Sorrow of Support and Healing classes
nanfoodle
Member, Founder, Kickstarter
Before we get into the main topic. Ashes will have leader boards. Steven has even talked about leader boards being used to let the system know who helped take out a node in a node war, for looting rights at the end of the battle. We see these at the end of Arena fights but we will be able to see peoples kill counts, assist, personal deaths etc. Here is where Support and Healing classes are often over looked.
Other then healing done these classes get very little info on the score board. A support class should have information on the leader board for Buffs given, damage % given to them for damage modifiers given to team mates. In short I add 10% damage buff to my team, I should have a score that shows how much damage I added for my buffs. I am sure IS could work this out to just a few stats that show how we participated.
DPS classes and damage done and kills marks them for what they are. Healers and Support needs their stats shown so they can gage how they did. Get recognition so they can get guild hunted. Invites to other events. Most MMOs do not do this and I ask that IS looks at ways to add stats on leader boards for us as well for the things that make us unique in the battle. This also challenges us to see how we can improve in that same thing.
Healers and Support class players, please speak out. What ideas do you have on the metrics you would like to see posted.
Other then healing done these classes get very little info on the score board. A support class should have information on the leader board for Buffs given, damage % given to them for damage modifiers given to team mates. In short I add 10% damage buff to my team, I should have a score that shows how much damage I added for my buffs. I am sure IS could work this out to just a few stats that show how we participated.
DPS classes and damage done and kills marks them for what they are. Healers and Support needs their stats shown so they can gage how they did. Get recognition so they can get guild hunted. Invites to other events. Most MMOs do not do this and I ask that IS looks at ways to add stats on leader boards for us as well for the things that make us unique in the battle. This also challenges us to see how we can improve in that same thing.
Healers and Support class players, please speak out. What ideas do you have on the metrics you would like to see posted.
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Comments
Though I personally dislike the leaderboards themselves, cause they can distract people from doing their damn job in the encounter and instead try to boost their leaderboard stats.
Im just giving feedback on systems Steven has confirmed will be in the game and how they are considering they will be implemented. I do like your idea, its simple and neat.
I get your feelings on this but here is my point.
1. Classes that DPS as their prime role are getting listed in these stats for what they do best.
2. Healers get some of that with amount healed but thats not all they do. Buffs, Reses etc.
3. Support like Bard classes wont have a focus of DPS or Heals. So they will have very little added to these leader board on how they shaped the battle.
This is a mechanic that WILL BE in this game. If thats a fact. Healers and Support (Bards) should have equal showing on these leader bords for what they do. I cant count how many times I have looked at a lead board and said, I really shaped this battle. Looking at this board, in no way did it reflect that. Ashes should do this better if thats the direction they are going. How can we do that???? Thats the point of this tread.
You could break it down by time and emphasize areas where key fights take place using graphs and numbers to illustrate cooldown usage, kills, healing numbers etc by player. The problem with this is it's a significant amount of work both from a tracking perspective and in UI display. The time to create this and make it useable will take away from other aspects of the game. I don't think the juice here is worth the squeeze.
In some circumstances it could give an indication of how well a healer is able to support the encounter on an apples-to-apples basis with other healers. Possibly it would also reflect how reactive vs proactive the healer is, given that the "oh shit" abilities generally require much more mana.
Ultimately I decided that it's probably not a very good metric because (1) some builds are more mana heavy than others, and more importantly, (2) the skill of the rest of the group probably has a bigger impact on a healer's mana efficiency than the healer's skill.
That said, I mention it here in case it might trigger thoughts from others on how it might be useful.
Some metrics are easy to quantify, and some aren't. That's part of the difficulty. In a perfect system, I'd prefer an overall "score" that took into account everything that a person did, that mattered (so ignored stat padding). Good luck creating that algorithm!
100% agreed. Bard is going to be the poster child for this.
I am planning to roll a Shadow Disciple, no doubt sacrificing a lot of heals to add damage and other utility. There are many examples like this, where the traditional stats just aren't going to capture the contributions of a player.
I do like there being a number of metrics that could be taken into account. Total Damage, healing, buff time sustained, damage mitatgated all having a point value and giving one score for just how much you participated. Just gives everyone a point value over all the stats separate.
In a game of chess, for instance, a centrally placed knight or a bishop controlling a diagonal might not be the most active pieces, but their presence alone restricts the opponent’s movements and applies pressure. This concept translates directly to siege gameplay, where positioning and zoning can be just as critical as direct damage or kills. However, these nuanced contributions, such as strategic zoning or well-timed crowd control (CC), are often underrepresented on leaderboards.
Crowd control (CC) usage, for example, isn’t just about how many enemies are stunned or rooted. The timing and placement of CC can be pivotal to the outcome of a battle, but these actions are difficult to track through basic kill/death or damage numbers.
A more effective system for tracking player contributions in sieges could involve developing metrics that account for positional value and area control, in addition to the traditional stats like damage dealt or kills. For instance:
Positional Value: This could be measured by tracking how long players control key areas of the battlefield or hold positions that apply strategic pressure on the enemy. Players in highly contested areas could receive additional weighting in their contribution score, as holding or contesting strategic points is often more valuable than raw damage output.
