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
One of the central tennents of this game is player agency. A key aspect of player agency is that players should have the information they need to make a decision. Not having access to a combat tracker takes away access to information players need to make decisions.
You could argue that a tool akin to DBM goes against the design direction of Ashes, but having access to information is absolutely consistent with everything else in the game.
That doesn't mean it is consistent with the rest of the game.
No what it does mean is that it is part of the game, a designed, and decided part of the game. Player agency is not the same as data metrics. One is the ability to make personal decisions within the games outlining design and direction, the other is explicitly excluded from this design to prevent min max mentality that would limit that player agency and health of the gane. Not that players won't still min max but the choice to do so will be personal and take work (which is a good thing)and time(alot of time) and not be a societal pressure pushed onto all players. If you allow it anywhere into the non back alley cheating portion of the game you'll create this pressure, removing said player agency.
That is a key word in this context.
A decision without information is a guess.
It is taking in to account the fact that it can track anything at all in an encounter (and many things not to do with combat) that you want it to - all you need to do is adjust a few properties.
A "DPS meter" is almost always only set to show DPS, which in most games, on most encounters, isn't actually that useful otehr than measuring the output of DPS classes. Other than on encounters with a specific design element, DPS itself is not important.
As an example, these tools can fairly easily be altered to show how much damage players in the raid are taking from a specific ability, so rather than competing in DPS, players in the raid can compete with each other to see who can take the least amount of damage from the lava - or what ever.
Since these tools are so flexible - to people that understand them - calling the DPS meters simply isn't appropriate.
No to DPS Meters:
Yes to Damage Reports:
Ashes of Creation will be the home to many types of people. Roleplayers will have their tools to enjoy roleplay. PVPers will have all sorts of ways to enjoy their game. Crafters, gatherers and other lifeskillers will play a prominent role in the world. Economic types will have their stock market, designers will have their freeholds to decorate and explorers will have their massive map to discover.
Please give the competitive/self improvement raiding focused types their enjoyment as well.
I'm referring to a system that's built into the game, not a third party mod.
Since this is a game in development, it could be incorporated.
EDIT: Added this detail into the first post for clarity.
There is no need to have anything at all displayed on the screen, or indeed anything that could break the immersion of the encounter.
You act like DPS meters are the only thing that could inform these decisions.
I agree with you. I'm generally pro dps meter, however I'm trying to position the proposal in my OP in a way that anti-dps meter people can agree with.
A combat tracker is the only thing that could provide a complete picture in a non-granular form of that information in regards to combat - simply because anything that provides this information fits in to the definition of what a combat tracker is.
Yes, Noanni loves to twist the concepts. Damage Received calculates the Damage Per Second taken.
Only Noobs need a tool to tell them not to stand in lava.
So kind of like League of Legends huh. Sounds interesting.
For sure. I imagine lots of different types of raiders could glean some useful information from a report that could cover all sorts of factors (some of which I listed in the OP).
Skill tooltips should help guide you down the right path, past that common sense is your friend. X damage for x time with x modifiers. The point is that you shouldn't have a complete picture instantly with no work. Even improving your build should be engaging content. Not a sim.
To be fair, I'm not at all against the idea, I just see it as a different name for the same thing.
To me, whether a thing like this works or not comes down to one major thing, and one minor thing - the major being the information that is contained, and the minor that it needs to be avaiable on all encounters, not just bosses.
Every game I have ever played has had multiple cases where they have not been correct.
I'd love it for all encounters, but again I'm trying to make a compromise here. Trash mobs are trash mobs. If I have to sacrifice a DPS Meter and sacrifice trash mob damage tracking to get Boss Mob damage tracking I'm all for that.
Even Blizzard which is one of the biggest MMO studios out there don't bother with build-in addons. Addons, of any kind, can only be perfected by the community for the simple reason that requires a lot of testing and a lot of coding to do. It is something similar to alpha-beta testing.
Have you ever wondered, pretty much after 2010, why every studio out there do alpha testing with community instead of hiring their own people ?
It's because alpha-beta testing requires a lot of people to test the game, for a long period of time. And that "a lot" it goes into thousands. More people to test a game - More chances to spot the mistakes - More new ideas come into the table.
Addons works the same way.
For the sake of the debate, let's assume 1 mind = 1 design. A studio can spare 5 minds to design an addon, the outcome will be a combination of those 5 minds. Now, the community offers 100 minds maybe even more than 1000+. So the chances the addon to be nearly perfect are much more.
In all major current MMOs out there, addons are made by the community and improved the gameplay by a lot.
Specifically for the damage meters, it is a fundamental feature for competitive gameplay and keeps people focused, in most cases (including myself). Even during the battle you can altered your rotation to improve your dps, and is a good way to spot mistakes.
Also, dps meters are optional feature. If you don't like it, you don't use. But forcing others not to use it , by telling the studio to disable it, is an ill request.
Remember - Whatever works in the past, it is good to keep it that way for the future. History is a great teacher for many things
A combat tracker isn't a tool to tell people to not stand in the lava.
Why not just ask for full DPS meters. The only difference with this is that you don't know until after the fight who you need to shame.
Set your chat windows to make a tab dedicated to combat logs only, record it, parse it, and voilà ! You'll have your dps meter... just not in game, aside from it.
Text parsers are fairly easy to code, I'm assuming someone in the community will do it and share it with everyone, no doubt about it.
That's how we did it in Everquest, 21 years ago.
And so, both people who want and don't want dick-o-meters will be happy.
Done with the dps meters threads ! Next !
It's already been stated many..many times by Steven that there will be no add-ons or DPS meters in the game.