Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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
And the fewer there are, the better it is for the game.
Only people that are insecure about such things think this.
Literally most systems in the game are a dick-measuring systems - especially when you look at the amount of different leaderboards that are confirmed
― Plato
what I find funny is that PvP players want the game to have only PvP activities in the game while at the same time avoiding PvP on equal footing. Is ganking honestly the only thing you want Ashes to strive towards?
― Plato
I've been saying for about 50 pages now that combat trackers are significantly less useful in PvP as they are in PvE.
Fortunately, PvX means both PvE and PvP, so a combat tracker is still viable for the PvE portion of it.
That’s a little disappointing but maybe I’m completely wrong. Maybe AoC will be different. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
First i didnt see anyone asking for more pvp activities, as pvp is not some activity you go and do, its more just part of core gameplay, and most people here just dont want this core element to be limited.
And i think you dont really understand how these type of games work.
Well exactly, and this game is meant to be PVX game, not PVE and PVP game(hope you can understand what i mean by this), so maybe the DPS meters are not needed at all?
But the game will still have PvE. It will have PvP too, but it will also have PvE. They will even happen at the same time, but this only adds to the need to have a combat tracker, not detract from it. This argument only makes sense if you are suggesting there will never be any PvE in Ashes.
Core gameplay is moving your character and interacting with anything you come in contact with.
PvP is a content type and it is quite heavily directed towards events like sieges and mercenary work on protecting/attacking caravans with valuables.
Also:
This is the exact backwards thinking that you accuse me of doing. The only allowed action or content in the game is PvP - if you can't PvP when doing something then it is destroying the open world.
― Plato
Ok, so you didnt understand then. Again, PVX doesnt mean that the game has pvp and pve, it means that theres no separation between pvp and pve, theres no one without the other, both are core mechanics and can not be separated unless to go completely against vision of this game. With this design its meant to unite all players in one world, where you have to play with each other. Does that clarifies a bit more?
So if the deciding factor in open world raids is PvP then it is by nature PvP content
― Plato
If this were true, it would mean we could expect PvE during sieges and in the military node leadership contest arena - as this kind of system would have to work both ways.
Fact is, this is just not what PvX means. PvX means there is PvE and there is PvP, sometimes you will do one or the other, sometimes both.
Im not saying its good for all games but in AoC we will have combat tracker, damage numbers, possibly training dummies... Seriously what more can you ask for???
I think everyone who asks for DPS meters are people who had it in games before and are too bound to it, never people new to the concept. You have to let it go guys, you'll have more fun with the game.
Why have an extra UI on a brand new role game, giving all that meta-objective info. In the long run you'll see the game is better without it, I hope.
Also, I am not sure which games it is you are talking about when you said but I really would like to know what "many" games you are talking about here - because I have yet to play an MMO that didn't have a combat tracker.
You are insufferable.
Do you actually have an answer? Because every MMO has a combat tracker of some sort, the presence of which benefits entire communities for all the information it brings to the table.
Except you will have pve in nodewars as monster coin stuff, with mobs attacking node and citizens defending it as well as needing to take castles from NPC's and even if the castle is player owned, to take castle ytou will need to defeat a raid.
Everybody values performance. That's the issue. I didn't express a negative attitude towards anybody. Just the way having a meta build and numbers always available will psychologically impact individual players and the community as a whole. Correct. We can agree that, at the very least, early in the game's life that damage meters will have my previous post's positive effects. But it will be timed. Specifically when the optimal meta has been discovered/selected, people will be hesitant to spend time deviating from it. For reasons ranging from comfort zone, to concern with the social aspect of other players oggling their numbers and judging them a burden. Such as in the next quote, where a non-meta build is poor performance and getting carried.
What are you defining as "pull their weight"? What standard deviation from the top performing available build are we talking? As you have expressed it, this is a point that will never be defined and alienates a player for not taking the meta route. It is boiled down to two options; you are the top build or you are the scapegoat.
You've just told me that "forcing the player to play a certain way" is just playing the highest numerically valuable path or they'll have "poor performance" and are "getting carried". I'm skeptical that youd really harbor such a negative and totalitarian perspective on it. But anybody who does should reflect on it.
I put these together really fast and I am sure that there are more reasons why having a DPS meter is bad. I wasn't seeing anyone else vocalizing this point so I wanted to put this out there.
