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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
And I do agree that just knowing that you can enjoy the gameplay itself and not always lose, cause you didn't spend 20h going through spreadsheets and/or YT guides, is quite comforting.
I mean more so the argument of player don't want to think for themselves / communicate with others so they need dps meters if combat isn't simple.
This is absolutely true, but isn't a mark against trackers.
In EQ2 I was in a guild with someone that was a fairly good player. Was about where top end players of her class should be. As the game progressed though, she started falling behind. We looked jn to why, and it turns out that the better builds for her class was improving over time mostly due to becoming faster, and she had hit the point where the latency in her connection just wasn't up to standard (Australian internet in the mod 2000's - if you know, you know).
So, we did some work on exactly how fast her build could be before she hit those issues, and then created a build for her that was at that pace, and added other improvements for the rest of her build.
She wasn't quite at the same level as others of her class, but she got Close.
Nothing in that is a mark against a combat tracker. It allowed us tor know she was a good player, it allowed us to know she was falling behind, it allowed us to work out why, and it allowed us to build the best build we could for her.
Now, some guilds in some games would have booted her for poor performance - this is usually where people start to think negatively about trackers. The problem is, the tracker isn't the thing that made such guilds boot the player in question.
Generally, in games where the game treats players as disposable, players also treat players as disposable. In games where the game treats players with respect, players trest other players with respect.
Both WoW and Archeage treat players as disposable. In WoW, you would get booted for under performing, and in Archeage you would get booted for being the wrong class.
EQ2 (and other games, we just both know EQ2 is my primary experience of this), players were treated with respect - no automated group systems, no stupid daily quests or login rewards etc. As such, it was normal for guilds to try and work through issues as per thr above.
In all of that, I fail to see how anyone can point at combat trackers as being a negative.
This is a argument Ive seen before and just dont understand where its coming from. DPS meters are a reporting tool, not a make combat easier tool.
A dps meter reports what damage was, what healing and shielding or mitigation was.
It can show you which of your skills the majority of your damage comes from, all sorts of things can be analyzed after the fight.
But in no way, does it simplify combat. A lazy player in the game that doesnt want to think for themselves is even less likely to go through the effort of actually using the dps meter in a way that will improve their performance.
Indeed.
The more an encounter varies, the easier it will be.
It is worth keeping in mind that Steven has also said he wants guilds to be able to plan to take on an encounter, and head out with character builds in order to facilitate that. This means that the changes to encounters need to be so small that they won't even alter the build you want.
let me ask you this, would you guys have booted her if none of you had had a tracker? would other guilds had booted her if no one had had a tracker?
you didnt kick her because you took the time to analyze all the data and help her, and that was my point. at a personal level, they are useful. but how many people are going to takethe time to do that?
if you have 100 guilds in the game, and only 3 would have kept her and the other 97 would have kicked her because of the info on the tracker, even if its not the tracker's fault, dont you think adding it to the game causes more harm than good at a global scale?
also, why would anyone kick her anyways...people could just take someone else to the raid and she could have joined a 2nd party or something if its a raid that is tight on time and you cant really afford someone doing less damage than what they are supposed to be doing and the guild only has the exact amount of players to do that raid. maybe just recruit more people idk, but kickign someone because they are falling behind is silly. how do you know they are falling behind? because the tracker tells you.
with no tracker, other guilds wouldnt have thought about kicking her, and with no tracker would have had to actually experiment and improve and figure things out, instead of having a tool telling you what to do, which is the intent of this game.
Kash | Content Creator/Podcaster | Twitter X @KashQuests | Twitch.tv/LoreForgedHQ | LoreForged.com
Most interesting person so far.
So you tend to minmax, you HAVE used them, you're happy they 'won't be in Ashes'.
Some people already have one for Ashes. You're like me then, in that you don't wanna bother using it, so the fact that the game won't let anyone ask you whether you actually did all the grinding or not, is good?
