I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
Indeed.
Game design is absolutely key to how a combat tracker will be used.
If there are no difficult PvE encounters in the game, trackers won't be used to work them out.
If there is only one viable build per class, trackers won't be used to evaluate other builds.
If the games skill ceiling is low, trackers won't be used to help players improve.
If the game allows for quick replacement of players mid content, people have an incentive to boot others mid content.
As it just so happens, the aspects above that are considered good game design (challenging content, many viable builds, high skill ceiling) all benefit from tracker use. The aspects that are generally considered bad game design (LFG/LFR type systems) will see trackers used in a negative way.
To me, based on the above, any game developer that is saying "we don't want a tracker in our game" starts ringing bells.
The obvious question to then ask that developer is; why not? What aspects of your games design are you worried about them in?
Are you planning on not having challenging PvE content, only having one viable build per class, having a low skill ceiling, or perhaps you plan on having a means to teleport players directly to a group mid content (such as the family summons).
this seems more like an add-ons discussion. Either Ashes adds a dps meter or they don't. If they do we accept it, if they don't then the question is do they allow add-ons. Nothing like DPS fight Tanks for threat X.X. I lean towards no add-ons. Play the game as the dev designed. Accept the DPS meter they put it in, and ban add-ons, or suffer elitism.
It's not, for a slightly subtle reason: It is impossible on a technical level to detect combat trackers. They don't even need to run on the same computer as the game client. You'd have to ban streaming. The discussion isn't so much "will Intrepid allow add-ons or not", it's "Do you prefer that combat trackers are available only to the elite who will ignore your rules, or do you prefer that they are available to everyone?" You don't need to worry that banning trackers will prevent elitism. It won't. It will just give other players less tools to help them catch up.
As many defenders have pointed out: Nobody's here to get trackers for themselves. We want everyone to have them, not just the elites. The game's more interesting when more people can keep up.
Hmmm. Well put that way, I guess I'd say make it accessible to everyone. It'd be nice to go back to the days of no trackers, but I don't think we can really, as you already put, people will find a way. So I guess the player base will need to evolve with them. Not a bad thing, I like meters, but it would be nice to go away from them if it was possible.
Trackers are not going to help a normal player catch up all the sudden, if you are wanting to see dps and what is effective that is easy to test without trackers. They simply want you to think you having a DPs meter is going to suddenly make you a great player to get you to support trackers.
Depending on the information provided and such they can make trackers less efficient, as well with action combat. People try to compare pure tab games when this game is much different in terms of combat based on your play style.
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are not difficult and are more of a gating mechanic. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
I cant really agree with this at all.
If the game pushes pick up content over group content it may be true. Thing is, I would list that as another bad game design - an MMO should be focusing on getting players to build strong relationships with each other, and guilds are the means to do that.
Toxicity of all forms (not just the 'you're bad at this so I'm booting you' form) mostly only ever present in situations where people have no relationship with each other.
This is why the LFG system was so bad - it bought people together that had no prior relationship, no motivation to build one, and an easy means to boot each other out.
Thing is, EQ2 had many DPS checks,and still almost no toxicity in the community. The thing is, those DPS checks were on content you would only ever see with your guild.
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mcstackersonMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again.
It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect.
If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be.
Sorry, my native language is Erlang.
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mcstackersonMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again.
It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect.
If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be.
My apologies. I don't mean to cause any distress. Nothing is being won or lost here.
This is just a forum we talk about ideas.
As much as I am against dps meters, I have agreed that if 3rd party meters are indeed unable to be stopped, then they should just be implemented into the game to provide an even playing field. But if they are able to be detected and banned, then I support not having them at all.
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again.
It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect.
If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be.
My apologies. I don't mean to cause any distress. Nothing is being won or lost here.
This is just a forum we talk about ideas.
I'll back off.
I thank you.
Perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion in the other way, though. What do you consider a PvE challenge in a game like Ashes that does not have a component in which you need to check 'numbers vs time'?
I can see how one could make a game where the question is moreso 'did you hit or not', 'did you defend or not', and 'did you activate the correct mechanic' than 'did you do enough damage' or 'did you mitigate enough damage'.
Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
The challenge for me there is 'avoid being CCed', right? The issue is that if you make a game like this, generally the response will be 'just bring more healers so that you don't have to worry about one being CCed'. I consider this less challenge, in the same way that fights which don't 'punish DPS players for just going all out' are less challenge. "Just bring more DPS so the enemy dies faster."
The result is that the boss normally has to be 'tuned' so that you 'will not succeed if you have too few or too many' but this is still going to be a 'numbers' result.
What do you see as a PvE challenge where you can't just throw more of X class at the problem to get around the mechanics preventing the effectiveness of any individual one?
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
Challenging PvE doesnt tell you want is going on. You have to figure it out for yourself.
All the comments of "just dont stand in the telegraph" and things like that only work if the ability is telegraphed.
Often times, the thing that went wrong isnt obvious. One mob in particular would explode if your raid DPS on it got too high. No warning, no hint at what went wrong - just boom.
Literally the only way to work this out is to notice that it exploded a specific amount of time after your raid DPS hit a specific level. Without a tracker, that just isnt possible.
Now, the argument could be made that the developers should have given a hint as to what went wrong- bit I would ask, why?
If the game is giving you a hint, working it out becomes trivial. The encounter is literally telling you want to do.
If that same encounter had a line of text saying "you are doing too much damage, I'm exploding", then working it out after the first pull would be expected.
The way it went though, it took people actual hundreds of pulls over actual weeks to work out what the trigger for the explosion was. Some guilds took months (keeping in mind sharing info on top end mobs wasnt a thing).
Put simply, without combat trackers, the game has to tell players what is going on. With combat trackers, the game can leave it up to players to figure out.
It should then be obvious how one of these willbe inherently harder than the other.
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mcstackersonMember, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again.
It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect.
If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be.
My apologies. I don't mean to cause any distress. Nothing is being won or lost here.
This is just a forum we talk about ideas.
I'll back off.
I thank you.
Perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion in the other way, though. What do you consider a PvE challenge in a game like Ashes that does not have a component in which you need to check 'numbers vs time'?
I can see how one could make a game where the question is moreso 'did you hit or not', 'did you defend or not', and 'did you activate the correct mechanic' than 'did you do enough damage' or 'did you mitigate enough damage'.
Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
The challenge for me there is 'avoid being CCed', right? The issue is that if you make a game like this, generally the response will be 'just bring more healers so that you don't have to worry about one being CCed'. I consider this less challenge, in the same way that fights which don't 'punish DPS players for just going all out' are less challenge. "Just bring more DPS so the enemy dies faster."
The result is that the boss normally has to be 'tuned' so that you 'will not succeed if you have too few or too many' but this is still going to be a 'numbers' result.
What do you see as a PvE challenge where you can't just throw more of X class at the problem to get around the mechanics preventing the effectiveness of any individual one?
I'd say avoidance and puzzle mechanics are not a direct numbers vs time check.
I think you need to force mechanics so they can't just dps through the challenge. Boss goes invulnerable until you do the mechanic. Also, have mechanics that require everyone in the area to do something so it's not just a small group doing it all.
If necessary, I think capping the dps a boss can take would be a way to limit the effect of a zerg.
If there is concern of people spamming healers, have mechanics that trigger based off classes in the area and make the healer one difficult to deal with. Also could have one that triggers based off healing being done in the area.
Besides that, the rewards encourages you to bring as few people as possible since the more people you bring, the more people you have to split items with and the less valuable the time will be. If you have to bring another healer for the CC mechanic, then that's a healer you are now competing with for loot.
I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again.
It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect.
If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be.
My apologies. I don't mean to cause any distress. Nothing is being won or lost here.
This is just a forum we talk about ideas.
I'll back off.
I thank you.
Perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion in the other way, though. What do you consider a PvE challenge in a game like Ashes that does not have a component in which you need to check 'numbers vs time'?
