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
Trying out different builds and trying to do the best you can is part of the fun and challenge in an mmo for some people, myself included. A DPS meter is a tool people like me use to measure whether I'm doing better by using a different kind of gear or a different set of skills or talents or augments or what-have-you.
I take pride in bringing my A game to encounters I do with friends and guildmates, and having the tools to ensure that I am adds to my enjoyment of the game. I have fun trying out silly things and seeing if they're any good. I've spent years in an mmo with DPS meters playing a build that was unorthodox on a spec that was considered underpowered, still knowing that I'm doing well and not holding anyone back BECAUSE I had meters to test with. I got to spend years playing the way I wanted to (which was very much against what was meta and considered good at the time) because I had the tools available to me to test out the build to make sure it was capable.
DPS meters have made mmos more fun for me not only because I get to see my improvement, but also because they help me try things out and experiment and play the way I want to without hindering anyone else's enjoyment of the game.
The only other point that has any grounding is the fact that it will evolve a meta too fast, but if that's the case then that is on the developers for trivializing the content because players who want to push their skills will absolutely do it without meters regardless. No one is asking for addons that play the game for you (like deadlybossmods, weakauras, etc) and we already know there is going to be heavy limits on the macro system. Games that have combat trackers don't get instantly figured out. Vanilla WoW had them and people took until 2017 on private servers to develop the current meta in today's game. Other games have had them as well, and none turn into the meta slave dystopia that you people are fearmongering.
Also it's really cute that you are intentionally not quoting people who go against your views. It's like those 4chan posters who post with @ instead of >> before the post number so the people don't get a (You). It's very adorable and tells just how salty you are about this discussion.
Please though, if you have an actual argument bring it up and discuss it, instead of going "b-b-b-b-but there are arguments, I just won't present them! Source: Dude just trust me"
read two posts above
But what makes your opinion right? You call out "WoW Players" for wanting to bring WoW into the game, but you yourselves are going "But there were no meters in X game and I want it like that!" So can I call you people out for wanting to make this game the next Lineage/Archage/EQ? Or is this really just 1 big salt factory because WoW is popular and ended up killing your favorite game?
You're really contradicting yourself when you say you want to push your class to it's limits but you would like some sort of challenge. Trackers make it easier to get a class to it's limits so it takes out that challenge which is why I'm personally against it. A lot of people are against it because trackers can be misused to kick people and whatnot but me personally I don't like them because they make the game easier and you said it yourself.
Once you got trackers you realize that people you thought were good really aren't because that data now is being handed to you rather than you having to go get your own data and actually experiment with builds. Like I've said before though, trackers are not really meant to be used as a way to make it a competition even if that's the way that you use it it's not the way they are meant to be used. I also enjoy competition and I do like that aspect of having a tracker but they don't really provide much in the form of competition either as most people even with the tracker will not try to be top damage rather people use them to make sure they are not bottom damage. Look at all the reddit posts that say how people use trackers and why they prefer dps to tanking or healing and it's because they don't like the stress of having such an important role that's why most people will DPS and then they just have to make sure they are not bottom DPS and if they are then they have to make sure that it's not by a significant margin.
I personally don't like that it makes the game easier so by in general I am against it.
I've said this multiple times now though.
I've got no problem with an optional PERSONAL and private source of determining what your damage is that you CHOOSE to share with others if you want
Not somethings thats forced on people because one mans a napolean micro manager forcing his measures like epstein himself.
Arguing for the validity of wanting something, and offering compromises to address some of the concerns brought up by people who are against DPS meters doesn't sound like getting mad to me.
There are a lot of points both for and against DPS meters, but I'm seeing a lot of posts in favor of DPS meters specifically addressing the concerns of those against them AND trying to work out compromises that could leave both sides happy.
I have yet to see someone who's against DPS meters trying to address the concerns of those who are for them OR trying to come up with compromises to make both sides happy.
If you have any particular concerns you feel haven't been addressed, please post them. There's A LOT of posts in this megathread (which was also kinda shoved together from multiple threads, by the looks of it), so I'm sure people on both sides have missed quite a bit.
