Guild Wars 2

Plz anet make this a thing

Such as SweetFX or overlays? Already allowed.

What particular ‘add-on’ are you referring to?

It’s highly unlikely to happen since Anet have already said they don’t want to allow it. With the exception of overlays that don’t actually interact with the game.

But if you want to try and persuade them to change their mind it would help if you added more detail. What kind of addons do you think should be allowed? Why would it be beneficial for players to have them? How would you mitigate any unfair advantages they give?

Personally I play 2 MMOs, GW2 and Elder Scrolls Online – which does allow addons – and I really don’t miss them when I’m playing GW2, even the ones I think I’d struggle to play ESO without. Although many of them add things we already have like a mini map and on-screen buff/debuff info.

It would be nice to be able to rearrange the UI, for example moving the event tracker to the left side of the screen or changing where the map closing notification appears (under my inventory if I have it open). But that could be done without addons.

On the one hand, ANet wanted this to be a competitive game, add-ons hurt the competitive scene by giving advantages to one player over another, and by altering the play environment in ways the developers did not intend when creating and balancing the game.

But on the other, the developers utterly failed at making this a competitive game in the first place, to a degree the poor game will never ever recover from. So what harm could add-ons really do at this point?

Lemme guess – you want a ReCount type of party DPS meter, right?

Nusku.3941:

Plz anet make this a thing

Ugh just no

Played WOW and Rift and few others with add-ons, but those 2 just take the cake on it to the point where its rediculous. In Rift, devs even design raid content to be played with add-ons.

Just can’t stand them anymore. To me, any game requiring add-ons and/or macros for optimal game play is a fail by the dev team. Any component or function should be properly programmed in from the ground up, thus not requiring add-ons in the first place.

Sure, allow addons, and then allow macros…then before you know it, it can be like every other MMO where you only have to hit 3 buttons and have an add-on tell you when you need to hit those three buttons

I think a self dps add on would be nice, rather than just using the chat logs.

I’d personally love a “Bio” section in the character screen, for RP purposes, when you inspect another player you could look at it too. I always like to give my characters some story behind, it helps me flesh them out. Specially because playing MMOs is one of the way I have to create future characters for my comics.
I don’t care if it is an add on or the main game allows it though.

coso.9173:

I’d personally love a “Bio” section in the character screen, for RP purposes, when you inspect another player you could look at it too. I always like to give my characters some story behind, it helps me flesh them out. Specially because playing MMOs is one of the way I have to create future characters for my comics.
I don’t care if it is an add on or the main game allows it though.

This is one thing I really miss from Ultima Online.

For anyone who got as far as the word ‘inspect’ and thought of WoW’s system it’s not like that at all. The one in UO allowed you to see an image of the character with no info on stats and a ‘biography’ page which was free text.

Some people would use it to talk about what they like to do in the game and what they’d be interested in grouping up for, or an advert for their guild. Others would make up an actual biography for their character and write it out in first person.

I know a lot of people (myself included) like to come up with extra backstory and personalities for their characters, even if they don’t actually role-play, so this could be a great way to share that.

(Of course there would also have to be an option to report people who abused the free text field to write something inappropriate, but that could easily be added to the existing tool.)

Danikat.8537:

coso.9173:

I’d personally love a “Bio” section in the character screen, for RP purposes, when you inspect another player you could look at it too. I always like to give my characters some story behind, it helps me flesh them out. Specially because playing MMOs is one of the way I have to create future characters for my comics.
I don’t care if it is an add on or the main game allows it though.

This is one thing I really miss from Ultima Online.

For anyone who got as far as the word ‘inspect’ and thought of WoW’s system it’s not like that at all. The one in UO allowed you to see an image of the character with no info on stats and a ‘biography’ page which was free text.

Some people would use it to talk about what they like to do in the game and what they’d be interested in grouping up for, or an advert for their guild. Others would make up an actual biography for their character and write it out in first person.

I know a lot of people (myself included) like to come up with extra backstory and personalities for their characters, even if they don’t actually role-play, so this could be a great way to share that.

(Of course there would also have to be an option to report people who abused the free text field to write something inappropriate, but that could easily be added to the existing tool.)

That’s actually quite a nifty idea. Let’s players be creative and provide useful information if desired without being to toxic (ideally).

Some of it sounds good but you know people would use this to get a dps counter and kick people from teams because their dps is a little less.

I don’t want to be kicked from a party because I chose to use marauder gear and not zerker. The game is about playing how you want and for the dps count at least will be a step in the other direction which the raids already did by making your team take certain roles.

Never mind all the “some players will be jerks” or “mods give gameplay advantage” arguments — I’m not saying these are invalid arguments, I am simply setting them aside for the nonce — I love not having to painstakingly update mods with every patch, not having to deal with LUI errors, everything I ever had to deal with in WoW and do deal with in ESO.

Once mods are allowed and created, they become necessary to improve the game experience. In ESO I am distressed when I don’t have my Wykkyd info bar and my inventory subcategories at the very least. So while I don’t actually play ESO all that much, I still have to keep on top of add on updates for those rare times I do log in to do more than peruse the Crown Store.

I’ve been very pleased all these years with just not having that extra chore in GW2. Are there some UI changes I’d like? Yes. Does ANet add these QoL changes in often enough? Not quite. But it’s still so much more relaxing to just be able to load the game and play it in a few moments that I really don’t want the chore of choosing preferred mods and keeping them current for this game.

“So just choose not to use mods, let the rest of us have options.” A valid comment, except for my above point that once there are mods, they become necessary rather than optional (to me, anyway).

coso.9173:

I’d personally love a “Bio” section in the character screen, for RP purposes, when you inspect another player you could look at it too. I always like to give my characters some story behind, it helps me flesh them out. Specially because playing MMOs is one of the way I have to create future characters for my comics.
I don’t care if it is an add on or the main game allows it though.

I don’t RP, but I think this would be a great addition to the game. Combined with a “custom title” option, I imagine ANet could sell this as an upgrade in the gem shop.

@Coso: imo, this idea is worth a separate thread, since the OP here was about add-ons, and your suggestion doesn’t have to be an “add-on”.

As mention, some add-ons are allowed. I think ANet’s stance is: None that allow some kind of in-game advantage or words to that effect.

Either way, I’d rather not have the required add-ons. Warcraft taught me what a mess that can become.

I am pretty sure ArenaNet designs their game(s) the way it provides all the information (they think) you need. Some customization would be nice, but that wouldn’t be “add-ons” anymore.

Same with APIs for external websites.