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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
I said CS find it easier to do their job when we are able to provide objective data about bugs.
Also, combat trackers are not developer tools.
It doesn't need it, and it don't seem to take this path.
POE you can virtually do anything you want (still, a build around archery with witch is not so efficient due to starting point ^^')
On AoC, your primary archetype will already define a lot your character.
What i hope is to have 2+ build avaible per secundary archetype in average. (by avaible i mean strongly efficient)
Drakengard 3 bosses have nearly no strategies, (so goes for other Yoko Taro's game)
We currently don't have realy idea of what bosses will be in AoC. the dragons we had in Alpha 1 were not a real difficulty, but could easily wipe raids without a basic structure (having tanks/healer defined, etc)
I think there will be high end fight, because it was said they wanted some of PvE content to be done by a "single digit percent" but there are various way to have this in fact
The first use of tracker is to test and makes various build.
Lets look at pathfinder : there are tons of absurdly strong builds avaible. but we have still to find them out. After thinking "oh, this class, and this one, and this feat and..;" is not enough, after you have to look at some statistics. Mainly your AC, AB, damages outside of the weapon itself, etc.
We will have the same base situation : we have lot of way to do (augment from secundary archetype but also race, and other source... AND the free choice around weapon and thise skill point spent in weapons. and also armor) But even if we have all informations about how the game works, and how the statistics impact character (how many of this to have 1% crit, attack speed or what else) which is what i really hope, due to the real time, there are still some test to do, and measure them... Sometime ideas are good, but makes gameplay too complicated (really short timeframe to refresh buff, complexe rotation, etc) for a minor DPS increase (and a complicated gameplay of a build on hard fight with mechanics to deal with is not always good idea. )
Those test to be as accurate as possible would need factual datas.
We end up at one of my posts with
Build A : 100 DPS, easy to play, easy to find
Build B : 120 DPS, but hard to figure out and far harder to play.
Both build are good, and top players would prefer B, but casuals would be less efficient (because it needs far more training so game time dedicated to master it) and would be at 80-90 DPS so better go A
Also, there is impact of statistics,
1) you could need X attack speed to swap to this other build, but Y attack speed to have, gameplay wise, a real benefits
2) While X critical chance are enough, for the theoric damages (which are an average so) but too random to be reliable and need far more.
Both case can be feeled a lot thru maths but really need real tests. (not even dummys, but on medium tier bosses) to have a better idea.
For those we should need to be able to do tests and measures outside of "some few bosses" but on most bosses.
Also with the guild perk idea : you will have to be in one of guilds using a tracker to have it, and limited to your guildmate. Adding another restriction above those is, i think not needed.
This is not a "combat tracker" but battle assistant. and THIS is a thing that should be avoided.
The combat tracker : it gather informations, and display it, as you could display it after putting all them on a spreadsheet. It is just the exact same work, but in a infinitely faster way as if you had to do it yourself
And due to being numbers on numbers around numbers, and graphics, watching it during fight is more a handicap than a help (you lose focus on informations in fight)
Here the guy has visual information that helps him to take decision directly in the fight.
If you played wow, you also learned about boss mods, or weakaura. this video is more to thing like this, where the addon gives information that players know exist, but couldn't have it so fast directly in fight... reducing the need of focus you need yourself. it is literally a battle assistant.
And i have a big critic about combat tracker : as guides, it makes people bad.
You obey your guides and don't understand all, or don't know why this is this build and not another that works.
You follow information of your battle assistant, and you are so unable to really learn the fight, but also how the game works.
WoW have some now, but in fact... it was always a thing. a good example in my mind right now would be Aran in Karazhan, at regular timing one after other, he use randomly some skills, one was the fire circle, if anyone go out, all take huge damage. avoid it. only few were targetted. but the game gave the information that it is coming (and being one mechanic at time, no problem to have all people stopping to move for few seconds). Because for each of its skill, Aran had a specific sentence.
