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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
We already know that Steven is going to want people to be using some form of voice chat to manage raids and Sieges.
But…
If Steven said they don’t want people to use Discord or TeamSpeak or whatever…
If I used it anyway, I would admit that that is cheating. And I would not be offended if someone called me a cheater.for doing so.
To be fair, I wasnt arguing for trackers there. There was no need to argue *for* trackers in a game where almost everyone already uses them.
What I was doing was pointing out that the poster in question would get a better response from posting in the ACT forums (which at the time were a subset of a forum called EQ2flames), because literally all the top end players in the game were posting there at the time, including the creator of ACT.
Auditu had a habit of giving incredibly good advice on how to get the most out of ACT at the time, but didn't post on the official EQ2 forums. However, mentioning EQ2Flames on the official forums at the time was against the rules.
So essentially, I was suggesting to a poster that they would get better answers if they post on a forum that I wasn't actually allowed to name.
To be banned, the activity has to be detected first.
I am not up-to-date with latest DPS Meters.
What kind of information they provide?
Can a DPS meter find patterns and predict when a certain event will happen?
Can those trigger actions too?
Let's say that in a raid there are more NPCs which trigger an invulnerability spell on each-other which starts healing them. The invulnerability would only be against certain type of damage.
Let's say those events would follow a complex pattern, each NPC having it's own.
Can a DPS Meter predict that in a certain moment there will be a 3 second vulnerability window to that specific type of damage on a specific NPC?
If DPS meters cannot do such things but only show that players react with much delay or do not react at all or cast wrong spells, then those are not exactly cheats, isn't it?
Of course the player who had a bad day at work and is tired and then is not allowed in the next raid, might call the raid leader toxic. But he would not be, if he just wants to improve the efficiency and bring me those drops. I'm paying him
Ethically speaking, should I pay him if I know he uses such tools? This will be like the prisoner dilemma game.
To go through these three one by one;
Pattern recognition is still something that people are better at than AI - even top end AI. Since a tracker only has access to information players have access to, players would be better at pattern recognition.
Predicting events is similar to recognizing patterns.
In order to trigger an action in the game, Intrepid would need to open up an API hook for that action. If they dont open up an API hook for a specific action, no third party program can trigger that action without being easily detected.
Basically, triggering actions is 100% under Intrepids control, regardless of what they do with trackers.
But at least, Mag7spy admitted that filling hundreds line in a spreadsheet is not fun.
Also, working on optimizing the character is not work, it is... playing RPG. this is also how i played and still play pen&paper RPG, as lot of people play pen&paper RPG. and you say videogame RPG should be different ? no... just look at pathfinder game, those game needs you to push your builds far (except if you play easy mode for sure. but i prefered play it hard). And i have fun, a lot, trying to build my characters, find new way, new combination, test it, (real test, not some random one which are not accurate, or doesnt allow good comparisons with others... ) I never spoke about work, but about having fun in what RPG were before they became video game, and what they were all along on video game.
I am currently waiting a NwN2 server to open its door, and... i have already 17 different character's build ready, and had fun for building them all. and doing all maths for it. And all tested on server i did myself to do various encounter to see where each will factually be strong / weak (because between theory and fact there are sometime real differences)
But i would not do this if i needed hours to just fill some boring spreadsheet, here it would become a work. I want to play the game, not working
Third party means third party
addon means addon.
And tos focus on only one thing : what is written on tos, not what devs are saying. vocal promises have no weight, only written words have when we speak on legal way.
Various devs explain already that this rules is large because it is easier to legally put this in TOS even if most of time they won't ban people for it, because, in case there are some excess, they already have the rule in TOS to do the ban. And some admitted that vocal can technically be considered third-party tool. but also they not any kind problem with it, and would be dumb to ban for it.
So it is breaking the rules, but devs didnt care because the rule was not meant for it.
How to know if rule is for a thing or not ? just wait to see if you are banned or not.
No dev ever would ban using vocal, even if the tos allow them, they didnt write this part of tos to target vocal software. So they don't care. But if one day one does it... it would be dumb as fuck, even more if there is no message in forum to ask people to stop, but it would just... brainlessly enforcing tos.
Now, with your definition of cheating, which is when you broke rules, it means that using cheatcode is... not cheating ? Because cheatcode are obviously fine to be used for devs... so it is not cheating... But it remains "cheat-code"... You cheat when you get unfair advantage, bug exploit, cheatcode, battle assistants (yes, i consider bossmods in WoW being some cheats, while they are totally allowed)
Then players could have a human or two observing the battle scene and coordinate the team. But those would take up slots in the team.
You could, or you could just look at all of the data you have gathered after the fact and look for a pattern.
This makes more sense to me.
Raidleader, even more in discovery time, often is less efficient that what he would be if he wasnt raid lead, because he focus to far more thing that his own part in fight. This is also why some role/spot in raid make it easier to raid lead than other.
I personally, prefer to be healer/support if i have to raidlead than DPS, because my role already needs me to be focus to nearly what happen in any place of the fight arena. While on DPS, i am more focus on smaller area bind to my DPS role.
Raid lead during battle is not only recruitment, saying who take what for the strategy, but also gives orders during fight. In current high end fight, being heavily scripted (to be nothing more than a music sheet for FFXIV and not so far of it for WoW) this part of raid lead work disappeared, and boss mods do it very well. in chaotic design, a "human call" is back to a thing, and it would be raid lead (or people he asked to focus on specific event during fight) to do it.
