remember that we are using the combat tracker to determine which stat to increase.
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 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
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
Don't want to disappoint.
Every game without hard caps that I have ever played has had both non-standard and non-linear diminishing returns - most of the time without the developer even realizing it.
There is literally no possible way to accurately map those diminishing returns without a combat tracker - at least not if we want to talk on the scale of a human lifespan.
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
The discussion around combat trackers are meaningless, and is very much of topic (though I do like to discuss it).
There will be combat trackers and that's that. You don't need to use it, but some people will.
i agree with you, but in some cases the combat tracker will tell you that a specific build in terms of numbers is performing better than the others, but because there are things that the combat tracker cant account for, using that "optimal" build will actually the a bad, if not the worst choice when it comes to actually playing the game (this will mostly be because of pvp).
There is nothing the combat tracker do not account for. It logs everything that happens in combat.
And "the most optimal" build or rotation usually do not come from the use of combat tracker but from the use of combat simulators.
I can not talk to much about pvp since I'm not a big pvper.
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.
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.
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...
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.
how do I know whats best? by playing the game, knowing how stats work, pvping a lot, talking to experienced players, etc
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).
I do math too. but you guys still don't get it. not all the info that you need is found in the combat logs.
So you can just see what is giving you the highest dmg output and saving your mana.
Trackers make games easier and allow people to find out things much faster. Tracks are garbage and just lead to more speed running of content and a handicap people rely on.
When seriously playing a game like Ashes, particularly in PvP, your goal is not often to understand either of those things.
Let's ignore the tracker part of this. A Mage's concern in group PvP generally should not be 'highest damage output' or 'saving their mana' in a non-simplistic game. The Mage is probably trying to work out 'exactly how much defense they need to survive long enough for their cooldowns to come back up again' in a certain situation.
For the eight mage Classes in Ashes, this will be different, and then it will depend on their party. And the effectiveness of their party will depend on which class they are, changing their goals. A Mage/Tank might have survivability from Augments but not as much cooldown/mana cost reduction. A Mage/Ranger might be able to apply defense reduction debuffs to enemies, but then be concerned about having survivability from their gear and not care about saving mana at all OR doing their own damage.
Or, because of their party composition, none of that will be true and the Mage/Tank will use their augments in some unconventional way, becoming 'a Lockdown Spellstone build' instead of a 'Disruption Spellstone build' because that's what their team needs.
This is the thing that people do on-the-fly, sometimes twice per hour, in other games. You now seem to be at the point in this Classes discussion where you are saying you just don't want people to be able to figure out how to play their class well, in general. Is it that you somehow value 'people having to struggle much more to understand their class'?
I am not really challenging your desire here, but if 'me getting good at my class' is the thing that leads to 'speedrunning of content' and you're against it for that reason, then isn't your goal to 'artificially inflate the time spent on the game' for some reason?
Arguments like 'people will be less social', 'people will kick others/be toxic and elitist', and 'people will use data wrong and create drama' are all related to trackers, yes, but what you are targeting now doesn't really seem to be about trackers, it's moreso an 'anti-skill' argument...
remember that we are using the combat tracker to determine which stat to increase.
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 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
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
Don't want to disappoint.
Every game without hard caps that I have ever played has had both non-standard and non-linear diminishing returns - most of the time without the developer even realizing it.
There is literally no possible way to accurately map those diminishing returns without a combat tracker - at least not if we want to talk on the scale of a human lifespan.
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
The discussion around combat trackers are meaningless, and is very much of topic (though I do like to discuss it).
There will be combat trackers and that's that. You don't need to use it, but some people will.
i agree with you, but in some cases the combat tracker will tell you that a specific build in terms of numbers is performing better than the others, but because there are things that the combat tracker cant account for, using that "optimal" build will actually the a bad, if not the worst choice when it comes to actually playing the game (this will mostly be because of pvp).
There is nothing the combat tracker do not account for. It logs everything that happens in combat.
And "the most optimal" build or rotation usually do not come from the use of combat tracker but from the use of combat simulators.
I can not talk to much about pvp since I'm not a big pvper.
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.
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.
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...
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.
how do I know whats best? by playing the game, knowing how stats work, pvping a lot, talking to experienced players, etc
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).
I do math too. but you guys still don't get it. not all the info that you need is found in the combat logs.
And where do you get those numbers from so you can do the math?
remember that we are using the combat tracker to determine which stat to increase.
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 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
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
Don't want to disappoint.
Every game without hard caps that I have ever played has had both non-standard and non-linear diminishing returns - most of the time without the developer even realizing it.
There is literally no possible way to accurately map those diminishing returns without a combat tracker - at least not if we want to talk on the scale of a human lifespan.
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
i disagree with this part. just because you can equip something, doesnt mean it will be effective on your character or build
Yeah but you won't know that it is less effective because there are no damage meters. Problem solved.
what?xD
so if need casting speed and i wear something that gives me attack speed instead, i wont know its bad without a damage meter? or if im a mage and my weapon gives me physical damage i wont know its bad? o-o
I doubt ashes is just going to have two modifiers “casting and attack/physical” there could be dozens.
