On the other hand, if you are interested in finding out why that class is underpowered, in trying to find a way to make it not underpowered, or in trying to get the developer to fix the class, a combat tracker is essential.
And I'm used to simply asking people from my guild to fight me and get a direct response from both sides on what is strong or not. My guildmates would've fought dozens/hundreds of the same class as me, so they'd know whether I was fighting better than others or not. So we'd fight each other, while I attempt different approaches or builds.
And once I did become stronger than what they had experienced in the past, I'd try that gameplay against other players (both from my guild and from enemy groups). And I'd get direct feedback from them as well, because I love to respect and talk to my enemies. And with time I'd get to a point where I was in fact better at my class than all the others.
And in cases where I wasn't, I'd simply go to the person who was better than me and would ask them for pointers. And due to my respect of them, I'd get a very good response back.
I've made countless friends and acquaintances this way, quite often from the enemy side as well. None of this would be the case if I simply needed to look at numbers, after hitting some mobs. And I've seen a shitton of people become waaaay better players through the same path - all w/o meters, trackers or dps dummies.
And I know you'll say that L2 was a shitty game, so my experience doesn't matter at all, but I'd simply say that I don't see Ashes being anywhere closer to EQ/WoW than it will be to L2, so I'd imagine my experience will be closer to the experience of Ashes players than it is to the experience of WoW/EQ ones.
It isn't that I have never seen it happen, it is that I have never heard of it happening.
Im not sure I understand that sentence. Are you saying it's even more extreme than just "not seeing it happen" - the concept has never entered your environment? And you still don't think what I'm describing is in any way a cause for self-reflection about that?
I just love that you consider yourself entitled to tell other players that if they don't make enough of an effort to adjust their playstyle to the objective meta standards, they're not qualified for multiplayer games and should stick to singleplayer games; meanwhile you're too antisocial to have a conversation with a non-guild player about what you plan to do together, and consider the very idea of ensuring you're on the same page outlandish. But apparently that's not a probematic trait for mutliplayer gaming at all.
None of this is to say I am treating the games population as numbers. If I am looking for someone and don't have someone that can fill that gap in my guild or friends list, I simply state what role I am looking for, and what content.
There is no more discussion that needs to happen - there is barely any more conversation that *could* happen.
- Expected clear pace/path/speed.
- Preliminary check-in about strategy for the encounter; if it matches, that should be good enough; if there are disagreements, which might just be due to different setups, you can work out further if there is a middle ground that works.
- If you want to keep expectations extra clear, you can then either qualify any proof for performance ability you would like to see, or if it's not important enough to test/confirm it, you can point out how you would define an incompatibility and how you would identify it during the encounter, and discuss if you'd be willing to regroup and retry, or if you'll be splitting up if a certain benchmark doesn't get matched. That way they'll know the hard thresholds they'll need to exceed.
I've yet to see a game that doesn't have some form of character builds, but if a game doesn't have gearscore, you can probably see what gear a player has in general via some other method. I'd be interested to see an MMORPG in which you have no ability at all to see what kind of gear another player has.
Off the top of my head, I can name Regnum and DaoC. I also know I have played several other games where there either wasn't a gear score at all, or at the very least you'd have to ask players to share it with you, so there would be a hook for some amount of communication, though I'd personallly obviously consider that still way too much automation of theorycrafting.
Without going into any detail - any MMORPG that wants even a modest amount of success will give players some manner of showing how good their gear is - to many players this is their version of cosmetics. They don't care about what their character looks like, they aren't showing off their fashion sense - they are showing off their in game accomplishments.
Many players wish to do this, and so MMORPG's will always allow them a means to do so - even if it is only a general means of showing it off.
They can show off their gear by wearing it, or talking about it. More importantly, they can show it off by being more successful in combat.
If no one else has a gear score or DPS parse score to throw around, you'll use the options that exist.
Again you're treating things as essential just because you're used to them.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
No it’s not, what the hell there was dps meters since tbc, wotlk, cata almost every expac up and it helped big guilds determine who was performing and would get on the roster especially when you were in the big guilds it pushed you to perform and get you to be the better at your class no way shape or form did a “dps or hps” meter push solo gameplay
Mistrusts happened from master looters, or loot that was ninja’d after end tier raids
🤦🏻♂️
It isn't that I have never seen it happen, it is that I have never heard of it happening.
Im not sure I understand that sentence. Are you saying it's even more extreme than just "not seeing it happen" - the concept has never entered your environment? And you still don't think what I'm describing is in any way a cause for self-reflection about that?
I just love that you consider yourself entitled to tell other players that if they don't make enough of an effort to adjust their playstyle to the objective meta standards, they're not qualified for multiplayer games and should stick to singleplayer games; meanwhile you're too antisocial to have a conversation with a non-guild player about what you plan to do together, and consider the very idea of ensuring you're on the same page outlandish. But apparently that's not a probematic trait for mutliplayer gaming at all.
