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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
Apok made a joke. You laughed at it. Why is that toxic?
Laughter is good. Laugh more.
Laughing is not toxic. Intentionally making people laugh is not toxic.
Calling people toxic when they are not is being toxic.
Stop being toxic.
By linking your performance to a number, a number that may not even be a true reflection of your performance, you're creating a hierarchy, a social order. If you're on the bottom of the totem pole, the weak link, it's just human nature to want to improve. People care about the perception that others have of them, admit it or not. So a person who didn't really care about the number suddenly has to care about the number, they might play more selfishly, they might switch classes to something that parses better but they don't actually want to play, or they might just leave the game. Meters force people to play a certain way, the "right" way, in spite of what that person actually thought was fun. Fun, you know, the reason we play games.
Meanwhile the people who revel in chasing that high parse feel justified in looking down on those who parse low, even if there's a perfectly good reason for why they're parsing low (ex. using support abilities). It creates a perceived justification for shitty behavior, "they parse low, therefore they're hindering my progress, therefore I'm justified in being toxic to them because they're bad."
By its nature, this min/max parse culture forces people to either join the culture to feel like they're contributing, or it forces them to quit the game, creating a feedback loop where the culture is reinforced because only participants in it are willing to stick around. It ends up driving away new players, because who would willingly join an abusive relationship?
In fact, it isn't caused by them.
In WoW, people use trackers and will happily exclude people.
In Archeage, people didn't really use trackers but would still happily exclude people.
In EQ and EQ2, people use trackers, but exclusion in both games is exceedingly rare.
The reason then can't be trackers.
What I can say about these three games though, is that the first two games have systems in place to treat players as disposable. With LFG/LFR content in WoW, if you feel someone isn't performing, you can boot them and be fairly sure the game will replace that player for you in an instant.
Same with Archeage - to an extent. In faction based PvP, raids are formed automatically. If someone in that raid isn't performing or listening, boot them and the game will replace that spot
In EQ and EQ2, there is no such system. To form a group you have to find players and invite them. If you boot someone mid content, you need to find someone willing to take up that content half way through (and capable of getting to you, which wasn't a given).
To me, if a games system is treating players as disposable, we shouldn't be surprised that players treat each other as disposable. We also shouldn't be looking any further than those systems to find blame for this happening. Attributing the blame for this to anything else is completely missing the larger picture.
BF Devs “We got rid of the scoreboard, kd and voice chat to minimise toxicity”
Yeah that worked out great for a strategy game lmfao
Indeed.
One day - not today, but one day - developers will realize that toxicity in their game is a direct result of the design of their game.
More importantly, if people base who they group with on numbers, a ton of player interaction potential gets lost.
No, it's absolutely both. Both are the issue. They're terrible for testing builds. Test your builds in the field and on a piece of paper or a spreadsheet you've made yourself. If you can't do that because there are too many variables to account for, welcome to good game design where min-maxing is a near-unattainable rare achievement, not the presupposed norm.
Your character-knowledge-implied roleplay research/testing/target dummies wouldn't give your character easily digestible numbers. No matter how impressive your knowledge and how motivated your research would be, you wouldn't have automatic access to perfect information.
We could continue this discussion with disingenuous continuations about how "numbers" in roleplay translate into real-world equivalents, but the underlying counter to your point is extremely clear:
You can do everything you just described in the actual game without a DPS meter, doing actual roleplay, by testing out builds in the arena, swapping equipment and coordinating with guild-members who have alternate builds you want to compare with. Or testing in the field by killing groups of mobs you've reverse-engineered the HP values and resistances for, once the community research has advanced far enough. And for new bosses, discovering that information is what the challenge is all about.
If that's the level of depth you need in order to gather the information as the player, so would your character. Your character doesn't just look at a sword and go: "I recognise those flames. This sword will require 47.6 slices to slay the dragon. That is not good enough." (Yes, that's an oversimplified application of the DPS meter, but the point about the research effort stands.)
If your character's investedness into perfecting their research is so important to you, why is it not important enough to just make attaining that actual information your gameplay?
If you're asking to be handed that information for free because your character would be *just that passionate*, and you don't get to fulfil your power fantasy if you don't get that info for free - do I also get to ask the devs for all players to be unkillable so I get to live my power fantasy because my character would attain enlightenment? The more you talk about this, the more Mag7's callout about children's roleplaying makes sense.
DPS meters aren't gameplay/roleplay, they're a replacement shortcut for gameplay. The only reason to have them is because you either want your game to be a spreadsheet simulator, or because for some weird reason presupposing that your allies have the same information about the optimal strategy as you makes your gameplay loop better. In an MMO, I highly doubt that can be the case.
Bicycles are gonna get stolen anyway; should we equip every bike stand with a hacksaw for public use?
I don't think it's a bad thing that some clans will have access to semi-accurate tracking tools and tightly theorycrafted requirements for their members.
By not hand-delivering perfect tools to every player, you allow casuals to be actual casuals, because the information that gets passed on from the high-tier guilds won't be broadly applicable to the average player, so there will be much more ambiguity about the perfect mid-tier builds, meaning most clans won't be able to, or even want to, enforce rigorous or demanding requirements. They'll have to test their members the old-fashioned way if they want to recruit top performers.
