Discussion: User Created UI Addons?

[Laughlyn]

Okay guys chill the freakin funk out!

No need to go raging over 2 addons.

Im amazed by the obsession over just these 2 things, last discussion on here been more
or less the same thing over & over again with no real new conclusion.

Limitating yourself by not trying to improve yourself is like saying..
"but i dont want to reach max level, i wanna stay level 30 rest of my FFXIV 2.0 experience."
(That was an example....)
Even if thats the case then i dont see why that person left FFXI / WoW in the first place.

Here's a simple solution, dont want to use em?...Then Dont.
I certainly wont blame you for not using any addon.

Any hardcore player / LS wanna use addons, go ahead...
and if its more or less required for joining an LS,....well do so or dont join.

There will always be competition wether its casual or hardcore.

Just like the diffrences between people around the world not to
mention everyones entitlement to their opinion.

Either way, Addons...its just not an reality yet, it may...or may never be.

There's really no need to go all personal for things you dont like, everyone is diffrent.com
And if anyone cant accept that...well sh!t, then you really, Really got to get out of that
deep black hole and experience the world beyond it.

I just like to add one final point... (wich i completly forgot or lost somewhere now btw... >.<)
I might have made a huge mistake by making this thread or not but idc,
i like reading what other ppl think of this.

Anywayz, i've seen countless threads & posts over the past 2 years asking for completly
useless feature or ingame items, they do nothing but add a few seconds of fun & excitement,
such as maybe the goobbue mount (even thou i think its cool) it dosent actually go faster
than our regular chocobo...so why do some people want more or diffrent mounts for example?

Because its a personal option you are given, and also for fun ofc.
The same thing can be said about every single aspect of any rpg / mmo these days.

Just imagine FFXIV like this...
1 Class, 1 skill/Spell, 1 city, 1 mount, 1 type of tree outside, 1 npc saying the same crap
over & over again every single freakin day you play it...
yeah dull as hell & no one would play that garbage, why?

No vareity or new cool things, its the same principle... however with minor diffrences.

MMO's are suppose to evolve, this isnt some sort of offline game where there's no DLC.
This isnt the 1980s, where ingame bugs couldnt be fixed by patches & stuff.
And addons / mods...well...its old, its nothing new but atleast it improves things...
or...it can completly ruin the game.

However, its about control, can SE control this, if it becomes available?

- end of rant.

[Wolfie]

Sorry man you already tried to use that one on someone else. You are wrong in this case though.

Yes you can create objects within functions by calling on them which in turn the function can return that object if that is it's function.

NOCOMBAT is a function call restriction, it does not prevent you from passing a returned object, or variable when calling another function. All it does is prevent you from calling that function in order to pass in an object in order to get the return.

So in your case, since the OnHover or OnClick function can be called in combat then you can get the target returned during combat. You can then pass in that object to any other function that is not restricted by NOCOMBAT if you are in combat. So unless GetPlayerHP() is NOCOMBAT restricted then there is no reason you can't get the HP returned by passing in your already acquired target object. And then from there you can pass your HP value into a Lua script, have the script spit out a command object then pass that to CastAbility(). Again all functions that aren't restricted by NOCOMBAT.

It seems like you are under the impression that you can somehow strip out an object or variable. This isn't possible as long as you can call the function and get the return.

If the function for creating that object has the NOCOMBAT restriction, then you will not have that object to pass it.

If you think creating a target without player input is possible, then you're wrong. Creating a target object would require a function which is restricted from combat use. OnHover and OnClick events do require player input, and are therefore not restricted from in-combat use.