I can see how one could make a game where the question is moreso 'did you hit or not', 'did you defend or not', and 'did you activate the correct mechanic' than 'did you do enough damage' or 'did you mitigate enough damage'.
Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
The challenge for me there is 'avoid being CCed', right? The issue is that if you make a game like this, generally the response will be 'just bring more healers so that you don't have to worry about one being CCed'. I consider this less challenge, in the same way that fights which don't 'punish DPS players for just going all out' are less challenge. "Just bring more DPS so the enemy dies faster."
The result is that the boss normally has to be 'tuned' so that you 'will not succeed if you have too few or too many' but this is still going to be a 'numbers' result.
What do you see as a PvE challenge where you can't just throw more of X class at the problem to get around the mechanics preventing the effectiveness of any individual one?
I'd say avoidance and puzzle mechanics are not a direct numbers vs time check.
I think you need to force mechanics so they can't just dps through the challenge. Boss goes invulnerable until you do the mechanic. Also, have mechanics that require everyone in the area to do something so it's not just a small group doing it all.
If necessary, I think capping the dps a boss can take would be a way to limit the effect of a zerg.
If there is concern of people spamming healers, have mechanics that trigger based off classes in the area and make the healer one difficult to deal with. Also could have one that triggers based off healing being done in the area.
Besides that, the rewards encourages you to bring as few people as possible since the more people you bring, the more people you have to split items with and the less valuable the time will be. If you have to bring another healer for the CC mechanic, then that's a healer you are now competing with for loot.
So would this be 'limiting DPS per person', or Limiting DPS the boss takes at all?
Because my first thought is the opposite. Bring more tanks. The moment you don't need the damage, that's what people do in my experience. They bring more tanks, they build more tanky. Since often, the utility of DPS, particularly on bosses, IS that they explicitly do more damage, taking that from them seems off?
There's also the fact that normally (for what I consider good design), 'damage' is the reward you get for 'not having to spend a lot of time recovering from or dealing with mechanics' or for 'taking a risk of attacking when a certain mechanic is possible'.
But honestly, it once again sounds like we just play different types of games. If Ashes manages what you're suggesting without it being a walkover for my group, I'll be glad. Been a while.
Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
One question though. Couldn't they just ask the healer? Like, I'm fighting the boss; the boss does some mechanic that brings me to low hp; I see that I'm at low hp and expect a heal; the heal doesn't come, I die and the raid wipes. I then ask the healer why the heal didn't come (assuming that I did everything correct and the boss mechanic wasn't avoidable at that particular moment). Healer just tells me that he was CCd.
I played a solo healer for a 36member raid a few times back in L2. The mechanics themselves weren't too complex, but because L2 didn't have any raid addons (or at least I've never used/seen them) - I had to know the voices of players in different groups so that I could heal individual players correctly (L2 didn't have raid-wide heals) and I needed to know mechanics to know when I'd be needed the most.
Theoretically, if it's not the very first attempt at the boss, you'd know the potential mechanics of said boss and would know which ones are the most dangerous ones (at least that'd be my expectations for the raid, if I was a RL). So if the raid wipes due to one member dying after a particular mechanic, I'd assume it shouldn't have taken up too much of healer's "ram" to remember that he was CCd during the last mechanic and that was the reason for the wipe. So he'd be able to answer my question w/o much trouble and w/o either side needing a tracker.
Now, I'll ask about the solution to the CCd problem below.
Often times, the thing that went wrong isnt obvious. One mob in particular would explode if your raid DPS on it got too high. No warning, no hint at what went wrong - just boom.
Literally the only way to work this out is to notice that it exploded a specific amount of time after your raid DPS hit a specific level. Without a tracker, that just isnt possible.
Now, the argument could be made that the developers should have given a hint as to what went wrong- bit I would ask, why?
The way it went though, it took people actual hundreds of pulls over actual weeks to work out what the trigger for the explosion was. Some guilds took months (keeping in mind sharing info on top end mobs wasnt a thing).
Put simply, without combat trackers, the game has to tell players what is going on. With combat trackers, the game can leave it up to players to figure out.
It should then be obvious how one of these willbe inherently harder than the other.
So what you're saying is that developers made a design that is literally unsolvable w/o an additional non-game-mechanic tool, but we're somehow supposed to just have said tool and accept that the design is good?
Maybe I'm just too elitist and selfish at this point, but why in the living hell should you have a tool that helps you beat smth difficult? It takes a guild months to figure out why they wipe? Great! It's a difficult content that requires them to try countless setups and pay attention to what everyone does during the raid. Fuck the tool that just shows you the most likely solution.
This to me just sounds like "devs made a shitty encounter, so it's completely fine to "cheat' and solve the encounter by being omniscient and knowing every detail of the fight". I consider that weak.
And this ties to the "CCd" problem from Azherae's example. The raid failed because the healer got CCd? Well then make several runs where the healer tries different char placements or resist buffs against the CC or multiple other potential solutions. It takes you several weeks to do this? Great! You have the whole rest of the game to play between those attempts, while having a difficult encounter to do in-between the rest of the gameplay.
This is what I was talking about when I said that trackers speed up content consumption. Except the issue is even deeper, because with the kind of mechanics Noaani wants, literally no one would be able to beat the bosses unless they were using a non-gameplay tool.
Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
One question though. Couldn't they just ask the healer? Like, I'm fighting the boss; the boss does some mechanic that brings me to low hp; I see that I'm at low hp and expect a heal; the heal doesn't come, I die and the raid wipes. I then ask the healer why the heal didn't come (assuming that I did everything correct and the boss mechanic wasn't avoidable at that particular moment). Healer just tells me that he was CCd.
I played a solo healer for a 36member raid a few times back in L2. The mechanics themselves weren't too complex, but because L2 didn't have any raid addons (or at least I've never used/seen them) - I had to know the voices of players in different groups so that I could heal individual players correctly (L2 didn't have raid-wide heals) and I needed to know mechanics to know when I'd be needed the most.
Theoretically, if it's not the very first attempt at the boss, you'd know the potential mechanics of said boss and would know which ones are the most dangerous ones (at least that'd be my expectations for the raid, if I was a RL). So if the raid wipes due to one member dying after a particular mechanic, I'd assume it shouldn't have taken up too much of healer's "ram" to remember that he was CCd during the last mechanic and that was the reason for the wipe. So he'd be able to answer my question w/o much trouble and w/o either side needing a tracker.
Sure, I don't have anything to say anymore.
There's just some conversations you can't have without faith.
That's why I said that to mcstackerson. I can't 'give you an example' that would be countered by simple responses like that, so either that means I'm wrong, and no one ever needs meters, or there's some fundamental disconnect in our perspectives.
Hopefully Noaani won't tire, but I'm out. Doesn't affect me anyway.
Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
One question though. Couldn't they just ask the healer? Like, I'm fighting the boss; the boss does some mechanic that brings me to low hp; I see that I'm at low hp and expect a heal; the heal doesn't come, I die and the raid wipes. I then ask the healer why the heal didn't come (assuming that I did everything correct and the boss mechanic wasn't avoidable at that particular moment). Healer just tells me that he was CCd.
I played a solo healer for a 36member raid a few times back in L2. The mechanics themselves weren't too complex, but because L2 didn't have any raid addons (or at least I've never used/seen them) - I had to know the voices of players in different groups so that I could heal individual players correctly (L2 didn't have raid-wide heals) and I needed to know mechanics to know when I'd be needed the most.
Theoretically, if it's not the very first attempt at the boss, you'd know the potential mechanics of said boss and would know which ones are the most dangerous ones (at least that'd be my expectations for the raid, if I was a RL). So if the raid wipes due to one member dying after a particular mechanic, I'd assume it shouldn't have taken up too much of healer's "ram" to remember that he was CCd during the last mechanic and that was the reason for the wipe. So he'd be able to answer my question w/o much trouble and w/o either side needing a tracker.
Now, I'll ask about the solution to the CCd problem below.
