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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
Again, this is against a "group" parser but not against parser.
personnal parser (or personnal combat tracker) is already a lot of help to improve yourself, to more understand the game. etc. I am far for wanting more than this. and while the ex raid leader i am liked to be able to have a parser to see the whole raid, to see where we have big lack and what were most mistakes some did, without spending 5 minutes looking their rotation on a dummy, for AOC i even prefer personnal parser !
And like i said : personnal parser will reduce A LOT getting some tier program like ACT for FFXIV. The mistake in FFXIV is not even providing a "personnal parser". (And FFXIV is totally turned to DPScheck)
I just defend to have parser in AoC, and a personnal one is clearly enough
Again, this is only for the top end content we are talking about here.
If you think you are able to quickly and accurately work out what is going wrong with a lack of objective data, I wouldn't want to be in any situation with you.
Keep in mind, the suggestion in this thread (which I assume you have not read), is for a combat tracker that is available as a guild perk, and only works on members of that guild.
I find it interesting you have nothing to say to any of the points you made that I refuted, just as it is telling with others that do not answer direct questions in regards to things they have said.
This is my response to everything you said right here:
I have to go to work now, bud. Good luck in your travels
No that's not correct. DPS meter = damage per second meter =\= combat meters xD
A DPS meter only shows you the DPS, while a combat tracker shows you everything.
there is one thing you totally took aside :
people spend time learning the game, learning their class, and doing their best to improve their gameplay, getting better. They are happy when they see that, with the same stuff, they get 1% more efficiency.
Some content are really hard, i don't know eso end game, but if there is "enrage" mechanic, having a minimum DPS is needed !
if the enrage is 10 minutes, the boss get 600k healthpoint, your whole group/raid will need 1k DPS.
if you have 999dps, you wont kill it.
So yes, some guilds where players spent a lot of time to perfect their gameplay don't want to just carry people thru content. They want people with a minimum of gamelevel.
Also, if a guy does not lot damage, if there is a clear lack of damages with the stuff he has. What could guarantee that at least he will does a perfect job on mechanics ? Most of time, player with a not so good DPS were not so good in all part of fight, those with really good DPS were at least good on other part, and those with shitty DPS were shitty... everywhere.
And here comes the stupid (really stupid) ilvl req we can see in party finder (and god knows how many facepalm i did on either wow or FFXIV for this)
This big ilvl was for 2 reasons
1) if you play bad, at least with the stuff you will have enough damages to do your part. I saw many time with 10 or 15 less ilvl doing as much DPS as another of the same class than me... and when there is enrage... it is matter
2) kind of "kill proof" : mainly saw it in FFXIV where there is a lot of "weekly loot" you see a ilvl req which is simply "you got all stuff improvement you could with weekly limit from the first week"
OH and before you say "enrage is bad design" : yes... and no.
Lets take souls/metroidvania bosses that are mainly "avoid to take damage, and hit when you can" . On a fight that the average people do it in 10 minutes. you can decide to do the fight in 1 hour, taking no risk, and hitting only when you are 100% sure that even if there is a little input mistake, you wont get it. Now the devs just add an enrage of 20 minutes. you will have to improve your gameplay to be able to do more risky moves.
this is what enrage does in MMORPG : not allowing people to have unlimited time. And while i hate "hard enrage" (you reach timer, and the boss suddenly does x10 damages...) i love soft enrages. like was gruul in BC : he begins being weak, and the longer the fight is, the stronger he hits. The toughest the tank were and stronger the heal were, the longer we could make the fight long. (So this is the whole raid capacity which is involved in killing the boss before "enrage" and not just a DPS matter).
A soft enrage in souls/metroidvania would simply making the bost getting faster and faster = the better you are to avoid, the longer you have to kill it.
However, the kind of person that does this is the kind of person that would do it regardless.
if not a combat tracker readout, they would find something else. What possible reason could anyone have for thinking not having a combat tracker would suddenly remove - or even lower - this kind of behavior from a game?
Keep in mind, Ashes is a game where people can literally kill you and take your stuff. They can destroy your home, and the industrial network you have built up. In such a game, someone saying "but I did more DPS than you" isn't really a big deal - even if it is uncalled for.
