Discussing things with a developer isn't always about balance - in fact, it usually isn't. More often than not it is about bugs.
I remember a game where a player proved to the developers that their RNG system was completely biased against the first and last numbers in any range. They had a 50% less chance of showing up than other numbers, thus a generating a random number between 1 and 3 100 times would generate 2 50 times and both 1 and 3 only 25 times each.
I remember a game where an ability had a listed range of x to x+30, but after 1,000 casts, it was proven that the actual range was x-15 to x+15. It was a mistake, and one the developers would never have picked up on.
That is very interesting! True accessing data to find bugs is in any situation is beneficial. But it doesn't mean that everyone will be using combat trackers for that purpose.
Regarding BDO and Archeage, BDO has a lot of PvP content where I have spend hours researching if AP or ACC builds are better dps vice. Lots of spreadsheets looked through enchanting and dps comparisons for each weapon type, so I wouldn't say that having combat tracker is useless in that game.
Archeage is just unbalanced to the point that I can't even say anything, Ive been one shotted with plate armor at 15k gs compared to 10k gs mage so many times. Getting higher gs in that game is difficult, especially at those numbers and will make you pretty much invincible to 10-15 players at once who are 2-3k below you if they are not build to counter your class. That game less about what abilities you use, but more about type of armor you wear and how good it is.
ppl who don't want dps meters are usually trash and they were previously kicked from raids because they were underperforming. they dont want this system in games so they can hide their bad performance and they get carried in raids.
That is one of the reasons for why they hate it, but there is lots of more that we discussed previously above.
That is very interesting! True accessing data to find bugs is in any situation is beneficial. But it doesn't mean that everyone will be using combat trackers for that purpose.
This isn't the only thing people will use it for, no.
But it is one use that is completely objectively positive, and provides players with a means to do something that is under no circumstance possible without a combat tracker.
If you consider all of the other reasons to have a combat tracker and all of the reasons to not have a combat tracker to kind of balance each other out to a neutral state (which is a generous statement, from me), then this one thing well and truly tips the scales towards combat trackers being a very good thing to have in a game - especially an MMO that at one point claimed to want to promote open development.
Regarding BDO and Archeage, BDO has a lot of PvP content where I have spend hours researching if AP or ACC builds are better dps vice. Lots of spreadsheets looked through enchanting and dps comparisons for each weapon type, so I wouldn't say that having combat tracker is useless in that game.
Not useless, just less use.
With a combat tracker, you can see what you are doing, but also what your opponent is doing. In PvE, this means you can see what your opponent is likely to do next time. In PvP, knowing what they did last time usually doesn't give you much of a clue as to what they will do next time, so that information is much less useful.
And yeah, Archeage is just broken now.
The game was good for the first 18 months when it first came out, but only if you could ignore the whales. After that, the game has been about little more than daily quests, daily events, weekly events, holiday events and obsessing over gear score.
That is very interesting! True accessing data to find bugs is in any situation is beneficial. But it doesn't mean that everyone will be using combat trackers for that purpose.
This isn't the only thing people will use it for, no.
But it is one use that is completely objectively positive, and provides players with a means to do something that is under no circumstance possible without a combat tracker.
If you consider all of the other reasons to have a combat tracker and all of the reasons to not have a combat tracker to kind of balance each other out to a neutral state (which is a generous statement, from me), then this one thing well and truly tips the scales towards combat trackers being a very good thing to have in a game - especially an MMO that at one point claimed to want to promote open development.
Agree
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Undead CanuckMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
ppl who don't want dps meters are usually trash and they were previously kicked from raids because they were underperforming. they dont want this system in games so they can hide their bad performance and they get carried in raids.
Why are you saying that @Steven Sharif and Jeff are trash? I remember that Steven has mentioned that he was running raids. Why would he have been kicked?
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AzryilMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
edited May 2020
Oh god this topic again.....the last thread went so well...
Well dps meters plus people make some bad problems. Dps meters are in fact a good tool in the hands of the right person. But from the design point of veiw dps meters are more trouble than they are worth. Personally I like them. So while the arguement can be made that they are useful which they are. It is also true that it will have a negative impact on the community and that outweights all other aurguents.
Or you could say that the bad apples are ruining it for the rest of us. So while they are a good tool just causes to much damage to the community as a whole. Pretty much were Ashes of Creation stands on this issue in real simple terms.
Steven did metion about a place to test out builds, but if they just gives target dummies that can be adjusted like hp and armour. Maybe even monster target dummies to represent raid bosses. And if they actually died. Well then trial and error would work pretty good. Things like having a target dummy similate casting an ability that needed to interuppted would be a great tool better than dps meter.
I suggested a test dungeoun were guilds could go into with lots of knobs to turn up and down. Good thing about that is it is group oriented instead of one person being on a target dummy.
Yes not having dps meters does make some problems but it also makes bigger problems. But Practice Tool or Practice Dungeouns or just really good target dummies. Would solve most issues of not having dps meter.
So if they just made good targets dummies and or monster dummies that would be great, must say the easy content like dungeouns is a great way to test out your toons set up.
But from the design point of veiw dps meters are more trouble than they are worth.
This is untrue.
If you read the thread, you will learn something.
DPS meters allow players to be able to engage with the games developers to point out potential balance issues and bugs with the games combat.
Players have much more time to go over these things than developers, and so will find issues that developers never would. Players then point them out to developers, who in turn confirm and fix the issues.
Without a combat tracker, this is not possible. This means the game retains these issues.
So, all other things aside (which we can assume to balance out, if you like) combat trackers help the game get rid of in combat bugs.
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RepkarMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I don't know, personally I'd rather enjoy the game vs watch a bunch of numbers on a 3rd party or in game meter, itl be a nice breath of fresh air. Been playing wow for years, I hate the meter, I know I am not bad and I know I don't have to use one, but to stay relevant vs other people who play my class, I kind of have to use one so I know when I am making a mistake.... It would be nice for someone to just say nope no one can use one. focus on mechanics not dps. as for any other point like threat/healing/interrupts, those are just excuses to use a dps meter. How about this, lets have a meter for everything except dps, would you agree to it? Of course not, you want a dps meter. All this toxicity is a good example of why the great Stevus said, "nope."
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RepkarMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
ppl who don't want dps meters are usually trash and they were previously kicked from raids because they were underperforming. they dont want this system in games so they can hide their bad performance and they get carried in raids.
What you said right there, is why there won't be a dps meter.
ppl who don't want dps meters are usually trash and they were previously kicked from raids because they were underperforming. they dont want this system in games so they can hide their bad performance and they get carried in raids.
What you said right there, is why there won't be a dps meter.
People like his would act in the exact same manner whether they have a combat tracker or not. They will make these claims based on objective data obtained from a combat tracker, or from subjective data gained from other sources.
Basically, in terms of this kind of behavior, a combat tracker is neutral - up until you realize that people that don't act like this can also run a combat tracker and shut these people up really fast.
As to your comments about WoW a few things to be aware of.
The first is that Ashes will have combat trackers. No one (not even Steven) can stop this. They are in development now and will be ready by launch.
The next thing is that the combat tracker in WoW is literally the worst case possible in any MMO (as is the case for many things in WoW). No one here is asking for that kind of combat tracker.
