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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
No, I'm not.
I'm waiting for you to reasonably and logically respond to the above point that tools are perfectly valid in the right hands, even if not great in the wrong hands.
The point you would need to make in reply to that is in regards to the effect it would have if some people have access to a tool that jot everyone has, as that is literally the only valid direction you can take things.
Obviously, I have a reply to that, but I cant provide said reply until you make the point.
Your other options are to opt to not further the discussion, or attempting to redirect the discussion.
The only real redirect you have is the notion that people wint agree, which is essentially a statement of understanding that you have no reason as to why I shouldnt have a combat tracker as long as you dont have to use one.
not in the games I've played. i also like to count how many hits I need to kill a mob, so stats increase don't matter if I need the same amount of hits to kill said mob. also doubling how many of the same mob you kill per hour is a significant improvement, and by counting how many hits you need to kill them 9or by simply seeing the hp of the mob in games that display it) you can tell if you are improving or not without a dps meter.
Almost without question, yes, in games you have played. Assuming, of course, you play MMORPG's. If you aren't running a combat tracker (and paying obsessive attention to parse data spanning months or even years), you are in no position to say it does or doesn't happen in games you play.
The thing with the way you are doing things is that a 1% change to a mobs HP isn't going to alter how many attacks it takes you to kill it. However, it will alter how long it takes to AoE large numbers of mobs.
Also, you are not both counting how many hits it takes to kill a mob and also counting that you have killed 800 mobs per hour.
I mean, I could continue to pick holes in your story here all day.
You have claimed you measure your proficiency by measuring how many mobs you kill per hour - but how are you accounting for travel time? What about variation in mob spawn times?
Also, I have yet to come across a game that has any mob challenging enough to be valid for a test of player improvement, yet that will see 800 of that mob exist within a given 1 hour period. Honestly sounds like a shit game.
Or bullshit.
well, you can also measure it by items gathered per hour. if the Mob you are killing drops an item with a 100% chance, and one day you get 400 of those per hour, then the next day 500, then 600, then 800, etc, arent you improving? you are doing something that makes you do more damage per hour in the same map/spot/area and then you keep doing that consistently for days, weeks or months.
idk why you keep arguing that its not doable. so how do people improve without dps meters?
and not every game is eq where you kill 1 mob then you have to sit for 10 mins, but even in a game like that...if you are able to go from 3 mobs per hour, to 4, to 5 to 6, arent you improving?
there are different ways to improve in different situations. maybe going form dying 10 times, to dying 5 times, to dying once is an improvement. maybe you learned the attack animations and you are able to dodge them now, etc.
you are only considering dpsing, or dpsing a dummy target.
how did people improve before dps trackers or in games where you don't have trackers? no one has still answered that. maybe people are willing to say it is impossible to improve without tracking tools?
I did answer this.
Regardless of whether or not people improve without trackers, trackers came before the games that needed them.
Therefore there has never been a period where MMOs didn't have trackers.
Maybe a period when few people understood or had them. Maybe a period where a specific game didn't give most people any way to use them. But because of the 'arms race' between 'ways to hide data from the client' and 'ways to parse the data' always favoring the second, there is no 'game before trackers'.
bruh you know what I mean...games that didn't offer trackers to the players. (or no third party trackers).
you still haven't answered how do you improve without using a tracker, or are you implying its impossible to improve without using a tracking tool?
I'm sorry, I actually didn't think you meant that because of the MMOs I played.
But I think that MMOs with combat logs, by nature, came before MMOs that managed to not show the combat logs.
Any game that has either a combat log or a visible HP bar for something has everything that you need to make a tracker. So I'm seriously trying to understand what you mean. You didn't give any examples of games you knew, like that, so I thought maybe you didn't know that games have always had trackers.
Meridian59, UO, even early MUDs, they all had tools that today would be considered combat trackers.
Hell, even first edition D&D had tools for measuring combat effectiveness.
Literally every MMO you have ever played has had someone use a combat tracker or similar tool, and share the knowledge they gained from it.
Once again, you have literally no idea of knowing if it is you improving, or the content being made easier.
You are welcome to claim you are getting better in relation to the content, but that doesn't mean you are getting better.
With a combat tracker, I am able to look at a fight with a mob I had today vs the same raid boss last week, last month last year or even last decade. I am able to look at how many HP the mob has, defenses the mob has, attacks the mob has etc. A combat tracker is able to work these things out, so I am able to be sure I am fighting the same mob with the same stats - the thing I am telling you that you are not able to be sure of.
