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
precise values on damage, health, logs of abilities and their effect, et cetera builds a database of the game.
It means the game is quickly Solved; and execution is just a matter of grinding some gear for something you know you'll get no matter what if you just spend 999 hours doing something tedious.
INSTEAD of a focus on the qualitative experience of the game, the devs just slap some effects together and add numbers to it.
Number 'mechanics' are nowhere as interesting as the more wholistic 'mechanics'.
Like, Tanks physically blocking damage and being in the way of attacks due to attacks being physical collisions could be a normal part of the game and how things work.
But when devs are allowed to just make "number mechanics" you get World of Warcraft where abilities are tab, attacking has no hitbox, no one has a collisionbox, and physics based anything isn't much of a reality.
Sure you could do a game with no life bar, no visual information, nothing.
And i won't play it it wouldnt interest me. It would fast end to be boring...
But just a question, if there are no life information of anykind, how do you are able to decide the heal you use ? (Don't say "healing should instead heal broken legs" this is not how it will work, and i am not interested in a survival MMORPG game. not my taste, and not what ashes of creation will be)
So you will allow player to have information about their own healthbar right ? so people can find out the damages of their skills... so the DPS of each skill if spammed. And because life = time to kill divided by DPS . . . People will be able to define at first approximately the range of health of ennemies.
You change data ? People will get bored of this game with random rules you can't rely on... Game master changing the rules of their table rarely keep their player for long (saw many doing it... all ended alone at their table)
And doing so, you have to lower the fight difficulties... you can reach highest fight difficulties only when people are able to minmax. In such case, you can predict the overall DPS, HPS, HPM, mitigation of the raid of 40 people, and so, design the fight to fit this. else, you risk to create boss mathematically impossible to kill.
You say you want the game to be less niche... but people who supported on KS are ok with the niche... For many it was probably even why they gave money...
And the funny thing : you want to add survival game features to make it less niche... while survival games being a niche genre ?
And for your complains :
PvE pressure : not for this game, aside specific events (thru event you can do lot of things if you do it mostly opt in / minor long term impact)
PvX progression : don't understand what you are speaking about, we don't know what will happen in the game life... maybe people will spam siege when guild go on the hardest boss, maybe not. I don't see how to complain about a thing we have no information
Classes : you should read a topic from nooani where he expresses that for him, the secundary archetype is meaningless in it. but there are also weapons that will help to have a character different to the other, and lot more augments than the secundary archetype (i don't know why you said 8x8x4 while there are far more than 4 augments . . . and why you consider using a sword or a bow is the same thing)
But also, we have no class design yet, so... how could you speak about the lack of uniqueness if we know nothing about it ? The first information we have are far from allowing us to speak about uniqueness or not.
Ok and ? you consider that you speak for all those who could like the game if your ideas are added to it, and so steven should consider it, even if it is losing all those who are currently doing free marketing (and would turn it to a negativ marketing about lying, not reaching promises, etc) in the hope to get people who don't care about the game to suddenly get interested ?
Sure on forum it is a small minority speaking here. but if people don't share their opinion... they don't use their voice, they can't be heared.
I have friends interested a lot in the game... and don't speak here. i don't claim "i speak for tens of people" while i know what they like and dislike...
You are not speaking for hundreds, thousands or millions people, you are speaking for you. i speak for myself, and people who said "no" to your ideas are speaking for themselves.
Steven himself has his own idea of this game, and already stated it won't be a survival one... making most of your idea clearly out of context here...
To end this message : until now, the more complex to understand the game mechanics (even without data changing) the less friendly it is for casuals/low skill players and the bigger the gap is between top and low players...
This is clearly not a good thing, in my opinion...
I think you've read what my suggestion is already. Let rough health estimates be a thing, with 'Inspect' providing more info, being in the same group enhancing that, and let Clerics see Health even better (to the point of % health and some visual indication of relative Max if in the same group and 'Inspecting').
Max health shouldn't be totally obfuscated either.
I don't see an issue with wound healing though. Specific limbs is tedious but "Bone mend" and various stuff sounds pretty good.
