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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
Not as detailed as other games of the era, but enough information to know both what is going on, and where to improve. Combat tracker use in FFXIV is rampant. The only thing they don't like is when players talk about it, which is utterly ridiculous.
They know perfectly well that you simply can not stop combat tracker use (literally no MMORPG has existed without them, going back to UO). Since it is a thing players WILL have, developers may as well work under that assumption.
As to "so what people really need to do is to just git gud", we do, and we use combat trackers to objectively tell us that we have got gud - whereas people that don't use them just kind of guess.
Though I hope that players somehow learn that devs use dps meters too
If you and I are both builders, I have a hammer and you are trying to use the palm of your hand to nail in nails, I am obviously going to be better at building things than you. That doesn't mean I am building easier things, it means I am using proper tools and you are not, and as such I am better.
Perhaps one of the most amusing things I have seen from Intrepid on their live streams was when someone asked about what good feedback is. Margret talked about a complaint she had once where a player said that a specific ability wasn't strong enough. The team went through the ability, looked at the damage it did, how it behaved in various circumstances, and determined that the ability was perfectly fine. The player that complained was actually talking about the look of the ability, not the effect of the ability - and Margret made the comment about how players having objective information about the thing they are wanting tp give feedback on is one of the most important things from a CS perspective.
Steven was just looking overly uncomfortable the entire time - as he knew Margret was basically saying players should have combat trackers.
However, the other thing this story illustrates is that CS use combat trackers to verify ability strength, and so is, and in there is literally no reason at all to assume they aren't used in creating those same abilities, and in developing content those abilities are used with.
I also know for a fact that many (perhaps most) of the staff at Intrepid would rather see players have access to combat trackers. Again, this is something I know for a fact, and is coming from someone that has said in the past that I know players will have access to combat trackers - feel free to connect the dots there.
See, this is the thing.
A combat tracker isn't able to tell you anything other than what has just happened. If you don't understand the mechanics/systems/combos, then all you are looking at are a bunch of numbers. If you DO understand those same mechanics/systems/combos, then it gives you more information on them than you could possibly get otherwise.
I mean, if I showed you a parse from EQ2, and said something was wrong, you would have literally no idea at all where to start - because you don't understand the mechanics/systems/combos.
A player that uses a combat tracker without knowledge of the game is only using a percentage of that combat tracker (look at that big number!). A player that goes out to learn about the game but doesn't use a combat tracker only knows a percentage of the game.
If you take all of the information from attacking a mob - every hit you attempt on it and it attempts on you, along with the outcome of each hit, and you put them in a spreadsheet so you can sort them as you see fit, you have a combat tracker.
It's just a really slow one.
In other words, you have no issues with combat trackers.
As a quick question, do you run Windows on your computer?
Imo it's similar to the party finder discussion. With an automatic party finder, all you're looking for is a role representative, while with chat-based party finding a person could negotiate their place in a party w/o directly fitting the role required. Well at least I've personally invited people that didn't fit the role needed, but still did the job just fine. And I myself was that person many times.
With a dps tracker you're looking for a number within a particular role. And you invite/kick people just based on that number (and I've seen a ton of people complaining about that). While w/o a tracker you're looking for a person who can fulfill that role and, if you think they're not doing their job well enough (which would assume you know how to do it better, instead of just looking at a number), you could discuss their actions with them and teach them to do smth better if you do know how to play their role/class better. And I have done this in L2 too.
And in later updates of L2, once they too added an auto-party finder, people started inviting people based purely on their gear, which is pretty much the same as a dps meter number in L2. In other words, optimization = bad. Reject innovations, return to boomer socialization. If you wanna draw a parallel between smth that I do and the tool that I use to do it, windows is not the best way to do it, cause I can't create my own OS while I can track my dmg if I want to. The better parallel would be a calculator and counting in your head or on paper. And I always try to count in my head first, and only if I completely fail to do so would I go to use a calc.
This kind of thing absolutely does happen in WoW (and basically only WoW), but it isn't a result of combat trackers. It is a result of being able to replace players mid content so easily (the games LFG system porting players directly to you from anywhere in the world).