If the positives outweigh the negatives then that's when it would be worth it to have a tracker but so far not a single person has made an argument as to how exactly a combat tracker would be beneficial.
In which specific situation would a combat tracker be more beneficial than harmful?
Ok, then you are on our side of wanting Guild Perk combat trackers. You can opt in or out of those and no one is forcing them upon you.
Read the thread then, because there have been many.
Let's just put guns in the game too. You can toggle them off and on but they one shot you and cause you to drop your entire inventory. They also permakill you. Let's put them in the game anyway though cuz some people think guns are cool.
Things like that are why choice isn't always the best option and why things aren't considered for being put into the game. DPS meters isn't that different from my suggestion.
U.S. East
I've read it over the past two days and can't really recall any give me an example
Wrong I'm only on the side of people having a PERSONAL and PRIVATE tracker that
a player CAN share if he or she CHOOSES
Nothing more, and ultimately I would prefer none.
There is still challenge in experimenting with builds with meters. You still have to go out and try things. People will likely post what they've found works well, and metas will likely evolve, but unless you're waiting on someone else to do it for you, you absolutely still have to go out and experiment with different bulids and gear setups yourself. A meter just gives you solid, easily-readable feedback.
There's challenge in obfuscating results, and if that's how you choose to have fun, I can respect that, but please don't assume that implementing meters means that all the work in learning to play is just magically done for you.
I enjoy meters precisely because they allow me to play around with builds and see tangible results.
I don't know of any MMO's that come with a dps meter or combat logging parsed to external sites built into it. That being the case, it's 100% optional for EVERYONE, regardless of your goals in the game. While that may be paying lip service to an ideal, since if it's something supported, competitive guilds will use it, and if you want to be in one of those, so will you - this is still entirely a choice made by you.
I've been all over the spectrum on this, from pure casual gaming to trying to compete towards the top of NA guilds spending hours on sites like warcraftlogs comparing myself to others of my class. All that time I spent in games with these features supported, and not one time during that did I feel like my experience was hurt by them simply existing. With them you're absolutely going to run into scenarios where someone sees someone doing low damage, something mean may get said and feelings may get hurt. But you don't HAVE to run with people like that.
I just have a really hard time with the argument that excluding so much as a choice on having something like that is a good thing, given the breadth of my experience. It may be interesting being in a game without them, not going to lie. But it's also a bit disconcerting thinking about how performance is going to be judged (if that is something you care about) without hard numbers to back it up.
Ok, lets say you are trialing for a competitive raiding guild. Your DPS is low and is under the threshold requirement to join, so to raise it up you go through the combat tracker to figure out why people of your same class are out damaging you and how you could emulate their strategies or come up with your own strategy to increase your DPS to be above that threshold.
Also many people have pointed out (me, noaani, pantease, and some others) that combat trackers can be a boon because it immediately lets a class leader or raid leader know what the problem is and how to remedy that problem. They can work together with their guildmates for the betterment of the group. People in WoW are disposable, because server transfers, teleporting, looking for group/raid, etc. In this game, there won't be any of that, so no one is going to just kick a low dps raider 3-4 hours into a raid night. They won't be able to replace that person in a timely manner, so the best thing to do would be to go over the combat tracker with them and figure out what went wrong and how everyone can be better.
Without combat trackers, it's just hectic. "Why are we wiping?" "Idk! Maybe dps is low?" *proceeds to bash their heads in at the boss for another hour* "WHY ARE WE STILL WIPING?" "I DONT KNOW, FUCKING SHITTER DPS MAYBE!" *raid ends and everyone is mad*
Then it turns out the reason people were wiping was because the healers weren't properly dispelling. No one knew because there were no trackers. Everyone is mad. And their lockout is ruined. Sure they could have spent the next week theorycrafting about what went wrong and coming up with "subjective" reasons why it happened until they managed to get it right, but combat trackers negates all that hassle, all the stress, and makes raiding more fun. You wouldn't have nights where people just give up because no one knows what is happening for hours.
