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
well topic is about damage meter not on some fancy combat trackers (whatever they do). If you have tool to collect data (more than just dps) and make something out of it. Cool. Let it be Website loading data from AoC API. But still I don't know why you have to have all these charts, excels and stuff to help someone how to be better in game? Without practice no one will get better, and saying someone is under performing cause numbers says so may discourage many people.
Maybe I don't rly get it because for me game is a game, a time to relax and have some fun with friends, not another job to analyze stuff how to be "optimal" in virtual world.
You act like you know how raiding in this game is going to pan out. 80% of this content is open world. Which includes dungeons and raids. No group finder either.
"80% of the content that will exist in Ashes of Creation is open-world and there's a specific reason for that. So because of the way that friendships and or enemies are forged in the game and people have the opportunity to create their own friends or foes. We want that to play out from a contesting standpoint as well. So a lot of these hunting grounds or raid bosses that people are going to have opportunities to kill, they're going to be essentially contested potentially by your your enemies that you've created in the game or you can work together to create alliances in order to defend those contested zones."
I wanna watch you call someone shit and exclude him from youre group. Then he recruits his own 40 man and wipes youre group and steals youre boss kill. Sounds like some sweet karma brewing and the game isn't even out yet.
Things like this are possible in this game. So min/max guilds or people on leaderboards are gonna get hella griefed.
I personally prefer no dps meter. Someone can have top dps but still fuck up the raid. It segregates everything in the game into tier lists and meta's faster then without it. I prefer build variety and/or diversity over having perfect speed run raids.
So i hope the Devs for AoC build the raids in such a way that you cant have them on farm. To prevent power scaling moments where you complete the raid once and now that raid is on farm because of youre new gear. Make the raid gear shit while doing that particular raid so you don't necessarily progress even after completing that raid with youre guild. Like if you gotta do it again youre not just overpowered now and gotta try again... but you got some awesome gear that can now assist you in all aspect outside of that raid... but if youre gear eventually breaks, you have to do that raid again to repair it thus going through that trail again. technically since there is 5 metros you got 5 raids. so you could rotate the raids once you complete one and go to the next but you gotta travel and also hope another group isnt there. lots of variables since items have durability.
- I'd love to have an Event tracker so I can sorta know when a boss is about to do certain mechanic, it would save us a lot of time and trouble
- Resource tracker, so I can put where the gatherable nodes usually spawn. This way we won't waste time running around
- Player tracker. Something that let's us know when to cleanse a player
All of this would make gameplay better imo and improve everyone's performance.
Some say IS won't be aware, some say they will ignore IS and do it anyway, some people have no common sense.
If my raid can't kill a boss and we wipe 50 times all because of a bad healer and a bad DPS how are we supposed to know that? How am I supposed to know that I suck? To me this isn't about min-maxing, it's about being good enough to accomplish my goals.
U.S. East
I think there’s too many classes and specialization to really warrant a damage meter. You shouldn’t be able to compare them all with numbers.
You should be able to have fun and feel how much damage you’re doing without a meter.
If there’s no damage meter then there will be much more variety
Even in a game like AoC, which seems to become more intricate than many other games, there will be certain meta's. And they will be figured out sooner or later, but much faster and more concrete if the numbers behind the scenes become clear as day. There is nothing wrong in seeking the meta, but rather how it's done that bothers me. In my experience it's the road to perfection that is fun, not the goal itself.
I think one of the most important aspects of an rpg is to create an illusion to make a player feel immersed, challanged and a sense of discovery. To tear that blanket away and get to know the mechanics and numbers behind the scenes only help to break that illusion. Rather than trying and failing through experience, you can step away from the intended gameplay to beat it. While math can be fun and all, having hidden mechanics and numbers isn't always a bad thing.
