TBC UI Changes

[shouryuu]

Originally Posted by illepic 1) Those that are pro-UI change are: A) Not a healing class B) A healing class that feels inherently guilty for using something to help them heal/cleanse, somehow equating that to "cheating" C) Players that do not understand that the API was opened up for us to use ON PURPOSE by Blizzard, to use in any way it allows us to. Many seem to feel that Decursive or Emergency Monitors are somehow illegal hacks of the game and have "just not been caught yet." D) Fearful/unskilled of technology and are generally non-tech-savvy (someone mentioned the great percentage of raiders that cannot handle a zip file...that describes about half my raid) E) People that presume spamming 3 buttons is somehow more skillful than using a mod to complete the task in 1.

There. I entirely disagree..
I am :

A) A healing class, a Priest even.
B) I don't feel guilty when I use decision making mods. I use them, have used them, and would have used them. If a raid's success depends on me decursing properly, then I'm going to do everything I can, even use mods, to optimize the process. Not because I want purple loot, but because 39 other players are depending on me to do so.
C) I do understand why Blizzard opened up the API. They did so because they hoped it would improve everyone's game play. It would allows every user to have a setting which fits their game play. However, they did so in the hope that these addons *did not provide an unfair advantage over users using the stock UI*. Yes, *THAT* was the condition. Now I DARE you to explain to me how someone using decursive didn't have an unfair advantage over someone using the stock UI.
D) I'm no tech-savy, but I've written mods. Sure they're ugly. The coding will make most coders eyes bleed, but they work, and I wrote them myself. I got on these forums hardly knowing how to code, I read every documentation I could find, tried to answer everything myself, asked for helped when I needed it, and managed to learn how to write mods. Yes I am damn proud of it, and yes it angers me when someone says I'm "computer-retarded" :P That doesn't make me the king of UI, that just makes me a guy with basic understanding of the WoW API.
E) I presume that taking three right decisions is more skilfull than not taking a single one, be it a wrong one, or a right one.

What I've tried to make clear in my other posts, is that what makes WoW fun, are two things:
1) Choice
2) Learning through experience.

Decision making mods, killed both of these in my eyes. It's an unpopular change, but part of being chief, is making unpopular decisions.
And anyone who says "But there tons of other ways to do what they want to do!", I'd really want to hear a few.
I would, like anyone else, prefer to keep my UI, my decursive, my decision making mods. It's makes the game easier, and to a certain level, more enjoyable. I'm not welcoming these changes, I'm accepting them as something good but not better, as something new. That's what we're looking for in TBC, right?

[illepic]

Do understand that my lists were what I'd observed in countless posts around the intarrweb. Rather than "if you like the changes you must be ...", think "those that I've seen that are pro-change have the following attributes..."

Congratulations, you've broken the mold. You are both thoughtful and analytical, able to see through the BS and emotion.

I'm still not backing down from my assertion that WoW was designed to reward two separate definitions of skill:

1) button-spamming-reaction skill

and/or

2) skilled and thoughtful tool developers

Discuss!

[Meltzor]

Originally Posted by gorgeth So what you are in effect saying is that, you do not play a class with any form of cure spell and thus you choose to be a blizzard fanboi? Unless blizzard goes back and fixes MC/BWL/ZG/AQ20/AQ40/NAXX to adjust for the new changes.. to content that was *all* designed around decursive being in use by every caster in the dungeon, all 40 man content is broken. The only encounter designed pre-decursive was molten core and it is only in 2 fights that it matters in molten core.. I want to see a group manage to kill the trio in aq40 without decursive.. it is not possible.. the encounter was designed 100% around instant removal of spells.. while simultaneously healing the raid.. it was not meant for the interface blizzard shipped the game with.. which makes it *impossible* to do the job required.. decursive was created to fix a problem that existed with the lucifron/geddon fights.. not for botting.. Smart Rank selection was created to remove 60 buttons from a healers screen.. there is *no way* you can heal on these encounters that last upwards of 10 mins using no form of rank selection and still beat the encounters *as they exist today* This change essentially removed the capability for the players of wow to raid any existing content period.. and those who believe otherwise are simply deluding themselves.. Until/Unless blizzard slows down the rate of incoming damage, and doubles the mana/stamina pools of players across the board.. the game just became unplayable in any group larger than 5man.. as well as making the legacy 5/10 mans almost impossible as well. There is quite simply far too much lag, too much spikey damage, and too little in the way of controlling that damage to be able to heal effectively through it without mods .. The avg priest can heal for roughly 35 seconds before running completely out of mana without downranking spells and consuming potions, etc. for druids and shaman its more like 15-25 seconds.. How do you propose that that 35 seconds is stretched to 10mins or longer? without keeping 40 or more actionbutttons related to heals on screen .. as well as.. targeting the 40 raid members ? Sure in early dungeons such as pre-60 content you can simply heal the maintanks.. try that on for size in aq/zg/aq40/bwl/naxx there are simply too many people taking too much damage at once.. But you can have fun manually decursing 3 people while the other 37 die because you support blizzards decision.

