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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
When ever I play an MMO where damage logs are present I know I find myself way more concerned with maximizing my rotation than actually enjoying the company of the people i'm with or atmosphere and mechanics of the dungeon, it turns it into a rat race and I think toxcity is the least of the problems damage logs create really.
― Plato
You need look no further than this thread to see many people wanting them.
"many people" There aren't even that many people in this threads entirety, this is but a small echo chamber with some reflection of a larger population.
Sure thing, bud.
Either way, your statement that it is commonly accepted that combat trackers have a negative impact on enjoying the game is false.
Some people may have that opinion, but it is not commonly accepted.
Yes, that means WoW.
hey finally something we agree on. Well except for the fact that statistics show WoW is for old people lmfao.
I have been following the dps/CombatTracker thread(s) for sometime now, and feel a crucial aspect is being overlooked by some, and perhaps unknown to others. While users, such as Noaani, have alluded to this with notions of faster progression, and knowledge of player(s) and target(s) ability usage, I thought it would be beneficial to clearly state what advantages this provides to those using such trackers, and how this can detract from the overall experience for all players, not just those utilizing these tools.
Knowledge of Boss Abilities/Mechanics:
With a CombatTracker, in one pull of a boss you can learn all of the abilities used in that phase, the damage of the abilities used, the intervals in which these abilities are used, phase-shift thresholds, etc. All of this without having to actually pay attention or coordinate your raid. You simply survive for long enough, export the data, and determine when defensive cooldowns need to be used for the raid, when the burst damage periods are best utilized, how many healers you numerically need to survive, and thus how many DPS you can stack to potentially negate an entire phase of the encounter.
Without the Tracker, your raid is reliant upon individuals coming together and describing what was seen, what seemed to do the most damage to them, how others avoided it, creating a rough strategy and iterating pull after pull until either you nail it, or notice a mechanic that was wreaking havoc and adjust from there.
So, what gives, why would anyone want to spend MORE time on a game they play for FUN, right?
Well, I'll answer anyway!
The Raid isn't the Raid Leader. The Raid isn't the Guild Leader. The Raid isn't the Top DPSer. The Raid isn't the Top Healer. The Raid isn't anyone person. The Raid is everyone, working together, putting their skillsets to use for the greater good. When you break everything down into raw numbers, you take away from what truly matters, from the reason we all started playing games in the first place. The reason we all joined Guilds to begin with. It is to be part of something bigger, to accomplish something truly great. Something we could never have done on our own.
When you have one or two people telling everyone exactly what they have to do at every point in a fight, down to the exact build they need to be, the exact armor they must be wearing, to the mount they have to ride in on, this is not a Guild. This is not a Raid. This is exploitation of peoples time and interest to further ones own goals thinly veiled as leadership. The Top Guild on any AoC server should be the Guild that is best able to work with itself, and others, to overcome the insurmountable. Not some spreadsheet-jockey that sucks the soul out of the encounter.
This is an MMORPG, Emphasis on the first 3 Letters: MMO. When you actually have people collaborating, playing together, devising new strategies, rather than just reading what's best from some bored data analyst, you've made a truly wonderful game worth promoting and protecting, even against those who have brazenly said they would use tools to gain an advantage even if AoC made it against TOS. If you're one of those people, you might not think much of it, but you could be party to why many have left the genre to begin with. It's all about WE, not ME.
Again, this is not how raid guilds work. Raid guilds are far more selective in who they let in to the guild, so poor performance during a raid is likely due to some issue that needs to be resolved, rather than booting a player out.
It is how pick up raids work on games where you can instantly sub in another player, but even pick up raids in games where you cant just sub another player in will work with what they have rather than boot people out.
The only people that get booted out mid raid from a raid run by a competent leader are people the raid is better off replacing with an empty spot.
If you have been booted from raids often, and those raids have gone on to success, the raid leader looked at something you were doing and decided the raid was better off with one less person than with having you there. It isnt just a case of poor performance, as someone doing half the DPS they would be expected to do is still doing more DPS than an empty spot.
It is literally a case of you doing something harmful to the raid (whether mechanically or due to your personality- which is where my money would be) and the raid leader not thinking your input is worth it.
