LotRO is one of the few big MMORPGs that doesn’t allow user add-ons as part of its design. I’ve never been a fan of this decision. There are a handful of hacks that can change things in the game (maps, namely), but all are workarounds and none are regularly updated.
As some know, you can also apply new skins to change the appearance of the interface. Everything in the interface can be moved around as well. This only really goes so far, unfortunately. None of this ever comes close to matching what add-ons bring to games like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online.
In some ways I’m sure adding them in would be a double edged sword. For all the interest it could bring, it seems likely that developers supporting user customization to this degree would receive an insane amount of help requests and bug reports due to add-ons with which they’re not even involved. Leaving these out would certainly allow the developer to concentrate on things they are responsible for. That alone gives a significant amount of control back to the developer and, I imagine, saves an incalculable amount of time.
On the flip side, I don’t feel that there’s a major benefit for the user due to this approach. I suppose on some level a player can be assured that everyone is set up like they are, that they’re not missing some amazing new thing that everyone else is using. I have to strain to even really call that a “concern”, however.
The fact is that user add-ons can result in some very good things. Some add-ons have eventually led to changes in the game proper. Others have adjusted nagging details that some people could never get past. Others increase the usability of the game. There will always be things the developers don’t get to or simply don’t consider. We all know they only have so much time and money, but user add-ons open things up to a nearly limitless amount of creators.
Frankly, if someone told me there wasn’t something they’d change about LotRO they’d be lying. The game works well because the foundation is sound, but there are many things I’m sure people would like to see. Add-ons that change the display of item icons, that display quests in a different manner, that allow you to more easily find quest goals, that add more details to maps, give coordinates without forcing you to type “;loc” and so forth would all be welcome by various players.
I think a lot of World of Warcraft’s success is due to these add-ons. Even casual players seem to have some installed for various reasons. Maybe they don’t go nuts and completely redesign the basic inferface, but everyone is going to find something that makes their game easier or adds extra details. These things simply result in more fun for the player and, if you don’t care for them, you simply can ignore them. While there are some that can “dumb down” the game, so to speak, there are others that definitely do enhance the game.
Usability is both objective and subjective and sometimes the subjective, personal differences can make all the difference in getting a player to stick around.
I would like to be able to set my own map notes. Otherwise… I’m not seeing a use for addons. I used to be the dev for a WoW addon called RPHelper which was fun, and that type of thing would certainly fit in the somewhat more RP-ish world of LOTRO. Otherwise, many addons address failures of the default UI such as in WAR the various group UIs were horrid and made life rough on healers. Addons fixed that, but why should the default UI be so broken? The flip side of that is the devs could track which UIs are most popular, find out why, and fix their damn game so the UI is no longer necessary.
But as an ex-raider, I find it so refreshing in LOTRO that *no one* has UI addons calling out boss events; we have to pay attention and actually play the game instead of watching tv or reading an article and only looking up to click a button when the addon tells us to. Or DPS meters! I hope I never play another game where DPS metering addons are being used to determine who is “best” and who “sucks.”
I’ll agree on the ;loc thing though. That is an utterly retarded solution and I cannot believe that has gone unaddressed. That’s great they have a /loc which gives the full 3D coordinates for a bug report. But why is *that* one used for /loc? Why isn’t ;loc a hidden variable used for that so players can simply type /loc? Or better yet, keep ;loc as it is so we can tell other players coordinates, and use a new variable *only* for the bug reports. Give us a /loc that prints our coordinates without needing a chat channel!
Quick and obvious fix: Why the HELL doesn’t my icon on the map have a tooltip showing my current location?
Yeah, I agree (obviously lol) about the ;loc thing. These are things that could be addressed very quickly by an add-on community while Turbine worries about the game itself.
I think with faults there are obvious ones like you’ve mentioned for WAR and far more subjective ones too. There are always some people who like this or that changed around for their specific class and I think giving them the ability to do so is usually a good thing.
As for the raiding comments you made, those are definitely things that crossed my mind. Add-ons do potentially create situations where the game becomes more about numbers than the actual enjoyment of playing the game. I definitely do not want to see that happen here. I do genuinely feel the lack of some of that encourages a different style of play that I honestly just enjoy more.
I think Turbine could address that by simply not allowing access to every point of data in the game to add-on creators. Let’s say they do allow location data, map data and so forth… But nothing that actually involves mob or battle data. WoW does allow access to most (if not all) of this information, but that was obviously Blizzard’s intention.
All of that’s in Turbine’s control. I think there could definitely be compromises to keep LotRO accessible to more people and avoid the whole “hardcore” mentality that WoW can have. I think allowing access to some of it would be better than none of it.
We’ll see what they do with it. They’ve mentioned they’re considering allowing some type of addon system but that won’t happen until they come out with their UI 2.0 (or whatever they’re going to call it) system they’re working on at a glacially slow pace.
The underlying UI system in their games was created in ’97, if that gives you a hint! It was first seen in AC2, DDO and LOTRO. I don’t think much was going on back then in the user-created UI addons and scripting department. They’ll have to look at what has happened with WoW and WAR primarily before they decide which datapoints they open up for us.
Fun project: Google up some screenshots of AC2’s UI then tell me where WoW got their base UI design from…
It sure wasn’t EQ, despite most of WoW’s team being EQ raiders.
* AC2, then DDO, then LOTRO* is how that was supposed to read. I’m sure you followed but just wanted to clarify.
I understood
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Yeah, I’ve been waiting for this revamped UI for a while now. I hope it comes within the next year… lol.