Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
If you use relics, you have to make sure the Tracker ones are abundant. If you use votes, you have to be sure they can't be manipulated by rival guilds. Making it a guild perk means it sorts "people who use trackers" and "people who don't" cleanly based on their choice of association with like-minded people, preventing any "clash of expectations" toxicity while keeping it available to all who want it (and are willing to spend a nominal amount on it).
Making it something that a hostile guild or node can prevent you from having, or take away from you means that the first guild to have and hold one gets an advantage. The strong get stronger. And the "losing rival guild" can't accept this. There's now a strong incentive to write an out-of-game tracker. The very thing that the proposed system is partly intended to prevent by de-incentivizing. This tracker won't have any such "anti-toxicity" limitations on it (because why would anyone do the extra work to add them?), and once it's made, it'll be out there.
If you want to disincentivize external trackers, and keep the "anti-toxicity" feature of keeping trackers to groups of people who have chosen, as a group, to use them, you shouldn't add serious barriers beyond that choice of whether to participate. The more you do, the less you've disincentivized someone just making an external one, and if you've made access to it limited and competitive? You went from disincentivizing the creation of an external tracker to practically requiring it. And once it's done, it's done. That tracker's out there and available forever.
The key to avoiding "clash of expectations" toxicity with trackers is exactly the "guild perk" compromise offered. Give it a low barrier to entry so no-one bothers to bypass it, but make it a communal choice for each individual player group so that there's an automatic self-selection so players who want to play that way, and those that don't, don't automatically mix. It's the same reason you can't make it a node choice. Beyond limited node citizenship making it immediately competitive, you don't get the social self-selection effect from that because "a node" isn't an individual play-group of like-minded players, even if its a "shared environment" community, with all the related incentives. Like most problems in life, you have to solve it on the right level, or you haven't solved anything at all.
Regarding "you have to make sure the Tracker ones are abundant"
I just read about the Relics today while trying to find the Sand momma puzzle.
So I do not understand yet how they work. If they are limited or not.
If the other relics come randomly and are limited (if not all nodes get them), then a similar special mechanic can be made just for trackers, to ensure that the option to vote happens as soon as the first difficult enough raid was completed.
Regarding: "Making it something that a hostile guild or node can prevent you from having, or take away from you means that the first guild to have and hold one gets an advantage"
No, it gets only the option to use the tracker and possibly to defeat stronger versions of bosses.
The game is in control of how difficult the content will be and what the boss drops.
The relics I understand that belong to the node not to the guilds.
Those who got the relic initially may lose them as they lose any other relic. But they will find a new node to live in. And the same way as they got the first relic, can get the new one too. It is supposed to be a guaranteed perk specific to the node. That is how I understood the wiki, but I might have passed fast over the concept. But I don't care about the proper relics.
The way how I describe it, players who can defeat raids will get a new relic if they stick together.
The ones who defeat the node will get a relic too this way if that is how this works. If they had no relic before because they are not so good at raids, but they were good enough at PvP then they might take advantage in using the relic. But a vote should happen for them too, in their node, to chose the option: allow or deny the tool and tracking. It would not be the choice of the guild leader or of the mayor. It would be the choice of the citizens who vote.
So you say that trackers will still be created. If Intrepid Studios decide to add a tracker as I suggested, it means that has already accepted it's use. It is not about me wanting to be used it or to prevent it's use.
If IS does that step, then it will have less concern that some players who are not good enough to obtain the perk still want it and will switch to external tools. External tools can still be detected more or less and if they are running on the same PC, they also reduce the performance.
Regarding the toxicity or the "anti-toxicity" of the tool I am not convinced. This is a relative thing and it is up to IS to decide what kind of audience to attract to the game. For now they want the anti-tracker people.
I think toxicity is a player attitude caused by lack of empathy, greed, selfishness...
But IS can detect the use of trackers without even checking for external tools. Just like they observe if a player is a bot or not, the play-style pattern, they can detect if a team works as if has a tracker or not.
If IS adds the option to have both tracker and no tracker in the game and it makes clear that both categories will get similar drops, no matter how difficult the boss was for the tracker team, then there will be less envy between the two categories.
I don't like the guild perk because that is the decision of the guild leader. He may want to decide everything in his guild but this option specifically I want to not be in his power. I am as inflexible as Steven, regarding this. I'll not change my mind. I want it to be a vote of players, as many as a node has.
The players in a node have to cooperate and create a mini community on the bigger map.
That is also the reason why the economy is broken down and there are no global auction houses.
