Possibility to open FFXIV up to a moddable UI?

[Nexxus]

If you refer to my screen, it's the skin mostly i was thinking of, on wow, everything can be moved everywhere you want, you dislike where the minimap sitting ? np just move it somewhere else, you doesn't like where the icon are ? np you can just change that too, you dont like the bar skin or where they're sitting, np just change that too, make them smaller, taller, in circle, etc... that's how it works on others MMO that accept Mod UI.

it's also name: Drag & Drop.

UI skin and stuff are all dependant of players that make them how they want, you dont like have more addon on screen that you can't see the game itself ? get a minimalistic addon that does the same and wont take all the windows.

check this site: wowinterface

And tell me how many mods UI does the same things in a different way.

[Ilean]

Also: unnecessary action bars?

Maybe 3 is overkill but 2x10 slots should be minimum. By level 50 10 slots are not even close to enough, and i want my abilities to be shown, to be at the touch of a single button and to show their recast times.

[Loony_BoB]

Since a lot of people are complaining a lot about boss mods. What's the difference between an on screen indicator via text that says "Spike Flail Incoming in 5..." and *insert random raid leader* constantly telling the raid over vent/skype to stand under the wing so you don't get hit with the incoming Spike Flail?

What's the difference between having an on screen text indicator saying "Adds incoming!" and just having the game swarm your screen with adds. If you're not paying attention, then you're not paying attention. Boss mods don't tell you anything the game doesn't. The minute a mod (boss mods or not) start telling you information the game isn't intentionally set up to tell you, then it's not a mod anymore. It's 3rd party software, or botting. Mods and bots ARE NOT the same.

I don't know what's so hard to understand about this. Something like Windower was not a mod, it was 3rd party software, it did not work WITH the FFXI software, and within it's restrictions in guidelines. It worked independently to read memory and give you information you're not suppose to have. Mods work within the game software and do only what developers allow them to do. If Square doesn't want you to know there is incoming adds ahead of time, they don't have to. And there's nothing that a "MOD" can do to change that. A "MOD" cannot make unintended things happen.

Please keep in mind I know very little of mods, so forgive me if I'm lacking in knowledge and some of my post reflects that.

I imagine the main difference between a leader pushing out commands and a mod telling you what to do is that one involves teamwork and good leadership, making it a social experience, while the other option is you being told to click buttons by a machine and your team not really achieving so much. I for one would feel pretty unsatisfied if I just clicked buttons when the screen told me to. Compare that to watching for slight changes in the monster's appearance or movement. This could mean it's about to do something, and perhaps a mod could tell me that, but I would much rather learn from experience - learn about the movements/changes myself, gain true 'experience' and knowledge of the enemy, thus allowing me to catch on to it's habits and thus allow better chances to defeat it via knowing when to and when not to attack.

Likewise, a mod is, I imagine, rarely if ever wrong. It's too reliable. Having a leader that shouts out things to you and you taking it's advice builds trust and if they get it wrong, then the leader learns from that and (hopefully!) so do you. It's a team thing, and individual skill thing, a learning thing, an experience. It's like wanting to play a game without a walkthrough instead of with it. And for some, it's about showing off their achievements without having accusations of using mods that held your little baby-hand through the ordeal.

I like the idea of skill and knowledge of you and your teammates being more important than the knowledge of your mod and your ability to read and carry out it's instructions.

However, if mods don't tell you about the subtle things that SE would rather you learn from using your eyes, then I don't have a problem. If it's stuff that SE doesn't already have visible in the game then they don't want you to have it visible in that way. Enemy stamina, time until the enemy can next cast, weaknesses that are about to be used, stuff like that should be things you figure out from experience.

Again, I'm not experienced with mods and I'm not against them if they don't take away from the learning experience. If they tell me the HP of the enemy, fine. If they log chats and capture videos, cool. If they tell me that the enemy is going to cast ____ in ___ seconds and/or when you should use _____, that's not what it should do. The game doesn't tell me that right now, so obviously I'm not meant to know that.

[Ava]

Please keep in mind I know very little of mods, so forgive me if I'm lacking in knowledge and some of my post reflects that.

I imagine the main difference between a leader pushing out commands and a mod telling you what to do is that one involves teamwork and good leadership, making it a social experience, while the other option is you being told to click buttons by a machine and your team not really achieving so much. I for one would feel pretty unsatisfied if I just clicked buttons when the screen told me to. Compare that to watching for slight changes in the monster's appearance or movement. This could mean it's about to do something, and perhaps a mod could tell me that, but I would much rather learn from experience - learn about the movements/changes myself, gain true 'experience' and knowledge of the enemy, thus allowing me to catch on to it's habits and thus allow better chances to defeat it via knowing when to and when not to attack.