Also do you like Armored Core?
In itself, sure.
The thing is, you need to look at both things together.
Sure, giving people a combat tracker will help them build better classes faster, and in isolation that means players get through content faster.
But that same combat tracker allows developers to develop more intricate content, meaning good developers should be able to produce content that takes players as long to clear as those developers want it to take.
Not having a tracker would also mean (in that game) that we simply were not working on top end content like we were - straight up not possible in EQ2.
In an attempt to answer your question assuming we just wave away the above two points, I'd say that we would have noticed the drop in performance, and would have attempted to do what we could to help. If we couldn't get her back up to a place we were all happy with, we wouldn't have booted her, she would have left ss that is just how the guild operated. Everyone in it was mostly friends with everyone else, we were there to take on top end content, if someone was stopping that they would have stepped aside in order to not hold back their friends.
Guilds in EQ2 were generally kept as lean as reasonably possible due to the way guild leveling worked. If someone wasn't raiding, they weren't in the guild. This is why I've said many times that if a game asks for raids of 24 people, I'll run guilds of 27 people.
We do usually also have a friends/family/alt guild, and in the above actuation this is probably where she would have gone (though we would all understand and support her decision if she wanted to join a lower tier raiding guild, he alts and such are still welcome in the alt guild).
The part about this you are forgetting is that it means the guild is now dragging someone under performing.
In games with actual top end content, this means the whole guilds progression is stopped. So, where you say without trackers the guild wouldn't kick her in the first place, I say that without trackers the entire guilds progression is stopped. Kicking her (not that we would do that, as per above) would upset one player. The guilds progression stopping upsets one guild.
The only way to prevent the whole guilds progression stopping is if encounters are intentionally designed where a guild can carry under performing players even if they don't realize. Basically, if the developers don't make too end encounters at all.
dont you think thats bad design? because you need an external tool to complete the game (not to get extras, like 100%, guides, etc). maybe eq didnt adjust the difficulty because people were clearing it, thanks to a combat tracker and they thought maybe it wasnt as hard? idk. but i cant imagine making a game on purpose that depends on players designing and programming an external tool that tells you how to play the game.
players should be able to play and beat the game without having to install extra software to assist in completing the game, otherwise, they cant.
also, unrelated, found ur site, now i know what ACT means /facepalm. I thought it would be something more interesting, like act now or time to act! lol
Also, I guess it's cause I'm not a competitive pver, but wouldn't "encounters that require trackers because devs made them with trackers" mean that there's only one way to beat the encounter, which means there's only one "raid build", which then comes back to the toxicity of "you either adhere to this build or you can't raid with us on this"?
You say that AA guilds kicked people for not having the proper class, but wouldn't trackers just support this, and the only reason why you'd be ok with that is because tracker is objectively correct so it's fine to filter people through it instead of for subjective reasons?
Also, if it isn't just one build then couldn't a non-tracker guild just beat the boss sooner or later through trial and error?
And the self-imposed limitations of "we should bring as few people to this encounter as possible to maximize the reward" created the higher difficulty for the guilds who wanted it, so most encounters were really difficult for the hardcore guilds.
@JamesSunderland @Depraved were either of you in any top guilds on the official servers? Did they use any types of 3rd party tools to understand encounters better? Cause I've never heard of those, outside the basic bot cause everyone and their mother wanted to bot the game.
Aww come on don't loop back here...
No, it does not mean that.
No, trackers don't support that.
And no, non-tracker guilds NORMALLY do not defeat the boss through trial and error unless its WoW just-above-mid-tier.
Seriously, this time at least, just trust the UltraGymLords on this part, because if we wanna reach 200 pages, dis is not da wae.
Then yes, while that does allow developers to make more intricate fights, it also completely destroys the original vision the devs had for the encounter, trivializing everything and removing carefully crafted challenge and fun. Learning to recognize the mechanic in the ways we are intended to watch the signs is part of the encounter.
