The only compromise would be to have some sort of 'personal' meter. The devs mentioned they might add some target dummies for players to test in their "hideouts" (I don't know the nomenclature yet).
This would only serve for personal skill improvements, and would not burden the player with the stigma of having crappy dps when it matters.
Also, if there's no separation between leveling dungeons and endgame dungeons, then having a dps meter for any encounter is moot, because everyone can blame it on lack of items or high server latency.
Coming from other MMOs where damage numbers are active, I dislike the attitude of calling people toxic for asking similar features.
If the UI customization is not flexible enough, players will still ask for a damage meter...
Raiders are all for puzzles and trying to solve them, and trial and error is indeed a part of that. However, Intrepid seem content with offering that up as the only available option should players wish to follow the TOS.
That won't fly.
That's literally all there should be. You walk into a new boss, why should you know anything about it? It's mechanics? Other than what you yourself have gleaned from the earlier fights of the raid, or mechanics you have seen before. Or at least similar ones. Team work and trial and error should be all that's necessary (outside of obvious things like gear and potions/ goodies)
Raiders are all for puzzles and trying to solve them, and trial and error is indeed a part of that. However, Intrepid seem content with offering that up as the only available option should players wish to follow the TOS.
That won't fly.
That's literally all there should be. You walk into a new boss, why should you know anything about it? It's mechanics? Other than what you yourself have gleaned from the earlier fights of the raid, or mechanics you have seen before. Or at least similar ones. Team work and trial and error should be all that's necessary (outside of obvious things like gear and potions/ goodies)
You shouldn't.
You should pull it a few times and then be able to collect data from those pulls.
That is what combat trackers do.
Once you have that data, you then begin to plan a strategy. There will likely still be questions your raid has on the encounter (are two specific abilities connected, can we delay this specific AoE, things of that nature), and your raid goes in to the encounter with a plan to test out the theories that you have formed from the data you have collected.
You then take that data and are able to determine if the things you tested for are in fact true or not, and from that, you are able to form a plan to actually attempt to kill the encounter - or at least get it to the next phase, should it have phases.
Without the data from trackers, all you are doing is guessing, feeling and assuming. The tracker turns those assumptions in to facts, which means you know you and your guild are on the right track, or alternatively you know you are not on the right track and so need to come up with another plan. Without that data, it would take many times longer to figure out if you and your guild are on the right path or not - this could result in weeks worth of attempts being in vain due to several wrong paths taken, with no data to point out that the chosen path was indeed wrong.
This is the part that won't fly. The whole raid may think they are on the right path, but with no objective data, no one can know for sure.
If you have information on an encounter before pulling it, that is from things other than combat trackers - as combat trackers can not predict the future.
The only compromise would be to have some sort of 'personal' meter. The devs mentioned they might add some target dummies for players to test in their "hideouts" (I don't know the nomenclature yet).
This would only serve for personal skill improvements, and would not burden the player with the stigma of having crappy dps when it matters.
Also, if there's no separation between leveling dungeons and endgame dungeons, then having a dps meter for any encounter is moot, because everyone can blame it on lack of items or high server latency.
Coming from other MMOs where damage numbers are active, I dislike the attitude of calling people toxic for asking similar features.
If the UI customization is not flexible enough, players will still ask for a damage meter...
I wouldn't call a dummy, or even better moving sparring partner as a damage meter for the purpose of these discussions. Freehold is the word you're looking for. Though i'd love a larger fancier one to be a building option for nodes as well. Like an Arena.
Dungeons aren't locked to character level to my knowledge but to node progression in most places. So you could go to a village and find a lower level one in the area, as opposed to one near a metropolis ZOI
I don't think anyone should be called toxic for requesting a feature like dps meters, unless they sail right on to the carebear, trash, and other insults. At the moment they aren't in favor of them, but if they decide later that it would be better for the game, then that'd be ok too, regardless of my personal views on them.
Why no meters?
For the same reason that there is open world pvp.
For the same reason that crafted gear matters.
For the sane reason that you cant reach lv50 in a week.
For the same reason that there isnt teleport points every 2 steps.
For the same reason that groups are made out of 8 and not tankheal2dps.
For the same reason that there isnt p2w.
Because people are tired of your typical boring mmorpgs we had for the last decade, a screen full of UI indicators and boring static rotation gameplay.
This is the part that won't fly. The whole raid may think they are on the right path, but with no objective data, no one can know for sure.
If you have information on an encounter before pulling it, that is from things other than combat trackers - as combat trackers can not predict the future.
Did we lower it's health further, were there adds running around, did we last longer, did a new fight phase begin, all of these are objective points of progress or not, and none of them require meters. People were crushing through raids long before meters rolled around. They are not necessary in the least, only another possible useful tool. So if it is felt that their other, negative aspects are not worth it, i think that's an entirely valid road to take.
Why no meters?
For the same reason that there is open world pvp.
For the same reason that crafted gear matters.
For the sane reason that you cant reach lv50 in a week.
For the same reason that there isnt teleport points every 2 steps.
For the same reason that groups are made out of 8 and not tankheal2dps.
For the same reason that there isnt p2w.
Because people are tired of your typical boring mmorpgs we had for the last decade, a screen full of UI indicators and boring static rotation gameplay.
If you have UI indicators, then you have something that is not a pure combat tracker. You have a combat tracker that is integrated with a UI modification.
This kind of thing is more likely to happen if trackers are left to third parties than if they were done by the developer.
I played eso for 5 years, a game based on animation cancelling dps race, without any combat metrics addons with Australian delay connected to the EU server (a mess of a performance game btw).
Guess what? I'd pull the same dps as the other people playing my class, clearing ALL content.
Are you rly afraid that you wont beat the game without dps meters?
Are you afraid that you wont be able to teach dpsing to your guild members without the meters?
Even if you stubornly stock to that notion (which is false because mmorpgs used to be without dps meters forever), well guess what. Nobody will have dps meters. Even playing field.
"And I think that the statement of if we designed the UI well which we are going to do you know there's not really a need for the add-ons"
On the topic of parsers
Parsers - They have no plans for putting in the hooks for parsers, nor do they plan on doing anything specific that will help with the construction of DPS meters.
"Right and they stratify they stratify the population in a bad way parsers can do some really nasty things to communities and you know when you're talking about a 1% difference determines whether or not somebody can join a party like it's you know it's it sucks yeah you know I understand the reason it's there and I love my parsers I don't think I you know it's but it's It's like a toxicity involved at some point"
"DPS meter oh god I'm sorry I just said that out loud but we don't want we don't want things that divide and sometimes when you give some communities the agency to make those things it facilitates the division"
I played eso for 5 years, a game based on animation cancelling dps race, without any combat metrics addons with Australian delay connected to the EU server (a mess of a performance game btw).