If the above scenario was an inherent result of combat trackers and nothing else, then it would happen in games like EQ2 that have massive combat tracker use, but absolutely no LFG system like WoW's.
Since it doesn't happen in EQ2 literally at all (never saw it happen even a single time in a decade of playing, that entire argument falls completely flat.
Sure, players in WoW may have had a group leader say "Your DPS is shit, I'm booting you and replacing you with someone else". I don't doubt that happens often in that game. However, what I am saying is that if you leave the combat tracker in place, and remove that group leaders ability to easily replace that player, that group leader would make a different decision because replacing the underperforming player is not an option.
It's the same in your L2 example - the issue was the group making tools, not the objective data about players. Sure, the data may inform the decision, but the group making tool is what makes the negative interaction a potential outcome of that decision.
This is why I am against the family summons - this is the mechanic that will allow players to be replaced mid content - and that does not matter at all on if a combat tracker exists or not. So, obviously you are fine with using third party programs - and more importantly Intrepid is fine with you using third party programs.
Next question - have you ever looked up a piece of information on a game you are playing? Perhaps a map some other player has made, information on mob drops, read forum posts to learn things others have found out - anything at all along those lines?
The limitations to the family summons will see it happen less often than WoW, but that is 100% due to those limitations - and nothing more.
So, YouTube and forums are all access via a browser, I assume you use a third party browser rather than a first or second party (made by Intrepid or you, respectively).
As such, you aren't even against using third party programs to gain an in game advantage, as you readily admit to doing it yourself (even if I do find it odd that you consider forums and YouTube to be a lesser version of this for some reason).
So, if you are using third party programs to gain an in game advantage, I simply have to assume you are fine with others doing the same, even if they opt to do it in slightly different ways than you.
From my own perspective, I have literally never once needed to go to YouTube, forums or other websites to gain any information on a games combat system. Not even once. This is because I stick to the first part - finding it out on my own, with the use of a combat tracker.
Our views on this topic are the same, except I'm the dude who tries to do get the info manually through way more tests and tries, while you just use a tracker.
If you are doing tests and such, and I am "just using a tracker", that would imply that I am not doing tests.
If I am using a tracker and not doing tests, the tracker isn't able to give me any data. All a tracker can do is give me data on the tests I do.
The difference is, I get more accurate results, and I get them faster.
Since I then have objective data as opposed to opinion (which is what you have without data), I am then able to compare that objective data to data others have, and use that to find bugs in the game (I have found many, including rounding errors that would literally be impossible to find manually - I needed 10k data samples and even then wasn't 100% sure), or to help others find what it is they are doing wrong.
Yeah, and I don't.
That's my point.
Why would you complain about something ("fuck DPS meters") when that thing literally exists primarily to perform a job you are doing, only faster and more accurately?
It would take you years to get the same level of results that I can get in an afternoon, which means over any given span of time I am able to go in to FAR more depth than you are able to.
If, by any chance, I come to a point where I will require them, I'll think about reconsidering my views on them, but before that I'll keep saying "fuck them". And I'm fine with that, because I'd know that I achieved, whatever stage of progress I achieved, completely with my own resources/power.
I honestly took you for the kind of person that would form your own opinion on things. I mean, if you just find out about this thing that everyone uses, and all you hear are bad things, I assumed you would be the kind of person to look further in to them to see why they were made, and why so many people use them.
I'm curious, are the people you heard these negative things from people you had played MMO's with in the past?
I've discussed this topic with people that I've played other games with (mainly one wow guy) and I saw 0 huge enough benefits for me to consider it a necessity. Then I've heard a ton of feedback from FF14 people and while I know that a lot of top lvl players use different kinds of trackers, my main argument against that was the info about ff14 devs only releasing raids that they themselves can clear. And I'm assuming they do that w/o trackers, considering their views on addons overall.
WoW and FF14 are touted as the biggest and best representatives of top lvl pve (I didn't have any EQers in any of the sources of info I had so sorry about that), so I trusted the opinions of people that played those games and then based my own opinion on that.
Obviously, my bias has probably clouded my judgement by quite a lot, but as I've said, I'm ready to rethink my current opinion once I hit a progress wall that will just say "you either use a dps tracker or you're not going forward". But until then, I'll keep my belief that dps trackers are not an absolute requirement.