Ive never used a 'smart' healing mod in my life. Personally i have about 4-5 heals i choose to cast during a fight depending on what fight it is and the urgency and I can assure you there is absolutely no requirement for smart healing mods. In my guild I actually frown upon healers who rely on a mod to choose thier heals.

I have come to the conclusion that you are either just a mod maker trying to pedal his wares or you are simply a terrible terrible healer.

If you cant heal adequately for the duration of a fight then you either need better gear, more brains or better class composition.

[tophero21]

personally, i do the same thing, in that i have f1-f5 or so bound to my healing spells, i use deficit health numbers on my unitframes and pick whatever is needed. however, i can see how decursive for one makes life a lot simpler, especially for a task that i think all would agree is a pain in the butt.

[sid67]

C) I do understand why Blizzard opened up the API. They did so because they hoped it would improve everyone's game play. It would allows every user to have a setting which fits their game play. However, they did so in the hope that these addons *did not provide an unfair advantage over users using the stock UI*. Yes, *THAT* was the condition. Now I DARE you to explain to me how someone using decursive didn't have an unfair advantage over someone using the stock UI.

Using that same logic, I DARE you to explain to me how any map mod is not an unfair advantage to another user using the stock UI. You can add notes to your map, locate your position on the map, and have instance maps (with boss info) in areas where the default UI wont even show maps. Metamap even keeps a knowledgebase of the location of mobs you have seen. Gatherer tells you where mining/herb nodes are located. If two people are competing for the same type nodes in a location, the one using Gatherer has a distinct unfair unadvantage over the other. What about mods that announce what the Boss is doing? Or mods that allow the player frames to show more debuffs. Or mods that show you what your target is casting by parsing the combat log.

ANY of those mods could be considered an unfair advantage over someone using the stock UI. That's why people use these addons--because they can do it better than with the default UI.

So the question is not whether or not these addons make the game inherently more unfair to users of the stock UI, the question is about a matter of degrees. How much MORE unfair does it make it than we (Blizzard) find acceptable?

Will you still need addons to raid effectively in 2.0? If you want to be the best you possibly can be it will. I'm not saying you can't be good without addons, I'm saying that addons will make any player better if they decide to use them. Addons are still going to be guild requirements for raiding.

This isn't an issue about Blizzard saying, "we want the game to be fun without addons". They have-to know that addons will still be just as prevalent as they are today. They will still be required for guild raid runs. Players who want to be the best they can be will still be installing addons. This is an issue where Blizzard decided that addons went too far and they want to limit functionality of a specific type of addon.

[instant]

One bad design decision after another.....

/cry

But, at least its not finalized yet -- but most likely it wont be changed by much.
And everyone will buy TBC anyway so they can pretty much do whatever they like.

[Barras]

Originally Posted by sid67 Gatherer tells you where mining/herb nodes are located. If two people are competing for the same type nodes in a location, the one using Gatherer has a distinct unfair unadvantage over the other.

Could be a wild mistake here, but I read somewhere in the wowace forums that an Ace'd gatherer clone won't be made because Gatherer will also stop working in TBC... Anyone heard anything similar? It's not related to the API, but rather that ore/herb nodes were being changed to spawn totally randomnly rather than in pre-defined areas, so as such the information gatherer stores would be useless.

I don't use gatherer so didn't pay much attention to the comment, and to be fair it's from one totally unconfirmed and unofficial source. So, um... anyone know anything about that?

[shouryuu]

Originally Posted by sid67 Using that same logic, I DARE you to explain to me how any map mod is not an unfair advantage to another user using the stock UI. You can add notes to your map, locate your position on the map, and have instance maps (with boss info) in areas where the default UI wont even show maps. Metamap even keeps a knowledgebase of the location of mobs you have seen. Gatherer tells you where mining/herb nodes are located. If two people are competing for the same type nodes in a location, the one using Gatherer has a distinct unfair unadvantage over the other. What about mods that announce what the Boss is doing? Or mods that allow the player frames to show more debuffs. Or mods that show you what your target is casting by parsing the combat log.

First of all, all these mods aren't taking decisions for you. THEY are enhancing your gameplay. All the examples you have given, be it SpellAlert mods, RA mods, Gatherer, take information available to the player, chew it up for him, and spit out what's important.

Gatherer: Take a screenshot of every map in game, print the screenshot. Take different colored pen, make a mark each time you pick up a herb/mine. Same goes for MapNotes. I don't care if you don't have a printer. I don't care if you don't have the program to open the screenshots. I don't care if you're dying dog is allergic to printing ink and that printing a colored document may kill him. Anyone with the stock UI can do it. Anyone with the stock UI CAN do it. Can a pen and a paper decide which player to debuff? No. God even Blizzard published a flash animated MAP with the main clusters of ores on their very site a while back.

