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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
A good combat tracker is a tool, in this case specifically for diagnostics. Nothing more, nothing less. The advantage of any tool for diagnostics is to be able to find issues faster, and with more clarity.
I don't want a big neon sign telling me what happened, players should still have to sift through information to figure out exactly what went wrong. However, without that information all we have are subjective opinions of 40 people - it's faster and more accurate to go to the data.
If a given player was the first to be attacked by all of those adds, and it was a few seconds before anyone else was attacked by them, then you know what happened. If many people got attacked at roughly the same time, you know that the raid as a whole was in the wrong place.
Also, if it is a one off mistake, there is no real need for any corrective action. You only need to take action when something is a repeated issue. As a leader in anything at all, you need to allow for people to make the occasional mistake - it's the repeated mistakes that you need to address.
If the same person (or small group of people) are always being killed by the adds from those eggs, you know you have done a poor job of explaining the encounter and your expectations of what those players need to do.
Again, no big neon sign telling you what went wrong, but enough clues for you to be able to figure it out without any real issues - assuming you have a complete understanding of the encounter. I'm always happy to kick players that are unwilling to learn - but that is the only reason I kick a player from a raid (the guild, actually). Well, I say always - I've actually only ever had to do it once.
However, if I have a DPS blaming a healer, the healer is going to blame the DPS. If I were the type to kick someone over that (I'm not), then at best I have a 50% chance of kicking the wrong player, unless I have an objective overview of the encounter.
I will never take action against someone on a "he said, she said" basis. That is poor leadership.
I missed this post.
The developers have said encounters will have phases and be heavily scripted. These things are not something that will be able to be dynamic, and as many scripts are a part of the environment rather than the encounter, it would be stupid to even try. Anyone that has spent any time raiding will know this.
The dynamic component of raid encounters will be the abilities of the mobs themselves, rather than the scripts.
When you take on an encounter, you'll likely understand what the script will be asking players to do. Whether it's adds in eggs, disintegrating floors, switches that need to be pulled, what ever - this component of encounters will likely remain the same.
However, even though you know what the script is calling for you to do, you won't know if the encounter has a really strong barrage, a fire AoE, maybe a temporary reflect of a specific damage type. It is the abilities of the mob itself that will change, rather than the scripts.
This still opens up the possibility for a fair amount of variation, and means raids need to head out to content equipped to deal with any damage type, and that is a good thing. However, the general flow of encounters will remain largely the same, no matter what abilities the encounter may have today vs last week - this is also a very good thing.
Nope.
Not how raiding works.
Not how any team activity works.
Raiding is a team sport. If one person in the team doesn't want to play their position properly, you replace them with someone that will. It's harsh on that one person, but it is more harsh on the other 39 people on the team if you don't make sure that specific position is functioning.
The desires of that one player do not - and never can - trump the needs of the team as a whole.
Fortunately, most people that join raid guilds understand this and that is how they want to play.
This one specific fact is the bulk of the reason a raid guild will always be more successful than a pickup raid.
Depends on the guild and how many raiders you have available.
@blackhearted I mean if you are not interested in a serious discusion then there is no point in responding. Ripping lines out of context so obviously to make another point that doesn't exist is pretty sad to see.
I set up a premise before that, which is independent of a dps meter.(again ripping lines out of context much man, seriously?) It's a general game design problem, in context a dps meter just makes sense to have to ensure the balance is there/ requierements are met between player and monster. I presumed that if there is no dps requierement then the burden falls to the other 2 parameters, which is healing and survivability as the limiting factor of a bossfight duration. That's logical. A logical conclusion.
Some player ressource will always have to limit the bossfight, so you will always have a dps requierement, otherwise you get what I already explained. I can't make it clearer than this. If you don't understand the implications of it, then I'm sorry but I'm done explaining.
Also prefering guild mates and players with good reputation doesn't guarantee anything in terms of damage. You have no way of checking if what they do is good or not.
