Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Explain to me how this is possible.
Wanting to isolate one player is the entire problem.
But, people playing near each other can evaluate how well they are syncing their abilities.
I don’t need a combat tracker to tell me that adds near me aren’t being cc’d well enough or that I’m not getting enough heals.
In games where we expect healers to heal instead dps, we can tell when a specific healer is focusing too much on dps without a combat tracker.
I said it is not possible.
You said it is possible.
Explain to me how it is possible.
The raid-leader do not know that but the 'common opinion' says that the Warlock is the best DPS. So you can't join to the raid with your mage. This is not just my fear, exactly that happened in GW2 while there were not DPS meter (class names are different). After they introduced the DPS meter the players was able to prove that the mage can have same DPS as the warlock so after that you were let in the raid with your mage.
As if generals are incapable of assessing the performances of individuals in an army without digital combat trackers. Humans have centuries of assessing the combat of individuals within a battalion without the need of combat trackers.
That's why armies have lieutenants and sergeants and corporals... and squad leaders.
I don't recall saying it is possible to isolate one player. I said it is possible to gauge the performance of an individual player without digital DPS meters and combat trackers.
You don't isolate "Player Number 26", rather you evaluate how well each primary archetype in a squad is doing. And you rely on the input of the squad leaders and squadmates to help determine how to improve individual performance(s) within each squad.
Before assuming what raid leaders can't assess without DPS meters, people should probably wait to see what tools the devs will implement for raid leaders and party/squad leaders. We know there is at least one tool in the Ashes design to help raid leaders and party leaders direct battle in the heat of combat.
https://ashespost.com/6-28-19-livestream-transcript/
Q: Who will command troops during a node siege/war. If anyone can, will a raid leading comms be available to all citizens?
A: There are administrative functions that will be available, including VOIP functions and raid delegation, including on screen commands and target designation.
Which why people are so keen to play Ashes of Creation, rather than GW2.
I don't, nor do I expect the average leader to require decades of training to be effective at assessing their raid.
This is one of the most unreasonable things you've said in this thread. It is not possible to evaluate an individual without isolating the output of the individual (this time, it is something I DO have decades of experience in).
This goes for anything. Sport. Manufacturing. Accounting. Research. Sales. Education.
All you are ever able to assess is what is able to be isolated. If all you are able to isolate is a group of three people, you are unable to access anything other than that group of three people as a single unit. If something is going wrong - or more importantly if something is going exceedingly well - if you are unable to isolate things beyond that group of three, you are unable to fix things if they are going wrong - or duplicate things if they are going right - without making all alterations to units of three.
Therefor, if you are able to gauge the performance of an individual among a raid of 40, you must be able to isolate that individuals output. If all you are able to do is say that the 8 healers in the rid didn't manage to keep the raid alive, you have no way of finding out why, or trying to fix the issue other than in dealing with all 8 healers . this gets even harder with the DPS, because while a raid of 40 would likely have about 24 DPS, it will also have around 6 utility characters that all contribute to DPS as well. So suddenly, if you have a raid of 24 DPS and 6 utility buffing them and things aren't going right, you have no unit smaller than that 30 people in which to make adjustments.
Even worse, should things go right one day, you have no way of knowing why, and so no way of duplicating the effects.
Add in a combat tracker, and not only can you find out what player caused things to either go right or wrong, but you can look at the individual abilities used to see EXACTLY what it was that went right or wrong. You can fix things that went wrong on an individual spell level, rather than the individual player level, or the contingent of 30 DPS/utility in the raid.
If things go right, you can see EXACTLY why they went right, down to the individual spell casts. You can then duplicate that result in the future for the benefit of all.
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Even in your post above where you claim to have answered the question, you haven't. You say that you can evaluate how each archetype in a "squad" (wtf is a "squad" in an MMORPG?) is doing, but you fail to say HOW you make that evaluation. How do you evaluate the output of your mages vs your rogues? With these archetypes, the main thing you will want to know is how much damage they have dealt - how do you know what damage your mages are inflicting vs what damage your rogues are inflicting? Further, assuming you somehow come to the conclusion that the mages are not doing as much damage as they should, how do you then figure out if that is because the mages are not performing as they should, or the bards and summoners buffing them are not buffing the mages as they should?