If I kill a boss, for example, and when I look at the logs afterwards I see that it has fewer HP than a previous kill of the same mob, or I see that it has different mitigation, block, dodge or resistances, I know I can't directly compare our recent kill against a previous kill.
Not at all.
A combat tracker can measure effectiveness of active blocking, as an example.
A combat tracker can measure literally everything - and I mean everything. As I said in a recent thread, I have seen a combat tracker used to for text-to-speech functions so players can listen to NPC,s guild and raid chat. I have seen combat trackers used to track market information, harvesting data, crafting data, you name it.
But yeah, sure, just DPS.
As to how players improved in games where they didn't use combat trackers - you are assuming that people not using combat trackers in general actively pay attention to this. In my experience, there are *very* few people that want to track their own progress but dont want to use a tool to assist in doing so.
I'm not sure if there have been any updates on this matter, but this was the situation on page 50, someone please correct me if something isn't true.
AOC doesn't have build in DPS meters/ACTs
IS doesn't support the use of 3rd party tools
IS considers the use of 3rd party tools being against the rules
Use of 3rd party tools could be bannable offense?
Assuming everything above is still true, I think that some having access to ACTs while others don't, could be harmful especially for one specific group of players; competitive players who don't want to use ACTs.
Resources in AOC will be limited and contested, and players with ACTs will have competitive advantage over the players that don't use ACTs. If the use of ACTs were to be allowed but made optional, it wouldn't really be optional to the players/guilds who want to be competitive, on equal footing with players/guilds who are using ACTs.
From the 50 pages that I read, I can say that majority of the people don't seem to want DPS meters/ACTs in AOC. So majority of players don't want these tools in the game and allowing the use of these tools, even if optional, would force a lot of players to use them even if they wouldn't want to.
Therefore I'm happy with the direction that IS is taking regarding DPS meters, assuming my information on this is up to date.
Yup most people don't want it and the same people try to argue for it, stance is the same. Game will have a combat log so anyone can use that to improve.
Yep, you got it, the thread takes a specific 'turn' after that, which keeps coming up, so in case you do care, and since I'm pretty neutral...
[Those who support or don't care about ACTs] then try to figure out if [those who dislike them], understand that the current stance won't avoid them (similar to what happens in FFXIV).
[Those people] then ask clarifying questions (and argue with two specific posters), many times getting clarification or giving clarification (about the fact that these tools are mostly unavoidable/undetectable)
[Those who dislike them] either 'retain their opinion, not caring that people will have them, only that they don't become the visible meta', or 'change their minds when they learn that these tools can't really be prevented if a combat log exists or if information is presented to players visually'.
So the 'argument', relative to your understanding, is 'Do you understand that nothing will prevent competitive players/guilds from having or using these, all you can prevent is those users talking openly about them?' with a few recent 'organic' posts more on the 'support for ACTs' side.
So the same question would go to you. If you are happy with the direction, is it because you don't care about whether or not competitive groups use them as long as they can be disciplined for using them if someone leaks the fact that they do (FFXIV stylle) or are you happy because you don't actually understand that no game that presents visual data in this era can avoid having these, or reliably detect them?
Sometimes people have stances that come off a bit weird to the supporters/neutrals when it comes down to that question, and the thread balloons another few pages while one supporter (Noaani) and one neutral (me) half-argue with claims from one neutral (Mag7spy) who sometimes... acts like an opponent (but as far as I can tell doesn't care that a combat log exists and also understands that people can write parsers for those easily, so is mainly arguing for a design space that wouldn't cause this to be very beneficial).
So the thread isn't really about 'DPS Meters' at all at this point, it's about the concept of difficulty in content.
Then the AI may have a 30-60s timer for the next aggro switch, the aggro switch will go to the person who dealt more damage. This is how you know who has more DPS, the aggro will rotate around the players with the biggest DPS.
If you are the aggro target and you have no tank, then you gotta lower your DPS and let someone else take the next aggro switch.
Works for me, it clearly indicates who is the top dps and there's no meters or parsers.
Right, that's a nice, simplistic system that a certain level of player/tactician can understand and handle without a tracker.
So if we were to continue discussion based on this premise, it would become about how 'that's not really hard enough content', or 'that has nothing to do with trackers'. Whether you understand that yourself or not isn't even really that relevant since the bases are different.
If you enjoy games where that's all you need or want, then good. Some players, particularly 'punishingly difficult PvE enjoyers', don't find such games engaging at all, so they are coming from a different place.
I have the fortune of being that type of player but not personally needing the Tracker as often, but the level of gameplay that I enjoy because it's at my personal limit of what I can do without the Tracker is the level where many other people want one.
