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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
And people found out using third party apps will be banned.
Combat logs/trackers/simulators give players the ability to see the potential and knowledgebase for what their class can do. These are the people who carry groups, make guides, and are significantly more invested in the community compared to players who do not.
I highly doubt they will ban an important echelon of players unless they are blatantly taunting using a 3rd party app. A don't ask don't tell policy is the likely outcome of this asinine approach by Intrepid.
If their stance is "We are not allowing it" and they don't ban that means they are allowing it. So if you are using third party add ons action will get taken against you. Its as simple as that. That mixed with game design not making it as reverent or easy to access all compound together. It isn't just one thing.
Which would lead to most people not caring about them or using them, unable to view other players to use it in toxic elements, and the few that have it don't say much on it.
Ashes shouldn't need people to rely on combat trackers (DPS meters) to make guides.
Augments should make it fairly obvious how to synergize/stack effects with others in your group to defeat combat challenges.
Combat trackers (DPS meters) certainly do not have to be the only way to evaluate party/raid tactics and also don't have to be the primary way to do so.
Ashes will have a personal combat log.
Individuals will be able to use that to evaluate their own combat encounters.
https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/45612/dps-meter-megathread/p1
Btw, there will be combat logs in-game. Not sure how advance but I hope it will be as advance as other games have it.
"We will be providing combat data for individual players in their chat window, that players can filter and analyze for themselves."
3rd party combat log sites/programs usually just make it easier to read and under stand the combat log from the game.
Their stance is no on third party.
Am very glad that there will *not* be sanctioned DPS-meters; Anyone using them will be utilizing un-sanctioned 3rd-party tools, risking an account ban/disciplinary actions from IS.
There will - unfortunately - be a class/class-combo or 2 that will be the min-maxxers will glom onto, as the "BEST" classes, for ultimate-DPS output. Those combos will likely be well-known, after 6-ish months of the game being out. Yours truly is of the ethic that Steven espouses: focus more on having fun.
Everyone's opinions should be taken with a grain of salt, though. Case-and-point: I'll be a Cleric/Cleric for max-heals, as I don't give a crap about DPS. The same will likely be true with Tank/Tanks, for max-tanking ability.
From a strategic perspective?
Just let OTHER people run the risks of using the un-sanctioned DPS meters, and when a consensus is reached by multiple such people publishing their finds? THEN use their findings; Why gamble your own account upon *gathering* the information yourself, when others will eventually put it out there, for you?
Establish your Healer and Tank to-be raid toons first, and then use information available later, to then roll your min-maxxed DPS raid-toon(s).
Generally no.
The people that are inquisitive in regards to the games combat system arw not the people booting others for under performing. Why would we? They are a valuable source of information.
All we will do is make a note to not group up with them again.
This is why - as I have told you in the past - I have never booted someone from a pick up group. Why get rid of an intersting source of data?
The people that boot others feom groups are very specific people. They are people that run pick up grouos, that want efficiency, that don't care about actually understanding the games combat system, and that either cant or wont help the player that is under performing.
All of these things need to be true.
without making this a long post, that is exactly the problem. again l2 as an example since its the closest we have to aoc. if you used a combat tracker in l2, it would tell you that increasing your magic attack as a mage as opposed to casting speed (because you cant always increase both) increases your dps, you need less hits to kill the same mob, you save on soulshots, you save mana, etc, so you'd think about increasing your magic attack instead, when in reality that's the worse option. if youremoved pvp, or attack cancels, the ensure that would be the best option (and assuming the mobs arent hitting you because you have a tank or whatever).
so basically in terms of numbers and data, the combat tracker will tell you that magic attack is the best choice, but in practice, increasing casting speed rather than magic attack is the best choice, otherwise, you wouldn't even get your attacks off in the first place.
there was also something similar with daggers. increasing your attack would give you a small gain in your skills damage and it would make your auto attack do more damage. so yeah for pve that's ok. but for PVP, you want that attack speed. the extra damage from stabs don't matter and your autos also don't matter. you want to get your skills off before the enemy can turn on you. same happens with crit damage vs haste SA on weapons.
i suspect something similar will happen in aoc. and on a side note, players from wow will surely increase mana and mana regen, especially if they are healers xDD rather than casting speed. which will also most likely be a mistake.
id say if aoc is similar in this regard (and so far aoc stat system is the same as l2, but I believe formulas will be different, duh!) I wouldn't be surprised if people who use the optimal build from the combat tracker will end up losing more in PVP. sometimes that extra casting speed after diminishing returns is better than more mana/mdef or min maxing your magic attack.
Again combat trackers do not tell you what is best, it only tells you what happend during combat. Meanig that it can not tell you what stats is the best to increase, it can only tell you what that change in stat and rotation did during combat.
