DPS Meter Megathread

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Noaani

blackhearted wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

Finally, I have never said a combat tracker should be mandatory - in fact, I've said the opposite.

I meant mandatory for the game itself, not isolated player. What are the actual cons of not having an ACT(Advanced Combat Tracker)? We can manage everything without ACT, sometimes with increased difficulty.

That is exactly it.

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.

noaani wrote: »

You don't need to know a players location in order to know how they died, you simply just need to know what ability caused them damage.

It's not always enough knowing how someone died, but why. ACT cant tell if someone couldve done something or did something wrong that doesnt show, like walked past eggs that break into adds.

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.

noaani wrote: »

sometimes it is good to have an objective overview of the encounter rather than relying on the subjective view of your raid members.
Also, many players simply don't want to say that their healer wasn't doing a good enough job, and I can fully understand why. However, if you have an objective overview of the encounter, raw facts and numbers that are not friends with that healer

I can understand that, but that is where we can adapt and develop as humans.
Give good criticism and guidance, learn to kick players unable or unwilling to learn even when it makes u feel bad.

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.

Noaani

whitedude31 wrote: »

you don't seem to understand your own reference. There will only be so many variations before we see them all and know what to expect. You also have to wonder how different the variations will actually be. Will they truly make a difference or be negligible differences? These are things we will not know until we actually play, so you may have a point or you may be misinterpreting the information

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.

Dygz

Shouldn’t be about blame in any case. Just try to come up with better strategies based on how the players with you like to play.

Noaani

dygz wrote: »

Shouldn’t be about blame in any case. Just try to come up with better strategies based on how the players with you like to play.

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.

Wandering Mist

noaani wrote: »

dygz wrote: »

Shouldn’t be about blame in any case. Just try to come up with better strategies based on how the players with you like to play.

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.

grisu

Edited I can't be bothered to get dragged more into this, shouldn't have bothered to come back in here.
@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.

Azathoth

I don't think it is inconceivable that I don't want a DPS meter because I find it useless (personally) and I understand what a DPS/ACT is.

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.

Noaani

wanderingmist wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

dygz wrote: »

Shouldn’t be about blame in any case. Just try to come up with better strategies based on how the players with you like to play.

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.

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.

azathoth wrote: »

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.

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).

Azryil

dygz wrote: »

Shouldn’t be about blame in any case. Just try to come up with better strategies based on how the players with you like to play.

That mindset only really works in casual guilds that have a fairly low chance of clearing content at the appropriate gear level.

Dygz

noaani wrote: »

dygz wrote: »

Shouldn’t be about blame in any case. Just try to come up with better strategies based on how the players with you like to play.

Nope.
Not how raiding works.

That's pretty much my entire point.

Dygz

arzosah wrote: »

dygz wrote: »

Shouldn’t be about blame in any case. Just try to come up with better strategies based on how the players with you like to play.

That mindset only really works in casual guilds that have a fairly low chance of clearing content at the appropriate gear level.

I'm a casual challenge player...
As long as we have fun defeating the content - gear level is irrelevant.

Ukyy

To me it's more about : Do we have a combat loggin or not. I we have acces to combat logs we'll be able to analyse group/raid or self perfomances during an encounter based not only on dps but also on evry aspect of the games that can be relevant during an encounter (aka damage done/cc/healing/damage taken/friendly fire/heling required/ect...) with ingame tools or outgame tools. Then we'll be able to min/max our game play, theorycraft, improve during encounters we struggle with OBJECTIVE datas. If we have no acces to the combat logs then it will be take the spells you think are fun and go with it. Imo the second solution makes no sense at all. you use the word elitism but it's not elitism it's jsut having objective datas to know the level of the player and then making decisions (like find anoter player OR tell him what's wrong so he can improve). Hiding information is never the good way to go. It only result in worst decisions based on subjective datas creating even more frustation

Dygz

grisu wrote: »

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.

We restrict access to tools when humans more often use them for ill rather than for good.

grisu

For example? @dygz

CrazySquiggle

grisu wrote: »

For example? @dygz

Nukes, assault weapons, Vehicles that require a license, Video games due to the rating system

grisu

So people turn to other things to murder each other. Start restricting access to icepicks I suppose.
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.

Blackhearted

noaani wrote: »

blackhearted wrote: »

I meant mandatory for the game itself, not isolated player. What are the actual cons of not having an ACT(Advanced Combat Tracker)? We can manage everything without ACT, sometimes with increased difficulty.

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.

So the upside of ACT is making it easier to find issues in ur raid and build but the downsides are clear meta, increased elitism and lesser social aspect?

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.

noaani wrote: »

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.

The whole point of that example was to point that breaking the eggs doesnt necessary damage the culprit first...

noaani wrote: »

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.

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.

Damokles

@blackhearted
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.

Blackhearted

1. Lesser social aspect means a lot of things, like players relying on meters instead of player interaction. Less reasons in creating friendships with capable players.
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.

Noaani

blackhearted wrote: »

noaani wrote: »

blackhearted wrote: »

I meant mandatory for the game itself, not isolated player. What are the actual cons of not having an ACT(Advanced Combat Tracker)? We can manage everything without ACT, sometimes with increased difficulty.

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.

So the upside of ACT is making it easier to find issues in ur raid and build but the downsides are clear meta, increased elitism and lesser social aspect?

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.

I don't personally think any of those things become an issue just because you have a tool.

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.

noaani wrote: »

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.

The whole point of that example was to point that breaking the eggs doesnt necessary damage the culprit first...

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.

noaani wrote: »

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.

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.

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.

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