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
The relevant input I can give to this is League of Legends.
When the game first launched you would play whatever you wanted, however. Taking champions in all lanes and stuff like that.
Then, around year 3-5 someone figured out "the best meta". It's not possible to play the game as you want, you know have to be limited by the meta. I mean, even Riot put the roles in game, you can't avoid them.
If you against this, you get reported, flamed, trolled.
So when you used to have liberty, you know have strict roles which you can't escape, even if playing at normals, which would mean like doing regular content.
The less you know, the better. Knowledge might give you specialization, but I think it takes away freedom.
If we have a combat log, but no dps meter, then there will be a way to measure performance and test out builds. However, all that leads to is a few particularly motivated individuals going through the combat log piece by piece, line by line to find the best of the builds they have the interest in checking. Whether we have dps meters or not ultimately just becomes a matter of how easy it is to check the efficiency of a build you like or what you're trying.
Having objective numbers to look at make for a much easier time assessing your own skill and build's efficiency. It may come with people using those numbers to inflate their egos or put other people down, but people who are interested in those things will always find some metric to use to do those things.
You can probably do reasonably well without dps meters given enough other information and skill, but for the average player, it's far easier to use dps as a measuring stick to compare builds and rotations.
It takes a far greater degree of dedication and prep time to go through combat logs line by line with very accurate timestamps to truly master a class without dps meters, even with all the skill in the world. You CAN master a class without dps meters, but it's a heck of a lot more tedious.
That's because league is a competitive game with a ranking system. You are free to play the non-competitive game modes and play however you want in them. Are you going to complain when no one wants to bring you to pvp arenas in Ashes when you are playing a garbage spec or they want a healer instead of a dps? No, because that's competitive.
Like I and noaani have said, implement them into guilds, so then competitive guilds can have them, and social guilds that don't want them don't have to use them, and pugs can't use them whatsoever. Then you make everyone happy and can have both a casual experience and a competitive experience and can make that decision for yourself. At the moment, competitive players are being forced into a world of mediocrity and spending countless hours, days, or even months trying to theorycraft without trackers and a bunch of garbage subjectivity blocking their progression.
Have you ever watched competitive League games? They try weird, crazy things all the time that end up winning or doing very well, and normal players see it and try stuff like that out too. There are plenty of players that like to play it safe, but you are more than free to mess with the established meta in that game and have some degree of success. That community is particularly toxic, so you will have to deal with people reporting/flaming/trolling if you go for something weird all on your own without consulting your team first, but that has more to do with the community than how the game actually works out given your team is on board for something "weird" and new.
Comparing dps meters, which are a tool to help you improve your individual play to trying to convince a bunch of strangers to try a new group dynamic in a completely different genre of game also doesn't really make much sense for your argument. I'm not seeing how this is applicable to be entirely honest.
Meanwhile your build could literally be better, but you have no objective way to prove it without meters. My girlfriend who raided back in Cataclysm in WoW raided as Holy Priest, which everyone considered to be god awful, but she was constantly out healing disc priests (the favored choice) and proved that her spec was in fact viable. She was one of the most popular healers on her server because of this very fact. Without meters she never would have been invited because "HOLY SUXXX!"
He also said that he wants this game to be left to player agency and that he wants a plethora of playstyles. Like noaani has said and many have said before him, if it's a guild perk then it does no harm to anyone, and allows a competitive scene in the game as well. There is no reason to not have both other than being stubborn.
Even if addons are a bannable offense, even if there is no tracker in the game itself, people will just use 3rd party simming websites instead. And you people will be right back here on the forums complaining about toxicity because you can't get into a pug because you're not performing well and your simmed dps sucks.
This game will still be worth checking out and having fun with even if it goes live without dps meters. The purpose behind my posting in favor of them is mostly my disagreement with the reasoning I've seen used for the absence of them. I'm sure many other people that take the time to make an account and argue this point probably feel similarly.
If Steve doesn't want them included, then it's his game, and I respect not only his stance on the matter, but also his resolve in sticking to it despite people like me arguing against it. I still want to play the game when it comes out. However, I will still happily argue the benefits of them when I see weak arguments being made about how awful they are for the health of a game and/or its community.
Because an MMO attracts players from all walks of life? Because people like to be the best? Because people like to speedrun? Because people want to have the achievement of doing world first? Because people want to challenge themselves?
I'm not saying the entire game needs to be competitive.
The playing field might be level, but being able to clearly see your own improvement against your past builds/rotations/attempts/gear is a hallmark of the genre, made much easier by dps meters.
Top end sportsmen havn't been using analytics for decades.
It doesn't make them great in and of itself, but it sure as hell helps.
Same with combat trackers, you can still be a shit player with them.
Additionally, if all players had access to them (due to them being implemented in to teh game itself) then it is still a level playing field.
As it stands now, where players only have access to their own information and only a few people will have access to any more than that (and people will), that is creating an uneven playing field.
As such, if an even playing field is what you want more than anything else, the correct course of action is to ask for them to be implemented in to the game.
Which in this case means “I’m better than other people and have the logs to show it.”