Oh, and you didn’t know that there is a hard cast speed cap at 30% and you already passed it? Turns out you actually need a bit more crit instead. Guess there was no way to know that, and there is no way to tell if an item actually improved your character.
those were just examples...im not gonna type every single item effect there is xD
also, no hard caps, already confirmed.
No hard caps means soft caps will exist.
This is a great thing for those of us that will be using a combat tracker.
actually, in this case the combat tracker will make you shoot yourself in the foot, most likely
im pretty sure you gonna reply to this with some explanation of why not, so ill wait and then explain you why.
The discussion around combat trackers are meaningless, and is very much of topic (though I do like to discuss it).
There will be combat trackers and that's that. You don't need to use it, but some people will.
i agree with you, but in some cases the combat tracker will tell you that a specific build in terms of numbers is performing better than the others, but because there are things that the combat tracker cant account for, using that "optimal" build will actually the a bad, if not the worst choice when it comes to actually playing the game (this will mostly be because of pvp).
There is nothing the combat tracker do not account for. It logs everything that happens in combat.
And "the most optimal" build or rotation usually do not come from the use of combat tracker but from the use of combat simulators.
I can not talk to much about pvp since I'm not a big pvper.
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.
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.
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...
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.
how do I know whats best? by playing the game, knowing how stats work, pvping a lot, talking to experienced players, etc
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).
I do math too. but you guys still don't get it. not all the info that you need is found in the combat logs.
And where do you get those numbers from so you can do the math?
What Information can't I see in the Combat logs?
Actually yeah I'm happy to pivot to that too, at least, since I can at least relate it to classes.
Let's discuss this as JUST Combat Logs, and what we can and can't do with them, because strictly speaking, we're getting to the point where you (@Depraved) and Mag are kinda arguing against combat logs (or basically telling people that you aren't good at these games, I wish I had a different way of seeing it but it is what it is).
The parts that a combat log doesn't show are the parts you should have actual memory of, physically. So what's the deal here? Are we expecting people to 'look at the log and then entirely drop the memory of what was on the screen at the time in the log timestamp?
It is 8 classes with 8 flavours each. I still think its a convoluted approach. There are so many games that could have influenced the class system, instead we get a half baked class system that's not DnD, not AA and not L2. It's a kind of halfway house and a half assed attempt at variety. We can't actually build how we want and we can't actually break from the base archetypes either.
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.
A combat tracker doesn't tell you what is or is not worth doing. All it tells you is what has happened - giving you information so that you can then make the decision as to what is and what is not worth doing.
Again, you are talking about misused combat trackers. You seem to think people will look at just one aspects of something to make a decision, which is either an illogical or dishonest argument on your part (depends on whether you actually believe what you are saying or not).
A combat tracker isn't going to tell me if auto attacks in any given game are worth using in PvP. What it can do is give me easy access to data from experiments I run in order to evaluate auto attacks in PvP. Using that data, I can then make my own decision.
That data includes everything - it includes damage, combat resources, it includes secondary effects that may be part of or triggered by auto attack (damage procs, interrupts, what ever). Literally everything is in a good combat log (they can be used to recreate exact replications of combat in entierity).
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).
I talk about people doing the best they can, not the best people.
People not putting thought at all in to their build (and thus making poor decisions) are not doing the best they can. The best they can would necessitate at least looking up a good build. That is something that is available to the entire population of any given MMORPG.
you are the one who suggested this a few posts ago.
No, you are just either failing to understand, or refusing to understand (my guess is refusing - this is really basic stuff).
You use a combat tracker to gain an understanding of the games combat system, and the individual mechancis that make up the combat system.
This means that by the time you get to the point where you need to make a decision, you already know what the right choice is because you have a deeper understanding of the systems at play. Thus you don't need to use a combat tracker at that point in time to get the answer - you have already learned the answer by gaining a basic understanding of the combat system.
The big difference between what you do and what I do is that I understand the outliers. You don't.
I would wager that there is a situation in L2 where auto attacks absolutely are worth using to some degree in PvP. I have absolutely no doubt that you wouldn't be aware of it, but if I played L2, I would.
This is what happened in Archeage. I'm not an overly good PvP player (not shit, but not great). However, because I had data that no one else had in that game, I was easily able to take on 3 or 4 equally geared players at a time. It isn't that I was good, it was that I knew how the games combat system was broken.
An example of that is that I knew which races were more susceptible to CC than the other races. This wasn't something that was known, there was no stated alteration to CC susceptability with race selection - there there were two races that were significantly more susceptable to all forms of CC.
Thus, if I was playing a game where auto attack wasn't worth using in PvP, but had a chance to interrupt component attached to it, and I also knew that there were some races that were more susceptable to CC than others, I would absolutely consider using auto attack if I came up against someone of one of those susceptable races that happened to be a caster or healer.
