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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
Ashes will not have a dev supported tracker, this is clearly stated.
The discussion should probably focus on
What should the stance be about 3rd party programs, because they do exist, and nothing Intrepid can do will stop them from existing.
Do they, go full stop ban anyone that has one? (A risky stance since they have to install a program on your computer to look at what else is running, which is illegal in many eastern countries, a big market for them to not sell the game in just to snoop on us)
Do they, ban people caught using one? A common stance in the industry of dont ask dont tell, and what I personally think is the best solution, since it allows people to use what they want anyway, and gives the pitchfork wielders a sense of victory that they get to be 'right'. Everyone wins.
Do they just acknowledge the existence and warn against use because its not their program and they cant gaurantee its not malware? And then we all go along with our daily grind?
DPS meters dont hurt anyone, meta gamers going to meta game one way or another, tools or no tools. Toxic gamers going to be toxic tools or no tools.
**Deadly Boss Mods** style addons **DO** hurt everyone as a community, and should be a different discussion than DPS meters.
Really though, its a live and let live kind of situation. Me or anyone use measuring dps doesnt affect you or anyone else that doesnt use one.
In the words of Mr. Rogers. "Cant we all just get along?"
Trackers will make fights easier, so pvers with them will ask for harder fights. If Intrepid comply, people who were maybe able to do those encounters before would either have to go use trackers or completely forget about any future encounters.
If Intrepid don't comply - they lose hardcore pvers. At which point I'm not even sure if it would be worth it to advertise their game as "having good pve". The latest Steven appearance kiiiiinda touched on this, but he just weaseled himself out of a comparison between super basic pve of games like AA by saying "well, you'd have to give a direct example, but we're definitely making difficult pve for Ashes, sir yes sir".
The worst thing in all of this, as you and others have pointed out already, is that Intrepid wouldn't ever know if the top pvers even have trackers on their PCs. Obviously it would be logical to assume they do, but you'd never know for sure. And at that point Intrepid would be trying to figure out if their current pve encounters are just the right amount of fun for the most amount of players or if it's so damn hard for the 95%, while it's super easy for the 5% who have trackers.
And there'd be a super vocal minority on both sides, so it's not like Intrepid could simply look at feedback and just decide which way it is.
people with DPS meters arent any better at the game than people without. source: I've cleared every content in wow and ff14 (every content, meaning the ultimates too). I am a speedrunner type of player, I like to study encounters and optimize my ability use to squeeze out even the tiniest bit more damage to go faster. I am not the best player, but I am certainly a tryhard and I like to do the big damages, and usually find myself measured in the top 5% or better.
Doesnt make me a better player, or the fights easier that I can measure my teams performance. Just gives me a way to look at the fights after the raid night is over before we go back the next day.
I still have to learn and understand all the mechanics, by watching video recordings of my or other players at the same prog point I am on, and that research has nothing to do with a dps meter, this research right here is what seperates good players that clear fast from decent players. Not a dps meter, but hours spent during prog reviewing footage.
I still have to perform, the mechanics dont simply do themselves just because I know what damage is. the meters just allow me to analyze and science things better to develop better solutions to the raid.
Mixed into this entire 200 page "debate" is DBM addons, or their equivalent in other games.
DBM style addons however, play the game for people, to the point where is there even a point to calling yourself a gamer if you rely on them. There is no fun or challenge when I have something on my screen that says "GO STAND OVER HERE, AND USE THIS ABILITY!!" and then draws an arrow for me telling me where to go. In my eyes that is a totally different discussion than a dps meter. This garbage ruins the game for everyone in my opinion.
I dont care about triggers that say an aoe is about to go off, when I can also just look with my own eyes to see that yes indeed, the aoe is about to go off. Doesnt really impact things in my view. I do care when a third party app plays the game for someone however.
Those mmos are in your head. If you ever get 40mil to start with, go make them. And least when I talk about stuff I base them on reality.
Say there's a super hardcore boss. With a tracker that explains to you everything that has happened in the fight to the minute detail you can manage to beat the boss after 50 tries (I know this is a super low attempt quantity, but whatever). W/o said tracker it'd take you way longer to figure out where exactly you could max out your output or where you had issues with boss mechanics, so instead of 50 it'd be 100 tries (again, purely for example).
If said boss respawns twice a week that's a difference of half a damn year, which is supposedly the content release schedule for Intrepid. So instead of consuming all the top tier content in half the time, you give devs more time to feed you content.
And as I said already, in the context of trackers, once you're done with that kind of difficulty of bosses you'd want a great new challenge. And in this scenario you'd want that challenge halfway till expansion, while other players (of supposedly same skill) that weren't using the tracker would be still figuring out how to beat the boss.
And for the next expansion Intrepid might look at groups of tracker people and say, well if we don't give them good new challenges they might get bored with the game, but if we introduce even harder bosses then everyone w/o trackers would never keep pace with the updates nor with tracker people (which is bad in the context of a pvx game).
At which point Intrepid would have a few choices: disregard the tracker people, disregard the non-tracker people, separate the content into difficulty ranges (pretty much impossible for open world content so this is kinda out of the picture) or make twice as much content in half the time. All of those choices are shite for a dev company, as far as I understand it.
And for the non-tracker players there'd pretty much be no other choice other than to start using trackers as well, at which point it's no longer "live and let live", it's just a "my way or the highway" approach.
If it takes someone half a year to clear a boss, trying every week
1) Either the boss is extremely over tuned, and probably not meant to be cleared except by less than 1% of the playerbase anyway.