Don't go bad-faith here, I'm not pretending that mid-tier clans won't still have high standards or demand verified performance data. I'm saying they'll have to work for creating and adjusting their standards, be more broad in their definitions because the data won't be perfectly accurate, and they'll be encouraged to define more soft-skill-based recruitment demands in general, and be more open to creative personal decisions as long as they provide results in practice.
And frankly, the prospect of the community coming together to hand-craft those tools using player-generated reference data (server-side calculations as a roadblock for client-side data-mining are a thing, especially for anything PvE-related) sounds infinitely more engaging and exciting to me than all the numbers being spewed out by the game or an authorised game add-on, with auto-completed perfect data taken straight from the game's devs.
Isn't it feasible to create the same effect without damage meters, force players to use the information they get from watching screencapture-recordings of their ingame UI, and still make the encounter strategy theorycrafting just as engaging?
The game could have sensibly similar levels of complexity, slightly adjusted in required precision to make up for the lack of perfect combat logs that track everything happening in your client. People would just have to do a bit more active analysis, which could be weighed against by adjusted clarity of the information (feedback numbers that scale slightly more extremely, so it can still be interpreted.)
The benefit would be more authentic gameplay, more mystery and variance of information levels between groups (boss-runner group 1 might know one detail a few weeks before guild 2, but it might be weighed against by different information!), and crucially, more naturally engaging gameplay among casuals, because presupposing perfect information would be frustratingly ineffective, so you naturally shift to discussing things out before they become problems.
You might say that that would just create the same result with less convenience, especially if you insist that reverse-engineered add-ons would ultimately be unpreventable, but the reduced convenience is an advantage in itself. The point is again that the distorted information would reduce the presupposability of each player having the "perfect" setup and having "perfect" knowledge of the optimal strategy as a default. Because "perfect" would have fuzzier edges, so there would be more open discussion, more explicit individual discussions about what's good, what's good enough, and what's insufficient. There would be more demonstrations, tests, and adaptations, instead of assuming everyone is on the same wavelength about everything the moment a dungeon party is created.
I think this is the most flawed assumption underlying much of this.
In games with damage meters, casuals don't, as you say, "at least chat about the data and how it relates to their groups." There's two very large camps of casual players, both ranging from low to upper medium skill & gear levels. 1) The hivemind-casuals that follow streamerdaddy's guide, expect a positive result every time, and flame each other when things don't work out. 2) The unambitious casuals who are just trying to piece together the information that's easy to research and the feedback they get from the game; probably while trying to express their personal preferred playstyle in the process.
No one's having fun here, and everyone's caught in a toxic environment of expectations that never get addressed because everyone who requires more than 3 unique sentences to interact with gets ignored.
In games without damage meters, casual players might still get frustrated at their peers because they "assume that it's easier for someone else (who has fully perfected all the research of builds and mechanics)", but they don't use that as a crutch to keep having unrealistic expectations. Because they can't. They depend on each other, and they depend on communication, because they don't have tools to replace communication for them:
After trying to recruit suitable guild/party members with "semi-uber level 89 plusplus gear with defaultDPSRangerBuild#2" and realising 5 times in a row, after applying the same type of standardised expectations to 5 different people, that their skill level is insufficient to get the raid done, they start to realise that they *have* to start talking strategy, getting to know players, adjusting their playstyles to each other, and coordinating with individuals better, if they ever want to get anything done. Because the default doesn't exist. Perfect information and perfect rotations don't exist. Consensus about "the right way" doesn't exist to clear a complex dungeon, or fight a boss fight that uses multiple mechanics where multiple methods of overcoming the obstacle are available and the preferred solution depends on the group you end up with. The "definitive guide" on how to clear a dungeon or boss won't be possible. It'll be approximated, but there will necessarily be more willingness for ad-hoc adjustments and explicit discussions of expectations in order to avoid bad surprises.
That's something you simply cannot recreate in an environment where information is auto-generated.
A few of those wannabe-tryhard-guide-slave casuals will still sit in their guilds where everyone only interacts with the same two groups every time they log on because they can't tolerate any frustration from interacting with other people. You can't remove those innately low frustration tolerance issues from some people. But the vast majority of players will communicate their goals, strategies, and demands more productively and ambitiously than they would if they had DPS add-ons doing the talking for them.
If - after reading the following - you feel there is a valid point in the rest of your post you would like me to address, feel free to point it out to me and I will.
Anyway, on with it.
Combat trackers do not take the excitement out of theory crafting - they make it possible.
There is a statment that says the difference between messing around and science is that when doing science, you write down what happens. If you are attempting to do theory crafting in a game without using a combat tracker, you are just messing around.
The notion that you can just use a tracker, test out everything and then be done with it is one of the most factually incorrect statements I have seen on the internet (it is on par with "the world is flat" in terms of it's factual accuracy).
There is no MMORPG ever in which all permutations of possible builds have been tested. The notion that this specifically could ever happen in Ashes is utter insanity (it would literally be millions of hours of effort to do this properly - and then needs to start again with each patch).
When you see a game like WoW where there is a meta that everyone essentially needs to stick to, that isn't a case of "we know this is the best", but rather, is more like "this is the best we know".
The notion that all of this could ever be "done" is a factual inaccuracy. If your thoughts on combat trackers are based on this being something that is possible (as in, say, it is the opening statement on 1500 word post on the subject), then you need to reconsider your opinions on combat trackers working under the assumption that this theory crafting is never actually done with combat trackers.