The fun include to have enough information to understand, but also react. Maybe FFXIV gives too many hints ? I dislike it in FFXIV but i never manage to tell if, out of my own subjectivity, it was too much or not. For GW2 most of time those kind of information in fight meant to be a little hard (fractals, raid, now hard mode strikes) never felt "too much"
Game needs to gives some hint, not only to discover strategy, but applying it. A thing i HATE on FFXIV (but a friend, really good player) love : the fact that all the fight is scripted, like a music sheet. I prefer things like LA, where bosses have many skills and use them randomly.
On FFXIV, knowing the music sheet is the "call" the game do. (added to visual aoe but for endgame, the real deal is this sheet) while in LA, recognize the visual movement is mandatory. 2 different thing that are needed.
what i will say work in video games and outside : you are always better when you don't have visual support, or assistant to learn your work. Many people in their work are unable to do it if their software is down, but can't even see when the information their sofware is showing are true or not, because they rely totally on it, and forgot (or badly learned) the bare hand method.
To be clear : Tracker is a tool to do measures. it gives informations you can have without it, but... far faster to have it this way. and it remain just information... if you don't know what to do with... it is still useless
Assistant (like in video) are the software that does part of the work for you. Using it too much make you dependant of it. but also remove part of the learning process.
2 totally different thing, 2 totally different subject.
boss resetting HP : moving the boss outside of its dedicated area...
There is nothing hard about it except if this is where the strategy and difficulty is specifically. but it is a kind of fight amongst lot.
If this is what you think difficult... i am asking a lot about your skill
In full action like BNS, sure... but in such game, the mitigations are not a thing, and the tank is ... anything that can keep the ennemy animosity high... so any DPS can do it. Because then you have to avoid. The path AoC seems to get for the tanking is the traditionnal one. a tank, keep hate on him, use CD to not insta-die, while healers replenish his health bar.
Also... just look at BDO, there are still accuracy / avoid statistics
And, boss using skills is part of combat log... so if combat log, tracker will get the information as i said.
About devs banning people : you never said how they would know who use it. . . Aside their .exe watch what you are doing out of the game on your computer (which would be a big problem about privacy)
You can fix a leak without the need of a plumber. it would be done poorly, with far more time spent, but still work.
With tracker you can do a bug report with far more informations. The more informations you give to dev, the easier for them to find what is the problem. And so the also needs less time to figure it out (less time on bug, more time on development)
QA team are nothing more than players that are PAID to find bugs... Also, they are not the average players enjoying the game, and laughing when they see this strange bug making the horse able to travel vertically, or discovering their sims can go incest. but their work is nothing more than... playing and doing lot of silly test to try to spot some bugs.
Then when they find the bug, they try to do it again, and again, if they can reproduce it, then, they try in different situation, etc etc... to finally, send them to devs... Because QA are paid for it, their work is not just "found this bug" but gives lot of information (how, when, what setup, etc). But i don't see a problem players spending their free time to do it for free... the result is same, and in both situation, the dev spend less time trying to reproduce it and understand it, faster to fix bug, and faster to go back on development topic.
But isn't this data already available in game without a DPS recording tool?
Is the argument essentially just asking to make it easier and faster to process the data?
Let's say 3rd party tools are allowed. How will IS be able to identify when someone is using a combat tracker vs a battle assistant?
This is why I think it should either be ingame by default or result in a hard ban.
Wouldn't meters also help someone directly make decisions in a fight? If you have a prolongued fight, between 2 equally matched players and you can see one is healing and dealing damage slightly more 51/49 isn't this giving one person an unfair advantage?
I've seen posts in here requesting access to parse all data. Cooldowns, Healing, Damage, Stuns and more related to combat. Objectively speaking, all of this information is clearly in the game already - just taking a moment to learn each skill will tell you the range, cooldown and estimated damage of their abilities.
The main reason I disagree with access to any meters is purely because of the open world PvP aspect and it being able to assist in real-time decision making.
Yeah I agree, I assume most bosses will have some visual indication of large skils but we'll have to wait until next alpha probably to see for ourselves
Do you think we should be allowed tools to analyze how large their range actually is if they decide to not have AoE indicaters (LA, GW2, FF14, etc)?
I'm not sure I agree with this. Information is information and if it can be processed real time, it definitely affects any decision making process a person can have. The more information a person can have, the more options they have as well.
Just to be clear, what information do you think should be available using a DPS meter?
