Battle Dummy DPS | HPS Recorder

What do you guys think of this Idea in place of UI/party/raid DPS meters?

First off, I personally don't care for DPS meters in games for similar reasons to what steven had mentioned, however I did have this idea and wanted to share it with you guys...

Why not have a Battle Dummy(s) that you can buy and place into your housing, having the ability to modify some settings on it, such as, set its Level, Max HP (up to a certain limit) , and how much HP it has when spawned (for healers to test their HPS).
This Battle dummy would only be able to be attacked by the owner and its DPS/HPS readings would only be given to those owners to see.

This would allow players to practice their rotations, as well as see their DPS/HPS.

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Arya_Yeshe

Recently there was a topic about dummies and I suggested simply this:

the dummy registers the last damage info about the last session and the biggest session of the day

That's all

ShadowVen

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Recently there was a topic about dummies and I suggested simply this:
the dummy registers the last damage info about the last session and the biggest session of the day

That's all

Are these sessions only seen by the person attacking them or others?
I think in order to prevent going down the normal rabbit hole of dps meter arguments, the "sessions" as you call them, should be discrete.

Arya_Yeshe

ShadowVen wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

Recently there was a topic about dummies and I suggested simply this:
the dummy registers the last damage info about the last session and the biggest session of the day

That's all

Are these sessions only seen by the person attacking them or others?
I think in order to prevent going down the normal rabbit hole of dps meter arguments, the "sessions" as you call them, should be discrete.

For sure it is fun being able to see the top damage and dps of the day. It is important knowing the damage and dps of the last session, since you could be tweaking your build and gear and you want to have an idea.

I don't know if the name of player should be displayed tough.

ShadowVen

My Idea was to just have it where you and you only could see the Results.

Taleof2Cities

ShadowVen wrote: »

My Idea was to just have it where you and you only could see the Results.

Let’s say your wish is granted and the results are discreet, @ShadowVen.

How would you prevent guilds from requiring a screenshot of your dummy parse as a membership requirement?

Just trying to reconcile the spirit of Intrepid’s stance on DPS meters versus your idea.

Elwendryll

On ESO. Back in the day, you measured your dps by killing a specific boss and doing some math. (Or having add-ons do the math)

Then they introduced the training dummy.

You put them in your house, when you kill them/the fight ends, it displays your dps as a system message in your chat (no one else can see).

After they released it, the dps ceiling absolutely shattered. Because it became extremely easy for anyone to monitor their dps, fine tune their build and rotation, and practice for hundreds or thousands of hours.

With add-ons you could have extremely detailed metrics on your different damage sources, uptimes, resources consumption etc etc...

Of course guilds started asking for screenshots to let you in raid groups etc, but for more selective groups, they don't even ask for that (way too easy to cheese and not indicative of skill), they ask for raid logs. In addition, dps was so optimized across the board that you could skip most of the mechanics on many encounters for all kinds of content.

I think being able to easily measure your dps and practice your rotation is crucial for endgame hardcore raid progression/leaderboards. You're min-maxing, comparing options, doing math, hammering in the muscle memory. But in general, I think it has a negative impact on the game, if you have a way to show that option A does 1% more damage than option B, people tend to say A is OP and B is trash xD And its disproportionately reflected on market prices and group compositions, even in content where this doesn't matter at all. You have very toxic gatekeepers who won't let some players in casual content because a youtuber told them option A was the best, and they can't think for themselves.

Personally, my preferred option would be a dummy with fixed HP that can't die and just displays damage/healing numbers like a regular enemy, but you can safely practice your rotation on it and compare individual damage numbers.

A bit unrelated but I'd love to have some kind of challenging solo instance content that would be some sort of trial by fire at some point in your progression. Something that if a raid leader knows you cleared, they can confidently take you in an entry-level raid group, and go up from there, instead of asking for a dps screenshot.

Noaani

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Just trying to reconcile the spirit of Intrepid’s stance on DPS meters versus your idea.

In order to meet the spirit of Intrepids stance here, one must first dismiss the notion of logic.

As such, the answer to your question as to how one would prevent screenshots being required is simple, all players must play the game with their monitors turned off. Good luck even seeing that screenshot now!

