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
Often times I find damage meters to be the same as medals in Overwatch. Sure it shows who has the most damage dealt, but in a team environment most damage != best performance. Nobody wants the person who stands in fire to pad their dps numbers. It often becomes a matter of dick measuring rather than being the best teammate.
I've also had experiences where they brought a lot of satisfaction. Practicing rotations on a target dummy and slowly seeing your performance get better and better. Grinding for hours to get my legendary cape in WoW and immediately seeing a huge boost (granted, you don't need a meter to see that). I've also had guild members who struggled one week, came back the next week and topped the charts. Everybody notices it and hypes them up and it's a great time.
I think AoC, with its augment system, will be different. We don't know any specifics yet, but it seems to me that choosing tank would boost survivability rather than damage. Choosing things like mage/ranger/fighter would probably increase your damage output. As Steven Sharif said, the mechanic serves to turn the dial a bit between the classes. Sure you can go for maximum damage output with your mage/mage build but is that what's best for the team? We don't know yet.
This isn't to say that there should be no 'benchmarking' tools in the game, because there definitely should. Otherwise people would just test how fast they kill a monster with a convenient amount of HP, which is both super inconvenient and a little immersion breaking. I would like these tools to be in town with options for lots of different group sizes.
For a game that offers a complex variety of ways to play and progress, I don't see how the simple addition of a combat tracker would develop a meta. It does in WoW, because WoW only has dungeon/raid PvE content.
There's going to be a meta no matter what. The most popular guide on how to down a boss is going to explain why you need to bring certain classes. Now your meta is based on opinions of the guides' creator instead of actual data.
They make people too focused on numbers, to the point of doing sub-optimal things chasing that damage - like cleaving/AOE the adds instead of focusing them down, for example.
I do, however, feel, that you could implement something like a training dummy encounter that measures your output. Or those training arenas in FFXIV that give you a timed encounter that trains certain aspects. The very base ones are dps/healing dummies. On more complex arenas the dummy will cast spells that you need to dodge or interrupt, etc, so you can train to improve your performance in a more dynamic situation.
If I go into a boss encounter and we kill it no problems and I don't have a meter, I'll never know that even though I was pressing all my buttons, my class just isn't doing as much as someone else.
I'll then go on to other content like pvp, arena for example, and then just get utterly wasted by someone playing a class that deals more damage than I do, and I'll never understand why.
You'll have to forgive me for not trusting the devs to balance classes by themselves with no player oversight, I've been hurt before
You spelt my name wrong.
This leaves the last real question as; when there are trackers to be used, will their use be against the EULA/ToS, and as such not able to be openly discussed in game or on the forums - or are you ok with people having and using trackers they are able to get working around the measures you will have in place?
Find a spot with lots of the same enemies. Kill them with different combos or gear sets and see which kills faster.
ROFL. Hahaha.
If we use add-ons after you banned them and talk about it on the forums will we get in trouble???
Think about it for a second while you read...
There is a difference though. You can't measure damage over a 5-10 minute encounter with a burst dps on a small enemy that takes 10-20 seconds to kill. I doubt there will be soloable enemies that would take the same time as a raid encounter.
You also won't be able to take boss defensive mechanics and resistances into account.
Also how will healers or tanks test their HPS/TPS?
People are going to record and analyze the damage they do on various classes, data will be aggregated and a tier list WILL come out. It is inevitable.
All you're doing is having people put a lot of work into sub optimal characters just to hear they made a mistake.
I completely understand the idea of playing a class because its fun. I like that idea; however, it's 2020. Gamers have come a LONG way. There is a large population of gamers who play MMOs because they want to push the limit of their characters and playstyles instead of being average andys.
The tier list will come out.
Coming from FFXIV where dps meters are taboo, it did not make anyone nicer. It just means instead of kicking individuals, whole groups disband. They still yell at people for gear, mechanics, not pulling big enough groups, healers that don't also dps, or whatever else they decide to be mad about that day.
What does make the community a little more civil in FFXIV is the no nonsense policy Square Enix takes when it comes to toxic behavior. DPS meters are not the hill to die on.
There is a difference between not allowing something, and actively taking action on that thing.
Comparing apples and oranges.
DPS meters do not stop players from talking about rotations/skillsets/gear/etc.
That’s disappointing you won’t even respond to the massive benefits objective information brings. I do hope you realize that this puts a big limit what players will be able to achieve in the game, especially if you don’t give players actual combat feedback.
Combat trackers have no effect on any social aspect of any game.
All those times people have kicked you out of a group or what ever - they would have kicked someone out of that group anyway, because it makes them feel good.
A combat tracker was just an easier excuse.
All in all, this hurts the casual player more than helping them, because the competitive players will go through the effort to find the best possible setups regardless of having combat trackers or not.
If a player has to test a new build religiously for hours and hours, only to find out it's worse, then it's a bunch of wasted effort, when having a combat tracker to begin with would minimize the time spent doing such menial tasks. Everyone will just use some random popular youtuber's/guide maker's cookie cutter build and "follow the fold" as they say.
These are all things that have been bought up in the other threads on this topic - such threads go back almost 18 months.
This means that these are things that Intrepid seems to be ok with.
While I am the first to say that this is Stevens game and his decision, I do find that the decision made seems somewhat counter to the rest of the game. Player agency seems to be of the utmost importance in Ashes - except in combat.
And even in games with combat trackers, it doesn't stop people from playing what they want to play even if it's unoptimal. There are still people playing ret paladin and feral druid in Classic WoW and we've known those specs are absolutely horrendous for 16 years. Do they get ostracized sometimes? Yeah, they do. Are they completely incapable of playing the game? No, they aren't.
