgame you were involved in, with what kind of guilds- but in my guilds pushing for server firsts people using healbot were the exception... not the rule.

communities like elitistjerks sneer at stuff like that for a reason.

(that reason primarily being that holy paladins tend to use healbot more than any other class, and holy paladins are already completely faceroll... but i digress)

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It's one of the most downloaded AddOns in WoW. I don't see how you can push it off as not being an issue just because your server first guild frowned upon its use.

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Originally Posted by Ladon

It's one of the most downloaded AddOns in WoW. I don't see how you can push it off as not being an issue just because your server first guild frowned upon its use.

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it's not an issue for the same reason it's one of the most downloaded mods: no matter what you do, baddies gonna bad.

that said,

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

HealBot (and Decursive) created OnHover and OnClick macros, and re-skinned the raid frames. You could replicate that with the default UI if you wanted to waste a few hours writing your macros.

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entirely true.

My idea: The ability to export a list of your inventory into a .txt file for easy posting on forums and such.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

HealBot (and Decursive) created OnHover and OnClick macros, and re-skinned the raid frames. You could replicate that with the default UI if you wanted to waste a few hours writing your macros.

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I'm not seeing the point here. You could say the same with most other WoW AddOns since you have access to pretty much the same calls via macros as you do via AddOn Lua scripting. The core issue is still that with enough control given to the user, you can expect people to come along and automate game tasks to the point of marginalizing gameplay without breaking a TOS.

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Originally Posted by Ladon

I'm not seeing the point here. You could say the same with most other WoW AddOns since you have access to pretty much the same calls via macros as you do via AddOn Lua scripting. The core issue is still that with enough control given to the user, you can expect people to come along and automate game tasks to the point of marginalizing gameplay without breaking a TOS.

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The point I was trying to make was that you could do what HealBot did with the default UI and in-game tools that were given to you.

The fact that some things were automated by the API does not mean anything. Generally things that were automated via API calls were already marginalized, unwanted, or unimportant parts of gameplay, like automatically retrieving all your mail, auto-replying to tells when in combat, etc. That is a conscious decision that the developers make.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

The point I was trying to make was that you could do what HealBot did with the default UI and in-game tools that were given to you.

The fact that some things were automated by the API does not mean anything. Generally things that were automated via API calls were already marginalized, unwanted, or unimportant parts of gameplay, like automatically retrieving all your mail, auto-replying to tells when in combat, etc. That is a conscious decision that the developers make.

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I'm still not sure what you are saying. I'm not taking about anything being automated by the API. I'm talking about using the API to create automation. For example if you allow your API to see player health which has plenty of legitimate uses, then allow your scripting language to perform conditionals/iteratives/comparisons which again has legitimate uses then allow for execution of commands, none of these three in themselves are automation or arguably malicious.

But when you put the three together, then you start running into problems. Give the user the three controls above in FF14 and you can make a White Mage play itself other than executing the macro similar to what HealBot does in WoW.

This is the kind of risk you run by opening your interface up. The more information and controls you expose the higher the risk that people will just further automate tasks in the game to the point that they are just running complex scripts rather than playing the game. Sure you can just argue that good people won't use them but that really doesn't solve the problem.