The last thing to note is that if Intrepid implemented a combat tracker in to the game in a manner where those that have valid reason to want one have access to it, and those that don't have a valid reason to want it don't, then that solves essentially every issue present on both sides of the discussion - and on top of that it also keeps Intrepid in control of what the combat tracker can and can not do - which eliminates a DBM type situation completely.
The people making combat trackers will likely not bother carrying on if Intrepid added in the basic functionality to the game itself.
For every reasonable person who knows how to correctly interpret the information on a damage meter and productively use it, you have 15 jackasses who don't and get into dickwaving discussions about their bar being bigger.
Meters also promote moronic gameplay where you get cases like Classic WoW where people will tunnel hard on their damage meter and ignore doing boss mechanics, or they'll stop watching their threat meter and wipe the raid due to overpulling on Nefarian and him shadow flaming the whole raid group. You tell them in Discord "Yo, you're climbing high on threat, cool off for a couple of seconds and stop attacking the boss." They're so fixated on their parse that they treat it like you just asked them to murder their child.
For the record, I am in favor of damage meters, but I am well aware of the idiotic behavior they bring forth and like I said, for every one intelligent person, you have 15 morons. It's important to note that in a group you're all a part of a team. As long as the objective gets done, who cares who did most of it aside from someone seeking praise because they did 40% of the damage? Yeah when you're wiping it makes it hard to assess who is precisely your deadweight but like I keep saying, the amount of positives far outweigh the negatives.
For every reasonable person who knows how to correctly interpret the information on a damage meter and productively use it, you have 15 jackasses who don't and get into dickwaving discussions about their bar being bigger.
Meters also promote moronic gameplay where you get cases like Classic WoW where people will tunnel hard on their damage meter and ignore doing boss mechanics, or they'll stop watching their threat meter and wipe the raid due to overpulling on Nefarian and him shadow flaming the whole raid group.
For the record, I am in favor of damage meters, but I am well aware of the idiotic behavior they bring forth and like I said, for every one intelligent person, you have 15 morons.
That's why we thought of different way to limit the use of combat meter to only those who really need it
Edit: Specific part of the thread about it >
Good afternoon, @noaani and @leonerdo
Quick go over my thoughts again from last night (for you and for myself) and state what I believe combat trackers bring as a positive into the game.
1. Combat trackers are beneficial for hardcore raiding groups to distinguish and compare their power in a raid environment (specifically that, because otherwise you can use dummies for dps checks and buff checks outside mechanics)
2. Combat trackers are making a life of a decent and determined on success leader of a guild/raid to point out the mistakes of his fellow members and PUGs
3. Combat trackers make it easier to find out the mistakes of developers on balancing each class individually and will be easier to send information for the fix if required.
Negative opinions about combat trackers if they were accessible to everyone.
1. Combat trackers will be the main excuse for veteran players to look down on new players or inexperienced players. Some people might help each other out like you said @noaani, but there will be lots who do not want to deal with "bad players" and get rid of them to continue in PUGs or Hardcore guilds
2. It provides somewhat new/unexperienced in the game raid leaders from taking certain players into their group for not having the required dps (as you said some classes could be more supportive/tanky) Once the game comes out, no one would really know what is good or bad. Lazy leaders would just judge by numbers in dps stance of things.
3. Overall siding with @leonerdo's breakdown of each player group, there will be players like 1,3,4 groups who oppose or not use combat tracker for its purpose given above that will result in 1 and 2 negative scenarios.
Ways to negotiate.
1. Combat trackers and (add-ons in general) shouldn't be something that everyone have to rely on, as @leonerdo mentioned in the spoiler section on the last post with WoW allowing add-ons and combat trackers to the point where it got out of hand due to lots of mechanics and unbalance in classes. @noaani mentioned that in GW2 today, one person should have a combat tracker to keep the raid on point but individual players do not require it.
2. Combat trackers should be available for those who really wants or needs it for successful raiding (guild leaders/hardcore raiders) either restricting players from continued use of combat tracker if not required in basic levels of dungeons and easy/medium difficulty content. @noaani looking back at the idea of allowing it for guild use only.
3. Maybe making a combat tracker an in-game option, which is unlikely, but it will prevent people from making any kind of add-ons and breaking the terms of use of the game without breaking away from one group of people. Once they allow 3rd party programs, it will transform into WoW UI crumble.
4. If they will still stand on the point of keeping all the 3rd party programs banned, it is still going to impossible to track all combat trackers. It will bring the community of those who use it to the minimum (because those who need it will know how to use it quoting @leonerdo with group #2) with "use at your own risk" as it was in GW2 few years back. Eventually changing that statement later on, with higher difficulty content coming out, like ArenaNet if it is required.
Personal concerns.
1. Keeping the game clean off add-ons overall, in my opinion, keeps the game difficult. Allowing one thing will open that bottle that will start leaking other add-ons. Keeping the bottle tightly closed for now, I feel like is okay.
That's why we thought of different way to limit the use of combat meter to only those who really need it
Yeah but you can't implement that without an issue unless it gives a detailed breakdown in the game itself to whoever was the leader that pops up after every boss wipe or kill. If that information is there, there will always be a tool to scrape that information. That's how meters work is they scrape the numbers in the combat log and process them into an easy to use UI. It's all there, you'll end up with them if the information is sent in any capacity.
That's also presuming your leader is intelligent since you can't just pick and choose select members of a community and say "You're trustworthy, have the damage meter." There's a lot of leaders who are just as bad at reading meters as the drones.
There's just no way to accurately assess who is trustworthy with a damage meter and who isn't, or well there is but then like I said in the above, it will end up boiling down to favoritism or people crying that they don't have damage meter access.
It's just safer to not allow them openly, inevitably third party mods will offer this functionality and if people prove problematic with them banning them for using third party addons.
That's why we thought of different way to limit the use of combat meter to only those who really need it
That's also presuming your leader is intelligent since you can't just pick and choose select members of a community and say "You're trustworthy, have the damage meter." There's a lot of leaders who are just as bad at reading meters as the drones.
There's just no way to accurately assess who is trustworthy with a damage meter and who isn't, or well there is but then like I said in the above, it will end up boiling down to favoritism or people crying that they don't have damage meter access.
It's just safer to not allow them openly, inevitably third party mods will offer this functionality and if people prove problematic with them banning them for using third party addons.
We were mostly talking to have dps meter available to guilds and only on top tier raid content. If you have people who are overly and stupidly rely on doing the most dps in the guild, that is your fault nonetheless.
Or having them at the end of each fight run, just a full breakdown on who did what, instead of having it active 24/7 and in your concern - being available for viewing during important raid mechanics.
While that would be fine, it doesn't curb the problem they're looking to solve by doing this. Keep in mind they are doing this with a specific objective at the cost of all the benefits of them. So you really can't make a solid argument because their objective is pretty specific and relies on them not existing in any capacity.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out honestly. It'll be annoying for sure if you care about performance and can't tell if your rotation is better or worse. Like early in WoW rogues didn't have an accurate way to know their damage output so there were a lot of heated arguments about "Slice and Dice or Eviscerate finisher" which when people actually were able to check how much damage they did and from how, SnD ended up being better.
