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.
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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
I'd prefer there be environmental, mechanical, and other conditions apart of massive fights instead rolling your face across the keyboard and killing the boss.
Good topics always need to be revived.
It is the cycle of life and death of a good topic.
A comment such as this would require that games with combat trackers present have no difficult encounters at all - and people that make it would be required to have killed every encounter in games with combat trackers in order to be able to state the above with any kind of validity. If a person making this comment didn't kill Uu'nat, or Kil'Jaeden pre-nerf, then that person has no place in making the above claim.
I mean, when the most popular MMO of all time, that has tools far more assistive than just combat trackers still manages to have encounters that top end guilds take 750+ attempts on, saying combat trackers make encounters face roll is just showing that commentors ignorance.
The only game I know of that has low combat tracker use (Archeage) had encounters that were defeated after 10 actual attempts at the most while I was playing it. Many of the games so-called top encounters were killed on first attempts (my guild killed the Kraken on our first ever pull - it was supposed to be the hardest boss in the game at the time).
The above statement is simply not borne out by the facts. If you actually look at encounters in games, the more active combat tracker use is, the harder the encounters in the game actually are. People can say they don't like combat trackers - but making factually incorrect statement in support of their argument simply doesn't work.
Truth is, a combat tracker in itself only displays information the player already has access to. As such, all a combat tracker does is speed up the process of gaining information on an encounter. As such, if an encounter is face roll with a combat tracker, it is face roll without a combat tracker once a guild spends the time to sort through that information.
It doesn't matter how many takes are needed to kill a boss. The fact remains the boss couldn't be killed until enough practice and knowledge had been obtained. The tracker merely presented the information in an easier manner.
All a tracker does is provide the same information a log provides. Just because you can claim two fights needed a tracker doesn't equate to all fights need a tracker to make the difficulty harder.
Something many players don't seem to understand (not saying this is you or not, don't care) is that not all raid content is designed to be hard. In fact, most of it is designed to be fairly easy.
A content cycles worth of raid content is a progression in and of itself. It starts off dead easy - to the point where top end raiders can often take on entry level raid content of a new content cycle with less than a quarter of the intended raid size. The intent is for it to get more difficult and more varied from that point.
In terms of actual difficult encounters, most games aim for 2 or 3 at the most per content cycle. Since a game like WoW has a content cycle every 2 or so years, it only has one actual difficult encounter per year. As such, the pool of difficult encounters to point to in WoW (specifically) is not in the thousands as you claim, the list of encounters that even had an attempt to be difficult is perhaps two dozen, if I were to be generous.
I mean, you don't get to point to an encounter in a game with combat trackers and say how easy it is and combat trackers are the reason, when the actual design intent behind that encounter was for it to be easy.
On the other hand, if you are going to make claims that combat trackers make content easy, or more specifically... Then all it takes to prove that comment factually incorrect is a single encounter that is objectively difficult in a game that has a high use of combat trackers.
I also simply don't play with people that don't give others time to improve. Part of improving is learning how to look at your combat log. See what killed you, see what you aren't casting enough, see what you are overcasting, see what outputs are lacking, did you accidentally have the wrong gear on. Raid leaders and experienced players help people who aren't aware become aware. This happens throughout the raids and after the raid is over. We constantly talk about how to get better.
A dps meter alone isn't enough. DPS numbers are just a check mark for what strats to use. If you aren't meeting those check marks it could be a million things other than just not being able to parse high enough. I want full combat logs for the entire raid. If the game is going to be difficult and takes weeks or months to clear content I want to be able to study the fight to get better even after the raid is over.
To me, this is akin to watching film and looking at stats after playing a game in sports. If that kind of stuff offends you and you don't want to work with the team to get better then you shouldn't be trying to do the hardest content in the game. On the same token if you aren't willing to help others and let them progress and get better you are also a bad team player and I don't want to be on your team.
As I've said many, many times in this thread, combat trackers are simply a tool that players use to get better at the game, and to assist others that want to get better at the game to do so as well.
Unfortunately, it seems that in Ashes PvE is going to be nothing more than a backdrop to the PvP experience.
If AoC has trainning dummies which you can start a 1 minute trainning session and then in the end it could show all the stats and even have a graph showing the dps performance along 1 minute. Such graph could breakdown the dps, showing the total dps, bleeding dps, poison dps, etc, all kinds of dps through that 1 minute
The trainning dummy could also keep the results from the previous session so you can compare and the biggest dps of the day so the trainning dummy would have:
Hardest content in game shouldn't mean looking at combat logs so you can understand it and have an advantage. It simply means its too hard and you can't do it on your own.
If this were the case, Ashes would have easier content than any other MMO out there.
Being "too hard to do on your own" is the definition of group content, not the definition of hard content.
It is the same shitty system EVE Online has, EVE has the zkillboard, so people do 0.1% damage on a target, then they shoot the next target... then the next... so people end up killing no one but they share thousands of kills as if they were some kind of PvP god. Dudes are just F1 monkeys and kill whores repeatdly scoring 0.1% damage on every target
I would rather people measure their build in a tranning room and then leave it behind, with no parsing... no real time dps meters... otherwise people play for scoring and not for doing their jobs in the raids and in the fights
You are missing the point if it is your own inability to figure things out and you are needing to look at other logs or use some sort of combat assistance you are effectively agreeing the game is too hard on its own and need to make it easier (in that element).