I think you are confusing combat tracker with combat simulator which simulates combat to try and find the best rotation and stat of a specific class. But that's not what we are currently talking about. Combat tracker is something that, in basic terms, reads the combat log during combat and displays that information.
yeah but whats the point of displaying the information? you want to use that info somehow. and we are talking about which stats to increase and that a combat tracker can help you decide by doing what you described, changing stats, rotations, etc.
so If i increased my magic attack and hit a target for a minute, then reset and increased my casting speed and hit the same target for a minute, by looking at the combat tracker (id probs call it combat tool at this point, since you can do whatever you want with a plugin), id assume that increasing magic attack is the best option since i did more damage and spent less mana and soulshots as well. you could repeat the test several times and you would conclude that increasing your magic attack would be the best option, but in reality, increasing casting speed would be the best option...otherwise you wouldn't even be able to even cast your magic.
remember that we are using the combat tracker to determine which stat to increase.
First of, here you assume something "id assume that increasing magic attack is the best option" so that is not a good argument. Secondly, determining what is "best" from a fight that is 1 minute is a very very small set of data.
However, if the combat logs shows that icnreasing magic power for that specific 1 minute fight is better (you doing more dps or whatever) then that's the better option for that very specific 1 minute fight. You can't then just apply that to everything and every fight. You need to be smart and logical and think what could be best in different situations and then test those theories, which can be proven or dissproven with the help of a combat tracker.
In a vain attempt to get this back closer to topic...
In a game with even 64 variations, not even classes, you'd have to have so many different 'technical goals' for any potential characterization, that this would nearly never be your goal even if you were basically pure DPS.
That's also not necessarily how you would use the information. So, 64 classes is specifically a good idea if a designer wants the simplistic use/perspective on Combat Trackers to be a bad idea. 64 classes is a good idea if you want people to just 'not bother with randos claiming stuff about builds because they downloaded a tracker and saw that they had better numbers after hitting a thing for a minute'.
(I want to stick close to your own example but it's the type I tend to pick apart and that's not the purpose of this thread).
A Mage whose role in their party is to be the killshot finisher will increase Magic Attack. A Mage whose role in their party is Mana management is more likely to increase Casting Speed. It is good for us to have different sensible ways to play Mage. Perhaps even by changing Secondary Archetype and building a 'class' that does it that way.
Yeah the 64 class model will, hopefully, give us different ways of playing the same base archetype and have different bis items/stats for each classs
I cant believe I have to explain this arent actual set values and are just examples .-.
hmm 64 classes might not necessarily mean 64 variations in stats. we only have 6 main stats and then I don't know how many substats.
it could also be that for all magic oriented classes (mage, bard, summoner, cleric and any 2nd archetype that changed your skills to magic skills) increasing casting speed is better than increasing magic attack. its just something universal. so suddenly you don't have to think about 64 classes or even 32, you just think about physical or magical classes.
regarding your last paragraph, that's exactly what I'm talking about. you can play a char different ways, and a tracker or any tool can help you with min maxing, but it doesn't mean its the best way to play it or that people will play that way. we are discussing which stat to increase.
Ok but WHY are we discussing that? I didn't see anyone else discussing that, you're the one who brought it to the discussion.
You said something (paraphrasing) about how if you used a tracker (incorrectly) in L2, then you would come to certain (incorrect) conclusions.
But who cares? That has nothing to do with the topic. I know from my research that L2 was not shallow enough for this to be an issue except in its variety in gear. Nearly no game is as gear-shallow as L2/BDO unless it wants to be, and Ashes probably doesn't want to be.
So we expect '64 classes' because the game isn't trying to be some easymode-to-understand cash grab like most of its Korean counterparts. It's never that you can't make them, it's that people get cranky about having to think and rush off to find a guide from someone who did the thinking for them (and hence, the only influence that trackers have on this equation).
convo ended up there
You seem to have a very one dimensional view of people.
If someone without a combat tracker knows that dagger auto attacks dont matter, someone with a combat tracker will also know that. This is because people using a combat tracker also have access to every source of information that you have, but also have a combat tracker on top of that.
Combat trackers only add information, they dont remove or replace information.
The fact that you keep referring to an "optimal build from a tracker" again tells me you don't know how to use a tracker properly.
In fact, everything you say about trackers tells me you dont know how to use them properly - as every time you talk about them you talk of what could happen if said tracker is misused.
As to your comment on WoW players - I don't see why any of them would gear or spec out a healer in Ashes as they would in WoW. That doesn't happen in any other game, at least not that I have ever seen. People gear their characters for the situations they expect to face with that character in that game, minimizing their weaknesses and maximizing their strengths. Since there is no real expectation of protracted fights in Ashes, there likely isn't going to be as much of a need for mana regen. It would only be if people start running iutof mana that they start looking for ways to prevent that happening - people arent just going to assume that is what they need to do.
Keep in mind WOW pretty much only has 3 stats: crit, haste and mastery. Each spec has varying soft caps etc.
Which reminds me that I had something to say about this, for Intrepid.
I want to feel it., and though I know you can't easily do it by the things mentioned other than the Icon, I want to be able to tell at a glance somehow.
I'm not talking about spec, but rather things like giving players LESS control over the color theme of their abilities so that the rest of us can partially tell what's happening within the huge chaos that is 'PvP group combat'. Nuance is great, even misdirection is fine with me, but if an Acolyte's Arcane Volley is applying 'Death Augment' DoT/debuff to me, I really want to know which one is the Acolyte at least by trying to work out the source direction.
