Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Ah. I misread you as well. I read noone can deny it WAS. I apologize for being confrontive, thought you were being unnecessarily hostile. I mix up posts sometimes too.
To break down your stance. You have concluded based on absolutely nothing more than anecdotal evidence that data tracking does not impact community toxicity. I'm sorry, but 4 cherry picked games for an argument is still 4 very cherry picked games.
That is not objective data. You are effectively manipulating the narrative to meet your requirements for winning said narrative. 4 MMOs of hundreds is neither a fair nor accurate representation of the MMO genre as a whole, nor is it a fair representation of data tracking in MMOs. This assertion based on this context is pure assumption. I can tell you that two of those games have high levels of PvP, the other two (I must assume for EQ2) do not. CoH did not have a huge raid community either, I cannot speak for either EQ2 or Archeage, but WoW invented the hardcore raid community.
The number of variables just from those 4 games are immeasurable.
Fact: Toxicity in MMOs is linked closely to highly competitive game play.
Fact: Data tracking is used primarily to inform individuals of player performance.
There is a direct correlation between the use of data tracking and competitive game play. This is not debatable. Data trackers are MEANT for competitive players.
For that other nonsensical "use" which is really an excuse, combat log in chat. Screenshot. Report bug. Job done. You do not need to use a data tracker to report such a trivial bug. I've done it dozens of times. This is a non-issue.
I do not argue against data tracking in a game out of the misguided belief that it will eliminate all forms of toxicity in the game. I argue for it's removal because it will reduce some of it. There will inevitably be a degree of toxicity in AoC due to it being a PvP oriented game, that is unavoidable. However, careful class balance and strong community watchdogs can mitigate much of it. Data tracking would serve no purpose beyond revealing whatever flaws in game play balance there are, and allow otherwise lazy players to judge others based on numbers that will almost never tell the whole story.
TL;DR: You're bad at debate.
It's usually pretty obvious for anyone who stops and pays attention to what's going on.
During a fight with some **** in Blade and Soul, my group of... 5 I think? Repeatedly died about 6 times. One player bitched constantly about it, blaming everyone. Eventually I had enough and just yelled at him to shut the hell up and do his job of keeping the adds off the group's only heavy hitting DPS (me) so that I can keep hitting the main target rather than fight off the god damn cats. Took all of 1 fight for me to pay attention to what was going on, 1 fight to confirm, and 7 seconds to snap at the offensive jerk.
Low and behold, it took 1 try after that. He shut up, I pissed off, and my guild mate acknowledged my furious anger with a "That... was awesome".
You should always just have someone dedicated to watching the fight and noting who's doing what and how they're doing it. Usually, this role defaults to the healer. Tank is busy watching the enemies, the healer is usually far enough back that they can pay attention to everyone's position and health. Beyond that, the DPS should focus on the environment, and watch for patrols and potential adds from the periphery of the battle.
The fact that trial and error takes time and dedication is part of why it's easier to avoid being a judgy asshole, at least in my own experience. Since it took ME hours of game play, practice, and experience, I can't expect everyone else to operate at my level.
Data tracking takes that away. What normally requires experience and expertise is reduced to noting numbers and graphs, and this is something everyone can do. So when not everyone does it, it becomes frustrating to those who do. Frustration leads to shorter tempers and that leads to toxic behavior.
Know your role, do your job. If Brad the Bard keeps dying, and you know how Bards work, advise. It's just common sense.
This is all very true. But that points more to the conclusion that if AoC wants to avoid competitive, toxic, data-tracking elitists, the only guaranteed solution they have is to make the game not competitive. If the game is highly competitive and combat trackers give people a competitive edge (or at least save them some time), then someone's going to make one, and lots of competitive players will download it.
Intrepid has only 3 options:
--Make a noncompetitive game -- Probably less fun, and doesn't sound like what Intrepid wants
--Make a competitive game and spend a ton of effort fighting combat trackers -- Probably has some success (but not complete) and leads to an equal amount of unhappiness from the competitive players who rely on trackers (not just for judging, but also for theorycrafting and friendly competition via parsing/logging)
--Make a competitive game and spend a ton of effort fighting toxicity directly (by banning people, not tools, and giving people clear behavioral guidelines) -- Probably leaves the most toxicity, but only slightly, and it doesn't negatively impact the game in other ways.