Virtek

This is a topic I've brought up on our podcast every time someone asks us about our stance on meters of any kind. (Wall of text incoming, but with a unique idea, maybe?)

Before I go too far, I must say that I do love the idea of a solo "Proving Grounds" that @Elwendryll mentioned.

Also know that I'm ok with the decision to not add any meters of any kind to the game. I'll live without them, and still be more than happy to plan Ashes without them. I simply have a preference and like to share my opinion on that when the topic comes up.

So...the idea
It is absolutely impossible (Yes. Impossible.) to prevent toxicity, elitism, and strict requirements to enter a raid with a group.
The only true decision to make is: how much more difficult on our player base do we want to make it?

Resist putting any kind of meter in the game and ban any third-party apps that provide that service?
YouTube/Twitch streamers will run the numbers live, record it for all to see, and advise what the best builds are. They will find easy/quick ways to measure if someone is up to the task, and raid leaders will require this.
This takes control out of the developer's hands and places it in the hands of streamers AND makes it more difficult on the players trying to get a raid spot AND on people trying to improve their own performance in any way.
Discord, which so many people use and require for raiding nowadays, has an easy "Stream for your friends" option. Imagine how that will be used to gatekeep raids. You join the raid, join the discord, get in voice chat, and they immediately ask you to go slay a stone golem with the group watching you stream it.
Probably feels worse than "what dps can you output?" when you get kicked from the discord for refusing.
"I'd be better off raiding without them, then!" you might say in reaction.
Yup. Exactly the same way you could react when people ask for your numbers.

I've seen many good solutions that would be great. My favorite is what we've come up with in talks on our show:

A guild (because MMO) can spend points to open up a small "arena" of sorts in their guild hall. This hall starts with a few NPC battles to lightly test someone's mettle. As the guild encounters major enemies in the wild, they can start earning experience towards unlocking a simulated battle against that enemy and their mechanics. Anyone that has earned a certain rank in the guild can use this mock arena to practice against whatever enemies the guild has unlocked.

A few points that make this idea extra nifty:

The guild must spend points to unlock this arena, thus sacrificing other potential benefits
You gain experience for this arena slowly by encountering a certain mechanic on any enemy while in a "guild run." A "guild run" consists of 80%+ members in the raid/party being members of the guild. This also helps dissuade one guild from splitting into multiple smaller guilds to only have one arena in a side guild but the raiding guild building up their points into raid benefits
The experience gained in a fight unlocks that single mechanic for that boss after you experience it on three separate days. Multiple mechanics can gain experience on a single day, you simply need to see them in the fight
Once you reach the experience needed to unlock that mechanic for that enemy, you need to pay someone (npc, player, anything, really) to upgrade the participants you are fighting against in the guild arena
The arena, by choice of the guild master, can either hide numbers, show them until the next fight begins, or save them for whatever amount of time they wish. The longer the logs are kept, the more they need to pay the "records keeper"

Something like that would prevent a lot of the toxicity, encourage guild membership and cooperation/loyalty, would provide a continual gold sink for raiding guilds, and make it so the guild has to experience each portion of the fight a few times before they can unlock a practice arena.
Additionally, it gives the guild a stable goal to drive towards. A reward they can 100% attain if they accomplish certain milestones. It might even be nifty if they could open it up and allow others to train in there. Recruiting campaigns? Earning some gold per hour of reservation? Open house to show off what they've earned as a guild?

It's not a perfect solution, I know, but it is the most favorite I've come across.
It does help the developers maintain more control over the hoops players must jump through to join a top-tier raiding group.
No risk of requiring a player to livestream in Discord while you slay/heal/survive whatever the raid leaders decide is a valid challenge.

Kesthely

I believe that Intrepids stance for addons and meters is two fold:
1) Not to encourage a certain playstyle due to an arbitrary number
2) not to exclude players due to an arbitrary number.

Having a target dummy that tells you, even if its only you an arbitrary number, cuts into that design philosophy, and would definatly promote towards a playstyle based on an arbitrary number.