Can't be bothered to go into all the other distortions you throw around. It's just sad to see.
The only thing that this thread shows is that 1. people are uneducated/inexperienced about what dps meters do and 2. they rather blame a tool then the human that abuses it. Because who wants to take responsibility for their own actions right?
That's just typical human "i want all rights but no responsibility" missbehaviour.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
Also, a lot of activities that involve teams function around the aspect of playing to each persons strengths. Not even sports are about having the exact same athlete do the exact same thing as all the other athletes in their sport/position. On a professional level, if you can't lead a team using the strengths of those around you, as opposed to trying to force everyone into a cookie-cutter type role, you usually don't lead for long.
Does it though?
If someone in the raid is not doing what they should, to the point where it is causing issues to the raid that are showing up on a combat tracker (the key point here - and as stated above, is a repeated situation rather than a one off), you can't just not do anything about it and expect the other 39 people in your raid to be happy with that.
The type of guild you are in and the number of people you have available absolutely will influence what action you take to deal with the situation - but the fact that the situations needs to be dealt with it - at least in my opinion - is a given.
Even if you are a totally casual guild, people still won't stand by and allow one persons buffoonary to hold up the entire raid for extended periods of time.
While true, you are missing an important aspect here.
An individual having a specific skill may come in useful - but only *if* that specific skill is of use on the specific encounter you are facing.
When against a human opponent, it is possible to create the conditions where an individuals specific skill can be put to use, so there is much more scope for individual players to put their special skills to use. When going up against computer code, however, things are required to be somewhat more specifically executed.
There is often scope to switch things up on raids though, and a good leader will usually identify them. These changes though are more likely to be swapping players between roles on the raid (not necessarily role as in terms of tank/healer/DPS/utility).
That mindset only really works in casual guilds that have a fairly low chance of clearing content at the appropriate gear level.
As long as we have fun defeating the content - gear level is irrelevant.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
Nukes, assault weapons, Vehicles that require a license, Video games due to the rating system
Some people with a licence for a car will still get into it drunk and will still be permitted to drive afterwards.
A 10 year old will still find all those "age restricting" contents on the news, TV, everyday life and they won't be any worse consuming that.
I am not disputing that restrictions can be/ are necessery and can be good for us as a society/community. I am using those 3 examples however to simply highlight that it will loop back to both points I made in the context of a combat tracker.
1. Being uneducated about a subject
2. Blaming tools rather than humans
They will use the first death as a reason to blame the whole failure on someone instead of damage numbers. I suppose ban showing who died until the end of combat and don't reveal in what order.
Knowing what is allowed/acceptable to do and what is not won't stop them, if it's not actually enforced. They will risk actual peoples life driving drunk, the heck they gonna care about some pixels and feelings. ( I am willfully exagurating, most won't go into a car drunk and be like, yeah fuck them, but they will risk others life and will do it again given the opportunity)
Uneducated views and fear mongering of what is harmful and what isn't. Shitty parenting way before the age of videogaming will lead to your little bastard being what he/she is. <<This is well documented and still ignored to drive debates about "harming children". It's easier to blame the video game tool than your shitty parenting of the last 10 years. It's pretty much on par with anti-vax debates for example, but hey it gains you sympathy in certain circles.
Shitty people exist and there won't magically be more because a combat tracker exists. I am not disputing that bad experiences that revolve around combat tracker don't exist, but they will happen with this tool and without it. Time to grow up and cut shitty people out of your life.
I can be a life devouring nightmare. - Grisu#1819
All scenarios where we think ACT is necessary, we can find a way to work around it.
We will find a way to min/max our characters and we will learn to observe our surroundings instead of an ACT.
We are also going to be needing skilled raid leaders more than ever in previous games.
The whole point of that example was to point that breaking the eggs doesnt necessary damage the culprit first...
When the lead cant be sure of the culprit, does that not mean hes more prone to giving it another try and focusing more on players instead of their own dps?