2) or they have major issues performing mechanics that have nothing to do with pushing more DPS numbers, and more to do with very basic raid requirements such as awareness and coordination.
The real path forward to clearing bosses in a reasonably fast measure of time is reviewing video footage that you or others record to figure out the tricks to mechanics. DPS checks do exist, but have only ever held back groups for a little while, on the scale of a few weeks at best. Never in the history of RPG games held back groups for half a year.
But maybe I am wrong, maybe Intrepid plan to go with mechanically simple bosses where the entire focus is on tank and spank pushing big damage, who knows I guess. I would personally not like that, I am hoping for mechanically complex encounters like in Wildstar or FF14.
In the case Intrepid make fights very simple, I yield to you that a DPS meter is a bigger advantage here than it would be in other games.
They literarily aren't going for ff14 or WoW, their challenges and mechanics are going to revolve around more pvx and open dungeons. So if you are expecting something like one person does not do the mech right so its a raid wipe instantly, that wont be a thing.
I think it is reasonable to assume that the FFXIV outcome would happen.
The sort of person who doesn't want the equivalent of a Tracker is often content believing that others aren't using them.
Like people who don't believe in knowing frame data.
If you won't get banned for using a combat tracker, so many people will straight up tell you they use a combat tracker that you expect the vast majority of non-casual players to be using combat trackers.
I'm sure Intrepid will make sure you get banned for any blatant violations of their ironclad ToS, yes.
This is the best way to handle it in my opinion.
The raiders that want it get to know what damage is, and no one has to know or be bothered by it. Everyone wins.
The problem with WoW isn't combat trackers. If trackers were the issue, then Archeage would be the least toxic game out there, and EQ2 would be the most toxic - but in reality EQ2 is the least toxic community I have ever played in, and Archeage is the most.
The problem with WoW is the LFG/LFR system. If you create a major system in your game that treats players as disposable, you shouldn't be surprised if players start treating each other as disposable.
If you are running a group or raid and a combat tracker is giving you information that suggests someone in the raid isn't performing their role as expected, that isn't toxic in and of itself (that is the only thing a combat tracker can do in this regard).
It is what happens from this point on that could be considered toxic though. If the raid leader decides to boot you from the raid for poor performance, and argument could be made that this is toxic. However, a raid leader is only going to boot you from the raid that is already in progress if they are confident they can quickly replace you. If there is no methord to easily replace you, then the raid leaders best option is to try and help you improve.
So, the game system that is causing toxicity in this situation is not the combat tracker, it is the LFG/LFR system - or the family summons in the case of Ashes.
I've said a few times in this thread that a singular person that is just a somewhat capable muppet filling a spot in a raid does't need to use one. It is only the people actually working shit out that need them - be that builds or encounters.
I base them on reality as well. I just know that people like you have significantly different experiences to someone like me - and I also happen to know that people like you assume that what ever game they happen to be playing is the hardest, because you would not want to be seen playing what is inherently an easy game.
To the above, I agree. It is unusual that a mob would take 6 months or more to kill - but it does indeed happen. I have seen a boss that was killed by 0.0002% of the player base before the next content cycle with a level cap increase came out. I have no expectation of any encounter even remotely close to that being even considered for Ashes.
Your comment on what Ashes bosses will be is fairly accurate. For the most part they will mechanically simple encounters, because the "challenge" for them is supposed to come from PvP, not from the encounters. You can't really have an encounter like Yogg-Saron while there are other players fighting you as well. Then there is the fact that most Ashes raids (perhaps all - Intrepid haven't said anything on this as yet) will not be restricted in terms of player numbers - you could well have 40 people trying to kill the encounter, or you could have 400.
The basics of the games design prevent actually worthwhile boss encounters (as in, the encounter itself is worthwhile) from existing.
As to your discussion on how Intrepid should look at trackers - the tracker I have right now is able to parse combat from the games livestreams, and work is being done on getting it to run on Android. Even if Intrepid installed something to hunt out a combat tracker, they can only install that on the computer that has their client. If my tracker isn't on that computer, they can't do a whole lot.
Your comments on DBM being a different thing is very true. Throughout this thread I have talked about combat trackers (which many people erroniously call DPS meters - that is one function of a combat tracker) and combat assistants.
Blah blah blah.
Show a video or shut up.
DBM doesn't just track combat though, a combat tracker is doing nothing but tracking (or monitoring).
Have you literally ever seen anyone talking about difficult MMO's in general who mentions ESO without being laughed at?
Your mmos exist only in your head. Show a difficult, wholesome PvE encounter or shut up.
While I won't say they don't exist, I have yet to see a finished version of a combat tracker that measures player output but doesn't also have the ability to monitor for enemy ability trigger alerts.
This is why I would suggest that a DPS meter is a function of a combat tracker.
3 replies to this.
1, as is my reply to anyone that demands anything from me - no.
2, I've already mentioned such encounters by name. Videos of them don't exist because people in games that are actually competitive don't record them. Even if they did exist, if you aren't familiar with the mechanics via actually playing the encounters in question, a video of a compex encounter isn't going to be able to show you anything of value.
3, wha the fuck does "wholesome" have to do with anything?
My numbers were there just for an extreme example, but the point still stands. PvE difficulty will get out of hand much quicker if Intrepid decides to completely accept the existence of meters/trackers. Obviously that existence is inevitable, but it's more about how Intrepid approach that inevitability rather than the sheer argument of what they should do about allowing or prohibiting meters.
Also they nerfed Baltheus so there's that.