Guess what? I'd pull the same dps as the other people playing my class, clearing ALL content.
Are you rly afraid that you wont beat the game without dps meters?
Are you afraid that you wont be able to teach dpsing to your guild members without the meters?
Even if you stubornly stock to that notion (which is false because mmorpgs used to be without dps meters forever), well guess what. Nobody will have dps meters. Even playing field.
ESO has the simplest combat and encounters of all MMO's out there.
It is one step above Wizard 101 in terms of being a children's game, in terms of mechanics.
You not using a combat tracker yourself does not mean you have not made use of one - every build that has been posted in that game has been assessed via Combat Metrics, and been improved based on those results. Every discussion on combat about that game has been based off of objective data - something that is only possible in the presence of an above board combat tracker.
And that is the thing, a combat tracker doesn't just give an advantage to those that use it. What they do is they put accurate information out to all who look for it.
---
Your assertion that MMO's have been without DPS meters forever - that's well, not true. The original EQ had a combat tracker in mid 2000 - so MMO's have had combat trackers for 20 years now, and that is just what i know of.
---
As to the game having an even playing field, again that is untrue. The game will have DPS meters designed for it, they will just be third party.
I just talked with one of the guys running development of one of the two that I know of, and when he saw the comments in the livestream today he decided that he was going to alter his tracker to be run as a server, so guilds could have one player host the program, and everyone else connect to that server. This will make it more accurate, so even if the only data that individual players get is the data on their own incoming and outgoing abilities, the server will still have all data for the raid.
The situation absolutely will be that those with access to one of these combat trackers have an advantage over those that don't have access to one. The only way this wont be the case - in any MMO - is if the game has these tools built in to it.
I mean, I'd like Ashes to break from what other games have done in the past in many situations. What other games have done in the past is to not have a built in combat tracker, thus forcing third party ones in to existence. This situation leads to the uneven playing field that we all want to avoid, as not everyone will have the additional tool for the game.
The way to get rid of that is not to do what every other MMO does, it is to do what they do not do. If you do what other games have done, you get the same result as other games. On the other hand, if you put those tools in to the hands of every player, every player is on the same, even playing field.
Other games have not implemented combat trackers in to the game. If Ashes also does not implement combat trackers in to the game, the result will be the same as all of those other games that also did not introduce them in to their game.
I'm not sure how you can claim that Ashes not having a built in combat tracker will result in a different situation than all other games that have not had a built in combat tracker.
"And I think that the statement of if we designed the UI well which we are going to do you know there's not really a need for the add-ons"
On the topic of parsers
Parsers - They have no plans for putting in the hooks for parsers, nor do they plan on doing anything specific that will help with the construction of DPS meters.
"Right and they stratify they stratify the population in a bad way parsers can do some really nasty things to communities and you know when you're talking about a 1% difference determines whether or not somebody can join a party like it's you know it's it sucks yeah you know I understand the reason it's there and I love my parsers I don't think I you know it's but it's It's like a toxicity involved at some point"
"DPS meter oh god I'm sorry I just said that out loud but we don't want we don't want things that divide and sometimes when you give some communities the agency to make those things it facilitates the division"
Thank you for taking the time, there was one or two things in that I hadn't found.
If you look through all of what was said though, what they are against is division in the community. Every time they talk about why they don't want a combat tracker in the game, this is the reason given.
Thing is, every other MMO has released without a combat tracker, every other MMO has had a third party design a combat tracker for that game whether the developers of the game were ok with that or not, and every other game has had that division that Intrepid are trying to avoid.
They are literally attempting to get a different result by doing the same thing.
I've said it before, I want Intrepid to make the game that Intrepid want to make. That doesn't mean that I have to think their reasoning is sound.
I played eso for 5 years, a game based on animation cancelling dps race, without any combat metrics addons with Australian delay connected to the EU server (a mess of a performance game btw).
Guess what? I'd pull the same dps as the other people playing my class, clearing ALL content.
Are you rly afraid that you wont beat the game without dps meters?
Are you afraid that you wont be able to teach dpsing to your guild members without the meters?
Even if you stubornly stock to that notion (which is false because mmorpgs used to be without dps meters forever), well guess what. Nobody will have dps meters. Even playing field.
ESO has the simplest combat and encounters of all MMO's out there.
It is one step above Wizard 101 in terms of being a children's game, in terms of mechanics.
You not using a combat tracker yourself does not mean you have not made use of one - every build that has been posted in that game has been assessed via Combat Metrics, and been improved based on those results. Every discussion on combat about that game has been based off of objective data - something that is only possible in the presence of an above board combat tracker.
And that is the thing, a combat tracker doesn't just give an advantage to those that use it. What they do is they put accurate information out to all who look for it.
---
Your assertion that MMO's have been without DPS meters forever - that's well, not true. The original EQ had a combat tracker in mid 2000 - so MMO's have had combat trackers for 20 years now, and that is just what i know of.
---
As to the game having an even playing field, again that is untrue. The game will have DPS meters designed for it, they will just be third party.
I just talked with one of the guys running development of one of the two that I know of, and when he saw the comments in the livestream today he decided that he was going to alter his tracker to be run as a server, so guilds could have one player host the program, and everyone else connect to that server. This will make it more accurate, so even if the only data that individual players get is the data on their own incoming and outgoing abilities, the server will still have all data for the raid.
The situation absolutely will be that those with access to one of these combat trackers have an advantage over those that don't have access to one. The only way this wont be the case - in any MMO - is if the game has these tools built in to it.
I mean, I'd like Ashes to break from what other games have done in the past in many situations. What other games have done in the past is to not have a built in combat tracker, thus forcing third party ones in to existence. This situation leads to the uneven playing field that we all want to avoid, as not everyone will have the additional tool for the game.
The way to get rid of that is not to do what every other MMO does, it is to do what they do not do. If you do what other games have done, you get the same result as other games. On the other hand, if you put those tools in to the hands of every player, every player is on the same, even playing field.
Other games have not implemented combat trackers in to the game. If Ashes also does not implement combat trackers in to the game, the result will be the same as all of those other games that also did not introduce them in to their game.
I'm not sure how you can claim that Ashes not having a built in combat tracker will result in a different situation than all other games that have not had a built in combat tracker.
I dont watch "theory crafters" (what a stupid name for a concept btw... craft theory. Make up theory) so no, my build was not based on any dps parses. My ability on dps was common sense.
Dps meters will not be needed in AoC. "Whoo!! I reached 50 in a week! What's fotm? Lemme copy paste".
Nope. In AoC you will spend time levelin up, learning your class, learning your abilities, building your skillset, one by one.
Not like ESO, vr14-16 (cp400-810) in 2 weeks with all skills unlocked ("hmm what do I slot in?")