Neither of our arguments is valid for player reactions in mentioned instances as we have no studies to analyse or draw data from.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
I dont know how you got all that...
1. No, the downside is not a lessered social aspect. People can still play their own specs, but they just cant enter a damn raid, because raids are supposed to have standards, and if they bring nothing else but lol or subpar dps to the table, then they cant raid.
2. Yes, it supports cookiecutter builds, that actually do what they are supposed to do (dps), not that other builds would not deal the modicum of dps required, but those other builds would in turn bring other things like buffs or superior cc cpabilities to the group.
3. No, a raid leader cant instantly see the culprit(which would be impossible without a combat logger), he wont be able to find the fault in the second or even third try. He would have to see every player over his/her shoulder, watch what they are doing, while doing his own job (which could lead to easy deaths if he was a tank or healer...) That would to lead to endless unnecessary wipes and a demoralized raid, which in turn would lead to a witch hunt for who ever does not pull his own weight.
4. I would like to watch you try organize a raid, give commands to boss mechanics, do you own role and controll every player through his (if it is even implemented) standard combat log.
I lead a raid for 3 years in WoW, and YES AoC wont be wow, but lets just assume here okay? Lets say that you finally got 40 man together and start a raid, but you cant clear the first boss, because the dps somehow just does not messure up. The boss has to enter/leave a specific phase really fast or your tanks/healers cant hold up. The dps are under pressure, everyone is a bit pissed. Second try: wipe. Third try: wipe. The raid gets more aggressive, misstakes happen more often, the pressure rises. Fourth try: someone thinks he saw how another raid member stand around and only use autoshot. It does not matter if that person has no mana or focus anymore, but it is enough for that person. He calls him out after another wipe. The raid turns into a lynch mob. The specific person gets pissed and leaves with his friends. Now you are 5 people less, still have not killed the first boss and the raids morale is in the underworld. (This is a real story bts
This could have all be prevented in the first or second pull with a combat meter.
2. There will be cookiecutter builds even without ACT, but they wont be absolute.
3. That is why we will need skilled raid leaders and not random trash.
4. In WoW our raid leader was never top dps because he paid more attention to the group, he re-organized groups and assigned them according to encounter. Very much like in WoW, youre going to be creating strategies to overcome encounters. Even in WoW, its raid leaders job to follow the groups and notice when someone is lost. We were never forced to look at dps meters because we knew everyone was capable. That is the kind of social interaction AoC is looking for.
The rest of ur post just seems like someone described a bad pug group that shouldnt exist in AoC nor should be trying high end content. You need guildies, players youve done dungeons with and noticed are capable.
A good raid leader should know classes and assign them appropriate roles, like ccing adds, some bursting them.
Raid leader should pay more attention to the environment instead of their dps and make sure everyone else is doing their job. When you achieve a group where the raid leader can trust others, he can dps more.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
The game I've played that had the biggest meta game to it - which also happens to be the game that has the most pronounced group of elitists - is Archeage.
Archeage doesn't have any means of checking combat effectiveness, so not only did it have an extremely pronounced meta, but once that meta was accepted, it was almost impossible to shift. Without the ability to show working proof that a build is better, people just stick to what they know - so I'd argue that while a combat tracker makes the meta game clearer, it also helps it move faster as new builds can be imagined, tried, tested and proven much faster.
IMO, this is a good thing.
Elitism exists in every game, you can't blame anything on that. Combat trackers - at worst - give a small number of not-so-smart a sense of faux-elitism, which is both an issue and a source of amusement at the same time.
As for the social aspect, like any tool, all it does is reflect the person wielding it. If someone uses a combat tracker in a negative way, that person would have found some way to be negative regardless. You can't blame the tool for this, you can only blame the player.
The negative action would happen with or without the tool. Not in WoW, no - but that is because WoW is poorly designed.
In most games, adds that are summoned via player action attack that player first - this is good game design.
