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Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
YES there will be toxicity, and avoid another kind of toxicity... won't speak about it, already gave my experience and opinion.
No, this is another thing. The community is not just "hardcore" and "casual"
casual can be good players, able to do hard content, and hardcore can be really bad...
Casual and hardcore are mainly "how much time do i play the game "
But, inside the "hardcore player" there is one small part that is hardcore in playtime, and gameplay level, aiming to be perfect. those are those on the world first run, those and even guild far from top1 are part of it.
Such kind of player will totally take ban risk, to have tool that allow them to improve themselves. they spend lot of time if needed for theorycraft, etc. For them, spending 10% of their gametime outside of the game doing calculation time to get the perfect build, perfect rotation, it is clearly not a problem...
Then there is a part of player, hardcore or casual, with a good focus on the game they play in, trying to give their best, but far from those "topworld". less time, or just not in the mood of spending hours outside of the game to find how to improve themselves.
And finally, players of lower level, just here to enjoy the game in its most simple way...
With a combat tracker, you can reduce the gap of gameplay level between the top world, and the really good players. because there is a tool easy to use, that reduce time to find how to improve yourself, less time "out of game"
Without this combat tracker, you will have a larger gap, more difference between topworld and really good one.
Why is it a matter ? it will reduce the part of players able to kill the biggest boss, while the top world will be able to farm them... Allowing them to have more stuff... be better... more farm, etc.
Why is it bad for the game ? Simply because those guilds with really strong people will be more and more dominant. with 50% of character power in stuff, if difference between the epic stuff from world boss, and the current boss is strong, this stuff difference and gameplay level difference will make those guild really hard to fight, be it in guild wars to destroy their guild freehold or in siege to break the node were they are mostly localised...
I am hardcore time/casual challenge.
Back in the day, lots of MMORPG players were hardcore time/hardcore challenge.
These days more players are some form of casual - because a lot of the people who used to be hardcore time/hardcore challenge now have jobs, families, kids, etc... Many of those have become casual time/hardcore challenge. And quite a few are now casual time/casual challenge.
Expect the manner in which we defeat world bosses to be different than the methods we've used in previous MMORPGs. I don't think we will be farming world bosses like we have in previous MMORPGs because Ashes is dynamic rather than static. We will not be able to do all content -especially not on infinite farm- because content won't stick around forever.
The vast majority of people will not be able to defeat world bosses with just a 40-person raid. And that is OK.
There will still be people who can defeat world bosses consistently - but they will be doing so without in-game DPS meters.
Who says that killing world bosses with a 40-person raid will be the only, or even primary, measure of a competent guild?
With Stevens current plan, players will have to read through combat logs in order to find a piece of information they may need. With a combat tracker, they can basically ctrl+f to find it, if they know what it is they are looking for - which they will only know by paying attention to the encounter itself.
Again, you don't understand the topic in question here. You understand it so poorly that you are now arguing FOR combat trackers to be built in to the games client.
just for Digz explanation:
I know for sure that if the above average guild raid will clear in 3 hours then the top leaderboard time will be around 20-30 minutes basically locked around travel time through the environment
This is not out of thin air, because there are publicly available data that clearly shows that top players really enjoy perfecting their strategies on clears and basically they become their own enemy since their goal stops being the best players that play the game, but to be the best players that they can become
― Plato
Yes... for this we need combat tracker to allow more people being able to do it !
it won't be the primary measure, it will maybe even be a low importance measure
BUT it gives stuff, better stuff + better gameplay = you dominate other...
Don't worry about "competent guild" we will see it fast enough, and it will be even worse without combat tracker, Combat tracker allowing more and more people improving themselves to get closer to the full hardcore player performance
I don't have objectiv proof of it, it is all that comes from 20 years with hundreds and thounsands hours spent in different guild, and speaking with even more different guilds.
It is also because now i grown up, i understand even more than 20 years ago that "the amount of time a hobby ask you is precious" ...