I mean, what's it going to do, hurt someone's feelings?
Every playstyle is going to have to make some adjustments when playing Ashes. No playstyle is going to have their optimum experience because a wide variety of playstyles are all stuck together on the same server.
For many people the terms are interchangeable and for some people they aren't.
Just as in some regions of the US a coke can be any brand or flavor of soda.
There is never any harm in being correct.
"DPS meters create elitism and toxicity, by removing meters we fight against it!"
- meanwhile archetype-archetype that isnt on "viable" tier list gets excluded
"we dont care that we clear in 16minutes instead of 10"
- meanwhile people that care about speed flock to people that care about it and those that dont flock with those that dont - only people rejected from speed guilds that got rid of the because they were slowing them down too much complain for not being where they want to be - aka "let me be a speed clearer without the effort or ability to do so"
"we want personal builds that we want to run"
- meanwhile designers are sweating because they are tracking all the build possibilities and praying that they didnt miss an overpowered interaction that would skyrocket a build way above all others - because we all know that when something is super strong that people reroll to it
In the end I have always a feeling that many players that are against meters are just people that don't want any loose conditions. However I'm super glad to see the alfa gameplay and finally to be able to have an inkling for what the build tools are going to look like and what direction those tools aim
― Plato
''In the end I have always a feeling that many players that are against meters are just people that don't want any loose conditions'' > We just don't want a meta to form so quickly each patch that you HAVE to play that specific class or you get excluded from content. Like in WoW, you literally get kicked if you don't play meta, even though you might not enjoy that class. Meta will still exist regardless, just less defined and more broad.
In my experience, that doesn't happen...but.
I expect people to have an easier time finding and playing with players who have similar playstyles in Ashes because we will know where those people's homes are.
The devs won't be sweating because the game is balanced around the active skills of the Primary Archetypes; not around the augments.
Just because you have a feeling doesn't mean that feeling is valid outside of yourself.
People who are against DPS meters tend to have fewer issues with lose conditions than people in favor of DPS. The anti-DPS-meters are wjust more willing to except loss more often as they strive to devise winning strategies by trial and error by observing abilities rather than by crunching numbers.
Yes metas will still form but they will be less defined and much less accurate (no real data to support the meta).
Bad players will play bad metas thinking they are good and won't listen to other players. (Meta formed by emotions not facts)
Good players will play the real metas that are good since they will spend hours and hours fine tuning there build for maximum dps/hps. (Doing indepth analysis from the numbers on the screen and tooltips, estimated data)
What combat trackers does is giving people accurate information about their performance. Meaning, good players will be able to fine tune their build even more, and bad players will no longer think they are playing a good meta.
Now, this is ONLY for people that want to do speed clears. Casual players will and should play the class and build they want to play, they shouldn't follow the meta if they don't want to.
"Well we will still be affected by the meta and kicked out of a PUG". No, no you won't. In a game without group finder och raid finder you will not be kicked out that easy from a PUG, the PUG leader have probably spent hours trying to find people that want to join and it would be faster to just let you play or help you improve rather than finding a new player. BUT, don't join PUGs if you want to have fun! PUGs are a group of RANDOM players lead by a player that is trying his or her best to make it a smooth run for all players. He/she will more likely be less tolerant to flaws and mistakes during the raid compared to a normal guild run. If you don't like the PUG leader then make your own PUG.
So, stop complaining about combat trackers and you being kicked out of pugs. Joina guild that you enjoy playing with and you will never be kicked out again.
"But I don't have any friends", then make some God damn friends in-game, start your own guild and try to recruit people with the same mind set as you. You can't be a solo player in a MMORPG.
You have no idea how balancing works, small arguments can make a huge difference. It's very very difficult to balance classes and builds.
That's because you have never joined a real guild and only played in PUGs (random groups).
Have you ever played a balanced MMO? There are always some class or build that are overpowered and broken on some way.
People that are for combat trackers are more willing to accepting facts and adapting to new challenges and encounters so the whole raid can have an easy and enjoyable raid/dungeon.
We have dev quotes that tell us the design of combat balance.
So, we certainly have some idea of how it will work - actually we have a pretty good idea of how it will work.