Noaani

Kesthely wrote: »

I believe that Intrepids stance for addons and meters is two fold:
1) Not to encourage a certain playstyle due to an arbitrary number
2) not to exclude players due to an arbitrary number.

Having a target dummy that tells you, even if its only you an arbitrary number, cuts into that design philosophy, and would definatly promote towards a playstyle based on an arbitrary number.

The problem with this opinion is that it doesn't stand up to basic scrutiny.

That arbitrary number still exist. Like it or not, that arbitrary number is a ratio between the mobs HP and the damage your abilities do.

In order for Intrepid to not have that arbitrary number in Ashes, mobs need to not have HP, and abilities need to not deal damage.

If these two things exist, that arbitrary number you talk about simply does exist as well.

Terrifying_Truth

People can still measure damage by dueling

Nowadays people from the same guild can simply share their screens on Discord and show everything

Elwendryll

Noaani wrote: »

That arbitrary number still exist. Like it or not, that arbitrary number is a ratio between the mobs HP and the damage your abilities do.

In order for Intrepid to not have that arbitrary number in Ashes, mobs need to not have HP, and abilities need to not deal damage.

If these two things exist, that arbitrary number you talk about simply does exist as well.

It's impossible to prevent people from figuring out their dps. But the less convenient it is to do, the more Intrepid will achieve their goal on that front. Because if it takes 5 minutes to figure out someone's dps, it's reasonable for a guild to ask that of them. If it's complex enough to get proper testing conditions, it will probably only be asked for content where it actually matters.

As someone always pushing for the hardest content available, I have to say, the more I am acutely aware of my exact damage output, the less I'm having fun. My dps becomes the only important metric, when there are things like flexibility, consistency, ease of use, survivability, that will also affect the outcome of an encounter. And overtime, I ditch the fun/interesting options that would be good enough for the content we need to clear in favour of the ones that bring more damage to the table.

And outside of instanced content, dps as a metric would be a lot less relevant anyway. Because PvP focused builds usually have lower dps in favour of burst damage and CC/survivability/utility. You'd have to take into account that you might have to fight off an other full group of players while attempting to kill a boss.

tl;dr dps is a bad metric to measure how well a player would do for most of the content, but it's an easy one because it's a number. By making it less convenient to measure it helps prevent people from overfocusing on it.

Noaani

Elwendryll wrote: »

It's impossible to prevent people from figuring out their dps. But the less convenient it is to do, the more Intrepid will achieve their goal on that front. Because if it takes 5 minutes to figure out someone's dps, it's reasonable for a guild to ask that of them. If it's complex enough to get proper testing conditions, it will probably only be asked for content where it actually matters.

Here's the problem with that.

Imagine you are running a guild, and your plan is to start taking on top end content.

You invite people to bring your guild up to the appropriate number of players, of the appropriate classes, and you start raiding. Without easy and immediate access to objective data, you cant really assess anyone's ability.

Eventually, after a few month, you get to some actual hard content, but your guild struggles with it, and simply aren't able to take it down.

So, as a dutiful guild leader, you start objectively assessing everyone's actual ability in your guild. You find that a number of people are not performing well enough. as guild leader, you now have a number of awkward conversations to have, and if any one of those players is offended enough to cause a scene, you risk real damage to your guild.

Imagine for a minute though, it is highly probable that at least one of those players simply isnt capable of getting any better. Now, after months of being with the guild, making friends and such, you have to drop these players in order for the guild to continue to progress.

This absolutely WILL disrupt the guild from a social perspective. Even if they are still kept in the guild and just not bought along to raids, people will miss their friends being on raids.

The notion that guilds will only objectively measure players when it matters means they will objectively measure people after social bonds have been formed, rather than before they have been formed (or at least before they have been strengthened). There is no logical scenario where this is the better option.

However, Ashes absolutely will prevent all of the above from happening. They will prevent it by simply not having any content where objective personal ability matters. Basically, the game will not have difficult top end raid content.

That is what the best result for an MMO is without easy access to objective player data. Since the 'choice' is to either not have top end raid content or to cause disruption in guilds as they progression through raid content, there really isnt a choice there at all.

