Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
Where things diverge for me with damage meters in particular is that in my experience, they're not especially helpful in bringing out an optimum performance from raiders and can paint a misleading picture of overall performance.
I may have miscommunicated this previously, but I'm for having tools that are objectively useful in analysing personal performance. I want people to know which mechanics they're not executing cleanly and what non-obvious things that the raid in general needs to be aware of.
I don't necessarily agree however that dps meters are an integral or even useful component of such tools.
You may notice, the only time I use the term "DPS meter" is when I use it to correct people. There is literally no such thing, and any tool that can be used to measure DPS is actually doing nothing more than scanning a log file for specific text to use to perform calculations. In all cases, you can alter the text it looks for which alters the information it picks up, and then you can alter the calculations it does with that information.
This means that it is now telling you what ever information you want, and the DPS that you are doing is one of the many hundred possible things that this can include.
If people have this tool, and they misuse it, then that is not a fault of the tool. If someone is looking at DPS as the only indicator of performance, then that is their fault, not the tools fault.
You think it's a mistake. Some people also thought it was a mistake in the past. I don't think so and so do many many people from the community.
Sure some min-maxers will always do this, because that is what brings them joy. But DPS meters tend to cause situations like "Accepting DPS 40K+ for raid no others", so for people to compete they play what performs best and not what they have fun playing. Because if they don't play the meta for best DPS they will not be able to get into groups for X content.
Yes this hinders min-maxers, but they still can find ways to measure their uber awesomeness without DPS meters. People who want to play to have fun can't undo DPS meter impact.
I suppose I am just a PvP player, so I enjoy the competitive environment a DPS meter brings. I truly believe it's a mistake to not have one in the game. The argument of, "well I suck, and people know I suck, so I can't get into hard content." seems insane to me. If you want to do the hard content, get good at the game. You don't get benched in games if the average DPS is 50k and you're doing 40k. The best players will do 80k DPS, the average player will do 50k DPS, and the players who get benched are doing 25-30k DPS.
I suppose no damage meter doesn't affect my enjoyment of PvP at all, so I guess it's not a huge deal.
Thinking more into it. I can likely go half AFK in raids because no one will be able to tell how low my damage is, which will make the PvE experience more enjoyable. I can make sandwich, do chores around the house, or even play a phone game, all while gearing my character.
You should get good by trail and error, try stuff out see what feels good and apply it.
This is part of playing an MMO, trail and error. risk vs reward, see where you failed, and learn from it. Change your tactic, gear, or even skill setup based on your own finding.
Learn, apply, try .. repeat.
I was exaggerating. I'll avoid all the mechanics. I'll DPS the boss to an extent. All while I watch Netflix or talk to my friends. Steven Sharif has stated many times there needs to be winners and losers, but it seems this is another game that will try to hide who the losers are.
Not being allowed to join a group because your DPS is low should motivate you to increase your DPS. It'll allow you to communicate with players who are performing better than you and ask for advice. Yes, it allows the players who earned the bragging rights the right to brag, but what is that bad? Why is competition bad? It's only at the very high end (WoW's "Cutting Edge") environment, where players get benched for low DPS. In most cases, you're just talking shit to your friends about how you out performed them, or they out performed you. Friendly competition is good, and important, especially for MMOs. The damage meter is a good friendly competition, and should be in the game.
META and min-maxing are inevitable. They will always exists, rather you like it or not. But these are suppose serve as tools, not as rules. When you have the extreme optimization as a rule, you just funnels down just a couple of combinations, throwing in the garbage all of the other possible interesting combinations that the game has, with a little chance to make a comeback once the META changes. And that's what 'hardcore' PvE players have been doing in the past years to speedrun the endgame content, in some of the most popular MMORPGs. When you have a high difficulty goal like that, it's fair to try to improve every minimal detail that can help you to get to your goal, so these people who embrace this ideal must have to give up in personal preference in order to reach the objective. What is not fair is when you create a toxic culture around it, in which you push this same behavior to all of your player base, when most of it are just trying to have fun in the game, not accomplishing something as difficult. So the 'normal' people who really likes to play something interesting or/and unique, feel pressured to give up their own preference playstyle just so they can have a place in a group for they being able to play some content, instead of playing the game in a 'normal' pace but actually enjoying doing it with your choice.
I'm not saying that without a DPS meter people won't be able to tell which class combinations, skills combos, etc., is the best, but it will certainly slows down the process of creating a META, by having just a qualitative measurement. Plus, as Ashes will be a new game in the neighbourhood, it will take a long time to stabilish a META, since the game have several multiple combinations possible, with many variables to consider, and even more difficult if the devs keep bringing balance patchs and new content.
Back in WoW, during WotLK my guild was trying to get through end game raids and was falling short. We used DPS meters to see who was having trouble keeping up and it turned out to be myself and another Rogue.