While that would be fine, it doesn't curb the problem they're looking to solve by doing this. Keep in mind they are doing this with a specific objective at the cost of all the benefits of them. So you really can't make a solid argument because their objective is pretty specific and relies on them not existing in any capacity.
Two points.
First, Intrepid have no say as to whether combat trackers will or will not exist.
They will exist - they already do.
Second, Intrepids stated reason is purely to do with community and toxicity. While I have no doubts at all that this is a misguided reason in the first place (toxic players do not rely on objective data), there is no doubt at all that if you only put combat trackers in the hands of people that sacrifice something else to have them, and only allow them to be used on members within that guild, then the potential for toxicity is essentially zero.
First, Intrepid have no say as to whether combat trackers will or will not exist.
They will exist - they already do.
I never denied they wouldn't exist. Take some time to exercise that reading comprehension skill of yours because it appears to be neglected. That being said, obviously they'll be added somewhere by someone through some third party, FFXIV has a hard stance against them but they still exist. However if they don't endorse them, yet people make or utilize them, the second that person becomes problematic they can ban them because they're technically breaking TOS by using something not endorsed.
Second, Intrepids stated reason is purely to do with community and toxicity. While I have no doubts at all that this is a misguided reason in the first place (toxic players do not rely on objective data)
Correct it doesn't rely on it, people will be dicks in any capacity, however giving them something makes them that does give them objective data does make them feel justified. If I say "You do bad damage, I'm carrying you." without a damage meter I'm being a bitch but I don't have proof. Give me objective data proving that and I will behave much worse. Even in WoW, if I decide I don't like somebody I will pull out all the stops and go through their logs to mock how back they are and it's a lot more severe because now I have actual evidence.
there is no doubt at all that if you only put combat trackers in the hands of people that sacrifice something else to have them, and only allow them to be used on members within that guild, then the potential for toxicity is essentially zero.
Something tells me you have never been in any form of leadership of a competent guild. Even when rogues are pulling bad damage and we know we don't say anything, but will bench them the immediate minute we have a better rogue that wants a spot. We don't need them to pull more damage, but we will drop them in favor of someone actually competent. It creates an easier environment for us to try and help them, and if they don't get it we just bench them instead of trying to work with them. In a lot of cases we just bench them one night because someone better showed up.
If you're in a casual guild where nobody really cares how it went so long as the content dies you won't notice this, but if you're in a guild serious about progression, damage meters are the first thing they'll use to start benching people next to inability to obey or follow mechanics consistently. If players are passable in a progression guild but they're really pushing for hardcore, they will drop people who are good in favor of just better.
Something tells me you have never been in any form of leadership of a competent guild. Even when rogues are pulling bad damage and we know we don't say anything, but will bench them the immediate minute we have a better rogue that wants a spot. We don't need them to pull more damage, but we will drop them in favor of someone actually competent. It creates an easier environment for us to try and help them, and if they don't get it we just bench them instead of trying to work with them. In a lot of cases we just bench them one night because someone better showed up.
Agree with that statement, hardcore guild will utilize everything they can to the max. That doesn't only include bad players, but it also include bad classes. Surely some classes could/might not be as good in specific content (Archeage or Rift examples with large amount of class variations). But if you are min-maxing for the top in hardcore guild, you would bench good players just because they are playing less than average capability class by statistics on tracker or in better way just tell them to switch to a better class.
This of course brings back the idea of @noaani that having combat tracker in correct hands of players that look for imbalance and bugs is a positive thing for those less than average classes to be brought up to the position of good.
However, more thinking into this, if Intrepid can successfully access combat data of each class or after each raid done by thousands of people using their information - they should be able to pinpoint the same problems as those with combat tracker (looking at how much testing they did during Apoc). Only benefit of giving it out to players for the idea of "help us find bugs and balance classes" is just making their job easier and faster by giving it to more volunteers. If they are strongly against it, then they are basically want to keep fixes and errors to themselves to find or not to find. If there is something obvious, forums will be filled with complains about it anyway.
First, Intrepid have no say as to whether combat trackers will or will not exist.
They will exist - they already do.
I never denied they wouldn't exist. Take some time to exercise that reading comprehension skill of yours because it appears to be neglected. That being said, obviously they'll be added somewhere by someone through some third party, FFXIV has a hard stance against them but they still exist. However if they don't endorse them, yet people make or utilize them, the second that person becomes problematic they can ban them because they're technically breaking TOS by using something not endorsed.
See, now you've gone and got all confrontational and stuff.
The third party trackers in development are able to be run on a machine other than the one the game client is on.
With how much I have pointed this out on these forums, I expect (and have basically dared) Intrepid to find evidence of it - even after pointing out that I will be running one on launch day (I may even run both of the ones I know of that are in development now).
If combat trackers are against the TOS, that is kind of pointless if the combat trackers that exist can't be detected at all.
Can't ban someone for using a thing you can't detect.
Correct it doesn't rely on it, people will be dicks in any capacity, however giving them something makes them that does give them objective data does make them feel justified. If I say "You do bad damage, I'm carrying you." without a damage meter I'm being a bitch but I don't have proof. Give me objective data proving that and I will behave much worse.
The kind of person dumb enough to do this (pick up raid leaders, or any raid leader in WoW) doesn't even know the difference between objective and subjective data.
If they read on the game forums or discord that X class is shit on raids, they will think that X class is shit on raids.
the kind of behavior you talk about in WoW will be unlikely to work in other games - especially games where other players can prevent you and your guild getting stuff done.
Every new player is tomorrows experienced player. If you make a habit of embarrassing those new players today, all you are doing is creating an army of people that think you are a bitch, and will happily actively work to your detriment.
Something tells me you have never been in any form of leadership of a competent guild.
Something tells me you have never raided outside of WoW.
Just because someone has a vastly different leadership style to you, doesn't mean it is less effective.
I have many years running my current department at work that requires people with a somewhat hard to find skill set. If people have a part of that skillset, it is easier for me to teach them the rest of it rather than continually look for someone that has every skill that I needed (which arguably doesn't exist outside of the people that I have trained).
That is a mindset I take to any situation in which I am in a leadership role.
In the situation you talk about with the rogue, what I do is I take him aside and tell him to his face that he needs to improve. I show him where he is at, I show him where I need him to be, and I ask him what assistance he needs to get there. Then I provide him what what ever assistance he asks for.
What I don't do is bench him. Even if I have more people show up for the next raid, I'll bench someone of his same class that is better than him long before I will bench that player. Reason being, that player isn't going to get any better on the bench. Now that he knows what is expected of him, he needs to be given the opportunity to meet that expectation.
In close to 20 years of being a leader on raids, all but the first year being best on server at a minimum, I have booted exactly one player from my raid or guild, and never benched a single player due to performance. This allows me to maintain a very high retention rate in what ever guild I am a leader in, while still getting at least server first kills on most encounters, and occasionally world first kills (though this isn't something I really strive for).
There is a lot of laziness that WoW has introduced to the MMO genre, and raid leaders that are unwilling to help their raid are among those things. Most of that laziness is contained within WoW, fortunately, and I don't expect Ashes release to suddenly allow that steaming pile of shit behavior to leave that game.