As to those raids without a competent leader, being booted from then is a good thing, not a bad thing. If you are doing as you know you should and are booted from a raid - in a game with trackers and without an easy means to sub in a replacement, you can be rest assured that the raid in question will not be successful and so all that has happened is you have saved some time and some repair costs.
Really, people that dont want to be booted from a raid should be asking for the family summons to be taken out of the game, as that is the singular mechanic that will allow a raid leader to sub in a new player. Being able to sub in a new player means they can boot players that are just underperforming as opposed to only booting players that are destructive to the raid which is the case without the family summons.
Why the heavy focus on raiding & associated stats by a select few?
Is it that your focus to play AoC as if playing WoW and use trackers to get to end game faster and spend all time raiding only?
I only see raiding as an occasional time absorber as hopefully many other things to do.
If the best raid is going to be the one with less "slackers", then the meta will be having trustable companions in that raid, not swapping everyone for others in a go just because gear, and actually building confidence and relationships with your close people. Wich is superb gameplay, and it's what this game is all about.
@Zythtyz Is completely right, and you guys need to let go of mechanizing gameplay in an RPG!
Massive Multiplayer Online Raid Playing Game....
Yup that fits.
Or how about
Massive Multiplayer Raiding and PvP Game...
Even better
Nice work!
Claiming that this will be used to help other players, is like saying guns are used to protect people ... until shots are fired. It all depends on who is using it. So why not just remove it? Those that want to help others can still do so, and those that want to be toxic have one tool less to abuse.
People saying that you cannot complete an encounter without data from such tools but brag that they are in a top raiding guild is rather funny ... it's an MMO, work together, think of strategies and build trust within your group to collaborate. You do not need meters, etc but people to complete raids, bosses, etc.
DPS meters also have a direct impact on the accessibility to the game for players that join in X amount of years. This due to the fear of being kicked in groups because they are new, certain requirements said by players, and the overall community being more focused on some digits than actually communicating.
Also comparing this game to WoW 24/7 isn't helping either, it should be clear by now that Ashes has a very different approach to how players interact with each other, the world and it's content.
Apologies for the rusty English
Here is a basic overview of my position as a top end raider in all but one game I have played.
Steven has said he wants a competitive raid scene in the game, and wants content that is so hard that only a single digit percentage of the population are able to defeat it.
This is great from my perspective, as that is what most games with a good raiding scene have.
Now, if a game aspires to have a competitive raiding scene, one of the things it needs is competitive raiders.
This isnt hard, as there are many of us that have not had a game to play for a long while. All a game needs to do to attract these players to the game is to have content that is enjoyable to them.
The issue there is, content that is enjoyable to these players is - by necessity - complex content. It is the kind of content that truly does need combat trackers.
The kind of people I am talking about here (people like me) would not consider simple content that is tuned to be difficult as enjoyable. There is no sense of pride in killing simple content.
So basically, intrepid want a top end raiding scene, which requires top end raiders who require complex content, which requires a combat tracker.
That is why discussions on combat trackers will always revolve around raid content.
As a final point, while trackers are useful and good to have at all levels of the game, and in all aspects (ACT is even useful for harvesting in many games), there has never been any content outside of top end raid content that has actually *required* a tracker.
The problem with this perspective is that it is simply not supported by the fact.
WoW has a lot of combat trackers, and is toxic.
EQ2 has a lot of combat trackers, and is not toxic.
Archeage has very few combat trackers, and is toxic.
Clearly, based on the above games, combat trackers and toxicity are not directly linked.
Anyone for combat trackers in AoC has basically 2 choices...
1. Find another game if it bothers you that much.
2. Use one anyway, and don't get caught.
There ... it is settled!
In fact, it would be hard to get caught using one - you'd basically have to go out of your way.
Something akin to this has been my suggestion for about two years now.
At the moment using a combat tracker doesn't lead to any action, because according to Steven it isn't possible to make any tracker work for ashes.