I assume it would be name of player, damage per second, possibly different coloured bars to indicate how proportional their damage from each skill was in effecting the DPS value?
In PvP this would essentially show you whether a player has used their burst or not...
In relation to DPS meters, what more information could you possibly need to give?
"When I use X skill, the tooltop says it should be Y but the damage is Z"
I'm not sure I see where the need for a meter comes in, that you wouldn't be able to just visually see.
Could you give an example of what a DPS meter would be able to help with in terms of bug reporting?
I can imagine it helping indentify balancing issues, but even then, I would assume IS have more detailed information than we have since they'd be able to look at damage looks across all characters and classes in the entire active population. Our own benchmarks would be anecdotal or be based on limited scope of players that decided to record their own meter readings.
I think this depends on industry and company. I believe most QA teams are contractors given a list of specific functions and features to test x number of times using various methods.
I agree they will often miss things due to time constraints preventing them from testing every possible variation.
Even if there's an issue with a skill interaction not correctly effecting damage dealt or mitigated, I feel like you'd be able to visually see the discrepency without any additional trackers.
This cannot go on my liege!
It`s too much!
Cease this conflict, lock the thread, lock the thread and "begone thy rascals" he says, "begone!"
Why post when you are going to read someone post and insert things that make no sense in it based on what you hear. Your points literally mean nothing. You simply take words and adjust it to fit a narrative not said and again what you want to hear. Glad to say people supporting trackers will do anything to waste time just to post on this thread.
Don't put words in my mouth on what i think is difficult
I just have to deal with some bs tactics they use and manipulation.
I would have to agree with some that meters help some folks thinker and improve at their craft. Myself included. But I have to admit that I hate the other side-of-the-coin, how certain people use this metrics. As with any other statistical tool, they can be misleading.
Dealing damage is just on part of the equation. Surviving, assisting or supporting the group is as important or at times even more important than just raw damage.
With the inclusion of the various iterations a tank, a healer and a DD can have, it would be beneficial to have a tool that could showcase how these hybrid builds are supporting and/or improving the group's performance in a given encounter.
Has anyone been in a group where the DD does not move out of mechanics or only focuses on the boss to avoid downtime when DPSing? They look great in the Damage Meter. But, they survive due to healer strain, and/or other means. You guessed correctly, then you need to resurrect or battle-rez them so that the group can push the necessary damage to complete the encounter. Other DDs even attack prior or at the same time as when the tank pulls the boss/mob just to have that edge (And I am speaking as a healer or even when playing a tank role).
I would like AOC to reimagine Meters. And yes, I would grant access to group leaders so they can be aware of the different interactions and/or how well the group/players performed for the encounter. Then they can use that information to help improve in the future (this will require Devs to further categorize player interactions -data that is already recorded).
I would love to see a Personal Meter where I can see fight-stats (damage done, abilities, damage taken, and other details that could help me be more efficient. Also a tool that can create awareness specially with how abilities, class specialization and augments work. I would want to see how a certain spell is performing, etc.) AND a Group Meter where the leader can see the group/class-category-breakdown of the encounter (where they can see from the macro to the micro if they would like to go into that rabbit-hole to min-max).
The goal is to have a tool that is not myopic rather allows for constructive criticism and/or growth.
Ex. This player is Great at DPS but has 68% of incoming heals, with 50% of damage taken, 0 encounter-interrupts. Is this due to encounter mechanics or???
Thinking out of the box - even have a Pop-up/hyperlink notification system that could award titles at the end of the encounter Like MOBA Match notifications. (Ex. Specific death, assists, avoiding mechanics, etc.) or even fun/odd interactions out in the world.
Thanks for the opportunity all! Keep up the great work, Devs!
You said that before ...
After this statement, I definitely know that you have no experience, you mainly troll, and that your arguments do not make sense
Regards
I know i have more experience than you nice try lmao.
With you "all add on support" you are 100% a person to support combat assistance.
soo, I guess something proves it about u..
As for your experience, I doubt very , very much;)
Regards
Just because i notice doesn't mean ill reply unless you are saying a bad take like that for all add ons which includes combat assistance unless you double or triple down while saying something stupid. But you got the attention you were begging for now.