I feel very competative myself and if I lose to someone I will do everything in my power to find out why. But I would love to have a good game were I can't just read the answer, or have a bunch of addons to guide me. It feels a bit like cheating and being told what to do next. But if they are available then without them you create a disadvantage for yourself if not used. My experience is that a game becomes trivial and boring very fast if you already know the answer of how to win.
With dmg meter, combat tracker and similar tools you get the numbers black on white, without them you only get opinions which will fuel discussions, diversity and experimentation. Would it be so bad if we never figure out the absolute meta to everything?
I don't think you need addons or third party programs to be able to complete or break a game if it's possible. And I trust the devs will correct their mistakes if they occur. And if we were to have one boss that takes months or even years to complete, would it be so bad? The dragon in the mountain that no one can slay. I like the sound of that.
I hope that's sarcasm, because that's gonna be a hard pass. Every one of those things is. "how can the game play itself a little bit more for me
Every "damage meter" can be easily adjusted (some easier than others) to pick up any type of information, rather than just damage, and display it in what ever style is desired. As such, every "damage meter" is a combat tracker set to output only damage information. This is why my suggestion has always been to add it in to the game in a way where a player like you doesn't ever need to see or interact with it at all.
To some people, their use is enjoyable and relaxing - and saying that they shouldn't have it is about the same as saying that you should have to use it.
My argument here is not to make it so that everyone has to use it - it is to make it so that those that want it have it, and those that don't are able to ignore (or even be oblivious to) it even existing.
U.S. East
A combat tracker only tells you things that have already happened. Literally all it does is go through a text file of things that have happened, pull the bits of informaiton that you tell it to, and then put that info in charts and stuff for you.
If it were to tell you what is about to happen (as per DBM and such) it would then be a combat assistant. Literally no one is asking for a combat assistant.
You can ask a combat tracker to pull up information on what you have harvested, or information on who has clensed who in your group or raid, but they can't predict the future.
I would say it is ignorance rather than sarcasm.
In the same way some people think that multiboxing as it exists in WoW is the only way multiboxing exists, usually the same people also think DBM and such are "DPS meters", rather than combat assistants, and have no real idea what an actual combat ttracker is or does.
I hear this often, and it's just incredibly naive. The moment anyone CAN use it, everyone is immediately held to the standards set by those who do. It is unavoidable. It has never not happened in a a game where parsing was possible. This is just not a good argument.
The problem is, in all games that have had parsing available in them, it has been something that has been available to every player equally. Anyone can download a combat tracker, and so everyone should.
If combat trackers remain the domain of third partes in Ashes (and it is naive to think they won't), then Ashes will be exactly the same as every other game in this regard. You can't expect different bahavior from the playerbase from exactly the same actions from the developers.
If you want different behavior from your playerbase in relation to combat trackers, then you have to have combat trackers be different than they are in every other game. This is why my suggestion has always been to have them implemented in the game client, as a guild perk, but in a way where most guilds would have something else they would rather take (additional guild member slots, as an example). Further, the idea is to make it so that these combat trackers only work on players that are members of that guild - and if you group with such a member, they can not track your combat at all.
In a situation like this, the basics of who can use a combat tracker has gone from literally everyone, to very few people. People that are not in a guild like this have no way of tracking their combat, and no way of tracking other players combat.
There is no need to feel beholden to a tool that literally no one is able to use on you.
As far as I am concerned, literally the only way to break away from how combat tracker use becomes unavoidable is to alter the way they are implemented. You really can't expect different results from doing the same thing over and over again - and every game has done the same thing over and over again, with third party combat trackers that are freely available to all players that want them being the way to parse.
The worst implementation would be to limit who has access to it. Either everyone should have it or no-one should have it. If only select people have it, especially those who are most likely to maximise the highest tiered drops from the PvE Content, then those Hardcore PvE Players would be Overpowered in Gear, Overpowered in Group Content and Overpowered in PvP.
BTW, it isn't that I particularly disagree with your stance, but the particular arguments that can be summed up as, essentially, only those who want to use them will, and those that don't, won't need to, that particular argument is never a good argument, because it is fundamentally flawed. That's why it'st he only part I bothered to quote.