A DPS meter should not provide this ability, and the devs should be very careful about how server information is sent client side regarding mechanics, so that parsers cannot recognize when and where mechanics happen. Gamers on all parts of the skill spectrum can agree on this. The folks that want autobattle addons to run the game for them dont actually care for enjoying the gaming, they just want the clear and the loot and the bragging rights.
DPS measurement is necessary for a strong raid community, and for strong theorycrafting community and players to craft builds and explore all sorts of things in the game. One way or another, this measurement is going to happen, either very easily by reading datapackets sent from the server (such as in ACT), or very meticulously frame by frame capture of the screen itself (such as what had to be done in GW2 before arcdps became a thing).
If its not obvious I am strongly in favor of being able to see DPS during encounters, and be able to analyze the data carefully afterwards. In any RPG, its a numbers game underneath everything after all, from tanking, to healing, to mitigating, numbers and stats have a lot of meaning.
Any capability beyond measurement, I am not in favor of.
What happens is that the person using the Tracker or the person who 'might as well be a Tracker' just gathers up all the Dumbass Casuals and tells them what to do. You get two types. The type you are, who ends up building their own whole entire guild and then eventually gets frustrated and relies on external information long after the boss has been beaten by someone else repeatedly (but they're still not doing it by trial and error) .
And the second type, who knows that they don't want to care but decide to just rely on the Tracker/Tracker user for instructions, and then that's it. And of course, as you can guess, if your guild is full of a certain type of Tracker-averse person and you don't want to start drama, you just tell them how to improve without telling them that you parsed them.
The sort of person who gets told 'Use this FCS because the Ricochet mechanic is stopping you from winning' and goes 'oh hey thanks' and never thinks about the amount of work it would have taken to know that was the problem, can go through hundreds of hours of a game without knowing who is parsing what.
I'm either too dumb or just so damn entrenched in my bias that I simply cannot understand tracker use. Even though I seemingly understand what they do and how they work and how people are supposedly using them, but when I say "trackers make the game ultimately easier and progression faster and if they can figure out the objectively best build that means that people can objectively tell you to use that and disregard anything else" - yet I'm told I'm wrong in that assumption.
I like to understand things, which is why I keep going in circles on the same damn topics again and again, but my inability to understand this frustrates me to no end. And I guess there's no way to simply do smth that would make me understand.
Well, nothing except for spending like a year in EQ2, grinding the game and its knowledge and relationships with people until I manage to get to the top and try the bosses that Noaani refuses to tell us about (if there are any of that type even left in the game at this point). Or at least I'd hit the wall that makes me understand why trackers are so valued.
I think I can actually give an answer, but normally this type of answer gets held back because of how it comes off, and this ain't the best community for giving it, but here you go.
The sort of person who builds the Tracker doesn't often need to build it for themselves. It benefits them, don't get me wrong, they can definitely use it and it is obviously more accurate than 'eyeballing'.
But they build it because they want to shorten or automate something they were already doing, to the point where they can get other people to do it. Why? Because helping each person would take too long. If you tell me 'no trackers' I literally don't have the time to work out what is wrong with some friend's build relative to a target.
Close friends? Sure, I can manage, or have the investment. Acquaintances? Nah.
So what happens? If you say 'no trackers and can enforce it' all the people who enjoy progression end up gravitating together. They want to progress and enjoy the content, every person who has a problem is just slowing them down even if they really want to help. So then not only does nothing get cleared any slower, you basically made your game more elitist.
It's so elitist that no one is even 'bothering' to 'kick a stubborn Dumbass Casual out of their guild'. They never even got to join the guild with the people who tend to do the analytics. Then next stage (in this era) is 'well there's no competition and we already did everything first so we're bored so let's take all that data and make some guides or something for clout'.
See where this goes?