And understand, i do all those statement, all my post not because "i want to have a combat tracker"... i persnally will enjoy the game even without it. not even sure i would join a guild aiming for raid content... and i trust myself enough to reach a decent gameplay level helped with forum speak to share opinion, experience about what i will play.
All my message, and this speculativ statement is because i wish the best for AoC, really. and i am really, really sure, that this question is far from a minor one for the long term
It is correct that the inclusion of regular DPS tracking and in-depth combat analysis takes away from immersion and comfort, and it bolsters the player enforcement of "the meta". This causes people to feel as though they must play a certain class or style in order to be competitive or to join groups. This is bad, obviously.
If a compromise can be struck to allow something like a specific area for general DPS output testing without the always-present tracking and judging, this could work out. It could even just be finding how long it takes for a player to kill a particular mob or dummy. It's clear the design philosophy for Ashes does not want this to be a WoW-esque numbers game where you just watch a meter and try to get that extra 0.001. This is evidenced by features like the invisibility of enemy health numbers. It should focus more on strategy and coordination, allowing for variety without punishment.
In close to 20 years, didnt find one MMORPG without an "enforced meta"...
so this is not related to any kind of legal combat tracker (because all MMORPG got a combat tracker... maybe not fiesta... right)
Don't worry, without parser, some classes will be prefered to the other.
There is meta in d2 without any combat tracker, in d3, in PoE also
As i proved in other post, a good way to have a more real meta, and a more open play with exotic choice is... having a parser, which will allow people to prove themselves even if they did a build people think "non meta"... Because it is how it works all time. people care less about meta if you prove them with objectiv proofs you do your job, even with a build considered out of meta
So because there will be a meta. (meta will always exist, it is impossible to not see one forming itself) we need parser to allow player to play what they want
WoW or FFXIV (and FFXI) don't show the amount of health of ennemy... And there are really tough fights, (the hardest of all MMORPG... while having combat tracker... (like all MMORPG)
This is one thing that amazes me...
People consider it is "big DPS" versus "strategy/coordination" ... it is so dumb...
If you saw WoW or FFXIV end game fight, you can see they are not just having big DPS ... far from this. yes it is the case as bosses like the renown "patchwerk" but nefarian, arthas or Ra den, having best game DPS people of the whole game was clearly not enough to kill them... you needed strategy, with each people of the raid doing their job as perfectly as they could. using more than just "best damaging skills"
Lets set up a situation. a fight is build for being won in around 30 minutes with an average of 5000 DPS spread between all 40 characets in the raid.
It is a raid full of "strategy" and big mechanics.
Now here comes a guild of player that knows game well enough to have a raid with 10k DPS => combat goes down to 15 minutes => easier fight.
Just... watch FFXI With Absolute Virtue and Pandemonium warden...
Even the insane DPS from a team full of DRK with Krakenclub didnt have easy fight on them, while it was the best DPS output they could have. . .
While the krakenclub in DRK hand allowed to make many other boss getting from "hard" to "fight among other fights"
You argument is based on the fact that without parser, people won't try to optimize the most possible their own gameplay, and optimize the guild efficiency. It is totally out of reality. The simple fact you can change secundary archetype will allow them to do so.
And when you reduce fight because you have a lot more DPS than needed you make those fight easier, you can make some mechanic becoming irrevelant. 2 example : add spawning, more DPS => add is less dangerous. A shield you have to break before interrupting boss, again, if team have enough DPS, a "hard boss" become really easy, even with really deep strategy. . .
Before considering that "allowing people to play at their best performance" is a danger for the strategy quality of fight, just ask yourself why because WoW and FFXIV, game with site like https://www.fflogs.com/ are also the 2 games with the most challenging, the hardest PvE on MMORPG market...