O you don't need to doubt its a fact, just more game experience than you in general. I'm sure you aren't much of a player without combat assistance as well
I hope that the game will not be built on the basis of players like you
Regards
Game isn't supporting add ons, i guess you missed the memo
Regards
Ya its not being implemented into the game
@Mag7spy these type of comments are not helping anyone, and probably are doing your side of the argument more harm than good. This is you being toxic, while claiming you want to reduce toxic behavior...
This is also exactly the type of situation that the other side says happens without meters. Each side claiming they are doing more damage without anyway to prove it.
I was on your side before...but now I'm not so sure...
Either is someone trying to insult me and getting the same energy back when they are for all add ons. Which includes combat assistance.
Combat log should (in any game) give all those information for sure.
Because, if you want a simple small information (as damages of a skill after you did full buff you) there is no need to open a tracker so... And for lot of people who don't care to get deep in minmaxing, combat log is already enough.
But as you say, it is faster to have a visual on those datas thru a tracker.
The work of a tracker is to avoid you to read each line of log, put the information of each line in a spreadsheet you already spend time on to prepare it (with some macro, and cells whose work is to give some specific information as "highest damages" etc)
There are lot of ways to enjoy a game, some like to push their character, find new builds etc.
But if you have to spends hours just to gather the data of test you did, it means you play less... (and also, share less informations you got)
Tracker is, for people who do theorycraft or at smaller scale try to improve themselves, a tool to simple spend more time filling some spreadsheet... no more no less. Saying it is cheating to avoid this time spent is dumb
As i said, hard ban needs IS to be able to know who uses third party tool.
FFXI is a good example, to have a window full screen but also mod the game, they used a tool, most people used it due to comfort it gave, even without using mods. And was strictly forbidden, SE banned anyone who gave enough proof (in SE's opinion) they used it... it never avoided people to use it because SE had no way to know who used it.
Now, if they were good developpers, such kind of thing can be detected because it interact directly with the game, so does mods. Currently, with the new .exe for WoW, mods user can have their accoutn flag and be victim of a ban wave... it happened the first banwave after the .exe change, many people manage to have their account back, and blizzard didnt do it against for mods. (the change aimed mainly on bots) even if mods are against TOS (file modification).
But for tracker... lets imagine a software that simply READS what happens in the window "ashes of creation" it can detect where there are texte lines (so chat log/combat log), so it can read each line and process information : no interaction with the game itself, only way to detect it : scan computer activity. to know if other software are running, and which. This is why third party is a common thing while always against ToS...
For combat assistant ? There are also way to have it without acting directly with the game : acting like a filter on your screen. (but big loss of accuracy of information, far worse than tracker).
Goldselling is forbidden everywhere (aside the "legal" RMT some MMORPG have for sure) but again... without good way to define which trade is RMT or not... hard to ban. And most of time, people buying big amounts, or regular small/medium amount are at risk. This will be a problem also on ashes... The solution ? look at FFXIV, gils are useless for most people, mainly needed to buy your house then, the millions your gather are for decoration/skins... some good friend crafter, you just have to focus on gathering job and you don't even need gils. and there are still gil-selling on FFXIV. BDO don't have "silver selling" because totally impossible (no trade, and AH has regualted prices). . . ALL other mmorpg had or have the gold selling problem. not all time a huge one, but it is always a thing. And for BDO... you can pay to have a dude doing hours farm for you instead...
I don't judge if any of those things are good or bad (third party in general, some specific, gold selling, powerleveling, Real Money paid carry). But to pretend "hard ban" them you have to be able first to be sure to detect most case it occurs, and with a really low rate of "false positiv". So before to say "just ban them" ask yourself why no mmorpg manage to get rid of those things. (or doing bdo way : limit a lot players liberty)
Also, ToS often includes things that the devs, when writing the ToS, didnt care at all by itself, but wanted to have this way easy solution to ban some behaviour... Here comes the case of modding in wow i explained. It seems that blizzard don't care about it, while tos forbid it thru the "no file modification".
