In WoW, almost everyone has a DPS meter. Some people use it to improve. Some use it to analyze others trying to improve them. And some use it as a benchmark if a player if worth having. A few do not care about it.
The problem with stopping the dps meter is that no issues get solved from stopping it. The DPS meter is a shortcut to judge a persons skill. It is one of the fastest way to see if the player is serious, efficient, knows how to use his class etc. But, it is by no means the only way.
Tryhard players, which are the ones that kick people and judge you based on your dps from meters, do not need the tool to judge and kick you. There are other ways to determinate a persons skill that will be used instead.
For example, a good player or tryhard can judge another persons skills by these simple clues:
- Simply by the way the person moves. Effective movement, stopcasting, backpeedalin and positioning. When I tryharded in wow, it took less than 3 seconds to judge the other persons skill just by the way they moved their character towards me or around me.
- The build. Obviously there will be many meta builds that everyone will copy and paste. But 1 single offmeta pick and a tryhard will kick you or not invite you.
- Your spell order/priority. Don't wanna follow the meta rotation of your class? Get kicked.
- Not using abilities at the right time. Forgot to pop your cooldowns when things got hard in a dungeon? Too slow to CC a certain mob? Always being the one who is slowest to interupt? Good bye.
The point is, the dps meter is just a tool to see the numbers a player puts out. It is one factor of many that tryhards use to judge if they want you in your group or not. Removing the DPS meter will just make people get kicked from other less obvious factors, because honestly, if you suck at the things above, your dps most likely sucks too.
If there are leaderboards in PVP with numbers, you will get kicked if you underperform in comparison to others anyways.
Now comes the argument for dps meters
A DPS meter, interupt meter, acitivity meter, CC tracker, or whatever else, is a tool which gives a player a clear view on what they are doing wrong.
Getting kicked because your Mage does 58% less damage than another Mage with worse gear atleast gives you a reason for why you are kicked. You might use the dps meter to see what the other guy was doing and learn from him.
Getting kicked with the only explanation being, "git gud, scrub" is a lot worse.
Bonus tips from a 10+ year wow guild master:
If the group you joined kicks you for your sligtly lower dps than avarage, you do not wanna play with those people, they are idiots and tryhards.
Try to ask the group you are joining if they are doing a chill run or a tryhard run. Do not ask to join a tryhard group expecting them to go easy on you because you are the main character in your life story.
A blocked DPS meter will not hide your skill. People will find out. So do your best to find people that want to improve with you and learn togheter. This way, you won't get kicked for underperforming based on your class avarege.
The issues in dps meters are people get so concerned with DPS they end up messing up or not doing other things they should because they are so worried about their spot on dps. In your example of wow and dps meters I was in a server 1st wow guild when dps meters became common...they starting causing so much issue in our raids guild officers eventually had to say offices will address any dps issues if we hear any non officer talking about anyone dps rank in the middle of raid we will kick the person bringing it up from the raid. DPS meters are far worse then they are helpful same for healing meters. You don't need people pulling aggro because someone almost passed them on dps, or healers not clensing because clense doesn't show on the healing meter. Or dps not tossing the defbuffs because the caster of the debuff looses alittle dps compared to the others by stopping to cast it. DPS meters while good on the surface became for people who can't see past a single # and are wiling to hose up everything to get 1 spot higher on that chart.
If the add-on tracks, coordinates and assists in combat it is a Comprehensive Combat Tracker.
It is not my issue someone named a DPS Meter as a Comprehensive Combat Tracker. WoW often claims originalities for well established practices. It's not like WoW itself wasn't based on earlier MMOs.
Further more, API access won't be granted so it is unlikely a third party will be able to make an integrated system for Ashes of Creation. If I was forced to have a DPS Meter (Which I don't actually like or agree with) I'd only accept an Intrepid version of a DPS Meter because I do not trust the general public not to exploit the systems.
As it stands, threats to make a DPS Meter whether IS will allow it or not are nothing but threats. You can bitch and moan but I agree with Steven.
In my experience any 'enhancements' disrupt fair play, and what starts as small 'tweaks' can be exploited for later gain. Some people will take 'Combat Aids' to extreme levels and its not a pretty picture. It directly changes the balance developers strive so hard for and gives some players massive advantages over others.
I dislike some fool telling me to do less healing and more dps, then the raid wipes, then I get kicked, all because of a DPS Meter. I would accept a DPS Meter if IS would implement it but I do not want third party add-ons.
It's such a simple thematic.
Let me explain to you why combat parsing is good.
(If the Devs implement them or not and whether people will be able to parse dmg anyways through other software is of no relevance to the discussion itself at all.)