(fflogs is a site where people can upload the data from their combat tracker, it allow to compare yourself to all other player, see if you have to improve, see where you have the most lack in your gameplay, etc)
Or... there won't be this kind of player on the game because there is nothing to appeal them enough (And with such anti-parser mentality, there will maybe exist a reason there wont be enough appeal on the game for them : world boss fight will probably be not so hard.)
But we need all kind of player. Because good MMORPG got all kind of them in the game
and i will finish to answer to this
I will defend the addition of combat tracker even after release. Because it is the best tool to have a smaller gap between topend players and the larger mass of player.
And because behind this "want only boss with big strategy" (like most FFXIV/WoW boss so) those same boss won't be hard enough to allow the game to pretend having a "decent PvE" ... and PvE will just become "how to get thing to craft the best stuff" . . .
This topic is still activ because people like me hope the best for this game, and we need for it to have a "real" hard PvE. And the hardest PvE fight are those needing a deep strategy AND big DPS
not those that only need deep strategy
i hope the best for this game, in with my long hardcore experience on MMORPG, i saw all good a combat tracker can give to a game.
Yes there is also bad things; but it comes from stupid players, players who don't even understand the game... And this kind of player will just be as stupid without combat tracker. Just have to find way to prove they are stupid in either situation...
Perhaps wanting a smaller gap between "topend" players and the larger mass of players is similar to wanting separate PvE servers.
You want that, but that doesn't mean the devs want that.
1h? same, 15min ? same.
When you design a fight, the less you underestimate how much a raid can do DPS, the easiest your fight will be. Even with complex strategy.
The simple fact you manage to make the fight shorter makes it easier : you will do less error... there is less risk to do 1 error during 10 minute than 1h or 10h. . .
Don't trust me? it is easy to understand with souls/metroidvania bosses. they are all about avoid to be hit. find the good time to damage. When you begin to learn those fight, you hit once, or two, the fight is long, and while the fight is long, you have more avoid to do. Then, you try to take risk, to hit the boss and move at the last time avaible. With managing with those short timing, you get a fight always shorter, so less chance to get hit and to die.
Also, FFXIV or WoW fight are designed with an enrage (soft or hard) for a simple reason : Do a really really hard fight, with really complex mechanics, strategy. this is what those game have. BUT no time limit, those fight become far more easy. because players don't need to take any risk to win the fight... The simple fact there is time limit, it forces people to throw the biggest DPS they have, but to do more DPS you have to take risk. It is far easier to do boss mechanics when you don't care doing the best DPS you can.
If you are ok to have guild far stronger than other, and reaching point of "too strong" is fine to you... but this would be a really bad thing for the game.
I continue to speak a lot to some big guilds, with players always optimizing their gameplay to insane level. While they love challenge, and would love to have people able to try to fight them, they won't lower their level at all for a false challenge.
i have a long story with bosses strategy. I never found mechanic hard to handle if i didn't have to have the biggest DPS avaible... Even in souls or metroidvania... most of time to train against them, i begin with try where i nearly does no damages, focusing on avoiding their attack, and when i am comfortable enough about it, i begin to hit them, and the more i want do damage, the harder it get.
Managing mechanic/avoiding attacks is never hard if it is the only important thing to do.
There is one kind of game where DPS is not needed to make fight hard : runners (for exemple : meatboy) and similar games (end is nigh) but here, we are on game asking chirurgical precision, does a 0,5 second mistake, or push to hard the input, you are dead.
Sounds like a viable strategy. It's not the only one.
Without DPS meters, it will probably tend to longer rather than shorter.
And, even without DPS meters, the topend raids will probably defeat the challenges of the raid more quickly than the masses of other players.
"Far easier" is subjective.
No DPS meters means raids will likely be easier and not as hardcore as fights designed for DPS meters.
We shall have to see, but if so... that's OK.
I don't know what "too strong" means, so I am probably OK with that.
In the 20+ years I've played MMORPGs, I have never had the concept of a guild being "too strong" - and don't even think about guilds being strong at all.