Imagine not playing an amazing game because it does not have a feature that shows a number on your screen telling if you are 'good' or 'bad'.
Right in being wrong. Yes, people can be kicked out/replaced for being bad at the game even if the game doesn't have a combat tracker. And, as you said yourself, a DPS meter shows, intensifies and speeds up this process of getting '/kick', in other words, 'ease' the decision. So yeah, they have a DIRECT impact in the social aspect by interfering in the decision making of the party/raid leader. Plus, it also facilitates the game to gravitate towards optimization as a rule, not as a tool.
There is something very wrong with this logic.
If a player is going to kick someone from a group, they are going to kick someone from a group.
If a player is not going to kick someone fro a group, they are not going to kick someone from a group.
If a game doesn't have combat trackers the kind of people that would kick others out of groups due to a combat tracker, that person would instead be kicking or not inviting people based on their class, or their specific build, or their social organization, or their religion.
Basically, people that exclude will exclude, people that include will include, and anyone that thinks a combat tracker can ever have any impact on any of that really needs to get out and meet more people.
But a DPS meter has the potential to put that in their face, and is an incentive to make them do it. Let's say you get in a small PUG, and you are halfway through some content and everything is going relatively okay... You are moving at a reasonable pace, nobody has died (or come close to it), there is no drama about loot, it's mellow. Alpha Broseph, King of D00Ds, is keeping quiet since nobody has slipped up.
Change the situation to having a damage meter. Everything is the same, except for some reason one person is doing about 2/3 the DPS as the rest of the group. It's clearly not a problem, but Alpha Broseph starts ranting about how much faster things would be if this slacker was pulling their weight, and starts arguing to kick them until it becomes disruptive and that person leaves the group voluntarily to not put up with it anymore, or the rest of the group agrees to kick the person lagging behind.
In either case, Alpha Broseph is the same jerk but they were given a reason to act on being a jerk with the meter. This is the scenario that I assume most people are worried about, and I have to say it isn't totally far-fetched. I assume it has happened at some point. However, I've been playing MMOs for over 2 decades now, and many of those games had DPS meters, and I've never experienced this. I have to believe it's rare. I've dealt with many, MANY toxic people, and I've been kicked before for frivolous reasons (and a few times for legit ones, I'm not perfect). But I've never been kicked for lacking DPS. Not once.
(Gear score, on the other hand...)
Running ICC 10man Normal mode. 6.5k gs and link "Heroic: Fall of the Lich King (25 player)" pst
This guy just sounds like trouble - even just his name!
In this situation, the group is going to go much, much faster with the person doing less DPS than the others than it would without that person, as since there is no automated group finder, there is no real way to get another player to the group. It is easy to boot someone if you know there is a queue of players behind them waiting for content that can be ported instantly to you.
Now, one could argue that the family summons may facilitate this, depending on how that pans out. But if this is the case, I would then argue that the reason that player was kicked from the group was due to the summon ability, not the combat tracker.
saying that it puts limits on what players can achieve or that they would not try out different builds is ridiculous.
By trail and error, they can try out different builds, craft their own setup and see what feels right.
If a player can only do this because a DPS meter is their source of information then that player is the problem, not the game. Besides that having a DPS meter that would only show your damage and etc, would lead to a lot of jerks asking for screenshots, etc. before you can join. Lff would be full of looking for ranger xxx dps+ only!
It is a useful tool for many people, but having one in place also makes the game feel very different.
Besides that addons and DPS meters have made it so that content is burned through faster. A lot of games have suffered because of this and some saw a drop in player base because they get bored.
Trail and error when it comes to your build, dungeons, raids, etc. is part of the game it is content and yes also makes it so that content will be relevant for a longer time as it would not be cleared in 1.2.3
Hardcore guilds that claim they are the best of the best but cannot figure out their build on their own or by testing stuff out .... might not be as good as you think
If there is no object feedback, how exactly is anyone supposed to know if that new build is any better than the old one? You can’t do “trial and error” without any feedback on what actually works. And if there is combat feedback, then other people can, will, and should use combat tracking software to make informed decision on how to approach content.
Every serious PvE guild is now looking elsewhere.
while we made have a different opinion on DPS meters you have made some good points in the past.
saying that combat trackers have no effect on the social aspects of the game, I do not agree at all.
The fact that they use it as an excuse like you say is exactly that. Kicking will then also trigger some people that do not use it and it becomes another episode of desperate housewives.
If a meter would be in the game, you might be ok with having some people in your group that don't hit X DPS.
Even having an individual meter,: screenshots required or lfg with ranger needed X dps+ only.
This takes away the accessibility for newbies that join the game later or take longer to level.
You seem like a really reasonable person, so yes you might not be your typical DPS meter jerk but many others will be exactly that.
In the past ( i think it was you) you mentioned a guild based meter that only the leader/officers could use in guild groups.
- If this would mean that this guild would have to invest their points into PVE instead of size or buffs sure why not.
- This leader/officer should only be able to see the guild members DPS in that party (even if someone external joins)
- Only 1 guild can be joined at a time with an X amount of days cooldown in between changing guild.
- DPS meter should be exactly as it says showing DPS, not an aggro meter.
- Can only be used within instanced Pve!
- The information shown can not be extracted or logged, it should solely support that guild during the encounter itself.
I believe that this solution would benefit everyone, it gives hardcore guilds the option to go full PVE in their journey/adventure in the game. It would not affect the open-world due to being instanced only, doesn't affect PvP, would not affect random groups, (pugs), or newbies that would join the game later on.