I literally view combat trackers as an alcohol - there were countries in history that tried to forbid alcohol in its entirety, but that just meant that the smuggling was booming and not that people stopped drinking it. Same thing is with Ashes and trackers, because those people that actually care to learn how to play and how to play to the best of their ability will use trackers without telling anyone that they use them.
These forum discussions about trackers are only about how to make the highest amount of people happy - those that do not want trackers and those that want them, because if intrepid would create the tracker themselves then they could quite literally limit the use of tracking to protect the people from it that dont want to interact with trackers.
If this game isnt dead on arrival and it actually has players that strive to be the best then those people will use trackers. And if intrepid goes to the lengths to prevent the use of trackers to the lengths that riot vanguard does (intrusive anticheat for competitive fps) then those players will just use screen capture with pen and paper.
― Plato
Those that have been around for a while in these discussions know that the suggestion I have been making for years isn't the answer I want, it is the answer I feel is best for everyone. Many others agree with this general approach.
Almost.
Screen capture => second computer running combat tracker.
So, if Intrepid opt for the most invasive of "anti cheat" protections (the kind that will see 10%+ of potential customers refuse to even install the game), all they will see on someone running a combat tracker is the exact same they will see on a streamer, or a wannabe content creator.
This then gives Intrepid the option to either ban all content creators, or to admit that they can't do anything about combat trackers.
That is basically the bed Steven has made for himself.
- game isnt popular and after initial hype the concurent player numbers drop below 4 figures so nobody really cares about trackers, because nobody is really playing the game
- game is popular and intrepid starts a war campaign against tracker users with ban waves
- (this is what i also think will actually happend) Steven gives the whole tracker topic a silent treatment without doing any actions against players to stop them from using it
― Plato
Toxicity can be caused by many things, DPS meters are one of them. As I said "having this tool in the wrong hands creates toxicity within the overall community, guilds, etc. " you cannot deny this. Archeage toxicity has very different reasons (which I am sure you are aware of) this is partially due to the game's design.
WoW is for a large part toxic due to elitism which is influenced further by the introduction of a million trackers.
But again as I said, in the wrong hands a DPS tracker can be used to create a toxic environment, impacting current and potential new players in the long run.
You claim that you want to use these trackers to help people, let's assume this is true. Then there is nothing stopping you from helping others without the use of a tracker/meter.
By having engagements and encouraging collaboration through clear communication you will defuse situations, and create a less toxic environment. This is true in your job and in a game or in any situation.
So no
need to have a tracker
I completely agree. The eventual end of the situation will be when Intrepid realize that so many people are using them, they have no real option other than to allow them (as per GW2).
The funny thing is, we've seen this before, and it isn't what anyone wants - Intrepid, players that want combat trackers, or players that don't want combat trackers. There is an actual viable solution that is better for all three groups, and it is to the detriment of all groups that Intrepid seem uninterested in taking it.
If you want to fight ingame toxicity then the game should provide a basic framework for dealing and punishing toxic players by the players - removing tools from the game doesnt remove toxicity, because all that it does is to have the same amount of toxicity to be shown in different way and as long as you can have in the game human to human interaction then you will have the possibility of toxicity
Trackers in wow just an extremely small part of the addon scene, because the game needs to be patched with player addons in order to provide basic functionality that should have been part of the game but the devs just didnt code it, because they knew that players would do that for themselves
Helping others without a tracker is extremely troublesome, because it usually means that you need to have a screenshare and do a coaching for that guy, because players that need help in 99% of the time dont know what they actually need help with
I believe you wanted to say "So no need to have a tracker" since what you wrote is in direct contradiction with the underlying message of your whole post.
While what you say is true, you can use that approach in any situation, but that doesnt mean that this approach is the best for every conflict that might happen. For example trying to talk with Flat Earth believers without the use of science is totally useless, because it just comes down to who can formulate better argument.
What you forget is that all people have their own perspectives on what happens and when you are trying to figure out what you can do better in a complex hard boss fight then you actually need cold hard facts that you can base your decisions off of.
Nobody wants the game to be designed for top players, but creating purposeful frustration from the lack of transparent information for any part of the playerbase is just straight bad
Don't transform the whole game for top players and dont kick top players in the balls for sport either
― Plato