None of this is to say I am treating the games population as numbers. If I am looking for someone and don't have someone that can fill that gap in my guild or friends list, I simply state what role I am looking for, and what content.
There is no more discussion that needs to happen - there is barely any more conversation that *could* happen.
- Expected clear pace/path/speed.
- Preliminary check-in about strategy for the encounter; if it matches, that should be good enough; if there are disagreements, which might just be due to different setups, you can work out further if there is a middle ground that works.
- If you want to keep expectations extra clear, you can then either qualify any proof for performance ability you would like to see, or if it's not important enough to test/confirm it, you can point out how you would define an incompatibility and how you would identify it during the encounter, and discuss if you'd be willing to regroup and retry, or if you'll be splitting up if a certain benchmark doesn't get matched. That way they'll know the hard thresholds they'll need to exceed.
So instead of a DPS meter, you want people to say how fast they kill things and potentially have to prove it?
It isn't that I have never seen it happen, it is that I have never heard of it happening.
Im not sure I understand that sentence. Are you saying it's even more extreme than just "not seeing it happen" - the concept has never entered your environment? And you still don't think what I'm describing is in any way a cause for self-reflection about that?
I just love that you consider yourself entitled to tell other players that if they don't make enough of an effort to adjust their playstyle to the objective meta standards, they're not qualified for multiplayer games and should stick to singleplayer games; meanwhile you're too antisocial to have a conversation with a non-guild player about what you plan to do together, and consider the very idea of ensuring you're on the same page outlandish. But apparently that's not a probematic trait for mutliplayer gaming at all.
None of this is to say I am treating the games population as numbers. If I am looking for someone and don't have someone that can fill that gap in my guild or friends list, I simply state what role I am looking for, and what content.
There is no more discussion that needs to happen - there is barely any more conversation that *could* happen.
- Expected clear pace/path/speed.
- Preliminary check-in about strategy for the encounter; if it matches, that should be good enough; if there are disagreements, which might just be due to different setups, you can work out further if there is a middle ground that works.
- If you want to keep expectations extra clear, you can then either qualify any proof for performance ability you would like to see, or if it's not important enough to test/confirm it, you can point out how you would define an incompatibility and how you would identify it during the encounter, and discuss if you'd be willing to regroup and retry, or if you'll be splitting up if a certain benchmark doesn't get matched. That way they'll know the hard thresholds they'll need to exceed.
So instead of a DPS meter, you want people to say how fast they kill things and potentially have to prove it?
Yes, for groups that have those demands, absolutely.
Which will affect the default player interaction dynamics in all kinds of ways.
Some players will stay cooped up with their known groups even more, because they can't handle that amount of communication. Some similar groups will accept outside party members, but place very high demands on proven performance (either tested live or screenshots / similar customs.)
Then there will also be an opposite bunch of players ready to adjust to the strengths of other players, or even willing to accept any outcome regardless of how well the group plays together; but those will admittedly largely be unchanged from the same pool of players in a game with DPS meters and similar tools.
However, the crucial difference would be in a core average group of players who will simply accept that they have to speak up more in order to end up in groups they like, and be more willing to talk out their expectations.
Again, proof: Other games I've played, plus the fact that pretty much everyone in this thread defending DPS meters is loudly proclaiming their disdain for players who don't meet their expectations. There is a deep-rooted need for more explicitly discussed expectations in group-making, and it comes out when automation of group-finding communication gets limited.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
On the other hand, if you are interested in finding out why that class is underpowered, in trying to find a way to make it not underpowered, or in trying to get the developer to fix the class, a combat tracker is essential.
And I'm used to simply asking people from my guild to fight me and get a direct response from both sides on what is strong or not. My guildmates would've fought dozens/hundreds of the same class as me, so they'd know whether I was fighting better than others or not. So we'd fight each other, while I attempt different approaches or builds.
And once I did become stronger than what they had experienced in the past, I'd try that gameplay against other players (both from my guild and from enemy groups). And I'd get direct feedback from them as well, because I love to respect and talk to my enemies. And with time I'd get to a point where I was in fact better at my class than all the others.
And in cases where I wasn't, I'd simply go to the person who was better than me and would ask them for pointers. And due to my respect of them, I'd get a very good response back.
I've made countless friends and acquaintances this way, quite often from the enemy side as well. None of this would be the case if I simply needed to look at numbers, after hitting some mobs. And I've seen a shitton of people become waaaay better players through the same path - all w/o meters, trackers or dps dummies.