The closest argument you can make to your statement being true is that you have a point where you are happy that enough theory crafting has been done, even if there is more to go, and the presence of a combat tracker makes it easier to arrive at this point.
However, just because you are happy to say pi is 3.16, that does not mean others accept that answer as written, others want to go deeper in to those decimals to work it out to a much greater degree.
Where there is a disconnect in your view here is - if you are someone tha tenjoys that theory crafting, just go in to deeper detail. On the other hand, if you don't enjoy it but do it because you feel it is required to function well, be glad that the presence of a combat tracker gets you to that 2 decimal place point of pi that much sooner.
Now to your comment on people grouping based on numbers.
You state that this sees a ton of player interaction get lost - I disagree.
If I am looking for someone to finish off a goup for some content, and if I were going to use numbers to assist in finding someone (I don't, but lets go with it), then I am still looking for the same number of people that I would be looking for if I were not using numbers to assist.
If you ask if you can join the group, and I look at these numbers of yours and turn you down, I don't suddenly stop looking for someone. The next person, or the person after that whom has those numbers in a manner I find acceptable will get that spot.
Thus, it isn't a decrease in the amount of player interaction that happens, it simply means you weren't invoved in that interaction, someone else was. There was no increase or decrease in the amount of player interaction that happened, even if there was a potential decrease in the amount of player interaction you had.
Selecting group members based on these numbers (what ever they are) isn't necessarily a bad thing, even though it is often treated as such.
In that above scenario, if I was looking for someone with some specific number (what ever that may be), there was probably a reason. Perhaps I wanted to do the content fast, or wanted to try something different that had a specific requirement of players in the group. Either way, if I was looking for someone with those numbers and you didn't have them, you would not have enjoyed being in that group, and we would not have enjoyed having you in that group. Instead, due to looking for group members based on those numbers, I would be able to find someone that fits with what we are doing, we would all have a positive interaction, where as there would be a very high chance of it being a negative interaction all around if we went in with you.
Taking people along on content that have different expectations of that content is how negative interactions happen. A very common example of this is what I Would term lazy healers - healers that only want to heal the main tank. There is often content that is so easy (or starts off so easy) that it isn't worth the time to use a tank to pull everything - just AoE blast it all down. If the healer is only willing to heal the tank, then that healer is simply not suited to any groups that wish to AoE blast that easier content. Even if they are a great healer, they simply do not belong in that group - they belong in a group that wants to have their tank pull each mob.
Again, having people with the same goals and expectations on content is key. Having "numbers" of some description is one of the tools players have to select who will and who will not have that same expectation. While it may suck being rejected from a group that you think you are able to function in, that sucks less than finding out that, actually, you can't. That situation sucks for everyone in the group, not just you.
So, both of the points you opened your post with are incorrect from a factual perspective. It is my hope that you will take this in to consideration and rethink your perspective on trackers (ie, if they don't actually make it so there is no more theory crafting to do, and if they don't reduce player overall total interaction but work at making player interactions better in general). That said, if you have other points in the above post that you'd like me to similarly address, again, I am happy to do so if you point out which points you think are important to you.
If you are in a group or raid specifically to deal a lot of damage, and a combat tracker reads you as dealing a lot of damage to the intended target at the intended time, then you are a great player (or at least were in this specific scenario).
There is no ambiguity in that.
If you were off doing things that you thought important when you were not asked to, and as such didn't deal a lot of damage, you are not a great player, because you didn't do the thing you were asked to do in that group or raid.
The only people that can look at a combat tracker and not know how good a given player is from the data within it are themselves terrible players.
So, fucking ditto.
Ok, I'll go through and read the responses you wrote to me.
Least I can do if you put that much time in to it.
Edit to add; keep in mind, I am going to disagree with most of what you have said, and will give my reason for that disagreement.
You got dps -- that doesn't mean you did anything else right. Firefirefire!
It's why add ons, like this, had to beat Magtheridon (as one if many endless examples) for so many terrible players and undeserving guilds.
It's not some outside the game software or the Devs developments duty to know the players. --- it's the guilds leaders.
No, you wouldn't - but you also don't have immediate access to it in a combat tracker. You still need to disect the information that is there, to look through it, to find things. I've had encounters where myself and others in my guild have spent literal days going through combat tracker data in order to work out what is happening.
So, it isn't immediate.
The only part of it that is immediate are the very basic things, damage, healing etc. These are the least useful pieces of information a combat traker gives.
As to our characters not having that data, well no, they wouldn't. Instead, they would have something there is no real way we can have.
I'm unsure if you have ever played a competitive sport - but I spent many years playing rugby. I have also played rugby games.
When playing a rubgy game, I know who is the fastest on the field, the strongest, the tallest, who can kick the farthest, a lot of things that I wouldn't know in a real game.
However, in that real game of rugby, when you have your head pushed in to the dirt with 9 other players on top of you, you have a feel for the game that simply doesn't exist in the computerized version. It can't exist.
So, rather than trying to make that feel for the game exist, develoeprs give players those stats that they wouldnt have access to. This is kind of a substitite for the information they would have if they were really playing. What I am able to do with the information I have on players in a computerized version of the game is actually fairly similar to what I can do as a single player on the field. I can use the information to better position myself, for example, if the opposition look like they are about to kick. The information I have from playing the real game informs me where I would want to be, and the information I have on player stats in the computerized game tells me where I would want to be.