And then he said there would be combat logs. The truth of those statements are mutually exclusive.
If we have combat logs, we will thankfully have combat trackers.
From everything I’ve heard from Steven, it seems like he only views combat trackers as real-time info displays, rather than the post-fight analyzers that they are.
Now, both groups I am following are working on methods that haven't been used for combat trackers in the past. There was a third group I was following a year ago or so, but their method of data collection happened serverside and I wasn't comfortable with that (they do this on a number of existing AAA MMO's).
The thing with this is, it is almost an arms race. If Intrepid block one method, these people (who look at it as a challenge to their ability) will find another. This will force Intrepid to either accept them, or to work on blocking that method. If they attempt to block it, these people will just find another method.
PvE players aren't going to PvP in raid gear if that will risk destroying that raid gear, leaving them unable to participate in the same level of raiding that they were in.
Basically the guild leader didn't do a raid by himself. He showed up with 39 other players. Just as he has the ability to judge them. They should have the ability to judge him back. It's disrespectful to take away rewards from a player who won a roll for any reason.
Having Damage Meters is just going to increase toxicity in group settings.
U.S. East
can we get a test dummy area in the large cities ?
I'd have to say the naive statement here would be any insinuation that it's not a real-time info display. It is also a post-fight analyzer, yes, but regardless of how certain people want to, or think it will be used, or the most valuable benefit of having one, what's important is how it is going to get used, and the consequences of it's existence on the game. damage meters/combat trackers, have genuine value to the players who want them. The value is undisputed. They also create real harm to the experience of those who don't want to use them. This is also undisputed. The stance of IS putting forth an effort is to prevent them from functioning as 3rd party software is a justifiable effort.
In my experience in other PvX Games is yes, they will. The reason they will is because Decay won't be trivial, and, they can clear the content where others might not be proficient to do so. Whoever downs the hardest bosses first will stand a chance of getting Maximum Tiered Equipment in the PvX System. One doesn't need to craft what one obtains, one just needs to maintain it.
Furthermore, few people will know where a Guild is based unless they Guild War the particular Guild. Even if a different Raid Group contests the Boss Locations, again, the Hardcore PvE People could potentially have the edge in terms of gear. They would also have the edge in DPS to obtain further gear because they would be optimised by a Combat Tracker.
Skills will be the same whether they are for PvE or PvP, all that might change is the passive buffs to specific gear sets, but, anyone can achieve the passive buffs easier if their base armour is superior. If you are fine-tuned by a Combat Tracker then you are fine-tuned for any encounter, as it is PvX. I don't even think Items will be destroyed permanently, I can't find any reference to permanent destruction. If it is the case that no permanent destruction occurs then the item sinks will be in the decay and repair system, rather than the crafting system. Though it is true Crafters would have to reforge the broken items.
It is actually quite ludicrous when someone claims to be a Hardcore PvE Player but relies on Combat Trackers. The advantages are very clear, without the advantages some claim the game will fail.
If a Hardcore PvP Player decided to use a Combat Assistant, we'd call that player a cheater and banish them from Duels, Arenas and potentially Sieges, yet, because it is a PvE discussion one tries to hide behind the PvE Mantle. Yet Ashes is a PvX Game, and, PvE Skill will determine how effective one is in PvP. The faster you climb the PvE, the faster you can climb the PvP and the faster one can unlock the PvP or PvE passives.
I wish there will be unbeatable bosses with some twists, and players have to figured it out on their own how to beat them (from little hints here and there). For example boss is killable only in winters at the sun set, or entire party have to wipe within 15 seconds in order to teleport into shadow realm and kill his soul first... Something not obvious and more original.
but unfortunately there is internet and every mystery last few seconds :<
Oh I forgot this topic is about addons so -> addons = bad
I am asking sincerely.