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
Yep. In WoW, I've watched many people getting kicked for low DPS in PUG raids, and even getting replaced in guild runs.
The problem is not even a DPS meter itself. The existence of it extends to bigger problems such as being easier to optimize the combinations between classes, races, talents and more, gravitating to use optimization as a rule, instead of a tool, as the time goes. Even more intensified if the devs rewards, in a way, this type of behavior which prioritizes ingame numbers instead of real life skill, such as concentration, patience, reflexes, etc.
They are NOT needed, for;
players posting bulds on forums and such for others to copy
players booting others out of groups and raids for performance reasons
players thinking they are the best example of their class
players complaining their class is underpowered, or another class is overpowered
They ARE needed for;
peer reviewing posted builds to ensure they are actually good
players being able to prove to the idiot group/raid leader that their performance is just fine
players being able to point out that the guy who thinks he is all that is actually not
players being able to objectively point out which class is under or over powered, rather than just guessing.
The above things are kind of not really debatable.
End of the day, combat trackers are tools. The behavior that many attribute to them is actually the behavior of players with or with this specific tool, and will continue with or without it.
Lastly, of course combat trackers for Ashes will exist, they are already being worked on. The question is - how useful will they be, and will players get banned if they talk about their use (which is the only way Intrepid will be able to know they are being used).
The other question is whether or not Intrepid will stand up and take control of the situation by implementing their own one in to the game directly, thus allowing them control over who has it and how it can be used.
I disagree, if without a DPS meter there is no reason to strive for a better rotation then clearly you have not played a lot of MMO's that do not have this kind of add-ons. People always want to be the best but not having an addon doesn't stop them.... they start experimenting, creating different builds, what feels best, what works, and doesn't gear combo's, rotations, etc... it just requires more time to do it but it works. This trail and error doesn't only apply to content but also to building your class.
Ps: you are wondering why people are afraid of DPS meters, but let me turn the question around ... do you really need it? Can you not play without it? Do you not feel confident without one?
Not having one , or supporting one like @Steven Sharif said is a great move.
This stance evens the playing field, adding one would destabilize this balance, uneven the playing field and would go against everything this game is aiming at.
It’s just wild
One of the most fun moments in games was were the times that me and my friends were trying to figure out some content that we kept failing on. Yes it takes time. But it also encourages team play and actually observing the gameplay and trial and error.
In the end, it wont really matter for me tbh. Ill just find my spot in the world with people who want to play the game the way i love to play it as well (or at least I hope i will
I hope you realize how ridiculous that sounds on a forum.... a place to exchange ideas and have discussions about stuff.
People don't have to agree but shutting a debate down like this is like saying "I am right, so no reason to discuss".
@Steven Sharif Could you please provide us with a stance on this matter?
I know you mentioned it on the stream a few times that you don't want these.
But what are you going to do to stop it, or what actions will be taken towards players using them?
- DPS meter and addons: Yes or No?
- Ban for using them: Yes or No?
-
As long as there is no statement we will see a thousand more of these discussions.
Having a statement on the matter might spark some discussions but at least it is set in stone.
For some people, this is a hot topic and can impact their support or not. I appreciate how open you all are on the development of the game so I hope we can also get more insight on this.
You can debate the impact of things, and give opinions, and make predictions, but once you start debating whether facts are facts, that is the point where discussion is no longer possible.
I would totally agree that a dps-meter is a great tool. As a former raid leader it was very helpful, especially as advanced tools tell you much more: who did dispell, who did switch and dps the adds, who got damaged by what source.
I also agree, that it can push a person to get more dps or hps out of his character. We used it to improve our raid.
Knowing all of this, I am against a dps-meter in AoC. Why? I have 4 key arguments.
Because the benefit does, in my experience, not outweigh the harm. Even in our raid group we had players that were fixated on their dps. This happened in a game (WoW), in which many boss fights are not dps-races.
In most of the random groups I joined, the DPS-Meter was seen as a measurement of skill. So if something went wrong, even in movement-fights, the people watched the DPS-Meter. Even in 5-man-Dungeons dps-shaming became a thing. As a Tank-Main I started to avoid random groups, as there were to many players prioritizing their dps over things l like aggro.
So my first argument would be: There are too much player that use a DPS-Meter in the wrong way, as it sets wrong incentives, if you just think "more dps = better" (what too many players do).
The second argument is: What you can measure, matters more!
In a game like AoC, that plans to have true support classes, there will be another problem. Often times the DPS-Meter only tells a fracture of the story. In a balanced game, pure DPS-Combinations will be stronger than DPS+Support or Support+DPS specs. As you cannot measure support so easily as you can dps, a dps-meter could create a more dps-focused environment. In 15 years of gameplay, I never saw a player post a dispell ranking at the end of a fight an bragging about it. (I myself as a raid leader posted some after some messy fights, though ;-))
I would argue, that a dps-meter sets false incentives in this regard, too. As it seems to be a simple thing to compare and to judge player skills with it, the playerbase will most likely will use it at the expense of hybrid-classes.