Give it a rest with the UI crutch.
Some people deserve being told "Well, deal with it".
From todays stream I got all my answers. Yes I will play mmorpg like the old days of L2 again.
I hope Steven makes a lot of money from AoC. Lucky guy to be able to say "I am making the game" of his dreams.
I dont watch "theory crafters" (what a stupid name for a concept btw... craft theory. Make up theory) so no, my build was not based on any dps parses. My ability on dps was common sense.
Dps meters will not be needed in AoC. "Whoo!! I reached 50 in a week! What's fotm? Lemme copy paste".
Nope. In AoC you will spend time levelin up, learning your class, learning your abilities, building your skillset, one by one.
Not like ESO, vr14-16 (cp400-810) in 2 weeks with all skills unlocked ("hmm what do I slot in?")
Give it a rest with the UI crutch.
Some people deserve being told "Well, deal with it".
From todays stream I got all my answers. Yes I will play mmorpg like the old days of L2 again.
I hope Steven makes a lot of money from AoC. Lucky guy to be able to say "I am making the game" of his dreams.
I agree, theory crafters is a stupid term. I'm fairly sure that just now is the first time I've ever typed that out in my life.
Bragging that you can keep up in a game with one dimensional combat is not much of a flex. Nor is it a good argument to take to any other game, unless you are hoping for similar one dimensional combat. I'm not saying there aren't good arguments to support your opinion, just that this is not one of them.
Leveling your class, learning your class and learning your abilities are not mutually exclusive to having access to a combat tracker. If anything, a combat tracker aides you in the second two, and have absolutely no effect at all on the first.
The UI crutch is something others bring up - it is their crutch, not mine. I only mention it to point out that what they are talking about is not a combat tracker. If no one attempts to say "I don't want to have the UI elements associated with a combat tracker over my pretty UI" - including the unintended ignorance that such a comment shows due to combat trackers not inherently having any UI elements or overlays - then I would never even mention it. However, should someone else bring that up as a point in future, I assume I can rely on you to tell them to give that particular crutch a rest.
Some people do deserve to be told to deal with it. However, when some people are told to deal with it, their way of dealing with it is to develop the tool they were told to deal without. From that point forward, it is the people that didn't want anyone to have the tool that now have to deal with some people having it.
I mean if Intrepid wants to ensure there are no DPS meters, they can in fact do that. It wouldn't be difficult for Intrepid to just not put combat logs. I mean they can just not show you your damage. Or they can also insert false positive data.
I'm not sure why people want to keep pushing the issue.
Intrepid hasn't said they won't allow DPS meters, they just aren't going to officially endorse them.
They aren't going to put the hooks in to help people build them.
I mean if Intrepid wants to ensure there are no DPS meters, they can in fact do that. It wouldn't be difficult for Intrepid to just not put combat logs. I mean they can just not show you your damage. Or they can also insert false positive data.
I'm not sure why people want to keep pushing the issue.
Intrepid hasn't said they won't allow DPS meters, they just aren't going to officially endorse them.
They aren't going to put the hooks in to help people build them.
Neither of the two I am aware of use combat logs.
If the game had combat logs, we would all just use Advanced Combat Tracker.
One of the meters essentially scrapes the screen for information. Development is kind of halted right now to see if there is enough information provided in the in game chat windows that most games have - and if Ashes doesn't have them it will pull floating combat feedback (the damage and heal numbers you see in game). This is not optimal, and this is the particular tracker that - if needed - will set it up so that all players in the raid can connect to one server.
The other one, the one that is using Android, I honestly don't know what they are doing to get the data out of the game. I wouldn't put it past the developer of this to actually scrape it from client computer ram, though this would restrict that particular tracker to people that trust the source.
This is also fairly easy to detect - if Intrepid have a fairly large team dedicated to finding it - which is why I am not 100% sure this is the route this particular tracker will take.
However, since this coder is quite skilled (even if somewhat unemployable), I wouldn't put it past them to have come up with some way out of left field.
To me, it is your last comment here that worries me.
Intrepid have indeed not said they won't allow DPS meters - no doubt in part because they know the futility of trying to enforce that. This leaves Ashes in the exact same state as every other game that hasn't had a built in combat tracker - which is to say, every other game.
Again, I've said many times I want Intrepid to develop their game, their way (or Steven's game, Steven's way, as Jeff seems somewhat on board with combat trackers). However, just because this is what they/he wants, and I still want him to make his game his way, that doesn't mean I need to agree with his reasoning.
As I said in an above post, Steven is literally doing what all other MMO's have done, yet is expecting a diametrically opposed result from that same action.
Damage Meters are a weird animal. From a logistical standpoint they are a valuable tool for somebody that actually is concerned with their performance or helping others assess their own performance, and they can nitpick where they went wrong or check with other people of the class to see what they were doing differently provided they know how to assess meters.
That being said, what invariably happens is most people use damage meters to just be moronic with them and say "MY METER IS BIGGER I AM BETTER!" They're a nifty tool in the hands of intelligent players, but in games intelligent players who actually know how to read meters are significantly small compared to people who are just overly stupid with them.
It wouldn't surprise me to see something like FFXIV where there is no released API for the game, but damage meters exist because it just scrapes the combat log more or less and operates like a constantly moving calculator, but this has to be done with an overlay and the overlays don't really communicate since you'll see someone's damage if they don't have the meter so it's clearly pulling information from the game itself. Square Enix with regards to this has said they don't mind and knew it would eventually happen, but they will not hesitate to ban you if you link them in party chat as a means to demean people.
I just really wish the argument against meters was actually phrased on "People are too stupid to use them correctly and use them as a means to exact negative behavior on people they perceive as inferior because of a bar without assessing the external factors like gear going into the equation." Instead it invariably comes to being "People are toxic." which is so nebulous and at this point a buzzphrase that it loses all meaning.
You could also make do without meters if you wanted to up someone's performance too I guess if there was something that allowed you to check the order of abilities that people were using since most issues with damage involve rotation, when rotations are executed perfectly it tends to boil down to either raw stats or procs, which you can assess stats on somebody by just checking their gear and you should be able to discern whether they're stacking too much of a stat, stacking the wrong stat, etc or just operating at a lesser gear level.
As you seem to be somewhat new here, I'll preface this by stating outright that I am probably the biggest advocate for having a combat tracker built in to the game itself on these forums. Just so you know my position right from the start.
Damage Meters are a weird animal. From a logistical standpoint they are a valuable tool for somebody that actually is concerned with their performance or helping others assess their own performance, and they can nitpick where they went wrong or check with other people of the class to see what they were doing differently provided they know how to assess meters.
