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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
I've played MMO's for two decades, always used combat trackers, and have never seen or heard of first hand accounts (from a trusted source) of the toxicity that others talk about.
If some people experience toxicity around combat trackers and some do not, we need to work out the variable as to why this is the case.
The people involved are the only real variable, but if you have an idea of some other variable, have at it.
The simple fact that many people use combat trackers without toxicity means that the fault does not lie with trackers. If it did, all players would experience the same toxicity.
Not the best vouch-safe.
Even for you, this post makes no sense.
I assume you are not talking about vouchsafe in terms not a grant. This means you are using it in reference of revealing new information - yet I haven't revealed any new information.
We been trying to Summon you for months now!!
Why not have heal checks then? Why need DPS tracker at all, if DPS does not matter, but what matter is positioning, strategy.
That could be a nice compromise, you can see everything, except the damage you do. You can still theorycraft and min max all of your raids.
All information matters.
I am unsure what argument it is that you are trying to get around with this. If it is the false argument of toxicity, this wouldn't impact it at all. If it is the false argument of player exclusion, this also wouldn't impact it at all.
I'm offering a compromise. You say toxicity doesn't come from dps meter, some say they do. So, if DPS doesn't matter in a fight, why would you want it?
Because damage dose matter? If the boss have health and player doesn't have unlimited resources then damage matter. Some players are there to give buffs and apply debuffs, some players are there to DPS, some people are there to tank, some people are there for raw healing, some for Shields, some for mechanic specific roles. Withholding information is always a bad thing. I understand what you are trying to accomplish and with would be a neat solution but it's also a bad solution since DPS does matter to some players/classes/builds.
it is a typewriting speed contest while reacting to mechanics in order to survive. on one hand you are limited by your own skillset to type correctly, but also by your build because your build is giving you keys to press.
This culminates in a score, when you add scores from all players then the contest becomes substantially easier the higher the score is.
Devs could normalize the score output of your build to be the same as everyone elses, so the only thing influencing the score from player perspective is how well he is typewriting to the layout given by the build he chose.
This however means that all customization is meaningless from power progression and the only thing it does is that it changes how you are supposed to press keys
― Plato
I've only briefly scanned through the recent discussion, but it seems like people are still talking about how they bring toxicity. This is probably based on subjective, anecdotal evidence. They see a couple people get kicked from a group with "low dps meters" cited as a reason, and make up their mind that combat tracking is bad.
Is the toxicity enough to disable that stuff? No, people are still going to be toxic. Anybody that's tried to get good at Overwatch should be familiar with how frustrating the medal system is. To those unaware, they hide match statistics in game like damage dealt. You can only see your own statistics, and whether you're in the top half of your team for that stat. Yeah, obfuscating those numbers mean you can't flame the lowest performer, but it also means you can't gauge your own performance. Those tools are so useful to improve your gameplay.
And people still flame all the time in Overwatch anyway, often times for no reason. They can't see the numbers that show how their team is performing, so they just pick out the person they think is doing bad.
With this in mind, combat tracking can actually reduce toxicity by making numbers available. I've seen this happen plenty of times in MMOs and in LoL
I hear people talk about it happening in games like WoW. Someone is not pulling their weight, and so they are booted and replaced.
Since this happens in games like WoW, and not games I play (specifically not games like WoW), then we have very little left to point fingers at.
Using WoW as our example here, people in that fame do I deed treat others as disposable entities. This absolutely adds to the issue of people being booted from groups fireplace of performance - no doubt about it.
The thing is, players in WoW treat others as disposable purely because the game allows them to do so - encourages it even.
If you are able to boot a player half way through a dungeon and have a replacement ported to you instantly, you are incentivised to boot anyone underperforming. On the other hand, if you have to fi s that new player and then have them physically run to the dungeon you are in, and work their way to the part of it you are working on (particularly of note with open dungeons where respawns are a thing), then you aren't going to boot that player.