A combat parse can do the following:
- improve your damage/healing
- improve your groups damage/healing
- monitor over all efficiency(depending on the depth of the tracker)
Now there are the people that are strictly against combat loggers. Why is that you ask.
To name a few:
- They have a history of getting kicked out of groups
- They hate competing against more invested players
- They are simply worse than a certain required threshold for content they want to do
- They are casual players and don't "need" it
Those are the same people that look at it only from their own perspective. They are the ones that join a group with the intention of clearing whatever content they are about to do successfully. If they DON'T bring the right amount of skill they don't deserve to master the content. It's as simple as that. You are wasting the time and effort of other people. If i employ new staff and they go through a trial period do i continue the contract with the person that is performing great or bad?
Because MMORPGs are games created with the intend to socialise and beat content together as a group it is a huuuge benefit of knowing your party members damage and healing. And the amount of times i personally got kicked out of groups because i lacked damage was less than 5 times in 15 years of very active online gaming and i am by far not a genius.
Also saying that judging people by watching their movement is enough to know weather they are actually good or not is simply wrong. What if they move like young gods but mess up their rotation consistently or run a completely inefficient build? Do you want to carry a person that is dealing 20% of your damage? I don't AND i don't expect the same from others.
And if that all did not resonate with you maybe this will:
Git gud
I agree parsing can be useful. Where I have issues is the terminology used.
In the 1990's (Yeah I'm that old). Comprehensive Combat Trackers would literally tell a player when to use Block, when to use Dodge, when to use Reposte, when to use Potions, when to use off-balanced skills.
All a person had to do was follow the recommendations and they would often win a PvP Duel. The whole concept came from Aim Bots, yet, to an MMO the Comprehensive Combat Tracker caused imbalance because it was a person playing an AI backed Player essentially. It was a method of cheating. It was not a method of checking DPS, it was a tool to literally surpass opponents. Now, some want a DPS Checker and a DPS Checker is a Parser (Comprehensive Combat Trackers also had a DPS Checker) but people are also asking for Combat Trackers which to me equates to a Comprehensive Combat Tracker.
To be blunt, if I was to fight AI I will PvE. I do not expect to fight an AI in PvP unless I'm in a Dungeon where both PvP and PvE take place. Fortunately I enjoy such dungeons. The decision has been made by IS and IS are the devs. So from my perspective there is no opportunity to cheat with a Comprehensive Combat Tracker.
The issues in dps meters are people get so concerned with DPS they end up messing up or not doing other things they should because they are so worried about their spot on dps. In your example of wow and dps meters I was in a server 1st wow guild when dps meters became common...they starting causing so much issue in our raids guild officers eventually had to say offices will address any dps issues if we hear any non officer talking about anyone dps rank in the middle of raid we will kick the person bringing it up from the raid. DPS meters are far worse then they are helpful same for healing meters. You don't need people pulling aggro because someone almost passed them on dps, or healers not clensing because clense doesn't show on the healing meter. Or dps not tossing the defbuffs because the caster of the debuff looses alittle dps compared to the others by stopping to cast it. DPS meters while good on the surface became for people who can't see past a single # and are wiling to hose up everything to get 1 spot higher on that chart.
See, the problem here isn't the tool, the problem is the tools using the tool - the raid leadership also needs to take a good portion of the responsibility for this kind of thing.
A "DPS meter" isn't a dps meter, nor is a 'healing meter" a healing meter. Both are forms of combat trackers, and both are able to do far more than that. In fact, both are able to do the job you would think the other is supposed to do.
In both cases, all they are doing is searching the log file the game creates for specific text, and then using extracts of that text to perform a number of calculations.
In both cases, if the guild knows what they are doing, they can factor in the damage each player takes from the damage sources in the encounter you are taking on.
If an encounter requires players to perform an action in order to prevent an attack called "you're an idiot, so I hit you", then the raid leadership will be able to set a combat tracker to limit the results to players that are in the top 12 DPS, but then display those names along side the damage they take from the attack "you're an idiot, so I hit you" - they can even have those names organised based on the damage they take rather than the DPS they dealt.
So basically, I would say that yes, a combat tracker (or DPS meter, or heal meter) in the hands of people that don't know how to use it can be a bad thing.
It is only when they are put in the hands of people that know how to use them that they become an invaluable tool to the players using them, their guilds, the game community at large, and the games developers.
In WoW, almost everyone has a DPS meter. Some people use it to improve. Some use it to analyze others trying to improve them. And some use it as a benchmark if a player if worth having. A few do not care about it.