None of these are ideal. If there was an easy ideal solution, I don't think we'd be having this debate for so long. But I think the third option has the best chance of allowing Intrepid to make the game they want, make the game somewhat less toxic, and not waste their time fighting combat trackers for a marginal trade-off of pros and cons.
Everyone in this tread speaking in favor or combat trackers acknowledge that there will be people especially in pug groups that will misuse the tool to take misinformed action. However the idiots that misuse the tool don't eliminate the value the tool brings to raid encounters. Further you quote my comment stating that I would rather have a combat tracker that isn't in real time in which case your example wouldn't have occurred.
Archeage doesn't have PvE raids - or didn't when I last played. Encounters like the Red Dragon, Kracken and Leviathan are there as a PvP reward. The encounters in that game would not pass as base population even in WoW. The difficulty in them is based on the fact that you are supposed to have at least one other raid attacking you.
GW2 raids - especially the early ones - are also somewhat lackluster. The game didn't have a workable class system when it added those first raids.
SWTOR is a game that is notorious among MMO players as being the best MMO to play single player, as the mulitplayer aspects of it are underwhelming and under-rewarding.
So all up, I would say your raiding experience in WoW is actually your most applicable in terms of understanding top end encounters and their design.
---
If an encounter has three giant crystals around it that seem to do nothing, and then suddenly start glowing in the middle of the fight, that isn't a trial and error thing, that is the encounter yelling what to do at you.
Age of Conan and EQ2 are the two games that I have raided in that have some encounters that don't tell you what to do, and interestingly they are also among the games that you can't simply look up the strategy for an encounter via a google search.
These games both required guilds to attack the encounter several times just to see what it would actually do. Some encounters would have an announcement for things like incoming AoE's, adds spawning or various other mechanics, but these were all early raid content in a given content cycle - the kind of content that exists to introduce new mechanics to players.
It is effectively the tutorial aspect of raiding - there is the actual raids after that, and when you get to those they don't tell you how to kill them - hell, those raids have so many things going on at once the encounter wouldn't shut up if it had to tell you about all of them.
My point is that the single biggest factor in ensuring a games community is going to be toxic is to not have any punishment for players that act toxic.
Developers and publishers aren't ever going to put suspensions or bans on players accounts for toxic behavior (outside of childrens games like Wizard 101). However, they are able to build them in to their games in other ways.
What they can do (and in fact many already do) is add in content to the game where you need others to actively participate in that content with you, but in a manner where these other players are able to chose to not participate with any specific player they wish. Thus the toxic player has trouble finding players to participate in this content with them.
Most games call this kind of content "grouping".
However, some games also have group content where there is a system by which you join a queue, and when your turn is up, you are placed in a group with random players. When this exists, since you are unlikely to ever see those same players again (even more true on cross server systems) the penalty for toxic behavior is reduced to zero.
The point I am trying to make here is that there is absolutely no connection at all between games with high use of combat trackers and highly toxic communities (games exist at all corners of that spectrum), yet there is a connection between games with highly toxic communities and no penalty for toxic behavior.
You are welcome to throw literally any MMO in to the mix of the four games we have so far - all I ask is that if you do, you keep in mind the actual argument that I am making here. If you bring up a game that has group content yet still has a toxic community - but that game has a group finder in it - then I'm not sure I'd bother replying.
All it would take from you to disprove my statement here is to successfully name one game that has a reasonable amount of desired content that requires other players to actively decide to group with specific players (aka, lots of group content with no automated group finding system), and yet still has a toxic community. I read that paper 5 years ago (I read papers on game design similar to how some people read novels).
It is based on MOBA's, and when they talk about competitive game play, they talk about random match arena PvP.
Basically nothing from that paper holds true outside of random match arena PvP.
That said, you get bonus internet points for finding it.
To be perfectly clear here, I am *not* saying that PvP in MMO's is not a cause of toxic behavior. It is, as far as I can tell, the second greatest cause of toxic behavior. However, this is PvP, not all competitiveness.
If I am reporting a bug that I consider to be worth my time to look in to, I am using either thousands or tens of thousands of data points.
I used 50,000 data points to point out to a game designer that their random number generator was not working as they expected it would work - and even with that, I prefaced it by saying the data set is still a little small for me to be completely sure.
I mean, if you think a single screenshot is able to convey an actual bug in a game, then you and I are operating on somewhat different levels here. This may be true, but it also may not.