Often times, the thing that went wrong isnt obvious. One mob in particular would explode if your raid DPS on it got too high. No warning, no hint at what went wrong - just boom.
Literally the only way to work this out is to notice that it exploded a specific amount of time after your raid DPS hit a specific level. Without a tracker, that just isnt possible.
Now, the argument could be made that the developers should have given a hint as to what went wrong- bit I would ask, why?
The way it went though, it took people actual hundreds of pulls over actual weeks to work out what the trigger for the explosion was. Some guilds took months (keeping in mind sharing info on top end mobs wasnt a thing).
Put simply, without combat trackers, the game has to tell players what is going on. With combat trackers, the game can leave it up to players to figure out.
It should then be obvious how one of these willbe inherently harder than the other.
So what you're saying is that developers made a design that is literally unsolvable w/o an additional non-game-mechanic tool, but we're somehow supposed to just have said tool and accept that the design is good?
Maybe I'm just too elitist and selfish at this point, but why in the living hell should you have a tool that helps you beat smth difficult? It takes a guild months to figure out why they wipe? Great! It's a difficult content that requires them to try countless setups and pay attention to what everyone does during the raid. Fuck the tool that just shows you the most likely solution.
This to me just sounds like "devs made a shitty encounter, so it's completely fine to "cheat' and solve the encounter by being omniscient and knowing every detail of the fight". I consider that weak.
And this ties to the "CCd" problem from Azherae's example. The raid failed because the healer got CCd? Well then make several runs where the healer tries different char placements or resist buffs against the CC or multiple other potential solutions. It takes you several weeks to do this? Great! You have the whole rest of the game to play between those attempts, while having a difficult encounter to do in-between the rest of the gameplay.
This is what I was talking about when I said that trackers speed up content consumption. Except the issue is even deeper, because with the kind of mechanics Noaani wants, literally no one would be able to beat the bosses unless they were using a non-gameplay tool.
Remember when i brought up its cheating and akin to aim bot but they dismissed it because it doesn't fit their narrative
And I'm in the same mind set, you figure it out. Yet this is the same person that is against guides yet will use cheats to find his way around -Insert two eye emoji-
I'm well aware of their point if you can't stop it someone else will cheat so you may as well cheat to until it becomes normal.
Or we can believe in devs creating good fun encounters and taking their swing at it and see how it goes. We shouldn't expect things to go exactly how a 15 year old game went, and expect more of a modern take on things. Older designs were rough for a reason and more difficult without being as fair because being limited by technology and such.
This is 2022 not the year 2002 though, devs as years go on will always be able to make better content.
Remember when i brought up its cheating and akin to aim bot but they dismissed it because it doesn't fit their narrative
It is still a weaker "cheat" than the one you were talking about, but yes, I do find the required omniscience a bit silly. And then you have a closed loop of "the design requires me to know things that I can't know w/o a tracker and the tracker lets me know literally everything so the design should implement even more things that I wouldn't be able to know w/o the tracker".
I feel like this kind of pve design is the same copout as L2's "just let the pvp be the difficult part" one.
So what you're saying is that developers made a design that is literally unsolvable w/o an additional non-game-mechanic tool, but we're somehow supposed to just have said tool and accept that the design is good?
Maybe I'm just too elitist and selfish at this point, but why in the living hell should you have a tool that helps you beat smth difficult?
I'm going to use an analogy here for you.
Imagine you are sorting out a set of drawers for your home.
If the only tool you have is a screwdriver, you are likely to wind up with something basic from IKEA - or a similar style product.
On the other hand, if you have a full workshop with bench saw, plains, joiners, lathes, a drill press, chisels, basically just all the things - you dont just get an IKEA set, you make one from scratch yourself, and end up with something far superior.
If someone comes and looks at the drawers you make, they aren't going to say "well, I made my IKEA drawers with just a screw driver, why did you need all of those tools to make your drawers?".
This is kind of what you are asking above. We dont want a combat tracker to be able to take on IKEA content, and content that can be taken on without proper tools is IKEA content.
Now, I wouldn't know where to begin if I were to make a set of drawers from scratch, just as you may not know what PvE content that requires a tracker looks like. These are both fine, I am happy to take the word of a joiner that they need all of those tools, and I hope you take our word for it that non-IKEA PvE content also requires tools.
I hope this helps you understanding things a little better.
Now, I wouldn't know where to begin if I were to make a set of drawers from scratch, just as you may not know what PvE content that requires a tracker looks like. These are both fine, I am happy to take the word of a joiner that they need all of those tools, and I hope you take our word for it that non-IKEA PvE content also requires tools.
I hope this helps you understanding things a little better.
The issue to me is that if "make a drawer" is your goal, the tracker is the IKEA, because it gives you everything you need to figure out how to make that drawer. While "making it with what you have w/o any instructions" would be the non-tracker gameplay. You'll probably waste twice as much wood, if not more, but you'll do it with your own hands (while, yes, using multitude of tools) and figuring out what goes together the best and what doesn't.
Making a drawer is a difficult process, but if you have an instruction/manual - it's way easier. You still need to know how to read the manual and how to follow it (some people still fail at this, so I feel like this parallel does apply to tracker use as well), but it's way easier than just having the tools and some wood, but having no instruction on what to do with them and then figuring out what you can do.
To me, all the tools you listed is your class, gear, your own skillset and the same stuff from each raid member. And you then use all those "tools" to figure out how to "make the drawer". And a tracker is the external omniscient tool that makes the whole process easier and faster.
But like I said, I'm too selfish/stubborn/elitist when it comes to this topic. And as we've agreed before, the convo itself is useless because people will definitely make trackers and make the encounters easier for themselves, no matter how difficult those encounters are. So sorry for wasting yalls time again
Now, I wouldn't know where to begin if I were to make a set of drawers from scratch, just as you may not know what PvE content that requires a tracker looks like. These are both fine, I am happy to take the word of a joiner that they need all of those tools, and I hope you take our word for it that non-IKEA PvE content also requires tools.
I hope this helps you understanding things a little better.
The issue to me is that if "make a drawer" is your goal, the tracker is the IKEA, because it gives you everything you need to figure out how to make that drawer.
No it doesnt.
A tracker can never tell you how to kill an encounter.
Again, the IKEA version in this case is the content developed based on the assumption the players do not have this tool.
The developers of such content put all the screw holes and hinge cutouts right in to the content for players to use - where as players with trackers are left to work out where they think the screw holes need to go, measure it, drill it and then start again if it is wrong.
Tools allow people more utility. That is literally their purpose.
As such, if you are developing a product for someone, you develop it based on the tools they have.
Develop that product for someone with no tools, and you can only ask basic things. Develop a product for someone with advanced tools, and you can ask for much more specific and detailed things in your product.
Is part of the reason you are not picking this up because you are assuming exactly the same content either with or without trackers?
No, I think you all over think it, mmo players always find the part they like in one mmo to play, and back in the day we really are play mmos which means not played by it, there are not such time investment BS there, we just login and have fun end game? bis? raid? hardcore players? F that I play the game not the another way around.
Its not overthinking it, its called playing a plethora of MMOs and seeing the majority die. I'm like you but people like us will not keep an MMO alive. People like us get shafted with Free 2 Play and then eventually Private Servers. From my perspective you have rose tinted glasses. It matters not whether I'm correct or not. The simply fact remains that ashes is a PvX game. What in your mind can be added that does not subtract from PvX that can also be counted as a PvP Expansion in Ashes?
In my logic that overthinking or not is depends on the point of view and how the person's brain been wired, so I think we both right, just different point of view and different thinking way make different out come, but I understand you.
Yes and no, I tried some f2p and private server at beginning of mmo start dying in my region but it's not the same, it's too complicated to me to explain with my bad English, in a short way to say when this genre start dying something or some mentalities gone with it and in that time the genre is overwhelmed and for decades the genre is full of shit and...I don't know I just feel angry about that, I looked for the translation about rose tinted glasses but I don't think the translation really translate the full meaning because so much difference between two languages and the cultures behind but I assume you're right, I mean to me Ashes of Creation is the last chance I give to myself to dream about mmo could be good, if it failed I won’t ever bother to care any news about this genre again like how I think about most of mobile games.
