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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.
The burden of statistics
Hi all,
Following on from some comments and discussions within other threads, I thought it was appropriate to create a separate thread to discuss this in more depth. Before going any further, let me suggest an argument that you can either agree or disagree with:
"Statistics around in-game performance (such as damage meters) limit player autonomy and create a predictable style of game play where certain spells, gear choices, character builds etc. are considered inefficient or ineffective.
This contrasts with un-analysable game play which empowers people to play to their tastes, unique encounters, and most importantly, not to a meta. This, therefore, offers a more satisfying gaming experience for the majority of people."
Some background behind this conversation:
One discussion centred of the idea that balancing the combat effectiveness and applicability of all 64 class combinations will be hard to balance and there is a sense of inevitability that there will be standard "best in role" classes that are mandatory for competitive game play, and by virtue of this there will be ineffective builds and combinations that will be shunned by players and guilds who want to be at the forefront of gaming progression.
Another conversation focused on the qualities of good combat in a game and how combat can continually feel rewarding and interesting. One point made was that good combat needs to have an element of unpredictability and flexibility. For example, classes/bosses/NPCs might have different resistances to various schools of magic and this information would not be made available. Therefore, only through experimentation of different spells/abilities could one eventually find spells that are effective (and uniquely so to that situation). This idea contrasted with another sentiment which suggested that understanding rotations and sequences of abilities was important to create a 'counter-play' dynamic in which one player executes a series of manoeuvres more successfully than someone else. The question here is whether that predictability ultimately dulls the gaming experience.
I think this is a very interesting conversation to continue. Some follow up questions you might like to consider:
Do we run the risk of making games linear and predictable when we over-apply statistical analyses to them?
Is all of this performance data necessary?
How would the gaming experience feel if DPS and other statistics were in fact a mystery?
How important is mystery and unidentifiable risk in your experience?
Would that eliminate some level of gratification that people thrive off of?
Would it empower different playstyles based on factors often not thought of in gameplay analyses, such as personality?
Following on from some comments and discussions within other threads, I thought it was appropriate to create a separate thread to discuss this in more depth. Before going any further, let me suggest an argument that you can either agree or disagree with:
"Statistics around in-game performance (such as damage meters) limit player autonomy and create a predictable style of game play where certain spells, gear choices, character builds etc. are considered inefficient or ineffective.
This contrasts with un-analysable game play which empowers people to play to their tastes, unique encounters, and most importantly, not to a meta. This, therefore, offers a more satisfying gaming experience for the majority of people."
Some background behind this conversation:
One discussion centred of the idea that balancing the combat effectiveness and applicability of all 64 class combinations will be hard to balance and there is a sense of inevitability that there will be standard "best in role" classes that are mandatory for competitive game play, and by virtue of this there will be ineffective builds and combinations that will be shunned by players and guilds who want to be at the forefront of gaming progression.
Another conversation focused on the qualities of good combat in a game and how combat can continually feel rewarding and interesting. One point made was that good combat needs to have an element of unpredictability and flexibility. For example, classes/bosses/NPCs might have different resistances to various schools of magic and this information would not be made available. Therefore, only through experimentation of different spells/abilities could one eventually find spells that are effective (and uniquely so to that situation). This idea contrasted with another sentiment which suggested that understanding rotations and sequences of abilities was important to create a 'counter-play' dynamic in which one player executes a series of manoeuvres more successfully than someone else. The question here is whether that predictability ultimately dulls the gaming experience.
I think this is a very interesting conversation to continue. Some follow up questions you might like to consider:
Do we run the risk of making games linear and predictable when we over-apply statistical analyses to them?
Is all of this performance data necessary?
How would the gaming experience feel if DPS and other statistics were in fact a mystery?
How important is mystery and unidentifiable risk in your experience?
Would that eliminate some level of gratification that people thrive off of?
Would it empower different playstyles based on factors often not thought of in gameplay analyses, such as personality?
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Comments
I'm not saying I'd like to see them implemented - but parsers are tools, they don't change people.
People that are dicks with them are still dicks without them.
That's why they probably shouldn't be given the tools to be bigger dicks than they usually are
If the other player is right, they can use the tool against the dick.
So how can the player use the tool against the dick?
You prove the dick wrong.
First of all, you make sure you are as effective at your chosen class as you can possibly be. The only real way to do this is to use a parser. Then you wait for a more public setting (monster coin attack or similar), and you parse higher than the dick and post it in public chat.