While these two things are different, they are equivlent, in a manner of speaking.
Now, I've never fought a dragon for real (honestly, I can't say I know anyone that has). However, I would imagine that if I were, there would be similar things that would be a part of that experience that just don't translate well via the medium of a computer game. Rather than that, in the same way that rugby game develoeprs give us stats on players as a stand in, game developers give us stats on player characters and enemies.
A combat tracker simply takes that data and lays it out in a better, more easily understandable way. It is worth noting that since we do not have any equivlent real life experience (unless you know someone that has fought a dragon), this is a more abstract notion that the fairly straight forward example with the rugby scenario above. However, the scenarios are equivlent - people in that situation would have information that simply doesn't translate to the medium of a computer game, so develoeprs fill that space in with data based on how the game does work.
It is worth also pointing out in relation to your comment about being handed that data for free - as I said above there is still a LOT of time involved in making sense of that data. It is in no way free.
This statement of yours would only make sense if the status quo across the genre was that combat trackers were not allowed.
They are allowed in every other MMO that has ever existed.
A better example than what you are talking about would be that every neighbourhood in a city encourages bicycling, except for one that is trying to outright ban it.
People that are used to cycling around the city 'could' just avoid that obviously stupid neighborhood, or they could just give them a big fuck you and cycle around there anyway.
I don't want every player given perfect tools.
What my argument in this thread has been is for Intrepid to implement a combat tracker as a part of the guild progression system, in a manner where it only works on members of that specific guild or allied guilds. Thus, if you were a casual, and you were in a guild that suited your playstyle, you wouldn't have a combat tracker, and others wouldn't be able to use a combat tracker on you without your knowledge.
This allows casuals to remain casual, it allows those wanting to draw out the last 0,5% to be able to do so, and is just generally the best option in my opinion.
No.
In part because they will always exist, but also in part because they allow for much more complex encounters.
Intrepid plan on essentially using animation as the main means of communication in regards to what a mob is going to do. With this, they are able to communicate a specific action about once every 2 seconds. A game developed with the assumption that a combat tracker is in use is able to communicate many times more actions than that.
That isn't to say that every encounter has dozens of things going off every second, I am just stating it to point out the very base level reason why encounters designed without combat tracker use simply can't compare in terms of compexity to those that are designed with it in mind.
It is worth noting that this doesn't mean they can't make encountres just as difficult - develoeprs are perfectly able to create encounters that their players simply can never kill in either scenario, should they wish. The difference is how much is going on in each encounter of comparible difficulty, and what you are spending your time doing.
If encounters were designed without trackers in mind, players would spend more time being communicated to, and working out exactly what is being communicated, than they spend dealing with things. With trackers though, you spend no time at all in working out what is happening (at least, not during the fight, that is what you do in those days I mentioned above), and instead everyone spends all their time doing what ever needs to be done.
One thing that is a given though, if develoeprs are tasked with creating an encounter for a specific number of people at a specific difficulty, the encounter would be very different based on if combat trackers were assumed to be present or not.
In this specific line of discussion, the only question I can think of left for you is to say "but what if I want that content where the communication between developer/mob and the players is key, rather than the content where just doing is key?".
To this I would say, why not have both?
If the suggesion above were implemented (guild based combat tracker), I see no reason at all why an instance couldn't exist where a pre-requisite for entering is tht no one has that tracker. Thus, if a combat tracker were built in to the game as an optional feature, one game could then have content that is designed for trackers, but also have content that is designed to not have trackers. Best of both - but is only possible if the tracker is built in to the game (there are a few minor considerations that need to also be made in this scenario, but they are fairly minor). A game not having combat trackers does not mean it won't have a meta.
Archeage had the lowest combat tracker use I have ever seen (I was the only person I ever saw using one).
Archeage also had the strictest meta of any game I have ever seen.
The game had communit events - there were raid bosses as well as a number of PvP events. Raids were formed automatically as players entered the area at the appropriate time. It wasn't uncommon for players to be booted out of the main raid (meaning no quest credit, among other things) for not being one of the 4 accepted classes.
Archeage had 120 classes.
I agree that what you are talking about here sucks. Not going to argue that at all.
However, what you are talking about is simply not a result of combat trackers. All of this is essentially what top end guilds are doing WITH trackers.
There isn't just one way to kill a mob, and there isn't a single "correct" build.
We know this to be true because we have the data to back that statement up. We also spend a lot of time experimenting - I spent an entire year in EQ2 without using the same build two days in a row, just to experiment.
Can you explain how this hypothetical isn't a contradiction to your earlier post saying that trackers aren't exclusionary? It reads to me like hypothetical you would be excluding someone based on a number from a tracker.
I've replied to both your responses, too.
To a degree that's true, but it's also true that you already get a lot of that instinct feedback from regular combat logs and damage flashing up in the game. Arguably, your character wouldn't be able to decipher precise interactions between everything going on on the battlefield from just reflecting about the action afterwards and basic testing on a target dummy. That would require more elaborate research.
You can reasonably say that you'd want that research effort to be implied in the combat tracker because making the player spend hours on research before they can even begin to theorycraft just isn't fun enough.
