Tragnar wrote: » Steven quote: 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. 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. https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/comment/235176#Comment_235176
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. 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.
Tarnish wrote: » Flying blind is bad for the entire community.
Great Brae wrote: » I do not beleive a game with dodge (insert piccolo tfs yell here) mechanics and action rpg elements has a need for dps meters. I personally will be fine if they didn't add them into the game, specially since the roles will be finely stirred in a mix of blurriness.
Tragnar wrote: » Everything you've written here tells me that there will be a big need for meters. What you are writing about is the fact that with action combat skills there comes a player skill component that can further decrease the effectiveness of builds. Which I actually take as a pro meter argument, because if you cannot reliably hit things on the boss then the meter can tell you if it is worth to switch to more stable and consistent spec. If in raid I miss a slow traveling projectile that gives critical debuff on the boss, because the boss is moving then I would want the raid leader to know that from a log or a meter that it missed, because I want to fully focus on playing correctly without mechanical errors and not be focused on watching that slow projectile to hit the boss. Players that would use the increased performance volatility to discriminate players that misplayed have no real place in raiding and are always pushed away where their only island of safe existence are pickup public raids where people do not know them. In all raiding I have done is going through meters taken as an act to improve the players that the guild has. You know willing raiders that want to improve are a really rare commodity in MMO's and even if you are really a slow bad learner then you will still have a pretty high chance to be raiding in a really great guild, because raid leaders value the most the players that want to improve. They don't care that you made mistakes, they care if you want to improve to not do them and practice not doing them.Taking meters away is hurting guilds trying to teach their players to play better.
Chunks wrote: » I feel like I'm very late to the party on this, but this could have a considerable, detrimental impact on the game so I wanted to take and defend a stance that DPS Meters shouldn't be in Ashes of Creation. There are variety of reasons that interweave with each other, being bad for the health of the game and the positive relationships in the community. Gamers are encouraged, in Ashes of Creation, to make their own path and play their character, in whichever content, as they desire and a DPS meter is at direct odds with that. First, and somewhat foremost, is the long-term effects; obviously having access to this tool would allow players an easier time of min/maxing, optimizing DPS and a few other logistics for PvE. The other side of that coin is the experience of players who don't want to play the most optimal builds trying to get into group content and are either denied access because they're playing their own build or they aren't putting satisfactory numbers on the DPS meter. Even though damage output is a one dimensional evaluation of a player's contribution, the DPS meter will allow them to take the role of a scapegoat and be blamed for the group's failure and diminish their enjoyment of the game. It may also allow the community to set on the rails of a game that is focused on optimizated progress rather than community and exploring ways to play and progress. Another point that ties directly into the previous point is how that demand for min/maxing, cookie cutter builds affects the class system. There are, essentially, 64(I think, my brain is fried after work) classes/combinations in this game in addition to the Schools of Augmentation for another layer of personalized character progress and builds. If a standard is set where one class and combination is dominant in one category, it will shoehorn players into that build, probably often times pushing them away from a build they would have naturally gravitated towards and tailored to their own liking. There are additional costs to a problem like this; in particular the time and commitment in progressing your character. If you have a character well half way or at max level and are unable to participate and have to reroll to be more involved in the community and content, that will feel like a tremendous amount of time wasted and CAN be a negative experience (sometimes starting fresh is as fun as it gets, I'll concede to that). On the other side of the same coin of players piling into a cookie cutter build for optimal DPS, I think there would be some serious issues of other classes/archetypes getting overlooked; namely something to the tune of a Bard (huehuehue). Traditionally the Bard class is a more support oriented role, and I would be surprised if there are other non-heal/tank classes besides that which aren't intended for high damage but instead take a