Regular healing may exist in the form of adding 'Lifeforce' which I think would be great as the natural form of healing in a person. Thus a person gets regen with this heal and is saved from the brink of death when it reaches a critical low.
The wound system and certain CC/ debuff removal can be tied together as well.
Of course, certain damage can inflict certain wounds and impede some forms of healing. This can be relatively intuitive and organic. It can be learned in-game as well. At least Class Trainers and Skill Tomes would make sense then.
I think obfuscation of exact health is good, but it should still be clear if something has about 2x one's own health (might be actually 2.2x).
I don't think the game should lie to the player but be 'coarse' in its updates and representation of things, with variability in exact value and moment it changes from 1 UI visual representation to another so it's again, 'coarse'.
Most mathematical changes can be to exact moment UI changes, mob variability, even Raid boss variability (not sure how static the raid content will be).
A 'raid boss' that rewards players may simply be an NPC faction without an actual raid boss though. It's up to another's decision, and I don't think raid bosses are necessary for every difficult 'crawl'.
Microscopic changes in other places can have an impact on how things are represented in game and even time to kill if it just so happens to be that before, some mob you use to test something was always 10 hp before the last blow; thus diminishing your evaluation of some rotation/ ability/ attack since it seemed to require too many uses to kill.
The survival elements were for balancing and to build up the world and resource management; including Farming and Fishing, and even the Nodes given there are desert and mountainous biomes.
What I think is currently more critical though, I've made clear.
PvE pressure is already basically planned for and I'm not sure what your issue with it is. It's like a "fantastical world you live in" is not what you want. It makes no sense.
Is there really no game you can play that requires less execution but rewards meta-gaming and time?
For this I mean XP from PvP, or simply On Use.
But yes the level of PvX intertwining is important as well.
Alpha 1 and another showcase had classes and they were not good. 5+ years in and it does not encourage hope or excitement in me.
I am simply stating what I see as important.
I will simply reiterate:
"Try to see the broadening of the game as an opportunity for growth and a broadening of your mind as well. An evolution for the game, for the players."
If you'd like to be more specific about what promises wouldn't be reached go ahead and elaborate.
I wasn't trying to characterize this as simply a business decision; I am trying to characterize everyone that doesn't share your tastes as people.
I have in other places made it clear that I'd like to increase the value of "unskilled manpower" and require "more manpower" for the effective and efficient doing of things.
Hopefully this addresses what you are speaking of.
Thank you.
Can you name me any other MMO exclusive franchise that is getting two full expansions this year?
I mean, sure, neither EQ is as popular as WoW, or ESO, or FFXIV, but that doesnt make them dead.
As to you complaining that you didnt @ me, so what? This is a discussion forum, not a shut-your-damn-mouth-unless-I-@ -you forum.
Most people on these forums know if someone posts something dumb or factually incorrect, and if I read it, I will respond calling it out. To be fair, when it comes to you, I've had to lower my standards to only bothering with the most egregious offenses, as trying to get them all would be a near full time job.
If you dont want me to respond to your posts, dont say dumb things. It's that simple.
And hey, if you dont want to take the time to.prove me wrong, all that says is that you know you cant make an argument without saying something dumb.
If data exists, there is something that can be learned from it. It may not be important to you, and that's great. It not being important to you does not mean that other people should not be able to have access to it.
I dont give a shit about RP content in a game, but you wont see me arguing that Intrepid shouldnt add RP content to Ashes, because other people will use it.
You not seeing any importance in data and a tracker does not mean they shouldnt exist.
Also, your comment about fighting games is interesting. As I have said before, you use different tools to analyze different games. In a fighting game, you use replays of fights and analyze them.
If I am not mistaken, most fighting games that the community takes somewhat seriously have some form of replay functionality built in (or the ability to watch matches between top ranked players).
A combat tracker is an MMO version of that. A simple replay isnt sufficient, as there is several orders of magnitude more happening in any given moment in a top end raid than in a fighting game, so trackers are the way everything is presented.
Literally every professional (and most amateur) sports gather and analyze data in order to improve.