What is absolutely true though is that a combat tracker is not the top cause of toxicity (that is lack or punishment), nor is it the second (PvP). I wouldn't consider it to be the third either (guild drama), nor the fourth (economy). I would accept an argument for the fifth, though I don't personally place it here (gold sellers/bots). TO me, I think sixth is the best one could even think of placing it.
Now, to me, by the time you get that far down the stack, if you are still looking at removing an incredibly useful tool for that small amount of reduced toxicity, you are basically trying to make a sterile game. If you have any of the first three of these things in your game, having the sixth won't make any kind of noticeable different in terms of the over all level of toxicity present in your game.
Ashes has two of the top three, this ensures some toxic behavior in the game. However, since it doesn't have the top one - which I would allocate more than 60% of all toxic behavior to - that level will be drastically lower than most other games out there.
The other thing I'd like to see you take in to consideration in your claim is the amount of toxicity that combat trackers put an end to. Whether it be someone posting on a games forum about how X class sucks because they play Y class, and he is so awesome he can do 100 DPS to Z mob - and then I come in and point out that I play X class as an alt, and here is a parse of me doing 450 DPS to Z mob.
That kind of thing not only stops that specific instance of toxic behavior, it stops that player (and others reading it) from ANY toxic behavior in the game.
The kind of player that makes up bullshit suddenly can't make up bullshit if there is objective data to prove that their bullshit is indeed bullshit.
Archeage has a few Raids now, Library and Ocleera Rift. Guild Wars 2 did have lackluster PvE content in general, but it was not made for this, and was a later addition. SWTOR did indeed focus heavily on single player narrative growth, but had some great multiplayer content, anyone who's played huttball could attest, and had 16 player raid content, about average in difficulty compared to other mmos. As i said WoW did have my most consistent hours logged, and content cleared.
And really, the crystals glowing is yelling at you what to do? So your raid goes to attack them, opp they're immune to damage! You stand by them nothing happens! Until someone notices an alter on one side of the room with a ball on it, oh its pick up able, you bring it to one of them bam party wipes. Repeat, bam party wipes. then you notice there's a mural on one wall that shows an order to the crystals. good you can target them! you blow up the first one, bam party wipes. Then one of you remember there was a clue given earlier in the raid, and you figure why not. Repeat, turns out the guy was right, you have to blow them up in the reverse order you unlocked them. If you truly believe you know exactly how an encounter will go only on the first cue, without any possibility there might be more, or different content, or something you need to puzzle out for a second, the first time you've done it, you are full of shit.
In the two games you yourself used as examples, i found cues in every fight i looked at, from the Earthen behemoth in EQ2, (i assume this was the eq you spoke of) to the Archfiend of Gore in Conan. If you need me to list them out for you i could but it would take a lot of typing. But as an example in EQ 2 the Behemoth emotes when you have done enough damage to break of a chunk of armor which will bring adds to the fight, along with a debuff that needs cleansing, and the archfiend, among other cues, there's a huge pool of blood he goes to give himself two buffs that change the encounter, and cues for raid movements before the blood floods.
But as i feel the conversation has side tracked, a damage meter was necessary for NONE of this. Is it a usable tool, sure. But if the developers tell you it's unnecessary for their title and detrimental in aspects to the community, and you still feel you can't excel without them, maybe the useful tool has become a crutch.
Oh no not shitting on it at all, i was referring to it's instanced pve content. It's a fine game, always liked their living world changes. I just felt especially early on, end game was more focused on getting to the mists and doing some Realm combat.
I'm a pretty casuall player and have only used a combat tracker once, to fine tune the Vitality to strenght distribution on my tank.
I'm not against combat trackers and while I wouldn't say that I'm for them either if I have to take one side then it would be beeing for them.
Eitherway the point I came here to make is for the kicking peopele and increased toxicity because of combat tracker.
I don't believe in that connection at all, not even in a corelation.
In my experience how toxic people are and how easily someone is kicked depend 0 on outside things like that and 100% on how social the game forces you to be.
One of the worst things for this is something like a dungeon finder, where instead of finding a group of people takes some time and actions on your side you just click a button and get randomly grouped with people that are most likely not even from the same server and there is a 99% chance that oyu will not see them ever again.