The problem with stopping the dps meter is that no issues get solved from stopping it. The DPS meter is a shortcut to judge a persons skill. It is one of the fastest way to see if the player is serious, efficient, knows how to use his class etc. But, it is by no means the only way.
Tryhard players, which are the ones that kick people and judge you based on your dps from meters, do not need the tool to judge and kick you. There are other ways to determinate a persons skill that will be used instead.
For example, a good player or tryhard can judge another persons skills by these simple clues:
- Simply by the way the person moves. Effective movement, stopcasting, backpeedalin and positioning. When I tryharded in wow, it took less than 3 seconds to judge the other persons skill just by the way they moved their character towards me or around me.
- The build. Obviously there will be many meta builds that everyone will copy and paste. But 1 single offmeta pick and a tryhard will kick you or not invite you.
- Your spell order/priority. Don't wanna follow the meta rotation of your class? Get kicked.
- Not using abilities at the right time. Forgot to pop your cooldowns when things got hard in a dungeon? Too slow to CC a certain mob? Always being the one who is slowest to interupt? Good bye.
The point is, the dps meter is just a tool to see the numbers a player puts out. It is one factor of many that tryhards use to judge if they want you in your group or not. Removing the DPS meter will just make people get kicked from other less obvious factors, because honestly, if you suck at the things above, your dps most likely sucks too.
If there are leaderboards in PVP with numbers, you will get kicked if you underperform in comparison to others anyways.
Now comes the argument for dps meters
A DPS meter, interupt meter, acitivity meter, CC tracker, or whatever else, is a tool which gives a player a clear view on what they are doing wrong.
Getting kicked because your Mage does 58% less damage than another Mage with worse gear atleast gives you a reason for why you are kicked. You might use the dps meter to see what the other guy was doing and learn from him.
Getting kicked with the only explanation being, "git gud, scrub" is a lot worse.
Bonus tips from a 10+ year wow guild master:
If the group you joined kicks you for your sligtly lower dps than avarage, you do not wanna play with those people, they are idiots and tryhards.
Try to ask the group you are joining if they are doing a chill run or a tryhard run. Do not ask to join a tryhard group expecting them to go easy on you because you are the main character in your life story.
A blocked DPS meter will not hide your skill. People will find out. So do your best to find people that want to improve with you and learn togheter. This way, you won't get kicked for underperforming based on your class avarege.
The issues in dps meters are people get so concerned with DPS they end up messing up or not doing other things they should because they are so worried about their spot on dps. In your example of wow and dps meters I was in a server 1st wow guild when dps meters became common...they starting causing so much issue in our raids guild officers eventually had to say offices will address any dps issues if we hear any non officer talking about anyone dps rank in the middle of raid we will kick the person bringing it up from the raid. DPS meters are far worse then they are helpful same for healing meters. You don't need people pulling aggro because someone almost passed them on dps, or healers not clensing because clense doesn't show on the healing meter. Or dps not tossing the defbuffs because the caster of the debuff looses alittle dps compared to the others by stopping to cast it. DPS meters while good on the surface became for people who can't see past a single # and are wiling to hose up everything to get 1 spot higher on that chart.
This is an absolutely ridiculous post. No one is watching the meter as they play. This is yet another post trying to blame the tool for no reason. Details in wow allows you look at almost anything you can think of from simple hps/dps to interupts to buff uptime, cc breaks, and what enemy took damage from who. Its an amazing tool that needs to be in this game. If not you can already write this off as not even bing a serious MMO with raiding and dungeons.
Would rather this game not become World of Warcraft. Sounds awful, and I've never needed DPS meters in other older "serious" MMOs to perform at the highest end in PvE content or to know what's going on.
That kind of behaviour, I am hoping, won't exist in this game because the mechanics don't support it ... If you kick that DPS for doing slightly less DPS, you're just going to have 1 less DPS, and probably a person and his friends/guild who want to come and wipe the rest of your group now for behaving so rudely. There's no dungeon-finder or fast-travel, how are you going to suddenly get a new DPS all the way out in the middle of a dungeon?
I think someone will have to be much worse than simply under-performing to warrant group removal in most situations. They'll have to be under-performing pretty dramatically, or doing things to endanger the rest of the group. Won't need a meter to know that person shouldn't be invited along next time, or maybe needs to be ditched immediately.
That type of toxic behavior is surprising rare (It definitely exists). Most of my active and previous guilds used Damage Meters and combat logs to gauge personal progression and improvement, determining where a failure happened, knowing what killed someone, ect..
