Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
You shouldn't be able to copy paste your log, or store it in a text format. That is somethin simply on your screen for you to view. So them demanding to see your combat log on stream would just be weird.
Sure there are the elitist types out there that think they are special that will do some weird stuff. But it isn't going to be the normal. Should that point being brought up as it wont be normal.
You simply can only look through things from your perspective, and why you don't' understand how things will really be. You only have your own experience demanding or expecting to see things.
This is why i keep telling you, you don't care what people think, only what you want. You might not realize it but you also that kind of toxic mentality but your core group think the same so it won't be a issue. Though if you were to paly a new popular game issues might start to pop up in people thinking you and your group run things a bit weird.
The point is relative to toxicity.
You have basically made two points. You don't want Trackers to exist so that players can't blaze through content. But if a Combat Log exists and a group chooses to combine their logs, a Tracker exists.
You don't want people tracking other people. That is avoidable if somehow logs are very carefully set, but then people might just refuse to let others join their guilds because of not providing logs. This would be fine and your goal would be achieved IF the first thing wasn't true.
If there is a Log and people can share their logs, you cannot prevent the effects of a Tracker that you're concerned about.
EDIT: At best, you can sorta-prevent the effects that @MrPockets is concerned about, but at that point, Noaani's suggestion is very slightly better.
Because parsing logs is not hard. The only reason people don't know that it isn't hard is because Trackers are basically a one click solution whereas Parsers require you to type two lines and open Excel (opening Excel might be optional)
I'm fine with thread being alive here and there and if people re for tracker to give their input and unique thought on it. I'm not going to tell them they are wrong everyone is fair to believe what they want and the devs can read and think on it.
Though you have a small group that will respond to anyone and try to convince them and then be like DEvs everyone agrees with me so we need trackers
Commented above, logs should not be copy pasted.
So again logs should not be copy pasted or viewed all at once. It needs to be akin to scroll through chats to view your damage done or taken.
The main reason this thread goes on is because the people on the 'Trackers are Ok' side are often forced to clarify to others that Intrepid is not offering any real solution to ANY of the problems those people perceive to exist.
So you can consider it Altruism in some, maybe all cases. People say 'I don't want trackers because X so I'm glad they won't be allowed', and someone explains 'the current situation won't prevent X'. It is true that if we were all actually selfish the response would be 'lol look at these people with their lack of knowledge thinking that something will actually stop this' and SILENCE.
In fact, I consider the lack of input from other Tracker-advocates to be a sign that's mostly what's happening. If you talk Noaani out of 'bothering to help solve the problem' then the result will be 'the problem exists, Noaani is fine, everyone with the alternate wish is not'.
So I believe this would mean that there should also be no way to maximize the chat window while viewing your logs, or you should not be able to take screenshots with the log window open?
A PvP community can not sustain itself long term on the scale that Ashes needs, so the game needs people that are viable targets in PvP, but are not in the game specifically for PvP.
The above excludes players that prefer PvP as they are in the game for PvP, and it excludes players that are not overly active in regards to combat - crafters and traders and such. I don't know of any other group of MMO players that fit this description other than PvE players.
As such, to me, the games long term viability is directly related to it's PvE community. The better served that community is, the more PvP targets PvP players have, the longer those PvP players will stay in the game.
Combat tracker support is one of those things that a PvE community expects. Rather than asking for support as per other games, I am asking for a built in tracker that Intrepid can control.
Not exactly but your aren't going to be able to fit hundreds of lines on your screen of combat in one go. Screenshot is fine, if someone wants to share some information that isn't really a issue.
You should be well aware the difference of access of information with sharing if you compare that to giving a text file of all your information... I shouldn't really need to explain that.
I know you think everyone is spineless enough that you can get your way.
git gud
will really rofl if game is made impossible for trackers or simply too difficult for you to enjoy and trackers do nothing for you
There aren't going to be hundreds of lines on the screen if each person's log only shows their own stuff, though.
Do you know how Optical Character Recognition works?
good enough
pick better points to argue
I have unfortunately not yet encountered a single game in this world that is too difficult for me to enjoy.
I look forward to playing the easy half of any such game as soon as possible.
At that time, I will gladly provide you a plush carpeted floor for you to roll around laughing on.
A bunch of other games on the market prove you wrong that are focused on PvP.
Catering to the single digit of people that do raids and want them to be difficult and have trackers is not going to sustain a mmorpg.
Making a good game with good gameplay loops, replayability, fun pvp, Politic driven pvp and territory control, good pve, good content overall, not destroyed by bugs WILL make a mmorpg with a community that will sustain itself.