Because to me, all of this is completely fine and "how it should be". The overall progression of the game is slow (because it takes longer to figure out things w/o trackers). There's super elites who put all of that time into progressing and removed any weak links in their ranks. There's everyone else who don't get the content or get it after that last part of the quote.
And by the time those elitists get to make those guides, the devs should release a big update that's gonna entertain them for the same long amount of time.
To me, this kind of setup is what makes sense. I'm completely positive that this setup would never happen, because not only can one not truly enforce the "no trackers" rule, but the overall gaming culture is just way too different. People just can't exist in a slow-paced environment. And the ones who can are playing on classic servers or their private alternatives.
In other words, I really need to go play AC so that we have something else to discuss
I'm moreso explaining why I claim that the non-analytic player guilds don't often actually clear the thing. With trackers, the game is designed such that someone is using them. Without them, the game is generally such that the PvE is easy, or the analytic people who can do it without the trackers all pile together and then the non-analytic players catch up once those people feel like making some guides because they don't care anymore.
The analytic types clear the content only slightly slower by just combining their abilities and time on each other instead of spreading out and making the game more interesting.
Model worked, see above post.
So nah, you're right. It's just the same sort of reaction I have to Steven's mindset about it. I figure in that, you two are the same, even if it's not for the same reason.
When it comes down to it, you kinda don't care about 'everyone getting a chance', and we already knew that. But the point I was making is that in my world, the Content is cleared in X weeks by 7 guilds, and in yours, it's cleared in X weeks by 1-2, and then that number barely rises if at all for a while.
Which is, interestingly, exactly how it worked out even in WoW for the hardest encounters. That, you can find data on.
i was in a top guild in l2 essence, before that i wasnt in a top guild. and a top guild in offi that went to a p server so i was in the guild when it played in the p server not in offi.
i dont know any1 who used any trackers, but people did use radars and adrenaline T_T if you know you know. it was usually the Russians tho.
but bosses in l2 arent super hard, xcept for antharas and valakas. and well, ive met lots of people who say bosses in l2 are hard, also dion kamaloka is hard according to them x_X this is why i dont trust too much when people tell me they do hard pve or top encounters etc, because they arent usually hard and people are just not that good in general
I think it would be bad design for a modern MMO - I would expect an MMO in development now to include thesr tools (this has been my argument - a combat tracker built in to the game, potentially as a guild perk).
However, for an MMO of the early 2000's, there was an expectation that some outside tools would be used.
Just for the record - ACT isn't mine. Not at all - though it is my combat tracker of choice. There is, however, a short and somewhat boring story behind why I use the icon here. You know I like accurate information, so I thought I'd make that clear before there were any misunderstandings.
Having seen it though, you perhaps have a better understanding of how deep the functionality can go.
If the developer (company, not person) built proper back end tools at the start of development - tools specifically designed to make scripting encounters easier - there shouldn't be an increased workload.
With these tools in place, the bulk of the work for a raid mob is in a unique character model. If you follow the EQ2 model, you use these unique models for end mobs of raid zones and content cycles, for open world encounters, but then you don't shy away from using regular existing models (increased in size perhaps) for lesser named mobs, or if there is a need for "emergency" content where players beat encounters signolificantly faster than expected (will happen on occasion).
i saw in the wiki that it can tell you when the boss is gonna use an attack, use sound alerts, etc, it can also alert you when you apply weakness or a debuff, soething liek that, so you know what to do next.
so that leads me to 1 of 2 conclusions:
1- people really werent that good that they needed a tracker for these simple stuff. and thats fine, im not as good as how i was when i was in my early 20-late teens. it happens. like i mention in my previous reply, ive ran into lots of players who say that this X encounter is hard, when it isnt. what happens is that they usually arent that good. and thats ok. so i cant really trust too much when someone says something like this is a really really difficult encounter, etc
or
2- the game didnt have (enough) (visual) clarity and feedback for the player so that they knew what was going on, which is bad design, or at least, it could be improved. maybe not the whole game, just that part. but its bad enough that people need an outside tool that wasnt even made by the devs to even know whats going on.
or maybe both.
why do u use the same pic?