Blizzard already blocked some addon, it even happened to make an announcement to stop to use one, until it got "killed" thru a patch soon. Blizzard shared API and threatened of ban users of one addon this way because it went too far (This add made the AOE show of FFXIV really nothing XD )
There are ToS and there are how the devs/publisher apply it.
all datas are usefull. and not only to find bugs. Because those data are factual situation in game, that confirms or not your theorical calculation. This is just applying here the scientific method : you have maths on paper, you have information given, etc... but in fact, we openly don't care at all... what matters is what reality says.
Now, reading your tracker during the fight is stupid : When fighting, we have to =>
-consider where is our character in the environment
-where is ennemies, and where is our target (only part of ennemies)
-react to AOE, react to cc
-have a follow on buffs durations, and couldown.
those are thing you have to do now, and where the tracker itself can't help.
If you had to read tracker during fight... you will lose your focus on some of previous point, and do bad work.
while battle assistant allow you to make decision (showing the range is a great help for sure) tracker is just the "spreadsheet" work done... and the use is AFTER a fight. not during a fight.
I think, should go on where the AOE indicator is (like most i saw in LA, and lot in GW2) bind to the aesthetic of the skill. and not a pre-call one. And we shouldn't have tools, except if they want us to collect data to send them. (not impossible there could be bugs on size of AOE). But those kind of bug are easy to see without tools...
Why i say "we shouldn't" those tools are the tools used in combat assistant, and i doubt it would be a good idea to give to alpha2 testers and beta testers combat assistant to remove it after (frustration, bad habit).
Devs should follow some raid doing the fights and see what happen. Because they know each aoe, they could easily suspect if it works well or no (and then go read datas). But watching fight allow to find lot more thing, including on the balancing side => what you see directly is a great addition to players feedback.
list of skill use, and the damages (and/or DPS) they did all along the fight (so you did 100 DPS, due to skill A did 60, B did 30 and C did 10)
Shows for each number of crit, normal, miss (and more if there is more cases) the top damage of the skill and lowest. (100 average damage is not the same if the skill goes from 90 to 110 or 20 to 1000)
Same goes for heals (and have directly either HPS or more important for me : HPM) damage received, crowd controlls, buff uptime, etc.
So in short : ALL information a player could collect by himself thru combat log
No more but no less.
realtime decision : during the fight itself. you don't have time to roam tracker's information during the fight, avoiding aoes you see, react to cc, to add spawn, doing your rotation etc won't give you time to watch to combat tracker, and travel its different pannel to have informations.
Having a tracker that hide during fight not being "dummies" would, in my opinion, have 0 impact on players because they already don't have time to roam it. if they have time : or they play bad, or the game is giving players too much freetime during fights. (And... this makes fight easier)
I will give an example of bug that can happen where the tracker is helpfull :
Your character has 50% crit chance, globally, the scrolling numbers around your character continue to show around 50% of hit that are crit. but you don't have in fight enough focus on it to count it well. and As basis you won't go paranoid "there was a patch recently, sure my class now get some bugs !"
Now, you read your tracker, and you are surprise to see a skill doing less average damages than it used to. You look patchnote, nothing speak about a balance on this skill. You return to tracker, you see that while your AA and skills have well 50% crit rate, this one is lower. you will go on dummy to be sure, go on more ennemies. Because... RNG is RNG and sometime, this is just bad luck.
This is a simple example where it helps a lot (else you would spend hours to do test, and count, one after one, each occurence of the skill to have its crit rate... due to how probability works, you do need LOT of occurence to have reliable numbers... faster to have statistics done with tracker)
Can also be a problem with a specific kind of monster where again, you find surprising datas with nothing in recent patchnotes to explain it.
Yes, QA teams are often asked for the current build to test some specific elements to extreme. But it remains "playing the game". Just, they don't play with the freedom a players has, and with the same objectiv that a player have. (the player aim to kill bosses, be rich, kill other players, etc.. and will find some bug... QA aim to find bugs but for it, will kill bosses, collect gold, kill other playing characters and do gathering)
And the tracker is usefull to find bug because of probability...
You need to rely on lot of use of skill to be sure of the result to be statistically close to their probability...