Your way of going about things isn't going to tell you that. You'll happily just thing that auto attack isn't worth using, and consider that something you now just know.
It is worth putting in here that literally every game I have ever played (EQ, EQ2, WoW, Rift, Archeage, AoC, WAR, DDO, LotRO, STO, EVE, Allods, BDO, ESO, GW2, Aion, several more) has had anomolies like the above in it. It is normal, it is not the exception.
Ashes absolutely will have things like this - you won't know of them.
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.
Just as an fyi - these are the comments you make that betray your lack of understanding of how to properly use a combat tracker.
Combat trackers don't tell people what to do. They give players specific points of information - that is all.
If a player doesn't take in to account all appropriate information, they may well make the wrong decision. If a player has incorrect information they may also make the wrong decision.
However, that applies to people that don't use combat trackers as well. If you don't use a combat tracker and you also don't take all the appropriate information in to account, you will make a poor decision. If you don't use a combat tracker and have incorrect information, you may still also make a wrong decision.
Having a combat tracker reduces the chances of having bad information, and gives you access to information faster, meaning you can either get it sooner (thus making the decision sooner), or you can get more information, making the information you are making your decision on statistically more accurate.
There is no situation where a properly used combat tracker can lead someone to a wrong choice where it isn't also equally or more viable for someone without a combat tracker to make that same wrong choice.
It is you saying "the combat tracker told you" really is screaming to the rest of us that you only know how to misuse a combat tracker.
I’m very excited and happy to wait for the augment system, even if they’re primarily cosmetic /thematic changes that pepper in some secondary skills that echo each archetype.. great. Millions of players care about expressing themselves through their avatar and class skins are such a great way to do that. I pick my class based on aesthetic and the rest kind of comes together, I have not enjoyed a class in wow so much as I have resto shaman and enhance just for the blue visuals.
I take issue because Ranger base has no melee skills right now. That means a Bow Bard will not have the ranged attacks a ranger does, just the hunts and marks. I really need to see a fully augmented setup before I can settle on the current setup.
It is 8 classes with 8 flavours each. I still think its a convoluted approach. There are so many games that could have influenced the class system, instead we get a half baked class system that's not DnD, not AA and not L2. It's a kind of halfway house and a half assed attempt at variety. We can't actually build how we want and we can't actually break from the base archetypes either.
It is 8 classes with 8 flavours each. I still think its a convoluted approach. There are so many games that could have influenced the class system, instead we get a half baked class system that's not DnD, not AA and not L2. It's a kind of halfway house and a half assed attempt at variety. We can't actually build how we want and we can't actually break from the base archetypes either.
This feels like a pretty bad take.
It can feel any which way you want. The fact remains we are still on base archetypes with few if any augments shown. A2 is in Q3 which means augments must exist. As a fundamental aspect of the class dynamics the augments should be shown in full operation prior to A2 alongside the rest of the classes. 8 years is a long time to have shown so little. Each time a class is shown its always half baked and basic principles.
It is 8 classes with 8 flavours each. I still think its a convoluted approach. There are so many games that could have influenced the class system, instead we get a half baked class system that's not DnD, not AA and not L2. It's a kind of halfway house and a half assed attempt at variety. We can't actually build how we want and we can't actually break from the base archetypes either.
This feels like a pretty bad take.
It can feel any which way you want. The fact remains we are still on base archetypes with few if any augments shown. A2 is in Q3 which means augments must exist. As a fundamental aspect of the class dynamics the augments should be shown in full operation prior to A2 alongside the rest of the classes. 8 years is a long time to have shown so little. Each time a class is shown its always half baked and basic principles.
IT isnt 8 years of 300 devs working on the game. That is include preproduction elements, building tech, vertical slice, etc.
ITs a indie studio so they have less resources and have to build a team, etc. Its a lot more work than being already established Ie ubisoft, epic games, bioware, etc.
It is 8 classes with 8 flavours each. I still think its a convoluted approach. There are so many games that could have influenced the class system, instead we get a half baked class system that's not DnD, not AA and not L2. It's a kind of halfway house and a half assed attempt at variety. We can't actually build how we want and we can't actually break from the base archetypes either.
This feels like a pretty bad take.
It can feel any which way you want. The fact remains we are still on base archetypes with few if any augments shown. A2 is in Q3 which means augments must exist. As a fundamental aspect of the class dynamics the augments should be shown in full operation prior to A2 alongside the rest of the classes. 8 years is a long time to have shown so little. Each time a class is shown its always half baked and basic principles.
IT isnt 8 years of 300 devs working on the game. That is include preproduction elements, building tech, vertical slice, etc.
ITs a indie studio so they have less resources and have to build a team, etc. Its a lot more work than being already established Ie ubisoft, epic games, bioware, etc.
Yes. I understand the principles of indie development. You skipped over my point entirely - unless the devs are about to encode several thousand augments in 9 months some augments must exist. We don't even have knowledge of all the augment trees for each class yet let alone the standalone trees for augments. Thus, to my mind, a massive chunk of combat is MIA.