Non-leaders could see their own performance numbers, this would be useful to actually have some sort data to see if my performance improves by changing a talent/spell/item, etc. but I think they shouldn't see other people's performance.
I am a competitive person, so I like to keep track of my own performance, and tuning my build accordingly. Knowing myself I'd probably even reach out to my officer/leader to ask if my performance is okay, should/could I improve somewhere, but many people are not like this, and they would just get dragged into drama and stress.
I've only recently started looking in to FFXIV, but I have done it in the same way I gained information about L2 - long discussions with people I know, trust and understand. From what I can see, FFXIV has "raid" content that would be considered mid tier at best in either WoW or EQ/EQ2.
This may be due to their testing system, but that is just an indictment on that testing system more than anything - as top end players of an MMO will always be better at playing that MMO than the developers.
The other thing to keep in mind, there is literally only one type of player that has a bad time in relation to combat trackers - players that refuse to listen to objective data and use that to improve.
People may have differing reasons for arriving at this state, but this state is a requirement for having a bad time with combat trackers.
They already have the datas, because they designed the class, the cycle, and the amount of DPS needed to kill the boss, or the adds.
Also i think they use tracker with more information that we have to see more things because they don't just have to see if the fight is doable or not, but also how to do slight change if needed or welcomed...
And another point : devs in FFXIV not all time do the fights, but all part of the fights...
The difference ? a ultimate is around 15 minute, with many different part with various strategy. The players will have to do the 15 minutes fight to win, but devs did test 5x3 minutes. So they get an easier version.
And this is not stupid, they don't need to test the whole fight, it wouldn't change anything, they need to be sure each part is doable, and need short timed test to see problems, adjust it, test again, and iterate until they are happy with it.
combat tracker allows the players (who didnt design classes and fight) to find the efficient way with reading some data without losing time to take all data, and write it..
But the result are exactly, precisely the same (if we consider either combat tracker is not bugged and don't show inaccurate data, and the players don't do mistake himself) ... Anything bad coming from tracker can come from yourself doing the same thing manually...
And people don't even need combat tracker to say "stfu noob, votekick lmao L2P".
The tracker just says "you did this damages" and allow you to see what each skill did, missrate, crit rate, etc etc.
The "bad" comes when it is for the whole party, but the "elite" with only disdain for the "bad" are not so often supported... I saw various LFR in wow, where there was some attempt to votekick low DPS while there was no problem currently... people massively said "no" and if the guy did spam the vote too much, or began to speak a lot "he is bad have to kick him" he was the kicked. Also, the tracker was not a so good friend for them, because it showed well they were far from perfect, top DPS maybe (most of time, only 2nd or 3rd out of 17 DPS...) but it was at cost of just ... doing the fight, the cc, interrupt etc... :')
On "young" raid, when there are already 5 or 6 wipe (while LFR is really baby difficulty) yes "bad" begin to get kicked, but DPS is not the only thing watched... counter of death for example... or some information like "cc breaker" that can explain why we have hard time.
And most of time... be it on wow or FFXIV, the "parser = bad" are people that don't want to be judged at all...
A big topic to have a ingame parser for FFXIV showed it well, most "no" were people that considered that they didnt have to be judge, that we were a whole community and had to help each other... So they went in "kill party" or even "farm party" but were a deadweight... and didnt even need parser to know they were a deadweight most of time... on medium difficulty content, with only 8man party, it is easy, without tool, to already have a good idea of who is underperforming... even more true in FFXIV due to how the fight and classes are designed .
True.
This is such a toxic way of thinking that I just cant even.
You don't use a tracker in a group looking for dead weight, you use a tracker (everyone should use a tracker) in order to improve them self and those around them as much as possible.
That is how you use a tracker - to help each other.
Perhaps people with your mindset simply shouldn't be allowed them - but they also shouldn't prevent the rest of us from having them.
1. This is no longer a game where you enjoy mindset - just play. It's a highly sophisticated excel spreadsheet. Efficiency over anything.
2. Dps meter or tracker will kill lower skilled(new to genre, gaming, social experience) players from parties. How those people can evolve in game?