And I know you'll say that L2 was a shitty game, so my experience doesn't matter at all, but I'd simply say that I don't see Ashes being anywhere closer to EQ/WoW than it will be to L2, so I'd imagine my experience will be closer to the experience of Ashes players than it is to the experience of WoW/EQ ones.
It'd be better to stay quiet than admit you have no idea what anyone is talking about. Like there's no way to respond or have a conversation when you are talking about cricket and everyone else is talking about baseball.
Again, proof: Other games I've played, plus the fact that pretty much everyone in this thread defending DPS meters is loudly proclaiming their disdain for players who don't meet their expectations. There is a deep-rooted need for more explicitly discussed expectations in group-making, and it comes out when automation of group-finding communication gets limited.
That's an interesting point of view and thank you for sharing it.
I think the default expectations for most people is the successful completion of the content you are grouping for. I think the vast majority of people wont complain to much about damage or healing numbers after a successful raid, if anything people may offer to help those that perform lower.
The disdain, infighting and calling people out happen when that expectation is failed. People feel like they are wasting their time and they don't want to continue doing so. That may involve removing people who are not performing well or disbanding the group to try again later. Meters allow the first to chosen more often. Rather than just DPS, if there aren't enough interrupts, a meter can show who needs to step it up. A healer spent the whole fight DPSing because other healers were overhealing until they were oom. Meters can show that to. A good meter can even show when the tank pressed cooldowns and how much damage they took.
In short Meters are an excellent tool that allows raid leaders to make objective decisions. Without available metrics the difficulty to make a similar decision is much higher and more time consuming. I think this will isolate groups even more than the design strategy of the game currently does.
Again, proof: Other games I've played, plus the fact that pretty much everyone in this thread defending DPS meters is loudly proclaiming their disdain for players who don't meet their expectations. There is a deep-rooted need for more explicitly discussed expectations in group-making, and it comes out when automation of group-finding communication gets limited.
That's an interesting point of view and thank you for sharing it.
I think the default expectations for most people is the successful completion of the content you are grouping for.
The disdain, infighting and calling people out happen when that expectation is failed.
In short Meters are an excellent tool that allows raid leaders to make objective decisions. Without available metrics the difficulty to make a similar decision is much higher and more time consuming.
It's a bandaid solution to try and outsource the communication to a tool instead of voicing your expectations and accepting that sometimes a mismatch will happen. Communication gets you clarity on both sides and helps make sure you actually take the necessary steps to be in control of the result instead of hoping everyone happens to be pulling on the same string. The implicit expectations of external tools automating communication get in the way of making those expectations explicit.
Yes, the DPS meter gives you accurate information to determine who the problem was, but automating that process removes an essential part of paying attention to the actual game's feedback in order to track and improve your performance.
In a game without a combat tracker, you can achieve the same result by encouraging people to self-evaluate honestly.
Compared to their competition, better leaders lead more successfully, better players improve more, and better teams coordinate more impressively, if everyone doesn't get perfect analysis neatly packaged after every encounter.
And with that I think I'll leave this thread, the back-and-forth doesn't seem to find and end.
My final stand would be: Have an open mind.
The mainstream has been dominated by embracing automation and giving authority to an identifiable objective superiority to a meta by giving access to reliable perfect information for a long time. Just consider that it might primarily appeal to you because it's what you're used to, and perhaps a game with more ambiguity, variety, manual data anaylysis, and communication instead of implicit expectations might be better than you imagine it.
The only one who can validate you for all the posts you didn't write is you.
Ye..
Someone cluelessly said that noobs will get loot without a DPS tool showing who performed.
As if this is yet another lobby mmo that randoms will raid in an instance.
As if every raid member gets awarded loot when the boss goes down.
Raids will know each members capabilities due to long time performance on pve pvp and economy participation within the guild.
All the "benefits" that you claim that dps meters will bring dont even fit AoCs stracture.
Totally out of touch on what this owpvp mmo is.
Keep talking.
You got dps -- that doesn't mean you did anything else right.
If you are in the group or raid for DPS, you shouldn't be doing anything else.
Bullshit.
If you want to give me a scenario in which you have asked to be DPS, and the right thing to do is something other than dealing damage, I'd be happy to point out how you are wrong.
Okay. For example, in Guild Wars 2, there is a raid boss called Dhuum. This is probably the most difficult raid in the entire game. 2 or 3 players must do something else than DPS at some point. When the time comes, they have to stop DPSing the boss and get in the air to collect orbs, or else we all die. And this is the most satisfying raid boss to kill because it is so hard to teamwork in this scenario.
Having varying raid encounters is challenging, and each individual has a role. But comes a point where players will find a way to succeed the raid and if the solution is to free a DPSer to do another mechanic, then be it.
You should check GW2 raids mechanics, they are really well made and thought.
