Stop the WoWificaton (ui mods)

[Ayuhra]

I don't know anything about any UI mods (I really don't) but if it's being used a lot the obvious solution to me is to make our own UI tools in game more robust. They're pretty good but unit frames would be nice and oh lord my kingdom for something like Weakauras for FFXIV.

[Breakbeat]

What exactly about WoW UI gives an advantage?

I modded my WoW UI to look like FFXIV with an addon lol.

That can be a hard question to answer without narrowing down the types of different addons. The vast majority of addons are for aesthetic or quality-of-life changes to the UI; IMHO I see no advantage gained if your action bars are purple neon strips whereas mine are green and red circles... or whatever. In the end, we both still click or use keybinds. You just click there while I click here.

There are a couple addons floating around that help "solve" some of the puzzles in WoW - those are a direct advantage over a stock UI as they'll add symbols or arrows on where to click.

Deadly Boss Mods can be debated. This is a mod that tells you to move away or step out of bad spots, basically warns you of all boss mechanics. Is it an advantage? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that you can skip learning the mechanics on your own, most of the time; DBM will warn you. No in the sense that if you learn when and how the mechanics fall, you can do without DBM. But you'd have to learn them very, very well, as the alternative DBM will notify you in scant milliseconds once it knows a mechanic is coming up.

I did run DBM and puzzle solvers, no shame in it. Blizzard breaks addons they don't want around; if they didn't want puzzle solvers and DBM, they'd break them too. The remainder of addons I ran were for, as I said, aesthetics, productivity, social stuff, bag and bank organizers, mount and toy and pet utilities, etc.

[Aron73]

Honest question, (please dont attack me)

-But is UI options/customization really a bad thing? Seems to me that if say wow/elv users can duplicate what they are "comfortable" with then that would make them more comfortable and stick around in this game? -just an example.

-Now I'm not defending how mods can be used in a derogatory way, however im genuinely curious as to why "options" to make people enjoy the game more are a bad thing?

In my opinion, you only use UI mods for two reasons. In my case, using ElvUI in WoW improved the game and got fewer crashes and faster load time.
The second reason is to make the game look better and increase immersion. A good example of this is Fallout 4, where I used a mod to improve the power armor UI.
Now in FFXIV, we are blessed to have the best UI I have ever seen, not the best-looking UI, but it works great and is more customizable than ElfUI, so my question is: Why would anyone change a UI to something inferior in everything that matters?

[MilkieTea]

In my opinion, you only use UI mods for two reasons. In my case, using ElvUI in WoW improved the game and got fewer crashes and faster load time.
The second reason is to make the game look better and increase immersion. A good example of this is Fallout 4, where I used a mod to improve the power armor UI.
Now in FFXIV, we are blessed to have the best UI I have ever seen, not the best-looking UI, but it works great and is more customizable than ElfUI, so my question is: Why would anyone change a UI to something inferior in everything that matters?

There are other UI mods, not just this one. The other one (which I’m not going to be the one to name) simply makes all the assets in game look a bit sleeker and more “modern”.

[Aron73]

There are other UI mods, not just this one. The other one (which I’m not going to be the one to name) simply makes all the assets in game look a bit sleeker and more “modern”.

Ok, so that's a graphics improvement. Usually, that means the game will be heavier to load, so in this case, I would say it's up to the user to chose quality or speed. I do not see a problem with that.

[Altera]

Only the player really knows about the mod, so unless they are advertising that they are using one, there's no real way to know. That includes wardrobe mods.

Wouldnt this be advertising? More and more XIV youtube content creators are actively advertising Addons like this

https://youtu.be/4bIK7N4ui4g
https://youtu.be/H-PdCFcNe78
https://youtu.be/9J682WK0ht8

This is how Addons start. With simple UI, Casting mods showing exactly when you can move your character during the cast, Damage meters, then we will get ones like DBM or Bigwigs and possibly even worse ones simply because of the no enforcing of their own TOS rules.
I hated Addons in WOW and what it made the community do to eachother and do not want the same to happen in XIV as Addons was 1 of 3 big reasons i ended up quitting WOW.

[Thaun]

Casting mods showing exactly when you can move your character during the cast

You can do this by intuition, and just looking at your seconds in the cast bar.

Also, i don't believe there has been any party finder that is saying "you need this-and-this addon to join this party", cause that is just dumb. It is all a personal preference.

As long as Square Enix, makes the fight the way that you are able to do without ToS Breaking Addons then it is fine. Cause why would Square Enix even make fights that requires an addon that breaks their own ToS.

[Penthea]

Honest question, (please dont attack me)

-But is UI options/customization really a bad thing?

They can be bad if they give you more information than the game itself gives you. For example if the party has debuffs on different timers and the order in which they must do something depends on the timer. Normally a player would have to look at their debuff timer themselves to figure out when they need to do whatever it is, but an add-on could do that working out for you and simply tell you when to move. Add-ons can trivalise content. I don't put parsers in this category because they don't tell you how to dps. The add-on in my example tells you what to do.

If the add-on is purely cosmetic I don't particularly care. As long as it's not some weird ToS stuff that belongs on an adult website.

Honestly what annoys me most is when some WoW players dismiss useful parts of the ui, hide it, and then complain that they lack information that was actually in the ui element they chose to hide. I caught a streamer once complaining that they can't see what enemies they're not targeting are casting...and the reason why is because they hid their enemy list. WoW doesn't have an enemy list so they assumed they wouldn't need it. Many need to realise that each ui element has a reason for being there and just because it wasn't in WoW doesn't mean it's useless in a different game.

[Aron73]

Wouldnt this be advertising? More and more XIV youtube content creators are actively advertising Addons like this

https://youtu.be/4bIK7N4ui4g
https://youtu.be/H-PdCFcNe78
https://youtu.be/9J682WK0ht8

This is how Addons start. With simple UI, Casting mods showing exactly when you can move your character during the cast, Damage meters, then we will get ones like DBM or Bigwigs and possibly even worse ones simply because of the no enforcing of their own TOS rules.
I hated Addons in WOW and what it made the community do to eachother and do not want the same to happen in XIV as Addons was 1 of 3 big reasons i ended up quitting WOW.

I have to agree with you here. I do not mind people using graphics improvement mods, but mods like DBM are cheating to me; after all, the mod is literally telling you in real-time what to do, and all you have to do is follow instructions.

[Larirawiel]

Wouldnt this be advertising? More and more XIV youtube content creators are actively advertising Addons like this

https://youtu.be/4bIK7N4ui4g
https://youtu.be/H-PdCFcNe78
https://youtu.be/9J682WK0ht8

This is how Addons start. With simple UI, Casting mods showing exactly when you can move your character during the cast, Damage meters, then we will get ones like DBM or Bigwigs and possibly even worse ones simply because of the no enforcing of their own TOS rules.
I hated Addons in WOW and what it made the community do to eachother and do not want the same to happen in XIV as Addons was 1 of 3 big reasons i ended up quitting WOW.

If an interface addon needs a special launcher than i would not use it. Because this launcher will get access to all data of the running FF14 process. This means, it can read your login data.

Nevertheless, Square Enix could take the good ideas from the addons and put them directly into the game. So they could make some interface mods obsolete.

Cheers