SpellAlert and RA: Yeah! Those are so unfair! They read your combat log! Not everyone has a combat log! Oh, wait... Yes, these mods once more take information available to every player and processes them for you. Everyone has the same information. Everyone has access to that information. This isn't unfair. You can set up your combat log to process information for you too. You have over two dozen types of messages you can choose to show hide in your combat log. Make several combat logs. One for bosses, one for PvP, one for raiding, one for grinding, one for whatever. It takes more time, it's harder, but it's doable. Everyone can do it. No everyone can select a player depending on his debuff and decurse him without ever actualy thinking.

All these mods *state* fact and nothing more. They merely help you understand what's happening. You're submerged by information, and these mods help you select what's important in most cases. They aren't doing things for you. They aren't playing the game for you. They aren't doing anything except gather information you could gather with your own eyes. They are simplifying your hard work. Not making things easier, simplifying. And no, these words aren't the same. There's a difference between a simple problem and an easy problem. These mods are telling you "Jack is casting this", not "Jack is casting this, let me move you towards Jack, cast fear, cast MB, cast MF, Dot, renew yourself, and melt his face for you. Thank you, come again."

Blizzard is fighting against bot like playing, not inteligent gaming. Nuance.

[sid67]

Originally Posted by shouryuu There's a difference between a simple problem and an easy problem. These mods are telling you "Jack is casting this", not "Jack is casting this, let me move you towards Jack, cast fear, cast MB, cast MF, Dot, renew yourself, and melt his face for you. Thank you, come again." Blizzard is fighting against bot like playing, not inteligent gaming. Nuance.

Your lying to yourself if you think addons dont create an unfair advantage over people who use the stock UI. It's not a question of whether it's unfair, it's a question of how unfair does it have to be before Blizzard decides to take action and nerf it. As you stated above, addons, by their very nature, make things simpler.

As to motive-- I would argue that this is a change as a direct result of how it impacts PvP. In PvP, the advantage is huge. However, the impact on upper instance PvE will make the game far less fun or appealing to a lot of people. In my opinion, the overall enjoyability of the game is a major sacrifice and an over-reaction to the PvP problem.

As to botting-- Determined people will still make this happen. I'm not going to go into detail and give people ideas, but nothing I have seen from these changes indicates to me that this will be able to curb botting or gold farming. If that is your hope, then I regret to tell you that this will not solve the problem.

[Benea]

As I've stated in my post a while back I never used "smart healing" mods that made the decision for me. I used decursive and Squishy--which was nothing more that sticking hurt people on a list and placing informational elements next to their name, in order to save screen real estate. It was't sorted according to the most hurt persons.

Having said that. if you are a casual player, playing mostly in 5 mans, then you have no idea how mods affected your play as a raid healer. The healing game is based on the UI--you are concentrated on the interface and not the game environment.

I never used decursive on 5-20 mans. You don't need it. I didn't use Squishy on 5 mans, you don't need it. I used decusive on 40 mans, on certain encounters, since Blizzard specifically designed these encounters around decursive. Now, I understand they don't want that anymore but like some mods authors have stated, in killing smart buttons, they killed smart displays as well.

The fun factor for me depends if they change the new encounters in TBC. Will they take out stupid twitch encounters where the debuff must be taken off the whole raid in a split second multiple times and faillure to do so on even 1 person results in a wipe? I hope so, but I'm not holding my breath.

edit: Also, we've tracked the cure rate amongst decursers in our guild. The ones using decursive cured about 70-75% of the debuffs and the ones without (they prefer not to use it), cured about 20-25%. We had roughly an equal ratio of decursive users vs non. Did the decursive users take up the slack of the manual casters?

[dafire]

I saw it coming .. but nobody believed me

http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...6&postcount=13

[winterhawk]

When I was twelve years old I was in a bad car accident that took most of my left arm and messed up my left leg, so my dreams of playing team sports went away too. I'm sixteen now and for the last year have played World of Warcraft because in the game I can be a part of a team just like anybody else. A couple of one-button addons let me do most of the things I need to with just a multi-button mouse, so I can play like anybody else.

That was until Blizzard decided that people like me playing their game didn't fit their "vision" and announced that they would be blocking these kind of addons. I guess all the two-handed kids playing Warcraft were really inconvenienced by the fact that I got to play too. They can probably be a lot cooler without having to compete with a cripple. Somebody posted that it was "no fun and took no skill" to just push a couple buttons again and again; well try it with one hand jerk. This is the stupidest decision I ever heard of. Blizzard took a game that anybody could play then put up a wall that says handicapped not wanted. Well thanks Blizzard, you just managed to take my real-world handicap and make it just as real in my game world. I guess your vision of online gaming doesn't include handicapped people just trying to join in.

[dafire]

That depends on what you define as "play" world of warcraft. Repeatly pressing one button and let the client decide who to heal or who to decurse is not playing in my eyes.

I don't think it will be much harder for you to continue with wow using click-casting addons.. It's still nearly everything possible except letting the addons play the game for you.