If the devs can't successfully deliver on their designs, then they will have failed and people won't be playing Ashes anyways. Toxicity will be moot.
People who are against dps meters are just as willing to accepting facts and adapt to new challenges and encounters so the whole raid can have an easy and enjoyable raid/dungeon. But, they are willing to take more time and losses as they observe actual behaviors rather than trying to be as quick and uber-efficient as possible based on numbers/trackers.
Adapting doesn't mean giving up their RP choices like a Necromancer being told to switch to High Priest just because the numbers indicate that the most uber-efficient strategy is to go with High Priest.
Ashes is being balanced so that any Primary Archetype Cleric will be viable.
Such that if High Priest is viable, Necromancer will also be viable.
And to the exclusion point - everyone argumenting that wow excludes nonmeta specs is true, but they never mention that you get meta replacement in few seconds after clicking a button, because why not make grinding dungeons faster to get the reward faster?
If in wow replacing a person would take several times longer than just doing a longer run with offmeta specs then the exclusion wouldnt be so widespread. It is just a matter of mistaking correlation with causation. It is literally the same situation as those populists were arguing that video games create real life violence, because some people had mental problems and they owned video games at the same time
― Plato
People how are against combat trackers are only driven by emotions and their personal perspective. Meaning, during a curtain encounter every player of the 40 man raid (or how many their are in the raid) will have their own perspective of the fight and will not listen to other players perspective because they think they are in the right. So it won't be a smooth and enjoyable experience, it will be a cock fight fiesta.
But as I said before, this is not true for the more casual players. I personally know players that are very very casual and know that they are very casual, and they play with other very casual players. In classic wow my guild cleared Naxx the first week, while some very casual guilds took over 2 months to clear it. I know that they still had a good time because they knew that they were casual players and didn't have any plans to hurry through the content. So I do agree with you to some extent
The problem I have is with players that think they are hard core but won't see the facts, or players that is trying not justify that hardcore players play the game in the wrong way.
This answer is the reason, why I don't share my "feelings" - today's my weak day i guess. Anything I wrote in that post has been invalidated by it and now we just have clutter posts that have literally negative value (lost time+energy and we've achieved nothing)
― Plato
A raid encounter is designed around four 8-person groups.
You don't need DPS meters or combat trackers to figure out how to fill those slots.
Augments primarily impact variety rather than power.
It's considerably more horizontal than it is vertical.
You could try to play the meta if you wanted to but the design won't support that view.
Necromancer, High Priest, Shadow Disciple will all be viable. Dungeons and Raids will be successful with any of them.
You are the one talking about your feelings and expecting your feelings to convince others.
Unlikely that it is just a matter of mistaking correlation with causation because not only is Steven against DPS meters, the Daybreak devs agree with him. And the devs have actually data and numbers, so... you know.. that wins.
You want to talk then just throw a pm
Steven are against Addons like Weakauras and deadly boss mods which tells you everything you need to do during the boss encounter, he is not against combat trackers.
"My stance on dps meters, these help automate the encounter, provide an easier way to complete content, creates less failures by eliminating the less experienced or less optimized players, defeat becomes less bitter tasting because it is experienced less often, and the reward is now glancing at a chart and eliminating the lesser players."
Addons can not automate, can not make it easier, can not create less failures by making less experience or less optimized players follow an addon. This is something combat trackers CAN NOT DO. It can help provide information about the encounter after the fight.
"IMO when you choose to exclude someone due to their performance or build (which happens often, not always) you are choosing the easiest path to success. This path is more easily available to groups that parse combat data through dps meters."
This is not a problem combat tracker problem as we have stated before. (Toxic player, different ways of playing the game, different opinions,...,)
"The desire to obfuscate (or make less prevalent by not offering this feature) so that groups are encouraged to grow together and help one another become better by more old school/organic methods of trial and error, efforts in watching other people during the raid, by failing repeatedly until success is possible. Now, could people use meters to aid in this task? Yes, but in my experience it isn’t used in this way..more often it is an exclusionary tool designed to separate players."