That being said, what invariably happens is most people use damage meters to just be moronic with them and say "MY METER IS BIGGER I AM BETTER!" They're a nifty tool in the hands of intelligent players, but in games intelligent players who actually know how to read meters are significantly small compared to people who are just overly stupid with them.
I 100% agree, but only in the presence of one other, more important factor.
If you put a combat tracker in the hands of players, and then put those players in to a game where they have no need to maintain a reputation or build in game friendships, then yes, what you are talking about here absolutely happens.
It isn't even something that could happen, or that sometimes happens. It happens every time. Every. Single. Time.
However, you take that same player and that same combat tracker, and you put them in to a game where they need to have a reputation, where they need friends in game just to survive, and you could then watch that players attitude towards other players completely reverses.
Ashes will absolutely be the second of these two scenarios. Reputation will matter, friends will matter, guilds will matter. People that act like the above won't have any of those things.
On top of that, in Ashes, if someone acts like this towards you while you are leveling up, you can then level past them (such players don't know the game, and so are almost always extremely slow at progressing), find them, and then you can then just kill them. Many times. You could even shout at them "whose got the low DPS NOW B***H!" as you do it, if that happened to be your thing.
And the thing is, other players wouldn't judge you for that, because that player probably has a reputation that everyone is aware of.
The good thing about this is that a player that is of the inclination to do this sort of thing in a game like Ashes is probably also aware of how the corruption system works - and between that and the fact that they would also have an artificially enlarged ego, they would no doubt attempt to fight back. If they do this, it would mean you don't even get a penalty for attacking and killing them.
It wouldn't surprise me to see something like FFXIV where there is no released API for the game, but damage meters exist because it just scrapes the combat log more or less and operates like a constantly moving calculator, but this has to be done with an overlay and the overlays don't really communicate since you'll see someone's damage if they don't have the meter so it's clearly pulling information from the game itself. Square Enix with regards to this has said they don't mind and knew it would eventually happen, but they will not hesitate to ban you if you link them in party chat as a means to demean people.
There are already at least two combat trackers being developed for Ashes. The only way Intrepid would be able to prevent them from appearing before the game launches would be to implement one in to the game itself.
Regardless, there will be one available on launch day.
I just really wish the argument against meters was actually phrased on "People are too stupid to use them correctly and use them as a means to exact negative behavior on people they perceive as inferior because of a bar without assessing the external factors like gear going into the equation." Instead it invariably comes to being "People are toxic." which is so nebulous and at this point a buzzphrase that it loses all meaning.
I have already suggested a means by which the game would be able to keep both first and third party combat trackers out of the hands of the few people that would be both inclined and dumb enough to misuse them in this way in Ashes - restrict them to guilds that raid, and only allow their use to apply to others within that same guild. Thus, the only people you are able to monitor combat of are your own guild members - and people tend to not get away with being toxic towards their own guild members very long.
You could also make do without meters if you wanted to up someone's performance too I guess if there was something that allowed you to check the order of abilities that people were using since most issues with damage involve rotation, when rotations are executed perfectly it tends to boil down to either raw stats or procs, which you can assess stats on somebody by just checking their gear and you should be able to discern whether they're stacking too much of a stat, stacking the wrong stat, etc or just operating at a lesser gear level.
Ashes will hopefully have a more complex combat system than this.
Even just the fact that players need to take at least 25% action combat abilities removes rotations as being the primary determining factor as to how much DPS you do.
just the title alone, says DaddySaucy dosen't want to listen to what other people have to say. Plus that is also the feeling i got, from reading some of his posts.
I have been kicked from a raid, in the past. That i had already done, because the raid leader only looked at the numbers and not what was really going on. As a melee dps you have to run around more, which has also been said. I was in a guild in swtor, where i heard 2 people talk about, that they got so focused on being top dps, that they ignored everything else. The raid also ended up wiping. How good is a person at avoiding taking damage. Are you moving out of the aoe's that causes damage (doing so the healers have to work harder), or are you staying in it, but lowering your dps.
I used to play swtor and I never used a dps and managed to do most raid bosses, by the time i quit the game. As have said, it is also alot about mecanics.
just the title alone, says DaddySaucy dosen't want to listen to what other people have to say. Plus that is also the feeling i got, from reading some of his posts.
Feel free to participate in the conversation here that doesn't involve him, then.
I have been kicked from a raid, in the past. That i had already done, because the raid leader only looked at the numbers and not what was really going on. As a melee dps you have to run around more, which has also been said. I was in a guild in swtor, where i heard 2 people talk about, that they got so focused on being top dps, that they ignored everything else. The raid also ended up wiping. How good is a person at avoiding taking damage. Are you moving out of the aoe's that causes damage (doing so the healers have to work harder), or are you staying in it, but lowering your dps.
I used to play swtor and I never used a dps and managed to do most raid bosses, by the time i quit the game. As have said, it is also alot about mecanics.
The kind of people that kick others from raids are not going to stop kicking people just because they don't have a combat tracker - or as is more likely to be the case in Ashes, they will have a combat tracker, but won't tell you they have one.
In situations where a scrub raid leader doesn't have a combat tracker, they will still kick people. Their reasons will be just as valid as their reasons for using DPS - which is to say, not at all valid.
Using or not using a meter isn't the issue here, the issue is that the internet has some people on it that are dicks.
A combat tracker will tell the raid leader exactly what those two DPS were doing - as they don't just show DPS, they show every piece of outgoing and - more importantly here - incoming damage. If an encounter has a period where players are supposed to stop DPS'ing for what ever reason, and someone doesn't, the raid leader will be able to simply look at their combat tracker, see that everyone other than those two stopped DPS when they were supposed to but those two carried on, and then deal with those two players as they see fit.
Most of the people that claim to have had bad experiences with them seem to think the only thing they do is give a list of how much DPS players are doing. In reality, especially in SWTOR (which was likely to have been Advanced Combat Tracker as the tool used), the amount of data is literally every single ability cast or attempted to be cast by everyone in the raid, or at everyone in the raid, and including the exact time (I believe down to the hundredth of a second) that it was cast.
If you had two players in your guild that were able to get away with not doing what was required, you had a guild that didn't know how to raid.
On the other hand, they may have just been having fun for that one pull.
I've always disliked dps meters and the toxic behavior they bring along with them. I also think that these meters encourages for meta builds and ways how to play and combat and that is something I dislike. Big no to dps meters from me.
I've always disliked dps meters and the toxic behavior they bring along with them. I also think that these meters encourages for meta builds and ways how to play and combat and that is something I dislike. Big no to dps meters from me.
I'm repeating myself at this point, but that doesn't bother me.
It is people that cause toxicity. People will be toxic whether they have a combat tracker or not.
Likewise, meta builds will exist in games, regardless of whether combat trackers exist or not. Archeage is a good example of this - it is the game that had the least widespread use of combat trackers of any game I have seen, yet it had the most reliance on meta builds of any game I have played.