I think a DPS meter is too "EASY". I like the idea of exploring and theory crafting for myself. I think I would have more fun in a game where I get to discover instead of always constantly having to compare myself
1) The only way you CAN explore if a set is better than another, is by trying it on and seeing your performance with it. Even with RaidBots (a system to simulate performance based on gear) you are ALWAYS testing these builds, and trying out new stat allocations to get that extra bang for your buck, particularly if you change specs. Where I think your sentiment lies is with the overwhelming "casual" player base that does not put any effort into their characters, because they assume all avenues have been examined by other players. Thus, they default to what those others do, because if it works well, it must work the best. With or without a damage meter, you will be testing out new gear sets and talents/abilities to get a feeling/idea of that performance. Can this lead to a perceived meta? Yes, but that again is due to the laziness of the player base. People want the answers spoon fed to them, and not spend their time in-game trying to figure out how to increasing their player power.
2) As a Guild Leader and Raid Leader, I emphatically disagree. If Billy is low on the DPS meters, we examine the logs to see what abilities Billy used, when he was using them, his resource generation, his active time spent doing xyz, we check to make sure he wasn't assigned to any mechanics that would explain such a drop in DPS. Once a potential issue is identified, we 100% work with Billy to get them the proper gear and guidance for their role. That's one of many reasons you have Officers in a guild, to help ensure the well-being of all of your members. If all guilds did was drop the lowest dps everytime, no progression would be made, particularly in an game where the content does not scale with group size.
3) This seems to be a continuation of point 1, or rather a contradiction of it. How can having meters both take away the luxury of trying on new gear/builds, AND force one to try on new gear and test their damage output using meters? The only things you are looking at when trying on a new piece of gear are the stats it provides (in terms of power progression), so I don't see how this is an argument or counter to having dps meters in the game.
4) Suppose you have a Raid Boss, X, and X has a health pool of 100million.
Also suppose if X reaches 0 HP in 60 seconds, then Reward R is dropped
Letting D = Raids DPS,
If X drops R, then D = 1.67Million.
Therefore, in order to get R, the raid must output 1.67 Million damage per second to the boss.
How can one figure out how much damage is being done to the boss without some form of combat tracking? I don't care for meters in game, but the ability to analyze your raids throughput is an incredibly powerful tool for coming up with strategies and improving as a group. (My discrete prof. would have flamed me for the above) Certain fights it might be about healing, others it might be about time spent doing mechanic x, or not doing action y, but the result is the same: Having a method to track these metrics enables a guild/group to be more coordinated.
5) PvP is not an area of really any game where you can just look at the raw damage output and say, "That's why I died". Of course, your health dropped to 0, that's why you died. In PvP it's more about the actual abilities used, and the context within which they were activated. That, combined with gear and certainly no small amount of time spent fighting, is what enables them to claim victory over others. The argument for 1 good build being discovered by the damage meters, actually relates more to your point #4: It hides a deeper issue. What is this deeper issue, nobody asked? Well it's Balancing, of course! But remember, Ashes is NOT a game balanced around solo play, but rather group play. So in your scenario, if you are destroyed by a fighter, and you play a bard, well it's not really an even assessment, is it? Your class is suited to make others stronger, while there's is directed at damage output. As for the mystery, I agree some mystery is fun, but having combat logs available for analyzing does not take away the mystery of why you can't get reward R, because you already know you're missing the damage. The mystery comes from not telling the player base, "If you kill X in Y seconds you get the best loot", those things are best left to the player base to discover. But even these will get posted online and soon that mystery you are talking about disappears, but not due to dps meters.
I think the issue here is the perception of tracking in-game metrics. Some people have been declined from groups, or potentially removed from (bad) guilds, due to some perceived metric they failed to meet. However, I find this hard to believe, as you would never remove a highly competent player from your group simply because they didn't perform at the top on one encounter. Rather, you would examine WHY this is the case, It's easy to correct gear deficiencies and improper stating, it is NOT easy to take a player who can't dodge a simple mechanic and get them to do a Waltz with a giant dragon. Tracking with combat logs enables the group to progress, rather than limit the individual.
WOWIEEE this became a lot longer than I intended. These are of course just my opinions, and by no means am I disregarding your input on the points you made or attacking you, I am simply responding from my view of the garden in hopes the flowers will talk back.
Node wars and monster coin events are in no way connected.
A node war happens any time a node declares a war on another node. It is a pure PvP situation. As are guild wars.