I mean, I cant see how you could say they dont. You dont even need to follow sport closely to know this. 12 year olds use data and analysis in sport.
The post from NiKr above about Moneyball is a perfect example, but it is worth pointing out that Baseball was (as far as I know) the last major sport anywhere in the world to switch to analysis driven management.
My argument for trackers is actually fairly straight forward. It can basically be boiled down to the following;
Some people enjoy using trackers, they are also useful tools for finding bugs in any MMO. This should see them existing as the default choice.
The only reason Intrepid have stated for not including them is due to toxicity that they claim they will bring. They believe that people will exclude others based on class or build if trackers exist.
To this I way no, players will exclude others because they can. In the absence of objective data to back up their opinion, people will simply fabricate their own facts (a recent phenomenon, due in no small part to recent world politics, I assume).
This is what I have been saying for years. The fact that there are currently two posters in this thread that are against trackers, both of whom make shit up to support their arguments is just poetry, as far as I am concerned.
The two of you are literally proving why trackers may as well exist.
Imagine not knowing how trackers work, but arguing against them anyway.
A tracker will not tell me if you are regenerating health, self healing, using a potion, and often wont tell me if you have a third party healing you (this last one is situational, generally).
If you run out of log distance, I wont know if someone else is attacking you.
The only way I will know what your hit points are is if you and I agree that I will attack you until you die. If we are in this situation, I do not need a tracker to tell me.
In any hostile situation though, a tracker will not tell you how many hit points a rival player has.
Hmmm...Interesting choice of words here when you say "Dev are allowed". I think it would be safe to say most game encounters start as pure numeric equations (this is even true in pen and paper rpgs, look at DnD as an example and encounter levels) so its not that "they are allowed to make number mechanics" but that they HAVE to in order to design the encounters
I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing if the design was intentional to enhance or facilitate gameplay and is what the game had to offer based on what technology was available at the time it was created. Many MMO's don't allow collision as it prevents severe in game trolling crap. I have been a longtime WOW player and enjoy what the game has but I am really drawn to other MMO's that offer new experiences. That is why I play New World as well and I am looking forward to AOC.
You can have both though. It adds a another layer to the whole. The "qualitative" aspect is most important for the gameplay itself but there is no reason the 2 cant be intertwined.
There is nothing wrong with requiring some "data structuring" that is somewhat arbitrary in a sense because it still requires a skill which can be fun and add the the overall experience. It just comes down to what skills you want to reward in your game systems. I generally think that the more skills-checks intertwined within the system the better. If thats not a skill you would like to see tested in the game you can have that opinion. Its a preference of fun. I like the dynamic moment-to-moment skill checks (pobably more), but I also like having that strategic/preparation "data structuring" skill-check as well. There is nothing wrong with that, you can appeal to different types of people.
Absolutely, i agree and that is my preference which is why I excel at competitive fighting games. As I said above you can have that while also having different kinds of skill-checks intertwined to appeal to those types of people as well. Its preference.
Regardless of your preference though, the clincher is that there is no down-side to having proper build feedback (without exploiting the enemy).
- If they are going with the design decision to make "numbers" impactful then having that feedback would be beneficial for that system.
- If they choose to not make numbers impactful then at that point it just wouldn't affect anything having the ability to "measure your own numbers" because it won't affect the fact that the game would be soley combat oriented with situation based gameplay. So it literally doesn't really matter whether you like it or not, because it wouldn't help your cause in either scenario by trying to remove the feature.
Based on this- assuming they go with having your "numbers" be relevant, there is no good reason to try to detract from the theory crafting experience to try to make it "worse" just because you think it shouldn't exist in the first place. It would be more out of spite to advocate for this.
I mean, exactly what you are talking about here with tanks is already known to be intended gameplay. That doesn't mean analysis stops for those that enjoy it.
The thing I still dont get is, if the game does have the combat we all know it will have, and if combat trackers are a thing for those that want to use them, if you do not want to use them, what is wrong with just... not?