All of that said, the question isn't really "should Ashes have a combat tracker or not". This is out of even Intrepids hands.
The question to ask is "should the combat tracker players in Ashes use be controlled by several third parties with player access being limited as those people see fit, or should it be implemented by Intrepid so that they can have control over it"
Meters is a yes for me if they are togglable and the information is only available to the user and not visible to anyone else unless that person shares it via screenshots or voice. There should be a rule in the TOS that sharing your meter information on public forums or official discord can be bannable.
Intrepid took a stance.
You say you can't play without meters? Then risk getting banned. On my side, I'll be enjoying the game and finding new strategies to overcome obstacles other than "L33T DPS"
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MeowsedMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited May 2020
I don't even care that much about DPS meters, but what is Intrepid going to do? Wage an information war on their players? Will they hide every damage value and HP bar in the game? Will there be no numbers in tooltips?
If they give the playerbase even the slightest bit of information, then people will reverse engineer it and we'll end up with third-party DPS meters anyways. They may as well save us some frustration and work, and just make all that information accessible to everyone.
And like Noanni has been pushing for, they can set the precedent for how DPS meters are made/used if they provide them first-party. Provide them only for personal use. And let guilds parse their guild members, if they opt-in. (Edit: They can also send the message that DPS meters are not important for the majority of the game/players, by making them locked by default, and requiring a moderate, one-time investment via a quest or vendor to unlock them.)
People who never used them and don't understand how they are useful, shouldn't even care that DPS meters exist, as long as it's not affecting game design (ala Deadly Boss Mods). Assholes will be assholes, with or without DPS meters. Report them and move on, like in any harassment situation.
People who have used combat trackers a ton in the past, but don't trust the untamed masses to use them correctly... That is exactly the elitist, toxic mindset that they claim to be fighting against. They can't trust others to use the tool responsibly, so it shouldn't exist? What is this, the Prohibition Era? (Sorry if that reference doesn't make sense outside the US.)
@Jahlon PUG leaders who kick under-performers rarely do it because of slightly low DPS, btw. They do it when people consistently mess up mechanics, or because of extremely low DPS. Neither of those problems require a DPS meter to detect. The whole problem of how PUG leaders treat their rando party-members is (at-best) tangential to DPS meters. I appreciate that you run PUGs better than that, and I think you should continue setting a good example. Ideally, you can include proper combat-tracker-usage when setting that example, but it becomes hard to do that publicly when combat trackers are universally banned.
Now then... I'm going to stop looking at these threads, because the debate over this issue is proving to be way more of a headache than the DPS meters themselves. (And I don't think I'm actually convincing anyone of anything.)
Edit: Oops I lied. I continued to look at and participate in this dreaded Discourse.
Yeah you probably won't. Though i think the number of people that can easily remember the times these systems have been abused, or caused harm to the community is a bit contrary to your claim that this behavior is rare.
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NagashMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I'm of the option that is the devs don't want them in a game then that's the way it should be played.
The dead do not squabble as this land’s rulers do. The dead have no desires, petty jealousies or ambitions. A world of the dead is a world at peace
why not lock a training area with meters dps and hps in a high level node say a metropolis military. and open it to only to citizens of that nodes so if you really feel the need to use one you can but it will limit you in other areas. The mayor of the node could say yes or no to building what would be a unique node building, vote for the mayor you want .....
You might as well just continue building your DPS meters. Intrepid isn't going to change their stance.
That is exactly what is happening.
And as I said - this means Ashes will have the exact same situation with combat trackers as every other game. You don't ever get different results by doing the same thing.
Obviously, I am somewhat disappointed. However, that is not due to Intrepid not doing things the way I want - I mean, I'll have a combat tracker. Rather, it is due to Intrepid recognizing an issue, a weak point in MMO's in general, claiming they want Ashes to not have that weakness, but then literally doing exactly the same thing every game out there has done.
Intrepid took a stance.
You say you can't play without meters? Then risk getting banned. On my side, I'll be enjoying the game and finding new strategies to overcome obstacles other than "L33T DPS"
I'll have my DPS meter and not risk getting banned.
It seems obvious to me, with everything I've said on the topic over the years here, that if Intrepid have plans to attempt to ban players if they are proven to be using a meter then my client/PC is probably a good place for them to start looking to try and detect one.
Yeah you probably won't. Though i think the number of people that can easily remember the times these systems have been abused, or caused harm to the community is a bit contrary to your claim that this behavior is rare.
I've been playing MMO's for a long time now.
I don't play WoW.
I do a fair amount of PUG's.
The number of times I have seen a combat tracker abused is in the single digits. Significantly less than once per year. When I do, the best way to deal with the issue is to point out that I have a combat tracker as well - thus making having a combat tracker the best way to solve the potential issues that can arise from players having a combat tracker - effectively, it is it's own solution.
However, the point here is that abuse like this is not because of combat trackers, it is because of lack of consequences of poor reputation. Add back in those consequences, and you get rid of that behavior.
I'm of the option that is the devs don't want them in a game then that's the way it should be played.
Does that mean if Intrepid have no inclusion for undead, you won't RP as such anyway?
I mean, if Intrepid want you to be undead, surely they would make than an option, right?
What if I want to RP as a performance mad mage (which, actually, I usually kind of do, I act much more performance driven in raids than I actually am, it's kind of fun).
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MarzzoMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I believe the decision to not include meters because it "promotes a toxic elitist behavior" is unjustified and shouldn't be left to the decision of just a couple people.
That's a mighty find opinion to have, but when one of the people who says no is the Creative Director who has kicked in $30,000,000 and the other is the Lead Game Designer, well those two aren't just a couple of people. They are THE people.
And you think that guild leaders wont find other ways to test scrubs? A dps meter is a fast tool for it. But it's easy to find who shitty players are without it as well. And these "scrubs" will get kicked from the group.
You can judge the skill of a player simply by how he is moving his character, which stats he prioritizes or even which skill order they choose.
Comments
This would only serve for personal skill improvements, and would not burden the player with the stigma of having crappy dps when it matters.
Also, if there's no separation between leveling dungeons and endgame dungeons, then having a dps meter for any encounter is moot, because everyone can blame it on lack of items or high server latency.
Coming from other MMOs where damage numbers are active, I dislike the attitude of calling people toxic for asking similar features.
If the UI customization is not flexible enough, players will still ask for a damage meter...
That's literally all there should be. You walk into a new boss, why should you know anything about it? It's mechanics? Other than what you yourself have gleaned from the earlier fights of the raid, or mechanics you have seen before. Or at least similar ones. Team work and trial and error should be all that's necessary (outside of obvious things like gear and potions/ goodies)
You shouldn't.