You then also say that you rely on input from "squad leaders and squadmates" to help determine how to improve individual performance, yet you fail to state how. Not only that, you fail to state how you establish a baseline for what the performance is now, and later on how much - if any - improvement has been made.
Basically, you have failed to demonstrate that you are able to assess any portion of a raid other than the whole raid, and you have also failed to demonstrate how you could possibly know whether any change you may make or suggest to another player in your "squad" is even a positive change.
This is exactly why people will have a combat tracker - Intrepids desires be damned. You say AoC is not GW2, but you say it in a way where you think people shouldn't learn from mistakes in history.
Again, humans have been doing this for millennia.
You don't have to isolate, you just have to pay attention. I don't need to isolate a healer to see that they are spending more time dealing damage when I expect them to be healing. I don't need to isolate a squadmate to realize that they aren't buffing or synching their abilities to mine as expected. I don't need to isolate a cc character to notice that adds aren't being adequately cc'd.
I definitely don't need DPS and combat tracker tools to feed me that info. If you do, it's because you've used those tools as a crutch way too often.
And, since the Ashes devs aren't supporting such tools, we know that Ashes content will be designed to be defeated without need those tools.
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If your reading comprehension is that poor, I can't help you.
Lets assume you are have the time in a raid to pay attention to others rather than focusing on what you are doing (you don't, but we are ignoring that).
You can't just judge what a person is doing by what spell motions and particle effects their character character is triggering. With 64 character classes, a minimum of 20 spells each and a likely minimum of 5 augments for each spell, that is 6,400 spell/augment combinations that the game will have.
Now, lets maintain the assumption that you are going to watch your raid, and are still able to perform. Working on an average of 1 spell every 2 seconds (some classes will be twice as high as this), and an average raid encounter of 15 minutes for boss, that means you are watching 18,000 spells and abilities be used, and are then mentally comparing them to the above list of 6,400 possible spell/augment combinations in order to figure out what spells and abilities your raid are using, and when they are using them.
No.
Not happening.
This would be possible in a small group of 4, but not in a raid of 40. May be that is what you are thinking of, as it is obvious you have no actual raid experience.
You may well be able to spot the occasional thing that is well out of place, but in a raid of 40 people, you are not able to discern enough accurate information on a single player to get an accurate picture of their performance, let alone get such a picture of all 40.
And that is all assuming you have a detailed understanding of the nuances of every build of every class in your raid - which is unreasonable to expect of anyone. If you don't have that understanding of the nuances of every class, you can't judge whether casting a specific ability at a specific time was the right or wrong thing to do, even if you could determine what spell was being cast and when, which you can't do.
With a combat tracker though, you are simply looking at actual output, without needing to know the nuances of how that output was achieved. You don't need to know if a given spell was the right or wrong one to cast at that point in time, nor do you need to identify that one spell among the 6,399 over spells in the game.
Lets go up one step from there though. Lets look at those adds that aren't being CC'd. Is it that they were CC'd and someone accidentally cast an an AoE and broke the CC without noticing? Maybe someone has an item with a damage proc that they didn't notice could attack enemies other than the target. Maybe the CC player cast their CC but the mob resisted. Do you have a stealthed enemy that is breaking the CC on those adds to wipe your raid? If he's good, he'll be able to do that without even getting in line of sight of anyone in your raid so there is no way you would be able to see him.
All you have been able to see is that the adds are not CC'd. There at least 30 people that could be to blame for that - and it may well be that the person to blame doesn't even know they did anything wrong, or that a person is doing something wrong on purpose (either from inside or outside your raid), and is being subtle enough that no one else can see.
And all you have to rely in is what you think you saw.
What matters is whether that is sufficient to defeat the content.
Everything we do these days, we have more information available to us than most of us know how to use.
If you are going to buy an item, you don't need to rely on what price you think you saw it last week in order to know if the advertised price is good or not, you can simply look up the average historical sales figure of the item online.
If you re going to go out and buy a pair of sneakers, you can just go for ones that look good, or you can make use of additional information and get ones that are a better match for the contour of your feet.
If you are going to the gym, you can get all sorts of performance analyses to tell you if the routine you are on is giving you the results you are after or not.
Hell, Fantasy Football is an entire game built around this additional information that everyone has access to, but only some make use of.
There is literally no activity in the world where you can't pull up more information than the average participant/viewer of that activity would want or know how to make use of, if you know where to look.