Agree with that statement, hardcore guild will utilize everything they can to the max. That doesn't only include bad players, but it also include bad classes. Surely some classes could/might not be as good in specific content (Archeage or Rift examples with large amount of class variations). But if you are min-maxing for the top in hardcore guild, you would bench good players just because they are playing less than average capability class by statistics on tracker or in better way just tell them to switch to a better class.
Pretty much. Guilds who are very focused on their performance will have little problem benching even competent players on sub par classes. The best example I can give for this is TBC raiding where we had really solid mages, but they still were less valuable to a raid than a warlock so if we could downsize a mage in favor of an equally geared warlock we would just because warlocks did more damage outright while keeping one token mage for arcane brilliance buff. And if we could have paid a mage to just stand outside Sunwell and buff our players with Arcane Brilliance every time we wiped just to kick the mage for a warlock, we would have done it. Same with hunters. Rogues you only wanted to keep around if they were rocking full BiS which included warglaives. If they didn't have both warglaives of azzinoth which was such a massive power boost to the class they were likely tied or slightly behind warlocks. Then you look at the raid utility one additional warlock gives where they can soulstone somebody and have an easier time target swapping than a melee being a caster. What did a rogue offer you? Damage. No raid utility past damage. We didn't buff anybody. Warlocks actually brought something useful to a raid in addition to similar damage. It was a no brainer.
Similarly, and this was most evident to me in Blood Legion which at the time was top guild in the US when I was with them, people who were around long term that began to slack on their performance were benched. We didn't have room to just keep people who clearly weren't holding themselves to a bar as we raced for world firsts. If you were having an off night, you were benched on that night. No questions asked. If you weren't an arcane mage when we were doing Spine, expect to be benched for that fight in favor of an arcane mage.
Besides, anything you'd reasonably use a damage meter for, as in finding out an optimal rotation will be found out without them by players. People will compare their experiences on discords for classes or even just figure it all out by observation. If I notice that using one rotation kills things much quicker than another rotation, it's safe to say it's best for doing damage. If anything it'd encourage me to actually look at my abilities and try to figure out what would work best together and gauging my own kill times instead of glancing at a meter. This is a short term thing though as eventually they'll settle on what is definitively best and preach it as gospel.
Agree with that statement, hardcore guild will utilize everything they can to the max. That doesn't only include bad players, but it also include bad classes. Surely some classes could/might not be as good in specific content (Archeage or Rift examples with large amount of class variations). But if you are min-maxing for the top in hardcore guild, you would bench good players just because they are playing less than average capability class by statistics on tracker or in better way just tell them to switch to a better class.
I wouldn't do that, not unless there was a specific reason to need to not take that class. I've never come across that need, I only even mention it because I can see it being possible in theory.
If it is just a case of "we can do this quicker without you", then that isn't a reason to not take them.
Any *experienced* raid leader will tell you quite happily that things change. Developers put out patches that switch up the balance of things, including classes.
Many years ago, I was running raids in EQ2. The game had 24 classes and 24 raid slots. There were two classes that most top end raid guilds simply didn't run with, as they were both tank classes but not deemed to be good enough as a class to be a raid tank, and didn't put out enough DPS to warrant that spot either.
I made a point of having at least one person with each of these classes as their main in my guild, and I made sure they got the same amount of raid time as any other player. This may have made some raid nights last 5 or so minutes longer than normal, but it never once caused us to not kill an encounter in an evening where we otherwise would have if not for them.
Then the inevitable happened. The developers altered game balance mid way through an expansion and basically made one of these classes the best tank in the game in every situation. They did this without much warning, as well. We were the only top end guild that had a player with raid experience on that class, with raid gear on said character ready to go. Every other raid had to either gear up an alt, or level and then gear an alt.
If taking a specific class is such a detriment to the raid that it could mean not getting a kill when we otherwise would have, that's something to consider. However, not having access to every class in the game has the potential to be far worse than that.
Now, this doesn't apply to pick up raids at all, not even in the slightest. But any top end raid that isn't maintaining access to at least one player that has extensive experience for each class, and has a character of that class that is raid gear, would leave me to openly question the experience of their leadership.
Then you look at the raid utility one additional warlock gives where they can soulstone somebody and have an easier time target swapping than a melee being a caster. What did a rogue offer you? Damage. No raid utility past damage. We didn't buff anybody. Warlocks actually brought something useful to a raid in addition to similar damage. It was a no brainer... If you weren't an arcane mage when we were doing Spine, expect to be benched for that fight in favor of an arcane mage..."
I had a lot of similar problems when I played WoW Classic, especially with finding PUG dungeons and raids. It was to the point of being invited into group due to good gear and high dps for a shaman, waiting 10 mins to fill that group up and then getting insta kicked for a warlock or a warrior or a mage. It wasn't even hardcore dungeons, the dps output is pretty much the same. I got some more group utility than other classes, but it was just a continuous rotation of invite > wait 10-15 mins > kick for better dps output class by statistics.
WoW players especially playing classic were so so toxic and unhelpful. I will not say that when Ashes gets released that WoW players would stick to WoW. Of course lots of them would flow into Ashes on release, but lots of them would probably quit due to crafting systems, no immediate gratification, and different combat style unlike they have in WoW.
I would point out that FF14 probably had one of the chillest dont give a shit communities that Ive seen. You would have people with combat trackers that clearly know that you suck at your class. Do 35% or less dps than anyone, but no, they wont point it out. If they did, they would not kick you out and they would deal with you for 6 hours on the same raid boss.
They did this without much warning, as well. We were the only top end guild that had a player with raid experience on that class, with raid gear on said character ready to go. Every other raid had to either gear up an alt, or level and then gear an alt.
If taking a specific class is such a detriment to the raid that it could mean not getting a kill when we otherwise would have, that's something to consider. However, not having access to every class in the game has the potential to be far worse than that.
Now, this doesn't apply to pick up raids at all, not even in the slightest. But any top end raid that isn't maintaining access to at least one player that has extensive experience for each class, and has a character of that class that is raid gear, would leave me to openly question the experience of their leadership.
As you mentioned, your guild was the only one that had all classes available to raid unlike any other. You pointed out that no one but you and your guild gives a damn about availability and utility. Others had to level an alt or get a new player to replace outdated class. Now lets think with the same idea of not giving a damn:
1. Example: BDO nodes, when the game came out of nodes (6 months after release), Wizard were OP vs large groups of players and dps vice in the game. Well, best guild on PvP server was just 100% wizard. No other class. You would just have 80-100 active players of wizards just to be best and it took LONG to level weapons to the right enchant and grind out lvl 56 for all your alts.
2. If people don't give a damn about properly playing the game, why would they give a damn about any other player that is worse than you. If you are a dick and telling everyone they suck, you would have no proof except if you duel them all. Usually with that people would just make fun of you for sticking that sword out for show. With DPS/combat meters, it would be similar to WoW fest. A dick points out that he does a bit more dps than anyone else, whole entire group turns away from inexperienced player and supports him. Instead of helping out the guy, they would just pressure him with "Oh why aren't you doing better, you are same class as this (dick) guy?"