You should pull it a few times and then be able to collect data from those pulls.
That is what combat trackers do.
Once you have that data, you then begin to plan a strategy. There will likely still be questions your raid has on the encounter (are two specific abilities connected, can we delay this specific AoE, things of that nature), and your raid goes in to the encounter with a plan to test out the theories that you have formed from the data you have collected.
You then take that data and are able to determine if the things you tested for are in fact true or not, and from that, you are able to form a plan to actually attempt to kill the encounter - or at least get it to the next phase, should it have phases.
Without the data from trackers, all you are doing is guessing, feeling and assuming. The tracker turns those assumptions in to facts, which means you know you and your guild are on the right track, or alternatively you know you are not on the right track and so need to come up with another plan. Without that data, it would take many times longer to figure out if you and your guild are on the right path or not - this could result in weeks worth of attempts being in vain due to several wrong paths taken, with no data to point out that the chosen path was indeed wrong.
This is the part that won't fly. The whole raid may think they are on the right path, but with no objective data, no one can know for sure.
If you have information on an encounter before pulling it, that is from things other than combat trackers - as combat trackers can not predict the future.
I wouldn't call a dummy, or even better moving sparring partner as a damage meter for the purpose of these discussions. Freehold is the word you're looking for. Though i'd love a larger fancier one to be a building option for nodes as well. Like an Arena.
Dungeons aren't locked to character level to my knowledge but to node progression in most places. So you could go to a village and find a lower level one in the area, as opposed to one near a metropolis ZOI
I don't think anyone should be called toxic for requesting a feature like dps meters, unless they sail right on to the carebear, trash, and other insults. At the moment they aren't in favor of them, but if they decide later that it would be better for the game, then that'd be ok too, regardless of my personal views on them.
For the same reason that there is open world pvp.
For the same reason that crafted gear matters.
For the sane reason that you cant reach lv50 in a week.
For the same reason that there isnt teleport points every 2 steps.
For the same reason that groups are made out of 8 and not tankheal2dps.
For the same reason that there isnt p2w.
Because people are tired of your typical boring mmorpgs we had for the last decade, a screen full of UI indicators and boring static rotation gameplay.
Did we lower it's health further, were there adds running around, did we last longer, did a new fight phase begin, all of these are objective points of progress or not, and none of them require meters. People were crushing through raids long before meters rolled around. They are not necessary in the least, only another possible useful tool. So if it is felt that their other, negative aspects are not worth it, i think that's an entirely valid road to take.
If you have UI indicators, then you have something that is not a pure combat tracker. You have a combat tracker that is integrated with a UI modification.
This kind of thing is more likely to happen if trackers are left to third parties than if they were done by the developer.
Guess what? I'd pull the same dps as the other people playing my class, clearing ALL content.
Are you rly afraid that you wont beat the game without dps meters?
Are you afraid that you wont be able to teach dpsing to your guild members without the meters?
Even if you stubornly stock to that notion (which is false because mmorpgs used to be without dps meters forever), well guess what. Nobody will have dps meters. Even playing field.
As far as Mods
UI - Mods, sure they are a possibility but not a probability. You'll want to check
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Talk:2017-05-15_Livestream
"And I think that the statement of if we designed the UI well which we are going to do you know there's not really a need for the add-ons"
On the topic of parsers
Parsers - They have no plans for putting in the hooks for parsers, nor do they plan on doing anything specific that will help with the construction of DPS meters.
Specific Link on parser hooks https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Talk:2017-05-10_Livestream
The developers feelings towards parsers:
"Right and they stratify they stratify the population in a bad way parsers can do some really nasty things to communities and you know when you're talking about a 1% difference determines whether or not somebody can join a party like it's you know it's it sucks yeah you know I understand the reason it's there and I love my parsers I don't think I you know it's but it's It's like a toxicity involved at some point"
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Talk:2017-05-15_Livestream
DPS meter quotes can be found
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Talk:2018-05-11_Ashes_of_Creation_Community_Podcast_with_Steven_Sharif
and
"DPS meter oh god I'm sorry I just said that out loud but we don't want we don't want things that divide and sometimes when you give some communities the agency to make those things it facilitates the division"
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Talk:2018-04-05_Video_-_PAX_East_Panel
ESO has the simplest combat and encounters of all MMO's out there.
It is one step above Wizard 101 in terms of being a children's game, in terms of mechanics.
You not using a combat tracker yourself does not mean you have not made use of one - every build that has been posted in that game has been assessed via Combat Metrics, and been improved based on those results. Every discussion on combat about that game has been based off of objective data - something that is only possible in the presence of an above board combat tracker.
And that is the thing, a combat tracker doesn't just give an advantage to those that use it. What they do is they put accurate information out to all who look for it.
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Your assertion that MMO's have been without DPS meters forever - that's well, not true. The original EQ had a combat tracker in mid 2000 - so MMO's have had combat trackers for 20 years now, and that is just what i know of.
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As to the game having an even playing field, again that is untrue. The game will have DPS meters designed for it, they will just be third party.
I just talked with one of the guys running development of one of the two that I know of, and when he saw the comments in the livestream today he decided that he was going to alter his tracker to be run as a server, so guilds could have one player host the program, and everyone else connect to that server. This will make it more accurate, so even if the only data that individual players get is the data on their own incoming and outgoing abilities, the server will still have all data for the raid.
The situation absolutely will be that those with access to one of these combat trackers have an advantage over those that don't have access to one. The only way this wont be the case - in any MMO - is if the game has these tools built in to it.
I mean, I'd like Ashes to break from what other games have done in the past in many situations. What other games have done in the past is to not have a built in combat tracker, thus forcing third party ones in to existence. This situation leads to the uneven playing field that we all want to avoid, as not everyone will have the additional tool for the game.
The way to get rid of that is not to do what every other MMO does, it is to do what they do not do. If you do what other games have done, you get the same result as other games. On the other hand, if you put those tools in to the hands of every player, every player is on the same, even playing field.
Other games have not implemented combat trackers in to the game. If Ashes also does not implement combat trackers in to the game, the result will be the same as all of those other games that also did not introduce them in to their game.
I'm not sure how you can claim that Ashes not having a built in combat tracker will result in a different situation than all other games that have not had a built in combat tracker.
Thank you for taking the time, there was one or two things in that I hadn't found.
If you look through all of what was said though, what they are against is division in the community. Every time they talk about why they don't want a combat tracker in the game, this is the reason given.
Thing is, every other MMO has released without a combat tracker, every other MMO has had a third party design a combat tracker for that game whether the developers of the game were ok with that or not, and every other game has had that division that Intrepid are trying to avoid.
They are literally attempting to get a different result by doing the same thing.