It is 8 classes with 8 flavours each. I still think its a convoluted approach. There are so many games that could have influenced the class system, instead we get a half baked class system that's not DnD, not AA and not L2. It's a kind of halfway house and a half assed attempt at variety. We can't actually build how we want and we can't actually break from the base archetypes either.
This feels like a pretty bad take.
It can feel any which way you want. The fact remains we are still on base archetypes with few if any augments shown. A2 is in Q3 which means augments must exist. As a fundamental aspect of the class dynamics the augments should be shown in full operation prior to A2 alongside the rest of the classes. 8 years is a long time to have shown so little. Each time a class is shown its always half baked and basic principles.
IT isnt 8 years of 300 devs working on the game. That is include preproduction elements, building tech, vertical slice, etc.
ITs a indie studio so they have less resources and have to build a team, etc. Its a lot more work than being already established Ie ubisoft, epic games, bioware, etc.
Yes. I understand the principles of indie development. You skipped over my point entirely - unless the devs are about to encode several thousand augments in 9 months some augments must exist. We don't even have knowledge of all the augment trees for each class yet let alone the standalone trees for augments. Thus, to my mind, a massive chunk of combat is MIA.
Ya im sure most of the stuff is mia. Baseline will be there by alpha 2 and be easier to develop from that point since it wont be blank canvases at that point.
Granted maybe they are further along than we realize hard to share every detail of their development in that hour and half time frame once per month.
This means that by the time you get to the point where you need to make a decision, you already know what the right choice is because you have a deeper understanding of the systems at play. Thus you don't need to use a combat tracker at that point in time to get the answer - you have already learned the answer by gaining a basic understanding of the combat system.
Exactly. Noanni you are wasting your time talking to Depraved. He doesn't understand it and he doesn't want to understand it. There are many of us that do understand it and know exactly what you are saying.
When we play a game we can only guess at the underlying mechanics, ie: "How the game actually works". The only way to find out for sure is through testing. All the combat tracker is doing is visually displaying our tests. Every fight you do is a test of the game systems.
Once we understand how the game works, we can design builds and arrange tradeoffs. Without this knowledge it is all guesswork and likely wrong.
I've been advocating for target dummies and trackers on multiple threads but just get brushed off... Shrug.
Don't know how many hours ive spent in games on dummies with trackers tweaking builds and seeing dmg profile responses. Then trading off some dmg here and there for some versatility in order to make a good 2v2 build, or battleground build, or open world build, or raid build.
It sounds like a lot of people in these forums just guess at what seems cool and never verify anything. No wonder they end up using cookie cutter meta builds from other people.
When we play a game we can only guess at the underlying mechanics, ie: "How the game actually works". The only way to find out for sure is through testing. All the combat tracker is doing is visually displaying our tests. Every fight you do is a test of the game systems.
Once we understand how the game works, we can design builds and arrange tradeoffs. Without this knowledge it is all guesswork and likely wrong.
I've been advocating for target dummies and trackers on multiple threads but just get brushed off... Shrug.
Don't know how many hours ive spent in games on dummies with trackers tweaking builds and seeing dmg profile responses. Then trading off some dmg here and there for some versatility in order to make a good 2v2 build, or battleground build, or open world build, or raid build.
So, Intrepid is wrong, wanting their players to actually play their game?
Instead, you bake your huge cockie in a testing environment rather than going out in the world and enjoying combat, gameplay, and time with your friends.
Getting brushed off on multiple occasions means you do something wrong or it isn't relevant for others.
Make your exact builds, juggle 90% of your time with math, numbers, graphs, and 3rd party tools but don't force your playstyle indirectly on other players who want to have fun with in-house gameplay mechanics.
There are reasons why Intrepid doesn't want to bother with it, accept it!... all of you.
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
Fist of, combat tracker have been in MMOs for a long time. I know for example that EverQuest 2 had it. So it's not a new thing.
Secondly, people that use combat tracker still very very much do social interactions. And finding the best possible way to play takes times and always changes. A good example is for example the theory crafters for ferals in classic wow. They feral community is Insanely active and shares ideas and theories.
It is however true that some played just want to "Winn the game" as fast as possible and don't do any social interactions or try and get game knowledge by them self. But that's not the type of players you are currently talking to.
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people wouldn't use it.
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
Yeah you just suck or are trolling. But you've irritated my group enough that I'm shifting the usual way, have fun with them instead today.
Anyone who thinks that people who use logs/replays to work out stuff are less social and more toxic, can't be counted on for much in tough games.
Goes both ways my group thinks u have no clue what you are talking about.
When you have a bunch of WoW and Ff players that can go to a website look someone or a build up and use that as a judgement sounds like you are skipping a lot of social elements. This is what happens when you are sitting in a bubble with the same people.
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people would use it.
The point of a good combat log is to compile the combat data in a readable and effective way. Instead of having to do it by recording screen and the rewatching it to do calculations by hand (pen and paper).
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people wouldn't use it.
Oh, so you are against combat logs and such. That makes so much more sense now.