That is a compromise I would be okay with as well, but to be fair if you are planning on joining a competitive guild they will expect you to share those with everyone. Especially in this game, where the content gets harder and you get better/more loot the better your group does, no one will want to play with someone who is hiding their dps from their guild (even if they are doing really well) because they don't want the possibility on missing loot.
This exactly proves my point and is the reason why I personally don't want trackers in the game. They make the game easier and just hands you information instead of people actually putting in the work to analyze the situation. In that specific situation that you mention you merely need to approach systematically to find where your problem lies rather than just automatically scream "I DON'T KNOW, FUCKING SHITTER DPS MAYBE!"
That's just not the way to approach the situation which I would say the guild wiping over and over is well deserved.
Another thing is that I'd personally prefer being rewarded for handling those situation the right way and if your raid leader or guild leader is not experienced or skilled enough to know what went wrong then you can simply talk to other raid leaders or guilds to help you. If you have the trackers it would get rid of that opportunity for social interaction.
And that will happen, but it will be less apparent. Without a tracker, the game will have to be trivialized to simple tasks instead of an environment where you can keep track of many things at once while also allowing yourself to be mechanically proficient in your class and pumping out as much damage/healing/threat/mitigation as you can while also managing small things.
Let's say in a raid there are 2 debuffs. If you mix the 2 debuffs, the player instantly dies, and everyone around them blows up as well, resulting in a wipe.
Now, is it more reasonable for the 1 raid leader to spend the next 5 hours trying to watch 39 other player's debuffs the entire night while also trying to pull his own weight? Will he even be able to keep track of all that information? Will they even be able to tell it was the debuffs at all? What if the first debuff comes out in the first 10 seconds of the fight, but the next one comes out 2 minutes later? People will look at the combat log and go "huh, I got debuff#2 and then I just died, that debuff must be dispelled I guess!" and then it will keep happening again and again because they don't know the actual crux of the problem. Then all it will lead to is an argument between DPS players and Healers about who is in the wrong. It could take a lot of guilds an entire raid week or maybe multiple weeks, just to figure out this one mechanic that really doesn't have a lot of depth or even challenge to it. Leading to guilds disbanding, fighting, people leaving, etc.
Sure that's more "challenging" (imo tedious, I find fights challenging because they actually push your mechanical skill and gear checks), but is it really more reasonable for people to be hard stuck on content because they have no idea how these 2 debuffs interact with each other and the onus of figuring it out is placed on 1 guild/raid leader who needs to babysit 39 other people? Or is it more reasonable to have a tracker and people to look at it after a wipe and go "Ok, so these 2 debuffs interact in such a way that wipes the raid, so healers be mindful of dispelling and dps be mindful of where you stand!"
Trackers allow devs the ability to make extremely nuanced and in depth mechanics because they are designing around the idea that players will be able to sufficiently track things. This allows for amazingly tuned and engaging boss fights. It's why WoW is still an MMO titan to this day even though it really sucks, because it's raids are absolutely fantastic and each fight is crafted extremely well while being insanely challenging at the mythic level.
U.S. East
I see your point and maybe I would agree with it if it were like 15 years ago but now people have so much experience with many different types of mechanics that it would not take very long for someone out of the thousands of people that play the game to figure out how it works and it will be posted someone on the internet and everyone will follow.
Years ago that wasn't the case as much as it is now.
Also like I said before, in order to really complete the raids people would have to be more organized so rather than having one leader and 39 group members you have 5 groups of 8 each with it's own leader to guide them and each has specific roles in the raid. That's how AoC is currently designed because groups are made from 8 people but you can have up to 5 groups of 8 in a raid. AoC is just being designed different than something like WoW or virtually any other MMO currently in the market. If you prefer those types of raids and those mechanics and that sort of challenge where the challenge lies in how much DPS you can do because of your gear and how min/maxed your build is then sure but I prefer something that's more difficult because of boss and raid mechanics.
And I agree to an extent.
It just seems pretty silly to claim that "trackers makes the game too easy" when WoW not only has trackers but a plethora of other addons that play the game for people and they have the hardest content in all of MMOs.