And those people would have one, and then I'd be disadvantaged for 'playing as intended'. And then like an idiot, I will keep doing so until either "I get caught in a wave of mass bans with false positives for being a savant" or "The game falls apart because the advantage for those who actually use the trackers is too great for anyone to compete with them".
I expect this outcome, whereas Noaani expects the 'People like me won't even play because it will be BDO PvE tier'.
In EVE's fitting window, is where you setup your ship, all its modules and subsystems, the window perfectly tells you your DPS, resistances, literally everything. So no metters are needed, because EVE's fitting is so vast and rich that everybody says it is a mini-game within a bigger game, people spent literally hours fitting ships and enjoying. Many people sometimes didn't even undock the ship for the day.
It is also possible simulate future fittings, because the in the fitting window it is available all items and all it's variants in the game!
I used meters in WoW, they are great for knowing the results of the build.... it is necessary because WoW character window sucks.
I understand if you get frustrated by having no meters in AoC, another way of countering this problem would be having an amazing character window where you can simulate builds even with items that you didn't acquire yet... just like EVE lets you do it (it also shows all the dps split through damage types)
For some people this would be enough. For some people this would be too much. It all depends on their goals.
What if people don't want to feel forced to do that?
What if people kick someone else from a group/guild because 'You can just look at the stat screen and simulate the best build for that Class, why would you even want to waste our time getting an item for your build that doesn't match the best build for this content and doesn't appear in any of the builds for the content in our region?'
That's kind of the point. There are definitely players who would be upset if the game offered an extremely detailed stat screen if other people started asking for a screenshot of that screen because 'toxicity'.
And then there are definitely players who will figure out how to screenshot a good build as if they have it, cover it with cosmetics, and use their normal build, and fail the expectations of the group because they 'don't feel like they should have to conform and actually have all the items of the best build'.
That's why it's easy for me, at least, to be neutral. People who want the information will have it. Those who don't, won't have it, and as long as those people don't mix, all is good for me, because I can adapt to whatever the game requires for me to enjoy the experience type I like.
You are perfectly describing the carebear paranoia!
In EVE, everybody use the fitting window in simulation mode and simulate other people's ships before fighting them... then the other guy changes something and transform his ship in a bait ship. It is fun
I'm truly amazed at how deftly you can make everything about 'the carebears'.
Many people hate to lose and hate to feel inferior. I have friends who are not the brightest bulbs in the box who get discouraged because they can't figure out that sort of thing on the fly and have to rely on me for it.
I can't say for you specifically, but I will say that I've met quite a few people who moreso lack empathy for those who have these issues. It's like calling someone who isn't good at doing arithmetic in their head a loser for using a calculator to multiple two six digit numbers because 'you know a guy that can do that in his head'.
Fantasy MMOs are stat blocks. Any game based on anything remotely resembling a D20 system will lead to some people wanting a Tracker purely because the Evasion and Accuracy stats exist, regardless of what the stat sheet says.
I'll continue to be the carebear that worries about those people in games where there is no Tracker. You can continue to be the anti-carebear that tears down their 'paranoia' about how their Accuracy +4 weapon isn't doing what they expect Accuracy +4 to do.
Tell me something you would like in this matter, I am very curious about knowing what "the other side" thinks about such trivial things
As I said, I don't really want anything. I'm neutral even if I don't seem like it.
If Steven makes a game that has Accuracy and Evasion in it, makes the PvE hard, and says 'No Trackers Allowed', then the game will get players who are okay with all those things AND with the result that people who use the Trackers will generally have the advantage. Other people will hopefully just not play a game they don't enjoy.
All I want is for people to understand what they're getting into. So I guess I want it to be clear to people that the whole 'We aren't allowing Third Party Tools' will not result in 'no Third Party Tools', it will result in FFXIV endgame situations like the recent beef between Yoshi-P and that guild.
Or as Noaani expects, it will result in BDO Tier PvE. It's not that I absolutely can't parse BDO, it's that BDO doesn't even have things like elemental resistances or separate magic defense stats and their PvE has like 2 worthwhile encounters in the entire game.
As long as everyone knows what they want and what they're getting, 'the Free Market' will handle Ashes.
If you consider it worthwhile to get people's opinions on 'very detailed stat screens' and/or 'Accuracy vs Evasion parsing', another thread would be nicer. Normally I respond in this one because it helps it 'return to the grave' faster.
People are pretty much walking in circles in this topic
Have been for years
Yeah that seems about on par what I was expecting to come next.