I admit to being entirely foolish enough to think that somehow you were making a real argument that logs are fine but trackers are bad, but you just don't like people having data.
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people wouldn't use it.
Oh, so you are against combat logs and such. That makes so much more sense now.
I admit to being entirely foolish enough to think that somehow you were making a real argument that logs are fine but trackers are bad, but you just don't like people having data.
Personal combat logs are fine, I'm against trackers and everything it leads to as well as tracking everyone around you automatically, and combat logs viewing other players around you.
When you get hit by NPCS imo you should have limited information from that as well. As in damage and not types (though I'm sure that wont be happening and you will have more detailed information).
Figure out NPcs knowing their strengths and weaknesses for gearing should as well be part of the challenge. Even more so with AoC being as it is to make up for parts of challenges lost because of the nature of the game.
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people would use it.
The point of a good combat log is to compile the combat data in a readable and effective way. Instead of having to do it by recording screen and the rewatching it to do calculations by hand (pen and paper).
Personal only and hand and paper is what you should do. It means more work going in and some people will be known for that. Everyone will find out different things and theorycraft on it. When we are getting to the point of some program reading insane detailed analytics and that is what is doing all the work so you can figure things out faster and alone. That is a issue to me that leads to less social interaction, allows you to run content faster, allows you to optimize your build faster, etc.
Respect for the journey is loss and you are effectively just being a half cyborg at that point. The next level becomes AI being very effective in giving exact answers instantly. Which all this gets deeper, lopng story short you aren't actually clearing content yourself.
When we play a game we can only guess at the underlying mechanics, ie: "How the game actually works". The only way to find out for sure is through testing. All the combat tracker is doing is visually displaying our tests. Every fight you do is a test of the game systems.
Once we understand how the game works, we can design builds and arrange tradeoffs. Without this knowledge it is all guesswork and likely wrong.
I've been advocating for target dummies and trackers on multiple threads but just get brushed off... Shrug.
Don't know how many hours ive spent in games on dummies with trackers tweaking builds and seeing dmg profile responses. Then trading off some dmg here and there for some versatility in order to make a good 2v2 build, or battleground build, or open world build, or raid build.
So, Intrepid is wrong, wanting their players to actually play their game?
Instead, you bake your huge cockie in a testing environment rather than going out in the world and enjoying combat, gameplay, and time with your friends.
Getting brushed off on multiple occasions means you do something wrong or it isn't relevant for others.
Make your exact builds, juggle 90% of your time with math, numbers, graphs, and 3rd party tools but don't force your playstyle indirectly on other players who want to have fun with in-house gameplay mechanics.
There are reasons why Intrepid doesn't want to bother with it, accept it!... all of you.
And to bring back the thread at least partially...
If Intrepid doesn't want to bother with 'people doing things in testing environments' they should probably take the BDO/Quinfall route and simplify builds to have less variety.
Obviously, players just 'create their own testing environments' in some way otherwise. You read too much into Xeeg's post, too.
Note this part:
"Once we understand how the game works, we can design builds and arrange tradeoffs. Without this knowledge it is all guesswork and likely wrong."
The thing that is happening isn't 'this is telling me what to do', it is 'I have a goal and I want to check if my goal is achieved with this gear setup, against a consistent situation'. Without this, the game turns into 'everyone of this type trying to go out and find their one simplistic consistent mob to do the same tests on'.
I don't care about Training Dummies vs not, but Intrepid would have to change the design of the game to be much shallower if they 'don't want to bother with it', or so complex and dynamic that the people who don't do this, won't even want to play (for many reasons).
So, if Intrepid somehow actually had a goal of 'making it a bad idea to parse their combat log and use training dummies or mob equivalents of training dummies', then having 64 classes is definitely a bad idea, even before any consideration of the high freedom allowed in builds, weapons, and augments.
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people wouldn't use it.
"People shouldn't wear glasses, it makes it faster and easier to see the stuff on screen." It doesn't automatically problem solve to have transparent information about enemies. It doesn't even really make it 'easier' unless we count 'putting glasses on' instead of squinting making math or tactical problems 'easier'.
I am glad modern designers have moved towards data transparency. Less time wasted on arguing with otherwise reasonable people who just forgot to put their glasses on. Less toxic.
Old days - people talking and figure things out together and putting work in to find out what works over time.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people would use it.
The point of a good combat log is to compile the combat data in a readable and effective way. Instead of having to do it by recording screen and the rewatching it to do calculations by hand (pen and paper).
Personal only and hand and paper is what you should do. It means more work going in and some people will be known for that. Everyone will find out different things and theorycraft on it. When we are getting to the point of some program reading insane detailed analytics and that is what is doing all the work so you can figure things out faster and alone. That is a issue to me that leads to less social interaction, allows you to run content faster, allows you to optimize your build faster, etc.
Respect for the journey is loss and you are effectively just being a half cyborg at that point. The next level becomes AI being very effective in giving exact answers instantly. Which all this gets deeper, lopng story short you aren't actually clearing content yourself.