3. If you are playing your class wrong, those who know your class would point that out with or without seeing your dps output. But with dps output, those who DONT know your class would just be smartasses and point it out (or kick you) because they dont know how to help you or willing to research into your class.
However, I totally understand your standpoint on this @noaani, just because many people are misusing it, doesn't mean that those who use it for its purpose have to suffer consequences. But that is just how life is.
just because many people are misusing it, doesn't mean that those who use it for its purpose have to suffer consequences. But that is just how life is.
As I've said in many threads now, what happens in WoW won't happen in Ashes,
In WoW, people can get away with being dicks. If they have a log of a player doing poor DPS, there are no consequences to them laughing at that player. The game is built around no sense of community at all.
Ashes is built around community mattering. If you have a reputation as being this kind of person, other guilds won't work with you. If other guilds won't work with you, they will work against you. If you manage to get hold of a castle, all of those other guilds will see to it that you lose it the following month. If they see you running a caravan, it won't make it to it's intended destination.
The other interesting thing about a guild run by this kind of person is that they are so one dimensional that espionage on them would be easier than on any other guild. All you need to do is place a character in their guild that is able to perform on a combat tracker, and this guild will trust them. As soon as this happens, all of your caravans will be reported to other guilds, and good luck getting anywhere now.
In Ashes, a guild that makes more enemies than friends and is full of spies really isn't going to last long.
If Ashes had the same community aspects as WoW, I'd probably agree that a combat tracker is a bad idea (though I'd also point out that my opinion on the matter is moot, as I wouldn't play that game).
You can't look at a system for Ashes and say "this game had these issues with that system" unless you also take in to account the other differences between the two games, and what effects those differences may have.
Guilds with the kind of leadership being talked about here will last less than a year in Ashes.
just because many people are misusing it, doesn't mean that those who use it for its purpose have to suffer consequences. But that is just how life is.
As I've said in many threads now, what happens in WoW won't happen in Ashes...Guilds with the kind of leadership being talked about here will last less than a year in Ashes.
I didn't mention that it only limited to WoW, it happens in every game. BDO pvp was based on community, and if that community was overpowering to the point where no one could do anything against them, they can do anything they wanted and say what they wanted. Nobody worked against them, ManUp had their castle for probably 9 months in a row with no one going against them. That is not the end of just one guild, 50% the top guilds were toxic af, been continuously banned for exploiting and toxic behavior between players, keeping half of the map locked for their use to grind. They would not care if they get "bad karma", and have chances of bringing down their item enchant if they die, if there is 300 top geared out players securing a location, not even 4-5 small or large guilds will be able to stop them from zerging. Why is that? Because toxic guilds like those were allied with the same toxic guilds. You go against one, 3-4 top hardcore guilds will grind your guild for a week non-stop.
It doesn't mean that those players wont come to Ashes. You cannot just guarantee that Ashes community will be care bears or good people like you. Nothing that Intrepid can do vs players like them if they aren't breaking any community rules. Why wouldn't they last less than a year in Ashes?
Edit: I do not know any better game to mention that relies on its community for end game. If anyone got better examples, mention your experiences.
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NagashMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
The question I would want to know is would Intrepid ban people for using a player made add one or would they allow it?
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
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Undead CanuckMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
just because many people are misusing it, doesn't mean that those who use it for its purpose have to suffer consequences. But that is just how life is.
As I've said in many threads now, what happens in WoW won't happen in Ashes...Guilds with the kind of leadership being talked about here will last less than a year in Ashes.
I didn't mention that it only limited to WoW, it happens in every game. BDO pvp was based on community, and if that community was overpowering to the point where no one could do anything against them, they can do anything they wanted and say what they wanted. Nobody worked against them, ManUp had their castle for probably 9 months in a row with no one going against them. That is not the end of just one guild, 50% the top guilds were toxic af, been continuously banned for exploiting and toxic behavior between players, keeping half of the map locked for their use to grind. They would not care if they get "bad karma", and have chances of bringing down their item enchant if they die, if there is 300 top geared out players securing a location, not even 4-5 small or large guilds will be able to stop them from zerging. Why is that? Because toxic guilds like those were allied with the same toxic guilds. You go against one, 3-4 top hardcore guilds will grind your guild for a week non-stop.
It doesn't mean that those players wont come to Ashes. You cannot just guarantee that Ashes community will be care bears or good people like you. Nothing that Intrepid can do vs players like them if they aren't breaking any community rules. Why wouldn't they last less than a year in Ashes?
Edit: I do not know any better game to mention that relies on its community for end game. If anyone got better examples, mention your experiences.
BDO is the closest thing to what Ashes will have in terms of community and PvP combining at the end game, but even that game doesn't have the same level of interaction.
The way BDO does server channels rather than servers means community is much less of an issue, and players can avoid guilds they don't like by simply moving to a different channel.
The question I would want to know is would Intrepid ban people for using a player made add one or would they allow it?
Please be ban.
Intrepid has stated their opinion. If people go against the design of the game, they can take action.
As someone that is somewhat on record as going to be using a tracker, I agree.
If people are dumb enough to get detected using a combat tracker, they deserve to be banned.
However, I am somewhat reminded of several memes from a few years ago in relation to the design of a path vs the path users would take.
You can design a path all you want, but if it doesn't go where users want to go, they simply won't use it. If you place that path where you know your users will use it, it is better for all involved.
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That is very interesting! True accessing data to find bugs is in any situation is beneficial. But it doesn't mean that everyone will be using combat trackers for that purpose.
Regarding BDO and Archeage, BDO has a lot of PvP content where I have spend hours researching if AP or ACC builds are better dps vice. Lots of spreadsheets looked through enchanting and dps comparisons for each weapon type, so I wouldn't say that having combat tracker is useless in that game.
Archeage is just unbalanced to the point that I can't even say anything, Ive been one shotted with plate armor at 15k gs compared to 10k gs mage so many times. Getting higher gs in that game is difficult, especially at those numbers and will make you pretty much invincible to 10-15 players at once who are 2-3k below you if they are not build to counter your class. That game less about what abilities you use, but more about type of armor you wear and how good it is.
That is one of the reasons for why they hate it, but there is lots of more that we discussed previously above.
But it is one use that is completely objectively positive, and provides players with a means to do something that is under no circumstance possible without a combat tracker.
If you consider all of the other reasons to have a combat tracker and all of the reasons to not have a combat tracker to kind of balance each other out to a neutral state (which is a generous statement, from me), then this one thing well and truly tips the scales towards combat trackers being a very good thing to have in a game - especially an MMO that at one point claimed to want to promote open development. Not useless, just less use.
With a combat tracker, you can see what you are doing, but also what your opponent is doing. In PvE, this means you can see what your opponent is likely to do next time. In PvP, knowing what they did last time usually doesn't give you much of a clue as to what they will do next time, so that information is much less useful.
And yeah, Archeage is just broken now.
The game was good for the first 18 months when it first came out, but only if you could ignore the whales. After that, the game has been about little more than daily quests, daily events, weekly events, holiday events and obsessing over gear score.
Agree
Why are you saying that @Steven Sharif and Jeff are trash? I remember that Steven has mentioned that he was running raids. Why would he have been kicked?
These threads go well when both sides accept healthy debate.
This thread did that, some other threads do not.