Addons level the playing field so damn much that it turns everyone who uses them into hyper-expert mega chads, with no real investment or learning curve. If OP is to be believed, .there's some real difference between understanding the game and having absolute control over its information though. A rage meter tells you exactly when the boss will jump the healer, but if your eyes are glued to managing the bar, you'll never notice all the hints and give-aways the designers put in the encounters so you won't need a meter. Instead of learning the tells of this boss, you learn the bar, which looks the same for every encounter in the game, so new encounters never teach you anything new really. The game becomes boring quicker.
I am a firm believer of leaving addons such as DPS meters and gear inspectors as it removes the challenge from the game.
Of all the arguments I've seen people make against combat trackers - this has to be the oddist.
I spent a decade raiding in EQ2, and during raids my screen only had my hotbars, my target, my implied target (or targets target) and the buffs I had on me.
I had a combat tracker running, but there was never a need to have it showing on screen during a raid. If need be, I could look at things at the end of the night, but if that is how I want to spend my time, that should be my perogitive.
I think this it worth not passing over and actually talking about. Its incredibly perceptive, and I’m rather impressed that came from the lips of asmongold.
I fall on the side of “no mods,” but I’m curious. Has there been any talk of bosses having ‘tells’ in Aoc? What kind of tells would they have? Animations? Voice emotes?
I think you underestimate Asmon. He may act like a degenerate at times, but when he gets serious about a topic, he shows some amazing intelligence.
That stuff has been part of game design since the dawn of home computers. The only reason it's not as obvious for most players is that it's either just not analyzed enough, or it gets drowned out by "helpful" UI or meters that are just way more accurate and obvious than the glint in Arthas' eye.
The monster hunter franchise relies MASSIVELY on these. Dark Souls is also an excellent example. It's just more obvious there because 3rd party tools would be seen as cheats and these games lack all other hints. Where will the firebreath go down? Watch the dragons mouth. Where does the sword hit? Watch the stance. Nothing else will save you.
Please note that this is a person with experience in one game talking about that one game.
WoW has combat assistants, not combat trackers. These are different things, one assists you in an encounter you are experiencing now, the other tells you what has just happened.
Literally no one is asking for combat assistance in Ashes. it isn't that perceptive, we have been talking about that here since last year.
Perhaps he just read the forums here...
I don't know about Steven, but this is what i somewhat want. I understand the top players want efficiency, but fuck man, i un-ironically hate it when the best builds and rotations are figured out within the first week and made meta.
If nothing else, hopefully you guys can find enjoy trying to figure out what is "best" and theorycraft over a longer period.
Except I'm not that rare.
If you play a game like WoW, the game itself is set up in a way where people are disposable. As such, people treat others as if they are disposable.
I spent most of my time in MMO's playing games where people were not so easily replaced, and so spending a bit of time with those players helping them get better - if that is what they want - is just what people do.
When you are running content in a pool of players that count in the millions, there is no way you can invest time in one player and expect to see anything come from that investment.
Cut that number down to thousands, and all of a sudden the chances of seeing a return is almost guaranteed.
Basically, my view on combat trackers and the way I use them and encourage others to use them is a result of the games I have played. Other people and their view on combat trackers is a result of the games they have played. This says that if Ashes look at the games that result in good things in relation to combat trackers, they should be able to get good results.
They are already doing most of what is needed (no automatic group finder, no cross-server grouping etc), they just seem to have made a false connection between combat trackers and behavior that isn't as direct as people think it is.
Everyone hates WoW retail. Everyone. The only people left playing it are people that like the raiding and the dungeon scene. Guess what: No company is going to put out a better raid or dungeon than WoW. If you like that shit? Stay there. Don't come to other games and ask for "Mythics" because you are literally missing the point.
If you can't understand why DPS meters are bad you are broken beyond all belief. We're not here doing this MMO for Mythics or Raids. We're here to ROLEPLAY and LIVE in the world. No matter how high skill you want to take that this is an MMORPG not whatever the fuck WoW retail is these days. The unknown makes things fun.
AoC is trying to be a real MMORPG. They're trying to make systems that work and exist with each other, and all bounce their mechanics of other areas of the game that make a fun gameplay loop and one that makes all aspects of a game important to every player.
As a PvP player, I need PvE players to gank to have fun.. I need traders to make me items. I need gatherers to make money. I want PvE to be strong, not because I like doing it but because it's a BENEFIT to me to have the players there.
Man I hate these stupid people around these parts.
Literally no one is asking for a combat assistant.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
I dislike retail WoW too, but just because a specific thing exists in retail WoW doesn't mean it's inherently bad. I don't think anyone is asking for Ashes to be exactly like WoW in every way, but rather to take a few small things that they do still like from it and implement it into Ashes. In this particular thread, no one's asking for mythics or super hardcore raider-only things. DPS meters still have value outside of the top 1% of players.
As for you saying that we're here to ROLEPLAY and LIVE in the world, not everyone has that as their main incentive to play Ashes. I like the more immersive ideas that end up grounding the gameplay in the world of the game, but I find plenty of exciting things to look forward to that aren't explicitly roleplaying. People looking to play this game don't necessarily share the exact same ideas of what will make this game fun to play, and that's okay.
The unknown might make things fun in some instances, but I like having concrete things to look at to know that, in spending time in a game I'm playing, I'm actively improving or trying new things without setting myself massively backwards.