Patch Notes 28/05/2021

[wargrimnir]

If there is a 'right' ability for the 'right' moment, the onus should be on the player, not a script, to use that ability.

Any sane player at a high level wouldn't put a conditional ability in a NB sequence and hope that it fires off when they want it to. CC is used separately because you need to time it correctly and not waste a cooldown on the wrong target. Tanks using taunt and challenge are either doing it responsively, or on cooldown anyway. Healers typically cleanse on cooldown. Everyone at a high level pretty much keeps detaunt on cooldown as soon as they know they're being focused. What 'right' ability for the 'right' moment are you talking about specifically?

[Sarnai]

If there is a 'right' ability for the 'right' moment, the onus should be on the player, not a script, to use that ability.

Any sane player at a high level wouldn't put a conditional ability in a NB sequence and hope that it fires off when they want it to. CC is used separately because you need to time it correctly and not waste a cooldown on the wrong target. Tanks using taunt and challenge are either doing it responsively, or on cooldown anyway. Healers typically cleanse on cooldown. Everyone at a high level pretty much keeps detaunt on cooldown as soon as they know they're being focused. What 'right' ability for the 'right' moment are you talking about specifically?

Severing/Shattering is what specifically comes to mind. Some interrupts as well. There's a lot of information that's onscreen in the more intense fights, and it should be the player processing and responding accordingly. Having shatter/sever getting thrown into your rotation automatically when the specific ability you're having it check for pops up shouldn't really be a thing.

[xoonerfree]

If there is a 'right' ability for the 'right' moment, the onus should be on the player, not a script, to use that ability.

Any sane player at a high level wouldn't put a conditional ability in a NB sequence and hope that it fires off when they want it to. CC is used separately because you need to time it correctly and not waste a cooldown on the wrong target. Tanks using taunt and challenge are either doing it responsively, or on cooldown anyway. Healers typically cleanse on cooldown. Everyone at a high level pretty much keeps detaunt on cooldown as soon as they know they're being focused. What 'right' ability for the 'right' moment are you talking about specifically?

Agree 100%. NB doesn't cut it for competitive play, i.e.1v1, ranked, 6v6, if you want to play AT YOUR BEST.

However, NB makes everyday play in warbands, roaming with randoms and pug scen relaxing and enjoyable without having to be frenetic about pressing buttons/abilities. NB use is good enough and makes you very effective. NB is about quality-of-life playing causally when you're not 100% heighted awareness.

[sundey]

Spoiler:

Or just stop playing the game. Its nice way to cripple a low pop game

I mean it is not the end of the world. Do I think that it is another bad change? Yes. Is it a dealbreaker for me after investing so much time? No. I wish I had the addon and nothing good comes out of blocking it but you get used to terrible changes and feeling of helplessness after playing on this server for some time. They could have done it better, warned the players months or weeks in advance to allow addon makers to adapt to their change and create a sequencebuilder without conditionals. I do not need it but there were few people with disabilities (who even wrote in this very thread) that relied on it.

What percentage of the population does it need to be a dealbreaker for before it's considered unacceptable? We've done big changes in the past that upset people, but that stuff was usually class related, and people would roll something else. This change not only affects an entire segment of people, but simultaneously demonizes them for using an addon that has been acceptable for the past decade. Is it 5% of your peak population disappearing overnight? 10%? What's the number where you would draw the line and say "Well maybe there were more people than we thought who rely on this to enjoy the game."? Is it 20% of players that just see their game is broken and don't feel like fighting it? There's plenty of other alternatives out there.

For what gain? So you feel a little better when someone makes a good play in PvP and you don't have to worry they kicked your ass with a fairly bad macro system? I notice a lot of people pissing on NB who simultaneously say they've never used it like ignorance is some point of pride they should wear as a badge. It only has the potential to work in the worst possible way people frame it when the stars align and the moon is in full eclipse. You can't truly call a 15 button NB string remotely reliable, it just doesn't work that way. At best you can get 4 or 5 skills in a string before it starts performing badly, and that's without a lot of conditionals.