3. Killing a social aspect of learning the game - sending people to watch videos, read forums and use dikc meters
4. Why you treat this game like other games you played before? Do you want the end game or level cap in a month time? Need to support it with all the numbers.
5. There is nothing wrong in failing. Not knowing, we can learn and adapt.
Also, Noaani.
Unless you copy paste devs speaking up for combat meters, please don't use it to support your claim.
Also, I will give you 100 hammers for 100 people. We all will get different result from it. Still almost the same experience. Experience matters.
Right, so, a few things.
Point #1- what are you even talking about? This is no longer a game where you enjoy mindset... what?
Point #2 - No, it won't. Some people will not want to group with new players, but those players wouldn't want to group with new players regardless of combat trackers. Some people are happy to help new players, and those people will be happy to help regardless of combat trackers.
This is literally a baseless claim that makes literally no sense.
Point #3 - Again, no idea what you are talking about here. Combat trackers are a fantastic tool for helping others learn the game.
Point #4 - Combat trackers will not reduce the time it takes to level up. Why would you even suggest this?
Point #5 - Indeed there isn't. And having a combat tracker won't stop you from failing. All it will do is help you do a better job of learning from it.
Point #6 (that you didn't number) - Can't paste discussions that didn't take place via text. However, the comment I made a little earlier about Margret can absolutely be found if you go looking for it. I'm not going to go looking for it for you though, because I am not your assistant.
Point #7 (still not numbered) - Indeed you will get different results from it. However, if the intent is to hammer a nail in to a piece of wood, all 100 of those people will do a better job than the person that tries to use the palm of their hand. Combat trackers do not prevent people from having different experiences - shit games that don't allow for deviation do that.
I don't play "raid" games, due to generally an overcomplex nature + a sickly drive for perfection via strict movement protocols and absolute mastery of rotations. In my view, it's already complex enough in the fact it's a multiplayer team game...
But what I've gathered is the determing factor to what makes you a great player in games like Wow/14/EQ is how well you can do a raid as it most likely contains the only conclusive avenues of ultimate reward and merit, that is the competition or you could say "PvP element".
If a game is competitive and it exists on PC, there's no getting around a huge demographic of people wanting to employ some if not all forms of tools to ease their progression/mastery/reward.
With that said, In the pursuit of a more welcoming and varied competitive world IE a needed and player driven economy and strategy with OW involving many player factors, I geniunely believe a hard focus on complex raiding is huge mistake UNLESS there are other avenues of being a great and respected player without it.
Making PvE+Event elements so challenging and difficult, requiring a passion of precise knowledge of your character's GCD's, damage totals and the raid/event knowledge itself, greatly benefitted with the help of an add on, lowers end game accessibility tremendously and that is bad!
Similar to the fighting game genre of which it's taken steps to improve if you look into Street Fighter 6 and Tekken's director talks.
Raiding games are enough of a game on their own, it does warrant a different genre for them honestly, a "PvE focused MOBA" in a sense, I really don't see how this benefits a player engagement genre that an mmorpg can be when in raid focused mmo's the skill factor is AWAY from player engagement and almost completely focusing the performance of one's self.
From my experience with mmo gaming, there isn't harsh enough complaints towards PvE and event AI/behaviour to warrant enough a high focus on it, as it would come with the price of lowering player engagement, accessibilty and ultimately comfort to how expansive and involving an open world game can be.
In regards to add ons, they are always required and unvoidable in a PC game, so it just requires devoloper focus on making the game feel great for everyone or its intended audience without alienating players or catering only to the top 10-5%.
Ashes needs to have more than just raiding as a means to be a respected player. Fortunately, it also has PvP - a player can be both well respected and feared if they are adept enough with this. To this day, I can name PvP players from Archeage that I respected. Conveniently, the game also gives top PvP players the ability to be mayor of military nodes.
That brings us on to node leadership. Since scientific nodes are led by a democratic vote, a player can earn a great deal of respect via doing a good job of running a node.
Then you have castles - I doubt anyone in the game would not respect (at least on some level) the leader of a guild that has control of a castle.
Or there are religions - players will actually be able to be the head of their religion in Ashes - no doubt taking a great amount of work. Social organizations are the same.
Then the game also has economic prowess (also resulting in node mayoralty), naval prowess, and potentially creating a crafting empire.