The node and the citizens are more important than the guilds.
You also mention "limited node citizenship". Those who are not citizens, have no house in that node. They don't live there. If they have no house at all, I have no idea if the game is viable for them long term. Can they do everything and even participate in raids? How many players will avoid the citizenship?
I don't want to push them away from the game but I would not care about them regarding DPS meters.
Regarding " "a node" isn't an individual play-group of like-minded players" that is true, at least until they cast this vote. Then they have to move if they cannot accept the vote outcome. That happens in real life too.
Also after a siege, if they lose their home, they'll have to chose a better one.
I go with the assumption that sieges will happen often enough.
Those who are very worried about this DPS vote they can ask in advance local guilds and players what their opinion is, when the server is launched and try to chose from the beginning. 3 months after the release, which node has what setting will be a known thing.
Regarding what happens when players with and without DPS meters mix in a raid, I have not thought much about this. But all should be aware who has which option. If they want to switch temporarily, then what happens is up to be discussed.
To you.
It's tedious and obnoxious how you try and recreate reality from your head, without understanding the in-between heads.
Some people are entertained by working out and you can turn red in the face and cry yourself to sleep thinking about it.
Working out, breakdancing, acrobatics, dancing, fighting, martial arts, training even. ffs
Anything can be entertaining. Hiking and looking at plant/ animal life can be the most entertaining thing in the world for someone. Not everyone is YOU.
And everything I mentioned just now is less of a time waster than MMOs.
Leave your echo chamber.
This isn't about convenience for conversation it's about shutting down the conversation because you don't want to hear about anything that doesn't fit the game formula you want.
Quit fuckin' bullshitting me.
No one cares if someone else can race in an MMO. Or build a colony (really saying that in AoC forum where it's planned that you can basically build up a colony and war with other colonies?)
You and those like you that suffer anything outside of a specific formula and definition will be the only ones that care when you all cry out "it's not an MMO!!".
Any gameplay can be in any game. Deal with it. Reality is open-ended. Is that why you want an escape that pushes most people out of it?
If there are cars in the MMO then go ahead and have racing. WHO GIVES A SHIT. Whatever the game/ world and tech can allow can be in an MMO.
There can be 'pod racing' even... was that in SWTOR? Because it could be. It might have been. And you can choke on it. What a non-topic ffs
I don't want your hollow argument where your definitions are the only thing that matter in this conversation; and your bullshit idea that the marginally similar class/ gameplay from some specific MMO somehow encapsulates, "ALREADY BEEN DONE", Guitaroo style song playing for the Bard class. Piss off.
Your token 'rhythm' in some class in some game is hardly relevant.
Just name the class and game so I can tear your token hollow argument apart.
You're dismissed. It's all you've done so you can implode on that.
No matter how you type something out and how moderate you try to make the tone, you still clearly have no respect for myself or anyone else; rejecting what I'm saying to the point of delusion, refusing to engage with what I'm saying except in a hollow and dismissive way. ONLY to spill the echoes of your chambered mind out onto screen.
BECAUSE all that matters is getting the pristine formulaic MMO you NEED and only suits YOU and People VERY MUCH ALIKE.
"NO COMPROMISES" Just brand it on your Ass.
---
You have not only 'pointed out' something about Trackers, you have exclaimed your opinion then clung to it; the only 'fact' that goes against the 'no tracker' argument is that Sharif will put Logs into the game. That's it. But that's not all you were saying ffs.
You were saying there SHOULD be Logs and Trackers.
I didn't want Trackers in the game so clearly I don't want the same function Trackers provide in the game ffs. I gave my reasons for it and took into consideration the broader playerbase (and potential playerbase) for why I do not want Trackers in the game.
We've already discussed this. It's done. Stop trying to get attention, stop fondling yourself, and go touch Grass.
Most people do not play video games.
Maybe a mini-game on their phone occassionally, but most do not play video games or very little.
Most people do not play MMOs ESPECIALLY because they cling to relics of the past, built for anti-social escapists that Actually can't take criticism constructively. I don't mean virtue-signalling how moderate and reasonable you are; I mean communication and evolution DOES NOT TAKE PLACE.
EVOLUTION. DIRECTION.