Moreover, WOW has protected classes and 'tainting', which makes your example of LUA comparisons moot, because action calls refuse to run if scripts are ran or it receives any data from a tainted source. It is for this reason that HealBot does not have conditional statements in it, such as canceling a heal action of the target's HP is too low/high.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Secure_Execution_and_Tainting

[Green_and_a_Half]

going to make a color orb that changes based on what the craft orb is. and put that right in the corner of the crafting window

[Altanas]

It would be useful to have various new subforums to aid player input and discussion for addons general and specifically, "add on suggestions/what i am looking for/what my idea is", "completed add ons", "development help"

Out of curiosity when will we see more details for the add on kit? post launch?
I dont know anything about making add ons so can anyone point to any resources/guides/manuals or is that in vain til SE releases more info? It would be nice to get a head start as there are clearly many ideas floating around. It would also benefit SE as we can give feedback on their proposed add on kit.

[Ladon]

If the function for creating that object has the NOCOMBAT restriction, then you will not have that object to pass it.

If you think creating a target without player input is possible, then you're wrong. Creating a target object would require a function which is restricted from combat use. OnHover and OnClick events do require player input, and are therefore not restricted from in-combat use.

Moreover, WOW has protected classes and 'tainting', which makes your example of LUA comparisons moot, because action calls refuse to run if scripts are ran or it receives any data from a tainted source. It is for this reason that HealBot does not have conditional statements in it, such as canceling a heal action of the target's HP is too low/high.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Secure_Execution_and_Tainting

Maybe you aren't reading my posts thoroughly? I never stated you wouldn't need user input. That is a given and acknowledged by me in every one of my posts. It's what is done after the user input that is the problem hence the Wack-a-Mole comparison. The user simply clicks on the target and THEN the script takes over as with HealBot.

As for protected classes, I'm not sure why these are brought up. Protected classes are simply classes that cannot be called by an unverified source...aka insecure code in this case. None of my examples address this because the calls are being made legitimately to the API from within the application, not through some kind of 3rd party hook.

As for script tainting...I'm starting to wonder if your knowledge is just gathered from reading the Wiki. Script tainting only occurs if you are attempting to manipulate the variables in memory being used by the LUA script via an outside hook. My example in no way requires any of this as it works with in the API, passes the objects and variables to a LUA script that isn't being manipulated externally. This is in fact exactly what HealBot does a lot of at a high level and last time I checked it works just fine in the current version of WoW. Your statement that HealBot has no conditional statements in it is 100% false. It for example performs a conditional on current target HP versus max target HP then chooses a spell from an array list which contains information about how much the spell heals, cast speed and mana cost. It also uses conditionals left and right for its "smart cast" feature.

So we can continue to have this argument but it still fails to address the point when it is a fact that HealBot exists, works and replaces much of the gameplay in WoW exactly as I have described. Somehow it has come down to you to somehow attempt to disprove this reality by bringing up silly things such as script tainting, protected procedures and objects. The real argument is that flexible UIs can bring about things like HealBot and it is questionable if a highly customizable UI with full add-on support is worth it.

I say it is not worth it. Developers are more than capable of making good UIs without the need for add-ons. It is not worth it for a developer to have to maintain API security so people don't break shit with add-ons. It is not worth developers having to worry about if certain add-ons are going to completely trivialize the content they had been working on the past couple months. You simply cannot create both a flexible yet restrictive API like you seem to be suggesting. It's either one or the other. Open it up and accept that there will be add-ons that trivialize your game or lock it down and do your best to take user feedback and implement it yourself.

[kazaran]

Some of the japanese tranlations hinted at a tool kick to customize the UI's. SO they will restrict certain things, but the abiltiy to theme, and create your customixed look (as long as it causes no advantage over others) will probably be added.

Be nice to have a wheel you can customize, color, add effects. Or a menu system. Done right, I would like to make a Windows Kinect interface for hand gestures to change things. Did that with another game and worked well.

[Wolfie]

I take it you haven't read the Wiki articles in depth to understand them. Smart Cast in combat has not been a thing since the BC launch. It simply does not exist. If you still think that HealBot performs casting actions without deliberate input from players, like you're suggesting with your fairytale examples that have literally not happened in WOW, then I don't know what to tell you man.