Area Control: This could involve monitoring how long a player prevents enemy forces from advancing into critical zones or disrupts their positioning through zoning mechanics. For example, a player who maintains control over an important choke point or creates zones of denial with abilities could earn recognition based on the time they actively influenced enemy movement.
This would be my proposed solution.
Given the challenges in accurately tracking positional value, area control, and other nuanced roles, it becomes clear that relying on a leaderboard to determine looting rights is fundamentally flawed. Leaderboards are designed to measure easily quantifiable metrics—kills, damage, healing—but they are ill-equipped to reflect the subtleties of support roles and strategic gameplay.
Attempting to quantify every aspect of a player’s contribution in real-time is not only impractical but could also lead to skewed reward systems that favor direct combat over strategic depth. Therefore, rather than using leaderboards as the primary metric for determining looting rights, a more holistic approach should be adopted that recognizes the diverse roles players occupy during sieges.
In conclusion, the leaderboard system, while useful for certain purposes, should not be the arbiter of looting rights in siege scenarios. By embracing a more comprehensive understanding of player contribution, developers can ensure that all players—whether on the front lines or offering tactical support—are rewarded fairly.
It’s never adds to the community, always distracts.
As a tank main, healer secondary, and dps third:
The juice is 100% worth the squeeze.
It's like saying it wouldn't be worth Intrepid taking the dev and UI time to make freeholds and guild halls placeable on anything but flat land that is clear of vegetation. We'll just ignore anything with a hill or tree because it would take too much time to dev. Just eliminate half the land space as viable.
If a feature is going to be in place, it should be fully functional, even if extra bells and whistles aren't there. In this case, it should reflect actual contributions from everyone to the fullest extent the data collection will allow and calculate. Maybe it doesn't update in real time. Maybe it doesn't create a singular weighted score for everyone, based on all the data collected. Maybe it doesn't remain anywhere forever and only shows for that one event. Hell, maybe it doesn't even group people into their respective parties and total the entire raid's contribution, or vice-versa and only shows raid contribution, but not party or individual. But at least it actually shows how non-DPS contributed meaningfully with more depth than simply "healing done" and "damage taken."
I'm not sure what roles you tend to play, but I can say that DPS don't typically feel the sadness of KNOWING you contributed heavily to the win while also seeing your name in the bottom 10% because you didn't slay enough of the opposition. 90% of games out there, be they standard multiplayer or MMO, don't truly value contributions of tank, healer, and support classes in any gathered metrics. Or PVP gameplay, for that matter.
I know 90% is the arbitrary number, but I can count on one hand the multiplayer/mmo games I've played (or even heard about) that actually made a tank feel like they can/did contribute to PVP combat. Tanks, healers, and supports usually seem to have a sole purpose of helping prop up the damage dealers and only gain the team W without getting their own time to shine as well.
If there's a leaderboard that provides winnings from anything and I don't have any way to make myself appear on the top, no matter what I do...Well, I won't be participating unless it is something crucial that impacts my play directly (guild war, node siege, etc...). Even then, I'm going to complain about it the whole time. "Play our game! But no...YOU can't get extra goodies or feel good points. Only people that do enough damage and kill enough other players." Soaks the fun right out of it at the end.
If it's something minor, I'll probably just pass. I'll probably get more fun just doing something else.
100% behind this.
Tanks, healers, and supports really do NEED stat collection outside of damage done, healing done, kills, deaths, and assists.
If there is going to be a leaderboard, it should reflect all contributions.
For tanks:
For healers and supports:
Probably more that could be thought of, but a few of those alone would make the experience far more fun and rewarding.
This thank you I was starting to feel so lonely in this thread.
Please Intrepid Studio pay attention to this post
Your analogy of free hold placement isn't the equivalent, there's so many different systems that touch placing objects in the world and ownership over those objects that that comparison is ridiculous.
There's x number of ui engineers/designers working on the game. Do they sacrifice another pass at player UI customization or increased crafting UI functionality in favor of increased leaderboard customization/functionality? The argument that it makes support players feel good is relatively pointless as any guild worth it's salt will pour through videos to see the value of supports.
Id much rather see a better UI overall then garbage time stats for gold star seeking players.
It has nothing to do with feeling good. If classes get feed back when they play DPS. I'm sick of support and healers and tanks getting their feedback for what they are designed to do. Ashes wants to bring back support then do the job right. Steven said these roles will matter in every area of the game. Them show them they do.
EDIT: Also Ashes has one of the best data collection systems any MMO they have stated. The data will be there. It just needs to be added to the UI that will give DPS feed back. Couple drop downs and your good to go.
Person I quoted definitely said it's about feeling good.
Damage feedback is subjectively useful at best and at worst negatively impacts perceived performance. The work required to make this info clear and concise is time consuming for the UI team.
Bringing back support has nothing to do with leaderboards
I'd be interested to see a Revive Counter, too.
If there are leaderboards for any one thing, I see no reason to not have them for every thing.
But this really depends on what the leaderboards are tracking. Is it resource contribution to nodes? pvp kills during war? dungeon bosses killed? All these require different methods of contribution tracking.
All great suggestions for calculating contributions more accurately so support classes actually get their efforts recognized and rewarded. I'd love to see any and all of this factor in to leaderboards