There is something I don't understand about the argument against them. Parsers ONLY provide accurate information. That is literally all they do. Arguing against parsers at all - to me - is akin to arguing against knowing the truth.
I understand some people want to take the blue pill and live in ignorance, but many people want to take the red pill and know the truth.
While I don't at all understand why people would want to live in ignorance, I'm obviously aware that some people do. As such, I am aware that a compromise needs to be conceded.
I'm not saying Intrepid should simply make parsers a thing in AoC, I'm just saying that we - as players that took the red pill - should have the ability to collect data on what we do.
If being in the raid group is really that important to you, play a support class.
In all seriousness, it's all about the human nature. Most raid leaders are going to want the best classes for every raid, especially during the early days of the game/raid, when nothing is on a real farm schedule.
Can you find one that doesn't care about a 1% difference? Sure. But how much time do you have to waste with that? I bet they are extremely rare. Again - human nature.
This is the issue. When you know the class is DESIGNED to be 1% below others it will segregate people. You could be the best player in the game. When you meet the best player of another class, you're going to be 1% below him in damage. If the raid leader wants the best damage dealers he's either going to ask you to respec (provided you are in a guild with him and such) or simply kick you out. In either case, your experience as the class DESIGNED to do 1% less damage, is going to suck hard.
I've played WoW for 4 years, starting in the early times of The Burning Crusade. As you probably know, it had parsers. I was a guild and raid leader and main tank (warrior) for two of those years, on a shitty realm and managed to do quite a bit with what we could scrape in terms of player quality and such. After that, I became a "common" player, transferred to the Neptulon realm and entered a raiding guild. Let me tell how it went - and this is considering my raid/guild leader was a really nice and mature guy (which very many weren't): they had an "A team" with the best geared people that first tried the raids and such. At first I was in the "B team" as an off-tank and dual-wielding DPS warrior. The reason why I was taken to those raids was because I could OFF-TANK. DPS warrior was usually in the middle of the charts (below hunters, mages and warlocks). Time passed, I became more appreciated for my skills and such, made it to the "A team". Still, I would bring my warrior only when off-tanking was needed - otherwise I'd bring my mage! Even then, affliction warlocks were usually in the top of the charts - and the reason why my mage was needed was because it could DECURSE.
Sorry for the long rant. It's just a piece of my gaming history... which I do not want to repeat itself. In other words, maybe I could've LOVED to play my DPS warrior all the time and not be forced to bring my mage just because it did more damage (and even then it was questionable - because I was another decurser).
How did that change my feelings and experience overall? I quit WoW. And I was a hardcore raider. I wasn't burnt out either (because after quitting raiding and such, I did play a bit longer just for fun, but it wasn't the same). Of course, other things mattered - like how they watered down the difficulty overall, but this wasn't my main reason at all.
Now, take all of this and apply it to a completely new game, with unknown mechanics, with guilds wanting to do server firsts and such AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, with SOLO (i.e. not belonging to a guild) players having a place in the world!
Do you realize how hard it's going to be for any class DESIGNED to have 1% less damage to be invited in a dungeon/raid group?
This isn't ignorance but a way for everyone to enjoy the damn game.
PS: I am glad Steven is going for this path and hope he'll never change it.
Even then, if each class combination is able to use some form of CC and such (and there's no reason NOT to, especially due to the leveling aspect), it would still come down to DPS DPS DPS
In games like WoW (or any MMO with little to no interaction between classes in combat), most players have negative views of parsers. The more they run pickup or casual groups and raids in such games, the more negative their views.
The main reason for this is because games like WoW allowed for parsers to be misused. With no interaction between classes in combat, the numbers a parser spits out basically function as a usefulness ranking.
In games with actual interaction between classes though (something AoC will potentially have more than any other MMO), the numbers a parser spits out can not be used in the same way. At least not by anyone wanting to be successful.
DPS and HPS are literally only measures of damage and healing. Since that is not all any class will bring to a group or a raid, it can't be a measure of how useful that class is.
It can be used to compare what a player does with different buffs, or how different gear effects them over a long encounter, but by itself it can't be used to tell you what classes you should bring with you.
It can be used to tell you if a *player* is not performing as well as they should (though only really if you have a baseline of the same class, same gear and same buffs), but it can't tell you that a class isn't worth taking.
I mean, sure, people will misuse it and do exactly that - but those people will fail miserably on raids as they are not looking at the full picture.