Or you could say that the bad apples are ruining it for the rest of us. So while they are a good tool just causes to much damage to the community as a whole. Pretty much were Ashes of Creation stands on this issue in real simple terms.
Steven did metion about a place to test out builds, but if they just gives target dummies that can be adjusted like hp and armour. Maybe even monster target dummies to represent raid bosses. And if they actually died. Well then trial and error would work pretty good. Things like having a target dummy similate casting an ability that needed to interuppted would be a great tool better than dps meter.
I suggested a test dungeoun were guilds could go into with lots of knobs to turn up and down. Good thing about that is it is group oriented instead of one person being on a target dummy.
Yes not having dps meters does make some problems but it also makes bigger problems. But Practice Tool or Practice Dungeouns or just really good target dummies. Would solve most issues of not having dps meter.
So if they just made good targets dummies and or monster dummies that would be great, must say the easy content like dungeouns is a great way to test out your toons set up.
If you read the thread, you will learn something.
DPS meters allow players to be able to engage with the games developers to point out potential balance issues and bugs with the games combat.
Players have much more time to go over these things than developers, and so will find issues that developers never would. Players then point them out to developers, who in turn confirm and fix the issues.
Without a combat tracker, this is not possible. This means the game retains these issues.
So, all other things aside (which we can assume to balance out, if you like) combat trackers help the game get rid of in combat bugs.
What you said right there, is why there won't be a dps meter.
Nope.
People like his would act in the exact same manner whether they have a combat tracker or not. They will make these claims based on objective data obtained from a combat tracker, or from subjective data gained from other sources.
Basically, in terms of this kind of behavior, a combat tracker is neutral - up until you realize that people that don't act like this can also run a combat tracker and shut these people up really fast.
As to your comments about WoW a few things to be aware of.
The first is that Ashes will have combat trackers. No one (not even Steven) can stop this. They are in development now and will be ready by launch.
The next thing is that the combat tracker in WoW is literally the worst case possible in any MMO (as is the case for many things in WoW). No one here is asking for that kind of combat tracker.
The last thing to note is that if Intrepid implemented a combat tracker in to the game in a manner where those that have valid reason to want one have access to it, and those that don't have a valid reason to want it don't, then that solves essentially every issue present on both sides of the discussion - and on top of that it also keeps Intrepid in control of what the combat tracker can and can not do - which eliminates a DBM type situation completely.
The people making combat trackers will likely not bother carrying on if Intrepid added in the basic functionality to the game itself.
Meters also promote moronic gameplay where you get cases like Classic WoW where people will tunnel hard on their damage meter and ignore doing boss mechanics, or they'll stop watching their threat meter and wipe the raid due to overpulling on Nefarian and him shadow flaming the whole raid group. You tell them in Discord "Yo, you're climbing high on threat, cool off for a couple of seconds and stop attacking the boss." They're so fixated on their parse that they treat it like you just asked them to murder their child.
For the record, I am in favor of damage meters, but I am well aware of the idiotic behavior they bring forth and like I said, for every one intelligent person, you have 15 morons. It's important to note that in a group you're all a part of a team. As long as the objective gets done, who cares who did most of it aside from someone seeking praise because they did 40% of the damage? Yeah when you're wiping it makes it hard to assess who is precisely your deadweight but like I keep saying, the amount of positives far outweigh the negatives.
That's why we thought of different way to limit the use of combat meter to only those who really need it
Edit: Specific part of the thread about it >
Quick go over my thoughts again from last night (for you and for myself) and state what I believe combat trackers bring as a positive into the game.
1. Combat trackers are beneficial for hardcore raiding groups to distinguish and compare their power in a raid environment (specifically that, because otherwise you can use dummies for dps checks and buff checks outside mechanics)
2. Combat trackers are making a life of a decent and determined on success leader of a guild/raid to point out the mistakes of his fellow members and PUGs
3. Combat trackers make it easier to find out the mistakes of developers on balancing each class individually and will be easier to send information for the fix if required.
Negative opinions about combat trackers if they were accessible to everyone.
1. Combat trackers will be the main excuse for veteran players to look down on new players or inexperienced players. Some people might help each other out like you said @noaani, but there will be lots who do not want to deal with "bad players" and get rid of them to continue in PUGs or Hardcore guilds
2. It provides somewhat new/unexperienced in the game raid leaders from taking certain players into their group for not having the required dps (as you said some classes could be more supportive/tanky) Once the game comes out, no one would really know what is good or bad. Lazy leaders would just judge by numbers in dps stance of things.
3. Overall siding with @leonerdo's breakdown of each player group, there will be players like 1,3,4 groups who oppose or not use combat tracker for its purpose given above that will result in 1 and 2 negative scenarios.
Ways to negotiate.
1. Combat trackers and (add-ons in general) shouldn't be something that everyone have to rely on, as @leonerdo mentioned in the spoiler section on the last post with WoW allowing add-ons and combat trackers to the point where it got out of hand due to lots of mechanics and unbalance in classes. @noaani mentioned that in GW2 today, one person should have a combat tracker to keep the raid on point but individual players do not require it.
2. Combat trackers should be available for those who really wants or needs it for successful raiding (guild leaders/hardcore raiders) either restricting players from continued use of combat tracker if not required in basic levels of dungeons and easy/medium difficulty content. @noaani looking back at the idea of allowing it for guild use only.
3. Maybe making a combat tracker an in-game option, which is unlikely, but it will prevent people from making any kind of add-ons and breaking the terms of use of the game without breaking away from one group of people. Once they allow 3rd party programs, it will transform into WoW UI crumble.
4. If they will still stand on the point of keeping all the 3rd party programs banned, it is still going to impossible to track all combat trackers. It will bring the community of those who use it to the minimum (because those who need it will know how to use it quoting @leonerdo with group #2) with "use at your own risk" as it was in GW2 few years back. Eventually changing that statement later on, with higher difficulty content coming out, like ArenaNet if it is required.
Personal concerns.
1. Keeping the game clean off add-ons overall, in my opinion, keeps the game difficult. Allowing one thing will open that bottle that will start leaking other add-ons. Keeping the bottle tightly closed for now, I feel like is okay.
Yeah but you can't implement that without an issue unless it gives a detailed breakdown in the game itself to whoever was the leader that pops up after every boss wipe or kill. If that information is there, there will always be a tool to scrape that information. That's how meters work is they scrape the numbers in the combat log and process them into an easy to use UI. It's all there, you'll end up with them if the information is sent in any capacity.
That's also presuming your leader is intelligent since you can't just pick and choose select members of a community and say "You're trustworthy, have the damage meter." There's a lot of leaders who are just as bad at reading meters as the drones.
There's just no way to accurately assess who is trustworthy with a damage meter and who isn't, or well there is but then like I said in the above, it will end up boiling down to favoritism or people crying that they don't have damage meter access.
It's just safer to not allow them openly, inevitably third party mods will offer this functionality and if people prove problematic with them banning them for using third party addons.
We were mostly talking to have dps meter available to guilds and only on top tier raid content. If you have people who are overly and stupidly rely on doing the most dps in the guild, that is your fault nonetheless.