It also means that less players will be able to and have the time to do analysis of the combat. Meaning that people will have to listen to other players even more since "they have done the pen and paper calculations". A casual player could never do their own quick analysis to confirm or deny. So there will be less detailed theory crafting and more guess work and not actually getting anywhere.
A good example of this is actually wow. Since wow classic came out in 2019 there have been crazy theory crafting on all classes and new ways of playing/breaking a class. This would never happen back in 2005, since combat logs and theory crafting, did exist, was much less common (and less people playing the game).
You can still play wow classic without logs or doing/listing to theory crafting, but you probably won't be able to play with the top top end players that requires you to do simulations and pushing your class to the limits. And that's fine.
I personally don't see the point that the "journey is lost"... For me it's more that the journey opens up more at the end game when I do a little bit of optimizing and theory crafting with (or without) combat logs at max level.
I forget if I've asked this before but, @Azherae what's your group's stance on pvp info in the logs?
In other words, if a fire mob hits you with fire and a fire mage hits you with fire, should the log say "you received fire dmg" or should it say "you received dmg from this source", but it'd be on you to know what type of dmg that source puts out?
Cause I want full transparency on pve side (with types/passives/etc shown in the mob nameplate), while barely any transparency on the pvp side. So imo the log should say the latter sentence.
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I do math too. but you guys still don't get it. not all the info that you need is found in the combat logs.
When seriously playing a game like Ashes, particularly in PvP, your goal is not often to understand either of those things.
Let's ignore the tracker part of this. A Mage's concern in group PvP generally should not be 'highest damage output' or 'saving their mana' in a non-simplistic game. The Mage is probably trying to work out 'exactly how much defense they need to survive long enough for their cooldowns to come back up again' in a certain situation.
For the eight mage Classes in Ashes, this will be different, and then it will depend on their party. And the effectiveness of their party will depend on which class they are, changing their goals. A Mage/Tank might have survivability from Augments but not as much cooldown/mana cost reduction. A Mage/Ranger might be able to apply defense reduction debuffs to enemies, but then be concerned about having survivability from their gear and not care about saving mana at all OR doing their own damage.
Or, because of their party composition, none of that will be true and the Mage/Tank will use their augments in some unconventional way, becoming 'a Lockdown Spellstone build' instead of a 'Disruption Spellstone build' because that's what their team needs.
This is the thing that people do on-the-fly, sometimes twice per hour, in other games. You now seem to be at the point in this Classes discussion where you are saying you just don't want people to be able to figure out how to play their class well, in general. Is it that you somehow value 'people having to struggle much more to understand their class'?
I am not really challenging your desire here, but if 'me getting good at my class' is the thing that leads to 'speedrunning of content' and you're against it for that reason, then isn't your goal to 'artificially inflate the time spent on the game' for some reason?
Arguments like 'people will be less social', 'people will kick others/be toxic and elitist', and 'people will use data wrong and create drama' are all related to trackers, yes, but what you are targeting now doesn't really seem to be about trackers, it's moreso an 'anti-skill' argument...
And where do you get those numbers from so you can do the math?
What Information can't I see in the Combat logs?
Actually yeah I'm happy to pivot to that too, at least, since I can at least relate it to classes.
Let's discuss this as JUST Combat Logs, and what we can and can't do with them, because strictly speaking, we're getting to the point where you (@Depraved) and Mag are kinda arguing against combat logs (or basically telling people that you aren't good at these games, I wish I had a different way of seeing it but it is what it is).
The parts that a combat log doesn't show are the parts you should have actual memory of, physically. So what's the deal here? Are we expecting people to 'look at the log and then entirely drop the memory of what was on the screen at the time in the log timestamp?
Again, you are talking about misused combat trackers. You seem to think people will look at just one aspects of something to make a decision, which is either an illogical or dishonest argument on your part (depends on whether you actually believe what you are saying or not).
A combat tracker isn't going to tell me if auto attacks in any given game are worth using in PvP. What it can do is give me easy access to data from experiments I run in order to evaluate auto attacks in PvP. Using that data, I can then make my own decision.
That data includes everything - it includes damage, combat resources, it includes secondary effects that may be part of or triggered by auto attack (damage procs, interrupts, what ever). Literally everything is in a good combat log (they can be used to recreate exact replications of combat in entierity).
I talk about people doing the best they can, not the best people.
People not putting thought at all in to their build (and thus making poor decisions) are not doing the best they can. The best they can would necessitate at least looking up a good build. That is something that is available to the entire population of any given MMORPG.
No, you are just either failing to understand, or refusing to understand (my guess is refusing - this is really basic stuff).
You use a combat tracker to gain an understanding of the games combat system, and the individual mechancis that make up the combat system.
This means that by the time you get to the point where you need to make a decision, you already know what the right choice is because you have a deeper understanding of the systems at play. Thus you don't need to use a combat tracker at that point in time to get the answer - you have already learned the answer by gaining a basic understanding of the combat system.