The argument always boils down to " I want this for me for my formulaic MMO that I like " yet you waste my time to get to that point, and waste my time with non-arguments at all times like "This isn't a racing game" and "there's a class with rhythm", "working out isn't entertainment",
"if there's nothing new at end-game then what will there be for us?" <-- which at that point you ignore when I explain and try to convince you that an expansion of the genre would challenge you long before you reach 'end-game' and you'd have a challenge for close to a decade from it (or more even); INSTEAD you argue "that's not an MMO" or start saying shit to DEFLECT like "you don't know the genre" or simply IGNORE what I'm saying (branching design anyone?) and that's that.
Your tastes fit .01% of people; MMOs are for those suffering from crippling social anxiety, weaknesses in general, lack of savviness in real life and lack of perhaps survivability in the big ole' real world
AND respond to that by escaping into an extremely simple time waster MMO devoid of the challenges that could touch their real weaknesses lmao while being used for all of their time and energy and money.
"If you were a developer. . . would you choose" to milk the fuck out of the whales and make billions? You want people to take thousands of your dollars? You want ME to?
ffs
Go ahead and tell me how a Bard-er Bard doesn't attract passion [subscribers].
Tell me how everything I've said isn't about bringing people in,
and how everything I've said isn't about ignoring the minority that are just crabs that don't want others to play their game.
Last time in the Tracker argument you just started talking about your Mythic+ .001% [of a .01% genre] BULLSHIT and now "this is an MMO not X or Y genre this is for the passionate" BULLSHIT.
and again:
Your token 'rhythm' class from some game is hardly relevant.
Just name the class and game so I can tear your token argument apart.
Dismissed.
The chair video was funny though. It reminds me of MMO players.
My point is this: If the tracker helps you optimize your performance and defeat stronger content more efficiently, then you get the rewards (which presumably provide progression) of the stronger content, and those who do not have access to it do so either slower, or not at all. You are right.
Difficulty: The game does decide how difficult the content is. In fact, there is one thing that some of the posters here occasionally remind us of: If the raids are too easy to benefit from (not 'need', just benefit from) a tracker, then... yeah, it won't matter. But because groups benefit from trackers on any raid that pushes their personal limits, all this means is that no raid will push most people's limits and the game will have unengaging high-end PvE.
Drops: If the drops make you stronger than you otherwise could have been, then they have the potential to make you stronger than your rival guild that you somehow managed to deny a tracker to. If no drops from difficult raid content make you stronger than you otherwise would have been... then yeah, the competitive disadvantage won't snowball. But I feel like a lot of players will complain that they don't get "meaningful" rewards from high-end raids.
As I read through your post a second time, I think that I don't understand what your goal is. You do not want to prevent the use of trackers, but you do want to limit them and tie them to in-game progression mechanics. What is the benefit that you see to doing this? What is the purpose of denying access to a built-in tracker to most or even many players?
Perhaps this hinges on something else: Detection.
That is the trick, isn't it? As has been brought up here before, trackers can be run on another computer just as easily. You'd have to ban streaming and recording to ensure it's even theoretically possible to detect them. As such, I'm not sure what this argument actually gets you? You still have tracker use by people you 'didn't intend'. At best, you have made it somewhat pay to win. (i.e. own a second computer, or perhaps in the future 'a phone')
I largely agree. Toxicity is caused by these things (which do not relate to trackers), but I believe that it can also be caused by clashing expectations. If Player A wants to go max optimization and try to clear content, even if it means doing certain forms of nonsense, and Player B wants to do their own thing, and figure out how to perfect themselves without necessarily 'cheesing things' or whatever, there will be problems when the two are in the same party, even if neither style is innately wrong.
The purpose of the 'guild trackers' compromise concept is to prevent this sort of "mixing oil and water" where trackers are concerned. If you don't believe that said "mixing oil and water" style effect results in toxicity, then it makes sense that you don't see a point to the offered compromise, since it implies that you are trying to solve a different problem than it is designed to.
But that brings me back to not understanding why you feel that tracker access should be limited at all. Even more specifically however, why nodes? Assigning it to nodes ties together the game experiences of players who may, in serious possibility, never directly play together or join the same party, even if they serve the interests of the same region or city independently.
Having personally worked on this sort of bad-player detection, I don't see how.
Something that might be worth reiterating is that a lot of the 'pro-tracker' team here doesn't care that much about real-time data. Looking over the recordings/logs for efficient post-mortem analysis is a large part of what matters. There's literally no 'during the fight' behavior to detect.
The only 'tell' of a "using trackers" group, is that they manage to improve their strategies and performance more quickly (i.e. "in fewer attempts at the content") than a "not using trackers" group, for the same content. But that type of natural variation exists even without trackers. There are absolutely savants who can just do it all in their head, even at the highest levels. (They're the ones that others use trackers to 'get on the same level as'.) Do you ban them too?