Woah, you sir, enunciated the entire issue perfectly, to the point I wish a moderator would pin your reply to the top of this whole thing.
We all been talking this or that, for or against, but this is the first post I saw to explain why there is a need to talk about it.
Are you still talking about the need for dps meters, trackers, or whatever other hair-splitting term you are willing to waste your time over, even though there are no dps sets, due to the nature of this mmo, in which pvp can happen anytime; so it's stupid just to spec into dps since there is no scenario in which you will, without obstruction, just dps like you would on a dummy?
Are you still talking about the need to measure and improve/kick guild/group members which you already know how good or bad they are at the game, in which the need to perform at much more than dps: product wealth, complete quests, fend off enemy players, complete the various tasks; having played for lengthy occurences, because this isn't a solo themepark, but a challenging world?
Do you still need a program to give you that image, even though this isn't a lobby mmo that you queue with random tank/healer/dps from a zerg guild, as just explained?
Are you still unwilling to rely on natural responses and a better screen without all the clutter?
Are you still trying to reach 200 pages?
It can, but you need to set it to tell it what to tell you (ie, when the tracker sees a specific row of text in the combat log, it performs the specific action you tell it to perform). You also need to decide what it is you are going to do for each ability you set it to give you an alert for.
The reality of this for EQ2 (the game it was originally designed for) is that some encounters would use abilities so often, it was impossible to communicate every ability via animation. While the animation for one ability was playing, there could be two other abilities also being used.
There was also the fact that some raid mobs used larger versions of regular mobs in order to save development time (see my discussion with NiKr), which meant some raid mobs simply didn't have enough casting animations to be able to have a unique animation for each ability.
Thus, text was the way these were communicated to players. I would say it dealt with both issues, but the reality is that text (and thus trackers) was the means of communicating abilities long before the above potential issues actually became apparent. Thus, this system prevented the issues from being issues in the first place, and in hindsight may well be a major part of the reason EQ2 was able to keep pace with players in terms of content creation vs consumption.
Then there is also the fact that abilities in EQ2 weren't telegraphed. There were no big red circles to tell you where the fire was about to be. You had to know and understand each ability and it's effect size and shape.
Part of the reason I don't consider WoW encounters to be actual top end is because they do telegraph most AoE abilities. In combination with a system like the above that tells you an ability is incoming, it does make things quite easy.
So, in regards to your two possible conclusions from your above post, one could say that the game didn't have enough visual information going to players - but that made the game better, not worse.
Having a unique animation for every ability and using that as a means of communicating the ability is about to be used means you are limited in how often a mob can use such abilities. A 2 second casting animation is a hard barrier to other abilities being used that also need to be communicated - that is realistically 3 or 4 seconds in which other abilities can't be used at all.
Thus, using animation as your only communication tool leads to more simple encounters, but in a way that takes more work from developers (unique models take more time than scripting the encounter, assuming proper tools are in place).
The reason I use this picture is because some forum regulars (people that no longer post here, mostly) complained once that I didn't have a custom picture at that point in time. This was in conjunction with capitalizing the first letter of our user name (couldn't use capitals when this forum started up), iirc they were surprised that i capitalized my name but didnt have a custom pic. This was at a point in time where Steven had just said they thought they would be able to detect anyone using a combat tracker with Ashes (probably the most naive comment he has ever made in relation to this game - more naive than saying the game will be out by 2020). So, because I'm both defiant and a bit of a dick, I changed it to what I have now.
well, 5 more pages lets go >_<
True, but don't expect me to stop posting at 200 pages.
While I've never bumped this thread, or posted to it if it wasn't on the first page,it is a thread in which I will always reply to, and will always attempt to clear uo any misconceptions presented.