I've said it before, I want Intrepid to make the game that Intrepid want to make. That doesn't mean that I have to think their reasoning is sound.
I dont watch "theory crafters" (what a stupid name for a concept btw... craft theory. Make up theory) so no, my build was not based on any dps parses. My ability on dps was common sense.
Dps meters will not be needed in AoC. "Whoo!! I reached 50 in a week! What's fotm? Lemme copy paste".
Nope. In AoC you will spend time levelin up, learning your class, learning your abilities, building your skillset, one by one.
Not like ESO, vr14-16 (cp400-810) in 2 weeks with all skills unlocked ("hmm what do I slot in?")
Give it a rest with the UI crutch.
Some people deserve being told "Well, deal with it".
From todays stream I got all my answers. Yes I will play mmorpg like the old days of L2 again.
I hope Steven makes a lot of money from AoC. Lucky guy to be able to say "I am making the game" of his dreams.
Bragging that you can keep up in a game with one dimensional combat is not much of a flex. Nor is it a good argument to take to any other game, unless you are hoping for similar one dimensional combat. I'm not saying there aren't good arguments to support your opinion, just that this is not one of them.
Leveling your class, learning your class and learning your abilities are not mutually exclusive to having access to a combat tracker. If anything, a combat tracker aides you in the second two, and have absolutely no effect at all on the first.
The UI crutch is something others bring up - it is their crutch, not mine. I only mention it to point out that what they are talking about is not a combat tracker. If no one attempts to say "I don't want to have the UI elements associated with a combat tracker over my pretty UI" - including the unintended ignorance that such a comment shows due to combat trackers not inherently having any UI elements or overlays - then I would never even mention it. However, should someone else bring that up as a point in future, I assume I can rely on you to tell them to give that particular crutch a rest.
Some people do deserve to be told to deal with it. However, when some people are told to deal with it, their way of dealing with it is to develop the tool they were told to deal without. From that point forward, it is the people that didn't want anyone to have the tool that now have to deal with some people having it.
I'm not sure why people want to keep pushing the issue.
Intrepid hasn't said they won't allow DPS meters, they just aren't going to officially endorse them.
They aren't going to put the hooks in to help people build them.
Neither of the two I am aware of use combat logs.
If the game had combat logs, we would all just use Advanced Combat Tracker.
One of the meters essentially scrapes the screen for information. Development is kind of halted right now to see if there is enough information provided in the in game chat windows that most games have - and if Ashes doesn't have them it will pull floating combat feedback (the damage and heal numbers you see in game). This is not optimal, and this is the particular tracker that - if needed - will set it up so that all players in the raid can connect to one server.
The other one, the one that is using Android, I honestly don't know what they are doing to get the data out of the game. I wouldn't put it past the developer of this to actually scrape it from client computer ram, though this would restrict that particular tracker to people that trust the source.
This is also fairly easy to detect - if Intrepid have a fairly large team dedicated to finding it - which is why I am not 100% sure this is the route this particular tracker will take.
However, since this coder is quite skilled (even if somewhat unemployable), I wouldn't put it past them to have come up with some way out of left field.
To me, it is your last comment here that worries me.
Intrepid have indeed not said they won't allow DPS meters - no doubt in part because they know the futility of trying to enforce that. This leaves Ashes in the exact same state as every other game that hasn't had a built in combat tracker - which is to say, every other game.
Again, I've said many times I want Intrepid to develop their game, their way (or Steven's game, Steven's way, as Jeff seems somewhat on board with combat trackers). However, just because this is what they/he wants, and I still want him to make his game his way, that doesn't mean I need to agree with his reasoning.
As I said in an above post, Steven is literally doing what all other MMO's have done, yet is expecting a diametrically opposed result from that same action.
This concerns me.
That being said, what invariably happens is most people use damage meters to just be moronic with them and say "MY METER IS BIGGER I AM BETTER!" They're a nifty tool in the hands of intelligent players, but in games intelligent players who actually know how to read meters are significantly small compared to people who are just overly stupid with them.
It wouldn't surprise me to see something like FFXIV where there is no released API for the game, but damage meters exist because it just scrapes the combat log more or less and operates like a constantly moving calculator, but this has to be done with an overlay and the overlays don't really communicate since you'll see someone's damage if they don't have the meter so it's clearly pulling information from the game itself. Square Enix with regards to this has said they don't mind and knew it would eventually happen, but they will not hesitate to ban you if you link them in party chat as a means to demean people.
I just really wish the argument against meters was actually phrased on "People are too stupid to use them correctly and use them as a means to exact negative behavior on people they perceive as inferior because of a bar without assessing the external factors like gear going into the equation." Instead it invariably comes to being "People are toxic." which is so nebulous and at this point a buzzphrase that it loses all meaning.
You could also make do without meters if you wanted to up someone's performance too I guess if there was something that allowed you to check the order of abilities that people were using since most issues with damage involve rotation, when rotations are executed perfectly it tends to boil down to either raw stats or procs, which you can assess stats on somebody by just checking their gear and you should be able to discern whether they're stacking too much of a stat, stacking the wrong stat, etc or just operating at a lesser gear level.
If you put a combat tracker in the hands of players, and then put those players in to a game where they have no need to maintain a reputation or build in game friendships, then yes, what you are talking about here absolutely happens.
It isn't even something that could happen, or that sometimes happens. It happens every time. Every. Single. Time.
However, you take that same player and that same combat tracker, and you put them in to a game where they need to have a reputation, where they need friends in game just to survive, and you could then watch that players attitude towards other players completely reverses.
Ashes will absolutely be the second of these two scenarios. Reputation will matter, friends will matter, guilds will matter. People that act like the above won't have any of those things.
On top of that, in Ashes, if someone acts like this towards you while you are leveling up, you can then level past them (such players don't know the game, and so are almost always extremely slow at progressing), find them, and then you can then just kill them. Many times. You could even shout at them "whose got the low DPS NOW B***H!" as you do it, if that happened to be your thing.
And the thing is, other players wouldn't judge you for that, because that player probably has a reputation that everyone is aware of.
The good thing about this is that a player that is of the inclination to do this sort of thing in a game like Ashes is probably also aware of how the corruption system works - and between that and the fact that they would also have an artificially enlarged ego, they would no doubt attempt to fight back. If they do this, it would mean you don't even get a penalty for attacking and killing them. There are already at least two combat trackers being developed for Ashes. The only way Intrepid would be able to prevent them from appearing before the game launches would be to implement one in to the game itself.
Regardless, there will be one available on launch day. I have already suggested a means by which the game would be able to keep both first and third party combat trackers out of the hands of the few people that would be both inclined and dumb enough to misuse them in this way in Ashes - restrict them to guilds that raid, and only allow their use to apply to others within that same guild. Thus, the only people you are able to monitor combat of are your own guild members - and people tend to not get away with being toxic towards their own guild members very long. Ashes will hopefully have a more complex combat system than this.