Oh I know that there's nothing that will completely prevent the use of ACTs and they will exist in the game to some extent. As of right now, I'm leaning towards IS heavily discouraging their use, ie. it would be seen as a bannable offence if there is any proof of their use. So pretty much the same mentality as in FPS games with wallhacking etc. This may sound like a harsh direction to take, when ACTs are allowed in other games, but if IS thinks the game would be better off without ACTs (which is something I agree with) and they are against rules, it's better to enforce the rules properly.
I think this could be good for the game long term, because some of the players who enjoy the game loop that ACTs bring (analyzing objective data to defeat challenging encounters) will eventually leave because the game doesn't offer enough challenge. Of course there's others that use them just to gain an advantage and don't care about the content itself, but I hope that with enforcing the rules strictly and not caving in to the demands of the ACT users, they would not become a considerable issue long term. Treat the issue like bots and RMT. These will exist no matter what, but IS with their actions can affect how big of a problem they are.
With all that said. Whatever happens regarding all this, it probably won't affect my gameplay experience much at all, as I don't really do raiding. This is just what I think would be best for the majority of AOC community, and I think that's important for the games success.
I don't really have a problem against the proper use of ACTs. My biggest concern is the improper use of ACT (the literal DPS meter in this case) that has negative effect on large portion of the player base. I want to take DPS out of the damn pedestal so that it doesn't determine players' value. I want players value to be determined by their actual performance, which DPS is part of but not to the extent that relatively small differences should determine who/what class/build is worthy of a spot in the party, who is the reason the raid is wiping, who is actually a good player that brings value to the party. Determine what the actual problems are, and work it out.
(And I know the proper use of ACTs would help to determine the "actual" value of the players based on objective data, and help to determine what the actual problems are. I get that, really, if someone is thinking about clinging on this point, don't, because the reason I don't support even the proper use of ACTs in AOC is coming)
AFAIK the reason for wipes usually is something else than a minor DPS difference and majority of the encounters don't actually require the most optimal DPS from the party. So why fixate on the DPS so hard. Yes there are encounters with hard and soft DPS checks (AFAIK often some seconds or minutes long burst dmg checks, which can differ a lot from encounter long DPS), and when they are struggling to pass those, now is the time to fixate on DPS.
So less fixating on DPS, which would hopefully cripple the minmax meta slavery culture which is something I dislike. I think the literal DPS meters, especially the ones that give you live data during the encounter, are a if not the culprit of this culture.
As far as the proper use of ACTs. I personally would prefer more of a trial and error type of approach to raiding, that is if I would care about raiding, which I really don't. And if this was a PVE MMO (WoW, FFXIV etc.) I wouldn't care what type of methods people use in raiding, because it really doesn't affect other people's raiding (outside of maybe world 1sts).
In this case tho, as AOC is a PvX MMO, where dungeons, bosses etc. are contested, players actions will affect each others, so I think that someone using methods that are outside of the rules set by the game developer and aren't wanted by the majority of the players, is a problem that should be dealt with the best way we can.
On the other hand, I don't really care about any of this... : )
The problem with this is that DPS is what about 75% of those present in a group or raid are there to provide. More DPS means being able to run more content which means more rewards which means more future success.
This is why it is on such a pedestal, as you put it.
It is an unfortunate truth that someone bought in to a group or raid as DPS can literally have their value determined by how much DPS they bring to said group or raid. Unfortunate, but still a truth.
Some people try and use the argument that players still need to perform encounter mechanics and such, and this is a factor external to DPS - but it isnt. You do indeed need to perform those actions, and then get back to DPS'ing. Thus those that are best at those actions have more time to DPS, and those that are bad at the actions will die and have lower DPS. So really, every aspect of a DPS class performance can be measured by their DPS output - for better or for worse.
In my experience, the biggest single difference between top end players and those playing games not at the top end is the acceptance - and even embracing - of this fact.
People in top end raid guilds know they are in their guild to provide a singular function. This is accepted and embraced, as I said. People in such guilds even compete with each other internally to this effect, with players always trying to do better than their peers. This has the added effect of increasing camaraderie within a guild - and indeed is a tactic militaries use to this effect (friendly competition with each other to both better oneself and improve overall morale).
It is in this atmosphere that combat trackers are literally nothing but a win. A win for players, a win for developers.
An argument can be made that combat trackers can be harmful when used outside of this atmosphere. I have never seen it first hand personally, but I accept that it can happen. I can see how people that see top end players using trackers and competing in a friendly manner with each other may misunderstand what is going on, and if such a person were to run a pickup group, I can see how they would massively misuse a combat tracker.
