LF Chat mod to show UID&char name but no other features

[Pinion]

Is there an addon that changes chat messages to show BOTH User ID & Player Char Name but NOTHING ELSE? I know pChat and others show both names but they also do more than I need and are larger in size as a consequence. My PC is getting old so my main problem is a performance hit with all the addons I use now, and that's WITH using Addon Selector. Thanks in advance for any help/advice.

[Baertram]

pChat is not hitting your performance at all if you do not enable the chat history, which will save the chat messages you have gotten to the SV file.
Just disable all settings you do not need and it works fine with the chat name changed to your needs at guilds, zone, say, group and whisper chat.
There is no need to re invent the wheel if exisitng an working addons are there already.
You shoud not be able to realize that difference in speed by human eye then ;-)

Your performance isuses are most probabyl related to addons that are big in SavedVariables size as they add more loading time to each zone change and reload UI or login But if you do not save much data to the SV, addons are not really noticeable in loading times or performance of the game (except for maybe combat related addons and group UI stuff related addons like buff trackers and attributes trackers etc.).

If you want to speed up things check which of your addons write big SavedVariables (>1mb) and disable those if not needed during normal gameplay.
Addons that store data about your not logged in toons like InventoryInsightFromAshes, CraftStore, MasterMerchant, TamrielTradeCenter and so on are commonly known for big SV files e.g. (over time growing as well in some cases).

[Pinion]

@Baertram thank you for taking time to reply and explain more. There's great information here that I didn't know and will be much more helpful now. Thank you thank you!

I wish I'd asked about it sooner since I have been enabling/disabling addons trying to maintain or improve game performance (with little affect).


Cheers.

[Baertram]

Basically each soruce code will be slowing stuff down as it is extra payload that needs to be read, interpreted, and run.
But most is not noticable for the human eye, in terms of performance. Allthough each extra loaded addo line will be considered in your RAM and thus will make it more full than without any addon ;-)
In the end it will slow down you PC but it should not matter IF the addon is not always reading/writing your disk (which if not is a SSD will be slow) to read and write the txt file for the SavedVariables. This is the time you realize that the stuff is taking longer, as you can count it via "seconds to load".

Addons that do much of comparisons, calculations for dmg/heal etc. also react on events and stuff that happens quite often in the game, like even several times in 1 second. So this might slow your game down too if your CPU is weak or you got a small amount of RAM.

But overall it should be okay to enable addons that do not do any checks for combat or tasks that repeat a lot like group frames (get the new postions of group members, update it, update other ...) or map related stuff (show extra icons, etc.). But even the map stuff should be fine as it normally updates for the area you are currently in or near and only a few times as you move (lorebooks, skyshards, HarvestMap etc.) or they provide settings to e.g. change the size of "area to check for updates around you in m, or similar" which you would be able to decrease a bit to gain performance.

I'd just try the addons if you do not really notice any difference then it's fine. If you get bigegr loading times switch to a non crowded area and test again as it also culd be server related and not addon related! Then check again and count the seconds you need after typing /reloadui to chat edit box and pressing the return key -> until you see the UI again with your chat and HUD.
This time will differ if addons with big SV files are enabled, so you should disable those addons if not needed currently, and only load via Addon Selector e.g. as you need them (before selling items to guilds e.g. enable TTC or MM, but not during normal gameplay).

After some minutes of playtime (20+) you might also get the intention that the game slows down somehow. That could be because of addons but also becasue of default game's lua source code and events. Everything that get's loaded into code wil lstay until you get a loading screen where you change zones or logout or do a /reloadui in chat! So if it get's slow, do a reloadui and some loaded controls will be cleared and not created again until they are needed to be shown etc. So this frees up a bit memory/RAM too.

[Pinion]

@Baertram I've had a chance to look at the areas you suggested. I also tried pChat and it works fine with no noticable hit on performance. I created an addon selector profile with all the same addons except for the two trading addons I use. It actually feels a bit more responsive. The FPS seems about the same but I have noticed the screen doesn't stutter nearly as much as before.

So a big thank you again for all your help and hard work on the addons! My next PC build should really help too, which I hope to have done by end of summer <fingers crossed>.