You simply do not have a game where objective data matters (difficult top end content), and not allow easy access to objective data from the very beginning.

Any game designer that makes the decision that objective data isnt readily available has already made the decision that objective data doesnt matter.

Elwendryll

Noaani wrote: »

This absolutely WILL disrupt the guild from a social perspective. Even if they are still kept in the guild and just not bought along to raids, people will miss their friends being on raids.

[...]

However, Ashes absolutely will prevent all of the above from happening. They will prevent it by simply not having any content where objective personal ability matters. Basically, the game will not have difficult top end raid content.

Hey, I agree with most of what you said, I've been in endgame raid progression, and raid leader myself, we actually had to solve the exact issue you describe, multiple times.
"Hey, as a group we're not ready yet for that more difficult content, do you want to keep running content we can do together, or move on to more challenging content, but we'll have to replace some members"
Do we sacrifice the social aspect for the challenge?
Sometimes we just wait for people to get better, sometimes they remove themselves from this particular group because they know they're struggling. It generally doesn't feel good for them (some are relieved), but they don't want to prevent their guildmates they made social bonds with from experiencing the content they want (we still play with them, we usually have different time slots for different content difficulties).
And that works out because we value smart people with a great personality and a drive to get better over their mechanical skill during the recruitment process. You can always practice your dps and overall execution, making everyone like and respect each other to work cohesively as a team, while having fun, is a lot more work.

I believe Steven stated the most challenging content would be open world, so potential PvX, which is one of the reasons why I said dps was a bad metric anyway. People will still want to figure out their dps, not making that information easily available just helps preventing them from "mistakenly" overfocusing on it.

Kilion

Context from the Wiki:

Addons (DPS-Meter)
Quote Steven Sharif: "[...] You can have things that can be more subtle and aren't going to be immediately given away by a meter indicating something; and that's the type of gameplay that we think that I believe we want to emphasize [...]"

I remember Intrepid saying they do not want any DPS or threat meters in the game, that there would be other ways to gauge the damage output ingame to not make a direct number measurement tool necessary.

And I think this might be a good way to do it, however with a slight adjustments.

They are crafted items only. You can't just buy them off some NPC and boom, done. There has to be a carpenter who builds the thing and also sets its stats through a variety of modification options.
Their durability decreases with use, so you either need to repair them or they will eventually break down completely into scrap materials.
Their stats can be adjusted to match those of known enemy types, without exactly displaying any of the numbers. Meaning, the artisan can copy the resistance stats of a fire dragon, but wouldn't exactly know what these are.
You can put them up wherever you want, so that you theoretically can use them to make a dmg test with your whole group

> Why make these limitations?
Because I think without them Intrepid wouldn't even consider putting something like them into the game in the first place.

Sjelden

ShadowVen wrote: »

What do you guys think of this Idea in place of UI/party/raid DPS meters?

Short answer: No!

Long answer: Please see any of the numerous interviews where Steven explains why there will be no DPS meter in the game. Having a dps-tracking targeting dummy with readout is nothing more than a convoluted way of circumventing the "No DPS meter" stance. My advice; stop trying to find a clever way to circumvente the "rules" for the game, and simply enjoy the game for what it will be.

Noaani

Elwendryll wrote: »

People will still want to figure out their dps, not making that information easily available just helps preventing them from "mistakenly" overfocusing on it.

In my experience, people only focus on DPS when DPS is the best thing for them to focus on.

An example of this from my past is an encounter in EQ2 where mana management was key. There was no time limit, no enrage, no real challenge at all to the encounter.

All there was, really, was an instant fail condition if anyone in the raids mana went either below 35% or above 60% (iirc). A single point of mana out by one person in the raid and the whole thing was a wipe.

While that encounter was what was being worked on, DPS wasnt even in the discussion. It was all about mana efficiency. Months of DPS classes discussing efficiency, without a mention of DPS at all.

However, if you have DPS classes in a game with nothing to focus on other than DPS, no one should be surprised if DPS is what those DPS players focus on.

In an open PvP setting, it will become very obvious even to those that have never played a PvP game that there is more to focus on than just DPS.

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