Sure Method clears content in a week, but they also play 20 hours a day, spend 10k real life dollars to buy gold to buy gear, have every class at max level to swap to FOTM classes/specs, and split raids a week before to get the best possible advantage they can get. And they still have bosses that take over hundreds of attempts (most recent example I can think of is Mythic Kil'jaeden which took over 19 days of attempts, was killed on the 654th attempt 3 weeks after release).
You can't call that easy and most guilds never even finished the raid on mythic difficulty. My guild got cutting edge 2 weeks before the new raid tier was about to come out (june 27th mythic released, got the kill november 14th, almost 5 months, and my guild was considered one of the better guilds at the time).
So really, if ashes decides to make content as hard as WoW's (which I'm not advocating they do and I highly doubt they will) then not having meters will mean basically no one will clear content at all. Mythic KJ cutting edge was only accomplished by 1.4% of the entire playerbase, with combat trackers, with addons that tell you mechanics, with outside sources of information, and he was nerfed TWICE during that time.
Both of those are WoW though. WoW has the hardest and most nuanced boss and raid mechanics in any game. It also has individual mechanics, mechanical skill, dps pumping, and gear play a huge part.
U.S. East
My personal main concern is it will make content easier and also it gets rid of the possibility for other social interactions which is part of an MMO imo. Some people don't really care about those other aspects of an MMO and they just want the raids and pve and could care less about it so why not just go to something like WoW? If WoW does have all those things then those people will keep playing that but AoC is not trying to become WoW it's clearly being designed different with more player interaction in mind.
AoC would just be balanced to be just as hard as those mythic+ raids but without the need for those addons. Also there's no point in having the meters from the beginning of the game since there's no content to test if they would even be needed for those that really claim that they do.
That's fair. All I'm advocating for is player choice. It's also fair for Steven and the developers to say no to me, and I will be perfectly happy with it. I agree it will be interesting to see how this game plays out and even if they don't plan to cater to a competitive side of players in the same way WoW does, I'm sure they will find something that will be good as well. I was honestly just hoping that this game would give me that same itch and would be able to pull a lot of competitive players from WoW (especially with how they plan to cater to a more "hardcore" style with the experience debt and resource loss from death, and other similar mechanics).
We'll just have to see where it pans out!
I just can't stand some of the arguments in this thread where people are being willfully ignorant/belligerent on the topic. Where people like me have tried to address every issue against meters, and even come up with compromises, people like @Yuyukoyay have just tried to attack people over what game they play or for being "toxic!" and have not offered a single suggestion instead being stuck in their own bubble. It's upsetting that they can't give people who advocate meters the same respect and courtesy that people like @noaani and @Pantease have given them.
That said I don't think the argument for meters is entirely honest. Sounds more like a bunch of excuses so that the vast amount of downsides can be abused.
U.S. East
The only reason I am not sayign everything is inaccurate is because you spelled the individual words correct - other than that, it's all incorrect.
Just because omeone creates a build, doesn't mean that build is viable. If a game has the capcacity to create builds that are not viable, in the absence of a way to objectively assess them, there will be non-viable builds posted.
The thing to note is that not every build that is posted was actually tested by the person posting the build. In many cases, they are simply theorycrafted based on the description of the abilities. The issue with this is the description itself may be incorrect - a sitation best observed via combat trackers.
As to your risk vs reward argument at the end, this would then suggest that the only risk at all in the game is in the build you opt to take. You are suggesting (actually outright saying) that is a player dumb-lucked their way on to the best build for their class, they won't face any risk in the game. By extension, you are suggesting that Intrepid develoeprs would be incapable of creating challenging PvE content, and that PvP will be so un-balanced that a person running the best build of their class will face no competition.
Clearly, these things are not true, which means your statement that a combat tracker eradicates the risk is also not true. Sucversion is essentially being built in to this game.
If you look at combat trackers as subversion (how access to objective data could be subversion is beyond me), then it would fit in even more with the design direction of the game than if you did not consider it as such. Actually, there have been no new arguments presented in this debate since before Steven entered it. There is no need to twist what he has said, as at least from my perspective I am able to state that I have already provided a logical reason as to why I disagree with what he has said.