Likewise, a mod is, I imagine, rarely if ever wrong. It's too reliable. Having a leader that shouts out things to you and you taking it's advice builds trust and if they get it wrong, then the leader learns from that and (hopefully!) so do you. It's a team thing, and individual skill thing, a learning thing, an experience. It's like wanting to play a game without a walkthrough instead of with it. And for some, it's about showing off their achievements without having accusations of using mods that held your little baby-hand through the ordeal.

I like the idea of skill and knowledge of you and your teammates being more important than the knowledge of your mod and your ability to read and carry out it's instructions.

However, if mods don't tell you about the subtle things that SE would rather you learn from using your eyes, then I don't have a problem. If it's stuff that SE doesn't already have visible in the game then they don't want you to have it visible in that way. Enemy stamina, time until the enemy can next cast, weaknesses that are about to be used, stuff like that should be things you figure out from experience.

Again, I'm not experienced with mods and I'm not against them if they don't take away from the learning experience. If they tell me the HP of the enemy, fine. If they log chats and capture videos, cool. If they tell me that the enemy is going to cast ____ in ___ seconds and/or when you should use _____, that's not what it should do. The game doesn't tell me that right now, so obviously I'm not meant to know that.

Have you ever used a strategy guide, or have gone to a web site to read up on tactics for certain encounters in a game? The learning experience is still there whether boss mods are used or not. Your raid still needs communication or you won't succeed, it doesn't remove from the experience at all. It's simply a method of displaying already displayed information in the form of text instead of graphics.

A boss mod can tell you adds are coming. But it doesn't tell you how to deal with them. It doesn't tell you if you need to kill them, where you need to kill them, what spells to use, or anything. It simply says "Adds are coming". The rest is up to you, your raid leaders, and the rest of your raid. A boss mod might say "Mega Super Beam of Deathly Doom incoming, move away!", but it doesn't tell you where to move, it doesn't move for you, and it doesn't tell you what actually happens if you get hit. It's up to you, your raid leaders, and your raid to communicate these things both ahead of time and during the raid in order to make sure everyone understands everything.

Anyone who raided even semi-hardcorelike in WoW and used boss mods I'm sure can vouch for the fact that a bad player or a bad raid leader can kill a raid whether they are using boss mods or not. Not paying attention is not paying attention. And learning scripted bosses in MMORPGs require you to pay attention first and foremost.

[Ostia]

Stop trolling Ostia, seriously. Read my post and think again before you act like a smartass. I never said the Mods play the game for you, I said mods can take away your own effort and make it a trivial task(Boss Mods)

Boss Mods doesn't do things for you, but they tell you what to do at what time...that's already way more then I'd like to see in XIV...

If you like to play XIV and fight boss' as if you are mentally retarded, that's your choice.

What effort ? it does not does anything, other than display information, or give you a warning that bosses already do, if i dont move from the AOE or the fire or the incoming attack, it null, and its not like the original UI from WOW does not display's said warnings on its own anyways. All you gotta do is go to options, interface, select show cast bars on enemy's and thats it, now you can see what boss mod does w/o boss mods lol

[Loony_BoB]

Have you ever used a strategy guide, or have gone to a web site to read up on tactics for certain encounters in a game? The learning experience is still there whether boss mods are used or not. Your raid still needs communication or you won't succeed, it doesn't remove from the experience at all. It's simply a method of displaying already displayed information in the form of text instead of graphics.

But the intelligence and observation factor is important to make it into an achievement. The knowing what each graphic movement means. And while yes, I do indeed use guides on rare occasions, I don't do it every time - only after I've died a few times over, can't level further and feel stuck. Basically, when I concede defeat but still want to progress through the story. It gives me no sense of achievement and it still requires me to understand what is happening on the screen rather than the screen TELLING me what is about to happen. The interpretation of the graphics is a skill, it is knowledge. Again, though, I rarely do this. I am a fairly determined person when it comes to doing things in what I see as 'the right way'.

A boss mod can tell you adds are coming. But it doesn't tell you how to deal with them. It doesn't tell you if you need to kill them, where you need to kill them, what spells to use, or anything. It simply says "Adds are coming".

I am relieved that it doesn't tell you what spells to use, etc. Although I understand some of these kind of mods actually do. That's the concern I have. And again, I prefer that it doesn't tell me but that I learn the signals, the graphics, so that I understand the game better. I like that part of video games.

PS. Sorry, I don't know what adds are ;_;"

The rest is up to you, your raid leaders, and the rest of your raid. A boss mod might say "Mega Super Beam of Deathly Doom incoming, move away!", but it doesn't tell you where to move, it doesn't move for you, and it doesn't tell you what actually happens if you get hit. It's up to you, your raid leaders, and your raid to communicate these things both ahead of time and during the raid in order to make sure everyone understands everything.