The big difference between what you do and what I do is that I understand the outliers. You don't.
I would wager that there is a situation in L2 where auto attacks absolutely are worth using to some degree in PvP. I have absolutely no doubt that you wouldn't be aware of it, but if I played L2, I would.
This is what happened in Archeage. I'm not an overly good PvP player (not shit, but not great). However, because I had data that no one else had in that game, I was easily able to take on 3 or 4 equally geared players at a time. It isn't that I was good, it was that I knew how the games combat system was broken.
An example of that is that I knew which races were more susceptible to CC than the other races. This wasn't something that was known, there was no stated alteration to CC susceptability with race selection - there there were two races that were significantly more susceptable to all forms of CC.
Thus, if I was playing a game where auto attack wasn't worth using in PvP, but had a chance to interrupt component attached to it, and I also knew that there were some races that were more susceptable to CC than others, I would absolutely consider using auto attack if I came up against someone of one of those susceptable races that happened to be a caster or healer.
Your way of going about things isn't going to tell you that. You'll happily just thing that auto attack isn't worth using, and consider that something you now just know.
It is worth putting in here that literally every game I have ever played (EQ, EQ2, WoW, Rift, Archeage, AoC, WAR, DDO, LotRO, STO, EVE, Allods, BDO, ESO, GW2, Aion, several more) has had anomolies like the above in it. It is normal, it is not the exception.
Ashes absolutely will have things like this - you won't know of them.
I will.
Combat trackers don't tell people what to do. They give players specific points of information - that is all.
If a player doesn't take in to account all appropriate information, they may well make the wrong decision. If a player has incorrect information they may also make the wrong decision.
However, that applies to people that don't use combat trackers as well. If you don't use a combat tracker and you also don't take all the appropriate information in to account, you will make a poor decision. If you don't use a combat tracker and have incorrect information, you may still also make a wrong decision.
Having a combat tracker reduces the chances of having bad information, and gives you access to information faster, meaning you can either get it sooner (thus making the decision sooner), or you can get more information, making the information you are making your decision on statistically more accurate.
There is no situation where a properly used combat tracker can lead someone to a wrong choice where it isn't also equally or more viable for someone without a combat tracker to make that same wrong choice.
It is you saying "the combat tracker told you" really is screaming to the rest of us that you only know how to misuse a combat tracker.
This feels like a pretty bad take.
It can feel any which way you want. The fact remains we are still on base archetypes with few if any augments shown. A2 is in Q3 which means augments must exist. As a fundamental aspect of the class dynamics the augments should be shown in full operation prior to A2 alongside the rest of the classes. 8 years is a long time to have shown so little. Each time a class is shown its always half baked and basic principles.
IT isnt 8 years of 300 devs working on the game. That is include preproduction elements, building tech, vertical slice, etc.
ITs a indie studio so they have less resources and have to build a team, etc. Its a lot more work than being already established Ie ubisoft, epic games, bioware, etc.
Yes. I understand the principles of indie development. You skipped over my point entirely - unless the devs are about to encode several thousand augments in 9 months some augments must exist. We don't even have knowledge of all the augment trees for each class yet let alone the standalone trees for augments. Thus, to my mind, a massive chunk of combat is MIA.
Ya im sure most of the stuff is mia. Baseline will be there by alpha 2 and be easier to develop from that point since it wont be blank canvases at that point.
Granted maybe they are further along than we realize hard to share every detail of their development in that hour and half time frame once per month.
Exactly. Noanni you are wasting your time talking to Depraved. He doesn't understand it and he doesn't want to understand it. There are many of us that do understand it and know exactly what you are saying.
When we play a game we can only guess at the underlying mechanics, ie: "How the game actually works". The only way to find out for sure is through testing. All the combat tracker is doing is visually displaying our tests. Every fight you do is a test of the game systems.
Once we understand how the game works, we can design builds and arrange tradeoffs. Without this knowledge it is all guesswork and likely wrong.
I've been advocating for target dummies and trackers on multiple threads but just get brushed off... Shrug.
Don't know how many hours ive spent in games on dummies with trackers tweaking builds and seeing dmg profile responses. Then trading off some dmg here and there for some versatility in order to make a good 2v2 build, or battleground build, or open world build, or raid build.
It sounds like a lot of people in these forums just guess at what seems cool and never verify anything. No wonder they end up using cookie cutter meta builds from other people.
So, Intrepid is wrong, wanting their players to actually play their game?
Instead, you bake your huge cockie in a testing environment rather than going out in the world and enjoying combat, gameplay, and time with your friends.
Getting brushed off on multiple occasions means you do something wrong or it isn't relevant for others.
Make your exact builds, juggle 90% of your time with math, numbers, graphs, and 3rd party tools but don't force your playstyle indirectly on other players who want to have fun with in-house gameplay mechanics.
There are reasons why Intrepid doesn't want to bother with it, accept it!... all of you.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
Yeah you just suck or are trolling. But you've irritated my group enough that I'm shifting the usual way, have fun with them instead today.