Basically, this game has more avenues for a player to excel and make a real name for them self than any other game I can think of.
As such, even if we both agree with your last sentence above, we should then both agree that the game should have that complicated top end raiding. As to this, the first thing I am going to address is the use of the term "add-on". While this may seem like a technicality here, it is not. An add-on is something that runs with the game - it is essentially a modification to the game itself.
No one is asking for that.
Combat trackers are their own application, not add-ons.
Next, I fail to see how anything discussed would lower player engagement, accessibility or comfort. I also don't see combat trackers as being for the 5 - 10% (I would wager that 50% or more of all players in EQ2 ran a combat tracker at least some of the time).
I want to now just focus on this.
First of all, are you saying that you believe skill factor and player performance are not related? I am actually not sure.
What I *think* you are saying here is that it would lower player engagement if players were looking at some readout of their performance rather than focusing on the game itself.
If this is the case, all I can say is that players that do this are using their combat tracker wrong.
Well...taking into account the rest of what you said, for sure, I'd love for an MMO to be that deep, I'm all about focusing on 1 game
It's an incredibly huge undertaking and my utlimate vision of a raid will probably not co-incide with yours (PvX, not instanced), of which I'll, brief as I can say is:
2 huge parties/raids entering inside of a "Crystal Maze" of sorts labyrinth/dungeon, where puzzles and challenges can always lead to different courses, including, on chance battling the opposing group/raid in raw PvP that includes location and PvE "twists" that challenges and utilizes a broad spectrum of player skill/mind and class abilities. All this leading to getting "1st dibs" or exclusive rights to the end boss of which after the ordeal of getting there I would not overload with expert level mechanics and understanding.
Well I'll just say for starters, as a non "excellent PvE" enthuiast, if I can't get everything I want from expert PvE players, IE "trade me that dungeon cosmetic, price?" then I will sure want an add on that will warn me to jump, duck, "hide behind the rock, ultimate attack!" because I cannot be arsed with it.
A combat tracker can help but in my eyes, leads to a focus on being an expert at damage delivery and quickness which is certainly not my vision of ultimate PvE gameplay as I also value defense strongly, regardless of it having an automatic presence (but an afterthought) in HP total, stats, "forced movement" and usually an absolutely laughable reliance on healing support.
Well, I'm practically saying the hard focus on making PvE a very challenging and precise measure has its price when comfortably working with players and will always suffer limitations when we could instead focus on PvX elements as player characters are a forever changing "AI".
There is ofc a skill factor and mastery but a player will ultimately reach the peak, only for them to probably scream at the devs for another challenge or a harder difficulty (that doesn't just involve a stat increase) which takes development time I'd much rather be spent on other things that involve more players and opposing players interactions that are infinitevely interesting.
I've said all I've wanted to say on this really, I'll just end with:
If you REALLY needed to win at a challenging dungeon/raid and you had a group of your friends and they were compotent and you know their history but 'Faker' is avaliable to take (the gaming genius who's a massive fan and expert at this game) you would take Faker. Even if you speak a totally different language and have slightly different protocols at maximising this challenging raids timing, he would still be your number 1 guy and factor in everything, he knows that it's necessary to keep everyone alive and his skill exhausts the potential of PvE behaviour.
Faker would have limited potential in a team setting having to factor in PvP involvement as he would have to communicate as death and mistakes are much more likely to occur.
Basically, PvX is the way forward and the potential of the raid genre has already been reached, focused and getting love (14, wow) but more importantly, raid focus mmo's are all about your focus to play the game correctly or even perfectly, creating a "toxic" barrier for entry ("L2P!", "dead weight!", "I'd rather take Faker!"). Ofc it still happens when PvP is involved but the human mind is never perfect, prone to mistakes and keeps on being interesting and beating people in a more direct manner is always a more fulfilling reward.
So I'll make it clear, focusing on the extremes of PvE challenge is a mistake for an OW and massive multiplayer game that should incorperate a wide range of players and talents and promoting the use of a tracker promotes a parameter of dev limitations that you'll ultimately never be happy with "I found this challenging but I felt they could do better with x, etc" but player focus and engagement never disappoints