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
I don't get this argument. Ingame tools don't "make" people toxic, that toxicity is already there. The simple fact they express that around what a tool says doesn't make the tool itself at fault. If they are a toxic individual they will most likely find other means of expressing it anyway.
Also, while toxic interactions may occur around that, very positive ones also happen, and it seems like you deliberately ignore this fact. I've personally spent hours just chatting with people on Discord or other means going over fight data. Having these tools absolutely does not remove "social interaction" and every time you repeat that refrain it really puzzles me.
Ask them to define "Social Interaction" and they'll realize that when they mention that in the same sentence as damage meters is plain ridiculous.
Reason why casuals exist because over the years and overtime they get the same results as hardcores do, only difference is casuals take more time to reach that status of acquiring elite builds. Also, casuals dont play 8 hours a day. They come from work and play a few hours maybe. But acquiring good builds takes more time simply because they resort to crafting instead of running dungeons all day. And if they do run dungeons, they dont have the stress of a hardcore leader that obliges high dps meter results.
Hardcore players just want shortcuts by maximizing their time playing mmorpg's, so they resort to like minded people who will comply with their demands by using dps meters and maximizing their performance. But even hardcores lose sometimes and have to start over. No one is perfect ...
Theorycrafters are still the go to people, WoW never changed that. The only thing that changed was general knowledge improved and the tools vastly improved. There's many well-known theorycrafters who participate in multiple class discords and people that assist them with running simulations and gathering data to put out guides.
What you're talking about is the very sloppy way it was done in early wow, where because most of the population was largely ignorant on the game you had a few people who were renowned for doing things like you mentioned or just simply being vocal, personable and engaging with the community. I watched as time went by and those types of people were replaced by people with more analytical and mathematical skills because that is the root of actual theorycrafting, not feelings or popularity.
I feel like the "reward" of seeing yourself on the top makes the grind feel worth it and introduces a very addictive cycle a lot of players are craving for.
Toxicity will be there, yes If you're on the bottom of the meter you might get flamed but on the other hand I believe a lot of players could prove themselves which could properly encourage teamwork, in sense of for example loot sharing which would otherwise not appear. People may hold the good loot back for people they know are good. New guild members could have a hard time because of trust issues and thoughts like "is this new member xxx worth this rare and expensive item?".
Nonetheless I believe you guys are gonna work out a good solution and I appreciate all the work you guys put in!
It has nothing to do with popularity. It has everything to do with social interaction. When you outperform someone in duels, same class against same class, then you are often asked how it has happened.
There are two ways to theory craft, the PvE Method which in older PvP Titles meant little, and then there is the PvP Method. Often times these would overlap unless the game differentiates between PvP Armour and PvE Armour.
It is simple to theory craft in most vertical MMOs because BiS is very narrow. It is not so easy in horizontal progression because BiS is much broader.
Unfortunately, since WoWs success most MMOs have been vertical progression.
I also remember playing Diablo 2 and not worrying about DPS, but being able to feel out how you were doing. Were you kicking butt, or getting your butt kicked?
Which comes back to this threads point other people have pointed out: Is it a skill issue? And even if it is, I bet there will be great people out there to help, and many guides to aid others with their class too!
(no matter how complex the game becomes, there will always be those that find a META)
I far too remember the days of being new to a game (especially well after launch) and being ridiculed for not knowing how to play due to 'low dps' - it's demoralizing and ruins the fun of what a game is. I do not see that being the case with how this community is, so I believe a public DPS meter is not needed. If people are so worried about DPS, cause they are that good, well buttercup it's time to watch to see what everyone is doing, especially if you are that concerned.
I do believe that you should have an optional, personal one that only you can see, and not allowing the use of addons will further this privacy. As a person who likes to Min-Max, is now a Guild Leader, and has the drive to help others learn, I can also see the use (and want) of a personal, private meter.
I will stand with Intrepid on which ever direction they go.