You were never going to get different drops either way by using a tracker. You were going to get the same drops faster. If you have a tool to help you analyze and optimize your performance, you're going to manage to improve (and therefore clear content and get its drops) faster than your competition. This means you have an advantage in both PvP (better gear) and gold generation (a (temporary) monopoly on the top drops until others can catch up).
If it was a vote of guild members rather than a choice of the guild leader, would that work for you? That would mean that it's not in the leader's power, but rather in the hands of the people it affects.
The only difference is that the members of a guild are much more likely to be like-minded than the members of a node.
Nodes aren't homogeneous. If there's 4 guilds living in a node who don't like trackers, and 4 living in the same node who do, the outcome of a vote is going to be a coin flip. Then it's nobody's choice. By choosing to do it at the node level you remove the concept of actual choice altogether. I recognize, as you say, that this could become a whole big 'objective' for some guilds to take over a node and get that vote. But it'll be faster and easier to just write a video parsing plugin for an existing tracker, and they'll lose less time to guilds that 'got lucky' directly. Which then entirely bypasses any limitations you wanted to have on the tracker.
To really think about the "forced to move" concept, I think I need to better understand the goals of your mechanics, so I'll leave that for now.
The "mix of players in a raid" is actually an interesting concern. You'd be creating a situation where some players have data in front of them to discuss after the raid, and others don't, which I feel would make for a complicated or annoying debrief for both sides. But if 'temporary switching' is involved, you start to lose the effect of having a vote that matters in the first place.
Anyway, I do hope you can help me understand your goals and intentions, so I can think about your suggestion in greater depth.
Why do you waste your time here ?
honestly, you didnt answer while already asked...
As what various people (lot of people) on this forum said on each of the ideas you gave, and you just denied them... to end up with the pinnacle of your argumetns "stop replying"
Ourselves... You have no respect for people on this forum... with all the "stop replying" or "quit posting" in hope people, on forum, where everyone can share their opinion (this is what a forum is made for) ... this is far from any kind of respect... You want people to respect you ? maybe you should begin with showing respect ...
But with later part of your post being even worse about the respect you have for other user of this forum... I doubt you want to give a little part of small respect to anyone here
*look at sapi's topics* ... You are really sure you are speaking to nooani and not yourself ?
Ok... ok ... hum...
ok... how to tell it
Here we are on the forum of a MMORPG currently in development.
So people here speaks between MMORPG enjoyer, and mostly "old MMORPG" enjoyers.
Nooani won't try to defend the point of view of people who only plays candy crush, or never touch any kind of video game... because they won't come here, this is not a game designed for them at all...
On this post, you are not shitting on MMORPG game, but the whole genre...
So again : why are you wasting your time on this forum ? Except try to demonstrate your mental superiority over the stupid MMORPG enjoyers gathered here.
This post is full of hate against video game players, full of disdain, and then you complain about a lack of respect ? while this only post is a concentration of insult to ALL the people on this forum. And not even a good one, but a carricatural one... An insult fitting your own reality
You are just full of hate... Maybe due to your superiority complex that get hurt on the real life by how little you are...
I hope you enjoy wasting your time on this forum at least
Am I wasting my time?
Refer back to what I said about Engagement to you.
Why are you being so dishonest?
Respect to a person doesn't begin by sharing your head.
You're getting every bit of engagement from me while I get vain shows of it from others. You in particular I'm not sure understand what I'm saying at times or are not saying entirely what you mean at times but in a simply confusing way that I do not get; maybe you are not trying to make sense?
The argument about immersion didn't make sense and it seemed like you thought I was against immersion or were trying to twist the word into something where your meaning wasn't clear.
Maybe you just aren't good at manipulation?
Noaani seems to be simply dishonest and looking for an angle with a plan of action for how to get his way though.
You are still being dishonest. 8 + 56 reskins x4 small reskins is not shades of grey that suits a small audience?
Do you not listen to what anyone says if you do not like them?
The world is full of people of various interests and being closed off from them is already a decision that they do not matter for any discussion.
Basically: no one matters except those that 99% agree with you, are like you, want a game that you already want, and you are not open to any opinion or discussion outside of that.
I know that makes sense to you.
You do not like anyone that is outside of your clique and you hope to shut everyone out. That is the commonality between all MMO players as well.
That is obvious to me and anyone with a brain.
