FF14 devs just keep doing your thing because my god

[Shougun]

This sounds very interesting, but as someone who never got into WoW I'm super lost lol.
What are these add-ons and how can they be basically mandatory for some raids?

The unfortunate thing is the addon most people are afraid of is "mostly" here in FFXIV, tied to a concept that many (in the higher end community at least) are aware of. So we've ran away from much of the QoL of addons but only in the shadows have we ran from the actual addons people are afraid of (parser and DBM).

It is true though that WoW did some silly things too.. like they'd for no good reason break your setup and that could take an hour out of your day, make you regret using addons then lol. Sometimes the author broke their own addon. It was like running a highly modded android, maybe vs FFXIV being an iphone that just works.

There were some truly amazing QoL addons, addons that let you make and share quests with others (some restrictions of course), or crazy goofy ones like you could play snake or peggle in the game (a game in your game XD), that I still miss but I do want to give SE credit in that they've added many over time (their search feature for example has come a very long way and reminds me of some mods I had to install just to have similar features that are basic in FFXIV now). I still wish they did a remix job to their map system though, I would very quickly install an addon for FFXIV's map if it was not to be an issue with ToS. (And I don't mean for radar or something, I just don't.. like it lol, the transparent / image in a box gives me a sort of 'beta, still a WIP' vibe [like it's literally an image viewer built into the game, loading png files, rather than being a 'map' I open for adventures).

To the lack of Blizzard's credit there are some basic features that they seemed to not care to add since you can just do it with addons (although I do wish FFXIV would be inspired by the in game calendar and the clickable quest links). So pro and cons, I think just calling it android vs iphone is enough to get a clear picture of the situation. Stuff just works here, and often a lot of built in features you don't have to go out of your way to enable or turn on, but if you wanted to go crazy you'd have more room to do so with WoW (and sometimes it would all break and you'd have to 'play addons' rather than play the actual game).

[Penthea]

This sounds very interesting, but as someone who never got into WoW I'm super lost lol.
What are these add-ons and how can they be basically mandatory for some raids?

So back in the early days of WoW raid bosses were far more simple to now. This was due to Blizzard still being relatively new to mmo boss design and also because of add-ons. In the beginning there were only a handful of add-ons but as time progressed they became commonly used, one of those being boss add-ons. What they do is put timers on the screen showing the queue of boss abilities giving you plenty of time to know exactly what was going to happen and exactly when. Unsurprisingly this made bosses easier to do so in reaction to this Blizzard had to make bosses harder because an enormous chunk of the raiding community were trivialising them with add-ons. Eventually it got to the point that any remotely serious raiding team used boss mods.

And this created a vicious cycle. Players use boss mods to kill bosses faster so then Blizzard creates bosses with the use of those add-ons in mind so that they remain challenging even with add-on use, which means you actually need to have a boss add-on to be able to do the content in a timely manner.

Having a damage meter was mandatory in every team I played with. Not only because they showed dps, but they also showed who died of what and when, what cds were used, who got debuffs, who cleansed them...so much useful information that is a lot more accessible than going through WoW's version of fflogs.

A threat meter is often mandatory so you can ensure that you never pulled aggro off of the main tank by accident. I don't know if this is still the case now but back when I played it was a lot easier for dps to get aggro mid-fight than in FF, so most dps needed to have one especially if they had high burst damage.

Some guilds used player generated currency to divvy out loot. You bid on item drops and you accumulated that currency with raid attendance. As far as I know loot is personal now in raids, (loot is automatically and randomly given to players by the game, you don't roll) I don't know for sure if it is because I never needed to check as I had no intention of raiding when I briefly played again, but if this is the case now then add-ons that managed that are no longer needed.

Some bosses have certain mechanics that have add-ons specifically developed for them. If you're in a competitive team you're expected to use every edge possible to ensure faster kills, so if a boss specific add-on was helpful in clearing it faster you are most times expected to have it.

So the above is what was typically mandatory back when I raided. In addition to this most players needed additional add-ons to make their ui more suitable for the class and role they played. And as I mentioned before in WoW's base ui you can't even move your action bars. It was pretty rare to find someone who raided regularly who didn't use add-ons to make their ui make sense for what they had to do.