I could have answered every post in this combined thread that has been posted since March simply by quoting earlier posts. I don't, because that would be rude, but there have been no new points made. This is completely true - until you start to factor in other people.
If you join a raiding guild, you are agreeing to play the way they play, at the times they play. This is a part of the deal. This is why having a combat tracker in game as something only these guilds would use would work - because everyone joining these guilds are already agreeing to play the game the way the guild plays the game.
If done this way, it leaves everyone else to play the game their own way - which seems to be exactly what you want. In games with combat trackers, the developers develop content based on the assumption that players will have access to one, because players will have access to one. The content is designed where it is not reasonable to take on that content without at least one person in the raid running a combat tracker to keep track of various things.
This is why my argument is that they should be built in to games. Not just Ashes, but all MMO's. Developers inevitably end up developing content based on the assumption that players are using these third party tools, so they should instead be first party. I am all for having EQ2 style combat trackers (essentially a log file of all events that happen around you, that players are free to parse if they wish), the problem is that this opens it up to people using it incorrectly in pick up groups and such.
It is worth noting that the original suggestion of adding a combat tracker to Ashes via guilds that is contained in this thread (that you have claimed to have read and thus your answers are comprehensive) includes a training dummy either as a freehold item, or as a service that nodes are able to build (or both, why not?). This would allow any player that wants to the ability to try out a new build for themselves. I have to assume this is the only reason you have for wanting a combat tracker to be available to all - and I agree and accounted for it a year ago.
But you've read this thread, you know all of this, because your replies are comprehensive.
What this system does is provide any player at all that wants it with the ability to access any build, ideally on a target with almost any stat dialled in to it that the player would want (or that they have faced), and it allows guilds to monitor their performance as they are want to do. It allows players taht are not in top end guilds to peer review builds that are posted by others (reviewing these builds should be done by peopel from multiple different playstyles). It also allows people to potentially find bugs that raiders wouldn't have seen as not all abilities and augments will be suited to raiding.
While doing all of this, it still leaves all other players in the game to play as they please.
I'm still looking for the actual downside.
I would consider this to be a basic necessity of combat trackers if they were implemented directly in to a games client - though to be sure, would never feature in a third party tracker. Combat trackers actually serve many purposes, and it is only in one game on the market (as opposed to the two dozen or some games in which they exist) where they are used to exclude players.
You can't say that is the only use for them when they exist in games where this is not something that happens.
Other uses for them have been listed. If you've not opted in to allowing the two of us to track each other, I totally agree. If I've not opted in and you have, then we still don't get to track each other.
Your entire argument here is built around the notion that a combat tracker only actually measures DPS. This is a fallacy, and why I will always refer to them as combat trackers (even though that in itself isn't telling the full picture).
I have seen two games where a combat tracker (the same combat tracker) was used to demonstrate to the games developers that their random number generator was not functioning as it should (to be fair, it wasn't the generator itself, it was rounding that was done with the number the generator spat out). There was a rounding error, and the way it manifested itself in game was that the first number and last number of any given range would only come up half as often as all other numbers.
This would mean that if the game had to roll a random number out of three, the number two would come up 50% of the time, the number one would come up 25% of the time and the number three would come up 25% of the time.
Since the random number generator is used for almost literally everything in game, from crafting success, to loot distribution, to damage dealt, to dodge chance, to, well, everything, this one thing actually impacted every player, every day, in many many small ways.
A combat tracker was the only way thing was even noticed, let alone being the only way that enough data was able to be collected to pass it on to the developers so they could fix it.
Every game has bugs in it that developers miss. Every game has had many of these bugs found by the playerbase. Most of these bugs are only found because combat trackers are a thing.
I want to again point out that the only toxicity that exists around combat trackers comes from WoW. No other game has this issue. Other games have combat trackers without that toxicity, and other games that that toxicity without trackers, but there is no other game that has the combination of high combat tracker use and high toxicity.
This should lead people to look for another source for that toxicity, as if one games with combat trackers have toxicity, and many games with combat trackers do not have that toxicity, then it seems incorrect from any perspective to say that combat trackers cause that toxicity (though it is an understandable position from someone that has only played WoW).