The third argument is a more nostalgic one:
As a raid leader and as a player you can get lost in numbers. If you have this tool available, you will use it. But it breaks down the whole experience into little performance pieces, that are totaly seperated from playing the game. It is a post-try-analysis. There were situations in which we looked into the numbers longer, than actually fighting the boss. Not having a dps-meter means for me, that you have to do other things to improve your gameplay and getting a feeling of the best rotation etc.
And as a raid leader, I have to rely more on watching the raid performing and communicating with the players.
The last argument: Every analysis tool impacts the design process, as it forces the designers to make bosses harder or devaluate the content. This makes such addons mandatory more often than not.
Let's say, as a game designer you aim at a boss difficulty of 100 at the end, because this is the challenging level of difficulty. With no add-ons 100=100. If you allow helpful add-ons, that ease a fight by 30%, the difficulty level now is at 70 for addon users. If the add-ons get more popular, you have to make the bosses more difficult, if you want the players have a challenging experience. By doing so, you make it harder for everyone to succeed without these add-ons.
More an more guilds will require you to use these add-ons. Thats how it went in WoW. You have very complex fights and quasi mandatory addons. If you had less effective tools in fight and afterwards, I guess the fights would not be so complex in current WoW.
Thanks for reading,
Haraxa
You are right, However the example you give a question from someone that has been answered by devs and is kinda set in stone. And until they say otherwise that will the a fact.
Like for example:
DPS meter is NOT needed for players complaining their class is under- or overpowered, or another class is overpowered
That is just a statement that people might disagree on. It's not set in stone somewhere. There is no ultimate truth or something to that matter. I'ts the view of the person typing it. I've seen people saying they do want meters to figure out what classes are balanced and stuff. No matter if i agree with that or not, its a different viewpoint thus a possible reason for a discussion.
While that may have an element of truth to it, it's also being very disingenuous. Damage meters are a great tool for completely optimizing your damage rotation and finding out exactly how spells interact with one another on a micro level. Being in a top 100 WoW guild that was pushing Cutting Edge raiding, no one was bragging about their dps. They were using dps meters (and raid logs) to measure their ability against others of their class, using the tools to see how they could improve their dps, see what strategies were allowing people to get drastically different dps outcomes, etc. With no dps meters, you can't "trial and error" because you have no idea if your damage is going up or down. You can see the numbers going up, marginally, but maybe you are actually going slower and your overall damage per second is actually lower than before.
I agree DPS meters can be a bad thing and I'm fine with them not being in the game, but to just act as if they are nothing but some Gold Medal players brag with is really insulting. It's what makes DPS competitive and makes people strive to do the very best they can. Without the information, people will not try as hard, people will not push new strategies, new strategies will be much harder to find, etc. You'll have no idea if you are weighing down your team with your skill setup/rotation or if you are doing absolutely fine.
Isn't that the exact reason they're not allowing it? That Steven didn't want people to look at an encounter and say, "Oh we're only doing 60% DPS, we need to get it up to 70% to win" or other calculators to determine something rather then playing the game to figure something out.
Jeff is in favor of combat trackers so hopefully Steven will listen to his peers who are able to see the value in letting player have objective information.
Actually, it is set in stone.
People don't need a combat tracker to complain about their class, because every game has threads where people are complaining about their class and are not using combat trackers.
This is an observable, objective fact.
Arguing this fact is to say that no one ever has complained about class balance anywhere without the aid of a combat tracker, and it should be obvious that this is the case.
Now, that statement didn't suggest for a moment that people with a combat tracker can't also complain about class balance, it just means that people will do it with or without them.
Now, if you have anything to actually discuss in regards to my previous post, the parts that aren't objective facts, have at it.
In my opinion combat trackers trivialize lots of encounters, make it easier and then people complain there's no content. All you have to do to figure out what it's wrong is look at the numbers.
Then I, as a non raider nor min-maxer, will have to follow your class guide because it's the meta, even if I don't fully understand it, nor should I.
I don't need to know how everything works to the decimal number.
People shouldn't know if they're performing subpar. That way no ones feelings get hurt.
No one gets attacked in raid, no one gets kicked for bad performance (but to be fair, in a competitive guild this is a good thing, not a bad thing), and people still get to min/max if they want to.
