Shiva.Devastation said:
I didn't want to say anything at first. You seemed to be having a blast creating your addon. I found the Shihei Counter interesting, but don't you find it redundant with "Haste Samba: O" when the animation should be on your screen or the status icon on the top left?
As for the Sambas, your point is fair, and I also wondered that but at the same time I think Inuyushi summed it up perfectly. I think it's the same reason people will use the enhanced visuals for Timers vs the plain layout. People will find different things useful in their own way. I don't play DNC past a subjob and even then I use a mule so I'm often not sub dancer.
I'm actually really glad you're adding this kind of thing in Paulu, and going with that mentality. I think being able to track important buffs in a clear way is invaluable. At the end of the day the ffxi buff/debuff bar is a mess. It's full of ***constantly that we don't care about (like the 9 individual STAT+ buffs in abyssea), and you can find the information you want far faster by looking in a place you know will have exactly the information you want, in exactly the same place, every time.
Speaking of dancer, A finishing move tracker would be a great addition to the default I think! Sadly, despite being able to accumulate some 8/9 finishing moves, the game only has icons for 1-5, which means you might have to do a similar thing to the shadow counter and only count to "5+"
I'm hoping for more feedback once I finally get my initial release out. I imagine the biggest gripe will be narrowing down a "default" layout. "Do you really need to show this? It's too much information and is distracting" vs "Yes please keep that".
I think the main thing here will be ensuring that you have an idiot-proof system for adding/removing abilities from the default, and saving the layout. There will be far fewer complaints about the default, if it's easy for the user to make changes.
I think with an addon like this, where every user will want a slightly different functionality, the default matters less than the ease of customization, and you can minimize most complaints about the default settings by focusing on that! :)
Edit: I think focusing on customization will also reduce your future work/maintenance load. For example, Yes you could create something that tracks Shihei specifically, but then someone is going to ask you to track trump cards next, or echo drops, etc.
So instead, maybe put in the extra work now and create a functionality where users can just add a tracker for any item within their inventory/sack/satchel. Then any user can track any item with a simple //jd Track-Item "Copper Ore" or something.
(And if you're already doing this then ***' Kudos to you mate, I'll just go lock myself back in my box where I belong XD)