Ashes won't be any different. The information will be there to those that know where to look. It will be there in a 'legal' manner, even if it remains somewhat in the shadows.
Whether you realize it or not, you are arguing for this to be the case - I am arguing for the information to be available to all.
The whole theme behind AOC is bringing social interaction back to the genre.
You should be running hard content only with a group of player u trust in.
You dont need to isolate number 26 because you know him and his strengths.
IS is trading out the ACT data to gain more meaningful interactions within the community.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
Because the devs aren't supporting those tools and will be actively working to disable them.
I'm not arguing for that to be the case.
If there is no in game or approved third party combat tracker, there will be an unapproved third party combat tracker. Unapproved does not mean against the rules, and if it is not against the rules there is nothing Intrepid can do about it.
I am asking for a first party one so that the unapproved third party one need not even exist (or more specifically, need not be altered to accommodate Ashes, as it already exists in a working state). I would much rather never see an unapproved combat tracker for Ashes if I had the option - and there is literally only one path that only one person can take to see to it that there are no unapproved combat trackers for Ashes.
I am not arguing for something to go against what Steven wants, I am arguing to convince him - since they have, after all, only ever said that they are undecided on the matter.
But, we will have considerable experience fighting in large groups with people we don't know.
We won't be able to kick random players who participate in caravan defense/attack.
We won't be able to kick random players who participate in a Node siege, but don't mechanically join a raid or party.
When we need to defend our Node from a Monster Coin Attack, we won't be kicking people from groups because they don't have the right gear score or flavor-of-the month character builds.
But, we will still evaluate combat performance and offer suggestions for better tactics while in the midst of battle. I don't expect open world raiding of world bosses will be much different since most of our large-group PvP combat will occur as I mentioned above.
I'm hoping that combat abilities will work in a manner that we can supplement and complement the abilities of the characters we are fighting alongside.
We know that a group of Summoners can work together to group Summon a Golem. I hope that Shadow Lords can aid a Necromancer with a group summons or at least augment the Necromancer's summons even if the result is not as powerful as the minion a full party of 8 Necromancers can summon.
In Ashes, open world raiding of World Boss lairs won't just be there for the leisure of "top end raid groups".
Static content that a raid group can repeat over and over and over again just to improve their past performances.
Rather they will be spaces where everyone who has a stake in ending the negative consequences the World Boss brings will be striving to make the kill.
I expect most of the people in my raid at a World Boss lair will be citizens from my Node with whom I typically party/raid. But, there will also likely be other soloers and mechanically joined parties and raids, whom I don't know, from other Nodes within the region and/or outside of the region who are fighting in that lair alongside my raid group.
But even then, this statement doesn't work. If I don't have access to combat analysis, I don't know a given players strengths in terms of damage output, buffing effectivenes, effective healing, overhealing or damage mitigation and reduction.
Without a tracker, I can only assume a given player is good, as was the case in GW2 (yes a different game, but same potential player pool, same basic set of circumstances, same need to learn from history). After reading more in to what happened in that game, I've sen posts from people who had been playing with others for a long time that they thought were good, but turned out to be average at best. I also heard of a player that as considered absolute shit at DPS, but when tracking came to that game turned out to be nearly untouchable.
This is the point I am trying to make. Without a combat tracker, you don't *KNOW* how good a player is. Even someone you have been playing with for years may turn out to be average.
But some people don't. I have actualy been kicked from a raid group, because the leader just looked at the dps meter. Instead of seeing what actualy went wrong in the boss fight
unfortunately, though at this point it's just the same arguments over and over.
See what you quoted above?
Seems to me you managed to escape a raid leader without a brain. Being kicked out of a raid because the raid leader looked only at DPS rather than the whole picture is a good thing for the person that gets kicked - as that person can go off and do something else. Meanwhile, the rest of the raid is stuck wasting their time with a raid leader that doesn't know how to lead a raid.
You should be thanking the DPS meter in this situation.
On the other hand, if the raid was successful, the raid leader kicking you was the right thing to do. It *IS* possible to see who is dragging a raid down simply by looking at a combat tracker, and depending on the encounter and combat tracker used, it could take as little as to seconds to see who to boot. If an encounter has a mob that the raid shouldn't be attacking, simply looking at who did the most damage to that specific mob in the encounter could tell a raid leader who is at fault.