Example: I got a new weapon. It hits SUPER hard, but slower. I had a faster weapon, but it hits for less. Which is better? What metric do you use to determine that? having a DPS listed on a weapon can be highly misleading depending on how abilities interact with the weapon's damage component. Having competition between your dps meters is healthy also.
Depending on how Threat works in this game, it could come into play at higher content to prevent dps from overtaking tanks in threat (hypothetical since I haven't seen anything related to this).
There are so many positive reasons to use it that I personally feel that outweigh the negatives.
Would rather this game not become World of Warcraft. Sounds awful, and I've never needed DPS meters in other older "serious" MMOs to perform at the highest end in PvE content or to know what's going on.
If you played WoW, you played in a way that made use of combat trackers.
You may not have used one yourself, but you would have used a build that was created using one. You would have played a class that was balanced - or even outright fixed - because players found issues while using a combat tracker and bought them to the developers attention. You would have fought encounters that were tuned to a somewhat exacting degree based on players using combat trackers.
That kind of behaviour, I am hoping, won't exist in this game because the mechanics don't support it ... If you kick that DPS for doing slightly less DPS, you're just going to have 1 less DPS, and probably a person and his friends/guild who want to come and wipe the rest of your group now for behaving so rudely. There's no dungeon-finder or fast-travel, how are you going to suddenly get a new DPS all the way out in the middle of a dungeon?
I think someone will have to be much worse than simply under-performing to warrant group removal in most situations. They'll have to be under-performing pretty dramatically, or doing things to endanger the rest of the group. Won't need a meter to know that person shouldn't be invited along next time, or maybe needs to be ditched immediately.
This is all absolutely spot on with how things will go in Ashes - with or without a combat tracker.
One of the real issues I see is that without a combat tracker, there will be a perception among many players that specific classes do not perform as well as other, similar classes. This will lead the same kind of player that would boot someone mid group in a game like WoW with a group automation system to simply refuse to group up with players of that class - even if the perception that the class doesn't perform well is actually completely untrue.
At the end of the day, a combat tracker literally is nothing more than a tool that provides players with objective
information. Some players are able to make fantastic use of that objective information, and some are not. The fact that some players can't make good use of it is no reason to prevent those of us that can from having access to it.
Comments
It is not my issue someone named a DPS Meter as a Comprehensive Combat Tracker. WoW often claims originalities for well established practices. It's not like WoW itself wasn't based on earlier MMOs.
Further more, API access won't be granted so it is unlikely a third party will be able to make an integrated system for Ashes of Creation. If I was forced to have a DPS Meter (Which I don't actually like or agree with) I'd only accept an Intrepid version of a DPS Meter because I do not trust the general public not to exploit the systems.
As it stands, threats to make a DPS Meter whether IS will allow it or not are nothing but threats. You can bitch and moan but I agree with Steven.
In my experience any 'enhancements' disrupt fair play, and what starts as small 'tweaks' can be exploited for later gain. Some people will take 'Combat Aids' to extreme levels and its not a pretty picture. It directly changes the balance developers strive so hard for and gives some players massive advantages over others.
I dislike some fool telling me to do less healing and more dps, then the raid wipes, then I get kicked, all because of a DPS Meter. I would accept a DPS Meter if IS would implement it but I do not want third party add-ons.
Let me explain to you why combat parsing is good.
(If the Devs implement them or not and whether people will be able to parse dmg anyways through other software is of no relevance to the discussion itself at all.)
A combat parse can do the following:
- improve your damage/healing
- improve your groups damage/healing
- monitor over all efficiency(depending on the depth of the tracker)
Now there are the people that are strictly against combat loggers. Why is that you ask.
To name a few:
- They have a history of getting kicked out of groups
- They hate competing against more invested players
- They are simply worse than a certain required threshold for content they want to do
- They are casual players and don't "need" it
Those are the same people that look at it only from their own perspective. They are the ones that join a group with the intention of clearing whatever content they are about to do successfully. If they DON'T bring the right amount of skill they don't deserve to master the content. It's as simple as that. You are wasting the time and effort of other people. If i employ new staff and they go through a trial period do i continue the contract with the person that is performing great or bad?
Because MMORPGs are games created with the intend to socialise and beat content together as a group it is a huuuge benefit of knowing your party members damage and healing. And the amount of times i personally got kicked out of groups because i lacked damage was less than 5 times in 15 years of very active online gaming and i am by far not a genius.
Also saying that judging people by watching their movement is enough to know weather they are actually good or not is simply wrong. What if they move like young gods but mess up their rotation consistently or run a completely inefficient build? Do you want to carry a person that is dealing 20% of your damage? I don't AND i don't expect the same from others.