*Also I don't get why people complain so much about being kicked. Find another guild, find people more your speed to play with, improve your skills, etc. There are dozens of ways it can be remedied. Kicking people for low performance isn't just a thing that happens in video games. People in the military get discharged, people in college get kicked out if they don't keep a certain gpa, people get fired from their jobs, etc. This stuff happens in real life, so to exclude it from your game means excluding something that would actually take place in a fantasy world or in the real world. MMOs aren't about inclusivity, games aren't about inclusivity, and as long as there are ways in game to get around and not be forced into a min/max tryhard guild then I don't see it as a problem.
tl;dr "Git gud"
The way Steven reacted to the question i can't see it changing
This will make it so you have to actually see the equipment and stats people have for calculating their aproximate dps. It's more fun overall.
If you have a bad leader kicking people for the wrong reason, their still not going to down the boss. Without a damage meter you end up kicking the person with the most boss damage because their build isn't meta, but no one can tell hes out performing everyone. Though the most likely scenario is you can't figure out why you can't down the boss, and the group quits trying to complain the boss is unkillable.
If there is a encounter where dispels matter, the players should brag about their dispels. Instead you'll not know who is dispelling unless everyone is honest (I'm sorry a world where everyone is honest doesn't exsist).
I've bragged about my dispels on my warlock because I out performed the healers on dispels. Without the meter, you'll complain that the boss is unkillable because there isn't enough dispels in the game, instead of seeing half your healers aren't dispelling.
Do you know how many tests in college that I FELT I had failed and got an A on? Do you know how many times I've been pulled over when I FELT I was going the speed limit on? I don't think I need to give more examples. Feeling like you're doing better, doesn't mean you're doing better. Spamming my only magic spell on my hunter because I have built a fully arcane hunter may feel better, but I'm sure, it's not.
I'm not arguing to have tons of addons. I'm arguing to have a built in damage meter. That way people can see how well they're performing instead of just feeling like they're performing better.
I want groups to be able to identify what is holding them back. I don't want groups to just say a boss is unkillable and give up.
The people I know that are building trackers for Ashes are only building them because there may not be one if they don't.
Essentially, they *will* have a tracker to use.
Both groups I know doing this would happily stop development on them if Intrepid released an in game tool that allowed for analyzing raid encounter pulls, and allowed players to assess different builds and gear options.
If those two things are catered for, the amount of work needed to build a tracker for what ever is left is simply not worth it.
This is only true if the game develops content without keeping in mind that players have trackers - which is another advantage to having them in game rather than ad an addon.
Seriously, go play FF14. They have a no damage meter policy. You will get banned if you're caught using one. Tell me that's more fun than just allowing the meter.
My decision is not to allow DPS meters nor add-ons. I feel we have adequate measures in place to prevent a majority of potential third party trackers. I know this subject has passionate voices on both sides and I respect the various opinions and positions many of you have expressed ❤️
Isn't this causing less players to raid or experience content? Imagine trying to join a guild and you get dumped 3 guides:
- 1 for your class, because you're not using the meta class and its rotation
- 1 on the raid boss explaining when you're supposed to hit your heavy rotation because X support classed activated X ability that amplifies damage
- 1 on gear because clearly you're not using the correct augments
I understand this from a hardcore pure PvE standpoint, but if Devs have to keep in mind that people are using Add ons it means the gap between hardcore and not so much hardcore keeps widening, forcing Developers to create content for less people, that still demand even more challenging raids.
I think it's a way to set a future which you're destined to fail in, because you keep creating content that needs to keep in mind the use of Combat Trackers that nullify many things that would require more time to learn in a Trial & Error basis vs having all the information laid out after just a couple of tools.
And I believe this makes joining more people to raids less likely.
I have raided, not sure if hardcore, but I had to have certain DPS and certain gear. Only raided in Rift during Storm Legion, and it was fun, and healing, and killing Crucia felt great.
But I don't think in "people that don't put the effort". Some people are just bad, poorly coordinated and even if they practice a lot, they won't make it. Some things are just out of our grasp. One thing is maybe people noticing, another one is just seeing that really low number that despite your efforts doesn't improve.
Should they raid? Well, in Steven's world they might have a chance, because average people could slip through, while in a Combat Tracker world would be impossible, all of their failures are for everyone to see.
This makes me the big sad. I will still try the game because I love MMOs, but this makes me worried. I'll go in with an open mind, and hope you prove me wrong.
A prime example of this would be how back in Vanilla, Ion Hazzikostas (the current game director of WoW), with his guild Elitist Jerks theorized that the boss C'thun was "mathematically impossible" to kill and requested that Blizzard retune the boss. This is also how he got his job at Blizzard.
Nowadays, we know for 100% certainty that he is completely wrong, because private servers have proved that not only is the boss, unnerfed, extremely killable, but they even buff the boss on private servers because players are just that much better.
The difference is they didn't have the addons and information that we have in 2020. If they had that knowledge, they wouldn't have given up, they would have had to get better, and Blizzard wouldn't have had to nerf the boss.