Could people use combat tracker to aid in this? YES!!!! To exclude yes but still not the fault of the combat tracker. It will only happen when you play with the wrong group of players. And from my experience hardcore combat tracker player do fail on encounters and grow together by helping each other by providing facts and knowledge based on previous experience (trial and error).
Steven isn't against combat trackers, he is against Addons like Weakauras and deadly boss mods.
Quotes from: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/235176#Comment_235176
If you horizontally reallocate power to better suit your needs then you've increased the power's efficiency and thus you increased it vertically for what you need it for.
"Horizontal progression" is spiced up vertical progression
The reason why as a developer you might be against dps meters is simple - it can show players how bad they are and they might stop playing your game. I don't know what Daybreak devs said, but since you are using it as a validation for Steven then I assume they said the exact same thing. And again I repeat myself - correlation isnt causation. To blame tools that show facts for player toxicity is extremely naive or just straight up shifting blame from gameplay systems that encourage toxicity
Like I get - if you have a toxic community it is way easier to blame information gathering tools rather than game systems encouraging toxic environment
― Plato
In MOP, hunter got the 3 specs deep on the bottom of DPS on most fight (all?)
And... i never threw out the hunter of our raid.
And i saw a lot of raid (even in the top1 guild of the serv) that used hunter.
META is a thing,
but then there is 2 kind of people
1) those who watches meta, and without any understanding follow it.
2) those who watches meta, understand it and... don't care fitting it if it says "play this you dislike"
The first ? i let them change with meta changes, it is fun to see this
The other we just enjoy the game.
Just watch lol, where some people try to play meta but throw up all games because they don't understand that meta and "counter" does not gives skill...
And aslo... people that "define" meta with parsers. they are the theorycrafters. They don't stop when they find a "really strong thing" that becomes meta. they don't stop there. they always try to find new things. another example i know from WoW : at Legion or BFA, without any patch, the meta war suddenly changed because theorycrafter discovered that with a specific build + stuff, a spec did far much better work than the current meta. was after the raid was well running and the world first run was totally over.
And final thing about "meta and dumb people" back in TBC, there was the last raid, much harder than most of the xpac bosses. the world first on one boss, there wasn't any rogue in the raid,
all players came crazy "rogues sucks so they didn't took one" Guild answer "when we did the raid to try again the kill, we didn't have any of our rogues logged in" . . .
The meta is a thing that exist really fast, even without any kind of parser, don't expect more than one month to see a first one appear. What parser does is at this point to see the meta change with less evident thing. And to understand in detail why a build is bad.
It is not because there is proof that your build is bad, that your build is not bad. and there is many way to try to see it, without parser... parser is just collecting and showing data... now take an ennemy with 10k life, and count how much time each build kill it and you have a begining of meta.
And i will finish this post with one fact :
No in game parser in FFXIV. Third party program are forbidden. Some people were banned for using parser "against" other players (kicking them with in chat "you have to low damages" as message. now people kick without saying why, no more ban)
and this exists : https://www.fflogs.com/
Don't think that having no ingame parser will avoid any kind of bad behaviour due to parser...
This is the point.
There is lot of things to do...
At first, people have to accept to play a bad archetype, not raging against it. "Yes i don"t play one of the top build and ? i like it"
At second, have a game not only in a vertical logic :
Fight are not just mitigation + healing + DPS
it is also people doing clsoe to 0 damages but remains helpfull. (lets see bard in FFXI, or a kind of build of red mage in FFXI where they were able to put all their debuff on ennemies even with the most debuff-resist possible). a last example : a build not so good in mono target can be a monster in AOE situation. (don't have to explain why it is usefull a such build sometime ? )
There is also all crowd controll, kiting, interrupt things.
Finally, the game is PvP heavy... and having the big DPS is not enough is such situation.
there will be some build that will clearly underperform, and we will see it even without parser. We d'ont need parser so to ask people to respec from one better. the only difference it will be more about "pack" instead having a clear ranking. but because people aiming to optimize the most fear randomness, they will totally avoid the classes SUSPECTED to underperform...
We (as community) have to be less focused on a brainless mind of "only best builds matter"
else, the problem will exist, with or without any kind of in game parser...