I usually stick to games with good over all design, so in my experience yes, that player will be attacked first. What I would do in that specific and exact situation depends on my experiences with the two players in question (and potentially the other people in the raid). But regardless of what the experiences with other people are, you are still better off with hard data than you are without it.
---
Now, my suggestion in all of this is to add a combat tracker as an optional perk that guilds can take - or they can take a different perk if they wish. Once taken, this combat tracker then allows members of the guild to track the combat of anyone in their group or raid - that is also in their guild.
I challenge you to come up with down sides to this.
Why would people interact less, if AoC had a combat log? Why would stey stop building friendships with each other? I dont understand your reasoning here tbh.
Cookiecutter builds will either way be absolute, because most of the players are not interested in making their own shit, but rather want someone to tell them what the best ability combination is. Ofc there are people like us that will go beyond that and experiment, but we will not be the majority.
3. Has nothing to do with the raid leader being thrash lol... it is about reality. No one is able to controll and check a 40 man raid without a ccombat log, thats the sad reality. It would be possible in a 10man WoW raid, yes, but immagine that with 40 man...
And what do you mean with "he re-organized groups and assigned them according to encounter."?
It is normal to shuffle groupmembers around for easy visual management. ALL raidleadrrs do that, that... is nothing impressive or noteworthy?
If you think that your guild will have 40 man raid teams without at least 5 randoms, then you are up for a bad wakeup call my friend... it is hard enough to find 25 regular dependable raidmembers. Then one got sick, another doesnt turn up for the raid and the third somehow managed to lock his raid id...
"Raid leader should pay more attention to the environment instead of their dps and make sure everyone else is doing their job. When you achieve a group where the raid leader can trust others, he can dps more"
A raid leader has to do his job in the raid no matter what happens. You cant just tell everyone to do their best, then do subpar work and demand from others to do better then you. When i was still raiding in wow i was at least top 3 in damage overall and helped people after the bossfight to see how they can get better.
I also always told them that moving was always better then dps, because one hit extra means that the healers have more mana to spend.
A raid leader is the raidleader, because he is the (most of the time) most experienced, has the best mechanical knowledge of the raid, knows his own dps rotation in his sleep, has the most prestige/recognition from the raid members and is willing to help new players and first time raiders to better themselves.
A raidleader (no matter the skilllevel) will never be able to see the misstakes of other players without a good combat logger. Do you know why wow classic was so much harder from a raid perspective? Because a raid leader didnt have the awesome combat loggers from today. A typical wow classic raid had at least 5 people that did nothing and were never found out because a raid leader cant do anything about it.
TELL ME HOW A RAIDLEADER IS SUPPOSED TO CHECK 40 MAN IN A COMBAT SCENARIO WITHOUT A COMBAT LOG I DARE YOU.
("Just by looking at the team members" wont be counted as an valid answere, because that will never work, except you know the animation of every skill, its variations, its damage, follow every dot, know from who each dot came from, and have the brain of a computer to add everything instantly together, not to forget the melee dps, where you would need to know the average damage from each melees weapon, their skills and for everyone: their crit chance and eventual number of crits)
By having people use social skills to communicate with each other without turning it into a witch hunt.
It could cost thousands of irl money to change a build in archeage which would prevent most people from changing.
There are 60 seconds in 1 minute so to find the dpm (damage per minute) from dps you just have to multiply dps by 60.
Dps or dpm, it doesn't matter. It's the same thing. Damage per timestep.
Invincible Tank
Unrivalled Dps
Queen of Growlgate
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H8 me cuz u ain't me
Assuming you are not changing the core of your class (caster to melee, etc), many builds didn't require any changes in gear at all, and many more required minor tweaks.
However, the problem with both my above statement and the statement from you that I am replying to here is that since Archeage didn't have combat trackers at all, there was no real way of knowing whether a class change was worth it without a gear change or not, and what sort of improvement a gear change could be expected to offer.