It'd be better to stay quiet than admit you have no idea what anyone is talking about. Like there's no way to respond or have a conversation when you are talking about cricket and everyone else is talking about baseball.
Very true, which is why I'm left wondering why you're still here
Having varying raid encounters is challenging, and each individual has a role. But comes a point where players will find a way to succeed the raid and if the solution is to free a DPSer to do another mechanic, then be it.
From what I've understood of Noaani's and Azherae's explanations, a good tracker would give info about this mechanic. It'd say which players had to do the mechanic and would say how quickly they reacted, and how long it took them to do it.
Tracker sees all, records all, parses all of that info and then tells you exactly who did what and at what time. And then it'd be on the raid to decide how to solve the issue, if there was one.
I've said it before, but, as I see it, this leads directly to the speeding up of content devouring by players. This then requires more dev time to produce more content, while at least a fraction of that content is now so difficult/complex that only people with trackers can even start to see what mechanics/timings they missed during the encounter.
And Noaani also has a very precise attitude towards the content's design. He's ok with not seeing mechanics directly, because he's used to several of them being invisible cause they're stacked onto each other. So the only physical way for players to even know that a mechanic happened is to go through the tracker's log and be like "ohhh, at this moment the boss used 10 abilities all at once and one of them dmged out off-tank by slightly too much, which made our healer spend 0.5% more mana than was required, which inevitably lead to our deaths 5 minutes later".
It's the shit like that in raid mmos, that makes everyone who likes those mmos always think that you can't play a game w/o a tracker. Because, yes, you cannot play a game when you literally can't see a mechanic happening.
Tracker players want to fly a plane in the middle of a cloud and go only by their instruments, while those who dislike trackers want to fly a plane. Both activities are really difficult, but one relies way more on the tools at hands, rather than simply on player skill. And obviously flying w/o visuals is harder, which gives the tracker people big enough of an ego to tell normal fliers that they shouldn't even fly, if they're not ready to go blind while doing it.
You got dps -- that doesn't mean you did anything else right.
If you are in the group or raid for DPS, you shouldn't be doing anything else.
Bullshit.
If you want to give me a scenario in which you have asked to be DPS, and the right thing to do is something other than dealing damage, I'd be happy to point out how you are wrong.
Okay. For example, in Guild Wars 2, there is a raid boss called Dhuum. This is probably the most difficult raid in the entire game. 2 or 3 players must do something else than DPS at some point. When the time comes, they have to stop DPSing the boss and get in the air to collect orbs, or else we all die. And this is the most satisfying raid boss to kill because it is so hard to teamwork in this scenario.
Having varying raid encounters is challenging, and each individual has a role. But comes a point where players will find a way to succeed the raid and if the solution is to free a DPSer to do another mechanic, then be it.
You should check GW2 raids mechanics, they are really well made and thought.
I'm totally with you here, I've never called out or had a RL call someone out for doing like 80% of the theoretical maximum dps. Doing unfathomably bad dps - like less than the healer/tank, yes that gets called out and it should be. Far more common would be along the lines of seeing who's taking the avoidable damage or not interrupting the important mechanic or not collecting orbs in your example.
And when there's a rival raid competing with you to kill the same boss. It's extremely useful to know who keeps blowing the mechanic and wiping the raid, intentionally or otherwise.
It'd be better to stay quiet than admit you have no idea what anyone is talking about. Like there's no way to respond or have a conversation when you are talking about cricket and everyone else is talking about baseball.
Very true, which is why I'm left wondering why you're still here.
Dude. You were literally talking about not needing a combat tracker when learning to duel well. You are way out in left field. Just sit this one out and maybe learn from other people's experience.
And I didn't mean just you, people who have never raid lead or been in a competitive PvE environment really can't speak to the usefulness or lack thereof of combat meters.
Dude. You were literally talking about not needing a combat tracker when learning to duel well. You are way out in left field. Just sit this one out and maybe learn from other people's experience.
I talked about that, because Ashes will not be a raid mmo. Hardest content will not be instanced. So a tracker telling you that your healer healed a ranger who was never in the boss' red zone won't let you blame that ranger for the raid's death, because the ranger was attacked by another player and the healer tried to keep him alive.
My response was also in the context of learning one's own character's limits/strengths/powers. And all of that can be done in a pvp setting w/o trackers, because you have a direct and immediate feedback to all the things you're doing. And you also get to completely control your target's responses/buffs/movements/etc. None of that is fully true in a pve environment, because there's only so much that the devs let you control in that situation.
On the other hand, if you are interested in finding out why that class is underpowered, in trying to find a way to make it not underpowered, or in trying to get the developer to fix the class, a combat tracker is essential.
And I'm used to simply asking people from my guild to fight me and get a direct response from both sides on what is strong or not.