A monster coin event is essentially random (as far as we know) and sees a monster attack a node. However, the namesake of these events, monster coins, allow players to take over said monster. So really, monster coin events are monsters controlled by players attacking nodes and defeated by other players.
Also, there is absolutely nothing at all to stop rivals from attacking and killing players attempting to take on that monster.
If you think killing a guard during a siege constitutes PvE as opposed to a PvP objective (which is what Intrepid are labeling it as), then again, you do not know what PvE is.
I largely agree with @Plutar above, but I will add my own thoughts too.
1, this point applies to the games meta more than a combat tracker. Players that care what others think will always do what they think they are supposed to do, players that do not care what others think will do as they please.
The difference of having a combat tracker is that you can quantify your decision to show others that do care that it isn't too bad, as opposed to not having a combat tracker where players will just not accept you because you are not following the meta.
2, if the content is hard enough that the raid would not be able to carry Billy, surely the best thing over all is to tell Billy he needs to improve, take someone else in his place for now, and then kill the encounter. That way you only have 1 player that is in a situation where they know they need to improve, and have the tools to do so, as opposed to a situation where you have 40 people unable to kill an encounter, and without the tools to work out why.
3, you are using the term immersion incorrectly here, but 90% of posters on these forums have been doing so since the last developer discussion, so I'll pass over that.
The bulk of players do not want to invest this time. They want to look online for a build, and just use it. Their understanding of gear usualyl revolves around one or two stats, and they just equip the item that has the highest of those stats.
A games meta is developed based around this notion, because metas for builds exist so that players need to think less.
If you have a combat tracker, you are able to break from the games meta - even if you care about what others think. You can do this because you are able to explore other options, and are able to quantify that exploration.
If you think the existance of a combat tracker in a game means the best builds will automatically be known, y ou have not been paying attention to games - even WoW has it's raid level meta change on occasion when players find new ways to do things.
4, combat trackers allow players to find issues in the games combat system. They do not hide them, they highlight them.
5, Adding a combat tracker will mean there may be a few good builds to start, this is true (1 build is absolutely untrue though).
However, combat trackers also mean that players can more easily develop builds that can counter those few popular builds, since this game is largely about PvP. If everyone is running a small number of builds, and the game is generally somewhat balanced, then it isn't hard to come up with an effective counter to those builds.
Thing with that is, then you have the original builds, and the counters to those builds - and you just know that someone is going to create a build to counter those builds that are countering the original builds. Adding a combat tracker allows this to happen, and means there will be exponentially more viable builds.
This is a factor that is only reall true due to the open nature of PvP in Ashes, so playing WoW would not have prepared you for it.
You've been routinely disrespectful in this thread, and dishonest on top of that. You claimed objective information discourages experimentation, then instead of explaining how you came to such a conclusion, you just restated the same thing with no logic to it at all.
Player pull their weight by putting in practice, by grinding gear like their group mates, by being willing to improve when its their performance that's weighing down the group's ability to clear.
Only you have been under the assumption that it's a gear game being played when combat trackers are used. That couldn't be further from the reality. Combat trackers will have that information, yes, but more importantly it will show a player's rotation, how well they keep up their DoTs, how often they're standing in stupid, how good their buff uptime is, how quickly they interrupt mobs, etc etc etc. Gear is such a minimal part of a player's performance in a raid, your claim that people would be excluded over their gear setup is laughable at best. I understand streamers crave attention, but to purposefully misrepresent the arguments being made does not give you good attention. For my own sanity I won't continue replying to someone who's so uninterested in any meaningful discussion.
I guarantee no one at all cares about an off-meta build so long as the player keeps up and doesn't make clearing content a hassle for everyone else in the group. When one person's need to be different harms the experience of 10+ other people, that person needs to change their behavior, or they should expect that group to kick them out. Like I said repeatedly, one person is not entitled to ruin the experience of the rest of the group, then be mad when they're kicked.
Yes i know nothing, and you know everything, except that monster coin even is pve event where mobs are attacking a node and some players can assume role of a monster through monster coin, but largely its a nodes citizens defending against mobs.
So, monster coin events are PvE except where both sides are players.
You should honestly seek help in understanding even simple concepts. Like if a player can use NPC as a vehicle for PvP combat then it is still PvP activity and not PvE
― Plato
Oh you two.... Read about Monster coin thing.... its mainly players vs mobs, with small portion of mobs being other players, still essentially PVE...