If that amount of damage to the wrong target is small, then it is probably an easy fix - just tell the player to be more careful. If the amount of damage is large (as in, the player was just outright attacking that mob) then booting the player may be the best thing to do - especially if the raid leader has had a group of players purposely try and make his raids fail (which I've seen numerous times).
You just saying you got booted from a raid because the raid leader looked at a "dps tracker" and then booted you is a worthless statement in terms of the value of a combat tracker. Regardless of what *actually* happened, the combat tracker is not to blame.
Either the raid leader was an idiot and used the combat tracker to try and cover up that fact, or you were not performing as required and are using the combat tracker to try and cover up that fact.
Thats how its been for the past two years XD when i spammed the topic everywhere :P
I think i had done the raid before, so i knew what i was doing. I might have died early on, but that can happen due to various reasons. But i recall the dps being mentioned, which is why i said it.
I recall it happened after 1 whipe, which isn't uncommen in a raid or dungeon. Then they looked at the dps meter and blaimed that. I agree it dodged a bullet, but i might have been locked out of the raid, as i recall we had already some of the bosses. Atleast the first one
In situations where this (or similar to this) is what has happened, then yeah, dodging a bullet is exactly what you did.
In this whole exchange, you gained knowledge of a raid leader you don't want to raid with, and all it cost you was a small amount of time and a single lockout.
In terms of whether a combat tracker should be allowed in Ashes or not (whether first or third party - though my preference has been made clear in this thread), this isn't really swinging much one way or the other.
However, if you factor in the lack of lockouts for most content in Ashes (open content doesn't have lockouts), it takes away your biggest loss in the exchange, while still providing you with your biggest gain. To me, that only adds to the case that there should be a combat tracker in Ashes - as situations like this will be somewhat less painful to the people in your position.
I totally agree that situations like this suck when they happen. At the time, you feel cheated and a little embarrassed at the same time, and it really isn't pleasant. For a lot of people, they leave it at that - an unpleasant experience that they gained nothing from. Many people also wrongly blame the combat tracker for the experience, rather than the people involved (hint; every single time something requires blame in the world, it is a person that should be blamed, never a 'thing', blaming a 'thing' is what people that are at fault themselves often do).
It takes a lot to be able to look back at that situation and see it from the perspective of a lesson learned - the lesson in this case being that the raid leader is not good at being a raid leader.
It is the very specific case of people that are in the situation you were in with this raid, but are unable to look back on it as the lesson it truly was that are the only possible reason why Intrepid are hesitant to add a combat tracker to Ashes. I'd like to find a catch all method of assisting people see these experiences for what they are, but I doubt such a thing would ever be realized.
That is why my suggestion for a combat tracker in Ashes is to build it in at the guild level. If a guild selects a combat tracker as their guild perk, then any member of that guild is able to track combat of everyone in their guild that is in the same encounter as them - but no one else.
Since people are usually more careful about which guild they join rather than which pick up raid they join, limiting combat tracking to within your own guild would effectively eliminate situations like the above from ever happening.
I don't know, that sounds like a bold statement based on opinion rather than known or admitted fact. Like everything else in this thread, it is still just an opinion. Regardless of how strong of an opinion it is, that's all it is.
We know Steven plays D&D. Maybe Steven is against Min/Max characters in D&D. Maybe he wants to remove an option from Ashes that he feels would make people feel required to min/max. Maybe not. But, it is an opinion.
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Making it so that people that do not enjoy min/max'ing dont feel the need to do so will by necessity remove the ability for those that do enjoy min/max'ing to be able to do so.
Removing the option for people to min/max in a game is no different to removing the ability for people to roleplay in a game, or to explore in a game.
These are all basic elements of gameplay that different gamers enjoy in different amounts. None of them are any more or less harmful than any others, as the only harm that can be caused is by people - and people are agnostic in terms of what tools they have on hand when they decide harming another is the thing they are going to do.
Personally, if given the choice, if someone decided they wanted to do harm to someone else in game, and I had the choice of giving them a combat tracker or the mayors position of a large node, I'd give them the combat tracker because there is far less harm that can be done with it (like, almost none).
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As an aside, I find it funny in D&D when players hate min/max players. Players that try to build a more rounded character look down on the min/maxer as being unrealistic or some other shit.
Thing is; if you lived in a world akin to a D&D setting, and you made your living by exploring dungeons and killing things that are trying to kill you, would you not do everything you can to be as good at that thing you do as you possibly could be? I mean, not only is it your job (which in itself is enough of a reason to min/max) but your life depends on you being really good at what you do.