That is still only capable of telling you which is stronger - it does nothing at all to tell you why.
Again, if all you are interested in is knowing which is harder/better/faster/stronger, your method is slower, but it works.
If you want to know why the above is the case, your method simply doesn't offer anything.
Basically, you and I have different goals. You want to create a strong build to play, I want to understand why the build is strong.
Okay. For example, in Guild Wars 2, there is a raid boss called Dhuum. This is probably the most difficult raid in the entire game. 2 or 3 players must do something else than DPS at some point.
Please keep the actual question in mind.
If you were bought in to a raid for DPS, you would not be one of these two or three players. On the other hand, if you were asked to perform this function, you were not asked to be DPS - you are DPS + encounter mechanics.
You would not opt to perform that function of your own volition.
The encounter mechanics you talk about are very common in most games with raid encounters - they are not GW2 specific, but were a consideration when I made the initial statement.
Editing to add: NiKr is also correct that a tracker will have this information in it - but the point about only doing DPS was in relation to when you were only asked to do DPS.
It isn't that I have never seen it happen, it is that I have never heard of it happening.
Im not sure I understand that sentence. Are you saying it's even more extreme than just "not seeing it happen" - the concept has never entered your environment?
Indeed.
Before you mentioned it in this thread, it is not a concept I have ever been aware of. In my experience, and the experience of the thousands of people I have played MMORPG's with, discussing expectations of a group before hand other than the target content is simply not done.
In EQ2 (where about half of my MMO play has been), if you joined a group to perform a role, you knew what to do. There was no conversation to be had. People wouldn't join a group with a build that was non-conducive to the role they were expected to fill in the group.
It may well be that this is a part of the reason why there was almost no toxicity in that game - everyone understood their role and came prepared to perform it.
There was no need to discuss clear speed or anything, because the expectation in that game was always "as fast as we can".
Off the top of my head, I can name Regnum and DaoC.
There were means to do this in DAoC up until 2017.
You can still do it in Champions of Regnum.
Just because you are looking for some single number or such and not finding it, doesn't mean there isn't (or wasn't) a way to do it.
Keep in mind, the goal isn't to know the gear score of a character, the goal is to know that they character has suitable gear for the content in question.
They can show off their gear by wearing it
Yes they can, and when they do, I know what gear they have.
As I said above, it isn't about gearscore specifically - that is just one means that some games have for making this easier.
If a game doesn't allow for cosmetics, there is no need to do anything other than look at the character.
The thing is, some people want to show off their fashion, some people want to show off the quality of their gear, some people want o do both (I would argue most people want to do both, to a degree - even though I am not one of that group).
You would not opt to perform that function of your own volition.
But what if the mechanic players are randomly chosen by the game?
While this does happen in some games (EQ2 has many such mechanics), such encounters are unlikely to be taken on by pickup groups or raids - and we are discussing pick up content as the base scenario here.
I could speculate as to what I think could happen in a situation like this, but as it isn't a real scenario, I don't see it being overly helpful to the discussion.
What I will say is that if you are going up against an encounter with such a mechanic, no one is being asked to come along as "just" any role - every person present is a key member of the group or raid, and has the very real possibility that their actions could cause a complete wipe (this is why such encounters are not run as pick up content - you need complete faith in every person present).
The very presence of a real-time dps meter inevitably leads to disagreements and bullying in a raid. a player's value starts not from his effectiveness in certain situations, but purely because of the numbers he gives out. there are different situations, somewhere you really need high damage, somewhere you need a well-honed knowledge of mechanics, and somewhere you need the ability to competently predict what is happening and will happen.
In my opinion, a compromise solution would be standard logs that can be viewed after an activity. general access to logs will be available only to the raid leader. individual players can only view their logs.
This way raid leader can evaluate the overall effectiveness of the party in terms of damage, and individual players will know their damage and track their progress.
The very presence of a real-time dps meter inevitably leads to disagreements and bullying in a raid. a player's value starts not from his effectiveness in certain situations, but purely because of the numbers he gives out. there are different situations, somewhere you really need high damage, somewhere you need a well-honed knowledge of mechanics, and somewhere you need the ability to competently predict what is happening and will happen.
Your first statement is wrong.
The rest of it is subjectively true.
Sure, there are times when you need knowledge of mechanics. However, anyone with that knowledge of mechanics won't be sitting there with a DPS meter aspect of their combat tracker open during an actual fight. If you are in a group or raid with someone that does have it open during a fight, and you are that person that has that understanding of mechanics and such, then you would excuse yourself from that group, raid or guild.
There is no reason or excuse to have a combat tracker showing real time DPS figures.