The strong point is only using it as a cast sequencer in the way you would expect a cast sequencer to work in most games that actually have them, which yes, those games do exist in the MMO industry. You put some of your basic skills on a couple buttons depending on how you would use them at any given time, you put some of your conditional skills on one button if they share the same function. You have to choose when to use them accurately, you have to position correctly, you need group support, you need to know your targets, you need to recognize equipment so you're not fighting someone in full sov when you're in anni. It's not simply use NB and win fights, you're still going to lose a lot of the time. It helps bad players get a little better, and lazy players enjoy a dead old game with too many skills. It helps put all your potions on one button, and your 2 or maybe 3 oh-**** survive buttons on one button. It saves space on the keyboard so you aren't dicking around with shift/ctrl/alt modifiers nearly as often, because you know hitting the windows key or alt-tab is real healthy in the heat of a fight. Real fair right.

Coming from the perspective of a lot of people here talking about skill there sure doesn't seem to be much concern for competition. Isn't Ranked struggling to find matches? Do you not see the connection that some people would have with using NB because they otherwise don't feel competitive enough to perform there? There sure doesn't seem to be a lot of respect for the players who have been here as long as everyone else. You really think alienating your own community is healthy over an addon that's been used for a decade is a good idea? Disabilities are one very legitimate reason to use it, sure. But the horror stories spread by people that don't use it in the first place, about how the evil NB users have some wildly unfair advantage are very stretched.

Most people are a bit lazy, or see NB as a way to fix skills that otherwise suck. The ones that use it for an advantage aren't in the tier of highly competitive players anyway, but they can hang with them for a little bit, which is good if you want competition. Kicking the crutch out from under a player who is trying to perform at a high level is a coin flip whether they step up or find something else to do. Demonizing them in the process make that less of a coin flip, and more a likelihood they simply leave a community they no longer feel like they're a part of or welcome in.

"Acceptable for the past decade" is debatable. AoR ignored blatant cheating for years until it died, so I wouldn't look to them for what's acceptable; several RoR devs/team-members voiced their opposition towards NB and a desire to get rid of it from the start but were limited by client control - nothing to do with 'acceptability'. I acknowledge the point though that its not being disabled/banned would imply that it was considered acceptable, and for a lot of players without background knowledge of the huge controversy around the addon (which goes back to AoR), this might seem like an arbitrary, out-of-the-blue change.

2nd paragraph starts with a nice strawman - I know it's hard for some people to believe, but some of us aren't against NB because we need a scapegoat to rely on when we can't confront how terrible we are at this game (that's obviously just one of my reasons).

I also think you're misrepresenting NB here, both its capabilities and the types of players (and their skill levels) who use it and get the most out of it. But we're probably not going to agree on either, and the latter point in particular can't really be resolved without stats.

I guess it ultimately comes down to each person's views on addons with conditional decision-making capabilities - whether you accept them in principle and, if not, whether you oppose them vehemently enough to consider the risk to population from disabling them worth it. Considering some of the actions (and inactions) taken on RoR, and the general ethos of "there's the door" from certain staff and for much of its time, appealing to population seems to me a little ironic. But in the end, a stance on pvp automation has to be taken and I guess the devs/team have done so.

[wargrimnir]

If there is a 'right' ability for the 'right' moment, the onus should be on the player, not a script, to use that ability.

Any sane player at a high level wouldn't put a conditional ability in a NB sequence and hope that it fires off when they want it to. CC is used separately because you need to time it correctly and not waste a cooldown on the wrong target. Tanks using taunt and challenge are either doing it responsively, or on cooldown anyway. Healers typically cleanse on cooldown. Everyone at a high level pretty much keeps detaunt on cooldown as soon as they know they're being focused. What 'right' ability for the 'right' moment are you talking about specifically?

Severing/Shattering is what specifically comes to mind. Some interrupts as well. There's a lot of information that's onscreen in the more intense fights, and it should be the player processing and responding accordingly. Having shatter/sever getting thrown into your rotation automatically when the specific ability you're having it check for pops up shouldn't really be a thing.

I spoke about this privately earlier. There are a great number of buffs that could be shattered/severed. This is one of those functions that a tank could (probably should) potentially be doing as frequently as possible, particularly since it doesn't fire unless there's something to remove. In high skill play they would be doing this responsively without NB and instead relying on Buffhead to show them high priority buffs as soon as they show up. You would need to add every ability ID of the abilities you specifically want to sever into an NB sequence, and it's simply not that reliable when you load up conditions like that.

[Spellbound]

Those crapping on NB players think they were losing because of it? They will still lose post-NB because those players know a lot more on PvP basics and reading the fight, communicate in discord and other addons. It’s all about using GCD as much as possible and yes small fraction of people went hardcore on conditionals but most I know mostly used it for sequence and have no idea on setting up conditions properly.

