TBC UI Changes

[Cairenn]

Okay, since the changes are rather sweeping, here's a place to discuss. As always, the rules of the site apply. Keep it civil folks.

No hysteria. No freaking out. Thoughtful rational discussion. Read the changes. Take time to understand them. And realize that it still isn't live, Blizz is no doubt still working away. There are probably more details yet to come.

/edit - An excellent read about the changes.

[JoshBorke]

holy snikies batman!

let me be the first one to say i'm intrigued by these new changes. it'll take a while to properly parse all this information. perhaps someone far wiser than I would like to give a rough overview of the implications of these changes?

[endx7]

I'm not -happy- that the changes were made, but everything that we need to do that isn't bot-like to should still be doable.

[mikk]

Well.. I can see how they want automatic targetting and spell casting gone from combat... But couldn't they allow it OUT of combat?

Manual buffing and all that is only mind-bogglingly boring and has very little to do with what boss you'll manage to kill :-P

[endx7]

hmm, I wonder if whispercast is still doable. (I'm doubtful)

Although, the only reason I really have it is to find a name in a group of 40 people. With 25 person maximum raid instances, this shouldn't be as much of an issue.

[Cirk]

These changes will kill quite a few addons (including my own Blessings, Autorank, and Fastcast) that make life bearable for a lot of players. I personally disagree very much with Blizzards stated "do it all by hand, sans addons" direction, since quite fundamentally it negatively impacts the majority of Blizzard's player base, while only temporarily (if at all) reducing botting.

But then this is an old argument with Blizzard in regards to WoW, and they've never listened before

-- Very unhappy Cirk

[Tuller]

I'm glad they've finally broken Decursive, it was too close to the line of being a bot. Click casting, in that using a mouse button to cast a spell on a specific unit, should still work.

It looks like I'm going to have to put in quite a bit of work into Bongos. Mainly, I wonder how I'm going to deal with any non-standard stance switching: prowl, moonkin, ranged, and enemy/friendly bars.

[Corrodias]

Click casting, in that using a mouse button to cast a spell on a specific unit, should still work.

I don't see how you arrive at the conclusion that, while we're not allowed any more to click on a frame to cast a spell to remove debuffs, we'll still be allowed to click on a frame to cast a spell to heal. Click-casting will die with the rest of them, no?

But then there's this, which just confuses me as to what they want to do: " Just to clarify, AddOns and macros will still be able to cast spells (with user interaction of course), they just won't be able to use logic to intelligently pick spells or targets. "

[JIM the Inventor]

Originally Posted by Tuller I'm glad they've finally broken Decursive, it was too close to the line of being a bot.

I don't get this sentiment. I use Decursive as a druid. It seems invaluable in raids. Human beings being what they are - and I'm talking about the folk in front of the computer screens, not in them - our lives are greatly enhanced by these tools.

I can't take down a 10-man, 20-man, or 40-man target solo - can you? They just do way too much damage. They also never make a mistake within the bounds of their programmed behavior. Now I'm rambling a bit here, but what I've trying to say is, without some automation, these monstrosities just cream my group. Delay on my side means someone dies.

You might say that I should learn to play faster, or better. I say that's not a gamer-friendly attitude.

Like Cirk, I may have to throw in the towel on this business.
I make AddOns to enhance my play style, not replace it, and not so I can fight through digital lockdown.

~*~*~

I think I may have to apologize to Cairenn here for coming into this thread uneducated as to exactly what slouken means. I saw Cairenn's copy of his statement, and his statements up to the end of page 1 of a 20 page thread. I would have read more, but that's an awful lot of pages to go through.

[Miles]

Can someone with an US account (I'm EU: Can't post there ) try to comfirm this?