No one seriously wants effort to be put into unique classes or game design that is enjoyable by many while retaining, changing, and adding fun or difficulty with unique or simply good mechanics.
8 x 8 x 4 shades of grey is not interesting to most people. Most people don't play video games because they are like you and others that do not want to create something enjoyable for others.
Brain dead mob AI is not interesting to most people.
People like that are involved with everything in this world and there is no "discussion" or "respect" there. You do not want respect you want to insulate yourself from others and be left alone because pulling the blanket away is cold and uncomfortable.
Don't trust a word Noaani says look at his god damn profile picture.
Unlike you who worked on bad-player detection, I only used trackers long time ago. I am not up-to-date with modern trackers. All I can say is that I've seen players trying to be more efficient if you show them that you measure their performance.
Your statement is in contradiction with what I was told here
There is no alternative.
But you also kind of confirmed this possibility in this post when you said
and those who do not have access to it do so either slower, or not at all
So based on what you say, there are two ways to detect those who use trackers: speed and the "not at all" behavior, the reason of the failure.
The speed can be tracked for each player all the time, based on wiki: I do not see this as a tracking which starts only when that group formed and entered the raid but a longer pattern detection. As long as it needs to be.
You asked if the savants should be banned.
Banning from game should not happen unless the game is modified, plugins are used, botting etc
But what to do with them is also tied to what you said: "a lot of players will complain that they don't get "meaningful" rewards from high-end raids."
If we look at individual level, ethically, the savant deserves to be spared from negative effects and maybe even rewarded.
If trackers will be used anyway, using recordings/logs then the game has to react in a way or another. The amount of legendary tier resources and items flowing into the economy should be balanced at least to some degree. That has to happen without thinking why players are faster than expected.
In this case both savants and tracker users have the same effect onto the server.
So how do we deal with that? The decision seems to scale up the raid difficulty dynamically, by design.
That will limit the inflow of materials and at the same time attempting to avoid big RNG. You defeat the boss, you most likely get something. A small RNG will exist though according to wiki.
Right, I do not want to prevent the use of trackers.
Like people here, I also suggested integrating trackers into an MMO too long time ago. (was only one post though)
That doesn't mean that I was right back then or the situation these days is the same. It might still be a mistake on my side suggesting to add them now.
Many players already own a 2nd computer as we all upgrade constantly. I do not know how powerful that 2nd computer has to be. I am not sure how efficient a recording can be as it shows the perspective of one player only and only if he looks constantly around and can see all team members.
It might still be better to put together the combat logs which the game already wants to provide.
Of course things can change regarding the combat logs too, just as the deep ocean became a pvp area suddenly.
Clashing expectations can happen for many reasons. I've seen story elements being also a distraction, some want them some already have... Players have to learn to talk with each other before raids : ) That will not happen easily if random players join together.
I also see the "mixing oil and water" as a source of toxicity.
For me, also seeing guilds with tracker and without tracker in the same node where I "live" bothers me.
I may be in a guild but I will interact with players in that node.
The game changer aspect of AoC is that it removes global group finders and provides instead bulletin boards at node level. Multiple guilds will live in that node and might help each other in dungeons, raids, defending the node. Some guilds can be large some small. But the node brings them together.
Also players can have alts but all alts must be citizens of the same node. That's how the game is designed.
Alts can however be part of multiple guilds, even part of guilds which are spread over the entire map.
So the player not the alt will vote and get the option to use trackers or to deny being tracked by those who have trackers.
Regarding: why you feel that tracker access should be limited at all
I see fun in both ways of playing the game, with and without trackers.
Steven will get his option too, to see players without trackers going through the content.
Then regarding detection of trackers. Having them in game, the game can see easier the difference between how players with trackers play and the ones who vote against it play. Will also notice if some pretend that they have no trackers and use an external one as the data to compare is more reliable, assuming some players are honest.
Then you raised the competition problem. If a guild becomes stronger because gets sooner the legendary drops. Note that I say sooner not more of them.
Those guilds will be in different nodes. Each node will have a different relic specific to how the vote concluded.
Each relic can bring different benefits, to balance out differences between how players decided.
Or can influence drops in raids or raid difficulty. (The raid difficulty adjustment I mentioned above. According to wiki, will happen anyway dynamically. Might even disregard sudden low performance if statistically the player was marked as suspicious - with or without in-game trackers)
These relics can cushion out that some guilds will get these items a bit later and when all of them have the top tier items, then that adjustment can fade.
Is hard to say how and what to balance as exact data is not available, like how much stronger one side is related to the other. Especially when PvP is involved too.