Well although it's not relevant to thread topic, I don't know what pvx in your region, in my region pvx is a more causal of play style and player does every part in the game but depends on mood, but to be honest I don’t think that is real what pvx means or even pxv is a misguided term to describe a game design, sometimes even pve and pvp these term are outdated because players and environment now are so different than the background of those terms back in the time them be created and defined, so with that being said keep it in mind that pve and pvp and pvx I talking about after are not exact the same definitions what you used to know.
It's very hard to make a real pvx game in my opinion, a real pvx game in my mind is that no matter which part you play you in a pvx game you won't able to get rid of other part completely, I mean it's hard to feel the joy in this type of game while you are a hard pve player or hard pvp player, and it kind true about pxv game is a more casual play style but I will say it’s more about the game design philosophy to design game fun for most of players who not hard categorized or say in other way for average people wha play games but at the same time that “average” is a misguiding term in a degree too, though to me the game most close to a pvx game I know is Splatoon 2 and SSBU.
I guess will be lots of people not agree with me and think I’m stupid but whatever.
In Splatoon 2, how Nintendo design the core gameplay is the key, when play online with other players basically there are two moves you can choose to focus on: 1. splash ink to claim territory for your team in order to keep the baseline to win the game(please consider this as pve part) or 2. kill enemies to stop them to claim territory(please consider this as pvp part), but you won't always be able to focus on only pve part or pvp part you will be force by your enemies to do pvp part while they attack on you or forced by situations that you need to refilled ink and reposition yourself, Nintendo design Splatoon well connect pvp player and non-pvp player and no matter you are good at aiming or not(but Nintendo make the aim very forgiving and it’s very good in my opinion) so there always have things you can do to be contributed for your team.
In SSBU, when you play with friends or online with other players and turn on the switch stages and random items to have a party game mode to play, this is the part I consider close to pvx, and Sakurai Masahiro design the core gameplay so well that basically same way to control every character in SSBU unlike in MHR:SB you have another set of key assignments to remember while you change weapons, and he not only design the core character controlling very easy to learn but also make the character skill sets so easy to understand and remember so player will easily to have a illusion that I’m good and willing to play the game unlike fighting game have a high entry(but it’s also the reason why fighting game tournaments are so entertaining), so please consider that switch stages and random items are pve part and the rest are basically pvp part, that stages have it own gimmicks and there are a lot of things can happen while fighting and switching stages, and items in SSBU are relative OP than character skill set and player skill so it's not you’re good at pvp so you have better chance to take the items and make better chances to win.
So, basically: 1. easy to learn and to be good or be competitive enough in other words blur the line between good player and not good, 2. make playgrounds have own gimmicks and playgrounds landform constantly changing through weather system and landform tool to create the uncertainties to blur the line between win and lose, 3. make pve and pvp basic behaviors cross to each other in those main repeatedly game modes that you want to have replayability in other words make pve and pvp players need each other and this is the most difficult part to do in mmos(a lazy example, implement moba-like gameplay and claim outpost in node war such as mercenaries and minions in moba games and able to create or claim temporary outposts as buff stations or nearer respawn points to make strategy more variety.
I don't want to talk about it too specific because it's not my game.
Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
One question though. Couldn't they just ask the healer? Like, I'm fighting the boss; the boss does some mechanic that brings me to low hp; I see that I'm at low hp and expect a heal; the heal doesn't come, I die and the raid wipes. I then ask the healer why the heal didn't come (assuming that I did everything correct and the boss mechanic wasn't avoidable at that particular moment). Healer just tells me that he was CCd.
I played a solo healer for a 36member raid a few times back in L2. The mechanics themselves weren't too complex, but because L2 didn't have any raid addons (or at least I've never used/seen them) - I had to know the voices of players in different groups so that I could heal individual players correctly (L2 didn't have raid-wide heals) and I needed to know mechanics to know when I'd be needed the most.
Theoretically, if it's not the very first attempt at the boss, you'd know the potential mechanics of said boss and would know which ones are the most dangerous ones (at least that'd be my expectations for the raid, if I was a RL). So if the raid wipes due to one member dying after a particular mechanic, I'd assume it shouldn't have taken up too much of healer's "ram" to remember that he was CCd during the last mechanic and that was the reason for the wipe. So he'd be able to answer my question w/o much trouble and w/o either side needing a tracker.
Maybe in some games it's that straightforward.
But if the reason is that the Healer had to heal the Summoner because a Summon fell at the wrong time, and they took an extra hit before they could resummon it due to ability cooldowns, and in that time the boss used a CC ability on the DPS which needed to be cleansed afterward. Then you the Tank took a decent hit but the big heal wasn't off cooldown yet so you used your own, at which point the Healer didn't need to heal you right away, and could prioritize other (originally) less injured party members and finally get around to dealing with the extra Poison effect from the boss that was busy ticking while they were saving the Summoner from a cooldown issue.
Five minutes later when you finally reach the end of the fight, win or lose, the question you the Tank are wondering isn't "Why couldn't you heal me, so we wiped just now?". It's "Why was it so hard to keep my MP up in the last half?"
You don't remember the missing healing, because rhythms shift, and because it's natural to sometimes have to heal yourself.
The summoner never associated them taking that hit with you spending MP in the first place.
The boss just happened to use Poison Aura more often today.
And you, at the end, don't even remember that extra healing beat or two that fell on you, because you were focused on the actual fight for the next 3-4 minutes before things finally broke down, and that self-healing requirement is normal, it just came up a few times too often.
In the end, the ANSWER, wasn't even any of that. The Bard missed an ability speed buff on the Summoner because someone's positioning was a bit off, and the Summoner eventually got unlucky as a result (and maybe that happened twice).
Who do you even ask?
There's not much reason you would remember those specific extra self-heals.
The Healer doesn't know for sure why the Summoner got hit.
The Summoner feels like it was just bad luck on timing.
The Bard didn't notice that the Summoner got knocked back while they were singing the "Speed Boost" buff that was supposed to have fixed the timing.
And the Boss may have even used more abilities later on that also made you spend more MP, as a red herring.
Literally no-one even knows, and those who do don't remember, because to NOBODY was their part of this chain of events more than 10% of what they had to focus on in fight as a whole.
But you could ask a tracker:
Tank: "Where'd my MP go?"
Tracker: "You self-healed more frequently than usual during this period."
Healer: "Then how much was I healing at that point, and who?"
Tracker: "You healed the Summoner 5 times in that part of the fight."
Healer: "Hm. Odd. I should only have needed to heal them two times."
Summoner: "Why'd I have so much trouble getting that summon off? Was the boss just extra lucky today?"
Tracker: "You only managed to heal each summon 3 times today instead of 4, due to cooldowns."
Summoner: "Wait, that's not right, why was I slower than ususal?"
Bard: "Hm? I sang the usual things."
Tracker: "The Summoner was out of range for the third recast of Speed Boost."
Party, after all of this: "Oh."
Summoner: "Well that sucks. I'll watch for that and call out if I get caught by cooldowns again."
Bard: "Hm. Okay, then that means I probably need to stand over here instead, even though I'm more likely to get hurt."
Healer: "I can afford to heal you at that POINT in the fight. The problem only comes up later on, after you're done with your buffing."
Tank: "Okay, cool. I won't fix it, cause it ain't broke, and I'd only end up making things worse."
A difference of perspective.
Maybe Ashes will be simplistic. "You wipe right away." instead of "This problem cost you some of your ability to adapt, and you didn't have enough left later on."
If every mistake instantly ends the raid, rather than demanding adaptation and allowing the opportunity to recover through skill, resources, or luck, I'm going to be a bit disappointed.
Is part of the reason you are not picking this up because you are assuming exactly the same content either with or without trackers?