My closing thoughts:
Public DPS Meter: Bad / Private DPS Meter: Good / No DPS Meter: Ok
Not that I expect a reply, you seem more interested in throwing your pre-concieved and ill-informed opinion on combat trackers around without actually engaging in proper discussion, but I'll continue to attempt as much. There are already three combat trackers in development for Ashes, two of which I am personally following (the third I am not, due to not agreeing with the methodolgy used).
This is the exact result that my suggestion of putting combat trackers in as a guild perk would result in.
Higher end guilds would use them, other guilds wouldn't. I'm not sure why you consider this to be ok but not my suggestion. History would suggest that over time, more and more people will make use of a combat tracker if it is available for the game.
Since there is a damn good chance that all that is needed for a combat tracker in Ashes is some freely available commercial software, and an existing and well known combat tracker with a plug in, the barrier to entry isn't that high when considering people will be playing Ashes for multiple years.
Once again, this is blatantly false.
In order to say this is what a combat tracker is, you are saying these things are inherent to combat trackers. If these things were inherent to combat trackers, they would happen in any game that has combat trackers.
Literally any player that has played a game with combat trackers that is not WoW, knows without even thinking about it that the issues in WoW are not present in other games.
As such, you simply can not make blanket statements like the above in regards to combat trackers in all games.
This is simply a case of your complete and obvious inexperience in MMO's coming through and coloring your opinion on the topic.
The thing with doping is - all sports are against it. In order for that to be a valid analogy, all MMO's would have to be against combat trackers.
Most are not, most are fine with it.
A better analogy would be that a combat tracker is akin to recruiting a member to your team in a league with a salary cap, but providing that player with an advertising deal on the side. Some sports are fine with this, some sports have no salery cap, some sports say you shouldn't but turn a blind eye in practise, and a very few sports don't like it, attempt to prevent it, but soon realize that it is not withing their scope to be able to actually do so.
While not a perfect analogy, it is far, FAR better han doping.
See, this is an issue I have.
Combat trackers are not about "feeling better", they are about playing better.
"feelings" have literally nothing at all to do with them, and as soon as the discussion turns to peoples feelings, the discussion has - by necessity - turned away from combat trackers and on to something else.
If I have a combat tracker and it says you are doing twice the damage I am, even if we are the same class, I will only feel bad about that if you make me feel bad about it. At this point, the issue is with you, not with the combat tracker.
On the other hand, if you do not make me feel bad about it, then why would I feel anything other than "oh look, I just found some room to improve!".
Combat trackers do literally nothing other than provide people with objective data. When talking about other peoples feelings, what people do with that data is the same as what they would do without that data. People that are going to try to hurt someones feelings will try to do that with or without that data, and will be exactly as effective at it either way - because what hurts peoples feelings is the fact that someone actually tried to hurt their feelings, more than the thing they actually did.
This is why I have been suggesting for well over a year now that the best thing any MMO can do is implement combat trackers directly in to the games client, but make it an optional guild perk that only works on members of the guild.
This means the people that are going to have one anyway will have one, and the people that don't care will be able to not even think about them.
Where this has the advantage over leaving it up to third parties is that a third party combat tracker is going to be able to track the combat of your group, meaning pick up groups in Ashes will be able to be tracked. If the combat tracker is built in to the games client, they can prevent things like this with a fair amount of ease.
If resources mined per hour were a direct influence over boss kills (and not indirect) and the bosses wouldn't die if you didn't mine enough resources, then you could be damn sure that people would be tracking it.
Resources mined per hour aren't measured because it's either
A ) A personal goal for someone to make some gold for themselves
B ) It doesn't have any direct negative influence if you don't manage to mine enough in a given amount of time
C ) Not needed for much of anything outside of specific crafting recipes
Or D ) All of the above
DPS/HPS/TPS is measured, because it directly influences and determines the biggest and hardest content in any given MMO. It's also the "most important" content for a wide margin of MMO players. So it's no surprise that people want to be the best, that people want to only play with the best, and that people want to track their and others performances to reach their goals and be competitive. Not everyone wants to do this, but with the many suggestions that have been offered, not everyone will need to.
With 3rd party trackers, even if you don't want to be tracked you inevitably will be, because Pug leaders and Guild leaders might use them, even if they advertise that they don't allow them. With an in game system that is opted into/out of by guilds, Pugs will never be able to use them, and Guild leaders have to be entirely transparent with whether they want to use them or not, and can't turn them on secretly for themselves mid way through a raid.