Package this up in to a one click solution, have it connect to a server, break the server off in to groups (ie, when you join a group in game, you automatically join the log group on this server). This server combines the logs from all players in the group, and spits out a combined log to run in ACT.
With this setup, you can even have it so that you get a notification if you are going to invite someone to your group that isn't logged in to this server, so that you know not to invite them. This means the discussion as to whether they are using this or not doesn't need to even happen in game, and those not using it will just find that they don't get as many invites to content.
Does it allow you to change in game logs through game files?
It allows you to read text directly from screenshots.
Some will let you read text directly from videos.
It does not need to interact with the game at any time.
I'm assuming this does this as you are playing?
Exactly what I was thinking. Catering to top end players is not required to make a successful game. There is SO much more to this game than PvE, I would rather they focus on all of those parts being good, instead of a tracker.
You put in their name into the system before you invite them. This doesn't interact with the game.
If you find no logs for the person in the system, you just don't invite them. This is what happens in FFXIV.
The big point of pushing against it is to make botting and scripting less useful, have dynamic content, get a mechanically grounded and deeper foundation, less arbitrary bullshit, and have a game designed that is more interesting and fun than WoW etc.
the Big Point of it is that people that rely on trackers are not fun or engaging players, looking for ways to make the game easier for themself, and those that create and use them tend to create bots & scripts or approve of them.
I mean like can this read your log real time while you are playing the game is my question?
This is also fine, except that it would lead back to the 'free for all trackers' problem, given what we know now. If Third Party Trackers are 'actually ok' in the FFXIV style, then it's fine.
But we know the game will have a Combat Log. As long as the game has a log, it has a Parser-Tracker. Intrepid does not need to do anything except if they explicitly don't want anyone to have those.
Combat trackers do not only cater to raiders. They cater to anyone that wants to be better.
In terms of their usefulness in regards to content (as opposed to their usefulness in regards to player build, player improvement or game system research), they are only really of use on harder content.
However, I would like to see some group content in Ashes that is hard.
I agree.
The thing is, a combat tracker is an essential tool for good PvE.
It's been explained a few times that no one cares about realtime logs at the level we are talking about BUT.
Yes, it can. And it does not do this by interacting with the game client, it does this by recording the gameplay OR a more convoluted method that is basically also recording gameplay but isn't detectable (because it's too customizable to detect)
Yes.
And if need be, you could use XSplit to record your gameplay, send it to a second computer and have that computer run all other software.
you just played the game
you know where you are
you just want to avoid the work of improving
because reading logs is easier than struggling in-game
Azherae gave a good answer, and i will just share another way to see it for my personnal case :
The current state is FFXIV state... And here is the result : fflogs.com
No game is able to avoid third party tool... Even mods while it often implies game file modification.
There is a gap between saying "don't do it" and enforce it... Because it is not as simple as saying it.
I hate the fact on ffxiv, people can have their fight data register/tracked and even UPLOADED to allow anyone roaming this site to see those without these people aknowledge it. . .
You walk in the street, anyone is filming you and then upload it on internet. Yay... sure it is far (totally) less harmfull in case of tracker, but this is the same idea... "less harmfull" is not an excuse to say "it is fine" ...
A limited and controlled use of an efficient tracker would avoid people to get tracked down, or have as "common behaviour" guild that says "share logs" (people will find their way to do it... )
Instead the existence of tracker as guild perk will allow people to chose what they want : play with tracker (and guildmate able to see your datas) or not (and so no one would see it). Nooani would join a guild with tracker, azerhae too i think, Mag7spy would go on guild that aim to PvE without it.
Because the real problem is not tracker, but playing with people with the same goal, and same mindset about how to reach the goal. no more no less.
I am roleplayer, and love to minmax all my characters. i offer people who don't care to do this work for them because in the end... It is better to have all character in the group with a similar efficiency, to avoid to have one character (so one player) doing most of the work... Roleplay as "the hero and its 4 lowly friends" is not what most roleplay table are seeking. And it is easier to help people who don't care minmaxing to get a character fitting their idea and still efficient, than asking to minmaxer to do "bad characters". And being also DM, i can totally say that players can do a build as strong as they want... i can still crush them if i want :')
The thing is, you are no fun for them to play with.
Some people like to stop and admire the scenery. That is fine, they are welcome to do that.
Others like to push through content as quickly as they can so they can then get on to other things - be that in game or out of game.
These two groups really shouldn't mix.
it is not a essential tool for good PVE. Anything in pve you can do without the tool...It simply gives you a short cut to need to use more tiem to explore and figure things out and more quickly get your answer. Effectively reducing pve difficulty for games int he past or their potential time frame to complete it. To the point older games knowing about trackers created weird game play around it, or trackers because the games were older was the best way to figure out content as certain technically limits made content harder by default.