There might be issues during the first 3 months after release until players start winning raids. But things will settle and players with strong opinions pro and against trackers can avoid each other by moving into the appropriate nodes. They will still interact in a way or another, as allies or foes.
I noticed the picture when I checked that tracker and how plugins work and if there is already a plugin for AoC or not. Apparently the ACT tool provides plugins in form of dll files. I don't like having on my PC executable code created by 3rd party unknown developers.
I have no idea how many players will defy the TOS either. With a declared interdiction of them, Steven might prevent them to even join the game.
But detecting players who are better than expected can be done. And the game can deny giving them drops.
Savants can also be a collateral damage, for the greater benefit of the community.
If you feel that you can be one of those very good players who can defeat a raid without trackers and be banned by mistake, then try to drink a beer or two before each raid.
And the game can even give rewards only to the lower half of those "too skilled" players who defeat the bosses.
If players cheat the game can cheat too.
It can happen that they will know and will not be able to prove the game is unfair without telling that they used a tracker. And those who don't use a tracker, they better start being nice citizen in their node and not rush to get legendary drops.
I really have the feeling that these extremely hard raids are there as traps to lure and see who has to be banned. And not for the non-tracker players.
If you don't want players to know what hps something has, or know what actual dps they are doing, then you need to limit information sent to the client from the server. This means no damage numbers or combat log. A lot of people wont like this because you essentially will never get feedback on how you are performing, or what build or attack order is actually doing more damage.
I'm not a game designer so i don't really know the exact limitations but I would assume that there are only a few bits of information that are actually required to be sent between server and client for gameplay. Again this might not be a practical solution, but if you want to make this game feature unhackable you need to do something like this.
Server to client:
Tell them when they have been hit and how much damage they have received, to update health bars.
Tell them whether or not their attacks hit the hitbox, to update animation frames regarding hits.
Client to server:
Tell the server what actions the player has taken, do the hit and damage calcs server side.
The more information the server sends to the client, the more open the game is to 3rd party apps intercepting that information and creating an addon out of it.
This thread is addictive, isn't it?
Trackers will still have more limited information, since they cant touch game files and will be banned if you do so, which that will be detected.
The trackers won't be as effective since it is not within the game already, and the game isn't being built around them and has action combat and not just tab (tab being very clear when you miss all attacks).
It is why they are trying to get in game trackers so they will be able to pull more information than normal, which in turn will also normalize 3rd party trackers and will be able to be enhanced with more information more than likely and eventually surpass first party ones.
The few people that are trying to convince people honestly can't be trusted. They are trying to word it in ways and not being actually honest. Rather then talking about how it make trackers as useless as possible they are trying to create weird arguments to say they need trackers like not trusting the developers and needing to check the game for bugs for example.
Yes. Please help.
Cause noaani is going to reply to everyone to try to convince them with bias and manipulation. Then a year from now say everyone wanted dps meters regardless of their answers.
"reply" means there are messages
As nooani said (and is easy to check) he won't answer if people don't speak.
The more you are speaking here, the more you make this topic go up, the more people will post in it, the more nooani will answer... Myself also never necroanimated this topic (or any other)...
But, you help a lot to have this topic alive, to allow us to share our opinion, and explanation, so kind of you
lmfao, literarily a few people will fight to keep this thread alive else it have been buried and come back up once in awhile.
You don't need to answer to everyone let people voice their thoughts and leave it at that, but we all know that won't happen Noaani needs to keep this thread alive and till respond any chance he gets.
You have my name and Mag's mixed up
@Xeeg
You don't need to update precise health to the client; you can just update the UI to change a certain amount, whether that's entirely accurate or not.
Time to kill (or abilities to kill) could be the only reliable metric and even then there's always variability of damage and possibly health & resistances between identical mobs.
Maybe a mob has crazy regen. It doesn't show it but at some point you may notice one's health tic up rather than down after half an hour of fighting these mobs. Then you know they heal or regen; but most healing show an animation. Thus it must be regen.
Some creatures may not show their health at all because they're literally made of stone and show no damage until they die.
All in all I don't think Intrepid or most studios can handle the burden of problem solving and creative design lmao. Too much nuance involved.
We are talking about entertainment activities, not entertaining.
This may seem the same thing to you, but it is not.
An entertainment activity is one which is primarily engaged with for entertainment. As such, activities such as working out dont fit, because the main reason most people have for engaging in them is fitness.