You need to use other elements of gameplay to bring difficulty where looking at combat logs won't help you clearly as much as having skill and experience. As I said before action combat is the key, make the game hard physically demanding for content. Using a mix of mobility and smart skill use, no top of of course knowing your class and how to output damage.
But main difficulty should not be from looking at logs in finding some easy loop hole to make the boss fight go easy. The gameplay should be with your eyes on the boss not looking through logs.
I mean, yeah. That's kind of the point.
Like most people, I can work out basic arithmetic in my head. No tools needed.
I can even work out some slightly more complex calculations, given time.
However, when it comes to complex trigonometry, I need tools of some form.
You are essentially suggesting Ashes content be basic arithmetic, where I totally agree tools aren't needed.
The thing is, that isnt difficult content, and will never be difficult content. If you can work it out in your head, by definition it isnt difficult.
Now, keep in mind, I am not saying all encounters should be like this - only a handful. Not everyone enjoys that kind of challenge.
However, the point remains - a game that has no tools does not allow itself to have objectively difficult content.
Since Ashes doesnt intend on allowing such tools, it cant deliver complex problems to its players. As such, all problems (and thus all content) will have to be designed to be simple.
This means no one wanting a PvE challenge will consider Ashes.
Can't say if it will be simple or not until i see what is their design goal for difficulty content and how they will approach it and not let people zerg everything.
But difficulty is retaliative, just because the designs are not over complex does not mean it isn't difficult. We also need to look at what kind of difficulty we are talking about, if it is in relation you won't know what to do unless you can look through a combat log that isn't good. You effectively are not adding difficulty its more gate keeping for those who know and those that don't. Its simply an extra step to look / cheat/ understand outside of the moment to moment gameplay.
You can't get to a conclusion people wanting a pve challenge won't just play the game like that its a lot more nuisance. Without these tools the difficulty increases since you need to figure it out, pay more attention and trial and error with more of a cost at your gear durability, etc. As I've said before difficulty can be readjusted and add a different kind of difficulty elsewhere and layer it on.
A teacher writing a math exam for students will write said exam with questions the students would be expected to be able to answer. The teacher will take in to account whether or not the students will have a calculator.
If the teacher spends some time educating the class how to solve a specific type of equation using functions on a scientific calculator, and then has an exam for that same class afterwards that does not allow students to have a calculator in hand, the teacher would be remiss if that recently learned equation was in the exam. The students would have every right to expect an exam without a calculator would see them having to answer questions they were taught how to do without using a calculator.
Likewise, content in MMO's thatvrequires a combat tracker requires a combat tracker.
If developers are not wanting combat trackers, theybhave to develop content based on players not having combat trackers.
Based on that, we absolutely can say without question (as long as Steven maintains his current position) that the content in Ashes will be simpler in design than content in other games where developers take trackers in to consideration.
This is really basic cause and effect stuff. It isn't really something that is up for debate, or something Intrepid can change - not without changing their stance on trackers.
As to being able to say players wanting PvE challenge wont come to Ashes, that absolutely is something I can say.
If the game doesnt have PvE content compariable to contemporary games, why would someone wanting good PvE come to Ashes?
Also, we have historical precedent for this. Many players wanting good PvE went to Archeage as the game was stated to have good PvE content. By Korean PvP MMO standards, it kind of did. However, that standard is well below the standard set by PvE games - and so PvE players left the game.
PvE players leaving were the first major wave of players leaving that game. They left before the changes to Thundersteuck trees (and arguably caused that change). As soon as players saw what was considered "good" content by that games standard, they just left.
(And, we shouldn't need to rely on dps meters or trackers to figure that out.)
I think if there was a trainning dummy or a trainning room in which the player run for a minute, that could register his performance.
Then when a party leader assembles the party for a raid, the party screem could simply sum up and show the numbers that the party has altogether. It is much simpler than having crazy parsing and people forcing themselves to look good in the party instead of doing their jobs and following the leader's calls during the raid
Even tough there is nothing about it in the wiki or in the streams that I watched I wonder if this will never happen. Maybe it will
The problem with blatantly obvious strengths and weaknesses is that it pigeonholes classes.
The absolute best case scenario with the kind of class setup is that groups will be forced to look for specific classes to finish off their group, so as to plug in the obvious weaknesses the group has.
Keep in mind with this as well, an aspect of a class that matters to content needs to be multiplied by four in order for players to notice it at all. What may look like a small issue to players is in fact a gaping hole to content.
The above does of course assume difficult content that challenges players.
There has been no indication of this being the case.
You are doing it on your own. You have to take the time to do research and practice. It's just tools it's not telling you how to do it or doing it for you.
If it doesn't require that then the content would be too easy to keep hardcore players engaged. There is content that my friends and I can wing. New dungeons come out and we blind run them. We do generic strats, figure out some mechanics and one shot them. Those are now done. One day and the content is over. That's too easy for us.
The combat logs are a tool. Tools that many hardcore players enjoy to see their progress and learn what to improve on. If you don't need them, that suggests to me that the content is too easy. If it takes weeks or months of engagement then a lack of combat logs will be frustrating. I know this isn't just my unique opinion. There is a large community of endgame raiders that do this and enjoy the process. Raid, research, grind, practice, progress. The progress after all that work is rewarding.