These two statements are contradictory.
You can not be someone whose builds become the meta of a game if you are also someone that would use in game suggestions for builds.
Simply not true.
I don't think anyone on this thread - regardless of their positon on combat trackers - would have any trouble at all figuring out which one of these two quotes from you is a complete and total lie.
They're great for self improvement - they helped me find out i was playing a class the wrong way before, in Rift.
They're great to see who needs help and who doesn't in a guild. Whether it be gear or skill related or otherwise.
They're great to see what combos of what classes are great for dps, healing, tanking, support etc and what isn't.
And the only drawback is fair enough - that some people will gate entry to their personal groups, based on your performance. Disallowing DPS Meters because of this, is basically you forcing more skilled players to have to play with and carry lesser skilled players.
Why do they not get to have that choice?
With all the other open world pvp and general semi-hardcore rules, why would you suddenly turn and do a 180 on this one thing, suddenly turning carebear?
Also no factions so you aren't told who your friends and enemies are, you're free to choose your allies and enemies in almost every single way, but all of a sudden you don't get a say here?
"you can kill anyone you want anytime, you can kill other groups in dungeons, you can kill people and their caravans and loot their stuff, you can attack and destroy peoples towns and houses and take their stuff, you can have anyone you want as friend or foe - but no you can't have a dps meter because this is a safe space"
Like what? Lmao.
*Hiding information to force players who have the time, skill and are generally much more invested in the game to have to play with busy, casual, less skilled, less interested, less performing players - is inherently wrong*
Let people be able to adequately make the distinction so the groups can find people who share their own interests, abilities and general investment.
Wouldn't that make for a more healthier atmosphere for those groups and gameplay in general? The only downside is the odd time when those 2 groups clash (mostly just casual players looking to join a more experienced group, that's instead looking for players of similar level to enjoy a more suitable experience - or "elitism" as it's known in casual circles.)
Indeed it is. However, it is also an endless round of new posters.
This is why I am still happy to participate in this discussion, after over a year.
I finally figured out yesterday how to skip to the developer posts on these forums, and read the few made by Steven earlier on. Made me pretty sad to see, honestly. Especially when he specifically confirmed that there will be combat logs. That alone is enough to guarantee a third-party tool of some sort will be created, even excluding any other methods of obtaining the data.
It kind of boggles my mind for the stance he takes towards trackers.
AoC is it's own game... AoC is not trying to be WoW.
While I did not read the 47 pages (yet), I have to say, I skimmed some points and as a player who has raided a fair number of times, I agree that it is a good measurement for a raid leader to decide who to take along.
In all other instances, I dislike dps meters. They turn into decision makers even in PUGs for content which is not end-game, but a bit harder. Seen it in quite a few games and did not like it.
But the solution is simple. Introduce a target-dummy (configurable to have boss-level resists or even finely grained immunities, damage reflection etc.), buff up and if you do not trust a person to be able to target a mob, you should not be taking them along on a raid. Same with buff/heal groups. Basic competence is required and the target-dummy will tell the raid-leader how that person is faring numbers-wise, since skill cycles will reflect even on a dummy.
Of course, that is worlds apart from measuring the performance in-raid, but it would allow to get a foot in the door and a picture of a wannabe raid participant.
And if a group leader suddenly drops a dummy and wants measurements for group-level content, I would simply walk away, laughing.
This is the other thing that keeps me on these forums.
This game is fairly cohesive in it's vision and strategy. Most things in the game work with other things to make the game a better whole than the sum of it's parts. The corruption system is a perfect example of this - with new posters coming in claiming the system is fatally flawed, only to point out a facet that they were missing that covers that "fatal" flaw.
The only two things that stand out as being completely out of line with the rest of the game are the family summons (which is easily able to be recitified), and the stance on combat trackers.