That doesnt mean YOU dont participate in said activity for enjoyment. In all honestly a single persons perspective is irrelevant here, as we are talking about activities, and as such we are talking about all peoples reason for engaging in said activity.
By the very nature of the word entertainment activities need to be perused for enjoyment. If an activity is persued primarily (by the collective of all people engaging in said activity) for any other reason, the activity is simply not entertainment.
It would seem, perhaps, that you assumed we were talking about things from an individual's perspective, rather than from the perspective of the activity. If we are going to look at classifying activities, you cant look at it from a personal perspective.
I thinknyouve lost sight of the context of comments at this point, and are just replying to snippets of posts in a somewhat angry demeanor.
I never said an MMO cant have races. In fact,both of the MMO's I have played the most had races in them.
That doesnt mean they are racing games - which is what I said. We use genres in discussion as it allows people to quickly understand. This is why genres exist - not just in games but in everything.
Again, we talk about MMO's in the context of MMO's so that people who have played MMO's understand easier.
As to you seeming to be pissed off at me for wanting ashes to be like some existing MMO's- that isnt a *me* thing, it is an Intrepid thing. They want Ashes to be reminiscent of older MMO's - hell they were even wearing "Make MMO's Great Again" hats in the early live streams.
I'm here because I want to play what Intepid want Ashes to be.
I am.unsure why you are here, as you clearly do not want to play whatIntrepid want Ashes to be.
You did no such thing.
In fact, you still haven't got your head around everything a tracker can and can not do, and what players like me are able to do with them.
You also have not even bothered going over my main point that is "as it stands, we have trackers I the game that are unlimited in function, my suggestion places limits on them, including not being able to use them on someone not in your guild".
In arguing AGAINST my point here, you are arguing FOR unlimited combat trackers, because I am arguing AGAINST unlimited trackers, and offering up the only solution that will ser that happen.
No.
If you want to get in to a discussion as to what MMO's should and should not do, you should first of all educate yourself on what they have and have not done, what did and did not work, and the reasoning behind all of that.
All you are doing now is ranting about something you have no knowledge of, everyone reading can see it. I have no incentive at all to assist you.
If making a third party tracker that worked on others were trivial, I would agree with you that there would be no reason at all to make a first party tracker. Indeed, I would never have even suggested it.
Now, to be clear, making a tracker that only tracks the user is trivial - even without the game having a log file.
Getting that individual user tracker and setting it up on a server, asking each member of a group or raid to log in to said server, that is also fairly easy.
This is the base level of what will happen in Ashes in the absolute worst case scenario. This may well see people not invited to guilds (and potentially even groups) without being willing to log in to that tracker server. As long as that discussion happens on Discord and not in the game, there is nothing any developer can do about it (not even with an FFXIV style "trackers are like Fight Club" rule).
However, when I talk about how Ashes will have trackers, the above is not what I am talking about. I am talking about a small number of people that both able and are in a position to be able to make a tracker that works on your guild or raid in Ashes. They will make these trackers because - like me - they KNOW that a game is better off if players have access to trackers. To be perfectly clear, there are only about a dozen or so people in the world that fit the above criteria - I am trying to be as vague as I can here, but I have talked about exactly this with a few posters on these forums, they know what I am talking about.
If a first party tracker is added to the game, that reason they have for making a tracker simply goes away. The game will be better for having a tracker, but the game has a tracker, so there is no need to develop a third party tracker.
So, if those dozen or so people from above are convinced that Ashes doesn't need a third party tracker because the game has a suitable first party tracker, then third party trackers that can track others are not likely to ever actually exist for Ashes.
Those trackers that can only track the user will still exist (people can patch one together in about half an hour). However, I doubt people would then set up servers to run them, as there wouldn't be much point, and the work/cost involved wouldn't be worth it if an in game tracker were available.
Additionally, as I have said earlier, it is within the scope of a piece of softwares ToS to say that any function of that software can not be reproduced outside of that software. This could be taken to mean that you can't use a third party combat tracker if the game ships with a combat tracker.
If the game had a tracker, and included language like this in the ToS, I can tell you now that I wouldn't want to be the one to test out that could to see if it was legally sound. I would simply not run a third party tracker in that game - assuming the first party tracker had all necessary functionality (if it didn't running a third party tracker to provide said functionality wouldn't be against the ToS, as you are not reproducing a function, you are performing a new function).
Edit, as to this comment It is as it is because a while back, some regular posters were commenting about how they were somewhat annoyed that I had not changed my forum name to have a capital first letter (those that have been around here long enough will know), and then when I changed it, they then commented that I should also change from the default picture.