@Noaani I may have misdescribed what I mean (my English is poor). to be more specific, what I'm saying is that having a real-time dps meter is not necessary at all
that is, when people focus on dps so much that they use dps meter in real time, it leads to many unpleasant situations and changes the vector, mood and meaning of the gameplay and enjoyment. and this change of vector also affects other people in the guild and community
Noaani I may have misdescribed what I mean (my English is poor). to be more specific, what I'm saying is that having a real-time dps meter is not necessary at all
You described what you meant just fine, and I agree, it isn't needed.
I literally never use one - but I always run a combat tracker. It is at it's best for review post content. The real time DPS measuring aspect of a combat tracker is perhaps 2% of what a combat tracker does. The bulk of this thread is not actually about real time DPS measuring - even if that is what Steven mistakely labeled the thread as (the discussion started before the thread started).
If Intrepid wanted to embrace combat tracker use in Ashes, they could do so in a way where it is not possible to use a combat tracker in real time, if they wished to do so.
People woul still request picture as proof of performance which leads to toxicity.
But again... none of that matters in an owpvp mmo.
This shit is designed for instanced gear treadmills
People woul still request picture as proof of performance which leads to toxicity.
But again... none of that matters in an owpvp mmo.
This shit is designed for instanced gear treadmills
Some aspects of combat trackers absolutely are designed for instanced content. Some are more geared towards PvP, however.
Comments
It's pretty clear a lot of the people posting on this thread don't have any clue what they are talking about.
And I'm used to simply asking people from my guild to fight me and get a direct response from both sides on what is strong or not. My guildmates would've fought dozens/hundreds of the same class as me, so they'd know whether I was fighting better than others or not. So we'd fight each other, while I attempt different approaches or builds.
And once I did become stronger than what they had experienced in the past, I'd try that gameplay against other players (both from my guild and from enemy groups). And I'd get direct feedback from them as well, because I love to respect and talk to my enemies. And with time I'd get to a point where I was in fact better at my class than all the others.
And in cases where I wasn't, I'd simply go to the person who was better than me and would ask them for pointers. And due to my respect of them, I'd get a very good response back.
I've made countless friends and acquaintances this way, quite often from the enemy side as well. None of this would be the case if I simply needed to look at numbers, after hitting some mobs. And I've seen a shitton of people become waaaay better players through the same path - all w/o meters, trackers or dps dummies.
And I know you'll say that L2 was a shitty game, so my experience doesn't matter at all, but I'd simply say that I don't see Ashes being anywhere closer to EQ/WoW than it will be to L2, so I'd imagine my experience will be closer to the experience of Ashes players than it is to the experience of WoW/EQ ones.
I just love that you consider yourself entitled to tell other players that if they don't make enough of an effort to adjust their playstyle to the objective meta standards, they're not qualified for multiplayer games and should stick to singleplayer games; meanwhile you're too antisocial to have a conversation with a non-guild player about what you plan to do together, and consider the very idea of ensuring you're on the same page outlandish. But apparently that's not a probematic trait for mutliplayer gaming at all.
- Expected clear pace/path/speed.
- Preliminary check-in about strategy for the encounter; if it matches, that should be good enough; if there are disagreements, which might just be due to different setups, you can work out further if there is a middle ground that works.
- If you want to keep expectations extra clear, you can then either qualify any proof for performance ability you would like to see, or if it's not important enough to test/confirm it, you can point out how you would define an incompatibility and how you would identify it during the encounter, and discuss if you'd be willing to regroup and retry, or if you'll be splitting up if a certain benchmark doesn't get matched. That way they'll know the hard thresholds they'll need to exceed.
Off the top of my head, I can name Regnum and DaoC. I also know I have played several other games where there either wasn't a gear score at all, or at the very least you'd have to ask players to share it with you, so there would be a hook for some amount of communication, though I'd personallly obviously consider that still way too much automation of theorycrafting.
They can show off their gear by wearing it, or talking about it. More importantly, they can show it off by being more successful in combat.
If no one else has a gear score or DPS parse score to throw around, you'll use the options that exist.
Again you're treating things as essential just because you're used to them.
Mistrusts happened from master looters, or loot that was ninja’d after end tier raids
🤦🏻♂️
So instead of a DPS meter, you want people to say how fast they kill things and potentially have to prove it?
Which will affect the default player interaction dynamics in all kinds of ways.
Again, proof: Other games I've played, plus the fact that pretty much everyone in this thread defending DPS meters is loudly proclaiming their disdain for players who don't meet their expectations. There is a deep-rooted need for more explicitly discussed expectations in group-making, and it comes out when automation of group-finding communication gets limited.
That's an interesting point of view and thank you for sharing it.
I think the default expectations for most people is the successful completion of the content you are grouping for. I think the vast majority of people wont complain to much about damage or healing numbers after a successful raid, if anything people may offer to help those that perform lower.