No, it's exactly because trackers push the content beyond reasonable design is what leading me to have issues with them.
My main issue with the tools analogy is that trackers are an external tool, that give you omniscient information that you wouldn't have had otherwise. And that is why I related them to the manual of an IKEA drawer. The manual gives you all the information that relates to the "encounter" and then it's on you to figure out what and how to do in order to succeed at completing said encounter. You were not the one who made the manual through knowledge or repetition or collaborative work. You were just presented with the manual.
The content can remain as complex as the developers want it to be. You can hide hints behind several mechanics and only if those mechanics stack onto each other in a particular way. And players then would have to play in exactly the same way, while looking out for any abnormal changes in the overall fight.
We stood in spots 1-4 and the boss used a poison aoe that wiped us. Let us now stand in spots 5-8 and see what he does. He used the poison aoe again, but now we didn't wipe. We did everything in the exact same way, but this time the rng of the boss abilities made him use a vertical slash before that poison aoe, let's stand in the same spots the next time and see if we didn't wipe because of the vertical slash or because of the positioning. And so on and so on.
And in the context of an open world pvp contested boss, you'd be doing these kinds of test under potential pressure and probably only once a day if not way rarer. So it'd take you months to figure out any given pattern. The same would apply to other guilds.
And this kind of approach would still allow for the "human" part of the equation. Maybe some player slipped up on some action and that was the reason for the wipe. If the player didn't realize it and if no one else noticed that he slipped up - imo that's a totally valid reason for your raid to have failed. Everyone still did their personal subjective best, but in that particular encounter it wasn't enough. Maybe you'll get it next time because the same player will not slip up that time.
The tracker would remove that human factor completely, because it gives you god powers of objectively knowing everything that has happened. And when developers are trying to design some encounter for people with trackers, they're literally going up against godmoded players. The dev hid a small attack feint in-between two big abilities that sometimes goes off and triggers a third ability? W/o a tracker at least one player during the raid would have to be observant enough to notice that little feint movement. With a tracker you'd just get a read out:
"During fight 1 the boss used two abilities. These were their cast times, this was the delay between the casts."
"During fight 2 the boss used 3 abilities. These were their cast times, this was the delay between the casts."
You'd see that the delay between the first two abilities in fight 2 was different from the first fight and would know to pay attention there and would be already better prepared for that change in your 3rd fight. That is even in case the tracker doesn't literally just tell you that boss used the ability "feint" there.
In other words, you'd literally get a manual of "if this screw is missing, you can use this other one w/o problems" instead of thinking "hell, I'm missing one screw, what do I do".
Bard: "Hm? I sang the usual things."
Tracker: "The Summoner was out of range for the third recast of Speed Boost."
Party, after all of this: "Oh."
I dunno how bards/UI worked in other games, but in L2 you could see other people's buffs in your UI, so, when you were casting your buffs, you'd at least glance at whether everyone received your buff. And if you saw that someone was missing it, you'd look at them and see that they were out of range.
So unless even the class abilities have some hidden interactions unknown to the player or the UI doesn't provide you the info you'd need for your class to operate correctly in the moment - I feel like every player should be able to do their job properly w/o needing a tracker to tell them what they did wrong/right after the fact.
On my last L2 playthrough I was a bard and a guild leader. During sieges I needed to give orders to my guild, track where my party was and where the other bard was (because of how elf bards worked in L2). And all of that on top of tracking enemies on the horizon or directly in the battle, glancing at chat for any positional callouts and listening to/talking in VC for party callouts of target assists.
My buffs had a 2 min cooldown with a ramping cost. The cost would pretty much double (for me and the other bard) if, instead of staggered buff application with the other bard, I gave my buff first and then he gave his on top of that. Due to flow of the battle, you'd sometimes have fights that lasted 10+ minutes, so you had to recast your full buff 5 times, while your whole party was together (the range was fairly limited), while you still had the previous buff (you'd match animations to the buff countdown so that your buff would replace it as soon as it went down) and while staggering your casts with the other bard.
All of that would be in the middle of fights with potential stuns/silences/agroes/movement. And I managed to do all that throughout a 2h siege with constantly changing variables.
Now I'm obviously not a top lvl pve player, nor do I know how truly difficult it is to participate in top end pve content. But if you're saying that each and every player has an attention requirement higher than what I had, during such sieges, and is pretty much unable to track the proper use of his abilities and what the boss is doing - then yes, I'll agree that trackers will be required for that kind of pve.
Bard: "Hm? I sang the usual things."
Tracker: "The Summoner was out of range for the third recast of Speed Boost."
Party, after all of this: "Oh."
I dunno how bards/UI worked in other games, but in L2 you could see other people's buffs in your UI, so, when you were casting your buffs, you'd at least glance at whether everyone received your buff. And if you saw that someone was missing it, you'd look at them and see that they were out of range.
So unless even the class abilities have some hidden interactions unknown to the player or the UI doesn't provide you the info you'd need for your class to operate correctly in the moment - I feel like every player should be able to do their job properly w/o needing a tracker to tell them what they did wrong/right after the fact.
On my last L2 playthrough I was a bard and a guild leader. During sieges I needed to give orders to my guild, track where my party was and where the other bard was (because of how elf bards worked in L2). And all of that on top of tracking enemies on the horizon or directly in the battle, glancing at chat for any positional callouts and listening to/talking in VC for party callouts of target assists.
My buffs had a 2 min cooldown with a ramping cost. The cost would pretty much double (for me and the other bard) if, instead of staggered buff application with the other bard, I gave my buff first and then he gave his on top of that. Due to flow of the battle, you'd sometimes have fights that lasted 10+ minutes, so you had to recast your full buff 5 times, while your whole party was together (the range was fairly limited), while you still had the previous buff (you'd match animations to the buff countdown so that your buff would replace it as soon as it went down) and while staggering your casts with the other bard.
All of that would be in the middle of fights with potential stuns/silences/agroes/movement. And I managed to do all that throughout a 2h siege with constantly changing variables.
Now I'm obviously not a top lvl pve player, nor do I know how truly difficult it is to participate in top end pve content. But if you're saying that each and every player has an attention requirement higher than what I had, during such sieges, and is pretty much unable to track the proper use of his abilities and what the boss is doing - then yes, I'll agree that trackers will be required for that kind of pve.
I don't actually need a tracker most of the time because my group leader is borderline superhuman. That's what all the anti-tracker people want. For the 'superhumans' to win. That's fine, I've got mine.
That's a fairly good write up that maybe illustrates to some people how wrong they are about assumptions they have made in relation to PvE content.
I would like to point out that this is the exact type of language/attitude that the "meters bring toxic behavior" crowd is talking about. (ie: your doing your rotation wrong)
Meters that track EVERYTHING as being described are a double edged sword. They can be used for good, as you want them to be. But as tools become more widespread, they can also be used for more...petty reasons.
I think most of the players advocating for no tracker want to play a game that's fun, social, and engaging...where wacky/memorable situations happen somewhat regularly. Not knowing every small detail that happens in a fight can leads to these situations. In these players' eyes, trackers push the game in the direction of a "job", where analyzing data becomes more important that playing the GAME.
I think the main feeling of "toxicity" happens when the mindset of "people are wrong/bad" starts spreading to the majority of the player base. When people can compare themselves to others in DPS tracking (live or on log websites), most interactions/conversations tend to be around "being on top of the meter", instead of anything else going on.
@Noaani I totally understand your concerns around this hot topic, but it feels like you are not taking the time to understand the other side of the argument.
I truly believe there is a middle ground with this, and I wish the discussion could be around compromises instead of a constant back and forth of each side being "wrong".
Comments
Game design is absolutely key to how a combat tracker will be used.
If there are no difficult PvE encounters in the game, trackers won't be used to work them out.
If there is only one viable build per class, trackers won't be used to evaluate other builds.
If the games skill ceiling is low, trackers won't be used to help players improve.
If the game allows for quick replacement of players mid content, people have an incentive to boot others mid content.