Or having them at the end of each fight run, just a full breakdown on who did what, instead of having it active 24/7 and in your concern - being available for viewing during important raid mechanics.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out honestly. It'll be annoying for sure if you care about performance and can't tell if your rotation is better or worse. Like early in WoW rogues didn't have an accurate way to know their damage output so there were a lot of heated arguments about "Slice and Dice or Eviscerate finisher" which when people actually were able to check how much damage they did and from how, SnD ended up being better.
First, Intrepid have no say as to whether combat trackers will or will not exist.
They will exist - they already do.
Second, Intrepids stated reason is purely to do with community and toxicity. While I have no doubts at all that this is a misguided reason in the first place (toxic players do not rely on objective data), there is no doubt at all that if you only put combat trackers in the hands of people that sacrifice something else to have them, and only allow them to be used on members within that guild, then the potential for toxicity is essentially zero.
I never denied they wouldn't exist. Take some time to exercise that reading comprehension skill of yours because it appears to be neglected. That being said, obviously they'll be added somewhere by someone through some third party, FFXIV has a hard stance against them but they still exist. However if they don't endorse them, yet people make or utilize them, the second that person becomes problematic they can ban them because they're technically breaking TOS by using something not endorsed.
Correct it doesn't rely on it, people will be dicks in any capacity, however giving them something makes them that does give them objective data does make them feel justified. If I say "You do bad damage, I'm carrying you." without a damage meter I'm being a bitch but I don't have proof. Give me objective data proving that and I will behave much worse. Even in WoW, if I decide I don't like somebody I will pull out all the stops and go through their logs to mock how back they are and it's a lot more severe because now I have actual evidence.
Something tells me you have never been in any form of leadership of a competent guild. Even when rogues are pulling bad damage and we know we don't say anything, but will bench them the immediate minute we have a better rogue that wants a spot. We don't need them to pull more damage, but we will drop them in favor of someone actually competent. It creates an easier environment for us to try and help them, and if they don't get it we just bench them instead of trying to work with them. In a lot of cases we just bench them one night because someone better showed up.
If you're in a casual guild where nobody really cares how it went so long as the content dies you won't notice this, but if you're in a guild serious about progression, damage meters are the first thing they'll use to start benching people next to inability to obey or follow mechanics consistently. If players are passable in a progression guild but they're really pushing for hardcore, they will drop people who are good in favor of just better.
Agree with that statement, hardcore guild will utilize everything they can to the max. That doesn't only include bad players, but it also include bad classes. Surely some classes could/might not be as good in specific content (Archeage or Rift examples with large amount of class variations). But if you are min-maxing for the top in hardcore guild, you would bench good players just because they are playing less than average capability class by statistics on tracker or in better way just tell them to switch to a better class.
This of course brings back the idea of @noaani that having combat tracker in correct hands of players that look for imbalance and bugs is a positive thing for those less than average classes to be brought up to the position of good.
However, more thinking into this, if Intrepid can successfully access combat data of each class or after each raid done by thousands of people using their information - they should be able to pinpoint the same problems as those with combat tracker (looking at how much testing they did during Apoc). Only benefit of giving it out to players for the idea of "help us find bugs and balance classes" is just making their job easier and faster by giving it to more volunteers. If they are strongly against it, then they are basically want to keep fixes and errors to themselves to find or not to find. If there is something obvious, forums will be filled with complains about it anyway.
The third party trackers in development are able to be run on a machine other than the one the game client is on.
With how much I have pointed this out on these forums, I expect (and have basically dared) Intrepid to find evidence of it - even after pointing out that I will be running one on launch day (I may even run both of the ones I know of that are in development now).
If combat trackers are against the TOS, that is kind of pointless if the combat trackers that exist can't be detected at all.
Can't ban someone for using a thing you can't detect.
The kind of person dumb enough to do this (pick up raid leaders, or any raid leader in WoW) doesn't even know the difference between objective and subjective data.
If they read on the game forums or discord that X class is shit on raids, they will think that X class is shit on raids.
the kind of behavior you talk about in WoW will be unlikely to work in other games - especially games where other players can prevent you and your guild getting stuff done.
Every new player is tomorrows experienced player. If you make a habit of embarrassing those new players today, all you are doing is creating an army of people that think you are a bitch, and will happily actively work to your detriment.
Something tells me you have never raided outside of WoW.
Just because someone has a vastly different leadership style to you, doesn't mean it is less effective.
I have many years running my current department at work that requires people with a somewhat hard to find skill set. If people have a part of that skillset, it is easier for me to teach them the rest of it rather than continually look for someone that has every skill that I needed (which arguably doesn't exist outside of the people that I have trained).
That is a mindset I take to any situation in which I am in a leadership role.
In the situation you talk about with the rogue, what I do is I take him aside and tell him to his face that he needs to improve. I show him where he is at, I show him where I need him to be, and I ask him what assistance he needs to get there. Then I provide him what what ever assistance he asks for.
What I don't do is bench him. Even if I have more people show up for the next raid, I'll bench someone of his same class that is better than him long before I will bench that player. Reason being, that player isn't going to get any better on the bench. Now that he knows what is expected of him, he needs to be given the opportunity to meet that expectation.
In close to 20 years of being a leader on raids, all but the first year being best on server at a minimum, I have booted exactly one player from my raid or guild, and never benched a single player due to performance. This allows me to maintain a very high retention rate in what ever guild I am a leader in, while still getting at least server first kills on most encounters, and occasionally world first kills (though this isn't something I really strive for).
There is a lot of laziness that WoW has introduced to the MMO genre, and raid leaders that are unwilling to help their raid are among those things. Most of that laziness is contained within WoW, fortunately, and I don't expect Ashes release to suddenly allow that steaming pile of shit behavior to leave that game.
Pretty much. Guilds who are very focused on their performance will have little problem benching even competent players on sub par classes. The best example I can give for this is TBC raiding where we had really solid mages, but they still were less valuable to a raid than a warlock so if we could downsize a mage in favor of an equally geared warlock we would just because warlocks did more damage outright while keeping one token mage for arcane brilliance buff. And if we could have paid a mage to just stand outside Sunwell and buff our players with Arcane Brilliance every time we wiped just to kick the mage for a warlock, we would have done it. Same with hunters. Rogues you only wanted to keep around if they were rocking full BiS which included warglaives. If they didn't have both warglaives of azzinoth which was such a massive power boost to the class they were likely tied or slightly behind warlocks. Then you look at the raid utility one additional warlock gives where they can soulstone somebody and have an easier time target swapping than a melee being a caster. What did a rogue offer you? Damage. No raid utility past damage. We didn't buff anybody. Warlocks actually brought something useful to a raid in addition to similar damage. It was a no brainer.
Similarly, and this was most evident to me in Blood Legion which at the time was top guild in the US when I was with them, people who were around long term that began to slack on their performance were benched. We didn't have room to just keep people who clearly weren't holding themselves to a bar as we raced for world firsts. If you were having an off night, you were benched on that night. No questions asked. If you weren't an arcane mage when we were doing Spine, expect to be benched for that fight in favor of an arcane mage.