Spellcasting Events
These events are obsolete:
SPELLCAST_START
SPELLCAST_STOP
SPELLCAST_FAILED
SPELLCAST_INTERRUPTED
SPELLCAST_DELAYED
SPELLCAST_CHANNEL_START
SPELLCAST_CHANNEL_UPDATE
SPELLCAST_CHANNEL_STOP
There are a number of new events:
UNIT_SPELLCAST_SENT, "player", spell, rank, target
UNIT_SPELLCAST_START, unit
UNIT_SPELLCAST_STOP, unit
UNIT_SPELLCAST_FAILED, unit
UNIT_SPELLCAST_INTERRUPTED, unit
UNIT_SPELLCAST_DELAYED, unit
UNIT_SPELLCAST_SUCCEEDED, "player", spell, rank
UNIT_SPELLCAST_CHANNEL_START, unit
UNIT_SPELLCAST_CHANNEL_UPDATE, unit
UNIT_SPELLCAST_CHANNEL_STOP, unit
There are also two new functions:
spell, rank, displayName, icon, startTime, endTime = UnitCastingInfo(unit)
spell, rank, displayName, icon, startTime, endTime = UnitChannelInfo(unit)

Note that SPELLCAST_START is split into UNIT_SPELLCAST_SENT and UNIT_SPELLCAST_START.

This could mean that when you send a spell to the server, it replies with when it's done (get it with UnitCastingInfo("player")). So if you have a 300 ms roundtrip and the clocks are synced, you will only lose 150 ms at the start, endTime will be spell duration + 150 ms, and the client allows you to start another cast after endTime.

Integrated FastCast? It's too good to be true.

[tntrkdrvr]

No more decursive or benecast???

[99ta316]

The problem with many of the functions they are breaking, it allowed unattenant boting, and cleansing way too easy in PvP. It was never intended for someone to stand back and just click a big flashing button in the middle of their screen to cleanse the whole raid. So the people you should be complaining to, are well yourselves if you used this addons/mods. For expoliting this code that blizzard allowed you to use as a cructh. Its their game. People have complained about boting since day 1. People have complained about macros to cleanse people randomly in the raid during PvP. So now they break that, since these functions were actually game breaking to those that wanted to have fun, not the most macros/addons. Now since everyone had to exploit this to the fullest in BoTing and PvP, this will break current PvE encounters for a lot of people.

/flame on because I will not be checking this thread anymore.

[Tuller]

Originally Posted by Corrodias I don't see how you arrive at the conclusion that, while we're not allowed any more to click on a frame to cast a spell to remove debuffs, we'll still be allowed to click on a frame to cast a spell to heal. Click-casting will die with the rest of them, no?

Slouken posted about the matter:

You can easily bind specific spells to modified buttons, but you can't have the addon intelligently pick the rank of the spell. For example, you can set up a row of frames representing the folks you want to heal, and then bind "medium heal" to click, and then "big heal" to shift-click, or right click. Or you could have a column of info frames showing raid member status, and then have a menu of cleanse/heal type spells that pop up when you click on them, etc. etc.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...01595&pageNo=9

I don't get this sentiment. I use Decursive as a druid. It seems invaluable in raids. Human beings being what they are - and I'm talking about the folk in front of the computer screens, not in them - our lives are greatly enhanced by these tools.

My logic here is that I play the game to play the game. I feel that decursive, by taking me out of the process of selecting a target and casting a spell, would remove me too much from actively playing the game.

The general complaint is that its far too tedious to remove curses/magic/poisons. I feel that the best approach to solving the matter is not to automate the process, but to alter the design of specific encounters that rely too much on a group simply decursing.

[wmrojer]

I can understand why they make these changes, but I don't agree with them for that reason.

By makeing these changes they make the game more evenly difficult for everyone. If they would have to take into account the best automation addons when setting the difficulty for the new content for TBC, it would be to difficult for those that do not use those addons.

But on the other hand, alot of the tasks that you have to perform is very simple, repetative and far from fun to perform. And isn't that what it's all about, being fun to play. So it's a balance.

I'm afraid that we will be seeing the same evolvment in WoW as was the case back in EQ with MacroQuest if they limit the api to much. Makeing an even bigger difference between those that automate and those that don't. At least as long as addons are use to automate the chars can't be moved around, preventing fully automated bots. But if someone develops MacroWoW that will change, makeing everything possible to automate. Detection of enemies, movement, accurate pet control, makeing it possible to play 6 instances of wow on one computer with perfect syncronization of all the characters in a group for fully automatic instance farming..... I guess you get the picture.

And don't tell me it's not possible, because i've seen it in live action in EQ, and WoW is develped with more controll left to the client side and less validation on the server side.