As it just so happens, the aspects above that are considered good game design (challenging content, many viable builds, high skill ceiling) all benefit from tracker use. The aspects that are generally considered bad game design (LFG/LFR type systems) will see trackers used in a negative way.
To me, based on the above, any game developer that is saying "we don't want a tracker in our game" starts ringing bells.
The obvious question to then ask that developer is; why not? What aspects of your games design are you worried about them in?
Are you planning on not having challenging PvE content, only having one viable build per class, having a low skill ceiling, or perhaps you plan on having a means to teleport players directly to a group mid content (such as the family summons).
Trackers are not going to help a normal player catch up all the sudden, if you are wanting to see dps and what is effective that is easy to test without trackers. They simply want you to think you having a DPs meter is going to suddenly make you a great player to get you to support trackers.
Depending on the information provided and such they can make trackers less efficient, as well with action combat. People try to compare pure tab games when this game is much different in terms of combat based on your play style.
But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want.
Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge.
DPS checks are not difficult and are more of a gating mechanic. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
How is that what I seem to want?
Trackers aren't primarily for DPS.
If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser.
If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that.
The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
If the game pushes pick up content over group content it may be true. Thing is, I would list that as another bad game design - an MMO should be focusing on getting players to build strong relationships with each other, and guilds are the means to do that.
Toxicity of all forms (not just the 'you're bad at this so I'm booting you' form) mostly only ever present in situations where people have no relationship with each other.
This is why the LFG system was so bad - it bought people together that had no prior relationship, no motivation to build one, and an easy means to boot each other out.
Thing is, EQ2 had many DPS checks,and still almost no toxicity in the community. The thing is, those DPS checks were on content you would only ever see with your guild.
What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again.
It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect.
If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be.
My apologies. I don't mean to cause any distress. Nothing is being won or lost here.
This is just a forum we talk about ideas.
I'll back off.
I thank you.
Perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion in the other way, though. What do you consider a PvE challenge in a game like Ashes that does not have a component in which you need to check 'numbers vs time'?
I can see how one could make a game where the question is moreso 'did you hit or not', 'did you defend or not', and 'did you activate the correct mechanic' than 'did you do enough damage' or 'did you mitigate enough damage'.
Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
The challenge for me there is 'avoid being CCed', right? The issue is that if you make a game like this, generally the response will be 'just bring more healers so that you don't have to worry about one being CCed'. I consider this less challenge, in the same way that fights which don't 'punish DPS players for just going all out' are less challenge. "Just bring more DPS so the enemy dies faster."
The result is that the boss normally has to be 'tuned' so that you 'will not succeed if you have too few or too many' but this is still going to be a 'numbers' result.
What do you see as a PvE challenge where you can't just throw more of X class at the problem to get around the mechanics preventing the effectiveness of any individual one?
Challenging PvE doesnt tell you want is going on. You have to figure it out for yourself.
All the comments of "just dont stand in the telegraph" and things like that only work if the ability is telegraphed.
Often times, the thing that went wrong isnt obvious. One mob in particular would explode if your raid DPS on it got too high. No warning, no hint at what went wrong - just boom.
Literally the only way to work this out is to notice that it exploded a specific amount of time after your raid DPS hit a specific level. Without a tracker, that just isnt possible.
Now, the argument could be made that the developers should have given a hint as to what went wrong- bit I would ask, why?
If the game is giving you a hint, working it out becomes trivial. The encounter is literally telling you want to do.
If that same encounter had a line of text saying "you are doing too much damage, I'm exploding", then working it out after the first pull would be expected.
The way it went though, it took people actual hundreds of pulls over actual weeks to work out what the trigger for the explosion was. Some guilds took months (keeping in mind sharing info on top end mobs wasnt a thing).
Put simply, without combat trackers, the game has to tell players what is going on. With combat trackers, the game can leave it up to players to figure out.
It should then be obvious how one of these willbe inherently harder than the other.
I'd say avoidance and puzzle mechanics are not a direct numbers vs time check.
I think you need to force mechanics so they can't just dps through the challenge. Boss goes invulnerable until you do the mechanic. Also, have mechanics that require everyone in the area to do something so it's not just a small group doing it all.
If necessary, I think capping the dps a boss can take would be a way to limit the effect of a zerg.
If there is concern of people spamming healers, have mechanics that trigger based off classes in the area and make the healer one difficult to deal with. Also could have one that triggers based off healing being done in the area.
Besides that, the rewards encourages you to bring as few people as possible since the more people you bring, the more people you have to split items with and the less valuable the time will be. If you have to bring another healer for the CC mechanic, then that's a healer you are now competing with for loot.
So would this be 'limiting DPS per person', or Limiting DPS the boss takes at all?
Because my first thought is the opposite. Bring more tanks. The moment you don't need the damage, that's what people do in my experience. They bring more tanks, they build more tanky. Since often, the utility of DPS, particularly on bosses, IS that they explicitly do more damage, taking that from them seems off?
There's also the fact that normally (for what I consider good design), 'damage' is the reward you get for 'not having to spend a lot of time recovering from or dealing with mechanics' or for 'taking a risk of attacking when a certain mechanic is possible'.
But honestly, it once again sounds like we just play different types of games. If Ashes manages what you're suggesting without it being a walkover for my group, I'll be glad. Been a while.
I played a solo healer for a 36member raid a few times back in L2. The mechanics themselves weren't too complex, but because L2 didn't have any raid addons (or at least I've never used/seen them) - I had to know the voices of players in different groups so that I could heal individual players correctly (L2 didn't have raid-wide heals) and I needed to know mechanics to know when I'd be needed the most.
Theoretically, if it's not the very first attempt at the boss, you'd know the potential mechanics of said boss and would know which ones are the most dangerous ones (at least that'd be my expectations for the raid, if I was a RL). So if the raid wipes due to one member dying after a particular mechanic, I'd assume it shouldn't have taken up too much of healer's "ram" to remember that he was CCd during the last mechanic and that was the reason for the wipe. So he'd be able to answer my question w/o much trouble and w/o either side needing a tracker.
Now, I'll ask about the solution to the CCd problem below. So what you're saying is that developers made a design that is literally unsolvable w/o an additional non-game-mechanic tool, but we're somehow supposed to just have said tool and accept that the design is good?
Maybe I'm just too elitist and selfish at this point, but why in the living hell should you have a tool that helps you beat smth difficult? It takes a guild months to figure out why they wipe? Great! It's a difficult content that requires them to try countless setups and pay attention to what everyone does during the raid. Fuck the tool that just shows you the most likely solution.
This to me just sounds like "devs made a shitty encounter, so it's completely fine to "cheat' and solve the encounter by being omniscient and knowing every detail of the fight". I consider that weak.
And this ties to the "CCd" problem from Azherae's example. The raid failed because the healer got CCd? Well then make several runs where the healer tries different char placements or resist buffs against the CC or multiple other potential solutions. It takes you several weeks to do this? Great! You have the whole rest of the game to play between those attempts, while having a difficult encounter to do in-between the rest of the gameplay.
This is what I was talking about when I said that trackers speed up content consumption. Except the issue is even deeper, because with the kind of mechanics Noaani wants, literally no one would be able to beat the bosses unless they were using a non-gameplay tool.
Sure, I don't have anything to say anymore.
There's just some conversations you can't have without faith.
That's why I said that to mcstackerson. I can't 'give you an example' that would be countered by simple responses like that, so either that means I'm wrong, and no one ever needs meters, or there's some fundamental disconnect in our perspectives.
Hopefully Noaani won't tire, but I'm out. Doesn't affect me anyway.
Remember when i brought up its cheating and akin to aim bot but they dismissed it because it doesn't fit their narrative
And I'm in the same mind set, you figure it out. Yet this is the same person that is against guides yet will use cheats to find his way around -Insert two eye emoji-
Or we can believe in devs creating good fun encounters and taking their swing at it and see how it goes. We shouldn't expect things to go exactly how a 15 year old game went, and expect more of a modern take on things. Older designs were rough for a reason and more difficult without being as fair because being limited by technology and such.