I don't disagree with that, I think that's a fair point. That said, it's not like you're forced to get as close to perfect information as you might wish to get. You can just put in as much effort as you feel like doing, and leave the rest up to chance and other players.
That's actually really cool to hear, I appreciate that nuance, but I don't think it addresses my concern as much as you think. I think the problem of the "one true strategy" for everything that's expected to be known by everyone, expected to work for everyone who does it correctly, and that comes with standardised measures of mechanics (e.g. DPS scores) gets created by perfect information. Every player having access to it helps, but as long as enough players have it, it's too easy for a few loud clan leaders to enforce their takes on optimisation on everyone else in order to make things reliable and convenient, by referring to their DPS meter calculations and going: "Look, it's unquestionably correct."
Speaking of DPS parsing scores brings me to this point:
Whether I or a player like me gets accepted into parties is thoroughly unimportant.
What you're describing is not player interaction; that's just gameplay. Running a dungeon with a faceless dps drone in your party without having to acknowledge who they are or how they play because everything is standardised to the point of having no identity.
I fully acknowledge that players want standardisation and optimisation. I love standardisation. I think players should, and will always, do that. But I don't think the game should do it for them. A game shouldn't be a job that you get a certificate for, so you can fit in as a reliable cog in the machine. If you want to ensure that someone fits your party, you should actively have to communicate or test them to find out.
It's exactly the same problem as why LookingForGroup tools are terrible for community interaction, except the side effects are less immediately obvious.
The reward for accepting non-automated optimisation is a dynamic where people actually interact. Not everything has a guaranteed known answer; at least not for a long time. You have to adjust on the fly. You get to know people's individual quirks, strengths, and weaknesses, and make the most of them.
It's going to make your interactions less efficient, but it's not a competitive disadvantage, because it will also make everyone else's interactions less efficient. And in return it feels that much greater when you've learned to communicate and strategise effectively for the needs of the game without getting a perfect answer printed out by an algorithm.
Yes. Which is why players should need to learn to communicate their expectations. Which they don't when they let tools do the talking for themselves.
In the DPS meter game, the expectations remain implicit. Guilds know they only run dungeons/encounters with players who parse n dps and know how to do xyz mechanics. Everyone else doesn't have to be talked to. They can come back when they know.
In a game where exact information about the dungeon's requirements for success is unknown and multiple viable solutions exist, you have to talk. You have to explain your approach in clearing the dungeon in the past, and assess whether another previously successful player's strategy is reconcilable with yours. By talking to them or testing them. If you don't exactly agree on the strategy/build/mechanics/rotations, you might have to adjust your playstyles to get the most out of each other's configuration, or you might turn down that player. Perhaps because they don't seem experienced/skilled enough; perhaps just because your builds don't allow for the same approach to clear the challenge.
You won't have to do this with people you know, but because there are multiple functional strategies going around, each of them preferred by different communities, you don't really have the luxury of turning down everyone who does something you're not used to. At least not for much longer than in a game with perfect tools.
Unlike with a "correct" DPS meter, no one person can quickly convince everyone by claiming the authority that their supposedly hyper-efficient boss setup / class setup is superior and should be copied by everyone - because the data is imperfect.
It's the accuracy of the information that's free. You don't have to put in any effort into your combat tracker in order to ensure that it gives you correct numbers. You still have to analyse them, but you know it has calculated the interactions of resistances, status effects, buffs, equipments and abilities correctly. This is a lot of room for vagueness and personal tendencies/preference you're filling up by feeding it data directly from the devs.
I don't think my analogy (which was originally about bicycle theft, not cycling) is versatile enough to extend it along this path, but for the sake of rounding it up, let's say it does make sense the way you're using it: If it does make sense, your conclusion only adds up so simply because you're going into it treating the DPS meter as a purely beneficial thing without negative consequences. My whole argument is about the negative side effects of having it in the game, not about whether it has no redeeming qualities and should be banned by default. (Yes, I'm about to address some of your counterpoints to the side effects and to what extent they may be caused/affected by the DPS meter.)
The point of the theft analogy was specifically to counter your argument that "It's gonna happen anyway, so we should enable it with accurate data from the game." Which I just don't buy, because I think player-controlled damage optimisation and encounter research is substantially less prone to negative side effects, than if every player relies on the same perfect-information tools to determine their default strategy. Even if some players develop perfect tools, with enough countermeasures they'd be niche enough that it would still at least limit the reliance of the community at large on these
Whereas with a perfect dps meter, you know full well after a month 80% of players will be expected to be playing the same builds.
To this, I think I can only say that we'll have to agree to disagree. Because to me what you call "just as difficult (through less complex but equally challenging mechanics)" sounds like a perfectly adequate replacement for the most complex PvE possible, if it improves community interaction.
I'm not sure whether your reason for disagreeing with that is that you don't acknowledge any of the negative side effects to DPS meters that I've listed as problematic (and as being affected by DPS meters), or if you simply put maximised complexity in PvE above everything else in the game, or perhaps just that you don't believe the side effects can be overcome through information imperfections, but either way, we probably won't see eye-to-eye on that issue.
Like I said, individual players don't need to use the combat tracker for its perfect information to influence the expectations of a meta standard. As long as a few influential voices use it to make their meta suggestions, it's already going to have a big impact on the community dynamic.