While a training dummy is an option, my personal preference would be for a combat tracker built in to the game client as an optional guild perk. Make it so that guilds can pick that, or pick other things that guilds that are not taking on top end content would find more useful to them (guild size increase, harvesting buff, etc). Then make it so that guilds with access to this tracker are only able to track people within their guild.
The reason I would like to see combat trackers usable in actual content is because in most games, especially games with an actual competitive PvE scene, you don't know what a mob is going to throw at you before you pull it for the first time. The information you are able to look up in games without that competitive aspect simply isn't there. Guilds place a very high value on keeping their strategy on specific encounters within the guild - this is why in games like EQ2 (which had a fairly highly competitive raid scene), you can't look up complete information on any raid mob in that games 16 year history, as it is simply not out there.
This means combat trackers are actually more useful during the encounter than they are in figuring out who to take.
If it is guild-only, it is too restrictive, imho. What if there are outdoor bosses like in the aforementioned EQ/EQ2? Those were sometimes actually tackled by a combine of smaller guilds that were not raid-ready for the real stuff. Even with pickups. In "old" EQ2 you even took pickups along to the party.
I partially disagree. In all games I played that sported in-combat dps counters, in the end you would be told "Ok, you are not parsing too good, you are out." That leads to a very lopsided view on the use of a person in a raid, especially when it comes to hybrid classes that can do damage (and are geared for it) but can also save others in a pinch. The dps meter is woefully unfit to measure raid performance. And it sometimes causes bad vibes.
A good raid leader/raid officer will do simple runs with applicants that parse ok (with a dummy, for instance
In the end, both approaches work, but maybe something new should be tried, since one approach has been done to death.
The idea behind this perk is that the only guilds that would pick it are guilds that are making taking on top end PvE content the focus of their time online. As such, these guilds are likely to either form in to larger guilds (if they are too small), or take on that content by themselves (if they are big enough).
Top end guids don't tend to work in alliances in regards to killing top end content. While such alliances may still kill some hard content, chances are, those alliances are also not going to be killing the hardest of encounters.
In old EQ2, guilds would take pickups along to kill Acrimoniad, but not Kra'thuk. Achrimoniad was contested raid content, but was not top end content. Kra'thuk was. This is why I don't talk about "DPS meters" but rather combat trackers.
A combat tracker (a good one) is able to tell you how well a support class did at their job (not hybrids, there is generally no place on a raid for a hybrid unless you also bring along an invaluable buff - raids are about specalization, not generalization).
If you have a support that has a specific buff or debuff, you can see how long that player had that buff or debuff on an enemy or ally. You can't do that with a training dummy.
It is actually the support players that are best positioned to gain by having a full combat tracker. I've never seen this outside of WoW.
I've seen guilds say "you are not parsing as high as we would like, would you like some assistance?", and maybe after a while of no improvement they may pull that player from regular raids - but I have never seen it happen in any way that could be considered toxic or unfair to the player involved.
Even top end guilds while I was playing EQ2 (2004 - 2014ish) were happy to assist players with things if the player themself was solid, but needed a little help with specific things. I could imagine a situation where a player finds themself in a top end guild and is in no way capable of performing at that level (combat tracker notwithstanding), then they may well be booted out of the guild with no attempt at training - but that is a result of the player being shit.
Basically, I have never seen a guild kick a player that can stay out of the floor fire because of a combat tracker saying they are a little low - if you get someone that is actually good at staying out of the fire, you build them up to where you want them to be.
I love how it's always "AoC is not trying to be WoW" specifically. No one wants it to be WoW, WoW didn't invent DPS meters, nor did they spearhead them.
But you never quite hear anyone else complaining when someone brings up systems from other MMOs. You never hear someone get upset and say "AoC is not trying to be Lineage" or "AoC is not trying to be Archeage"
Leads me to believe the people who say this are just people who are still salty about WoW in 2020 and mad that their game was never as popular.
If tentacle boy is the right example is debatable.
But you have a point, of course. The strongest content will never be a matter of social/pickup groups or alliances, but top guild only for item distribution reasons alone.
Still, there seems a bit more openly reachable content in this game from what I have seen so far, and in the end maybe even more "public" bosses. Those would be possible to tackle with a smaller guild and a few pickups. That would add more variety for sure and then that "sieving" of people by "show me your last parse" will happen and put people off.