So long as it is extremely obvious that these things are about to happen, I could live with that, although I would prefer to not have that happen. I would prefer a member of my team (hopefully there are multiple 'leaders') says something - perhaps it will be me - and we react accordingly.

Anyone who raided even semi-hardcorelike in WoW and used boss mods I'm sure can vouch for the fact that a bad player or a bad raid leader can kill a raid whether they are using boss mods or not. Not paying attention is not paying attention. And learning scripted bosses in MMORPGs require you to pay attention first and foremost.

Do they sometimes insist you use mods, though? The biggest concern of all is that I might miss a graphic/signal from the monster for some reason and people will blame me for the loss of the group because I don't use a certain mod that would have made it more obvious. I would rather be in a situation where they blame me for not noticing the signal and their comments saying "ARGH, doom beam coming!" or whatever. If 5/6 people in a party all use a mod that tells you these things, they may get used to not having to communicate and thus the 1/6 that doesn't use the mod may suffer for it.

Thanks for explaining things a little more, hope you can reply to this, too! It's constructive/educational, at least for me.

[Nexxus]

PS. Sorry, I don't know what adds are ;_;"

Add are the minion that pop to assist the boss. (Like JoL poping mob that can astral flow)

[Loony_BoB]

Ahhhhh. Thanks.

[Ava]

...

Thanks for explaining things a little more, hope you can reply to this, too! It's constructive/educational, at least for me.

I cut your post because it was big and I dont like quoting big things.

Some people will argue that mods ruin things like the element of surprise and such but this is a major misconception. LUA code is not very smart. LUA cannot calculate complex mathematical formulas or use elaborate algorithms to tell you what to do. LUA simply cannot do that efficiently. So no, boss mods don't tell you what spells to cast, LUA is not smart, it can't make decisions for you.

Adds above was in reference to additional monsters in an encounter, sometimes bosses will spawn "adds", which means monsters will come to the battlefield as a part of the encounter and you'll have to handle both the adds + the boss at the same time. A boss mod can only tell you they are coming, it can't tell you what to do with them (offtank, or kill them), LUA is not that smart.

Some guilds do insist on their members using boss mods in other games. But if you're a known good player, most guilds won't question your decision not to use them. You can argue that boss mods might be insulting to people if they're having a hard time learning an encounter, but this is a team game. You want everyone on your team to be as well equipped as the others, if you have someone that keeps wiping the raid because they aren't anticipating that super attack that kills everyone then you'll have to find a solution. If you've already tried explaining it to them, the next step is to either kick them or ask them to download boss mods. In this situation, is it not wrong? It could offend people, and that may be where a lot of the debate comes from, but let's be honest, who wants to be one of the 7 people doing things right but that 8th person just keeps screwing things up for everyone?

[Loony_BoB]

Some guilds do insist on their members using boss mods in other games. But if you're a known good player, most guilds won't question your decision not to use them. You can argue that boss mods might be insulting to people if they're having a hard time learning an encounter, but this is a team game.

Yes, but as much as it is a team game, how can you learn an encounter without actually being given a chance to learn it, even if it means making mistakes? Mistakes are exactly how you learn. I won't claim to be a known good player at all, I play for fun and I'm very social when in a party compared to most people (particularly if it involves my friends). Sometimes we all died, but we laughed about it and we got back up again and carried on where we left off.

You want everyone on your team to be as well equipped as the others, if you have someone that keeps wiping the raid because they aren't anticipating that super attack that kills everyone then you'll have to find a solution. If you've already tried explaining it to them, the next step is to either kick them or ask them to download boss mods.

Tell them when it's happening. I can understand you kicking them if they never learn even if you tell them, though, because obviously that means even if the mod was not there for anyone in the party, they still would not react to your communication.

In this situation, is it not wrong? It could offend people, and that may be where a lot of the debate comes from, but let's be honest, who wants to be one of the 7 people doing things right but that 8th person just keeps screwing things up for everyone?

I agree if they keep screwing up - but only if you are still communicating effectively with them. If you are not communicating effectively with them, if they are not given another chance after screwing up on their first or second attempt, then it does become a concern.

Basically, I just hope that everyone is on the same level regardless of what mods - if any - they use. You seem to be of the opinion that even with those mods, people will still communicate and that people should still require skill, and therefore the mods will not cause any issues. If that's the case, I hope what you believe turns out to be true, because it sounds fine.

I hope you understand the worry of others and where it's coming from, though. Particularly relatively inexperienced people like myself - my experience in modern MMO's is restricted to FFXI, and I only got to somewhere around level 40 or so in that.