And if that all did not resonate with you maybe this will:
Git gud
It is like a darn roller coaster. We thankfully let these threads go to rest, and then someone pokes it again.
At this point restless thread maybe a real thing
In the 1990's (Yeah I'm that old). Comprehensive Combat Trackers would literally tell a player when to use Block, when to use Dodge, when to use Reposte, when to use Potions, when to use off-balanced skills.
All a person had to do was follow the recommendations and they would often win a PvP Duel. The whole concept came from Aim Bots, yet, to an MMO the Comprehensive Combat Tracker caused imbalance because it was a person playing an AI backed Player essentially. It was a method of cheating. It was not a method of checking DPS, it was a tool to literally surpass opponents. Now, some want a DPS Checker and a DPS Checker is a Parser (Comprehensive Combat Trackers also had a DPS Checker) but people are also asking for Combat Trackers which to me equates to a Comprehensive Combat Tracker.
To be blunt, if I was to fight AI I will PvE. I do not expect to fight an AI in PvP unless I'm in a Dungeon where both PvP and PvE take place. Fortunately I enjoy such dungeons. The decision has been made by IS and IS are the devs. So from my perspective there is no opportunity to cheat with a Comprehensive Combat Tracker.
can't find the 'Close Useless Thread Button'
I have been waiting for that one for 3 years
A "DPS meter" isn't a dps meter, nor is a 'healing meter" a healing meter. Both are forms of combat trackers, and both are able to do far more than that. In fact, both are able to do the job you would think the other is supposed to do.
In both cases, all they are doing is searching the log file the game creates for specific text, and then using extracts of that text to perform a number of calculations.
In both cases, if the guild knows what they are doing, they can factor in the damage each player takes from the damage sources in the encounter you are taking on.
If an encounter requires players to perform an action in order to prevent an attack called "you're an idiot, so I hit you", then the raid leadership will be able to set a combat tracker to limit the results to players that are in the top 12 DPS, but then display those names along side the damage they take from the attack "you're an idiot, so I hit you" - they can even have those names organised based on the damage they take rather than the DPS they dealt.
So basically, I would say that yes, a combat tracker (or DPS meter, or heal meter) in the hands of people that don't know how to use it can be a bad thing.
It is only when they are put in the hands of people that know how to use them that they become an invaluable tool to the players using them, their guilds, the game community at large, and the games developers.
Do you think that using a meter ingame would prevent external ones?
I have my doubts, people still will want more info and develop one anyway
Would rather this game not become World of Warcraft. Sounds awful, and I've never needed DPS meters in other older "serious" MMOs to perform at the highest end in PvE content or to know what's going on.
That kind of behaviour, I am hoping, won't exist in this game because the mechanics don't support it ... If you kick that DPS for doing slightly less DPS, you're just going to have 1 less DPS, and probably a person and his friends/guild who want to come and wipe the rest of your group now for behaving so rudely. There's no dungeon-finder or fast-travel, how are you going to suddenly get a new DPS all the way out in the middle of a dungeon?
I think someone will have to be much worse than simply under-performing to warrant group removal in most situations. They'll have to be under-performing pretty dramatically, or doing things to endanger the rest of the group. Won't need a meter to know that person shouldn't be invited along next time, or maybe needs to be ditched immediately.
Example: I got a new weapon. It hits SUPER hard, but slower. I had a faster weapon, but it hits for less. Which is better? What metric do you use to determine that? having a DPS listed on a weapon can be highly misleading depending on how abilities interact with the weapon's damage component. Having competition between your dps meters is healthy also.
Depending on how Threat works in this game, it could come into play at higher content to prevent dps from overtaking tanks in threat (hypothetical since I haven't seen anything related to this).
There are so many positive reasons to use it that I personally feel that outweigh the negatives.
You may not have used one yourself, but you would have used a build that was created using one. You would have played a class that was balanced - or even outright fixed - because players found issues while using a combat tracker and bought them to the developers attention. You would have fought encounters that were tuned to a somewhat exacting degree based on players using combat trackers. This is all absolutely spot on with how things will go in Ashes - with or without a combat tracker.
One of the real issues I see is that without a combat tracker, there will be a perception among many players that specific classes do not perform as well as other, similar classes. This will lead the same kind of player that would boot someone mid group in a game like WoW with a group automation system to simply refuse to group up with players of that class - even if the perception that the class doesn't perform well is actually completely untrue.
At the end of the day, a combat tracker literally is nothing more than a tool that provides players with objective
information. Some players are able to make fantastic use of that objective information, and some are not. The fact that some players can't make good use of it is no reason to prevent those of us that can from having access to it.