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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
If he was on my server ima perma dec his guild, anytime they are doing pve content ima show up.
It's like looking at someone hit something. It's generally pretty clear whether they hit hard by seeing them move and seeing what happens to what they hit.
Alternatively damage and healing could have some visual feedback. Super strong hits have more dramatic animations or something. Super fast/ Agi hits hit faster (whether strikes between attacks have some downtime or not it can hit fast). Speed and enhancement of animation would be based on weapon inertia and their agi.
Damn this is quite a mega thread.
No
I do not have a bad opinion about in-game DPS meters, but I understand why they could be bad.
Maybe there should be some combat logs after the instance that can be checked and uploaded (like warcraftlogs), to be able to analyze other players efficiency. I cannot see how we can evaluate why we wipe a Raid without being able ot analyze any sort of logs from all players. There could be that some players are no up to the challenge for a certain encounter, which would just slow down some competitive Guilds progression.
This makes sense for Raids that require 10+ people. If AoC is not designed that way (and I'm new here, so don't know what kind of PvE encounters are planned), meaning there will be only instances for 5-players, combat analysis is not necessary, since players will be able to see who is 'slacking'.
In a raid type setting of course dps is important, but more so is often the mechanics. IF half of your raid is dead, thats a bigger hit to dps than a few people being 10% behind (for example).
As i said in the post you quoted, tracker is a minor subject that won't change the base philosophy of the game.
Or if you go this way, so, no debate should happen on forum about what is already said (so... no debate about corruption ... which is the most common thing here... )
If you really think that have a in game tracker would be a change of the philosophy of the game... i would be interesed about your arguments this way.
The impact of the game itself would be lesser than, for example... making no corruption in open sea (while all expected it wouldnt be the case as reminder)
While, the idea on the topic where my message comes from, which is making some nodes a NPC territory to reconquer is a deep change : like other ideas of this guy, it would transform part of the game world to a "survival game", ... literally another kind of video game.
And... this debate is in its place on this forum, after all the first post invite to get all discussion around tracker here, and is from... Steven.
the problem of warcraftlog in a system where the official message is "no tracker" ... rely on its FFXIV version : FFlogs.
On wow, you know that in your raid atleast one will have one of the DPS meters.
This is not the case on FFXIV. people might want to not be recorded due to this official message... as in FFXIV, and would end up on a site like warcraftlogs/fflogs.
Nooani suggested an idea that avoid those people to have their datas recorded :
Limited to guilds who wants the tracker, with a tracker you can get thru a guildperk. (so, taking it, is also not taking other guild bonuses as for example more maximum members)
There would be guild using it and guild not using it. And with a tracker doing its work only on guild members, it avoid all those "sneaky record".
Ashes, due to all we heard from devs, can be expected as a game where pickup will be minor part of PvE activity, for the easy part. So, limiting it to guild with high end PvE objectivs won't be restrictiv, it will even be part of define what the guild is, to make people of the same mindset to gather in the appropriate guild, making less drama, or conflict inside guilds.
But in a less difficult dungeon, should I care and try to improve or not?
When I play alone, nobody cares.
The problems happen when more players have to cooperate.
Some players want order to maximize rewards, others want chaos to maximize fun.
Those who hate chaos want DPS Meters.
Those who favor intuitive and spontaneous reaction to solving problems, want problems and surprises. They don't want every dungeon run to be the same and a raid leader to punish them if they do not play by the book. But the game rewards both categories when they overcome the chaos, with or without tools.
What should the game developer do, which kind of players to favor?
According to wiki
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Design_pillars
But that isnt a material change from how they will have to design encounters.
Regardless of whether players use first or third party trackers, top end content needs to be designed based on what players are capable of killing.
Just the top-end ones probably though, unless the gear ladder is simplistic.
That's like assuming that PvPers will rarely gank if there is no Corruption.
I disagree. There are going to be people who parse through the data regardless if there is a tracker available to them or not, and that data will be disseminated to the community through one way or another. People will utilize that information to put out higher performance regardless. Having a combat tracker available merely changes the amount of time needed to put together the data, offering more tools to the average player to improve their performance if they so choose. This leads to less disinformation and more build discussion within the community, not a complete change in design philosophy for PvE content.