WOW is an example of a game that has a flexible but secure API that does not trivialize the content, and here you are telling me it's impossible. I have nothing else to say, because logic clearly won't change your mind.

[Jynx]

Back in my day people just knew how much cure healed, and how long it took to cast. They didn't need a UI to tell them when/where/who to use stuff on.

I think there is a certain point where custom UI's become counter intuative to rewarding players based on skill instead of gear checks. these UI elements can take all the skill out of playing the game and just make your gear be the only difference between you and UI user 2.

[Tonkra]

Yes, because people can't get it through their heads that when something is allowed by the TOS, it is by definition not cheating.

things that mods/addons do is that it is forcing people to actually install that "shit" if they dont want to have disadvantages against those who use it. and thats a terrible idea in my opinion.

why not making the entire original UI good enough. well.. well..


i like the idea of cutsomizing the outward appearance of the UI. For example switching the job icons in the group menu against 2D sprites of classic FF's. But what i dont like is the idea to make a number fest out of the FF franchise and to give people advantages to those who have installed any of these addons. (you are 1 metre away from target etc.)


now then we have boss fights were everybody says "do not get 10 metre near the boss, otherwise you will get hit by an aeo attack" ... for me it is like making it far easier, in this case you cheat the game design, thats a fact.. because in the original version it is not visible to your character.
so you can say its kind of using a cheat in an offline game. making things easier, than just playing the original version.
Or please just tell me the difference.

these addons just persuade you that you REALLY need "features" like these. so disturbing to me personally. im not against addons which change the appearance of the UI, giving it a classic FF7/FF9 look to it or whatever..

[Antipika]

Back in my day people just knew how much cure healed, and how long it took to cast. They didn't need a UI to tell them when/where/who to use stuff on.

I think there is a certain point where custom UI's become counter intuative to rewarding players based on skill instead of gear checks. these UI elements can take all the skill out of playing the game and just make your gear be the only difference between you and UI user 2.

It all depends how mechanics are tailored around that. If you play WoW or Rift, despite having a UI that can be highly customized, end-game encounters remain harder than anything XIV has implemented at the moment.

It's easy to see if an UI is game breaking or not. You just check the average time needed for a game population to defeat latest implemented raids and you check how fast people progress through raids. In XIV, in a matter of hours/days, the newly implemented content is cleared by "top" players. Quite soon after, a good chunk of the population is able to clear anything that's implemented. Especially if you use JP players are reference (less affected by latency).

Now, if I take Rift as an example, latest 20mans raid was implemented on April 18th. The Raid have 8 bosses.

First World kill of boss #4: April 22nd (all boss before that one went down "quickly")
First World kill of boss #5: May 25th
First World kill of last boss: June 10th

So it took about 2 months to get the instance cleared by top players in the world (and they are hardcore players :x). Even as of today, end of August, only a small amount of guilds are past the 5th boss. And a very low amount of guilds defeated the last boss. We're 4 months past release and people are still progressing through this raid. And that is with UI mods, parsers, you name it...

Also please note that unlike XIV, where every new killing attempt is a hassle and often mean high downtime, in this game, you are good to go in ~5 min after an entire raid wipe. Anyone can just AoE raise, people rebuffs, and you go again. And despite all that, we are still looking at months to clear a raid.

To understand that such UI element aren't game breaking if mechanics are done properly, you must have raiding experience in another game could it be WoW, Rift or similar. If you have no raiding experience, then you cannot understand how these tools doesn't "play" for you. Skill is more involved than ever.

Giving lot of tools to players is counterbalanced by having lot of mechanics put in place. It's like driving a car vs piloting a huge airplane. Yes I do not need 545687 assists to drive a car, there isn't much to look for. But however I do need tons of electronic equipment, assists, automatic things when piloting an airplane. In the end, which one is the most complicated? Driving a car? Or piloting the airplane?

Then if DEVs are stupid and allows lot of UI mods while gameplay remain as it is now, obviously it will kill the game, yes. Driving a car with automatic pilot isn't challenging.