Discussion: User Created UI Addons?

[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.

Let me guess, you have no prior experience to development work. Does that sound about right?

[Kiote]

Let me guess, you have no prior experience to development work. Does that sound about right?

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.

[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.

[Tonkra]

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.

thats a good point. and thats what i meant.

im ok with offline rpgs, people can mod or cheat their asses off in offline singleplayer rpgs if they want to.. nobody will ever be disturbed by that. i dont mind if they cheat the game itself.

from the developers it is NOT intended to let the players see how far they are away from a specific monster, otherwise they would have implemented things like these for their own UI (range metre as an example) why making those numbers visible for players? its like making visible the next chess stroke from the PC in a chess game... i cant seriously understand those people to make everything more easier, as it was supposed to be.. how about a UI feature where you see the cooldown of the enemies abillities? well that would be somethin?

a game where you experience the gameplay on YOUR OWN. i think you forgot what a game is supposed to be.
where are the arguments that you SHOULD be able to see unvisible informations like these? nobody from the +pro side could ever tell me (in an objective way!)

If you want XI back, what do you do in here? >>http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/ The game is still running you know.

you could also say the same thing to the wide WoW audience in here "what do you do in here?"

such an WoW arrogant behaviour in here, seriously. and you know.. WoW is also still running.

[Antipika]

you could also say the same thing to the wide WoW audience in here "what do you do in here?"

Wanting an UI that works = wanting to play WoW? It's not even like WoW invented that also.

[Tonkra]

Wanting an UI that works = wanting to play WoW?

ehm and in her opinion the FFXI UI is something that works = wanting to play FFXI? (how you told her)

its just annoying to see such ignorant postings from people who seriously want to have "World of Final Fantasy", it makes me just sick. i cant hear it anymore.

my opinion remains the same. people can cheat and mod their "asses off" in singleplayer rpgs because no one is disturbed by it. but in my opinion people should not make hidden numbers visible, if it was not intended by the developers! if so they would have implemented that in their own UI. what about a UI feature which makes the re-use timer of monster/boss abillities visible? -> easy win? as i said, im not a fan of UI "addons" in an Online Game. We can easily play without that shit (we did so in many Final Fantasys)


yea.. and people complain about a stat booster in the re-release version of FF7... its so true.

[Antipika]

What you still fail to understand is that even if something is not implemented, players will find way around it and use parsers etc. You can parse XIV actually, without even breaching the ToS (the logs are exported by using a native functionality and the parser doesn't need to hook itself directly to the game process).

As for:

ehm and in her opinion the FFXI UI is something that works = wanting to play FFXI?

The FF XI UI doesn't work. The game is getting a new UI for a reason. Also how many PC players did use third party tools on XI? Lot of them, which obviously mean that there was an issue with the UI from the start. If the vanilla UI is fine, why would I bother to breach the ToS and use third party tools?

And don't tell me that only min/maxers did so. Even people not caring about endgame and such had Windower+plugins installed. It wasn't (only) about performance, it was about convenience.

[Tonkra]

The FF XI UI doesn't work.

your opinion. not hers. your opinion is also that WoW has the best UI system. which isnt my opinion also... so...

What you still fail to understand is that even if something is not implemented, players will find way around it and use parsers etc. You can parse XIV actually, without even breaching the ToS (the logs are exported by using a native functionality and the parser doesn't need to hook itself directly to the game process).

Well parsing should be also not allowed, why shall it? you make invisible numbers visible for players.. isnt that kind of hacking/cheating/modding/manipulating around the game client, whatever? for what do you need it?

Tell me please why people should be able to see these things, if they are not implemented by the developer?

Bots are also not implemented and are highly used...

And one serious question.. do you need mods, to play a game? do you need mods/cheats, to be successfull in a game? did you need mods in offline final fantasys for being effective? just tell me, why we should need ugly user interfaces? to have advantages against players who dont use it?

in an online game? seriously is this your intention? i mean there was also a big base of players in Diablo II battlenet, which cheated their asses off. i think such a clientele enjoys having mods in MMorpgs too.

but please eleborate.