But, since Steven loves leading guilds and is against DPS meters - I don't expect this to be an issue
Perfect. You will be able to do so in Ashes even without DPS meters.
Ashes is another game where DPS meters aren't needed.
DPS meter is needed in no MMORPG (except maybe wildstar needed it because the game was totally build around hardcore players). even in wow, or FFXIV where there are really good fights, you don't need a combat tracker to play the game and do some content.
Read again the sentence, i didn't speak about DPSmeter...
The problem is not there.
just imagine, you train for a marathon. And you are forbidden to use any kind of way to measure time. Good you can congratule yourself to finish. Now how can you know if this second time you finished the marathon you were faster ? Slower ?
This is exactly this Steven's decision.
Ashes is a game where DPS matter, where DPS is a thing that will matter. even if Steven doesn't want it...
Simply because it exists. 25 years of gaming, with lot of hours each week, i know NO game where there is any kind of DPS, and where DPS was not an important thing. i would be happy to find one, never found it.
Steven is making a game where there will be things stronger than others. He is making a game with a balance for PvP, and a balance for PvE. He is making a game with a meta. All those thing will be written deep in the code.
So, yes, DPS will be an important thing. Not because you say "i don't want people to focus on DPS" that DPS become meaningless.
Steven can want people won't care about DPS, he can hope as much as he wants... this dream will never come true untill he discourage enough people so they will just leave. And it would be really tragic to lose the topend player part of community (as would be tragic to lose any part of the community)
Dont say "the game can't please everyone" i know it. and some bighardcore players won't like this game for numerous reason. but the MMORPG that live well over the time, are those where there is a strong hardcore part of the community. We need them, like we need the most casual part of community.
Devs will have to use a potential DPS value for a raid to design boss fight.
Simple example : you want an add to come every 45seconds during all fight, and you want him to be dangerous enough to be a way to wipe.
If you give him far too much HP, he will die the time the next spawn, so no time to damage the boss => was the problem from C'thun on wow, devs did a fight where, even playing in the totally absolute perfect way with the perfect stuff for each character of the raid, the boss would remain unkillable...
If you give him not enough HP, he will die so fast that he won't be anykind of danger.
You have to give him the good amount of healthpoint, and how? you have ton consider how much DPS people can output. EVEN if people don't have DPSmeter the problem will exist.
Now, devs know, "an average raid with perfect gameplay can reach 10k DPS on this fight, but people have a level of gameplay only allowing to do 5k DPS" you design your whole fight with this, you have a fight "hard enough" for now. But when players are able to do 90% or even 95% of efficiency, doing +80, 90% damages from the value used by devs to design fight, the fight become shorter, and easier... (adds dying too fast to be dangerous, shorter fight so people have less time to do mistakes, etc etc)
So... lets do the boss more around 8k DPS as base value to design it ? If you don't give them combat tracker, or they will just drop it, or they will work out of game calculation to find the "real" meta your code did define...
And this is why that without parser, the gap between topend, and the rest of people will be bigger... I want the boss to be tough enough to be a real challenge, and that those who kill boss are not the "everyone" people. But i also want those able to kill any boss in any MMORPG to be not the only one able to do it in AoC...
Damake Done, Damage Taken, Healing, Treath, Buffs, Debuffs, Deaths, Interrupts, Dispels, Resources, Casts.
But make it so each player can choose to share information or stay anonymous
In The Elder Scrolls Online there is a tool like this, and it's super helpful.
Almost all end game players spend hours analysing logs, and I personally think is the most fun thing to do.
I never encounter any negative or toxicity with sharing stats, all groups I know use it to learn, improve and help others.
It is especially helpful when you trying to go for some of the harder achievements, that groups / guilds spend months and even years trying to complete.
Here is a short video that briefly explains how it works.
A personnal combat tracker would be enough in my mind. guilds needs more each one to be able to train than the raidleader to see everyone (if a guild struggle and suspect a DPS problem, they can just ask everyone to post screenshot on their discord... )
But i admit a system allowing to be seen by other if you are ok with it... why not.
