Avran_Sylt wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

RaidingTraiding wrote: »

Only addon i have a problem with is Miats. Maybe if you're fighting in melee range there might be some doubt they anticipated something or it was a lucky dodge roll but it's pretty obvious when someones is using it when they perfectly dodge everything, especially if you're far behind them out of their field of view or coming out of stealth. It is funny though when you know they're using it and they choose to dodge everything it tells them to so you troll them with destro heavy spams until they use up all their stam and you just cc them. Honestly though I'm sure this addon is the only reason people don't complain more about how overtuned bow proc is.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with how much I still see this misinformation. Has anyone that still complains about Miat's actually tried it out anytime in the last few years?

ZOS removed the API that allowed Miat's to tell you when attacks were incoming years ago. The addon's page even states this. It will tell you if you're standing in red, but so do PvE addons like Code's Combat Alerts.

Miat's cannot and will not tell you when to dodge incoming projectiles or attacks.

It's also still in the mind of ZOS; just a couple updates ago in U46 they removed API that allowed for addons (including Miat's) to tell you when you were about to be pulled by Rush of Agony.

The only even slightly dubious thing that Miat's does these days is play a sound when you enter combat, which can clue you in half a second sooner to a gank than you would have known otherwise. There are other widely used addons that have this functionality as well, as it literally just gives you a notification the instant you enter combat.



It's literally on the addon page itself. People love to blame Miat's but they're more often than not just being predictable or don't realize just how generous the dodge window really is, to the point where you can just sort of roll dodge randomly and dodge 99% of attacks that get thrown your way.

Question, given the language used can be... ambiguous. Does it not tell you when attacks are coming at you at all? Or just that it no longer triggers off of the specific feature disabled by ZoS? Yet... still triggers off of say, the immediate start of a client-side audio event associated with the attack?

Because, if the dodge-roll is as generous as you say, the more milliseconds saved the better, especially with visual confirmation in perhaps an audio cluttered environment.

(Or perhaps you were focused on the enemy in front of you, but hey Miat's let's you know of a cast-time attack coming in from behind).

It does not tell you when attacks are incoming. Period. It cannot do that - no addons can do that with player attacks (only PvE attacks like a mob charging a heavy attack, since being targeted by a mob is technically a debuff on you; this does not work with player pets or blastbones either).

Addons no longer have any way of knowing if another player is targeting you with an attack. Even an audio based system like you describe wouldn't work because then the addon would trigger off a teammate being targeted as well. ZOS removed all APIs communicating with your client about when you are being targeted by a player attack, projectile, etc.

Miat's can tell you if you've been stunned or rooted (after you've been stunned, so can LUI, PvE addons, etc) and it can tell you if you are standing in red like Caltrops etc (again, so can LUI, PvE addons, etc). And honestly, it may not be able to tell you if you're in red anymore after ZOS changed the API to prevent addons from telling you if you were about to be pulled by Rush or DC.

The other thing it does is play a sound when you enter combat with a player. This could potentially be seen as dubious, but realistically it will only give you a fraction of a second to react earlier to a gank (and I do mean a fraction of a second, typically not enough to actually do anything about it, and only in the situation of the very first time a player ganks you, as it only plays a sound when you enter combat and has nothing to do with the actual attacks)

IMO, there's a very slippery slope from "quality-of-life" to unnatural competitive advantage.

By definition, add-ons are making the game easier for the user. Otherwise, players would not use them. For example, instead of having to memorize or "feel" your timers by simply mastering your build, you can instead follow an automatic countdown that tells you what to do and when to do it, etc. It is an advantage over anyone not using such methods. That fact is undeniable.

At the same time it is true that the game's vanilla UI is not particularly good. So it is not outlandish to want to improve it. But it should always be remembered that that IS an advantage. Console players got good at the game through simply being good at the game so we know that it is definitely possible.

I do strongly agree about the API, though. It is far, far, FAR too permissive. As confirmed in the recently posted Q&A, it seemingly takes a blacklist approach rather than a whitelist approach and so very clearly "cheaty" features are enabled by default and only disabled: a) if the community even knows that they are being used against them, and, b) report it heavily enough to rouse ZOS to block it. Why is this the case?

Obviously, hiding "cheaty" add-ons under the cloak of being private is intended to prevent their discovery and to short-circuit the ability to report and thus to block them. That is entirely by design. IMO, private add-ons should be abolished in addition to switching to a whitelist-based approach for API features. Let the registered mod authors make their case for why a certain feature should be enabled - and then allow the rest of us in the community to evaluate their claims and make a fully-informed decision.

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For data-sharing, there is a quite a populist case to be made for banning data-sharing in PvP venues: and the first and most intuitive reason is because basically only the super sweats use them. Those groups, ballgroups and small-man comped groups, already have tons of advantages, so why do they need PvE-style data-sharing to be yet another one? Turn off the tap of automatic data-sharing and make those groups either get better at the game or else use their actual voices if they have important information to share.

As to the performance implications of the new library... all that we have are empty-calorie claims and suppositions. Remember that Map Pins was also widely believed to be "lightweight" in terms of its overhead (and perhaps it was in small-scale toy examples that ignored the full complexity that the real-world game is run within) as well. But that turned out to be wildly incorrect. Often times, the conventional wisdom is simply wrong, especially when self-interest is potentially involved. As an observation, people like their add-ons and so will tend to look for reasons to absolve them of causing problems (yes, I still remember being gaslit about Bandits).

So let us have our add-on-less test and allow the chips to fall where they may. Even as someone who is generally anti-add-on, though, I do not believe that add-ons are the biggest contributor to bad performance. That seems undeniably to be ability complexity and/or some deeper engine or systems architecture flaw. But even that statement ignores situations where add-ons are perhaps having an outsized influence, such as in giant fights where there are 3 ballgroups plus an "organized zerg" multi-group guild all running RDK + whatever else to share all available state details between themselves. If the server is already struggling during a fight then adding literally anything else to its plate via third-party apps is genuinely unhelpful.

And from a basic fairness point of view, just how much of a "performance tax" should be paid by non-add-on users for the convenience of the sweat groups using data-sharing? I would personally draw the line at literally any supplemental overhead being added to the server. Even one CPU cycle is, IMO, too much. If a test came back and the results were: 5%? 3%? 1%? increase in server frame time? Or perhaps an average spikes much higher during worst-case conditions? How much are you personally willing to have your game experience be affected for the private gain of others? IMO, the server runs the game for everyone and should not be used to facilitate essentially private transactions.

The cheat detection/prevention algorithm in ESO is pretty poor, there are addons out there, though not widely known or communicated, that do give unfair advantage - especially those that block packets of info from the client to the server and vice versa. How do you think some guys can tank 5 people, heal and burst dps at the same time (warden bugs are excluded from this statement) - there is not a proc set/monster set/CP config in the game that fosters these abilities. This was most especially prevalent in the latest Vengeance test when folks who were unkillable were easily killed because the addons were disabled - dispute the facts if you want to, but it is not hard to write a mod that alters the flow of info to/from your client in this game if you know what you are doing.

To be clear, I do not support or condone this behavior = but still does not change the fact that these addons are out there.