Ok, granted. A very good tracker that takes into account when aggro was pulled by an off-tank or a plate healer (as in EQ2) to save a stupid dps monkey from being squished by trash. But having such a thing in game is not a mean feat.
If that worked, I would agree that it would be tremendously useful, even for smaller guilds and non-raid content (like harder dungeons). And before you say it, I know the rules.
The hybrid thing is debatable. My EQ2 Inq back in the day was tough enough to tank trash for a short while while I did my job too. Especially in EQ2, you could pull a hybrid raid member off, except in the real hard raids where every bit counted. But we digress.
The reason, I never joined a guild with my raid tier characters on AB and Nagafen was exactly that reason.
If that is the case in the majority of cases, I would not even care if someone could inspect me and see my last 10 combat parses. Alas, I think it is no longer that way.
But to be back on topic: A true combat tracker with meaningful statistics that also helps with non-raid content: Sure. Pure DPS Meter = bad imho.
Instead, develop strategies, build complementary characters, and use monsters weakness against them.
That's all you need.
"Ok, you are not parsing too good, you are out."
Parsing is a different tool of measurement. If there are raidlogs, and by extension parses, then the people are only going to be measured against people of their same level, same archetype, and same level of gear (which has already been confirmed to be a measurable figure in this game with how they are going to have buffs on players in PvP which gives a general idea of their gear level). So someone who is a hybrid that is "parsing low" is probably actually parsing low for their class and needs to improve since they are within like the 40th percentile of their class/gear level or what have you. Now if you meant to say a raid leader just looks at the numbers in the dps tracker, and nothing else, and is only comparing it to the rest of the guildies who are other classes/specs then yeah the guild leader is in the wrong here.
But I highly doubt that people will be getting kicked on first offenses in this game. People are not easily replaceable in this game as they are in other games where the system allows it. For instance in WoW, people are easily replaceable because the game is cross server, because teleports/summons are all over and it doesn't take an hour for someone to reach the raid, because the looking for group/looking for raid system exists, etc. In WoW, people are easily replaced because the game allows it. Ashes won't have any of that, so it will be a pretty big wake up call to a toxic guild leader when he kicks 1-2 people and then they have to wait 2 hours to get replacements effectively ruining the entire raid night. No one will want to do that.
Now if you are going to be constantly under parsing, never improving, you show up late to raid, you show up without enchants/augments on your gear, you don't contribute to the guild or raid in a meaningful way, and you are a sub par class combination (note: this only applies if other conditions are met, I'm sure if you want to play suboptimal builds people will be fine with it if you are a good team player) and then you finally get kicked from the raid, you can't blame DPS meters on that.
"The dps meter is woefully unfit to measure raid performance. And it sometimes causes bad vibes."
I don't think you understand that meters track more than just dps.
A lot of people who complain about DPS meters/combat trackers cause toxicity are typically the casual players that are interacting with other casual players. In particular, a vast portion of it comes from more casual guilds/players trying to mimic what they think hardcore guilds/players are like.Toxicity of this sort is usually quite rare in the actual hardcore guilds for the simple reason that people who specifically want to get into more hardcore aspects of an MMO already know and agree with increased skill requirements. If someone wants to break into the hardcore raiding scene, and doesn't quite make the cut for DPS or some such metric, but is willing to learn and improve, most guilds will gladly help out.
That last part is what is super important, and what most people who complain about toxicity never seem to understand. If you want to put in the effort to improve, then having low DPS is a trivial matter that can be fixed rather easily. However, if you don't want to improve, then of course a guild is going to drop you. Why should a guild whose members are all putting in 90-95%+ of their effort for each fight be required to carry people who only want to put in 20% effort, but get all the rewards? It makes no logical sense.
If anyone ever listens to Preach Gaming's Drama Time stories, you can get a good idea of what I mean. Basically all of the stories involve guilds that are doing normal/heroic raiding. The few stories that pop up in regards to the mythic scene usually involve someone coming in as a trial, immediately expecting gear, and then raging out when they don't get anything.