I want to play a fun game
The game will be designed as if 1% of players do that instead of as if 100% of players do that.
this is where you forget a thing : a good PvE side for a MMORPG needs different content with different difficulties. WoW does it 2 way,
on one side while the first boss of a raid is far easier than last, (with around 10 boss between them with various difficulties) there are 4 different mode. LFR, normal, heroic, Mythic. If you just want see the raid, the boss, for the arts, or enjoy easy fight just to be immerse, you will go LFR... Then if you want a little more difficulty you go normal mode : People relying on tracker to segregate other often finished to be the one kicked out of raids... it is rare to find people with really poor DPS for such raid. Then heroic, the case to find "too low DPS" increase but is still not so high, mostly people in hope to get carried on the raid, if we inspect their stuff, the answer is already there. and mythic, where the real high end difficulty is... Where i don't want to go anymore because the time investment there is far too high for my personnal taste now.
THen there is Mythic+... simply, M+2 is easier than M+3, M+15 giving best weekly rewards and over is mostly to flex. Again... for m+15 sure, having people focus, on DPS, on trash skip, on boss strategies, etc etc is mandatory, but in M+2... (and more, when the run begins you can't stop it to replace anyone)
On FFXIV there are "story mode" for primals, most easy content (aside dungeons) then raid24 and story mode 8man raid. Xtrem primals, and finally, savage mode (and over it, ultimate for top end difficulty)
Until Xtrem primals, DPS check are rarelly a problem, and never due to the "enrage" (which exist but rare to reach it. mostly all dead before)
Where in those contant (normal or even heroic raid later in patch, or up to primal xtrem) people are looking at each other tracker is a specific case : farm parties. People want to farm it now, and due to doing it again and again (week after week on wow, spam it during 1h or more on FFXIV) if they see some people are slacking/getting carried on those "farm run" sure, lets see who is the problem and kick him, but it would happen without tracker, because the problem is more the design of both game, with this brainless boring farm.
And even when i was doing top end content... i was defending a lot the development of midtier and lowtier content... For various reason i could explain if you want. but it is, i think, mandatory for the game, the higher it goes, the more important those lower tier.
The trackers won't impact the philosophy because the philosophy is already "high end difficulty will be in game" also. adding tracker or not will just help (or not) players to improve their gameplay with accurate informations instead of feelings, and how fast they can find out new builds again and again (without tracker, it will be far slower, making people more and more to stick to a "meta" which wont move a lot)
Also how devs will do "top end difficulty fights" after the release : look at the previous fight of this difficulty, and some data they want to focus : it can be % of players who killed it around all population, % of player who killed it amongst those who try, or even, amongst those who did a minimum amount of try (like, if they abandonned before 10th wipe, they don't even count as part of people trying the boss). It can also focus on specific part of the difficulty (where did people struggle?)
If they find the last fight was too easy/hard/fine, they take all informations and adapt their metric : make DPS check easier/harder, time to avoid mechanics longer/shorter, etc etc.
People could all use tracker, but the reference fight being killed by not enough people in their opinion, they will reduce the difficulty... again and again and again... until it is fine. same goes with "no tracker use by anyone, but too many manage to kill fight" : they willl go harder and harder
This is like a less punishing or more punishing corruption, or global chat, i did say in my message. It will for sure impact how the game will be played by us, players, and will also have indirect impact on other part of the game (global chat could impact a lot the trade between player) but won't change the philosophy of the base game design. While, i admit that the open see corruption less can be seen as a slight change in base philosophy (but i have hard time to judge how impactfull it will be.)
Interested players will pursue high performance metrics regardless if they have a tracker on hand or not. People are always searching for guides and tips to improve. The tracker isn't the deciding factor in content completion. The quality of the content and the skill of the community is. The claim that a tracker will change how content is made is just a false one.
I want to play a fun game
Vanilla, where tracker was rare thing, the fight grew again and again in difficulty, from onyxia and ragnaros, a Vaelastrasz became a really good boss to see which guild could or could not progress, while remaining easy in regard of chromaggus/nefarian.
