Should HUD Add-Ons Be Allowed By Square Enix?

[Shurrikhan]

We're almost 6 years into this game and we barely have any options. They don't have the manpower to natively implement and maintain the stuff modders would add. The whole point of modding is so the community can help the devs with this stuff.

That's fair. I'd have to ask though -- and this is an honest question -- which API do we give access to in order to allow the best means of UI improvements to modders without also allowing for the effectively auto-play mods available on, say, World of Warcraft, where a mod-swapped dynamic action key and an auto-clicker can reduce the gameplay required of a player to purely player movement and facing?

How do we forgo mods like DBM or Big Wigs or their equivalents, if the developers want players to have to be aware of mechanics for themselves?

[Granyala]

How do we forgo mods like DBM or Big Wigs or their equivalents, if the developers want players to have to be aware of mechanics for themselves?

If I am not mistaken, the counterparts to these addons already exist in the form of custom triggers in the program that shall not be named here.
Personally I don't use them b/c I dislike being dependent on a program that might stop working after a patch.
Post patch raids when half the addons didn't work were always rather hilarious in WoW.

[Shurrikhan]

Post patch raids when half the addons didn't work were always rather hilarious in WoW.

I think that might be just as large a concern for me as even the massive PC advantage it would offer, haha.

[Talinthis]

i would rather not. i dont like installing all this extra garbage. if you need optional add ons the hud isnt good to begin with and its nice when everyone has to use the same one because there is no extra advantage compared to another.

[Callinon]

How do we forgo mods like DBM or Big Wigs or their equivalents, if the developers want players to have to be aware of mechanics for themselves?

You probably can't.

The functionality that addons like DBM are based on is so blindingly simple that not having it would basically render nearly every other UI addon useless. It's a clock. Seriously, that's all it is. It's a bunch of timers with a manually-written script attached to each fight. When the clock hits a certain value (based on the script) an alert pops up on your screen. It's just such a dead simple addon, there's virtually no way you can create an addon API and NOT end up with something like DBM eventually.

But honestly, who cares? Frankly, if it means people will pay attention to mechanics for once, I'm all for it.

I quite enjoyed customizing my UI in WoW. In fact every expansion I tore the whole thing down and built it again. Every time it got a little bit better. I learned what I needed and what I didn't need. And there was always something new to look at and think about. I really enjoyed that aspect of that game and I miss the customization it offered when I play other games.

The stone cold fact is: SE does not have the resources to give us that level of UI customization by themselves. No dev team could. Blizzard's horde of developers (pun intended) couldn't do it if they wanted to. That level of UI modification REQUIRES external users creating mods. This has been made hilariously apparent with the addition of the "light theme" in Shadowbringers. This is, apparently, a big damn deal. They spent time showing it off at Fanfest. They're really proud of that.

It's a window recolor... and not a very good one as it doesn't take certain text colors into account. Seriously? Shall I just point out here that WoW has an addon that lets you reskin every window in their game individually? All the colors of the rainbow? This is because someone wanted this functionality and spent their own time designing, coding, and debugging it before sending it out into the world for all to enjoy. If SE had to dedicate dev resources to something like that, we'd lose an alliance raid tier.

[Fhaerron]

That's fair. I'd have to ask though -- and this is an honest question -- which API do we give access to in order to allow the best means of UI improvements to modders without also allowing for the effectively auto-play mods available on, say, World of Warcraft, where a mod-swapped dynamic action key and an auto-clicker can reduce the gameplay required of a player to purely player movement and facing?

How do we forgo mods like DBM or Big Wigs or their equivalents, if the developers want players to have to be aware of mechanics for themselves?

In regards to WoW, Auto clicker is actually seen as botting and can result in a ban.
There are addons that have like a visual display of like a rotation and suggest ability to use next and others that have a huge impact on macros but you still need to press the button yourself manually.

And we do have an equivalent of DBM/Big Wigs as we do have an equivalent of Skada/Recount.


Personally I would love to have UI addons to modify the interfact. I'm a big fan of simplicity & information.
Back in WoW I used KKthnxUI, Weakauras 2 & Skada. (I would post a screenshot of my UI but I'm not sure if we're allowed to post screenshot of other games).

Maybe it's just a coincidence but I see a lot of Japanese games with awful UI's and the screen full of text (Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a good example of this). Where's in 'EU/US's RPG games the Ui is usually much more cleaner and simpler.