Discussion: User Created UI Addons?

[Promethevs]

I'm one of the very few people on these forums who actually work in this Industry. I'm sorry, but this is one subject you cannot give a community the benefit of the doubt on. Every MMO that has ever had Mods has had Cheat mods. That is just the way people work. They make things as easy as possible instead of playing the game as intended.

You cannot give the community the ability to Add features to a game and not expect them to Cheat.

Sure, you can expect people to use what you give them to the fullest extent that it is usable. The way to ensure people are not cheating is simple in concept, if more delicate in practice - you establish a concept of what you think is "acceptable play," and you design your addon API in light of this. If you find that API functions are being abused beyond this scope of acceptable practice, you patch the offending functions out. The game devs absolutely have control of what players can do with their addons in a well designed development environment.

Again, I'd say the guiding principle that WoW follows with respect to addon development is a fair one - that players actually have to make any decision, and each action has to come from a corresponding player action.

Every MMO ends up having some cheat or another pop up due to the complexity of the project. It's how long those cheats are allowed to last that makes the difference.

[Wolfie]

WoW only allows batch processing of crafting because crafting is marginalized in the game as a trivial exercise that is not part of "core gameplay."

If WoW had a system of crafting like FFXIV's, where direct user input determines performance, automation would not be allowed. WoW's system actually very strongly prevents automation of "performance actions" through addons, and they maintain a system where every character action in combat requires 1 button push, and each combination of button+modifiers (sh-alt-ctrl) is unique -- in other words, you cannot queue actions in a macro, and you cannot use macros along with conditional expressions to choose for you what spell comes out of your button press. The only way to automate in WoW is to use third-party programs that run outside of the scope of the client, which gets you banned if you're found out.

I'd advocate that as far as addons go, this is a pretty good system to follow. It ensures that the player has to make the decision at every decision point, and has to act for every action.

Hence, "debatable". You know full well that SE will not allow automating of crafting; they've already tried to stop auto-enter systems. If they decide that they want to let people auto-craft, then that is their decision and modders making auto-craft mods does not mean that they are cheating.

I'm one of the very few people on these forums who actually work in this Industry. I'm sorry, but this is one subject you cannot give a community the benefit of the doubt on. Every MMO that has ever had Mods has had Cheat mods. That is just the way people work. They make things as easy as possible instead of playing the game as intended.

You cannot give the community the ability to Add features to a game and not expect them to Cheat.

You are absolutely out of your element here and I don't believe for one second that you are part of the development industry; or you would not have said something as ignorant as having exposed API makes it easier to reverse engineer a product. These are not jigsaw puzzles, having more open API does not make it easier to reverse engineer the rest of the compiled code.

Saying that every MMO who has had mods has had cheating mods is disingenuous because every MMO has had cheating mods. Every MMO has a combination of client-server communication vulnerabilities, vulnerable configuration files that are stored client side, or simple mechanics that can be mimicked by custom automated third party tools. Every. Single. MMO.

[Wolfie]

Besides that, the bulk of the game's logic and code is stored server side. Nobody reverse-engineers server side code. If you are truly in the industry as you say, and you are not in an entry level position, you should be ashamed that you even said something like that.

[Kiote]

Besides that, the bulk of the game's logic and code is stored server side. Nobody reverse-engineers server side code. If you are truly in the industry as you say, and you are not in an entry level position, you should be ashamed that you even said something like that.

Nice attempt twisting my Words, but I never said that API's would make it easier to reverse engineer the game. I said it would make it easy to abuse the code.

Players already reverse engineer the code.

[Wolfie]

Giving the Community just part of the Code is more than they need. Players already reverse engineer the code. Giving them permission to do it will only make it easier. SE can make as many thing as they want against the ToS, but that will not stop people from using this Inch to take a Mile. It will only serve to make everything else more rampant.

Done replying to you. You're incorrigibly arrogant and won't admit you're wrong, incorrigibly dumb, or trolling me.

[Reiterpallasch]

If your entire argument against mods is that someone, somewhere might make a mod that goes against the TOS, then you are inherently wrong and dumb; and you deserve neither protection from cheaters nor a good UI.

On a similar note, I'm absolutely 100% against the development of car parts, because someone somewhere might speed and break the speed limit.

[Laraul]

Well I've found this distance meter for FFXIV a little while ago. I didn't find it particularly helpful. Hard to read and hard to configure.

[Promethevs]

If there's one mod I'd really love to have... an angular positioning readout! (or even a rough L-R-B-F format)
Thinking I'm in the right spot only to realize I'm slightly off and have already used my 10-second-cooldown starter or 20-second-cooldown second step is a pain.

Especially on monsters that like to switch facing like cactuars, or monsters that visually angle their bodies without actually angling like Amaljaa...

[Godsleftsock]

there you see the difference between a wow and a non wow players. i would not miss it..
well when people need it for their alter ego.. then go for it.

in battle i can see how much damage i do, and how others do. personally i dont need it.

Alter ego?! What are we, fucking Batman?

[Raubahn]

I want a JP button Add on . . . why not?