Steven is opposed to dps meters because "they help automate the encounter, provide an easier way to complete content, creates less failures by eliminating the less experienced or less optimized players, defeat becomes less bitter tasting because it is experienced less often, and the reward is now glancing at a chart and eliminating the lesser players."
Instead, Steven believes, "things should be hard, people should fail, the bitter taste of defeat is what makes success that much more rewarding. Helping other players learn encounter strategy, and fine tuning their play style for high end content is an important part of eliminating participation trophy. Growing together is a good thing, and that includes failing together as a means to drive for success together."
Also, "Back in the day, when MMOs were great, you had to win your encounters through trial and error. You didn't have a DPS meter telling you, 'Oh! We need to get up to 67.7% damage in order to achieve the whatever!' It wasn't some mechanical bullshit experience where you got to look at a graph or chart and say, 'Oh! We need to do exactly this.' Instead, you actually had to be present, you had to watch what was happening, you had to help your fellow guild members learn how to play the game and you had to excel as a group.
Now, that is the type of experience we want to replicate: that everybody is in this together type of scenario where we build the teams we are friends with up and we accomplish content together. It kind of also provides this mystery effect, where you're required to actually participate and watch what's going on and not just rely on that DPS meter."
"It wasn't some mechanical bullshit experience" really says all we need to know.
I don't know what you mean by stacking stronger archetypes - stronger archetypes is not a thing.
You don't need to increase power efficiency, you just need to figure out winning tactics.
"Helping other players learn encounter strategy, and fine tuning their play style for high end content is an important part of eliminating participation trophy. Growing together is a good thing, and that includes failing together as a means to drive for success together."
"Back in the day, when MMOs were great, you had to win your encounters through trial and error. You didn't have a DPS meter telling you, 'Oh! We need to get up to 67.7% damage in order to achieve the whatever!' It wasn't some mechanical bullshit experience where you got to look at a graph or chart and say, 'Oh! We need to do exactly this.' Instead, you actually had to be present, you had to watch what was happening, you had to help your fellow guild members learn how to play the game and you had to excel as a group."
Theoretically it might be why, but it's not actually why.
"Back in the day, when MMOs were great, you had to win your encounters through trial and error. You didn't have a DPS meter telling you, 'Oh! We need to get up to 67.7% damage in order to achieve the whatever!' It wasn't some mechanical bullshit experience where you got to look at a graph or chart and say, 'Oh! We need to do exactly this.' Instead, you actually had to be present, you had to watch what was happening, you had to help your fellow guild members learn how to play the game and you had to excel as a group."
The Daybreak devs can evaluate the data to determine whether it's correlation or causation.
You can't.
To alleviate the elitism people feel comes from dps meters, make them opt in.
The raid leader has a option to try to turn on dps meter for the raid. Allow everyone to see everyones damage.
When the raid leader tries to turn on the dps meter, everyone gets a opt in message.
If someone opts out. The raid leader gets a message with who opts out. At that point, a discussion will happen, and the person who doesnt want their damage to be known can decide to leave, or ask to stay, and the raid leader can decide if its worth doing the raid without the meter or not. Experience will tell me that the raid leader will tell the person to have a good day, and find a replacement. Simple as that, no toxicity involved.
The reverse situation can also happen if someone wants a meter turned on and the raid leader says no.
Trying to force players that want the meter turned on to play with it turned off because some dont want it will create toxicity. These players have different playstyles, we should not try to force one to align with the other and let them enjoy playing how they like.
To the point posted above about exclusion when someone is not pulling their weight. If the rest of the team is capable of carrying dead weight and dont mind because everyone is friends, that is fine. If not then....
Yes, if someone does not want to take the time to learn job rotations to do sufficient damage to clear an encounter, then they are sandbagging you and need to be replaced. You need the meter to see someone being lazy and holding you down.
If someone is mechanically unable to do an encounter and are not spending the effort to pay attention and learn what the boss mechanics, then yes you will replace them. No meter required here.
Look at it this way, why would you destroy an entire groups enjoyment just for one person who is being negligent by refusing to play at a required level. It may not seem that way on the surface because the person just wants to 'play casually', but raids are rarely designed to be casual content, and are meant to be challenging to complete. You want people who will put effort into it.
TLDR. IN game supported meter with opt in please