Originally Posted by LilBudyWizer
This is to prevent DPS meter addons. That being because the best solution to people behaving in a manner we don't like is to force them to not behave that way rather than ignore them.
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No. DPS meters had nothing to do with the chat communication nerf. Perhaps you weren't involved at the time it happened, or you simply haven't been brought up to speed. But guesses like this and misinformation aren't helping anyone's "cause" here.
SendChatMessage, and addon inter-communication in general, was nerf or simply not supported for the following reasons:
1 - Limiting the ease of which users could spam chat. While we can all agree this did nothing to curb illicit spammers, that was indeed one of Zenimax's motivations for disabling SendChatMessage.
2 - Curbing the ability to use said messages, or addon-communication of any kind, to support automation scripting. Sad to say but there was a group of players who posted videos of themselves using a combination of addons and AutoHotKey to automate gameplay during a weekend beta. The addon read the game environment info out of the API and drew tiny colored pixels on screen for AHK to react to, to automate heals, blocks, interrupts, etc.
#2 is quite pathetic for a player to do, but players do it. Nerfing addon communication to thwart #2 doesn't actually solve anything in the long run because you cannot make a game unscriptable... you can only curb the "honest", so to speak. The harder it is to do the less likely the masses will attempt it. Those who are intent on cheating will still find a way.
#2 was also about stopping addon to addon communication, which would have circumvented a lot of the API nerfs they'd put in place. We could have had addons communication between players to cross-feed info like buffs, debuffs, stamina, magicka, cast bars, etc. Or more to the point, addon-to-addon communication opened the doors for things like my War Tools addon which, prior to the nerf, was using Party chat to flag/mark/highlight AvA objective targets in party-member addons so you didn't need to talk, chat or have voice chat to coordinate team siege warfare. (It was actually quite awesome, though short lived).
EDIT: I was also working with another addon author pre-nerf on an "assist target" system that would have helped people focus fire during crowded combat scenarios... we were doing it simply to see if it was feasible. It was, to a limited extent. And had the nerf not occurred I'm sure a nerf would have quickly followed launch to disable it, because it would have become a "must have" for anyone in Cyrodiil.
None of the above had anything to do with DPS meters, which are still relatively useful to that crowd of players.