But great news for you, there is another MMORPG in development, in which, there will be the "classic" healing system AND the broken bones (and other thing) healing system alltogether.
Do i spit on this other game ? no... i also support this.
2 different games, 2 different set of ideas, and totally different in the end (maybe not for you who consider war3 and SC1/2 being the same thing... )
Did you see class in their final state in alpha 1 ? Funny, because i played alpha1 and still saw nothing about classes...
Those were placeholder, and was explained this way. they were far from a final design...
This will happen, until people get bored from this large gap due to a design making the game hard to learn...
The casual/low players get a far lower retention in such game. So, bad idea.
One of them is not even defending the current project, but try to convert people into supporting its own project v_v"
While claiming he dislike MMORPG, and have clear disdain to video-gamer...
Games can have "number mechanics" and action combat just fine. Look at any action combat MMO ever and you will see that.
Hitboxes exist in tab target games, and in "number mechanic" games.
Collision is something that game developers can choose to add or not add based on their game. Has literally nothing at all to do with anything. Same with physics based anything, I fail to see how having "number mechanics" prevents developers from implementing physics in to their game if they want to.
This is just another one of those times you've made things up in an attempt to further your argument.
They are 'allowed' to leave things at barebone number mechanics rather than having to invent new ones based on the qualitatively (and numerically) deeper reality of something like a Physical (or simply more physical) system.
If a dev team thinks it's perfectly OK to go the lazier route then it just falls into a smaller and smaller niche as the quality and effort never reaches a high level and gets lazier over time.
If that is the intention then fuck that.
Anything can be said to be for the "sake of enhancing or facilitating gameplay" but removing entire dimensions of the game is only facilitating a much smaller scope.
Some collision/ physics is good for differentiating classes, characters, CC, abilities, and so on.
Most projects focus too much on "thinking" and just don't do the work honestly; hence number mechanics.
Honestly the hardest part of business in general and game dev is probably Co-Workers LMAO
as long as it gets done
This is of course, also untrue.
Newest game intends to add explicit frame data visualizations to help players improve.
Mag is going to make a self-revealing incorrect counterpoint to this, so I'll wait for it before saying more. Feel free to use this until he does.
Yes it is boring talking about tastes when you know you will never compromise on anything and simply want someone to pop out a finished product that suits you and no one else.
Its been over 5 years.
So to be clear, do you think a strong class identity is important? Or do you not care if everything blends into one another and no class is really deeply explored on its basic premise, without borrowing from other classes? Being truly its own thing?
What is this large complicated gap? Why do you care about mass appeal?
I don't think the game should be trying to appeal to everyone but simply expand and do the work of elaborating on its basic premises.
But I thought you support all kinds of projects and like all sorts of games? You said so multiple times.
So you like all kinds of games, support them, yet resist expansion and elaboration of any single one of them?
You also seem concerned with casual appeal, yet want to keep the game niche?
It's clear that I simply want to expand this niche game to have broader appeal; not to appeal to "everyone".
I've asked you to consider things with 'survival' elements aside; to focus on the issues that I think matter most; but have you?
The coherency of what you think is "alright" and what is "not alright" is lacking from what I can tell.
Do you like different kinds of games or do you like only 1 kind of game? Do you want a niche game or a popular game?
I will simply reiterate:
"Try to see the broadening of the game as an opportunity for growth and a broadening of your mind as well. An evolution for the game, for the players."
Thank you
Sorry to disappoint(?).
Would you like more variety? As noted, I only do this because the rest of my group doesn't generally have the time/patience, but I could honestly leave 'Mag Fact Checks' to other people.
EDIT: I have been reminded that they have lunch dates today, so you're stuck with me after all.
Then please focus your attention on the combat system instead of the dps feedback
The combat will be the thing that will provide the experience you seek. Try to let others have their fun by not being a roadblock to them getting the proper build feedback they want.
So an encyclopedic database can be built? It's an MMO; a game of exploration. Uncertainty is part of the appeal.
I'm fine with the Training Dummy tests. Not with numbers. Seeing how far something sticks in a plank of wood is all good. Seeing how easy it is to cut a rope is all good. There are a hundred tests and interactions that can be elaborated upon.