People were scared to make minor changes to the few classes they ran in Archeage, but not because of the cost of a change - they were scared because they didn't know if a class change would work out or not.
The same way a store manager knows that every part of their store is running smoothly, by having competent support staff who help monitor what is going on. You will be hard pressed to find a raid leader who knows the intricacies of every single class and spec in the game, which is why a good raid leader will listen to their raid members when deciding tactics and figuring out what went wrong. Of course, in a 40-man raid, having everyone chip in with ideas is impractical, so you have raid officers and team leaders to help you.
On a side note, one of the reasons why I prefer 10-man raids is that it allows everyone to pitch in and give their feedback on what is happening. Even the most observant raid leader with access to a full combat tracker can miss things that other people spot.
No one managing a store relies solely on asking their staff what is and isn't selling. They take that in to account, but also look at past sales data, region/nationwide/international trends etc. Hell, depending on what you are selling, they will even take the weather forecast in to consideration.
Talking to your team is an invaluable thing - in business and in raiding.
But so to is objective data.
Yeah you're right there. On second thoughts, the store analogy is a little off, so instead let's compare a 40-man raid to the military. In the British Army, a Captain leads a Platoon of 30 soldiers. It would be unreasonable for the Captain to keep track of everyone in their Platoon at once, so the soldiers are split into 3 Sections. Each Section is commanded by a Corporal. Within each Section you have 2 Fire Teams, each commanded by a Lance Corporal.
A good Army Captain will be in constant communication with their Corporals who in turn will make sure that the rest of the soldiers are following orders. That is the essence of command and a raid team follows similar principles.
Yeah well IS said that all raids will be 40man raids...
And another thing that ALL of us seemed to have forgotten until now:
"Combat itself will be pretty intricate mechanics-wise. We're going to have different phases of the bosses, there's going to be a lot of adds stuff, there's going to be random oriented skill usage. We're not going to have telegraphed templates on the ground, but we will have telegraphed animations, so it's going to be location, mobility, strategic. It will be something that can not be repeatable in the exact same way from raid to raid, but has a variance between the combat, so raiders are going to have to be fluid in thinking on their feet."
If they stay true to their words, then the boss fights will be randomized nearly each time, with random ability patterns. That alone will fuck up tons of raiders, and the telegraphed animations will keep the tanks on their toes.
If you are shure that you dont want a combat logger for this, then go ahead: i would rather have the ability to easily see the misstakes of my teammates to instantly help them learn to do better, rather then take the long route.
A store manager also has an intricate computer filing system that helps everyone see how much of everything is in stock. That would be the combat log in this metaphor.
Without a damage meter, no one knows how much damage their dealt, or how much damage missed to go into the next phase.
Or in store manager terms, without a filing system, no one would know how much every other employee actually ordered, without having to ask each individual extra and then adding it all together.
Phases are also actually confirmed xD (was not sure about that myself)
https://en.ashesofcreation.wiki/Raids
That data in this case may be in the form of satellite imagery, reconnaissance, informant, etc. Every armed force in the world devotes a large portion of it's over all budget towards getting objective data to it's front line leaders.
Point is, no matter what you are doing, there is value in talking to those under you, and value in objective data.
One of the keys to good management - whether in a store, in a war or in a raid - is in knowing how to make use of both.
Case in point.
Regarding the raid encounters themselves, what we know right now is very very vague. I personally am willing to wait until we actually see the raids before asking for more tools.
Okay lets say that the raid consists of 1 raidleader, 4 lieutenants, 1 group of 8 and 3 groups of 9 (40man raid team right here).
Each of the lieutenants controlls one group, with the raidleader directing the groups.
Now each of the lieutenants has to coordinate with the raidleader, each other, do mechanics (WHICH ARE RANDOM), do their own role in the raid (dps heal etc), and watch their own subgroup in fight to catch one player that cant do his job. That sound slike a circus.
The thing with the army is that each and every soldier has tons of training behjnd them, and they all know what to do in numerous combat scenarios.