Are Addons worth the fuss?

UGotBenched91

So, I’ve heard so many great things about addons but I can’t help but see all the negative. I constantly see people posting about their game crashing and massive lag. I don’t experience any of this.

With that being said, I’ve seen some people say it’s because the addons are not updated and they cause the crash. I’d rather not add them onto my game if it’s going to cause lag and crashing issues. So, is there any truth to this? And if there is, why is everyone blaming ESO makers for it?

RD065

Depends on the individual. For me I like using them very much. I'll do my best to make sure they're crash free.

Kadoin

I don't use any right now, but when I do, only inventory insight is worth the time of day IMO. The rest are visual clutter and too noisy for me (that includes those combat ones people crutch on).

EDIT: Forgot to mention map pins. No way I will spend ages looking for something for the 9th time because I don't care to remember it

Agenericname

I don't think that the crashes have been linked to add ons. Some who have never used them still report the crashes. The common theme for the crashes is Cyrodiil.

Some of the add ons add to the quality of life, but they aren't truly necessary. Consoles make do without them. I would be much poorer without lazy writ crafter though.

If you're happy without them, keep at it. If you want them, try them out, just realize that just about every patch things may be wonky for a few days.

kylewwefan

I finally got around to playing on PC so I could check them out. While I don’t find it necessary, there’s some interesting stuff on them.

I don’t think the eso logs is an ad on; and there’s some really neat stuff on there to check out.

If you want to make gold, you pretty much have to learn to use ad ons. The market on pc is ridiculously tight.

Lintashi

For me, absolutely yes. I really like minimap, ability to swap whole gearsets and skillbars with one click, ability to sort unlearned traits/motifs/recipes in guild stores, place ui/group/raids windows as I want, fillet all fish with 1 click, automatically craft daily writs, and see lorebooks and skyshards on my map. I believe, that Zos should look at what addons are most popular, and either integrate them, or create their own version of them, as QOL improvement.

DMuehlhausen

Yes, they are worth the fuss.

Do you need to have your screen covered it extra frames and stuff now, but stuff like LazyWritCrafter alone is amazing lol

redspecter23

If I didn't have a minimap, I would find a game that had one. That's pretty much it for me.

oxygen_thief

default ui is a shoddy cheap work from a greedy company. i dont know how people can play eso without addons

Royaji

It's the other way around. Addons exist to remove the fuss of dealing with base game UI and lackluster functions.

Bucky_13

Yes. Depends on what you do and what you need, but I'd rather not play without the ones I have, which is around 20.

zvavi

UGotBenched91 wrote: »

So, I’ve heard so many great things about addons but I can’t help but see all the negative. I constantly see people posting about their game crashing and massive lag. I don’t experience any of this.

With that being said, I’ve seen some people say it’s because the addons are not updated and they cause the crash. I’d rather not add them onto my game if it’s going to cause lag and crashing issues. So, is there any truth to this? And if there is, why is everyone blaming ESO makers for it?

Many times people crush and it has nothing to do with addons, usually pvp, or last boss in frost vault. I mean, ye, sure, sometimes addons are at fault, but when half of cyrodil is in dc, and part of it doesn't even run add-ons, blaming addons is silly.

FierceSam

Short answer : yes definitely

Long answer: yes definitely. I find the following essential to my game enjoyment. I want my game to look good and provide me with information that allows me to play not perform tedious repetitive tasks. Most of the things I really like should be a part of the base game. So I want

- mini map
- map pins (I should be able to decide if I see where skyshards I haven’t collected are on my umpteenth character)
- Dolgubon’s lazy writ crafter (writs should be about does your character have the right skills and materials, not do you want to click 19 times to create a rubbish sword or can you remember what the recipe for this glyph is)
- writ worthy (if I’ve got many master writs, I should not have to do them and hand them in individually)
- Combat metrics (how the hell is anyone supposed to improve when you get no information about your performance)
- Inventory insight (I want to easily find stuff across multiple characters)
- FCOIS (I want my inventory to be organised how I want it, or failing that at least basically organised)
- Master merchant (I want to know what I’ve sold and what the right price is for stuff I am selling)
- Some kind of UI add on (because I’d like to be able to customise what I see in terms of on-screen information)

It seems to me that ZOS has basically given up on developing their UI and has dobbed all of that off to 3rd party developers and given up on the console interface. I mean some of what I want may seem a touch demanding, but the fact that console have access to none of these UI enhancements is a bit disgusting.

For a PC player it’s insane not to take advantage of at least some of them.

yRaven

Fixing ZoS mistakes and making life easy? Yep, go for it everytime, actually if you're going to endgame Trials and etc... you're obligated to use Hodor, Raid Notifier, Code's Combat Alerts, Combat Metrics, Buff Tracker(Healer), Untaunted(Tank), so... no escape really... also MINIMAP IS AWESOME

Varana

You're playing Elder Scrolls games wrong if you're not using plugins/mods/addons.

As an answer to the question: Yes, they are. Reports about their unreliability are vastly exaggerated.
Maybe not vastly, and they require a bit of maintenance after a major patch (and if you don't know how to do that: disable them for a while), but they make the game UI bearable instead of a dumpster-fire, and provide much-needed comfort functions.

Neoealth

They are really not that much of a fuss once you know how to manage them and update. So yes, I'd say they are very much worth it. Do it today OP, you won't regret it. Use minion mod manager.

