WoW Is Too Hard Without Addons - Ion Interview with PC Gamer
Consequences of Restricting Addons
Unsurprisingly, restricting addon functionality has resulted in a host of trickle down issues, forcing Blizzard to reevaluate what's presented by base UI, how players interact with encounter mechanics, and the complexity of the class they're playing while doing so.
PC Gamer
"If you're playing it out of the box, no addons whatsoever, and trying to play at the highest competitive levels, I do think that it is too hard," he says, "and I think that consequently, hardly anyone is attempting to do that."
"A lot of the class changes haven't been in the works for years," Hazzikostas says. Instead, he says they popped up over the past few months. "When we first began our conversation with the community around the philosophy of where we were thinking we wanted to go with addons, we heard a lot of feedback immediately of, 'That's all well and good, but how am I supposed to track this mechanic?' Internally we were like, 'They're not wrong.' "
Classes that require players to evaluate four separate variables within 0.7 seconds to pick the correct next action nearly require WeakAuras to manage, he says. "Then it becomes pretty straightforward—push the button when my UI tells me to. But that's not the game we were actually designing."
Not Turning All Encounters into Giant Puzzles
Somewhat ironically, considering the mechanics of Mythic Fractillus this season, the developers have been trying to use less pure coordination challenges, since they are so often solved by addons. Instead, their approach has been to layer multiple types of challenges atop one another, asking players to solve a puzzle, while dodging swirls, and meeting a throughput check all at the same time. This helps ensure that even if an addon is helping solve part of the problem, players are still facing multiple challenges... though in a world without a WeakAura coordinating which players are going where, that simultaneous split-second decision making could become overwhelming.
PC GamerOn the raid fight side, designers were well aware of what WeakAuras could do, and so they avoided putting in mechanics that would be trivialized by those addons. Dylan Barker, lead encounter designer, told me in an interview that the team classifies mechanics for raids into three categories: dexterity, strength and intellect.
Dexterity is the "we're going to ask you to dance" category, he says. Strength challenges pose a DPS or healing check. And intellect challenges you to react to a variable situation with a fight. There's a bomb on you and four other players, he gives as an example: Where do you take it?
"An intellect-based encounter is the sort of thing that addons have historically solved pretty well," Barker says, and as a result, the team has been using less and less of them. To make an encounter with an intellect coordination challenge that might require four players to move to specific spots, they can't just make one more player have the debuff, for example.
"We've had to layer on dexterity and speed and pace and lethality to make things that were coordination tests harder," he says. "In Mythic , I have to pull out six shooters and I am firing swirls at your feet, so you do both at the same time. It's a very different axis of skill."
Another big part of that is the amount of time given to players to solve a particular mechanic. In a world where WeakAuras can solve the problem in a split second, pacing has ramped up to counterbalance it, giving players less time to assess the situation. Players will now need to solve these mechanics themselves, though by tweaking the amount of damage, reducing the number of targeted players, or giving them a few more seconds to react, the intent is to keep roughly the same level of overall difficulty as before.
PC GamerHazzikostas says the idea is when all the changes are done the level of challenge, particularly at the highest tiers of gameplay, should be about the same.
"I don't think it's going to look all that different," he says. "I think the skill ceiling should be in about the same place, and the ways in which it's measured should be fairly similar for people."
The floor, the average level of gameplay, should rise as people take advantage of better-designed fights and classes that are easier for people to read without help, he says. But the challenge for great players should remain, even with easier to see mechanics and less-complex character spell rotations.
"The progression from being a beginner player to a good player lies in mastering a rotation to the point where you can execute it on a combat dummy," Hazzikostas says. "I know what buttons to push, I am gearing correctly, I can execute close to my maximum potential damage in a completely static situation.
"Now let's throw some raid mechanics in the mix. Every player's damage goes down. When you're distracted, everyone suffers some throughput. If you're focused on PVE skill, a lot of it is what percentage of your theoretical damage you can do while multitasking."
Speaking of Mythic Fractillus, the Game Director acknowledges that the current fight would be unreasonably difficult, stating emphatically that they're not looking to turn all of the game's raid encounters into giant puzzles, but they should be more involved than knowing how to run to a star marker.
Who placed that Wall? Courtesy of Wipefest
PC Gamer"Many players rightly look at the Mythic version of that fight and say, 'We don't think this is possible without an addon.' Honestly, I wouldn't say it's not possible—I would say it's unreasonably difficult," Hazzikostas says.
Without WeakAuras trivializing the encounter by telling players exactly where to go, the team can tune it to give players a few seconds more to get there, or by reducing the number of players who need to move, or tweaking the damage required to kill the boss.
"Now, that becomes a hallmark of the encounter in a way that we honestly haven't been able to do for a long time, because we knew what WeakAuras would do to it," he says. "We're not looking to turn all our raid encounters into giant puzzles for people to solve."
"But I think coordination and figuring out the solutions to these multifaceted problems has long been one of the more interesting parts of raiding, instead of the first three wipes are because someone had their WeakAura misconfigured," he says, "and then after that all you have to know is run to a star."
Continuing to Improve Accessibility
Accessibility remains a high priority for Blizzard, particularly following feedback from Undaunted, several members of which were since invited to give more feedback and test new accessibility features, which include new text-to-speech and audio cues in Midnight.
We've already seen the first wave of these updates on the Alpha, though some question remains over whether its enough. While Blizzard does appear keen on adding more options to their UI and Cooldown Manager, they're still limited by what the developers decide you need to see or hear. As it currently stands, there's no option to create a reminder saying "blue goes left, red goes right" or extra loud airhorn when targeted by a particularly important mechanic, though customizable audio cues for bosses are something that Blizzard will look at over time.
Not entirely certain if visual clarity would be better or worse without addons.
Although the "visual clutter of world markers used by WeakAuras" is mentioned, nothing is said about the propensity to have a purple boss in a purple room dropping purple void zones, the continual wall of spell effects flying in from allied casters, or melee being firmly eye to belt buckle with the latest larger-than-life raid boss and its unreasonably small hitbox. Despite repeatedly acknowledging these issue, its something players have continually struggled with, which we can only hope that Midnight will take greater care to avoid.
PC Gamer"Accessibility remains a top focus for the team, especially as it relates to this initiative, so we want to hear from all our players, and especially from those who rely on special setups to play our game," he says.
Crash Reed, lead user experience designer, says Blizzard will also be adding customizable audio cues, specifically for the player class cooldown manager tool. Options will include assigning sounds or text-to-speech to abilities coming off cooldown or a variety of other event states, he says.
"Personally, I'm a UI person, but I would much rather hear it than stare at my UI," Reed says. Boss warnings will also come with sound cues, but at this point those are locked in by the team and not customizable. "That would be something we could look at over time," he says.
According to Reed, nameplate changes will help players track mobs that have aggroed on them even if they're off the screen, as floating nameplates for those monsters will appear at the edge of the display. Some other visual clutter that players leaned on heavily, including raid markers used by WeakAuras, may no longer be necessary after the Midnight changes go through, Hazzikostas says.
A large number of players have been invited to participate in Midnight's alpha tests to give feedback on all the addon, encounter and class design changes, he says, and their thoughts will cause further tweaks. "This is the starting point of iteration. This is definitely not set in stone."