buff/support/debuff benefit. Some players will see the value in these classes and what they offer. Others, directly as a result of the damage meter, will not and will boil the game down to a matter of damage output. When these occur in a way that the devs can observe and identify as a legitimate problem, they will likely step in and attempt to rebalance classes and abilities a bit, right? This rebalance would affect a tremendous amount of players who decided to take on their classes by the min/maxxing meta alone. These players will be in a pickle, leaving them between chasing another class that they either enjoy, the new optimally performing build, or abandoning the game (even if only for a bit) feeling frustrated and a little bit alienated by the hypothetical changes (let's be honest, they'd be nerfs to that class and buffs to others). My own experience with these points have come from the last couple years playing a few mainstream MMOs, and discrepancy between World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV embody these issues very well. Both of these games use a iLvL gear check system. However, WoW allows use of add-ons while FFXIV does not. When examining how players engage in end game content, WoW playerbase is much more fickle and exclusive in how they form groups and raids. Even when a player has an iLvL that is appropiate for the content, they will be overlooked - openly, even, by the leader of the group - for another class that is often a less risk/higher reward selection. There is no consideration for how good that player is, and how/when they perform, what they can offer the group - only the theory-crafted base DPS numbers. That is contrast to FFXIV where, in end game content, knowledge of encounter mechanics is your most valuable asset. Groups may directly use your iLvL to measure your worth to that of the content, however, I have never personally witnessed a player miss out on a invitation to a raid simply because of their class' projected potential. Knowledge of the game is the barrier to entry in FFXIV end game content. Not DPS Meter production, and (AT LEAST TO A LESSER EXTENT!) not the build you've chosen. -Although, also, to be fair there is not really much variation in builds in FFXIV, just choices of class. I figure these are interchangable in this context. I have seen support for DPS Meters making a claim that communities aren't elitist and this trend doesn't happen. It does happen. A lot. World of Warcraft is a prime example of how this happens. Individual players are judged based on their build, rather than their abilities/knowledge of their build and game. Elitism can also take different forms. Often times when a group is failing, one of the first things scrutinized is the healer's performance, followed by looking at damage meters for the lowest output. Advice on how the lowest damage player can improve can feel immediately alienating and like they're being blamed. Although a damage meter can tell a greater story, it is almost exclusively used as a "big number vs. little number" metric. That lower damage player may have been quite productive outside of flat damage output. Most of us have been on either side of this situation in a game at one point or another. We know how it feels to be blamed for the group's shortcomings, and we know we usually feel like the good guy when we try to offer constructive feedback to who we have subconsciously labeled as the dead weight. Your intentions and actions may not always line up as perfectly as you believe they do.The most important factor, to me, among all this is how a DPS Meter ties into the whole philosophies and design choice of Ashes of Creation. Ashes of Creation is not a PvE game. It is not a PvP game. It is not a RP experience. It is not a gathering/crafting simulator. It is all of these. It is not a one-dimensional PvE meta game. DPS Meters pushes the communities very heavily toward a PvE focus. Elitism is inevitable, even without damage meters, purely as function of players trying to achieve the best results in end-game possible. However, these DPS Meters exacerbate the problem and will narrow the ways we can interact with each other and enjoy the game. P.S.,Do Devs Still Read This Stuff, Or Did I Just Spend An Hour After Work Typing This Out To Pat Myself On The Back?
Great Brae wrote: » Mostly dps meters are effective only if your in stagnate combat with very little movement and relies majorly on roations. Which works fine for purely tab target games, but this game don't have 100% tab target, so unless the pve targets do nothing but stand still which goes against action rpg elements, it will be harder to gauge player skill with just numbers. If they do as advertised and make this game an action rpg with some tab targeting, then the boss would be more actively moving then in say bosses in WoW, meaning your strikes, if they have cool-downs, can miss simply because the boss moved out of the way, or the npc humanoid dodge rolled out of the way. Edit: It's also harder to create rotations if the target is on constant move like in most action rpg's. I think it'd be best to wait to see how mobs works in game before we can declare we need meters.