I want those projectiles to be lil' purple skulls or something. Particularly because, even with a Combat Log, the design for abilities so far really makes me feel like that is gonna be scrolling by so fast in PvP that there will not be time to focus on it, as it should be.
But as the person whose job it is to 'extend or meet your intended TTK', that matters a lot, and this isn't Predecessor where I will 'be reading the Combat Log after I die to see the effects from the one who killed me'.
Even with subgroups, 250 v 250, I need to be able to recognize 'The Volley Of Death'.
the auto attacks matter just not that much for PVP. my example was that the combat tracker could tell you (or help you reach the conclusion) that increasing X stat over Y its the right choice because of the extra damage, diminishing returns, etc. but it could be that in practice, its the wrong choice, mostly because of PVP, but people who follow combat trackers to build their character will not realize this (remember you suggested using a combat tracker to build your character and min max your stats, not me, I'm just talking about using I like that).
saying that people who use combat trackers have access to the info people who don't use it is pointless. not everybody read guides, experiments In pvp, etc, etc. i still see to this day people increasing the wrong stats and buffing themselves wrong in L2 and the game has been out for 20 years...
if you already know what stat to increase without the combat tracker, then using the combat tracker to figure out which stat to increase is pointless, don't you think? you are the one who didn't consider this when you suggested using it...
Yeah I do think that the 64 class model will, hopefully, give us variations in playstyle within the same archetype and have different bis items/stats of each class
How do you know what is best?
Combat trackers in pvp can be good to see what happened and what spell/debuff your opponent used and timings. But since pvp is so dynamic and extremely situational, it can be very difficult to determine what is "best".
From what I know, combat trackers are mostly used for PvE Content, but I'm also mostly a PvE player.
But - the only way someone using a combat tracker properly would ever think that an attack (any attack) is the right choice in a given scenario is if they have data to support that it is the right choice in that scenario.
People like me look at each option on each encounter. Not each type of encounter - each individual encounter.
That is a combat tracker used properly.
I'm not going to be sitting around somewhere with some training dummy collecting data and assuming it applies to every situation - I'm going to be out fighting in every situation and then looking at that data.
Not only would I know if auto attack (not that we have one) would be near worthless in PvP (due to having data that shows it is near useless), but I would before long have data to support how worthwhile or whorthless auto attack for each class, against each class, at differing levels of what ever physical defenses the game has.
That is a combat tracker used properly.
You'll know (or think, to be fair) that auto attack is worthless. I'll be able to give an exact value of it's worth, as well as the worth of other attacks, in a variety of situations.
If people want to spec poorly, that is on them. When I talk about anything (as you well know) I talk about people always doing the best they can within the restrictions placed on them. Thus, if we are talking about someone with a combat tracker and someone without a combat tracker, we are talking about two people doing the best they can.
Some people (you would probably be a good example of this, it seems) can even have a combat tracker and spec poorly - but I am not (read; never) talking about such people.
If I am having to use a combat tracker in order to understand what stat to increase, then I did it wrong.
In regards to spec/gear, you use the combat tracker to understand the whole system - the math behind the system. Then when you are given an option to increase some stat in what ever way, you already know the answer. At best, you then use a combat tracker to confirm what you already know to be true.
how do I know whats best? by playing the game, knowing how stats work, pvping a lot, talking to experienced players, etc
that's not what I was talking about and I'm not saying what you are wrong here. however, to answer to this point, you could still fall victim of the tracker. the tracker could lead you to reach the conclusion that auto-attacking is a waste of soulshots in PVP. it could tell you that auto attacking in pve is worth it because of the damage you do, the mana you save over time, etc. then you wouldn't consider auto attacks in PVP, but then you arent considering other things such as interrupting the enemy skill, something that you wont see on the logs, for example, and even if you do, you might still not think its worth using them because of the little damage, when in reality its worth using them. this doesn't have to be autos, this could be anything.
the best people are a small %. most people might just follow the tracker or some guide who they think its good (that probably was made using a tracker).
you are the one who suggested this a few posts ago.
seems that you gonna be one of those people who gonna fall victim of the combat tracker data. you gonna use gear that increases magic attack because the tracker told you so, when you should be wearing gear that increases casting speed.
So you do not know? You just make an assumption based on your and experienced players (who may or may not be using combat logs). PvP is a hard thing to talk about when it comes to combat logs, because not only do pvp depend on your human actions and human error but also your opponents human actions and human error (which can be seen be the comabt log).
I agree that, by just playing the game you can learn alot and you can then apply that to pvp/pve incounters. What combat logs really do in this situation is help you confirm your well educated guess, and in some situiations you will learn something new from it, big or small. Again, im mostly talking from a PvE perspective since I have done very little pvp in comparison to pve.
I mean in most situations going with what your "gut feeling" tells you from hours and hours of playing the game will get you by 90% of the time (if not more).
You still need to play the game to even get the data? So no, no one is saying that "any information you want to know can be found through tracker and not playing the game", or atleast Im not. I'm saying that you can see all the combat information in the combat log after the fight to see if you may have missed something during combat. And with the collected data you can evaluated your own performance and look for improvements.
*popcorn noises*