Even just the fact that players need to take at least 25% action combat abilities removes rotations as being the primary determining factor as to how much DPS you do.
I have been kicked from a raid, in the past. That i had already done, because the raid leader only looked at the numbers and not what was really going on. As a melee dps you have to run around more, which has also been said. I was in a guild in swtor, where i heard 2 people talk about, that they got so focused on being top dps, that they ignored everything else. The raid also ended up wiping. How good is a person at avoiding taking damage. Are you moving out of the aoe's that causes damage (doing so the healers have to work harder), or are you staying in it, but lowering your dps.
I used to play swtor and I never used a dps and managed to do most raid bosses, by the time i quit the game. As have said, it is also alot about mecanics.
In situations where a scrub raid leader doesn't have a combat tracker, they will still kick people. Their reasons will be just as valid as their reasons for using DPS - which is to say, not at all valid.
Using or not using a meter isn't the issue here, the issue is that the internet has some people on it that are dicks.
A combat tracker will tell the raid leader exactly what those two DPS were doing - as they don't just show DPS, they show every piece of outgoing and - more importantly here - incoming damage. If an encounter has a period where players are supposed to stop DPS'ing for what ever reason, and someone doesn't, the raid leader will be able to simply look at their combat tracker, see that everyone other than those two stopped DPS when they were supposed to but those two carried on, and then deal with those two players as they see fit.
Most of the people that claim to have had bad experiences with them seem to think the only thing they do is give a list of how much DPS players are doing. In reality, especially in SWTOR (which was likely to have been Advanced Combat Tracker as the tool used), the amount of data is literally every single ability cast or attempted to be cast by everyone in the raid, or at everyone in the raid, and including the exact time (I believe down to the hundredth of a second) that it was cast.
If you had two players in your guild that were able to get away with not doing what was required, you had a guild that didn't know how to raid.
On the other hand, they may have just been having fun for that one pull.
I'm repeating myself at this point, but that doesn't bother me.
It is people that cause toxicity. People will be toxic whether they have a combat tracker or not.
Likewise, meta builds will exist in games, regardless of whether combat trackers exist or not. Archeage is a good example of this - it is the game that had the least widespread use of combat trackers of any game I have seen, yet it had the most reliance on meta builds of any game I have played.
All of that said, the question isn't really "should Ashes have a combat tracker or not". This is out of even Intrepids hands.
The question to ask is "should the combat tracker players in Ashes use be controlled by several third parties with player access being limited as those people see fit, or should it be implemented by Intrepid so that they can have control over it"
Meters is a yes for me if they are togglable and the information is only available to the user and not visible to anyone else unless that person shares it via screenshots or voice. There should be a rule in the TOS that sharing your meter information on public forums or official discord can be bannable.
Meters should track healing and DPS to be fair.
You say you can't play without meters? Then risk getting banned. On my side, I'll be enjoying the game and finding new strategies to overcome obstacles other than "L33T DPS"
If they give the playerbase even the slightest bit of information, then people will reverse engineer it and we'll end up with third-party DPS meters anyways. They may as well save us some frustration and work, and just make all that information accessible to everyone.
And like Noanni has been pushing for, they can set the precedent for how DPS meters are made/used if they provide them first-party. Provide them only for personal use. And let guilds parse their guild members, if they opt-in. (Edit: They can also send the message that DPS meters are not important for the majority of the game/players, by making them locked by default, and requiring a moderate, one-time investment via a quest or vendor to unlock them.)
People who never used them and don't understand how they are useful, shouldn't even care that DPS meters exist, as long as it's not affecting game design (ala Deadly Boss Mods). Assholes will be assholes, with or without DPS meters. Report them and move on, like in any harassment situation.
People who have used combat trackers a ton in the past, but don't trust the untamed masses to use them correctly... That is exactly the elitist, toxic mindset that they claim to be fighting against. They can't trust others to use the tool responsibly, so it shouldn't exist? What is this, the Prohibition Era? (Sorry if that reference doesn't make sense outside the US.)
@Jahlon PUG leaders who kick under-performers rarely do it because of slightly low DPS, btw. They do it when people consistently mess up mechanics, or because of extremely low DPS. Neither of those problems require a DPS meter to detect. The whole problem of how PUG leaders treat their rando party-members is (at-best) tangential to DPS meters. I appreciate that you run PUGs better than that, and I think you should continue setting a good example. Ideally, you can include proper combat-tracker-usage when setting that example, but it becomes hard to do that publicly when combat trackers are universally banned.
Now then... I'm going to stop looking at these threads, because the debate over this issue is proving to be way more of a headache than the DPS meters themselves. (And I don't think I'm actually convincing anyone of anything.)
Edit: Oops I lied. I continued to look at and participate in this dreaded Discourse.
That is exactly what is happening.
And as I said - this means Ashes will have the exact same situation with combat trackers as every other game. You don't ever get different results by doing the same thing.
Obviously, I am somewhat disappointed. However, that is not due to Intrepid not doing things the way I want - I mean, I'll have a combat tracker. Rather, it is due to Intrepid recognizing an issue, a weak point in MMO's in general, claiming they want Ashes to not have that weakness, but then literally doing exactly the same thing every game out there has done.
I'll have my DPS meter and not risk getting banned.
It seems obvious to me, with everything I've said on the topic over the years here, that if Intrepid have plans to attempt to ban players if they are proven to be using a meter then my client/PC is probably a good place for them to start looking to try and detect one.
I welcome them to try.
I've been playing MMO's for a long time now.
I don't play WoW.
I do a fair amount of PUG's.
The number of times I have seen a combat tracker abused is in the single digits. Significantly less than once per year. When I do, the best way to deal with the issue is to point out that I have a combat tracker as well - thus making having a combat tracker the best way to solve the potential issues that can arise from players having a combat tracker - effectively, it is it's own solution.
However, the point here is that abuse like this is not because of combat trackers, it is because of lack of consequences of poor reputation. Add back in those consequences, and you get rid of that behavior.
Does that mean if Intrepid have no inclusion for undead, you won't RP as such anyway?
I mean, if Intrepid want you to be undead, surely they would make than an option, right?
What if I want to RP as a performance mad mage (which, actually, I usually kind of do, I act much more performance driven in raids than I actually am, it's kind of fun).
And you think that guild leaders wont find other ways to test scrubs? A dps meter is a fast tool for it. But it's easy to find who shitty players are without it as well. And these "scrubs" will get kicked from the group.
You can judge the skill of a player simply by how he is moving his character, which stats he prioritizes or even which skill order they choose.
A dps meters just puts all this down in numbers.