This is 2022 not the year 2002 though, devs as years go on will always be able to make better content.
I feel like this kind of pve design is the same copout as L2's "just let the pvp be the difficult part" one.
I'm going to use an analogy here for you.
Imagine you are sorting out a set of drawers for your home.
If the only tool you have is a screwdriver, you are likely to wind up with something basic from IKEA - or a similar style product.
On the other hand, if you have a full workshop with bench saw, plains, joiners, lathes, a drill press, chisels, basically just all the things - you dont just get an IKEA set, you make one from scratch yourself, and end up with something far superior.
If someone comes and looks at the drawers you make, they aren't going to say "well, I made my IKEA drawers with just a screw driver, why did you need all of those tools to make your drawers?".
This is kind of what you are asking above. We dont want a combat tracker to be able to take on IKEA content, and content that can be taken on without proper tools is IKEA content.
Now, I wouldn't know where to begin if I were to make a set of drawers from scratch, just as you may not know what PvE content that requires a tracker looks like. These are both fine, I am happy to take the word of a joiner that they need all of those tools, and I hope you take our word for it that non-IKEA PvE content also requires tools.
I hope this helps you understanding things a little better.
Making a drawer is a difficult process, but if you have an instruction/manual - it's way easier. You still need to know how to read the manual and how to follow it (some people still fail at this, so I feel like this parallel does apply to tracker use as well), but it's way easier than just having the tools and some wood, but having no instruction on what to do with them and then figuring out what you can do.
To me, all the tools you listed is your class, gear, your own skillset and the same stuff from each raid member. And you then use all those "tools" to figure out how to "make the drawer". And a tracker is the external omniscient tool that makes the whole process easier and faster.
But like I said, I'm too selfish/stubborn/elitist when it comes to this topic. And as we've agreed before, the convo itself is useless because people will definitely make trackers and make the encounters easier for themselves, no matter how difficult those encounters are. So sorry for wasting yalls time again
No it doesnt.
A tracker can never tell you how to kill an encounter.
Again, the IKEA version in this case is the content developed based on the assumption the players do not have this tool.
The developers of such content put all the screw holes and hinge cutouts right in to the content for players to use - where as players with trackers are left to work out where they think the screw holes need to go, measure it, drill it and then start again if it is wrong.
Tools allow people more utility. That is literally their purpose.
As such, if you are developing a product for someone, you develop it based on the tools they have.
Develop that product for someone with no tools, and you can only ask basic things. Develop a product for someone with advanced tools, and you can ask for much more specific and detailed things in your product.
Is part of the reason you are not picking this up because you are assuming exactly the same content either with or without trackers?
In my logic that overthinking or not is depends on the point of view and how the person's brain been wired, so I think we both right, just different point of view and different thinking way make different out come, but I understand you.
Yes and no, I tried some f2p and private server at beginning of mmo start dying in my region but it's not the same, it's too complicated to me to explain with my bad English, in a short way to say when this genre start dying something or some mentalities gone with it and in that time the genre is overwhelmed and for decades the genre is full of shit and...I don't know I just feel angry about that, I looked for the translation about rose tinted glasses but I don't think the translation really translate the full meaning because so much difference between two languages and the cultures behind but I assume you're right, I mean to me Ashes of Creation is the last chance I give to myself to dream about mmo could be good, if it failed I won’t ever bother to care any news about this genre again like how I think about most of mobile games.
Well although it's not relevant to thread topic, I don't know what pvx in your region, in my region pvx is a more causal of play style and player does every part in the game but depends on mood, but to be honest I don’t think that is real what pvx means or even pxv is a misguided term to describe a game design, sometimes even pve and pvp these term are outdated because players and environment now are so different than the background of those terms back in the time them be created and defined, so with that being said keep it in mind that pve and pvp and pvx I talking about after are not exact the same definitions what you used to know.
It's very hard to make a real pvx game in my opinion, a real pvx game in my mind is that no matter which part you play you in a pvx game you won't able to get rid of other part completely, I mean it's hard to feel the joy in this type of game while you are a hard pve player or hard pvp player, and it kind true about pxv game is a more casual play style but I will say it’s more about the game design philosophy to design game fun for most of players who not hard categorized or say in other way for average people wha play games but at the same time that “average” is a misguiding term in a degree too, though to me the game most close to a pvx game I know is Splatoon 2 and SSBU.
I guess will be lots of people not agree with me and think I’m stupid but whatever.
In Splatoon 2, how Nintendo design the core gameplay is the key, when play online with other players basically there are two moves you can choose to focus on: 1. splash ink to claim territory for your team in order to keep the baseline to win the game(please consider this as pve part) or 2. kill enemies to stop them to claim territory(please consider this as pvp part), but you won't always be able to focus on only pve part or pvp part you will be force by your enemies to do pvp part while they attack on you or forced by situations that you need to refilled ink and reposition yourself, Nintendo design Splatoon well connect pvp player and non-pvp player and no matter you are good at aiming or not(but Nintendo make the aim very forgiving and it’s very good in my opinion) so there always have things you can do to be contributed for your team.
In SSBU, when you play with friends or online with other players and turn on the switch stages and random items to have a party game mode to play, this is the part I consider close to pvx, and Sakurai Masahiro design the core gameplay so well that basically same way to control every character in SSBU unlike in MHR:SB you have another set of key assignments to remember while you change weapons, and he not only design the core character controlling very easy to learn but also make the character skill sets so easy to understand and remember so player will easily to have a illusion that I’m good and willing to play the game unlike fighting game have a high entry(but it’s also the reason why fighting game tournaments are so entertaining), so please consider that switch stages and random items are pve part and the rest are basically pvp part, that stages have it own gimmicks and there are a lot of things can happen while fighting and switching stages, and items in SSBU are relative OP than character skill set and player skill so it's not you’re good at pvp so you have better chance to take the items and make better chances to win.
So, basically: 1. easy to learn and to be good or be competitive enough in other words blur the line between good player and not good, 2. make playgrounds have own gimmicks and playgrounds landform constantly changing through weather system and landform tool to create the uncertainties to blur the line between win and lose, 3. make pve and pvp basic behaviors cross to each other in those main repeatedly game modes that you want to have replayability in other words make pve and pvp players need each other and this is the most difficult part to do in mmos(a lazy example, implement moba-like gameplay and claim outpost in node war such as mercenaries and minions in moba games and able to create or claim temporary outposts as buff stations or nearer respawn points to make strategy more variety.
I don't want to talk about it too specific because it's not my game.
Maybe in some games it's that straightforward.
But if the reason is that the Healer had to heal the Summoner because a Summon fell at the wrong time, and they took an extra hit before they could resummon it due to ability cooldowns, and in that time the boss used a CC ability on the DPS which needed to be cleansed afterward. Then you the Tank took a decent hit but the big heal wasn't off cooldown yet so you used your own, at which point the Healer didn't need to heal you right away, and could prioritize other (originally) less injured party members and finally get around to dealing with the extra Poison effect from the boss that was busy ticking while they were saving the Summoner from a cooldown issue.
Five minutes later when you finally reach the end of the fight, win or lose, the question you the Tank are wondering isn't "Why couldn't you heal me, so we wiped just now?". It's "Why was it so hard to keep my MP up in the last half?"
You don't remember the missing healing, because rhythms shift, and because it's natural to sometimes have to heal yourself.
The summoner never associated them taking that hit with you spending MP in the first place.
The boss just happened to use Poison Aura more often today.
And you, at the end, don't even remember that extra healing beat or two that fell on you, because you were focused on the actual fight for the next 3-4 minutes before things finally broke down, and that self-healing requirement is normal, it just came up a few times too often.
In the end, the ANSWER, wasn't even any of that. The Bard missed an ability speed buff on the Summoner because someone's positioning was a bit off, and the Summoner eventually got unlucky as a result (and maybe that happened twice).
