HECK YES, BROTHER!

PRAISE TALOS.

1. Yes they do exist rarely, personally I never really fought anyone, where I thought, sure he is using Macros.
2. Thats honestly not an issue at all. Information like timers, you can easily count down yourself, Information about resistances or similar honestly do not matter. You know if someone is squishy if you touch them once.
3. That I can't say much about, just that I never encountered issues with it.

If you suspect if any addon can be used for the advantage, please report it. Addon devs are open for dialog and mods can take actions. If these are "private" addons and exist only for one or group of people, there is option for game devs to close particular APIs, as it was done many times before. I think it is safe to give us names of addons, as it is not "naming and shaming", just discussion of addon functionality. I am curious to know addon names you are keeping in mind.

1. While Macros are relatively less common than many think, they are present. The most common that I have seen are for the automatic taking of Synergies. (yes, this is taking into account rebinding the take key to Scroll wheel. I've seen the actual Add-on)
Report this addon and users, fish bots were banned recently for example.


3. Ones that give you information on other players that you shouldn't have. For a specific example, you shouldn't have a count down of enemy Shalks/proxy timers, as well as notifications of when Enemy Ults are going off. (I've seen this one personally) A common one that is on the line of acceptability is Squishy finder.
Every ultimate has its own visual effect, so addon showing you that is not an advantage. What about counters, it is more questionable topic, but I can count enemy Shalks without it as I can clearly see initial animation, so just remember it and count. It is hard, but it makes you better player. I personally would not be bothered, if my opponent will use them, it is not an advantage IMO.

3. Do people remember the whole Map Ping fiasco? I firmly believe that some add-on creators ignore the guidelines given about pings to the server.
It is now impossible to abuse pings, they are now limited to one ping per 10 seconds.

I personally developed some UI PvP addons and I want to keep them, as default UI is not good enough. I can say for sure: it involves only user UI and can't affect server performance.

I don't use add ons anyways.

Those same players who think everyone is abusing Miat's / RDK to kill them are still going to howl and blame and spout nonsense excuses every time they die, addons or no. I don't use either of those and never have, they just get in my way, but you can pry my Azurah and my Fancy Action Bar from my cold dead hands. I need a tuned minimalist UI.

LPapirius wrote: »

There are a few add ons that shouldn't be allowed, for sure. But the vast majority of add ons do a really good job of filling in for oversights that should have been included in the game. And one of the systems ZOS did incorporate into the game should be removed. Cyrodiil alerts is one of the add on's that should be removed and taken out of the base game.

So it's a mixed bag, but most add ons are fantastic and improve the game experience.

I'm curious. What sort of improvements would you like to see to the base UI? For me I would love to see a mini map, clearer buff/debuffs, and the ability to move the various UI elements around.

imPDA wrote: »

Dalinar4 wrote: »

RDK still pings every two seconds.

The thing is - pings can send small amount of data, but you were able to send multiple pings in a short time window, so you were able to send big amount of data. And if you are unable to send many pings, you are unable to deliver enough data, and one ping per 10 seconds if very small amount of data, and 10s delay means it is useless. 2 seconds (according to you) is better, but still, 2s delay and very small amount of data per ping. Even if it is 2s instead of 10s, it is virtually useless. New dedicated API provides much bigger bandwidth and 1s delay, more about it here -> https://www.esoui.com/forums/showthread.php?p=51017

I can check the code if it is disturbing anyone, but from the first glance, it stopped using pings and I need to dig deeper to say more, and this is why I need to know what addon settings I should enable in the game to see 2s pings.

One observation that I have is that the pro-add-on community habitually under-estimates the potential impact of add-ons on game performance (which makes sense, as they are trying to protect their Golden Goose). Map Pings was once ridiculed as completely impossible to degrade performance... and then it was demonstrated to do exactly that. And while history does not necessarily repeat itself - it often rhymes.

So while I can hear well-intentioned assurances as to why LibGroupBroadcast is better than Map Pings... that is not the same thing as telling me that it cannot also degrade performance. The ZOS engineer in that thread literally warned that the framework could potentially lead to performance issues, particularly under stressed server conditions, and admonished folk not to abuse it because if it broke bad the way that Map Pings did then the alternative was to shut it down completely.

And that is entirely apart from the whole scandal over Combat Events and how it is the complete and utter Wild West if you know what to look for.

But backing up and zooming-out, from a simple philosophical perspective, it is simply outrageous that you can even use third-party meta-game apps in an ostensibly competitive multiplayer game. Many of which are exactly the sorts of things that would get you literally banned by anti-cheat mechanisms in other games.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

imPDA wrote: »

Dalinar4 wrote: »

RDK still pings every two seconds.

The thing is - pings can send small amount of data, but you were able to send multiple pings in a short time window, so you were able to send big amount of data. And if you are unable to send many pings, you are unable to deliver enough data, and one ping per 10 seconds if very small amount of data, and 10s delay means it is useless. 2 seconds (according to you) is better, but still, 2s delay and very small amount of data per ping. Even if it is 2s instead of 10s, it is virtually useless. New dedicated API provides much bigger bandwidth and 1s delay, more about it here -> https://www.esoui.com/forums/showthread.php?p=51017

I can check the code if it is disturbing anyone, but from the first glance, it stopped using pings and I need to dig deeper to say more, and this is why I need to know what addon settings I should enable in the game to see 2s pings.

But backing up and zooming-out, from a simple philosophical perspective, it is simply outrageous that you can even use third-party meta-game apps in an ostensibly competitive multiplayer game. Many of which are exactly the sorts of things that would get you literally banned by anti-cheat mechanisms in other games.