The disdain, infighting and calling people out happen when that expectation is failed. People feel like they are wasting their time and they don't want to continue doing so. That may involve removing people who are not performing well or disbanding the group to try again later. Meters allow the first to chosen more often. Rather than just DPS, if there aren't enough interrupts, a meter can show who needs to step it up. A healer spent the whole fight DPSing because other healers were overhealing until they were oom. Meters can show that to. A good meter can even show when the tank pressed cooldowns and how much damage they took.
In short Meters are an excellent tool that allows raid leaders to make objective decisions. Without available metrics the difficulty to make a similar decision is much higher and more time consuming. I think this will isolate groups even more than the design strategy of the game currently does.
Yes, the DPS meter gives you accurate information to determine who the problem was, but automating that process removes an essential part of paying attention to the actual game's feedback in order to track and improve your performance.
In a game without a combat tracker, you can achieve the same result by encouraging people to self-evaluate honestly.
Compared to their competition, better leaders lead more successfully, better players improve more, and better teams coordinate more impressively, if everyone doesn't get perfect analysis neatly packaged after every encounter.
And with that I think I'll leave this thread, the back-and-forth doesn't seem to find and end.
My final stand would be: Have an open mind.
The mainstream has been dominated by embracing automation and giving authority to an identifiable objective superiority to a meta by giving access to reliable perfect information for a long time. Just consider that it might primarily appeal to you because it's what you're used to, and perhaps a game with more ambiguity, variety, manual data anaylysis, and communication instead of implicit expectations might be better than you imagine it.
Someone cluelessly said that noobs will get loot without a DPS tool showing who performed.
As if this is yet another lobby mmo that randoms will raid in an instance.
As if every raid member gets awarded loot when the boss goes down.
Raids will know each members capabilities due to long time performance on pve pvp and economy participation within the guild.
All the "benefits" that you claim that dps meters will bring dont even fit AoCs stracture.
Totally out of touch on what this owpvp mmo is.
Keep talking.
Okay. For example, in Guild Wars 2, there is a raid boss called Dhuum. This is probably the most difficult raid in the entire game. 2 or 3 players must do something else than DPS at some point. When the time comes, they have to stop DPSing the boss and get in the air to collect orbs, or else we all die. And this is the most satisfying raid boss to kill because it is so hard to teamwork in this scenario.
Having varying raid encounters is challenging, and each individual has a role. But comes a point where players will find a way to succeed the raid and if the solution is to free a DPSer to do another mechanic, then be it.
You should check GW2 raids mechanics, they are really well made and thought.
From what I've understood of Noaani's and Azherae's explanations, a good tracker would give info about this mechanic. It'd say which players had to do the mechanic and would say how quickly they reacted, and how long it took them to do it.
Tracker sees all, records all, parses all of that info and then tells you exactly who did what and at what time. And then it'd be on the raid to decide how to solve the issue, if there was one.
I've said it before, but, as I see it, this leads directly to the speeding up of content devouring by players. This then requires more dev time to produce more content, while at least a fraction of that content is now so difficult/complex that only people with trackers can even start to see what mechanics/timings they missed during the encounter.
And Noaani also has a very precise attitude towards the content's design. He's ok with not seeing mechanics directly, because he's used to several of them being invisible cause they're stacked onto each other. So the only physical way for players to even know that a mechanic happened is to go through the tracker's log and be like "ohhh, at this moment the boss used 10 abilities all at once and one of them dmged out off-tank by slightly too much, which made our healer spend 0.5% more mana than was required, which inevitably lead to our deaths 5 minutes later".
It's the shit like that in raid mmos, that makes everyone who likes those mmos always think that you can't play a game w/o a tracker. Because, yes, you cannot play a game when you literally can't see a mechanic happening.
Tracker players want to fly a plane in the middle of a cloud and go only by their instruments, while those who dislike trackers want to fly a plane. Both activities are really difficult, but one relies way more on the tools at hands, rather than simply on player skill. And obviously flying w/o visuals is harder, which gives the tracker people big enough of an ego to tell normal fliers that they shouldn't even fly, if they're not ready to go blind while doing it.
And when there's a rival raid competing with you to kill the same boss. It's extremely useful to know who keeps blowing the mechanic and wiping the raid, intentionally or otherwise.
Dude. You were literally talking about not needing a combat tracker when learning to duel well. You are way out in left field. Just sit this one out and maybe learn from other people's experience.
And I didn't mean just you, people who have never raid lead or been in a competitive PvE environment really can't speak to the usefulness or lack thereof of combat meters.