It's totally fine that optimised preferences and standards happen. It's less fine if players never even bother to think about how to approach situations outside of those standards.
You said it wasn't uncommon for non-accepted classes to be booted, but how *common* was it for a set of suboptimal groups to clear the raid anyway?
And without trying to take away from your answer to that, again, the game *does* have a DPS meter which might still have a considerable influence on the meta standards, even if few players directly use or even just reference those calculations/analyses. And even if that's not how it played out in ArcheAge in particular, it's still an effect it might have on different games.
If you ask me, the decisive role of DPS meters (not just meta standards) on the community culture and non-interactivity in ESO and WOW is absolutely unquestionable.
(Unimportant but interesting speculation: Is it possible no one used the DPS meter in the West because the Meta was already defined by the game's native Asian community, where it might have seen some more use?)
Possibly? I fear that it's a more of a principles issue. The more you enable the meta, the more you incentivise uninteractive gameplay.
Also, I can't help but ask: Why not the other way around? If my issue is about fostering a more diverse general default community culture, while yours is about making sure the game has enough maximally complex encounters, it seems like introducing a specific set of encounters complex enough to warrant a dps meter restricted to that part of the game would be the more principled/accurate solution to the problem.
To be clear, I wouldn't turn down the offer. It's definitely better than nothing.
This general point is closely connected to:
I'd rather the devs start somewhere than just never start trying, and just continue to support the culture of implicit expectations by feeding it perfect information to boost its legitimacy.
The difference is in how the results of your experimentation spread. The acceptance for your approach will be far more immediate and broad, if you can offer hard numbers that your approach deals 5% more DPS to the boss than if you only have a guild-internal tool whose validity might be questioned from the outside. Not to mention the reduced accessibility of testing your approach for players of other levels and equipment tiers.
I'm putting this in it's own post before I reply to the rest of your above post, as I consider this point to be of supreme importance specifically to you. This is something you really do need to understand. Without abundant access to combat trackers, this will be the case before the game leaves beta testing.
My take is that I think you're interpreting past experience that's been influenced by past customs and developments (game studios allowing or enabling/supporting/embracing DPS meters, LFG features, etc.) too dogmatically as unavoidable.
I think you can do things to slow down the process, and encourage more flexible adaptation and interaction. Especially in the bottom 80-90% of performers, where a 5% damage increase doesn't get universally adopted by default, if there are established personal favourites.
Source: I've played enough MMOs that didn't have anything like the rigorous meta of ESO/WoW & co.
Granted, they were far from mainstream. But aside from the low player count, I think a big defining feature of these games' meta was the difficulty of accessing data and comparing data analyses.
And while I'm sure you're right that a game of the size of Ashes will have decisive meta preferences, all I'm ultimately saying is that it'll still make a difference if those developments don't get actively supported, and even verified with the stamp of truth, by the developers.
Still working on the reply to your longer post (cutting it short for reasons you'll see).
However, it is worth pointing out that the games you refer to often (ESO and WoW) are the two games with the worst built-in systems for community interaction.
For WoW it is their LFG/LFR system, that treats players as disposable, and for ESO it is the completely stupid way they did guilds.
All of the issues in relation to community interaction that you are blaming on trackers should probably be aimed at those specific systems in those games. There is a reason those complaints you make (which are valid in those games) don't exist in other games.
I believe this to be an incorrect foundational point of your issue with trackers.
To this point, I ask you one question; why in EQ2 (a game with more combat tracker use than WoW) are there no set builds, or no set means for killing group or raid encounters?
The information in that game is on par with any, yet the thing you say is a result of perfect information simply doesn't happen in that game. Nor in EQ, or in Rift, or a number of other games. It only really happens in a few games - notibly WoW.
In EQ2, I had an early content cycle where I saw myself in three different top end guilds. Each guild took on each encounter very differently - I had to relearn each encounter for each guild.
I can give you an answer to the question I have asked you above, but I want you to think about this, to consider why there are examples of games with perfect information, yet that don't have the issue you believe to be a result of having perfect information.
This is another of those foundational misconceptions I feel you have.
As I stated above, in EQ2 I had to relearn encounters for each guild. This wasn't a problem though, as guilds in that game were aware that they would need to teach new members what they needed to do - even those that had defeated the content in question.
The question I have for you in relation to this point is - why do you think that guilds in WoW were against spending any time training new players, yet guild in other games knew it was something they needed to do?
Again, I have an answer for this, but I want you to think about it.
Any meta that could be enforced in a situation where I can't see how you are performing is a meta that would be enforced without combat trackers being present.
Again looking to Archeage - the meta in that game was enforced as I said above. The thing with the meta in that game is that it wasn't made up of the best builds, it was made up of the first builds found to be successful (to your question of if they used trakers in Korea and we imported their meta - no, but if they did they suck at it). I was able to take the accepted builds in that game, alter a few minor points and end up with a build that was better in every aspect (more damage, more survivabilty, more CC breaks, more CC, less reliance on mana, more manuvaribility). I would use these builds outside of community events, then switch back to an accepted build to run those events.
The reason people stuck to the meta in Archeage was simple - they knew it worked, but they had no data to prove that anything else would work. Thus no one wanted to move from what they already knew worked.