While i reject the "toxicity" argument as a good one to say no to combat tracker, i also want to fight such toxicity (like any other) so never against thing to limit toxicity ! will watch this video with curiosity
How long it takes to reach the destination is inconsequential. You don't inherently need to measure time.
Raids are more like climbing Mount Everest than running a marathon.
I think I disagree.
Some players might decide they want to try race to the top of Mount Everest. They can try that if they wish.
DPS is important to some gamers. And in every MMORPG there are gamers who obsess over DPS. True.
So, I would not say that Ashes is a game where DPS matters. Rather, Ashes is a game that will have some players who obsess over DPS.
DPS will be an important thing to some players.
Steven will not say that he wants people to not care about DPS. Rather, as much DPS as possible will probably not be in the design for raids and dungeons.
Ashes is unlikely to lose any more of the topend raid community than it will casual PvErs for not having separate PvE-Only servers.
Every playstyle will be finding some form of compromise rather than playing their ideal.
I'm pretty sure the goal for Ashes is to not have raids so static and scripted that an add will come every 45 seconds.
I could not follow the English of that one. Sorry.
But, I don't think too much HP will be a problem.
It's not going to be just about HP. HP will regen during combat.
Some people will use a strategy to do as much DPS as quickly as possible, but that's not necessarily the only strategy. We will have to do more damage than the overall HP regen during a span of minutes, but it's fine for that to be Damage Per Minutes rather than Damage Per Seconds.
Or Damage Per Minute. Especially if you know that max level players cannot kill the boss in under a minute regardless of Damage Per Second.
I still think it's really going to be more about Damage Per Minute than Damage Per Second.
Some people will try to calculate a meta, but without a group combat tracker, it will be more difficult to lay blame on individuals based on numbers. Which will, thereby, reduce toxicity.
What you want may not be what Steven wants.
Again - there are people who want a separate PvE-Only server. That doesn't mean that's what Steven will give them.
What devs want is not what players will do...
If there is one thing that players does in video game, is playing the game the way they like, and don't care anything the devs want...
Regen ? don't change anything about all i said... really. Regen is just "more HP"
And you didn't prove that DPS will be meaningless in Ashes... i won't take time to answer to what you said, all your last post is far from all reality already saw in MMORPG, from everquest to the most recent...
If you really think that ashes of creation will be able to do what no other did, free to you... i will continue to defend what will help the game to have the topend community any MMORPG need
I said that time to defeat the boss is inconsequential. As in, the boss doesn't have to be killed as quickly as possible. Dungeons and raids don't have to be speed runs.
You can "continue to defend what will help the game to have the topend community any MMORPG needs". It's likely to be as fruitful as championing a separate PvE-Only server.
Just because some players want to meta and speed their way through dungeons and raids doesn't mean the devs have to help them do so.
In your dream it will be... in the game, it will be other... i said it.
Because boss are designed with the DPS (or Damage per minute if you want... change nearly nothing) in mind, because time to kill will have a really huge impact on difficulty of ANY fght in ANY RPG, even more in MMORPG.
I mean, even on most pen&paper RPG i played, damages was one of the biggest thing for the fight part ... being a DM, i always had to build my encounters in the end of the campaign with the builds my player made in mind, to avoid doing a fight too easy or too hard... and damages was part of the thing...
Specifically, meta and speed runs are inconsequential - just some (bored) players love to obsess over that... because most MMORPGs have people stuck in endgame waiting for new content for years at a time.
As someone that has actually run top end raids (which you haven't), you often have a limited window in which to get things done - and if things don't get done in that time, they just don't get done. If your guild is not getting things done, then people join guilds that are getting things done.
People have things like jobs, kinds, partners, other hobbies. These things all demand their time. Any raid leader that doesn't respect that should not be leading a raid, nor any raid leader that doesn't try to get as much done in the time they have their raid assembled.