Chunks wrote: » I feel like I'm very late to the party on this, but this could have a considerable, detrimental impact on the game so I wanted to take and defend a stance that DPS Meters shouldn't be in Ashes of Creation. There are variety of reasons that interweave with each other, being bad for the health of the game and the positive relationships in the community. Gamers are encouraged, in Ashes of Creation, to make their own path and play their character, in whichever content, as they desire and a DPS meter is at direct odds with that. First, and somewhat foremost, is the long-term effects; obviously having access to this tool would allow players an easier time of min/maxing, optimizing DPS and a few other logistics for PvE. The other side of that coin is the experience of players who don't want to play the most optimal builds trying to get into group content and are either denied access because they're playing their own build or they aren't putting satisfactory numbers on the DPS meter. Even though damage output is a one dimensional evaluation of a player's contribution, the DPS meter will allow them to take the role of a scapegoat and be blamed for the group's failure and diminish their enjoyment of the game. It may also allow the community to set on the rails of a game that is focused on optimizated progress rather than community and exploring ways to play and progress. Another point that ties directly into the previous point is how that demand for min/maxing, cookie cutter builds affects the class system. There are, essentially, 64(I think, my brain is fried after work) classes/combinations in this game in addition to the Schools of Augmentation for another layer of personalized character progress and builds. If a standard is set where one class and combination is dominant in one category, it will shoehorn players into that build, probably often times pushing them away from a build they would have naturally gravitated towards and tailored to their own liking. There are additional costs to a problem like this; in particular the time and commitment in progressing your character. If you have a character well half way or at max level and are unable to participate and have to reroll to be more involved in the community and content, that will feel like a tremendous amount of time wasted and CAN be a negative experience (sometimes starting fresh is as fun as it gets, I'll concede to that). On the other side of the same coin of players piling into a cookie cutter build for optimal DPS, I think there would be some serious issues of other classes/archetypes getting overlooked; namely something to the tune of a Bard (huehuehue). Traditionally the Bard class is a more support oriented role, and I would be surprised if there are other non-heal/tank classes besides that which aren't intended for high damage but instead take a buff/support/debuff benefit. Some players will see the value in these classes and what they offer. Others, directly as a result of the damage meter, will not and will boil the game down to a matter of damage output. When these occur in a way that the devs can observe and identify as a legitimate problem, they will likely step in and attempt to rebalance classes and abilities a bit, right? This rebalance would affect a tremendous amount of players who decided to take on their classes by the min/maxxing meta alone. These players will be in a pickle, leaving them between chasing another class that they either enjoy, the new optimally performing build, or abandoning the game (even if only for a bit) feeling frustrated and a little bit alienated by the hypothetical changes (let's be honest, they'd be nerfs to that class and buffs to others).
My own experience with these points have come from the last couple years playing a few mainstream MMOs, and discrepancy between World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV embody these issues very well. Both of these games use a iLvL gear check system. However, WoW allows use of add-ons while FFXIV does not. When examining how players engage in end game content, WoW playerbase is much more fickle and exclusive in how they form groups and raids. Even when a player has an iLvL that is appropiate for the content, they will be overlooked - openly, even, by the leader of the group - for another class that is often a less risk/higher reward selection. There is no consideration for how good that player is, and how/when they perform, what they can offer the group - only the theory-crafted base DPS numbers. That is contrast to FFXIV where, in end game content, knowledge of encounter mechanics is your most valuable asset. Groups may directly use your iLvL to measure your worth to that of the content, however, I have never personally witnessed a player miss out on a invitation to a raid simply because of their class' projected potential. Knowledge of the game is the barrier to entry in FFXIV end game content. Not DPS Meter production, and (AT LEAST TO A LESSER EXTENT!) not the build you've chosen. -Although, also, to be fair there is not really much variation in builds in FFXIV, just choices of class. I figure these are interchangable in this context.
I have seen support for DPS Meters making a claim that communities aren't elitist and this trend doesn't happen. It does happen. A lot. World of Warcraft is a prime example of how this happens. Individual players are judged based on their build, rather than their abilities/knowledge of their build and game. Elitism can also take different forms. Often times when a group is failing, one of the first things scrutinized is the healer's performance, followed by looking at damage meters for the lowest output. Advice on how the lowest damage player can improve can feel immediately alienating and like they're being blamed. Although a damage meter can tell a greater story, it is almost exclusively used as a "big number vs. little number" metric. That lower damage player may have been quite productive outside of flat damage output. Most of us have been on either side of this situation in a game at one point or another. We know how it feels to be blamed for the group's shortcomings, and we know we usually feel like the good guy when we try to offer constructive feedback to who we have subconsciously labeled as the dead weight. Your intentions and actions may not always line up as perfectly as you believe they do.
The most important factor, to me, among all this is how a DPS Meter ties into the whole philosophies and design choice of Ashes of Creation. Ashes of Creation is not a PvE game. It is not a PvP game. It is not a RP experience. It is not a gathering/crafting simulator. It is all of these. It is not a one-dimensional PvE meta game. DPS Meters pushes the communities very heavily toward a PvE focus. Elitism is inevitable, even without damage meters, purely as function of players trying to achieve the best results in end-game possible. However, these DPS Meters exacerbate the problem and will narrow the ways we can interact with each other and enjoy the game.
neuroguy wrote: » "bosses/dungeons/raids will become more difficult and give better loot the better you perform".