In a game like Ashes, booting a player from your group mid dungeon is going to be rare. The game will have trackers - most groups will have someone using one - so this isn't the reason.
The reason is because it is so much harder to replace that player if you boot them, and almost definitely means going back to the start of the dungeon and doing it all again.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Combat#Combat_logs
Yes that's very true, the problem arise when people lie about their personal combat log. And trust me, this happens.
Not only do people lie, but most people can't even effectively read and undersrand a combat log.
The total lack of understanding of what a combat tracker is able to do (which is a simplified version of the data from combat logs) displayed by some in this thread should be enough proof for anyone that this isn't a solution.
I mean, are we going to see "understands combat logs" as a requirement for being accepted on top end content? I thought we were trying to not segregate people.
you can of course find what you want in a library that was never organised by knowledgeable librarian
question is - how long did it take and was it a good experience using the library?
― Plato
And the developers are the architecture and the Library software. It's up to them to make it easy for the librarians and the public to find what they want
If they don't though then somebody will do that instead of them.
If there is no librarian in a library then the books become organised by regular readers that spend a lot of time in the library. The only thing the owner of the library can do is to hire staff that would be guarding the library to prohibit the readers doing the librarian's job
― Plato
Good thing a combat tracker like ACT isn't an add-on.
That's true, and is something that people talked about when comparing modern WoW and classic WoW. Lobby style "queue and wait" gameplay seems to encourage that behavior.
My hope is that the node system takes the game even further from that type of gameplay, with citizenships and all that. Like you said: " it is so much harder to replace that player if you boot them, and almost definitely means going back to the start of the dungeon and doing it all again". In addition to that, treating people as disposable will likely dispose of your relationship with them. If node citizenships cause people to play in the same general area, you will see the same people a lot more and it'll be better to have a good relationship with your neighbors than a bad one.
It's funny how people that are against combat trackers talk about boss mechanics and outplaying the game perfectly, when the top players of any game, people that take down the hardest bosses in the game before anyone else, are people that use combat trackers the most. And these people don't really care about doing the most damage, yes they want to push the selves to do more DPS, but they want to do the mechanics perfectly and kill the boss first, and they use combat trackers to perfect every little thing.
Yes, bosses shouldn't be boring punching bags, but
if that's the case then it's not the fault of DPS meters but the fault of bad game design. If nothing else, the use of combat trackers may potentially allow the developers to create more difficult encounters because of the wide game knowledge players will get from using combat trackers.
For some people killing the boss is enough (I'm one of them), but some people want to kill the boss the fastest, with the least death, with the least damage taken. These are the people that will optimize and theorycraft every build to find what class will be the best for a specific encounter. And form my experience, a lot of people like the competitive PvE side of MMOs.
If you don't care about numbers and only care about killing the bossed, you do you. But don't tell other people how to play the game
Indeed, I do think this will happen.
Not only is it a case of good relations, but it is also a case of wanting g those players to be as good as they can be.
If you are living in a node cluster, the people living around you are the pool of people you can easily group up with for pick up content. They are also the people that are the most likely to come to your defense in sieges and caravan attacks.
Because of this, it is in almost every players best interest to help those near them to be as good at the game as they can be. Rather than booting a player from a group, it will be far more common in a game like Ashes for a player to offer assistance to that player.
While not everyone is open to such assistance, many (most) are. This is the same kind of thing that happens in smaller MMO's (such as EQ2), due to that same limit in potential group mates, so I am very much speaking from a decade of experience here.
So, in a game like WoW, a person running a pick up group noticing a player is not pulling their weight may well just boot them. However, if that same person running that group were instead in a game like Ashes (or EQ2), and they see that same player not pulling their weight, the likely response is to offer assistance, with the explanation that everyone is better off if everyone is better at the game.
This is how I see combat trackers used in games I play - and the only way j see them being used I Ashes by people that wish to thrive in the game. This is also why I simply will not stand by when people claim they cause toxicity.