It doesnt need to take slots, just chose good people to do this
As Naoki Yoshida says, "What counts as a third-party tool? Excel?"
If the devs state they don't want people to use combat trackers other than the ones provided by the game and you use a combat tracker that is not provided by the game but is not an add-on, you won't get banned, but you are still cheating.
It honestly baffles me that information gathering outside of the game is considered cheating such as sharing an account for boosting or direct bot automation
every game playerbase looks at information gathering outside of the game as a form of excess "nerding out" but never as cheating
― Plato
I want to play a fun game
Sure. And every game playerbase knows the degree of cheating they might be doing.
database are also cheating for you ? those are third party, displaying ingame informations, rarelly supported (and even less manage) by devs/publisher (so, all time or nearly all time, unofficial)
It seems for me, a really large definition of cheating. . .
I have to agree.
If we are going to assume trackers are cheating, we have to assume things like build calculators and content guides are also cheating.
By any definition of why a tracker is cheating, these two also kind of have to fit.
It's usually obvious when a group is new when doing such content, however, people will start to argue and fight because of awkward reasons like not doing 80% benchmark damage.
I'm quite curious how will it work out in this game however as it can also be used for training groups to help people improve ^^
Creative director said no DPs meters will be in the game, it is like the same 3 people arguing for years on dps meters to protest.
Thanks for the clarification
If the content is not dying, would these people not be arguing anyway? I mean, people aren't arguing when things are being killed, and if you are going to argue over DPS, you are going to argue over things not being killed.
Combat trackers will not be in the game - just as they are not in any other MMO. As such, players in Ashes will have exactly the same access to combat trackers in Ashes as we do in FFXIV or WoW.
That guy Noaani says he is going to break tos btw.
There will be nothing at all in the ToS about the tracker I will be using.
We have been over this time and time again, I am unsure why you keep bringing up something you know to be untrue.
It's almost as if you are allergic to facts - which would explain your position on a number of topics.
You don't work on the Dev team, Steven says they will not be allowed. We have been over this stop having a big head, its almost as if you are ignorant to the words people say because of EGO. You are the definition of a toxic player, you prove it more and more with your mind set. You are the type to kick people over the DPS meter if they dont' preform how you want.
You have the same mind set of those people running BOTs on Lost ark, thinking nothing could stop them and be undetected the entire time.
He is out here trying to convince people its ok to use trackers in game cause of his own toxic ego. He doesn't care the devs have spoken on this.
Spreading misinformation could actually effect people in the future in a bad way with them not knowing and simply reading your comment.
They will say you was not "fluid enough in thinking"
According to wiki raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet
Can a tracker even tell where the 80% benchmark is if
"it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid" ?
They also say if the same group plays again together, and if before somebody had a bad performance, the raid becomes easier.
But then, the final boss will check how many teams won the last 100 encounters, because only
"A single digit percentage of the population will be capable of defeating certain content.[9]"
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Raids
And to prevent a steep difficulty jump, it may even let himself killed when the overall raid was at lower difficulty level.
So teams might win when it is not their best day?
If trackers cannot be detected and some people say it is cheating, is the game allowed to cheat too and reward the weaker players?
There are a number of different definitions for the word "allow", and none of them outright prevent an activity that isn't being allowed.
The base level definition of the word "allow" would be to permit something - in this case Intrepid permitting combat trackers from being in the game.
Steven has said he will not allow - or permit - trackers. This isn't up for debate. What is up for debate is what the situation will be for unpermitted tracker use.
The answer is literally nothing.
Effectively, at the absolute best, using a tracker in Ashes is an unpermitted activity that has no penalty for happening.
Not being allowed (or permitted) and being against the ToS are not the same thing. As I have explained to you already (in painstaking detail), there is no actual means at all for Intrepid to place a ban on combat trackers in the ToS without also banning any videos of the game from existing - and also potentially preventing any written guides on content or builds.
I mean, if my tracker isn't interacting with Intrepids software at all, what grounds do they have to prevent me from using it?
Sometime i allowed them to do thing, sometime i forbid, and sometime... i just didnt allow.
In the forbidden case : i would have to sanction them if they did it otherwise
in the didnt allow : they could totally do it if they wanted... just they couldnt hope on me or the group to cover them if problem.
When i allowed : i had to assume for them if problem happened
Don't allow and forbidden are 2 differents thing, and anyone with proffessional, or caritativ group experience knows it well. Except... those who love to modify, manipulate or adapt words to fit their narrativ ?
For tracker : i am free to do what i want with software in my computer (with limit of tos of windos/macos/unix system i use) IS can forbid (and i think honestly they will do) any file modification (so modding) or software that read packets between games and servers. And also probably software that interact with the game itself, the "addons".
They won't allow addon : no support about it, if you get bugs due to using them it is your problem and if it break your computer... you problem. They can also forbid addons for sure. but currently nothing say this way.
Tracker can be an addon.
But tracker can be... a simple software as is discord, opera/firefox, or another game running on second screen while you are waiting your teammate to log in... OR... a software that record information on one of your screen... As you do for... recording video, or streaming your playing session.
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