I have said this so many times I can't even count them - raid leaders are responsible for the time of 40 people in Ashes. This means they ARE speed runs, or you are not doing your job as a raid leader properly.
This is true, but what do you need to know before climbing Mount everest? You need to know the weather, wind, temperature, how many people you going to climb with, how much food you will need, water, tent, right cloths. You need a lot of data before you can climb mount everest.
The first person to climb Mount Everest went in blind, just like new players in new raids, but after years of climbing we have gotten a lot of data, just like old raids from combat trackers. So now we can optimized the climbing experience and make it better, smother and easier. Just like old raids will via the use of combat trackers.
Still, all of this is experience by doing, no automation.
You can figure out that data with out a digital parser.
It's actually just like old raids without combat trackers.
These days, a helicopter might be the meta for reaching the top of Mt. Everest.
"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."
---Steven
I can very well see a world where competetive minmaxing guilds are just oneshotting open world raids and are just "raid gatherers", because those raids pose no threat
Just look at classic tbc currently - when people were playing it originally in 2007/8 they were doing less than half the damage of people doing today and that is with 25 man raid where the compounding difference is way smaller.
In other words - there are always ways of playing better and if you don't have parsers then most of your community is so behind that it feels like they are still tribal hunters when the top players are already past industrial revolution
And the most damaging thing this brings is that you get youtube videos of the hardest raids being oneshotted under 1-2 minutes per boss and the public perception is going to be "Dood, look at that - this raid is a joke"
If you are boasting as a developer that you will create hard encounters that only small percentage of players is able to beat then the public perception of you is that you don't know a thing about hard encounters, because it is getting demolished to the point of ridiculousness.
But I can see that they actually could tune everything for top players "like they have meters" just to make it impossible for the most of community to beat it, because if you don't know where the problem is then you don't know what you should improve on so you then are actually just waiting on better gear and improving your rotations
― Plato
actually one the most embarassing quotes you could find, because it is literally detached from reality - you never are aiming to "get a dps quota", but you are looking for mistakesin decision making and on what players are doing - for example it is about "hey look he f-d up his rotation and was on a bad spot, so let's move him here and after the raid ends we can talk to him to help him improve on how to press buttons"
Steven's perspective is about rose tinted glasses about a past where everything was a joke and the difficulty was in the fact that players had no clue what they were doing
― Plato
Not only that, but the PvE content wasn't actually even good back then.
If MMO's hadn't moved on to more compelling PvE content - which combat trackers are a key component of - they would have died as a genre before SWG was released.
Truth is that ashes has VERY ambitious systems and a lot of them need to work in practice and not only on a design document in order for raiding to be somewhat succesful
I would very much hate to see for those design systems to fail, because players are always going the path of least resistance. So far the only succesfully challenging raids have been instanced, because all of the open world encounters are designed for casual groups "stumbling" upon them for some fun - however this has never stood against organised guilds that go for the loot as effeciently as possible
You can argue that the raids will be challenging with pvp happening around - what I say is that I want the baseline difficulty of a proper raid to be impossible with a full blown pvp around it otherwise when the pvp doesnt happen the raid transforms literally into chests just waiting for the raid to loot
― Plato
Steven wants people to fail more often than we are typically used to.
Just because you stumble upon a raid boss does not mean you should be able to (easily) kill it.
"Growing together is a good thing, and that includes failing together as a means to drive for success together."
---Steven
The biggest example of this is POE - because if you want to have fun, you are just following a guide for a build.
You can stay with the hopes that the game will be balanced, everything will be viable and that there won't be weak builds This is a noble goal, thing is that we know next to nothing about the actual realisation of the raids
Having a goal to build a high building is ok, nobody says it can't be done, but you need to meet the reality and build it in a way that it won't fall down. Ashes is currently saying how high that "raiding building" is going to be, but we know nothing about the plans how they want to build it
― Plato