Sometimes the author broke their own addon. It was like running a highly modded android, maybe vs FFXIV being an iphone that just works.

Yeap sometimes the dev for the add-on would update it and break it in the process, which was very frustrating if you had a raid before the add-on got fixed, so you had to find an older version of it to roll-back to before it was broken or try to find another similar add-on that worked.

The worst was when you found a great add-on and then after some time the dev, for whatever reason, stopped working on it. If no one picked up that project then you would eventually have to stop using the add-on because as time passed it would become more and more out of date which meant a higher chance for ui errors. And sometimes you can't find another similar add-on that do the things you need from the other add-on...so then you just have to deal with being without something that improved your experience in the game.

Is FFXIV's ui perfect? Absolutely not, but because SE update it regularly and its base ui gives a tremendous amount of options for players to tweak the layout to whatever suits them best, you can still do high-end content without your ui getting in the way of your combat performance.

Personally the only thing that's missing for me is something small about the focus target pane. I wish it showed the target of the focus target...but that's it. Aside from that one small thing I don't ever feel like I need an add-on to be able to play the way I want. FFXIV's ui options fulfill every other need that I have, and that small thing it doesn't has very little effect on me. I can easily deal with not having it, I would just prefer to have it.

[ItMe]

[a beautiful answer]

God, I can't imagine how hectic this must be now after so many years of attrition against the players.
The "we'll give you something you can't trivialize" of it all also helps me understand WoW's ever more consuming push towards high end content.

For your UI to just break...
Needing to bring your own UI element for even something as simple as loot distribution...
what a nightmare.

[Liam_Harper]

So back in the early days of WoW raid bosses were far more simple to now. This was due to Blizzard still being relatively new to mmo boss design and also because of add-ons.

Honestly I believe it's more with how gaming has evolved and the impact the internet has than just addons. In the past raid bosses with 3 mechanics worked fine because we were all essentially nubs (in a nice way). Very few people read guides and information was harder to come by, you'd just stumble through, put on whatever gear you scraped together and it was plenty because everyone else was in a similar boat.
Nowadays information on literally everything is available online and people tend to be competitive and want to be good at things, so they research and use this information for almost everything, from dungeon tactics to rotations to where to find items and so on. Thus gaming as a whole has evolved to be far more complex to keep players with all the information suitably challenged. It's also a reason why the divide between the casual who doesn't read up things and the serious players is so wide. Even FF14's bosses, with no addons, are probably even more mechanically complex than WoW's at endgame. I've seen WoW heroic raid bosses summed up in 5-6 lines where Savage bosses are usually several pages. It makes games more complicated to develop too, anything you produce will be analyzed by the player-base and flaws or imbalances picked out almost immediately.

In one way it has positive sides too. I personally find bosses with a whole range of mechanics and factors to watch out for a lot more interesting than 3 mechanic target dummies. Once you've had a taste of advanced raiding and in-depth strategizing, it's hard to go back to simplistic gameplay. Information being available isn't necessarily a bad thing, research is an important part of becoming good at many things in life. I like gaming that tests the limits a bit.

[LisSquid]

I've seen WoW heroic raid bosses summed up in 5-6 lines where Savage bosses are usually several pages.

Not to be rude but it's because WoW's savage is mythic. Normal is meme tier, heroic is for the casuals, and mythic is for statics.

[linayar]

Not to be rude but it's because WoW's savage is mythic. Normal is meme tier, heroic is for the casuals, and mythic is for statics.

It's fascinating to me as an outsider seeing different people try to make comparisons, and I suspect sometimes from people who are also outsiders like me or only doing one of them and then guessing on the other. That said, I'm not making any judgment on your own comparison because I don't really know the answer myself, but I have seen different comparisons made.

From what I can tell/remember, I do believe that, in the current tier, where Savage and Normal/Heroic came out in the same week, Savage and Heroic world first took around similar length of time from their respective release. I don't know exactly what can be concluded from that except that difficulty between WoW and FFXIV may not be as simple as lining up different difficulty tiers.