AQ40 after went higher, mainly with Ouro, twins and C'thun. and lets end to naxxramas, with many really hard bosses
BC, begining of casualisation many boss nerfed (karazhan mainly)
but there was lot of complains about too easy. because even in Black temple, most fight were realatively easy in comparison of what we had before.
And come WOTLK, blizzard see its most important metrics : income. increase of players. the casualisation is a good idea, dungeons easier so... And come back of naxxramas, with an explanation : only 5% of players saw naxramas back in time (and far less able to do decent progression in it)
Players complained, because most boss from the first tier in wotlk were too easy, far too easy. The tracker was more and more used, and game difficulty went down...
Blizzard finally found solution, the hard mode (then heroic mode). and lets go back to high difficulty (hello mimiron, yogg1/Yogg0 or algalon... for hardest of ulduar).
And this 2 difficulty became 3 (LFR begining with last raid in cataclysm) and finally a 4th one on "easy" side (with last raid of mist of pandaria).
Blizzard began with growing difficulty, and because people complained about losing some difficulty, blizzard added more mode, and mostly on easy side (the last 2 added are the most easy one)
We see that the tracker was not what defined fight, but simply how difficult they wanted it to be, how large part of population could be able to clean it. no more no less. and they added some easy difficulty to please the majority of their customer who wouldn't spend time/effort in those high difficult content.
No game is designed around 100% of people using trackers, it is only ever the top 10% or so of content where this is the case.
This will be the case in Ashes, as well.
There are both systems where you don't see their damage or always see it. Which is it you're hoping for.
No they wont.
That's like saying if Intrepid provide crafting classes, they will assume everyone will max out. Or if they provide PvP, everyone will be all for it.
Different people enjoy different things in an MMO, and it is a developers job to provide for all.
You know all of this perfectly well, you are just being argumentative because you have no real argument left
So what you are saying is - if you dont want to get involved in crafting, Ashes isnt the game for you?
I mean, they very obviously wont design the game based in everyone crafting. Literally no MMO has ever done that in history.
And the pvp is designed in an almost-impossible-to-avoid way too. And the whole world is built around the idea of pvp being unavoidable.
And they could either design pve for everyone, and disregard those who want to crunch numbers (in the same way that pvers are somewhat disregarded with the unavoidable pvp), or they could provide trackers to everyone and maybe even implement some form of guide that would help people read the tracker properly.
Dygz' comment that if Intrepid implement a thing - any thing - in to the game then they would need to assume everyone uses it is just outright incorrect.
What is this genre thinking. . . It's a power dynamic.
Most games advertised as "Survival" are what; Zombie Survival? Generally some sort of scavenging sort of thing? Then what is Gathering? I don't think Gathering should be the focus of the game of course; there's plenty of other stuff to do.
Is Left 4 Dead a survival game? You survive but it's not really about scavenging.
I really do not know what people are thinking of because it is ambiguous when they start talking about genres and "other video games" as if alluding to something well-known.
"Survival" is just a fight or die dynamic, and present in every game you can die in.
Many of these threats could be economic, simply territorial, or a threat to something specific like Metals (rust? stone golems eating different metals?).
It's not very contradictory to have PvE pressure the players & world. In fact it's rather aligned to their current intent given sieges, hostile events; and the player collision allows stuff to be balanced based on max # of effective people in one location.
L2 made you pve in order to get levels and gear and made you pvp to be able to pve. So both were kinda required. But its crafting wasn't really required cause you could just buy stuff on the market.
AoC will have the same approach with pvx, but it will also heavily encourage participation in the overall artisanal system, purely based on the sheer amount of various way to participate. I feel like it'd be at least somewhat difficult to find a person who's disinterested in literally that entire system. I'm sure there'll be at least a few, but I'd bet their numbers will be dismissible in the grand scheme of things.
And if you want to participate in some part of the system, you kinda made to interact with its other parts.
Bar graphs are dumb though. I'd rather see the damage/ effect on the enemy.
Your idea of what's design philosphy and what isn't is questionable.