Danikat

One thing to consider is addons are not all the same, they do a huge range of different things and even when there are similar ones they may work differently behind the scenes, which means the effects they have - both intended and unintended - will be different too. Add in player preferences and there's no simple way to answer that question.

I think the addons I use are worth the trouble, otherwise I wouldn't use them. There have been times I've installed one and then a patch broke it and I got fed up with waiting for it to be updated and uninstalled it again. Sometimes I find a replacement which works, sometimes I don't bother because I wasn't using it that much anyway.

But there's others, including some I wouldn't want to be without, which have been out of date for years (literally) and have never caused a problem.

For example one of my favourites is an addon called Binder which "just" saves sets of keybindings so you can load them all instantly using chat commands. It hasn't been updated in a year but because what it does is relatively simple and presumably that bit of the API hasn't been changed it still works and my game almost never crashes so I assume it's not causing any problems behind the scenes. I also wouldn't want to play without it because I'm always tweaking my keybindings and wouldn't want to keep copying them over to all my other characters each time I make a change.

daim

Only thing why you woulnd't try addons out is out of prinsible or that you don't bother keeping them updated at all.

It's true that after some major updates might make some specific addons unusable. To solve that problem is to disable those addons until they are fixed. So no problem there.

The base problem with disabling addons is that you're so used to have those sweet extra features that you forgot how dreadful the original client feature was and have to use it again. That's why people get angry and frustrated when some addons break and go nuts at forums.

To be honest, the addon community is really awesome. They do a lot of hard work out of goodness of their heart and share their work to us all (so when ever you go to the comments section remember that they don't owe us anything, we owe at least to respect them).

Most addons will be fixed in matter of hours, some you might have to wait a bit longer or crawl some comments to see how to get them fixed.

However the above is pretty much the worst case scenario. Most of the time Minion does the updating process for you. You just have to click once to update all your outdated addons. Get over to ESOUI.COM

Kiralyn2000

Lag/etc, also depends on the mods you use. For just simple ones, that aren't polling the server much or at all, there shouldn't really be any lag.


Personally, I just use QoL/informational addons - they take the place of me writing down notes to keep track of things, or looking up maps/guides/etc on another screen. What recipes I have learned, Skyshard/Treasure/Survey locations, where I've harvested resources, that kind of thing.

I don't bother with all the trading stuff, which does a lot of server calls as I understand it.


edit: pretty much the same kind of addons I used in WoW 10 years ago.

Katahdin

Yes, for the QOL things they provide alone

ghastley

There are add-ons for so many different things that you can't generalize any more. The map enhancement ones that are very popular aren't going to cause any lag, as they're only used when you have time to read the map. The data they need to access is pretty static, and kept client-side by most that I've looked at.

The ones that contribute to lag are going to be the ones that constantly make requests to the server for "current status" of something, rather than get notification of change. The server-side work has to fit in with everything else the server is doing, like running a 50-player battle in Cyrodiil.

So use them, but pick carefully.

Nemesis7884

thats like asking if mods are worth it for skyrim ^^

Asardes

Definitely. If they crash your game, update them using Minion. Post Harrowstorm I've had issues for a couple of days, but updated them all and now they run just fine.

mayasunrising

So much yes! In my opinion anyway. For housing Essential Housing Tools is a must that brings it to a whole new level. For PvP add-ons like Provinatus are indispensable to me. And for all around gaming experience LUI, Inventory Insight, and gear/champ point swap add-ons are a must. I am lost when I turn off my add-ons. lol

Oh, and I like a minimalist UI when in PVE land, so I use a few to help me hide UI elements like the compass and chat, etc.

karekiz

Addons are a crutch and should be removed.

Asardes

karekiz wrote: »

Addons are a crutch and should be removed.

Right after they make the vanilla UI at least half decent.

Tandor

Varana wrote: »

You're playing Elder Scrolls games wrong if you're not using plugins/mods/addons.

As an answer to the question: Yes, they are. Reports about their unreliability are vastly exaggerated.
Maybe not vastly, and they require a bit of maintenance after a major patch (and if you don't know how to do that: disable them for a while), but they make the game UI bearable instead of a dumpster-fire, and provide much-needed comfort functions.

I've played every single Elder Scrolls game, and the only add-on I've used is one that gave me a house in Skyrim. I only visited the house once, didn't find it attractive, and found the add-on completely unnecessary.

I do accept that with ESO there is a clear benefit in using a trading add-on if you are a trader on PC, and yet every trader on console - that's roughly two-thirds of the traders in the game - find it perfectly doable without one.

There's clearly a distinction to be made between those add-ons which only provide an enhancement to a base function in the game (and which may well be mandated if you are, for example, in a raiding or trading guild), and those which allow a player to cut corners and have his/her hand held rather than rely on a basic function of any MMORPG, namely exploration.

Much depends on playstyle, and as a non-competitive PvE-only player, I've never had a single issue with the default UI, from Arena onwards I've found all the TES games wholly enjoyable as they were developed - and that surely is the only measure by which one can judge whether you're playing the games right. I've no problem with those who want to use add-ons, even when they cut corners or downright cheat that is the player's prerogative subject to the games' TOS. I do have a problem, however, with being told that I'm playing the game wrong because I'm not using add-ons-- as may the two-thirds of the ESO playerbase who are not using them.

ZOS_FalcoYamaoka

Greetings,

This thread has been closed as its a duplicate of another thread. Please refer to original thread here:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/515249/are-addons-worth-the-fuss#latest