Frame data is fine to me in a Fighting Game because it's basically about timing windows in a reaction-based pure action game. They aren't necessary though, since trial and error is more straightforward. It makes comparing characters and choosing one to main easier perhaps.
MMOs are more about exploration, and rudimentary feedback is part of that. The class is suppose to make it clear how it plays, what it can do.
Fighter characters are often very similar in appearance and function, or are unpredictable, and simply have regular names like "Ken".
???????
I thought we went over this, leading to your eventual "as long as it gets done"- I don't understand why you are now backtracking to a point we already had a resolution over.
I said I don't desire for this, I also said that even if you remove all ability to get direct enemy data feedback, the facts that
A)you can yield a specific result (with some variability) against said enemies, as a way of comparing/contrasting builds
B)trial and error exists
means that you might eventually get those databases anyway from people who live to test and figure out that variability.
In agreeance with you, I also still think it is best to not give that direct enemy data feedback. Hense detering from said databases, but not excluding the potential existence of dps build feedback- hense the "training ground dummy" suggestion.
In general my Profile Picture will change approximately 1 week before the expected date of a LiveStream, so you will only have this experience once per month.
And so that this post contributes to the thread in any way, for non-fighting Gamers:
Literally everything that is being said here about Combat Trackers is relevant to those games and explicitly aimed for by the developers because of a simple point that I feel worth addressing.
"People playing suboptimally relative to their own wishes without knowing that they are doing so does not help anyone."
The cost of the above is that there is a subset of people who will be toxic and attempt to remove the 'relative to their own wishes' part. This is never solved by ignorance. The ignorance simply strengthens the barrier between two specific types of people, in competitive games.
There are people who prefer to play without understanding any Frame Data, understanding any hitboxes, understanding any Move Properties. This is great. As long as they are having fun and know they are choosing to engage with less of the game than there is, they will not be unhappy. Even if they get completely defeated by someone who does know all those things OR a savant, they can rest easy in knowing that they lack the knowledge to apply greater skill.
There are people who prefer to play with perfect understanding of all those things, and they therefore can make very educated choices about how they want to play, if they want to play, and what strategies would personally make them happy.
And then there are the unfortunate people who want to play without understanding any of those things (you don't need to understand them all), but still want to not lose 80% of the time when facing a randomly selected opponent. Not all of these people 'hate Frame data' or 'hate the sort of person who knows hitboxes', BUT...
Nearly all people who 'hate Frame Data' or 'Hate the sort of person who knows hitboxes' is this type of unfortunate person. This is the parallel I see relative to combat trackers. Those who hate Trackers don't want to 'just enjoy the game'. They want to 'not lose while understanding less things' and therefore will pursue the idea that others should be limited in what they are allowed to understand.
And that, @NiKr, is the difference between you and those people. If Ashes is built the way Mag implies, all that will happen is that someone will do the frame analysis instead, and then those people will complain that 'this isn't the way the game is supposed to be approached'. For the same reason.
You honestly say some of the dumbest things I've seen and most ignorant view point is honestly the same on you.
Here you already say something stupid about anyone can talk which i never said they couldn't You are saying I'm trying to win a argument against you when my comment was to someone else and not you to begin with. So by default I was not trying to win a argument with you as you were not referenced.
This is your normal attitude where you feel the need to respond to everyone in the thread like you are the center of it. (granted you are the one fighting to keep it alive)
I don't know why you are going on a tangent about importance of a tracker. This is like playing DnD and asking the DM let me know your skills of the monsters, the damage of the monsters, the hp of the monster, etc. There is far more reward in not knowing everything and learning through experience. Obviously if something is giving you information and you can use that information to know a insane amount of details it is an advantage. Though that depends on gameplay as well, I can know the HP of a character in a fighting game but that doesn't mean you are going to win or have a advantage.
No a combat tracker is not a version of that, you need to stop trying to compare things that don't make sense. Like just stop being stubborn and thinking tracking everything in a game is required. If you watch a lot of matches you aren't going to suddenly be a better player. There is a big difference between fighting and feeling and simply just watching something even if you understand it.