Aside from NB, most addons determine how you play your character. Remove Enemy and the world will end and those anti-NB players will then cry because now it affects them. Healers right now HoT players that don’t have a dot next to someone’s name on enemy to be optimal. If someone is heal debuffed you have Enemy show a broken heart icon so you can cleanse.

Tether, if the line turns from green to blue, you determine how to play your character due to the add on and stay in range. Again, add on helping you. Player that uses Enemy and Tether will have an advantage over a player that doesn’t use addons because they’re proud.

If buffhead wasn’t around where you can filter which buffs/debuffs to show, you wouldn’t know when someone has immunities and would randomly try to punt them. Again, addons is helping you so you don’t have to look at the 3 lines of buffs and debuffs on a player.

Don’t think you’re high and mighty cutting down your own population/community when you’re using some sort of addon that helps you determine what to do next such as what button to press or where to move.

NB wasn’t a large advantage because it was free and available for everyone to use, just like Enemy, Buffhead, Tether are “required”. Player chooses not to use a sequencer won’t make them good or bad. The outcome will be worse if you remove Tether, Enemy or Buffhead affecting fights than NB would. Even with NB you gotta determine still what buttons to press and Wargrim pretty much nailed it in the post you still gotta have your conditionals such as punts, KD, HD, snare, etc on separate buttons to be optimal.

All NB removal did was remove the QoL players been used to since they been playing WH. I saw many players login and say in discord they’re logging out because they don’t have hours to fix everything now without giving a heads up warning and they were coming home from work to enjoy the game.

I think it was unhealthy to at least not give a heads up so they can adapt and spend the week to adapt on their own time. Not coming home from work and surprise “your UI broken and gotta rework everything” and find a place to put 22 abilities or go buy a 12 button gaming mouse.

[Harrwin]

So by what Wargrimnir posts here, the devs changed their stance on NB, now its ok to be used... I dnot use it, but i know how it works, and makes extremely sad seeying good pvpers defending an addon with positional checks and sequencers. Yes there are alot of addons that present information but NB takes a decision and even acts for you, its not the same thing. We are playing a pvp game, where doing your correct spell rotation as a bright wizard or sorc its part of playing decently, where using your positional attacks as a melee dps to pump out more damage, or casting an interupt at the right time, or shattering/severing buffs, all this goes away with NB. Where is the player in this? How can you say you are a good pvper when an addon does that for you?(you can easly check alot of this by just watching certain players using it in ranked, shattering/severing buffs automatic, using the right attack at the right moment automatic). Anyways its irrelevant what i say or show, devs have decided.

[zumos2]

I spoke about this privately earlier. There are a great number of buffs that could be shattered/severed. This is one of those functions that a tank could (probably should) potentially be doing as frequently as possible, particularly since it doesn't fire unless there's something to remove. In high skill play they would be doing this responsively without NB and instead relying on Buffhead to show them high priority buffs as soon as they show up.

Literally admitting that NB helps bad players be as effective as skilled players.

You would need to add every ability ID of the abilities you specifically want to sever into an NB sequence, and it's simply not that reliable when you load up conditions like that.

You can just put shatter before your spam skill and it will shatter whenever possible. It is literally always worth doing that over your spam attack on a tank.

[Taxen0]

I don't use NB and never have, I don't need it and want to keep addons to a minimum. But I also don't care if someone else want to use it for whatever reason, i prefer to have more ppl on both sides performing as good as they can.

Besides, while these changes broke the NB addon you could tweak it and still use it in a similar manner if you really wanted. So then the devs would have to start blocking more things from the API and soon addons like buff head and enemy might get affected. So in my opinion it's probably best to revert it, ppl need to be careful what they wish for.

[wargrimnir]

"Acceptable for the past decade" is debatable. AoR ignored blatant cheating for years until it died, so I wouldn't look to them for what's acceptable; several RoR devs/team-members voiced their opposition towards NB and a desire to get rid of it from the start but were limited by client control - nothing to do with 'acceptability'. I acknowledge the point though that its not being disabled/banned would imply that it was considered acceptable, and for a lot of players without background knowledge of the huge controversy around the addon (which goes back to AoR), this might seem like an arbitrary, out-of-the-blue change.

2nd paragraph starts with a nice strawman - I know it's hard for some people to believe, but some of us aren't against NB because we need a scapegoat to rely on when we can't confront how terrible we are at this game (that's obviously just one of my reasons).