Addons have been the standard of the MMO genre for literal decades. ZOS controls the API for addons. Things they deem unfair get removed.

Until ZOS can fix their UI with basic things like moving elements/frames around freely, tracking synergy cooldowns, tracking proc cooldowns, providing numbers for damage shields on the healthbar, and allowing a whitelist for which buffs to track and which buffs to ignore, addons should stay. Those are basic things the game should have but doesn't.

imPDA wrote: »

It is OK to have another opinion, but I would like to correct you, it is not "Golden Goose", it is hard work done in a spare time, and sometimes it takes many hours to bring something really good, it is contribution to ESO community and attempt to make game itself better.

One observation that I have is that the pro-add-on community habitually under-estimates the potential impact of add-ons on game performance

Pro-add-on community do not need to estimate now, everything is monitored and if it will become a problem, it will be shut down, as it was already with things you mentioned. That's it. I will not continue this dispute with you, your position was clear from the first meaningless comment in this thread, and I just answered some delusions in further meaningful discussion.

But backing up and zooming-out, from a simple philosophical perspective, it is simply outrageous that you can even use third-party meta-game apps in an ostensibly competitive multiplayer game.

WOW is more competitive, and it has addons.

Add-on performance definitely is NOT monitored in any sort of comprehensive manner. If that were true then it would not have taken a random community member to come forward about Map Pings; it would have been caught by ZOS or by the authors themselves. The default posture toward add-ons in ESO can be summed-up in the phrase, "Hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil, etc.".

Similarly, there is virtually zero policing as to what Combat Events can be listened for with add-ons. ZOS is NOT carefully curating which to expose and which to block based upon principles such as competitive fairness. They are exposing nearly everything up-front and then shifting the onus to the community to complain about something specific before they even look at an issue. This is completely the reverse of how the situation ought to be. The default policy should be to block and then to shift the responsibility to authors to request, and, more importantly, to justify, inclusive of competitive fairness concerns, specific events to be exposed.

Further, nobody should be particularly interested in what WoW or any other non-ESO MMO does or does not do with respect to add-ons. We play THIS game. And simply because other games adopt a flawed or devil-may-care policy toward competitive balance does not mean that we should seek to emulate that here. It could also be that Blizzard, etc. more carefully scrutinizes what they expose to authors and thus do not have the cheat-engine-adjacent situation that we have in this game.

I completely get that add-on authors, particularly the more upstanding ones on ESOUI, have good intentions. And that's totally okay in PvE where mobs don't complain that you get notifications about their next mechanic 10 seconds before it happens, etc.. But that sort of thing has no place at all in PvP. We are out here trying to play player vs. player not add-on vs. add-on.

Also to clarify, basic UI mods that simply rearrange information found in the vanilla UI are completely fine since all players have access to that from playing the vanilla game, and, importantly, any performance cost is shouldered entirely by the user. But the moment that add-ons begin to incorporate information not found in the vanilla UI and/or begin to cost even a single extra CPU cycle for the already overburdened Cyrodiil server to process, we have gone completely through the proverbial looking-glass.

imPDA wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Many of which are exactly the sorts of things that would get you literally banned by anti-cheat mechanisms in other games.

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Further, nobody should be particularly interested in what WoW or any other non-ESO MMO does or does not do with respect to add-ons. We play THIS game.

I will let myself one last comment: please try to stick with one opinion next time, stop trolling on the forum.

I am beginning to suspect that you are not primarily a PvP player, and, as such, are not particularly invested in the many valid points raised in this thread regarding competitive fairness and performance.

When I can write an add-on that displays, for example, enemy Shalks and Proxy timers, then we are no longer PvP'ing. That is, to ESO PvP, what something like wall hacks are to Counterstrike. This is currently possible and is but one small example as to the clear oversights and undue leniency currently permitted by ZOS to add-on developers.

I would defy anyone to present a compelling argument as to why information on enemy stats, attacks, and states, information that is normally concealed from players or that requires attentive play to recognize via specific tells, also known as using your skill at PvP, should be available to anyone via third-party means. Meanwhile, the case against it makes itself.

Does ZOS know that this sort of functionality is possible? Unlikely. Just as they did not know about the old Miat's warning players of incoming projectile attacks or more recently about the impact of Map Pings and Bandits.

Guess what? I was a victim of Bandits and its overuse/abuse of the Map Pings hack, for lack of a better word. My internet connection is not particularly strong and thus my performance cratered when grouped with Bandits users flooding me with their attempts to share data. That is why I feel quite strongly about this issue. I didn't run Bandits as I choose not run any add-ons. Instead, however, I was subjected to it by others through no fault or opt-in of my own. Why did it take a random user with Wireshark to come forward about that? Why wasn't it caught by one of the parties actually responsible for it? It does not inspire confidence that the oversight over the content or cost of add-ons is particularly robust. That goes triple for add-ons not found on ESOUI. As private add-ons are often private for a reason... to avoid detection and scrutiny (which is basically mens rae that what you are doing is sketchy).

Moreover, wouldn't it be nice to die in PvP and to have confidence that you were actually beaten by the skill of the opponent and not by the add-on suite run by the opponent? Or that, when game performance dips, that it is the fault of the game and only of the game? We can have that future. The vast majority of players who choose either not to use add-ons at all or who use only basic UI add-ons with no data-sharing are not the problem. The problems are enumerated above and would likely only find defenders among those currently using them for, in my opinion, unearned competitive gain.