So we talked about gear, and what skills we were using and how we were using them. I made some changes, tried out new things on practice dummies, made more changes, etc. I felt pretty confident (so did my buddy, the other Rogue) and things went much better the next time around. We learned, improved, and it was a great experience.
Damage meters made that happen. Without them there would be no way to tell who was lagging and by how much, and no good way to measure and test how we were doing. All the stuff you talk about was made possible because of the meter. You’re arguing for it and don’t even realize it.
I know that a game can survive without it; many MMOs I’ve played do fine without one. And sure, some people might look at a meter and decide to kick out and give up on someone who isn’t doing well. But that’s not a meter issue, that’s an asshole issue. Meters don’t make people jerks, they reveal them to be jerks.
I think first of all we all have to realize that WoW and Ashes are not the same game. So in WoW it helped you and your guild this is also because Raids are the end game. Not saying you are, but DPS meters might reveal jerks ! but the moment they become a standard in the community it also makes a lot more people become jerks.
For a game that is so community-driven and impacted by it a DPS meter would only damage the game.
I do still stand by my opinion as I have done it myself countless times. Trail and error, with a good guild you will work together figure out what went wrong, analyze gear together, discuss the pain points in a fight, and what could be done to counter it. Non of this requires an addon but teamwork, communication, insight and skill.
Want to test your damage? Go kill the same thing over and over and time it. There's your damage meter.
My perspective is this, I like DPS meters because as a guild leader, it allows me to help players to min/max their class. It creates a level of competition between players during raids/groups and allows the community to set a bar for themselves on how to improve. Having the tool in place for these things should be in the game, if not then as an add on. I don't see this hurting anyone at all unless someone plans to be lazy and not get "caught" being lazy.
Having a DPS meters puts pressure on a lot of people to compete, a lot of people would ignore some of the other features and it would fuel toxicity no matter what as whatever your beliefs are it fuels elitism.
Adding a DPS meter after launch will anger a lot of players and might make them leave, impacting the game.
So why add one? the game is fair and open for everyone to play however he or she wants. If you want to be the best test your builds, play around with it.
Outside of that, I haven't really seen any *need* for a dps meter. Most of the content outside of a cutting edge raid environment doesn't need a dps meter, or healing meter. It has its uses, but isn't needed. I personally just find them very distracting. As a player, I find it more enjoyable to be focused on what's happening right in front of me than in a small window in the bottom that's comparing my numbers to everyone else's.
Plus, I can't stand those players that love to link the meters in chat.
Again, I understand how they can be useful but in most cases, I just find them distracting.
Oh you’re not the ideal race/class combo? Kick.
Oh, you haven’t done this dungeon before and want to learn? Not while I’m here. Kick.
Your class isn’t FOTM right now, I need winners. Kick.
DPS meters certainly empower jerks but they are going to be small-minded, selfish, intolerant misanthropes without it.
A DPS meter won’t damage the game. It will make it a lot harder for those trying to improve themselves. It’s like driving without a speedometer; you have to guess how fast you’re going, and you can still do it by feel and sometimes it might not matter too much but you will probably miss it at some point.
I don’t get this major opposition to them. It’s practically Luddite behavior. Again, it might not be essential but it’s a useful tool that can help a lot and you don’t have to have an irrational fear of it.
The problem with dps meters is that it pushes people to be perfectly efficient with their dps, and demand others be perfectly efficient with their dps, even when it isn't actually necessary to clear the content. Dps meters are one of if not the main driving force(s) behind a stringent meta where only certain classes are accepted in raids. It leads people to solely focusing on dps as the benefit a dps-role player can bring to the group, which may not be wholly appropriate in a game like AoC, where there may be some form of hybrid support many classes can provide, the benefit of which can't be properly measured by meters.
We do not know the Raid Designs yet, saying a DPS Meter will be useful without knowledge of the Raids is folly.
I always wanted to be a game deaigner but here I am at a sales desk.
When I go into a raid encounter that is easy enough to where optimal DPS doesn't matter, I still want the DPS meter. I want to be able to see how I'm doing compared to the other players. If everyones pulling 5k DPS and I'm pulling 2k DPS, I want to know so I can improve.
People are always going to bar others from joining dependent on some standard. If there's no DPS meter, they're just going to say you're not allowed to come because you're items aren't high enough level, you don't have the achievement of killing this boss, no one has ever heard of you, or you don't have the right food buff. There's always something. No DPS meter isn't going to change that.
No DPS meter does ensure there is no reason to strive for a better rotation. No reason to try to optimize your build. No reason to put any risk/reward toward your character. The best part is, even if you do try to optimize your character, there is no way of even telling.
Besides, you know... all of those things still exist, you just don't have numbers to flex over.