[LisSquid]

It's fascinating to me as an outsider seeing different people try to make comparisons, and I suspect sometimes from people who are also outsiders like me or only doing one of them and then guessing on the other. That said, I'm not making any judgment on your own comparison because I don't really know the answer myself, but I have seen different comparisons made.

From what I can tell/remember, I do believe that, in the current tier, where Savage and Normal/Heroic came out in the same week, Savage and Heroic world first took around similar length of time from their respective release. I don't know exactly what can be concluded from that except that difficulty between WoW and FFXIV may not be as simple as lining up different difficulty tiers.

Oh no I wasn't saying one was more difficult than the other. I was just saying that to accurately compare you have to put highest end against highest end. I wouldn't compare normal raids in 14 to LFR, for instance, as LFR is itself a totally different beast.

[Jojoya]

Not to be rude but it's because WoW's savage is mythic. Normal is meme tier, heroic is for the casuals, and mythic is for statics.

Depends on when someone played WoW. Until end of MoP, Heroic was the Savage equivalent.

[Puremallace]

Depends on when someone played WoW. Until end of MoP, Heroic was the Savage equivalent.

I'm old enough to remember when Heroic meant you needed a coordinated group and used CC to take down trash packs much less bosses.

[Penthea]

Honestly I believe it's more with how gaming has evolved and the impact the internet has than just addons. In the past raid bosses with 3 mechanics worked fine because we were all essentially nubs (in a nice way). Very few people read guides and information was harder to come by, you'd just stumble through, put on whatever gear you scraped together and it was plenty because everyone else was in a similar boat.

I agree I just didn't want to dive too much in this particular part of the subject because frankly my post was already an essay without even getting in to that. Another thing to add to what you have said is very advanced boss design would have been too punishing back in the early days of WoW because it was common to disconnect or lag due to the game and player pcs not being as good at handling such a large number of things happening as well as internet connections in general not being anywhere near as powerful as they are now. Old WoW bosses were a product of their time for many reasons. I just focused mostly on the add-ons aspect as this was directly related to the question I was answering.

Even FF14's bosses, with no addons, are probably even more mechanically complex than WoW's at endgame. I've seen WoW heroic raid bosses summed up in 5-6 lines where Savage bosses are usually several pages.

The biggest difference between WoW and FFXIV high end raiding is the size of the team. In WoW's mythic (what used to be called heroic) you have 20 people, but you only have 8 in FFXIV's savage. While the mechanics of some FFXIV bosses can be more complex sometimes, it doesn't change the fact that managing 20 people is significantly more work than managing only 8.

And this is partially why WoW high end raiders rely so heavily on add-ons. Add-ons can quite significantly reduce the complication and work load of coordinating 20 people. They can relay information better than a human ever could, and without clogging up voice chat.

In one way it has positive sides too. I personally find bosses with a whole range of mechanics and factors to watch out for a lot more interesting than 3 mechanic target dummies. Once you've had a taste of advanced raiding and in-depth strategizing, it's hard to go back to simplistic gameplay.

Oh man I completely understand this. I quit hardcore raiding for a number of reasons but none of them were because I grew tired of the challenge of the content. That alone is what kept me raiding in WoW for so long despite enduring a lot of other things that I grew to hate.

FFXIV has become the ideal for me. I no longer raid hardcore and can never do so again due to developing a disability (it affects the use of my hands), but you don't need to be anywhere near hardcore in FFXIV to clear a tier. My team cleared the last two Eden tiers on only four hours of raiding per week. Clearing a tier on only that in WoW would be a difficult goal to say the least because of the huge number of raid bosses per tier. WoW typically has 9 to 14 bosses per tier, FFXIV only has 4. Maybe 5 if you include ultimate if there is one in the tier.

In FFXIV I can still scratch the itch I get to experience something challenging, but without sacrificing so much time to do it and without risking putting myself in physical pain by trying to do more than my body can currently handle. In WoW I would have to accept the fact that I could never do challenging raid content again. Unsurprisingly I am so thankful for how raiding is developed in FFXIV. It's more accessible than WoW's raiding due to needing a smaller time commitment.

And as a disclaimer in case anyone looks us up in fflogs: we are very late starting this tier due to two in our team being unavailable for the start of the tier. We started savage only last week.