In EQ2 by contrast, there was no meta, because we had data. If someone in my guild wanted to run a random build for a raid, great, go for it (be ready to change it if it really isn't working, however). People would change builds because they wanted to play around with a different ability, or to see how a build they used at an earlier level worked at this new level, or to see how builds of two different classes interacted.
If a build didn't work out, people wouldn't run it. Not because we told them not to (I have never told anyone what build to run), but because we always only recruit people that want to perform at their best. Performing at your best means sometimes experimenting, and so a part of recruiting these people that always want to be at their best means allowing them to experiment, but knowing that they will always be there when the guild needs something from them (because that is what they want to do).
Again, if this is not the case in other games, then by all means look in to the reasons why it may be different. However, when you are looking for why something is the case in one game but not in another, you can't point your finger to something that is equally present in both games and assume that to be the cause - you need to look for things that are different between the games.
I agree.
However, those efforts should be put to actual use, rather than being aimed in the wrong direction (I am sure you agree with this statement, you just assume you know the right direction).
If WoW and Archeage have a meta that you don't want in Ashes, you need to figure out the common thing between those games that caused the meta.
If EQ2 didn't have a meta and that is what you want in Ashes, you need to look for something that was present in WoW and Archeage, but not present in EQ2.
As a discussion about avoiding a meta in Ashes, combat trackers have now been ruled out as a possible avenue. They are present in a game with that meta, they are not present in a game with that meta, and they are present in a game without that meta. Ergo, they are not the droids you are looking for.
Sorry, that's too simple for me. I think it's fair to consider that the faults of ESO and WoW attracted a more hiveminded crowd, but tools like the DPS meter further manifested their dominance.
EQ2 attracted players who have a substantially more...pure? appreciation for I'd argue it's possible for a game like that to add an instrument that disincentivises player interaction, but come out fine because everything else encourages healthy social gameplay.
If that's what happened here (I won't claim to be able to figure out whether that's the case) the DPS meter would still remain something you'd have to introduce in moderation at best, if you don't want to take that risk.
Yes, teach. But would they have been open to figuring out how to play with you without adjusting your gameplay to their preference?
Because this is something that happens naturally in other games I have played with less clear metas.
I'll reserve my answer for when you've responded to the question above.
Eugh, ok, maybe it is I who just doesn't like people. It's so absurd to me that people subject themselves to these pointless standards. Like, most of these players aren't nerds and hyperoptimisers themselves. These tend to be fairly casual-minded dungeon runners who just want to be succesful. Why do they deprive themselves of fun challenges and human interactions just to save some time in order not to talk to people, learn from each other, and adapt their playstyle by a hair?
I can't believe that players want to be that bound by convention. There's just no advantage to it besides saving time. If you hate spending time interacting in a game so much, what are you doing playing it? They'd literally rather save extra time to sit at the auction house afking than risk having to talk to a player that might not turn out optimal for their dungeon run because they don't conform directly to their comfortable expectations.
Okay, your argument is taking shape, this application sounds like fairly practical evidence that the DPS Meter really doesn't have to get much in the way of flexibility and versatility.
I still stand by my earlier point that it's possible EQ2 just happened to have a substantially better community by nature of its overall niche purist, traditional cooperative design, but I admit that your argument is looking pretty strong here.
It could be better. Even more open to variety. But for a game as large as EQ2, it's a good show.
In your scenario, the issue is the faults in those two games that caused the hivemend crowd that you are talking about. A combat tracker may have made that worse, but if it wasn't there to start with, a combat tracker could not do any harm. Thus, don't blame the tracker, blame those faults.
When you are listing pros and cons of trackers in your head, if this is listed as a con, cross it out, as it is not the fault of trackers.
I am unsure I understand the question, but I will answer it as best I can.
When joining a guild in EQ2, the implicit (though often explicit) understanding is that you are joining them to do things their way. You don't change the way 30 players run content in order to accommodate 1 new player.
That said, the role that this player is expected to fulfil in the raid is clear. If the guild is looking for a Wizard, that is what they will be looking for. That means you are expected to be a single target DPS specalist, because that is what a Wizard was in that game. If you were a Wizard, it is because you wanted to be a single target DPS specalist. The guild isn't going to look for a Wizard and expect them to be an AoE DPS specalist, or be a tank, or anything like that. Likewise, that Wizard is not going to expect to join that guild as a Wizard and then expect to do anything other than single target DPS. If they wanted to do something else, they would be a different class.
Where the differences are is in things like where the mob is pulled to, what methods the guild is using to deal with different abilities the mob has, things like that. It may well be that I am expected to joust an AoE in some guilds (run out of its range, then back in once it has gone off), while in other guilds the expectation is that the healers can heal through it, or AoE blockers can prevent it. All are valid, all are built in to the game as viable ways to deal with an AoE, different guilds have different methods for how they wish to go about things.
A better question is, why would they?
If what they do now works, why change it?
It isn't as if there was no interaction happening, it just wasn't happening in relation to working out a better build. In fact, a big part of the reason people were happy to run the "required" builds for that content is because that is where the most player interaction happened in the game. People wanted to be a part of that content because that is where you met up with friends that had housing on a different continent, and these raids (specifically CR/GR in Archeage) often used to morph in to Library runs or open PvP. People wanted to be a part of it, and so were happy to be one of the required builds.