Besides, anything you'd reasonably use a damage meter for, as in finding out an optimal rotation will be found out without them by players. People will compare their experiences on discords for classes or even just figure it all out by observation. If I notice that using one rotation kills things much quicker than another rotation, it's safe to say it's best for doing damage. If anything it'd encourage me to actually look at my abilities and try to figure out what would work best together and gauging my own kill times instead of glancing at a meter. This is a short term thing though as eventually they'll settle on what is definitively best and preach it as gospel.
If it is just a case of "we can do this quicker without you", then that isn't a reason to not take them.
Any *experienced* raid leader will tell you quite happily that things change. Developers put out patches that switch up the balance of things, including classes.
Many years ago, I was running raids in EQ2. The game had 24 classes and 24 raid slots. There were two classes that most top end raid guilds simply didn't run with, as they were both tank classes but not deemed to be good enough as a class to be a raid tank, and didn't put out enough DPS to warrant that spot either.
I made a point of having at least one person with each of these classes as their main in my guild, and I made sure they got the same amount of raid time as any other player. This may have made some raid nights last 5 or so minutes longer than normal, but it never once caused us to not kill an encounter in an evening where we otherwise would have if not for them.
Then the inevitable happened. The developers altered game balance mid way through an expansion and basically made one of these classes the best tank in the game in every situation. They did this without much warning, as well. We were the only top end guild that had a player with raid experience on that class, with raid gear on said character ready to go. Every other raid had to either gear up an alt, or level and then gear an alt.
If taking a specific class is such a detriment to the raid that it could mean not getting a kill when we otherwise would have, that's something to consider. However, not having access to every class in the game has the potential to be far worse than that.
Now, this doesn't apply to pick up raids at all, not even in the slightest. But any top end raid that isn't maintaining access to at least one player that has extensive experience for each class, and has a character of that class that is raid gear, would leave me to openly question the experience of their leadership.
Agree with points of @Sabrina Lancaster
I had a lot of similar problems when I played WoW Classic, especially with finding PUG dungeons and raids. It was to the point of being invited into group due to good gear and high dps for a shaman, waiting 10 mins to fill that group up and then getting insta kicked for a warlock or a warrior or a mage. It wasn't even hardcore dungeons, the dps output is pretty much the same. I got some more group utility than other classes, but it was just a continuous rotation of invite > wait 10-15 mins > kick for better dps output class by statistics.
WoW players especially playing classic were so so toxic and unhelpful. I will not say that when Ashes gets released that WoW players would stick to WoW. Of course lots of them would flow into Ashes on release, but lots of them would probably quit due to crafting systems, no immediate gratification, and different combat style unlike they have in WoW.
I would point out that FF14 probably had one of the chillest dont give a shit communities that Ive seen. You would have people with combat trackers that clearly know that you suck at your class. Do 35% or less dps than anyone, but no, they wont point it out. If they did, they would not kick you out and they would deal with you for 6 hours on the same raid boss.
Agree with points of @noaani
As you mentioned, your guild was the only one that had all classes available to raid unlike any other. You pointed out that no one but you and your guild gives a damn about availability and utility. Others had to level an alt or get a new player to replace outdated class. Now lets think with the same idea of not giving a damn:
1. Example: BDO nodes, when the game came out of nodes (6 months after release), Wizard were OP vs large groups of players and dps vice in the game. Well, best guild on PvP server was just 100% wizard. No other class. You would just have 80-100 active players of wizards just to be best and it took LONG to level weapons to the right enchant and grind out lvl 56 for all your alts.
2. If people don't give a damn about properly playing the game, why would they give a damn about any other player that is worse than you. If you are a dick and telling everyone they suck, you would have no proof except if you duel them all. Usually with that people would just make fun of you for sticking that sword out for show. With DPS/combat meters, it would be similar to WoW fest. A dick points out that he does a bit more dps than anyone else, whole entire group turns away from inexperienced player and supports him. Instead of helping out the guy, they would just pressure him with "Oh why aren't you doing better, you are same class as this (dick) guy?"
3. If you are playing your class wrong, those who know your class would point that out with or without seeing your dps output. But with dps output, those who DONT know your class would just be smartasses and point it out (or kick you) because they dont know how to help you or willing to research into your class.
However, I totally understand your standpoint on this @noaani, just because many people are misusing it, doesn't mean that those who use it for its purpose have to suffer consequences. But that is just how life is.
In WoW, people can get away with being dicks. If they have a log of a player doing poor DPS, there are no consequences to them laughing at that player. The game is built around no sense of community at all.
Ashes is built around community mattering. If you have a reputation as being this kind of person, other guilds won't work with you. If other guilds won't work with you, they will work against you. If you manage to get hold of a castle, all of those other guilds will see to it that you lose it the following month. If they see you running a caravan, it won't make it to it's intended destination.
The other interesting thing about a guild run by this kind of person is that they are so one dimensional that espionage on them would be easier than on any other guild. All you need to do is place a character in their guild that is able to perform on a combat tracker, and this guild will trust them. As soon as this happens, all of your caravans will be reported to other guilds, and good luck getting anywhere now.
In Ashes, a guild that makes more enemies than friends and is full of spies really isn't going to last long.
If Ashes had the same community aspects as WoW, I'd probably agree that a combat tracker is a bad idea (though I'd also point out that my opinion on the matter is moot, as I wouldn't play that game).
You can't look at a system for Ashes and say "this game had these issues with that system" unless you also take in to account the other differences between the two games, and what effects those differences may have.
Guilds with the kind of leadership being talked about here will last less than a year in Ashes.
I didn't mention that it only limited to WoW, it happens in every game. BDO pvp was based on community, and if that community was overpowering to the point where no one could do anything against them, they can do anything they wanted and say what they wanted. Nobody worked against them, ManUp had their castle for probably 9 months in a row with no one going against them. That is not the end of just one guild, 50% the top guilds were toxic af, been continuously banned for exploiting and toxic behavior between players, keeping half of the map locked for their use to grind. They would not care if they get "bad karma", and have chances of bringing down their item enchant if they die, if there is 300 top geared out players securing a location, not even 4-5 small or large guilds will be able to stop them from zerging. Why is that? Because toxic guilds like those were allied with the same toxic guilds. You go against one, 3-4 top hardcore guilds will grind your guild for a week non-stop.
It doesn't mean that those players wont come to Ashes. You cannot just guarantee that Ashes community will be care bears or good people like you. Nothing that Intrepid can do vs players like them if they aren't breaking any community rules. Why wouldn't they last less than a year in Ashes?
Edit: I do not know any better game to mention that relies on its community for end game. If anyone got better examples, mention your experiences.
Please be ban.
Intrepid has stated their opinion. If people go against the design of the game, they can take action.
BDO is the closest thing to what Ashes will have in terms of community and PvP combining at the end game, but even that game doesn't have the same level of interaction.
The way BDO does server channels rather than servers means community is much less of an issue, and players can avoid guilds they don't like by simply moving to a different channel.
This isn't an option in Ashes.
As someone that is somewhat on record as going to be using a tracker, I agree.
If people are dumb enough to get detected using a combat tracker, they deserve to be banned.
However, I am somewhat reminded of several memes from a few years ago in relation to the design of a path vs the path users would take.
You can design a path all you want, but if it doesn't go where users want to go, they simply won't use it. If you place that path where you know your users will use it, it is better for all involved.