On the other end of the spectrum are things like in GW2 where every Character can revive fallen players. It is in no way forced upon players to do so and as far as I know you do not get rewarded for it but it is one of the few games I have seen were players actively go out of their way to help other random players as a regular course of action.
And I believe making helping each other out easy and naturall as well as knitting a community (server population) together in some way that makes them want to be nice to each other is the best medicine against mean tempered and kick happy players. On the other Hand Estranging players making every meeting a one time encounter putting stones in the way of helping each other is the one way to make a games community stressed out and mean spirited.
Now guess in which of these categories a combat tracker falls.
Is it making meetings one time encounters?
Is it masking people so tha they can behave worse and get away with it?
Is it making it harder to help other pplayers?
Is it making people interact more with each other?
Is it making helping another player easier?
However, Ocleera in Archeage went through two distinct stages of what type of content it was. When it first came out, it was essentially just another PvP excuse. One faction would kill all the stationary mobs (I forget their names) leading up to the boss, and usually also kill Ocleera.
Then XL timed Ocleera to always fall inside Diamond Shores peace. This left Ocleera as more of a PvE world event akin to the rifts from Rift, or public quests from other games. It became a way for new players go gear up - though because that gear wasn't able to be upgrades like regular crafted or obsidian, so it was kind of a closed gear path that meant it would take people that took it longer to actually get to a point where they would be competitive.
Again, not taking anything away from the people that ran those events, but the content it self was not raid content. Good people doing good things.
The library was designed as group content, but is often overrun by people in raids in order to complete daily quests faster.
I want to repeat here, I have not played Archeage in a few years, and these things may have changed since then - however, since XL have shown a complete inability to create PvE content on par with even WoW (a game I am on record as having a healthy amount of disdain for the quality of it's content), then I would be somewhat surprised.
My comments about GW2 raid content wasn't in any way a go at people that play the game, it was merely there to point out that raid content in GW2 is not really comparable to raid content in other games, for the exact reason you point out yourself. This is all fine for environmental aspects of an encounter.
Thing is, good encounters have elements within the games combat system as well as elements within the environment.
If an encounter does a thing that you only notice when you attack the encounter with different abilities - not play tag with crystals and orbs. The Earthen Behemoth you are talking about here from EQ2 is a somewhat entry level single group encounter (and also does double duty as a solo encounter).
It is not a raid encounter.
In EQ2 - especially early on - you will be hard pressed to find information on actual high end raid encounters. What information is out there is either incomplete or completely incorrect. This is because guilds had to collect that information by themselves (trial and error), and so the information was a closely guarded secret. Correct, a combat tracker isn't necessary for trivial non-raid content.
What's that got to do with a DPS metre? Stay on topic and stop attempting to blurr the lines to try to justify toxicity.
A combat tracker is the name people that know how to use DPS meters give to DPS meters, because we are aware they do more than just measure DPS.
So when Caeryl says "If you’ve ever looked up class guides, you’ve used a combat tracker."
You can feel free to read that as "If you’ve ever looked up class guides, you’ve used a DPS meter."
Expand that to the rest of the post, and I'm sure you'll see what it has to do with DPS meters.
It is described as a Raid. Whether they have a solo, group, and heroic versions is irrelevant. It is well into the tier list, at most recent tier, and even if you want to twist around words to continue trying to justify your point, as i stated before, these were just examples. I found similar ones in every encounter. EQ2 more so than Conan, which took a bit more digging to find the fight mechanics. Normally you come forward with well-reasoned debate, but on this subject you're grasping on indefensible points now and trying to twist any phrase to continue doing so. Maybe because any reasonable points have been brought up already.
I fail to see what a YouTube video of how to play a class in regards to which skill to use and when, has anything to do with keeping track of how big your total dps number has stacked up to for the run. One is a DPS metre, one isn't.
My assumption is that you saw the EQ2i page for the encounter that lists solo, advanced solo and heroic versions of the encounter.
Assuming you have not played EQ2, you would be forgiven for thinking Heroic meant raid - whereas in EQ2 Heroic is used to define single group content. In order to have a well-reasoned debate, I need something to debate against.
I've been talking all along about raid encounters - more specifically, high end raid encounters.
I totally agree that on entry level raid encounters, a combat tracker isn't needed.
I totally agree that on group content, a combat tracker is not needed.
You bring up a group encounter that is not high end, and want me to form a well reasoned debate against that?
As far as I am concerned, I already have.