In all honesty, someone saying "your class doesn't parse well enough" in a game where classes interact with each other is a big red flashing light that you have come across an inexperienced raid leader whom is about to lead a raid into a messy failure.
That I can agree with. It basically means you should find a better guild to properly enjoy the game.
Now, let's consider the best case scenario - every player knows how to interact with other classes and knows how to play the game, use abilities etc. It all comes down to how unique the class is designed to be in terms of participating in a fight. Can ONLY class X interact with class Y in order to get that awesome effect/buff/whatever, or there's also another class, Z, that can provide the same interaction?
Without uniqueness it will still come down to parsers equaling damage done, but in a more limited manner (in the example above - they are going to compare classes X and Z). I do not have any information on this aspect of the game, so the only thing I can do is discuss both possibilities.
If we don't have uniqueness, the issue that parsers bring will not be solved.
If we do have uniqueness, it brings other problems along. For example: what does missing that class from your raid group mean? how is the spread of classes to be dealt with (i.e. what if half the people on the server play one class and the others are not really equally distributed)?
In other words, how critical is a class going to be to a raid/dungeon composition and how can you mitigate the fact when too many/few players actually play that class?
Also, if class X versus class Z interact with class Y only with 50% efficiency/damage/success/whatever, it doesn't mean classes X and Z are unique. They are the same in that aspect, but any parser is going to clearly favor the one with a higher efficiency/whatever.
PS: by class I meant a combination of primary/secondary.
That is absolutely one interaction, but in many cases it can be far more effective - and complicated - than that.
Class' X and Y may have an effect that they can bring when together in a group, but that class Z can also provide with either X or Y. However, it is reasonable to assume that when X, Y and Z are all together, that effect can be even stronger. It may also be that class X has different things they can bring that work well with classes Q, R, S, T, U, V and W, and neither Y nor Z bring anything comparable (though between them they have interactions with classes A through to M that X doesn't have).
Now, it could be that some of these interactions are DPS based, but they could also be healing based, could improve the CC ability of a utility class, or could even be a buff for a tank. Some of them could be unique things that you need class X for, some may have multiple classes that can be used, and some may get more powerful the more different classes the raid has that can add to the specific ability.
When you take all of that in, and also factor in that classes A - Z, back to AA and all the way up to BL (64) have different interactions with different classes, some of which can show on the parse on either character, on both characters or even be something that can't be parsed, you start to realize how futile it is to use a parser in a complex game like AoC to decide what class is best.
I want to address something that I think other posts have not yet made comment on:
Within classes, there will be play styles and spells that are either more or less impactful in any given context. How important is it that players know exactly when spells should or should not be used, and how much of an impact do you think this would have on the player?
Example: I really love lightning-based magic and want to really focus my combat experience around these spells. However, a mix of frost and fire magic enables higher damage output. Therefore, many of my spells from other schools of magic are not considered valuable. I therefore don't get to play as I wish, but rather as the meta dictates.
I suppose, the first response I anticipate is that this is a reductive example because dps (as has already been acknowledged) is only one way of measuring the impact of a class (it's also the most easily quantifiable). My example doesn't consider buffs, debuffs, mobility, damage avoidance and so on.
Is it therefore essential that IS ensure they create enough 'effects' that it is impossible to boil a class down to quantifiable metrics?
Choice is a thing, but the game need not (can not) cater to every choice.
If a player wishes to only use lightning spells, their is their call. If that makes them underpowered in comparison to a player that is happy to use any magic type, they have a choice to make - playing it their way, or playing to be the best they can. Each option has pros and cons associated with it, and it is up to each individual player to decide how they want that to unfold.
Intrepid can't cater to the whims of every player - it literally isn't possible.
I mean, I would love to build a mage purely around fire and ice spells - with nothing else. But I know I will build the highest damage output mage I can, and so will accept what ever that means.
However, what my decision is doesn't affect what your decision should be for you. Play it your way and accept what comes with that, or make it as effective as you can and accept what comes with that.
@Oiraeket and @Noaani
Let me just start with this: right now we know too little about these extra interactions, so what I'm going to say is just another supposition, taking into consideration a best case scenario (or close to it).My point from the previous posts wasn't clear enough. Ok, DPS is not everything in this game and there will be many other interactions that will matter. Suppose there are 7 other factors, equally important as "damage done" or DPS. Each class combination will be "good" or "bad" or "average" at any of these factors. Combinations will be possible, meaning that Factor 1 from class X together with Factor 2 from class Y might create a new factor... and so on.