So, in a situiation where there is no incentive to find a better build, there is every incentive to be one of the meta builds, there is no data to prove a build is better, one can't be surprised that no one attempted to come up with a better meta.
What about when not joining a guild, but just a scenario you referenced earlier, when you're trying to run a dungeon with them because they got 1 missing? That's more what I was referring to. Same for scenarios where no guilds are involved.
Yea, that's all okay by me, or even good.
Yeah, I'm more talking about more specific quirks. Say your clan is used to amplifying burst damage by timing debuffs or whatever in order to deal with a boss mechanic. And that player instead uses poison. It might be possible to combine your strategies for this run, as long as you play more defensively than your clan is used to.
If your guild party now either refuses this player and continues to look for a perfect match for another 20 minutes, or does accept them, but insists on playing the way they're used to, and then gets wiped and flames the player for not being meta enough...to me that's a missed opportunity.
Edit: perspective.
More opportunities for fun interactions. You know. Enjoying a game. What "works" depends on your goals.
I think success is a flawed primary motivator in any gaming endeavour. It's a fantastic secondary motivator, but if you centre the core of your decisionmaking around it, you're missing out.
In a game where you might run into a dozen players every day who are trying out a new build, you don't have to be the one exploring a new build, the question is about why you're rejecting them by default instead of finding out where your priorities overlap, and where you'd have to make concessions, and whether they're acceptable.
It's just a flawed hyperoptimisation of time that kills genuine interaction in my experience.
I wanna make it clear that I'm not some cuckoo off-meta-only player by a long shot. I don't copy the meta by default either, but I have a decently conventional role-optimisation-driven playstyle.
But what I do do is adjust my playstyle to other player's quirks if it means I get more productive interaction out of it. Cause it's fun as hell, and it gives me more people to interact and cooperate with. And learn from, though that's a sidenote.
and that wont be the case with combat trackers? when people figure out the best builds using the combat trackers, they will play those and expect others to do so.
The way to avoid that hivemind is to not have the game at all. Or to have the game but make it single player, or to make it so players can't group, or to not have combat. There are thousands of other points that this line could be drawn.
Saying that you think a combat tracker is the line that should be drawn in the sand as opposed to drawing the line in any other place makes no sense without context as to why that is where the line should be drawn. I believe it is your turn.
I answered the question here as you said you would refrain from answer the question I posed to you until I answered the above question - since this discussion was in relation to guilds, it seems to me that only the guild aspect is relevant right now.
Quotes for a reminder
The question I asked you; Your response; And the question you asked and wanted answered before answering my question So yeah, I think it's your turn in this specific exchange - why do you think guilds in WoW are so uninterested in training/teaching players, while guilds in other games consider this a requirement/obligation?
But they were enjoying the game.
The vast majority of players simply aren't interested in coming up with their own build. They don't want to spend time doing something that they don't enjoy, that may end up in them not being taken along on content (this is a point of discussion specific to Archeage, keep in mind). There is simply no incentive at all to look for a different build, just as there is no incentive in WoW.
Generally, players don't care about the class options they have not taken, they care that they have a functional class. If they do, the vast majority of players consider that 'done'. Trackers aren't really for these people - they are for those of us that want to expirement, want to find better and be better.
I agree - and the way to find out if they are acceptable is by using a combat tracker.
Again, in EQ2, or any game where trackers are common, I am not going to reject a player to a piece of content based on their build. If they are of a role that fits in to what we are looking for, sure, give them a go. I am aware that this isn't the case in WoW - but the reason for this is something that you may well discover when you answer the question about why guilds in WoW also aren't willing to train players.
It wouldn't be guaranteed. If tracker use were openly allowed (or even encouraged), a meta would be built for the game that is based more on the design of the game. Essentially, it would then be up to the developers to develop the class system in a way where there is no clear best, in which case having trackers will make that obvious, leading to either no meta or (more likely) a very open meta with many hundreds of accepted builds.
However, not having trackers will guarantee the above.
Your doing The Lord's work Noanni.
Bullshit.
1) Metas are formed without using DPS meters to determine the best build. People already have adapted their theorycrafting databases for Ashes. They are being updated every showcase and reveal. There are simulations ready to be fed new information. I'm sure content creators will have build tier lists and meta build videos way before launch even happens. People don't use or need DPS meters to figure this stuff out. They are far more likely to find combat bugs with a DPS meter than happen upon a new build.
2) I think DPS meters actually lend themselves to meta shifts and having an open mind about emerging builds. Not everyone is pouring over every update patch or the cutting edge of class meta. You will notice when the Spellhunter suddenly starts showing on the top of the meters after a major update. And pretty much everyone can discover new things taking a deep look at other people in the DPS meters.
3) Along those lines, they cut both ways. You discover not only who/what might be underperforming, but who/what isn't. I had a Hunter alt in WoW during WotLK. Towards the end of the expansion, Survival Hunter went from one of the worst dps classes to one of the best. I definitely remember more than one pug raid commenting how I was Survival and wanting me to respec for raid, and I would just reply, "if I'm not top DPS, just kick me." Two bosses in, they figured out what they thought was meta was just plain wrong. I'm not sure I would have had raid spots without DPS meters giving instant feedback.
4) 3rd-party combat log websites, if they exist for this game, are going to use the combat logs not DPS meters. They, too, have their uses and flaws.