I also think you're misrepresenting NB here, both its capabilities and the types of players (and their skill levels) who use it and get the most out of it. But we're probably not going to agree on either, and the latter point in particular can't really be resolved without stats.

I guess it ultimately comes down to each person's views on addons with conditional decision-making capabilities - whether you accept them in principle and, if not, whether you oppose them vehemently enough to consider the risk to population from disabling them worth it. Considering some of the actions (and inactions) taken on RoR, and the general ethos of "there's the door" from certain staff and for much of its time, appealing to population seems to me a little ironic. But in the end, a stance on pvp automation has to be taken and I guess the devs/team have done so.

They certainly did not ignore blatant cheating, along with a whole lot of lesser offenses. Since you mentioned a strawman, that's a pretty big one. There was absolutely an active GM team on live, and they did what they could with a limited staff covering dozens of servers. They weren't properly staffed to support a live service towards the end by any means, but that doesn't mean they simply allowed cheating to happen while turning a blind eye.

It was a bit of a strawman, but it was based largely on the reactions in this thread. There's plenty of reasons to have used NB in the past. The majority of people are casual players who would use it to perform a little better or make some simple rotations to alleviate the stress on their hands. That's not to dismiss that people would certainly use any advantage they can find at a high level. My argument was more that NB doesn't provide the sort of advantages that people commonly attribute to it when it's more likely people already know how to make those decisions themselves.

Using NB for the sort of myths it's portrayed as causes a lot more skills to be burned in situations that you don't necessarily want them to be. You have to keep your conditional reactive abilities outside of NB, it just doesn't manage them well enough. If you're playing with CC/interrupts/detaunts in your (this doesn't exist) one-key-to-rule-them-all NB script, you're not winning anything aside from maybe specific 1v1 matches that specific sequence is tailored for. There's certainly more than enough more impactful conditions outside of pure button pushing skill that impacts fighting in all different formats. Kiting, picking targets, group support, morale drops, pivoting to new targets, clearing tanks or staggering healers, slowing down to regen AP for your next burst rotation. NB doesn't teach you to do any of these things, you can't program this stuff, but you absolutely need it to be successful in organized PvP.

Reading through the past several hundred posts there has been a hostile and aggressive tone towards the players who relied on NB to provide them a pleasant game experience. Ostracizing the limited community en-masse is damaging to the health of the server. Yes, we do make some changes that we tell people to deal with, particularly when it comes to balance. That's part of the MMO experience, classes change over time. Meta shifts. Whether people like it or not is part of the agreement you have here, change keeps the game fresh. This is something a little different. Banning and openly being discriminatory/dismissive towards a large class of players who have been around as long as anyone else is not beneficial, only damaging. There is only one net change in population, and it's negative. You're not changing the duration on a cooldown, or moving CC from one spec to another. You're telling people they're cheaters, scumbags, they deserved it, good riddance, etc. It's disrespectful to players affected both in the response they received for speaking out about it, and for enforcing it in the first place when it's become, despite the flawed arguments, a controversial but otherwise popular addon.

It's a slippery slope as well. There are lots of addons that provide loads of beneficial information that strongly dictate how to play the game. Automation is absolutely present for anyone that uses miraclegrow for apothecary. Swiftassist allows you to press a single button and your entire warband can focus fire on the same target. Buffhead specifically has a list and guide of high impact abilities that it notifies you are present so you can immediately cleanse/sever/shatter/taunt (maybe that's where it's from). Enemy is a far better version of the default UI, and customizable to perfectly fit your aesthetic or information needs, not to mention the ability to track morale pips and AP of other party members. Healgrid allows click casting (I didn't know that worked, but so I've heard).

Addons are designed specifically to enhance your gameplay. They ALL provide some benefit, and the best ones provide significantly more benefit than others. Throwing NB to the curb opens the door to question what other addons should be removed. If it's automation that's a problem, that excludes MiracleGrow. If it's conditionals, Buffhead would be performing at a very high level for providing that information that's otherwise significantly obfuscated by the UI. I've long opposed opening this can of worms because it asks a whole lot of questions about what should be allowed, not to mention attempting to block something only pushes things into the shadows. The benefit that everyone could enjoy, despite being controversial, will now likely only be available to people in specific discords where they're fairly certain no one will leak information. It pushes basic ability sequencing to people that have physical macro keyboards and mice available, which isn't something we can detect anyway. It doesn't remove the problem, it just makes it less obvious and more likely that people will go looking for something shady instead of using a freely available addon that gives them the experience they're looking for.