Indeed, this is fun, complex and kind of futile to parse with some tool... as you might have another 64 factors that in themselves could interact differently with the base ones and end up with another 64x64...and so on.
Yet, some things can be parsed resulting in player segregation. During the early days of the game everyone will care about DPS because that's what they are used to. The first "road bump" they hit will make them realize that they will need to factor in these combinations. And here is the "catch"..... actually two possible ones. Let's consider everything in the context of raiding.
1. They will obviously have, eventually, a successful raid composition that, due to some of the combos/factor and such, will have done good enough and not wasted too much time. In the consecutive runs, most raid leaders will want a similar composition. Not identical but, if they already have main class X that they know can have an useful combo with some other classes that are present in the raid, they might not take a second player with it. Indeed, raids will have 8 to 40 people (I think). But if content scales to the number of people, it's not going to matter too much. Even if it doesn't scale, 40 people means many classes could be taken, even more guys using the same ones, but the raid difficulty will be comparable too... so the party will hit that "road bump" and will need to make adjustments in the class composition.
2. And here comes the parsers. How do you delimit which player(s) to take from a group of 5 that all play the same class combination? Maybe you need two at most. So the need to have a parser has sprung into existence. It's not going to only count the DPS the players did (not at first at least), but how much time they used certain abilities and maybe at which moments during the fights. Now, if these 5 players have 5 different play styles (one uses lightning, one fire, one ice, one psychic, one holy abilities), raid leaders will need the combos/factors that they know WORK. So, if their previously successful run was with two guys using holy and ice abilities, then that's what they'll choose. And the parser will tell them the exact measure of these specific play styles.
Going further into the future, provided the game isn't going to be dead, parsers will be able to compute almost everything. For example, (Factor 1 of class X * Factor 2 of class Y) * (Factor 1 of class Z * Factor 5 of class T * Factor 7 of class V) * Factor 3 of class W = a certain amount of damage done if executed properly.
Why am I coming back to damage done/DPS? Because we are used to and will be inclined to use a "common denominator" for all possible factors. At the end of the day, DAMAGE is what kills a boss. If you quantify that or everything else INTO that, you have your way of segregating people. Like I said before, these parsers won't be available at first, but even the early versions will provide some information regarding what classes to bring and such.
This means we come back to ...human nature. Having parsers, how many raid leaders do you think are going to say the following: "hey, let's use the next 3-4 raid resets (or whatever) such that we find new combos using ALL of the players that are viable from our guild, in order to learn some new interactions that they can provide with their classes, not just the ones WE KNOW ARE ABLE TO provide enough effectiveness so as to kill the boss" ?
If we had a majority of people thinking like this, then I'd totally be in favor of parsers.
Yet, time is the most important resource we have as human beings and I bet that most of us want to use it to do other stuff in the game...
To conclude, the first raid composition that kills a boss will become more or less a reference that few raid leaders will want to deviate (too much) from and parsers won't need to show the DPS to provide them with this information.
@Oiraeket I don't know if I provided a proper reply to what you asked (everything is just personal opinion anyway), but your question made me come up with the above wall of text
TL;DR: nope
If the game provides us with any feedback at all in terms of how much damage we are doing, calculations will be done on it. It could be as simple as taking information from abilities themselves, it could be using overhead damage feedback, basically anything that gives us concrete numbers to work from.
Again, I plan on doing this to an extent myself with some mechanics, and I know others that plan on doing it with other mechanics.
A lack of parsers won't stop the curious from knowing.
People like the dicks talked about above will find any information they can and use it to give them what they think is an advantage by only taking the classes the information they have to them say are best.
A lack of parsers won't change that.
TL:DR of my point in this entire thread; dicks will be dicks, regardless of the data they have. People that are not dicks are best served by having more data if they want to spend the time to improve.
I still don't expect to see full combat log parsers in AoC, and honestly if that's what Intrepid want, that's cool. Thing is, even without them dicks will exclude specific classes and/or players - because that is how they think they get an advantage over other raids.