Honestly, the RP'er in D&D that decides to take a level as a bard because he sings songs by the camp fire or something - he is the one being unrealistic. The min/max'er - that is the player that is putting himself in the head of the character he is playing, in the setting they are in. The RP'er at best is in their characters head, but not the setting - and at worst is just trying to show off their sub-par RP skills.
For one thing, D&D is a high fantasy setting - so "realistic" is an absurd metric to begin with.
Taking a level of Bard because the character is interested in taking a level of Bard is perfectly reasonable - even if the reason is to sing while camping - especially since there are group combat benefits for doing so.
If Bard is in the setting and the setting allows for multi-classing, the character is inherently fitting the setting.
Allowing a 2E D&D Orc to take a level Bard may not fit the official rules and such a character would be as much of an outlier as Drizzt, sure.
Some D&D players min/max. A wide variety of playstyles in D&D.
But, Steven has never stated he's against min/maxing.
What he has stated is that the Ashes devs want to minimize people kicking party and raid members from groups due to raw data for gear score and raw data from combat trackers. Doesn't really matter whether there are players who disagree with that design philosophy. Just as it doesn't matter whether there are players who disagree with not having official PvE-centric servers or official RP-centric servers.
People with power will restrict or ban tools they feel are generally mishandled.
This is one of those cases.
@noaani your opinions are very strong, but they are just that.
Also unless you cam quote someone else with what i quoted, I assume it is yoir statement. Just because you believe it is the only good/correct one doesn't mean anything to me.
I usually agree with most things you sau until you drop absolutes.
It's honestly the most ridiculous thing in gaming. I mean, amateur body builders min/max almost every action they make, and it' not like their life depends on it. Go to a fantasy (even a "high fantasy") setting and become an adventurer - you'll either min/max or have a very short career. The idea that any player playing an adventuring character in any game in such a setting would want to do anything else is just odd to me. Even from an RP perspective - ESPECIALLY from an RP perspective - it just doesn't compute.
If you are putting yourself in harms way regularly, you want to be as good as you can at what ever you need to do to stay alive. This doesn't change just because you are in a fantasy (even a "high fantasy") setting - if anything it makes it more important as the range of things you will come up against is far greater.
Imagine we're all off on some adventurer thing, and when we camp for the night I pull out my sparring sword and spar with another swordsman for a few hours to keep our ability honed - while the third swordsman decides to instead get singing lessons. We're very quickly going to find a new third swordsman, as our life may well be in his hands and if nothing else, he isn't taking this seriously.
So, as far as I am concerned, a real RP'er in a fantasy setting, RP'ing a career adventurer, has no excuse to do anything short of min/max, as that is the only way that character would survive in that world. Not min/max'ing means they are expecting the DM/GM to keep their character alive rather than their character keeping them self alive, and that's just shit roleplay.
As to my opinion and all that, maybe I worded it insufficiently (long week, product development to deployment in less than 10 days - should be 3 months). The most common way for a new poster to enter this thread is with an anecdote about how they got kicked from a group or raid because the group or raid leader looked at the DPS. That is what I was referencing in that post, rather than it being a hard truth from Intrepid (I can find nothing concrete on a combat tracker from them, only a hard *no* on function based add ons).
I've kept my opinion of what I think Intrepid will end up doing out of this thread, as my actual opinion doesn't add anything to the discussion. That opinion is that since Intrepid want a high end community in Ashes, and no MMORPG has ever had a high end community without a combat tracker, they will add some sort of functionality to the base game to give players enough feedback so the developers can create more intricate content.
This is due to content being tailored to what developers can expect of players - and if players have more tools, developers can ask more of players.
Developers asking more of high end players leads to more intricate encounters.
More intricate encounters leads to high end players having more challenging content.
More challenging content means high end players have more fun.
High end players having more fun means more high end players from other games join Ashes.
That is essentially what it boils down to. The game will survive without a combat tracker, but it won't have a high end scene.
The bartle types are just categories. I know dygz seems to use them like horoscopes but that's not what they are. Horoscopes are: you are x therefore y. Bartle types are: you are x.
Invincible Tank
Unrivalled Dps
Queen of Growlgate
Kraken Tamer
Super Cutie
H8 me cuz u ain't me