The more you flip your coin, the closer to 50/50 it will be. the more you roll your D20, the closer you will be to have 5% of fumble. . . Meanwhile, last week on my table top, we reached 7 fumble with 53 d20 rolled... bug of the site we used ? or simply bad luck. On mmorpg, this is... even worse.
Lets take the example i gave earlier. with the skill getting 10% less crit (so probably 5% less damages, ending up less than 5% reduced DPS for the character). Do you think it would be spot without tracker ? Personally, people wouldn't even suspect it until a long time.
To end this long post (sorry for making them long XD )
You asked my what i want in trackers, and did a list.
But another way to say it :
Datas, showing datas and nothing more, just cold, soulless, numbers about what the characters tracked did, and had to suffer.
Any information that fit in combat log fit in tracker. because tracker is just an easier way to read all combat log informations.
You often reply to sincerity and attempts at informing you with toxicity, you reply to toxicity with toxicity, you basically just reply to everything that isnt an outright agreement to what you are saying with total toxicity.
Not only that, you keep purposely misleading people, purposely misquoting people, purposely taking quotes out of context, and have even outright made things up that you have labeled facts.
Essentially, in the context of this thread, your face is red and blue, you have the horned hoodie, and you are charging up the stairs.
You are not interested in facts, any truth that you do not agree with will simply be substituted in your head with something you make up.
Everyone else can see the above as being true - even those not wanting trackers.
The person that has said the most insults and calls people kids on the internet and says they have no experience playing games is calling me toxic lmfao.
The person that says I have 0 respect for you, and has talked even more shit, and in turn for your own lack of respect I give you back the same kind of respect.
The person that puts words in peoples mouth again says the most nonsense.
You show 0 sincerity, the person I've talk the most to in this thread is you, idk what you are talking about making up things. So you are jumping on your usual toxic manipulation to someone doing a troll post against me.
You don't speak the truth bud, you are just trying to fight with everyone for thousands of post to get trackers in the game because you are mad the game isn't being designed for it. You can clearly see that in the earlier post with your dissatisfaction.
Imagine thinking YOUR words are the truth and sincere you are literarily just a asshole lmao, saw that back in the tab thread, and it is no different here. You are stuck up your own ass and think everything you saw is right no matter what.
You are part of the reason why i don't trust trackers in peoples hands to not be toxic.
The trick is, I dont surround myself with people like you in games, and thus I not only aren't toxic at all, but I never even see toxicity.
The fact that you claim to see toxicity everywhere is a reflection of yourself, not of others.
If everywhere you go you see toxic people, the only common denominator with all of those situations is that you are there...
Look at your trying to manipulate my words again cute. This si what i mean with how you are toxic, you have been doing this since day one. All you can do is try to put words in peoples mouth and change what they are saying. I never said I see toxicity everywhere, the toxicity I was talking about is how you act and those were all elements in relating to you.
Like imagine trying to call someone else toxic, they reply and you take their words and remold the meaning so you can continue to be toxic towards them. That is you right now.
It applies to you, however.
---
Correct me if I am wrong here - but you claim to have seen a good amount of toxicity in groups in relation to combat trackers, is this not correct?
I haven't. I have hardly ever seen any toxicity in an MMO outside of open chat channels (which I would class as banter more than toxicity). This is despite me always using a combat tracker - which according to you is a cause of toxicity.
So, you see more toxicity than I do, yet I am the one carrying around the toxicity causing device.
Feel free to work out for yourself why this is. I've already given you the answer above though.
Do what I do with the meme thread.
Just ignore it.
You are so manipulative and toxic it is insane you are honestly a issue. My your logic all the people that say there is toxicity in dps meters you are saying everyone is toxic because they see or experience toxicity from people like that.
Imagine being that disingenuous and saying it is the peoples fault and the people are toxic because of their experience with trackers.
You are so stuck in your own ass, I've said it before and you only confirm it, you literarily don't care about anyone but what you want. Everyone is wrong to you and only you are right in your view point. Pinnacle of being ignorant right there.
You are the type to do toxic actions, but do it over the guise of it is your reasoning so you aren't being toxic in your mind.
Granted it makes sense, since actions you have been doing manipulating and taking quotes out of context SINCE the pve thread that i had called you out on and explained how it was out of context. You got some serious issues.