I want to say how much I like the position some commentators are taking whereby parsing can not simply be reduced to two metrics (DPS and HPS). The idea that classes can interact with one another considerably and therefore attribute DPS to one another in ways that are tricky to analyse (though I doubt impossible...) coupled with a range of engaging utility makes it sound almost EXCITING to parse and - dare I say -even encouraging of a varied team composition. @Crusader2010 makes a very good point, however. How likely is it that guilds will take the experiment over the tried and tested? How can experimentation be encouraged? My stance comes from the following claim:
An MMORPG is about empowering players to be the hero they want.
To what extent do you agree with this statement? Are MMORPGs really about giving people the empowerment to create a character that plays the way they desire most? Is it acceptable that a game might force compromise of this characteristic for the purposes of progression in-game? What can IS do to empower variety, player autonomy, and a wide-ranging meta?
With no chance of gaining any data, and no data to support a proposed experiment, guilds will find what works for them and never budge from it.
A world where facts are ignored or regarded as irrelevant is a depressing and dangerous world.
As for the last have of the above post - I find that trying to reduce any product down to a simple statement like that demeans the product in question - if nothing else the statement as written doesn't really cover those that want to play the game for the economic or industrious aspects of it.
My statement was not made with the intention of demeaning the product. Distilling experiences and creations to a core purpose doesn't have to be reductive or demeaning. I wanted to shed light on what ultimately characterises RPGs for me. Again, consensus is what would make or break the truthfulness of the claim as a generalisation. It's certainly not the only purpose of MMORPGs, nor should it necessarily be so.
MMO's are some of the biggest, most complex software projects people undertake. People that play these games regularly all have differing motivations. Not everyone plays an MMO in order to be the hero - and to be fair single player games do that far better than an MMO ever could.
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Imagine you are the leader of a raid guild.
You raid 4 nights a week, 2 fairly serious raids, 2 fairly casual raids (fairly typical).
This guild has 50 - 60 people that look to you these four nights a week to see to their entertainment.
Your job is to take 40 of them through a piece of content, and be a successful as possible.
You have a general setup that you know works, and it includes using 4 of the Priest/X classes, but not the remaining four priest/X classes.
Someone invites a friend in to the guild that is a priest/X class that you don't currently use.
You have the option of either giving this person a spot in your raid, or not. Lets assume you do just slot it in one night (one of the more casual nights) and hope that this new introduced variable doesn't ruin the night for the remaining 39 people.
Now, lets imagine it goes badly. It could be the player, it could be the class.
In a game that allows data collection, you can figure out why, present this to your guild so they understand what is going on, and try again.
In a game that doesn't allow data, you don't bring that player back.
End of story.
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With the exception of sponsored guilds (a rare anomaly that should be excluded), most top end guilds are as much about the players as anything. They players need to perform, without a doubt, but no one loses sight of the fact that everyone in the raid is there for entertainment.
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In my experience, most top end players that leave a game early in the end game do so because they have reached their goals.
Burnout happens, but after usually only after years of raiding - not a few months.
If you go in to a game with a goal, and you achieve that goal, it isn't unusual for you to then go on to another game.
That is often what top end players do in the first wave of end game content in an MMO, and is something that I am personally expecting in Ashes.
Mystery was the thing that strengthened the Upbringing of the likes of WoW via Novels & MMORTS - mystery is what gets the Community talking about stuff . And since there's variety in Progression via Horizontal Progression ... as opposed to Vertical Progression ... ( something you commonly seen in ThemeParks MMOs ) ... the Variety of Progression is something that, imho, puts more emphasis on Mystery - both Lore-wise and Combat-wise ... and likely in other areas too.
Ruining the Freedom of choosing any Archetype-Blends will make things painfully annoying when trying to Group-up for harder content. Since all Classes are planned to be viable - thus not having a Meta
(via their 1st Iteration of Balancing Combat via "Rock, Paper, Scissors Column Style")
Combat is being designed on Group-Play anyways. , so it might be a lost cause at this point until more information & more testing occurs
Lose the hitpoint, save the world.
While the hitpoint remains the proxy measurement of tactile efficacy and success, we will be forever under the tyrannical rule of numbers.
Many of these players that don't engage in competitive Raiding may wish to have parsers for their own reasons.
Personally, I tend to prefer instanced PvP (though I will engage in OWPvP if it is well executed), and have found many important uses for a parser in my game play: gauging my own performance in HPS/DPS terms; analyzing data within the parse in order to improve my play; identifying top performers in order to create priorities for my healing; collecting data in order to contribute to discussions about balance.
If I had the freedom to choose whether I could use a parser or not, my emphatic answer would be "YES".