Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Personally feel that dps/healing meters are useful tools to have. Toxicity in a game is something that needs to be addressed with the playerbase, IMO... leaving out a useful tool because you're worried someone will be elitist overemphasizes one problem and causes another.
Personally feel that dps/healing meters are useful tools to have. Toxicity in a game is something that needs to be addressed with the playerbase, IMO... leaving out a useful tool because you're worried someone will be elitist overemphasizes one problem and causes another.
Second, this isn't a themepark mmo. Asking for this feature is no different from PVE only players asking for PVE only servers in a game that requires PVP for the world to function properly. Many times they are guided to the games that they should be playing, like FFXIV.
So I'm doing the same. Ashes is not an A-Z raid grinder and never will be.The game is about building up the world and its cities and civilizations. Not going on endless raids one after another. By building up the cities, new dungeons and raids open. Many of us will be doing raids to further our nodes and their features, not looking at some stopwatch like its some sort of horse race.
Again, this not a sandbox feature. It doesn't belong in one. If you've never played a sandbox mmo before and can't understand how the feature doesn't fit, I suggest playing a sandbox mmo before the game launches.
And we know that Ashes will have leaderboards for combat.
So, metrics...though perhaps not meters.
If your allies are still standing at the end of it all, you probably done enough healing.
Anything else is just a dick measuring contest for the competitive types who need to be 'the best'.
The ones that need to look down upon everyone else from their mountain top.
They can stay lonely at the top of the mountain feeling awesome about themselves.
The rest of us will just get on with stuff enjoying the moment together.
What if you need to check the enemy is dead, rather than be told ? Woudlnt that be more exciting and fun and scary ?
Meters are a way to compensate for that lack of info.
Which is why we have health bars.
If we're talking meters rather than metrics, it's really a matter of how many meters.
Therefore I see no reason for meters in the overall game beyond arena competition if that's the only way someone can measure their worth at fighting.
I believe it was Rift where I was a cleric and a young dps guildmate wanted to know why it was so hard for him to kill clerics in PvP. I never stand around an duel. I made an exception with him. After several attempts he still lost. I told him there was a way through skill and abilities he could kill me and to go practice while I was way on vacation. On my return a week later this young fella won our first duel! It was a matter of learning how to use skills not meters.
Health and mana bars are meters, so again, it's a matter of how many meters.
But thats just me
I and others in the community obviously thought it to mean, should one exist as an entity for the community, not our personal individual preferences.
And yes, I totally agree, some people will always be asshats, but it will however be easier for them to be asshats if you give them a hat made from the buttock leather of a giraffe.
The point is that the themepark functions of the game are all based on its sandbox elements. Gages like meters only matter in a case where you are repeating the same dungeon/raid/instance over and over again. Which has no bearing in a game like Ashes if we aren't even all seeing the same raids/dungeons/instances because of our respective nodes opening up different versions.
What is the point of measuring your raid clear time against others who aren't even going to see the same raid that *your* node opened?
I'll also ask this, do you want to be involved with a node that as "leets" who kick people out of siege defensive groups because said person doesn't do enough dps? What if that person focused on being a pure healer? Or going for a pure cc role, stunlocking enemy players to keep a siege attempt in chaos? The last thing I want is to be around a bunch of themepark minded players who are more focused on clearing raids instead of helping to develop and protect the local node.
I'll say it again, meters like these do nothing but force people (who may be specialists in their own right) into playing a certain way. I'm not saying that people shouldn't get good. I am saying that themepark efficiency mindsets have no place in a game with sandbox elements - because the game focus is different, therefore the same efficiency mindsets of a themepark is not the same as efficiency in a sandbox mmo. Especially one with RTS elements.
Ashes has aspects of both Themepark and Sandbox.
I like to see how well I've done regardless of whether I'm going to repeat the same dungeon/raid/instance. Really has nothing to do with repeating the same content.
I don't particularly care about clear time. Those aren't the only metrics.
I don't group with leets. I group with people I have fun grouping with.
And, since I'm a casual player, that means grouping with people who don't care about efficiency - but not caring about efficiency doesn't mean there is 0 interest in comparing encounter contributions with other player characters and measuring our own performances to help us improve in areas where we hope to improve.
Ashes is a themebox, so you should probably expect to encounter themepark-minded players as well as sandbox-minded players.
For certain, some players will be more focused on clearing raids than protecting the local node. Regardless of metrics or meters.
You can say things as many times as you wish.
Doesn't what you say true.
People force people into playing a certain way. That will also happen regardless of metrics or meters.
Again, Ashes is a themebox.
So, you should expect the playerbase to have themepark mindsets as well as sandbox mindsets - and features and mechanics that support both.
The focus of the game may different from traditional MMORPGs. Efficiency may even be significantly different.
In Ashes, there will still be players who are interested in gauging their performance. Because the desire to gauge performance via metrics isn't all about efficiency.
Example:
I see a bear, I decide to (perhaps foolishly) take it on, and sling a spell at it. I barely see it being affected, it just shrugs it off and goes straight for me. Okay, perhaps I am ill-equipped to take on this bear. I will come back later.
In real life, we have many, many signs of how we are affecting targets of attack.
Signs that are too complex to display with out current level of tech - which is why we still rely on health bars.
The whole idea of quantifying things in games is born from tabletop games like D&D where things were necessarily simplified so the games can be played with basic mental calculations.
Even with the enormous computational power available today, these legacy notions have been carried forward without question. Just because RPGs have always done it like this, is no reason for Ashes to follow suit. Quite the opposite in my opinion.
In real life, a wide variety of signs - but it's all signs and signals.
That is the only way for the brain to comprehend anything.
Doesn't really matter what 25% health or 50% health means in real life.
What matter is that, in the game, it gives enough information to help people devise and adapt strategies during combat. Both in terms of self-preservation and in terms of which opponents are most vulnerable.
Signs don't necessarily have to be displayed in terms of numbers.
Doom and several modern games also show the damage received from foes and imminent death with visuals like accumulating blood spatter on the edges of the screen.
But, even in real life, it's easy to ignore signs of poor health when there is no pain.
Which is why it's helpful for games to also have a meter which displays percentage in the form of a health bar - and that's even better when it's accompanied by a pulsing controller that mimics a heartbeat to warn of imminent death.
Humans are extremely visual and, in a game that lacks other senses -especially pain and tactile fatigue- meters are currently the best way to provide the necessary info.
Especially with the current tech.
As tech improves, we will be able to share the necessary info via more realistic tells.
(Same is true for the necessity of nameplates to distinguish individual characters.)
This Poll was ALWAYS about whether or not you wanted to be able to track your own progress. I re-worded it because people fail at reading-- they assumed I was asking if they wanted to deal with people using those numbers against them.