So I did. It was right around the time this thread was created/merged, and so I used the icon of my preferred third party tracker. If you want to look in to it any more than that, you are welcome to do so. I've had people suggest that I much be the "owner" of ACT or something in order to use their icon here (nope, copy/paste works great), and so I must just be posting here to try and get more people to use ACT so that I somehow make more money.
I assume you are smart enough to realize that 1, ACT is free, so even if I were the "owner" of it, there is no money to be made and 2, if I were the owner of it and were trying to make money from more users, Ashes not having a first party tracker would see more people look for a third party one. As such, I am actually arguing for there to be fewer people in Ashes using ACT.
But as I said, surely you are smart enough to realize that.
I'm literally not reading past your first 2 lines.
You are getting what you deserve, to be honest.
The first interaction you and I had on these forums was in relation to your idea on inspect rather than a tracker. I was overly polite (out of character for me) in pointing out to you that your suggestion may be a valid thing to add to the game, but it isn't a replacement for trackers as you claimed.
You then argued that point with me. Later on, we learned that you didn't even know what a tracker is actually even used for - yet you had argued with me in relation to your suggestion.
Then we have the whole debacle of your post formatting. Not just the OP of that other thread, but your insistence to use spoiler tags for quotes which is a needless hassle to anyone that may be reading while doing some other task.
You don't deserve to have people engage with you at this point. You can earn back that right, and people will begin to engage with properly you once again, but in order for that to happen you kind of need to realize that you are the one here that doesn't know what they are talking about in relation to MMO's, and if someone that does know what they are talking about corrects you, you need to simply accept that correction (don't worry, if the person that corrected you was wrong, someone will correct them).
An example of this would be the above suggestion you had in relation to inspect. You had a suggestion for an alternative to combat trackers, someone that has been using a combat tracker for more than two decades informs you that your suggestion will not replace combat trackers. The appropriate thing for you to do is to accept that, and then either drop your idea and discussion on it, or attempt to modify your idea so that it covers the shortfalls it had.
I mean, the suggestion of a guild based tracker wasn't just my idea. I agreed with someone else early on in this thread that said a built in tracker would be a good idea, and then as people pointed out issues with it, I came up with ways around that system. People said they didn't want anyone to track them, I said cool, the tracker should be opt in. People said group leaders will require people to opt in to be bought along on content, I said cool, make it opt in at the guild level (you should be joining a guild with like minded players - if you do not want to use a combat tracker, you should not be in a guild with people that do, and vice versa).
Now on Ignore
All you ignoring me means is that I can point out the flaws in your statements without needing to get in to a worthless debate with you.
And keep in mind, the bulk of my posts are for the benefit of other readers. If someone says something untrue, I will post a rebuttal for others that are reading - not for the person that posted something untrue. Generally speaking, if someone is ready to proclaim untruths as being fact, I am not going to be able to persuade them otherwise - but I may be able to prevent someone else from assume that untruth is true.
Doesn't that depend on client/server information exchange? If the client only tells the server that the players did X attack at Y location, and the server does all the calculations, the client never has to know exactly how much damage was applied.
The server could just send back something to indicate that u hit them, and a status "unwounded, slightly wounded, heavily wounded, critically wounded" of the enemy.
I'd be both 'okay with this' and sort of 'surprised that is what anyone wanted'.
Specific damage done doesn't matter to me when I'm using parsers, but similarly having to just 'trust that you're doing more damage now after X change' as a generality is kind of weird.
Plus, it would just make people use 'PvP' for the tests.
BDO already does this (if you aren't familiar with how to get a specific additional set of data), but I feel like that led to more harm than good since games almost always apply some sort of scaling or 'hidden aspects' of a formula somewhere.
If Ashes has simplistic damage formulas, that'd surprise me, but I guess it wouldn't be too weird.
A log file is a text file the game creates that has, well, a log of everything. This is where trackers like ACT get their data from. It is why they are able to function without needing to interact with the game client at all - the client produces a file for ACT, and ACT only interacts with that file.
Ashes will not have a log file, but we do know it will have a combat log. As such, in order to get a text file for ACT to read, all you need to do is turn that combat log in to a text file, and point ACT at it.
All we really need the game to provide in order to be able to do this easily is floating combat feedback, which again is something we know we will have.
Developers of Western MMO's aren't usually keen on keeping players in the dark as to what is happening - this includes Intrepid. We can expect a reasonable amount of information to be sent to the client.