If you need a tracker to understand what is going in a raid than that is a issue with design. You need to be able to understand it through practicing the raid, and having a skill element to it as well that isn't people standing around attacking the boss doing nothing. There should be no gameplay element wher eyou can onyl see through tracker, you need to get that out of your head.
People enjoy using aimbot in shooters as well
You don't need a tool to find bugs in a mmorpg you can test that yourself its not a reason for trackers to be given to you.
Trackers / dps meters do cause toxicity as anything else that tracks how people do. Yes it can exisit without trackers but trackers can make it worse and spread the mind set.
Usuals manipulation as well. Saying 2 people are against trackers let me make this clear again PEOPLE WERE TIRED of arguing with your ass. Most people int his thread are against TRACKERS and agree with Steven. stop lying and making shit up. Anyone can go through the post and read everyone replies and even see the older poll that was made with a tiny sample size on a forum that should have the highest chance of people supporting trackers.
It is two posters for trackers here, and me and others being against it is not a reason for trackers so you can try to find out all elements in the game without working for it.
Imagine being this ignorant, i need to remember you have a troll display picture to begin with.
You were talking about skill checks and intertwining stuff.
What does that have to do with trackers, which you just brought up?
lmao what is this bullshit?
"you might get those databases" do not waste my time with your hopes and dreams for trackers and databases because you dont' actually like exploration.
You are probably imagining a Training Dummy provide number feedback. No. There should be an effect such as you'd find with an actual 'Training Dummy' or whatever implements such as a Wood Plank Target, a Tree, whatever.
Ok, this is not meant to be an insult, I legitimately feel like "6-27" in this video is the interaction that took place in this convo.
I recommend maybe reading through the convo again for a refresher on the train of reasoning that was used to arrive at the conclusion of you saying "as long as it gets done".
We went step by step resolving how
1. I don't think tracking enemy data should be encouraged
2. pre enemy-interaction dps feedback could potentially occur without revealing direct enemy data (assuming the dps is dependent upon enemy-specific modifiers and variance)
3. Said dps feedback would support the theory crafters by giving them this convenience tool, to promote their style of data structuring rather than forcing experiential methods of testing
4. it would be best to support these theory crafters since it is a valid "skill-check" as long as the more "qualitative" skill-checks are encouraged in the combat system- so it would be worth having an "arbitrary" complexity in build depth to promote said skill and prevent rewarding simple "number crunching"
And the most irritating part of it all is how you acted like you finally understand how a basic conversation works, admitting that you wasted my time by getting mad over be "dismissing" something that Mag never even stated by the time I entered the thread. Yet immediately you fall back into you bahavioral pattern saying:
At the slightest hint of a misunderstanding. Stop wasting my time making me coddle you before allowing me to unravel your twisted perceptions of what im trying to say.
Yes, direct number feedback for your build, without exploiting enemy data. Its no different than manually calculating your dps based on your stats and abiltiy data- except way less tedious to hit something. Its like an first person shooting game that has a target that has numbers pop up when you hit it. Its no different to calculate your time-to-kill manually through damage and fire-rate but it would be much more convenient if it displayed that info against a standard health pool for a reference point when comparing builds.
You don't need that to improve you should be well aware of your skills to begin with through actually playing the game or using training. You are discovering new moves all the sudden, they moves worked the same before and will work the same after nothing is hidden.
If you aren't aware of how your character works and can feel the speed of your moves i suppose it does it make more clear for less experienced people though. This isn't going to have you beat good players though if your skill height is average I'm sure in that case it might help as will anything. (average with character but can actually understand the speed that it is showing, granted again if you are at a higher level you should just be able to understand by playing.)
Anyway ya that isn't going to help you be a better player against people that are actually skilled at the game. You could look at meters bars / tracking, ettc all day and it wont change if they are better than you, they will be better.
So you're saying that a person should be able to tell from 'just playing the game' that their move has 5 active frames instead of 4 active frames?