This is why the suggestion throughout this thread has always been for a combat tracker as a guild perk, but where that combat tracker only tracks combat of members of that guild.
What this leaves us with is a situation where guilds can opt to have the above situation, if they value data over what other guild perk options are offered. However, it also means that players not wanting a combat tracker used on them, and it means players like the above player that misunderstood the point of a tracker is not in a position to use a tracker in a pick up group at all. It also puts trackers in the hands of the most analytical players - these are the same people that will tear apart the games combat system to find bugs, that will parse builds for other players just because it is fun, basically all of the general good that combat trackers can have in a game as a whole happen when these analytical players have access to them and can discuss their findings - and the above still allows for that,
To me, this is the best possible outcome for all players.
It is worth pointing out that while I have previously said that if a tracker like this is built in to the game, development on the third party trackers that I am aware of would stop. However, while this is still technically true, with ChatGPT being a thing now, it is possible for someone that doesnt even know basic coding to make a totally undetectable combat tracker in an afternoon.
MMORPG content should not be designed to require DPS meters as tools - which is why the devs should not include DPS meters.
"Back in the day, when MMOs were great, you had to win your encounters through trial and error. You didn't have a DPS meter telling you, 'Oh! We need to get up to 67.7% damage in order to achieve the whatever!' It wasn't some mechanical bullshit experience where you got to look at a graph or chart and say, 'Oh! We need to do exactly this.' Instead, you actually had to be present, you had to watch what was happening, you had to help your fellow guild members learn how to play the game and you had to excel as a group."
---Steven
I've never asked actually.
How do you feel about the Accuracy and Evasion stats and their effects on player effectiveness and 'DPS'?
I ask because the primary reason most people I know ever care about Trackers comes from the fact that Acc and Eva stats, especially opposed to each other directly, is squarely in the realm of 'statistical analysis' that becomes very hard to do without a Tracker, and often, it's directly the 'DPS' portion, so it's fair enough to say that most of the time, someone who cares about that aspect really does want the 'DPS meter'.
Do you prefer that Accuracy and Evasion are not parts of the game, that they're 'very straightforward', or that players basically just guess how much they should aim for in their builds (or any other perception you have about it, I don't mean to limit the 'choices' here).
In any RPG, I expect to be able to build a character with high Accuracy and/or high Evasion stats.
But, I don't need to know the stats of my group mates or dictate how they allocate their stats.
I also don't need to review the combat stats and try to determine the most efficient path to success.
I just need to be able to determine a viable path to success based on how my group mates use their abilities.
And, because it's an RPG, that is best done without reducing everything to DPS meter numbers.
We should not be looking at a combat tracker to evaluate who, individually, has a low DPS.
Rather, we should all be striving to synergize our Active Skills and Augments with our group mates to stack our strengths and shore up our weaknesses.
We shouldn't need to rely on combat trackers to figure out how to do that.
I don't need a combat tracker to know how to min/max my stats.
A combat tracker can not tell you that you need 67.7% more DPS. It can only tell you what DPS you had.
The above quote is literally Steven saying "I am ignorant as to what a tracker actually can and can not do, and I think it does things that it actually does not. These things that a tracker can not do that I think they can do are things I do not want in Ashes, therefore I am not going to openly allow them".
Essentially, it is proof that he formed an opinion without any relevant information, and then acted on that opinion.
The above quote is kind of the reason why many people will have no problems using a tracker in Ashes anyway, as it is just proving that the reason for the "ban" is unfounded. It is the reason why Intrepid staff (either past, present or both, I will not disclose) have worked on trackers for the game.
Alright, I was moreso referring to a specific thing from some other games that is probably not relevant to you.
In case you've never experienced it, there are certain games where top content will become very difficult if not impossible to defeat if your character is lacking the accuracy to consistently hit them or can only achieve the accuracy to consistently hit them by trading other 'damage' related stats.
It is a common thing for people in that situation to use the Tracker because it's a catch-22 from the design part. Adding more Damage stats does not matter if you miss, and vice versa to some extent.
That's all I'll say, I don't think this is really your type of thing anyway. My only point was that this is one of the situations where I feel it's hard to make a real argument against the tracker because 'Accuracy vs Evasion' is often very statistical and RNG dependent, leading to situations where you get a bad RNG streak and feel like you should change your build (to add more Accuracy or Evasion) when you don't need to, and it ends up being unnecessary (and you still lose because that's the difficulty level of the content).
I'm sure there must be some game where Acc and Eva are meaningful and yet you can avoid this situation, I probably just haven't played it.
Thanks for answering.