[gorgeth]

Originally Posted by Tuller Slouken posted about the matter: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...01595&pageNo=9 My logic here is that I play the game to play the game. I feel that decursive, by taking me out of the process of selecting a target and casting a spell, would remove me too much from actively playing the game. The general complaint is that its far too tedious to remove curses/magic/poisons. I feel that the best approach to solving the matter is not to automate the process, but to alter the design of specific encounters that rely too much on a group simply decursing.

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.

[Beladona]

If you read all of the blue posts on this matter you would know that one of the driving factors in the decision to remove decursive like automation, was to allow designers the freedom to design encounters based on BASE ui capabilities. Many of the encounters that you are used to now are based on the fact that people DO use decursive type addons, which meant that encounters needed to be hard enough that people with decursive weren't overpowering to the encounter. Obviously this created a self-propagated issue, as making encounters harder only drove more people to use devursive to keep up.

With this change I would suggest and be willing to bet that encounters will begin being easier, and existing difficult encounters will get scaled back to suit this change. Trust me when I say that Blizz DOES have people who test these encounters, and being able to scale them to the level of player skill is IMPORTANT in their design decisions.

This change merely means that people can play the game, and do well at it based on thier OWN skill, not the skill of an addon that does it for them. That was one of my biggest problem with decursive, in that it made people STUPID when it comes to debuffing / cleansing. When I hear someone say "I don't know what to cast to get rid of that curse, and I haven't loaded decursive yet since I got this new computer" I am forced to ask "What the heck are you doing in my raid?". Let's face it, I would rather have someone that can play the game unassisted by addons (regardless if they actually use any) than someone who needs them to be able to do their job.

The point of addons are to enhance your experience in World of Warcraft. Not to give you an advantage over another player who doesn't have the same addon. I know this is not purely black and white, and there will still be addons that give some players a slight edge, but the point of this change is that those addons will now be presenting YOU with the information you need to PLAY THE GAME YOURSELF. It will be up to you to actually take the next step from information to actual performance...

[Goatus]

Originally Posted by Corrodias I don't see how you arrive at the conclusion that, while we're not allowed any more to click on a frame to cast a spell to remove debuffs, we'll still be allowed to click on a frame to cast a spell to heal. Click-casting will die with the rest of them, no? But then there's this, which just confuses me as to what they want to do: " Just to clarify, AddOns and macros will still be able to cast spells (with user interaction of course), they just won't be able to use logic to intelligently pick spells or targets. "

From my understanding it means that while addons can still do spellcasting / target changing and stuff like that, they can'not change their functionality based on info they get from diffrent sources. Which means they can't chose what spell / spell rank cast or what target cast it on.

So you can still have click-on_frame-cast functionality but it must be set in stone (exact ranks/spells/targets) for the duration of whole combat.

[limdul]

Originally Posted by Corrodias I don't see how you arrive at the conclusion that, while we're not allowed any more to click on a frame to cast a spell to remove debuffs, we'll still be allowed to click on a frame to cast a spell to heal. Click-casting will die with the rest of them, no? But then there's this, which just confuses me as to what they want to do: " Just to clarify, AddOns and macros will still be able to cast spells (with user interaction of course), they just won't be able to use logic to intelligently pick spells or targets. "

click casting should still work since

Originally Posted by Slouken You no longer have to target a unit to cast a spell on it, if you have the spell pre-loaded into your buttons. For example, you can have your teammates arranged in a pleasing array, and when they get sheeped they can start glowing or flashing ... or just bleat... and then you can either click on them to dispel them or pop up a menu with the dispel action on it, depending on how you have things set up. ... while you're still targeting the flag carrier all along. The key point is that the UI won't automatically have the right spell ready, you'll have to plan your tactics in advance.

so you should be able to bind a button to remove magic on party member 2 and a nother button to party member 3, you just can't have the button select which party member to cast on or which despell spell to use. So you'll have to set up a button / mouse combo for each type of despell spell you have on each party member

[Benea]

I don't have an issue with them removing decursive. I always felt uncomfortable using it, it was too close to botting (in my opinion). I love raiding, and it's why I play this game.