So again, I fully agree that single group content doesn't need a combat tracker. I also fully agree that entry and mid level content doesn't need a combat tracker You presented me with a single group encounter that is mid tier and said you don't think it needs a combat tracker, and that is a statement I have already agreed with.
Edit; As an aside in this discussion, I want to point out that when you do see information listed on an encounter, that information was gained via a combat tracker.
The people that create those guides use combat trackers and simulations to justify their reasoning, and determine what builds work best and how to best use the toolkit in the build.
Lol so you're telling me it's impossible to have a guide made for a game that doesn't possess an already implemented DPS metre? Yeah ok buddy.
It's impossible, because no such games exist.
While not popular in PvP oriented games, and somewhat kept in the shadows in a small number of other games, every single MMORPG released to date has a combat tracker available for it.
Most games released in the last 10 years have had a combat tracker working by the end of beta. Archeage is the only one that I know of that didn't have one during beta - but it turns out that was the Korean beta, it had one by the time it came to NA/EU servers.
Warframe.
Guides for days.
No pathetic DPS metre.
You can stop posting now that you are wrong.
Warframe isn't an MMORPG.
You do, I assume, see where I said MMORPG in the post you quoted.
That said, Warframe does have a combat tracker.
Also, Ashes of Creation, they are literally making a game without a DPS metre, so no, it's not impossible and they have heaps of stuff on YouTube already.
Is this not meant to be sarcasm?
Because I can’t understand how you don’t know that all their data had to come from a system that can track their damage output.
There are two combat trackers in development for Ashes right now - that I know of.
There is zero possibility of Ashes not having a combat tracker of some sort during beta - possibly even during the later stages of alpha.
So far, all Intrepid have said is that they do not support them - but combat trackers do not need development support in order to function.
Intrepid have not said they will be against the TOS, and even if that ended up being the case, being against the TOS is only worth mentioning if Intrepid have a means of detecting the use of combat trackers - which both of the two that I know of in development right now will literally be impossible to detect (one will run on an android device - though I am unsure as to the specifics, the other will run on a second PC - and need not even be connected to the internet - and I am sure of the specifics of this one).
Lol no idea what nonsense you are talking about, Steven already said they aren't implementing a DPS metre...
Intrepid do not need to implement one in order for one to work for their game.
Here is a link to a combat tracker that works for EQ2, FFXIV, Rift, Age of Connan, Aion, Star Wars: TOR and The Secret World - and a few others as well. Now, unless you are going to tell me that all of these game developers worked together to make this one combat tracker (despite the fact that other combat trackers exist for all of these games), then I am not sure what relevance you think intrepid not making a combat tracker will actually have.
Now, to be clear, the above tracker is not one of the ones I am aware of that is being made for Ashes - though when a third party manages to find a way to produce a text file with combat information, it would only take an hour or two to get it working.
But wait.. Intrepid doesn't need one.. Blizzard never implemented one.. Yet a few posts ago you were saying the complete opposite and that it was impossible to make a game that doesn't have one.. yet you just gave me 2 examples contradicting yourself..
Not sure I should even bother reading your next post, it'll just be some fumbled attempt to clarify your story. 🤷🏼♂️
There is zero chance that Ashes won't have a combat tracker.
Intrepid does not need to make it, because others will.
Intrepid are unable to stop these people, and unable to detect people using these trackers - which means there is nothing they can do at all.
If you go back to the very start of this thread - well before you took an interest to posting here - you will find me saying this. I've also said it in many other threads on this topic. It may well be that I didn't clarify a point in here well enough for you, but this is a discussion I have had many times, each time following the same basic pattern.
Now, on top of that, my opinion is that the best thing Intrepid could do for Ashes - in terms of a combat tracker - is to build one in to the game themselves, and then limit who has access to it. This could be done via making it a choice, where only players that value the use of a combat tracker highly would consider that option - and additionally it could function in a manner where only people in the same guild as the user can have their combat tracked.
These things cease to become possibilities when control of combat trackers is taken out of Intrepids hands. If combat trackers are third party, anyone that downloads them will be able to use them, and anyone fighting near a player using them will have their combat tracked (not even a need to be in the game group - let alone guild).
If Intrepid provide the basic functionality that players developing these combat trackers want to have (ability to analyze raid encounters and player builds), then they will simply stop development of the trackers they are working on.