I didn't admit to getting mad for no reason. You took a small concession as meaning I obey you I guess. Tough luck, ya piece of shit.
I could have saved myself a little time but in the end you will continue to waste it and be dense as fuck.
If I thought you weren't dense as fuck, which I already knew you were, I wouldn't have said all that I said.
You can go back and reread it because it's the same shit I'll smack you with everyday.
No you can't have pre-mitigated DPS and avoid data analysis, database building, and tracking. The best way to avoid such is to not show any precise numbers and then everyone is basically looking at the same game.
No there is no reason to have an 'arbitrary' amount of complexity and you were incapable of producing an example of a game that is complex and not arbitrary, while allowing theory crafting.
What game would be complex but not arbitrary? One that mirrors the complexity of reality perhaps, with added fantasy elaborations and extroardinarily Abled Characters?
If you can't make anything out of that then a game about exploration and massive-multiplayer is simply not for you.
Here is a skill-check: try playing the game as I suggested. And being good at it. Or simply enjoy the game.
I can confirm... The overall tendency is more transparency about game mechanics, data, and mathematics.
Devs understood that player will get informations they want, so they prefer now give it...
And the more transparency there is, the more analytics are easily avaible, the more even "low players" find their place in the community and will improve their gameplay more...
Back when i went on aion release, i discovered ani cancel (not a big thing on summoner and chanter but it did exist) and weaving (big deal on chanter)... and it made a huge gap between people knowing this, and the majority ignoring this...
I first was happy, young adult i was... easily superior... then, speaking to some people i realised all the frustration they had, they didnt have the keys to improve themselves... they lacked lot of informations for it. they were "bad" not because too lazy to train their skill, but because they couldn't simply train efficiently...
The more informations players can have, better it is even for the lower part... even more for them in fact because top players will get the information.
Each friday i do DnD5ed, one week i am dungeon master, another week it is a good friend...
and i played a lot, and did ton of builds for 3.5...
So i can point that here you are saying a stupidity.
After any fight, a good player that analysis the fight will know all needed information about the ennemy...
In fact, after 1 fight, i am far more accurate about ennemies on my DnD game as player, than i ever was after 1 fight on MMORPG using a tracker...
Turnbase system allow a far easier analysis of data.
There hugely less amount of data to check.
Rules are simple and many information are easy to check.
So it is far easier to do data analysis in DnD than in MMORPG even using tracker in MMORPG...
On NwN2 servers (3.5 rules persistant roleplay servers) i need to do dungeons once to then begin to optimise how to clean it... after 5th clear only, it is as fluid as i can with the current level/stuff of my character (needs months to get max level, and ... even a year could be not enough to get full stuff ^^') (the game is realtime, but you analyse it in the round base logic. 6 second being 1 round)
But this is not really where your sentence is stupid... "asking the dm to let me know" ... so here you consider that tracker is like getting informations BEFORE the end of the fight right ? But the tracker gives you informations AFTER the fight... ... ...
Again you prove to know nothing about trackers, about how they work and what they give...
Yes its pretty clear on knowing what moves you have are fast based on experience, and what moves who you are fighting are going to do and using the right skill to counter them based on timing. As well as adjust, this is nothing special you just gain more experience and understand through playing the game.
Of course if you are fighting at a lower level player anything you can do can improve you at that point. As well as knowing their recoveries and be able to keep them on the defensive or punish them if they act. All skills you gain from just playing the game and understanding it, your character and your whole movelist.
You have some victim complex dude. Anyone can improve.
MMOs are so far from the actual reality of improvement, they simply tell you you've improved.
Frames in a Fight game can be determined through playing the game. It just amounts to windows of opportunity and how small or large those windows are. Experientially learned just fine.
It's not even unique to Fighters lol there's aways animation shit involved. Input delays, animation canceling, input queueing/ not queueing, bullshit.
You and many others simply give up whenever things are difficult. MMOs are probably something you should have given up from how boring and unrewarding they are though lol but since they require less skill. . . .
EDIT: Have I been @ Azherae on accident sometimes? Might have been.