Losing the emergency monitor (I use Squishy) will impact my enjoyment of the game, unless some alternative form is put in. I asked myself if I want to go back to staring at 40 healthbars (25 in TBC), and I can't see myself doing it--I can see the healer burnout looming at this point, if I have to take a step back.

If any of you have used Squishy it doesn't work like CTRA's EM. It mainly just sticks the hurt people into one box together--it doesn't sort it according to health at all--it does give you information on who is actively being hit however and who is receiving a heal from another healer. I don't use clickcasting, so I choose who to heal by clicking, and I choose the spell (and the rank) to cast. My spells are all casted by keybinds. What in my actions here is considered "automated" by Blizzard is my question. I have no macros except my tell macros for whispercast (which I believe won't work either, yay for manual buffing, not) for my buffs.

Slouken's post (see the quote above) makes me imagine 25 people, and to heal them, I mouse over the name, right click, pick a spell from a menu, left click. Choose the next person, right click, pick a spell from a menu, left click. This is SWG style UI. I absolutely hated this system.

Overall, from reading posts, I'm pretty disappointed at the direction the game is going. I'm hoping the positive additions (are there any?) will alleviate the immense tedium and increased button pushes and mouse clicks that radial and drop down menus will introduce. I'm definitely going to take a close look at the PTR when the UI changes go there, and decide whether I still want to support this game with my time and money.

[gorgeth]

Originally Posted by Beladona If you read all of the blue posts on this matter you would know that one of the driving factors in the decision to remove decursive like automation, was to allow designers the freedom to design encounters based on BASE ui capabilities. Many of the encounters that you are used to now are based on the fact that people DO use decursive type addons, which meant that encounters needed to be hard enough that people with decursive weren't overpowering to the encounter. Obviously this created a self-propagated issue, as making encounters harder only drove more people to use devursive to keep up. With this change I would suggest and be willing to bet that encounters will begin being easier, and existing difficult encounters will get scaled back to suit this change. Trust me when I say that Blizz DOES have people who test these encounters, and being able to scale them to the level of player skill is IMPORTANT in their design decisions. This change merely means that people can play the game, and do well at it based on thier OWN skill, not the skill of an addon that does it for them. That was one of my biggest problem with decursive, in that it made people STUPID when it comes to debuffing / cleansing. When I hear someone say "I don't know what to cast to get rid of that curse, and I haven't loaded decursive yet since I got this new computer" I am forced to ask "What the heck are you doing in my raid?". Let's face it, I would rather have someone that can play the game unassisted by addons (regardless if they actually use any) than someone who needs them to be able to do their job. The point of addons are to enhance your experience in World of Warcraft. Not to give you an advantage over another player who doesn't have the same addon. I know this is not purely black and white, and there will still be addons that give some players a slight edge, but the point of this change is that those addons will now be presenting YOU with the information you need to PLAY THE GAME YOURSELF. It will be up to you to actually take the next step from information to actual performance...

Lucifron and geddon where designed before decursive.. they are the impetus for decursive's creation.. nice try to justify however.. now lets move on to reality?

Fact: wow players as a general rule suck.. they can barely tie their own shoes, can't unzip a file to save their own lives, and yet we are expected to rely on them to manually heal/remove debuffs..

Debuffs which you cannot even warn the healers exist if you follow the logical conclusions of this retarded set of "lets piss off the mod authors/users" drivel by slouken

You like how your current unit frame changes in combat to show debuffs? too bad you are **** out of luck, thats illegal under this system.. you like SCT? too bad its gone as well.. click casting your cup of tea? fat chance since you cant hook the default frames for it without making an insecure mod.. and 3rd party frames are removed by this set of changes (along with 3rd party action bar utility)

And yet we have mod authors rolling over and defending this crap, knowing full well that this decision is completely retarded and will be rolled back to something more "socially acceptable" ala SOE

Announce youa re breaking all mods, then give them back 1 thing and they will think you are their best friends..

Frankly the response to these changes from unitbar/actionbar/healing mod authors has been pathetic at its best, and downright ludicrous at its worst... (ala tueller post above defending it.. from the POV of a non casting class.. we shall see how he likes not being able to change action bars , have updated unit frames, etc and .. basically how much everyone will enjoy dying for no good reason on content that has been largely beaten to a pulp for 2 years now)