Who do you even ask?
There's not much reason you would remember those specific extra self-heals.
The Healer doesn't know for sure why the Summoner got hit.
The Summoner feels like it was just bad luck on timing.
The Bard didn't notice that the Summoner got knocked back while they were singing the "Speed Boost" buff that was supposed to have fixed the timing.
And the Boss may have even used more abilities later on that also made you spend more MP, as a red herring.
Literally no-one even knows, and those who do don't remember, because to NOBODY was their part of this chain of events more than 10% of what they had to focus on in fight as a whole.
But you could ask a tracker:
Tank: "Where'd my MP go?"
Tracker: "You self-healed more frequently than usual during this period."
Healer: "Then how much was I healing at that point, and who?"
Tracker: "You healed the Summoner 5 times in that part of the fight."
Healer: "Hm. Odd. I should only have needed to heal them two times."
Summoner: "Why'd I have so much trouble getting that summon off? Was the boss just extra lucky today?"
Tracker: "You only managed to heal each summon 3 times today instead of 4, due to cooldowns."
Summoner: "Wait, that's not right, why was I slower than ususal?"
Bard: "Hm? I sang the usual things."
Tracker: "The Summoner was out of range for the third recast of Speed Boost."
Party, after all of this: "Oh."
Summoner: "Well that sucks. I'll watch for that and call out if I get caught by cooldowns again."
Bard: "Hm. Okay, then that means I probably need to stand over here instead, even though I'm more likely to get hurt."
Healer: "I can afford to heal you at that POINT in the fight. The problem only comes up later on, after you're done with your buffing."
Tank: "Okay, cool. I won't fix it, cause it ain't broke, and I'd only end up making things worse."
A difference of perspective.
Maybe Ashes will be simplistic. "You wipe right away." instead of "This problem cost you some of your ability to adapt, and you didn't have enough left later on."
If every mistake instantly ends the raid, rather than demanding adaptation and allowing the opportunity to recover through skill, resources, or luck, I'm going to be a bit disappointed.
That's a fairly good write up that maybe illustrates to some people how wrong they are about assumptions they have made in relation to PvE content.
I'm assuming that you have played EQ2, based on much of the above, as that is an exact situation I have seen a number of times in that game.
No, I'm on the FFXI side.
Maybe FFXIV is closer to EQ2 than I had thought. This is a good thing - it proves there is still a market for this type of combat in an MMO.
I may have to give it a more in depth look than I have done so far.
No, FFXI. I've never touched FFXIV. (I'd hate for you to end up trying out the wrong game and missing out. I can only vouch for the one.)
My main issue with the tools analogy is that trackers are an external tool, that give you omniscient information that you wouldn't have had otherwise. And that is why I related them to the manual of an IKEA drawer. The manual gives you all the information that relates to the "encounter" and then it's on you to figure out what and how to do in order to succeed at completing said encounter. You were not the one who made the manual through knowledge or repetition or collaborative work. You were just presented with the manual.
The content can remain as complex as the developers want it to be. You can hide hints behind several mechanics and only if those mechanics stack onto each other in a particular way. And players then would have to play in exactly the same way, while looking out for any abnormal changes in the overall fight.
We stood in spots 1-4 and the boss used a poison aoe that wiped us. Let us now stand in spots 5-8 and see what he does. He used the poison aoe again, but now we didn't wipe. We did everything in the exact same way, but this time the rng of the boss abilities made him use a vertical slash before that poison aoe, let's stand in the same spots the next time and see if we didn't wipe because of the vertical slash or because of the positioning. And so on and so on.
And in the context of an open world pvp contested boss, you'd be doing these kinds of test under potential pressure and probably only once a day if not way rarer. So it'd take you months to figure out any given pattern. The same would apply to other guilds.
And this kind of approach would still allow for the "human" part of the equation. Maybe some player slipped up on some action and that was the reason for the wipe. If the player didn't realize it and if no one else noticed that he slipped up - imo that's a totally valid reason for your raid to have failed. Everyone still did their personal subjective best, but in that particular encounter it wasn't enough. Maybe you'll get it next time because the same player will not slip up that time.
The tracker would remove that human factor completely, because it gives you god powers of objectively knowing everything that has happened. And when developers are trying to design some encounter for people with trackers, they're literally going up against godmoded players. The dev hid a small attack feint in-between two big abilities that sometimes goes off and triggers a third ability? W/o a tracker at least one player during the raid would have to be observant enough to notice that little feint movement. With a tracker you'd just get a read out:
"During fight 1 the boss used two abilities. These were their cast times, this was the delay between the casts."
"During fight 2 the boss used 3 abilities. These were their cast times, this was the delay between the casts."
You'd see that the delay between the first two abilities in fight 2 was different from the first fight and would know to pay attention there and would be already better prepared for that change in your 3rd fight. That is even in case the tracker doesn't literally just tell you that boss used the ability "feint" there.
In other words, you'd literally get a manual of "if this screw is missing, you can use this other one w/o problems" instead of thinking "hell, I'm missing one screw, what do I do". I dunno how bards/UI worked in other games, but in L2 you could see other people's buffs in your UI, so, when you were casting your buffs, you'd at least glance at whether everyone received your buff. And if you saw that someone was missing it, you'd look at them and see that they were out of range.
So unless even the class abilities have some hidden interactions unknown to the player or the UI doesn't provide you the info you'd need for your class to operate correctly in the moment - I feel like every player should be able to do their job properly w/o needing a tracker to tell them what they did wrong/right after the fact.
On my last L2 playthrough I was a bard and a guild leader. During sieges I needed to give orders to my guild, track where my party was and where the other bard was (because of how elf bards worked in L2). And all of that on top of tracking enemies on the horizon or directly in the battle, glancing at chat for any positional callouts and listening to/talking in VC for party callouts of target assists.
My buffs had a 2 min cooldown with a ramping cost. The cost would pretty much double (for me and the other bard) if, instead of staggered buff application with the other bard, I gave my buff first and then he gave his on top of that. Due to flow of the battle, you'd sometimes have fights that lasted 10+ minutes, so you had to recast your full buff 5 times, while your whole party was together (the range was fairly limited), while you still had the previous buff (you'd match animations to the buff countdown so that your buff would replace it as soon as it went down) and while staggering your casts with the other bard.
All of that would be in the middle of fights with potential stuns/silences/agroes/movement. And I managed to do all that throughout a 2h siege with constantly changing variables.
Now I'm obviously not a top lvl pve player, nor do I know how truly difficult it is to participate in top end pve content. But if you're saying that each and every player has an attention requirement higher than what I had, during such sieges, and is pretty much unable to track the proper use of his abilities and what the boss is doing - then yes, I'll agree that trackers will be required for that kind of pve.
I don't actually need a tracker most of the time because my group leader is borderline superhuman. That's what all the anti-tracker people want. For the 'superhumans' to win. That's fine, I've got mine.
I would like to point out that this is the exact type of language/attitude that the "meters bring toxic behavior" crowd is talking about. (ie: your doing your rotation wrong)
Meters that track EVERYTHING as being described are a double edged sword. They can be used for good, as you want them to be. But as tools become more widespread, they can also be used for more...petty reasons.
I think most of the players advocating for no tracker want to play a game that's fun, social, and engaging...where wacky/memorable situations happen somewhat regularly. Not knowing every small detail that happens in a fight can leads to these situations. In these players' eyes, trackers push the game in the direction of a "job", where analyzing data becomes more important that playing the GAME.
I think the main feeling of "toxicity" happens when the mindset of "people are wrong/bad" starts spreading to the majority of the player base. When people can compare themselves to others in DPS tracking (live or on log websites), most interactions/conversations tend to be around "being on top of the meter", instead of anything else going on.
@Noaani I totally understand your concerns around this hot topic, but it feels like you are not taking the time to understand the other side of the argument.
I truly believe there is a middle ground with this, and I wish the discussion could be around compromises instead of a constant back and forth of each side being "wrong".