My response was also in the context of learning one's own character's limits/strengths/powers. And all of that can be done in a pvp setting w/o trackers, because you have a direct and immediate feedback to all the things you're doing. And you also get to completely control your target's responses/buffs/movements/etc. None of that is fully true in a pve environment, because there's only so much that the devs let you control in that situation.
I've even seen people be toxic in the forums! And there is no DPS meter here...
This has been a recurring theme for about 200 thread pages.
I very much want the ability to measure and optimize my own performance.
I do not want in any way the game to rely on such optimizations, to need that kind of peak performance, or encounters to require addons to complete.
I just like to make more damage because its damage
Again, if all you are interested in is knowing which is harder/better/faster/stronger, your method is slower, but it works.
If you want to know why the above is the case, your method simply doesn't offer anything.
Basically, you and I have different goals. You want to create a strong build to play, I want to understand why the build is strong.
Please keep the actual question in mind.
If you were bought in to a raid for DPS, you would not be one of these two or three players. On the other hand, if you were asked to perform this function, you were not asked to be DPS - you are DPS + encounter mechanics.
You would not opt to perform that function of your own volition.
The encounter mechanics you talk about are very common in most games with raid encounters - they are not GW2 specific, but were a consideration when I made the initial statement.
Editing to add: NiKr is also correct that a tracker will have this information in it - but the point about only doing DPS was in relation to when you were only asked to do DPS.
Before you mentioned it in this thread, it is not a concept I have ever been aware of. In my experience, and the experience of the thousands of people I have played MMORPG's with, discussing expectations of a group before hand other than the target content is simply not done.
In EQ2 (where about half of my MMO play has been), if you joined a group to perform a role, you knew what to do. There was no conversation to be had. People wouldn't join a group with a build that was non-conducive to the role they were expected to fill in the group.
It may well be that this is a part of the reason why there was almost no toxicity in that game - everyone understood their role and came prepared to perform it.
There was no need to discuss clear speed or anything, because the expectation in that game was always "as fast as we can". There were means to do this in DAoC up until 2017.
You can still do it in Champions of Regnum.
Just because you are looking for some single number or such and not finding it, doesn't mean there isn't (or wasn't) a way to do it.
Keep in mind, the goal isn't to know the gear score of a character, the goal is to know that they character has suitable gear for the content in question.
Yes they can, and when they do, I know what gear they have.
As I said above, it isn't about gearscore specifically - that is just one means that some games have for making this easier.
If a game doesn't allow for cosmetics, there is no need to do anything other than look at the character.
The thing is, some people want to show off their fashion, some people want to show off the quality of their gear, some people want o do both (I would argue most people want to do both, to a degree - even though I am not one of that group).
While this does happen in some games (EQ2 has many such mechanics), such encounters are unlikely to be taken on by pickup groups or raids - and we are discussing pick up content as the base scenario here.
I could speculate as to what I think could happen in a situation like this, but as it isn't a real scenario, I don't see it being overly helpful to the discussion.
What I will say is that if you are going up against an encounter with such a mechanic, no one is being asked to come along as "just" any role - every person present is a key member of the group or raid, and has the very real possibility that their actions could cause a complete wipe (this is why such encounters are not run as pick up content - you need complete faith in every person present).
In my opinion, a compromise solution would be standard logs that can be viewed after an activity. general access to logs will be available only to the raid leader. individual players can only view their logs.
This way raid leader can evaluate the overall effectiveness of the party in terms of damage, and individual players will know their damage and track their progress.
Should have seen the old school WoW forums, now that was good entertainment
It would definitely get cancelled in today’s generation lmao
The rest of it is subjectively true.
Sure, there are times when you need knowledge of mechanics. However, anyone with that knowledge of mechanics won't be sitting there with a DPS meter aspect of their combat tracker open during an actual fight. If you are in a group or raid with someone that does have it open during a fight, and you are that person that has that understanding of mechanics and such, then you would excuse yourself from that group, raid or guild.
There is no reason or excuse to have a combat tracker showing real time DPS figures.
that is, when people focus on dps so much that they use dps meter in real time, it leads to many unpleasant situations and changes the vector, mood and meaning of the gameplay and enjoyment. and this change of vector also affects other people in the guild and community
I literally never use one - but I always run a combat tracker. It is at it's best for review post content. The real time DPS measuring aspect of a combat tracker is perhaps 2% of what a combat tracker does. The bulk of this thread is not actually about real time DPS measuring - even if that is what Steven mistakely labeled the thread as (the discussion started before the thread started).
If Intrepid wanted to embrace combat tracker use in Ashes, they could do so in a way where it is not possible to use a combat tracker in real time, if they wished to do so.
But again... none of that matters in an owpvp mmo.
This shit is designed for instanced gear treadmills
Some aspects of combat trackers absolutely are designed for instanced content. Some are more geared towards PvP, however.