In a game built on toxicity, combat trackers can be a catalyst for toxicity. In a game built around community, combat trackers are a catalyst for people coming together.
I agree with this part of your post, but not the rest.
I don't think you even agree with yourself for the remainder of your post. Here's an example;
You say that rather than a combat tracker to "show off how big your DPS is" (note: not what they are for), you can just use the gear you got from the boss you killed using that DPS.
OK, great.
However, you also say that the game should rely on skill, not gear.
Which is it? If I am using the gear I got from the boss to show off, then that gear should be giving me an advantage. It isn't showing off otherwise.
Yet if the game values skill over gear, that gear isn't anything to show off, and thus the whole thing is circular.
The strategy doesn't have to be perfect, just successful.
Who said anything about perfection?
When you have 200+ actions per second in a raid (once all entities are accounted for) you need a combat tracker to just see what's happening - not to reach for perfection.
On a personal level, combat trackers are used to improve, not to perfect. Wanting to be better is not the same thing as striving for perfection.
I don't personally aim for perfection. While I don't personally begrudge those that do, I absolutely do begrudge those that refuse easy personal improvement.
So a contribution score meter would be a meter which calculates your total contribution to the mob killing or raid as a whole by measuring everything you've done. Did you CC a mob which was about to cast a big damage spell? You get 15 contribution points! Did you also top DPS? You get 60 contribution points! Did you hold aggro and soak up a ton of damage? You get 30 contribution points! Were you top 3 dps? You get 25 contribution points! Were you top heal(overhealing not included)? You get 60 contribution points! Did you heal the biggest portion of health(overhealing not included) after a boss's burst spell? You get 25 contribution points! Etc. etc.
This way no player value would be lost to the scoreboard inside a raid due to class difference or gear difference. A player might be lacking in gear but he might be a veteran MMO player and contribute to the raid with timely CCs or/and timely heals/buffs(bard buffs) etc.
Then this contribution meter could be broken down to it's individual parts (CC meter, DPS meter, Heal meter) etc. so that it can be used for player optimization.
But if the community feels strongly against allowing for this kind of tool to exist for player optimization or as some call it perfectionism then the option to break down the contribution meter into it's individual parts and accessing hard numbers instead of just points can be blocked for players and thus we have reached a compromise where there is a scoreboard but at the same time it's not a tool that can be easily used for player optimization.
I personally don't mind either way we go with this - no meter at all / contribution meter / or dps meter. It's all fine for me.
1# No meter would mean that creating meta builds and stuff like that will be hard to prove and hard to create and thus it will be rarely seen on the web. This is a plus for me because I don't like how guides for most optimized way to play your class for PvP or for PvE etc and stuff like that come within a month or two of a game release. I don't like being judged that I am not allocating my points exactly as the all mighty guide has said. This sort of guide-optimization culture ruins player interaction. Without it veteran players would be having discussions and debate what is best and then passing on their secrets to their guildies and then those secrets leaking out etc etc.. This is truly rich player interaction. Guides ruin that because no one talks about that, everyone just googles the guide and accepts it as the current meta until a new patch or expansion comes out and when it does 2 weeks later new guides emerge with the new meta. This makes the game less social and MMOs are supposed to be social. That's a big part of steven's reasoning to the choice to make this game's content player-driven.
2# Contribution meter is a nice compromise between the two options or an advancement to the dps meter if it's made to be able to be broken down into it's building blocks.
3# DPS meter would make it same old same old which I am comfortable with and if I am honest I enjoy dabbling in class optimization myself.
But If I had to choose I'd choose no meter because I'd rather have the social aspect over the optimization aspect. The danger with this though is that people might find a way to hack a meter inside the game. Then a meter exists but it's available to only those who are able to fork out the money and break the rules. I would not like this. So if there is no way to 100% safeguard against a meter being hacked to the game then I'd rather have a meter instead of having no meter while rule breakers fund hackers to give them meters to use to better optimize their builds and steamroll me in pvp by using knowledge that I don't have access to. That's a nightmare.