Anyone who thinks that people who use logs/replays to work out stuff are less social and more toxic, can't be counted on for much in tough games.
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
Fist of, combat tracker have been in MMOs for a long time. I know for example that EverQuest 2 had it. So it's not a new thing.
Secondly, people that use combat tracker still very very much do social interactions. And finding the best possible way to play takes times and always changes. A good example is for example the theory crafters for ferals in classic wow. They feral community is Insanely active and shares ideas and theories.
It is however true that some played just want to "Winn the game" as fast as possible and don't do any social interactions or try and get game knowledge by them self. But that's not the type of players you are currently talking to.
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people wouldn't use it.
Goes both ways my group thinks u have no clue what you are talking about.
When you have a bunch of WoW and Ff players that can go to a website look someone or a build up and use that as a judgement sounds like you are skipping a lot of social elements. This is what happens when you are sitting in a bubble with the same people.
The point of a good combat log is to compile the combat data in a readable and effective way. Instead of having to do it by recording screen and the rewatching it to do calculations by hand (pen and paper).
Oh, so you are against combat logs and such. That makes so much more sense now.
I admit to being entirely foolish enough to think that somehow you were making a real argument that logs are fine but trackers are bad, but you just don't like people having data.
Personal combat logs are fine, I'm against trackers and everything it leads to as well as tracking everyone around you automatically, and combat logs viewing other players around you.
When you get hit by NPCS imo you should have limited information from that as well. As in damage and not types (though I'm sure that wont be happening and you will have more detailed information).
Figure out NPcs knowing their strengths and weaknesses for gearing should as well be part of the challenge. Even more so with AoC being as it is to make up for parts of challenges lost because of the nature of the game.
Personal only and hand and paper is what you should do. It means more work going in and some people will be known for that. Everyone will find out different things and theorycraft on it. When we are getting to the point of some program reading insane detailed analytics and that is what is doing all the work so you can figure things out faster and alone. That is a issue to me that leads to less social interaction, allows you to run content faster, allows you to optimize your build faster, etc.
Respect for the journey is loss and you are effectively just being a half cyborg at that point. The next level becomes AI being very effective in giving exact answers instantly. Which all this gets deeper, lopng story short you aren't actually clearing content yourself.
And to bring back the thread at least partially...
If Intrepid doesn't want to bother with 'people doing things in testing environments' they should probably take the BDO/Quinfall route and simplify builds to have less variety.
Obviously, players just 'create their own testing environments' in some way otherwise. You read too much into Xeeg's post, too.
Note this part:
"Once we understand how the game works, we can design builds and arrange tradeoffs. Without this knowledge it is all guesswork and likely wrong."
The thing that is happening isn't 'this is telling me what to do', it is 'I have a goal and I want to check if my goal is achieved with this gear setup, against a consistent situation'. Without this, the game turns into 'everyone of this type trying to go out and find their one simplistic consistent mob to do the same tests on'.
I don't care about Training Dummies vs not, but Intrepid would have to change the design of the game to be much shallower if they 'don't want to bother with it', or so complex and dynamic that the people who don't do this, won't even want to play (for many reasons).
So, if Intrepid somehow actually had a goal of 'making it a bad idea to parse their combat log and use training dummies or mob equivalents of training dummies', then having 64 classes is definitely a bad idea, even before any consideration of the high freedom allowed in builds, weapons, and augments.
"People shouldn't wear glasses, it makes it faster and easier to see the stuff on screen." It doesn't automatically problem solve to have transparent information about enemies. It doesn't even really make it 'easier' unless we count 'putting glasses on' instead of squinting making math or tactical problems 'easier'.
I am glad modern designers have moved towards data transparency. Less time wasted on arguing with otherwise reasonable people who just forgot to put their glasses on. Less toxic.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yhr9WpjaDzw
It also means that less players will be able to and have the time to do analysis of the combat. Meaning that people will have to listen to other players even more since "they have done the pen and paper calculations". A casual player could never do their own quick analysis to confirm or deny. So there will be less detailed theory crafting and more guess work and not actually getting anywhere.
A good example of this is actually wow. Since wow classic came out in 2019 there have been crazy theory crafting on all classes and new ways of playing/breaking a class. This would never happen back in 2005, since combat logs and theory crafting, did exist, was much less common (and less people playing the game).
You can still play wow classic without logs or doing/listing to theory crafting, but you probably won't be able to play with the top top end players that requires you to do simulations and pushing your class to the limits. And that's fine.
I personally don't see the point that the "journey is lost"... For me it's more that the journey opens up more at the end game when I do a little bit of optimizing and theory crafting with (or without) combat logs at max level.
In other words, if a fire mob hits you with fire and a fire mage hits you with fire, should the log say "you received fire dmg" or should it say "you received dmg from this source", but it'd be on you to know what type of dmg that source puts out?
Cause I want full transparency on pve side (with types/passives/etc shown in the mob nameplate), while barely any transparency on the pvp side. So imo the log should say the latter sentence.