noaani wrote: » Of course it is a privilege to join a group. Thinking you have the right to join a group - any group - sounds elitist to me. And by definition, if it is not a right, then it is a privilege.
noaani wrote: » The single worst thing I can think of for Ashes is for there to be no way for players to assess their own builds. If there is nothing at all, then the bulk of players that just want to get in the game and kill stuff will simply look for some cookie cutter board on a wiki or forum somewhere and just use it blindly.
dygz wrote: » noaani wrote: » Of course it is a privilege to join a group. Thinking you have the right to join a group - any group - sounds elitist to me. And by definition, if it is not a right, then it is a privilege. Being part of a group is not restricted to your binary concept of rights and privileges. I guess elitists might be restricted to that binary view.
noaani wrote: » Being in a group is a privilege, end of story. No one is obliged to group with you or I, and so when people do, it is a privilege for us to be in a group with them. This is according to the very definition of the word, not to any view you may think I have.
azathoth wrote: » I thought we would be assessing our character's build by playing the game, and measuring the difficulty of the content to our skill level. If I am skilled, my character might be able to handle a few things a few difficulty levels above my character. However, if I still get my butt kicked by level appropriate challenges then the game is either better balanced than expected or my build could be better. If I continue to get my butt kicked by content a lower level (or more) in difficulty, than my skill level needs to come up. If practice doesn't help, then maybe my build is sub-par. The more complex the system, the more I need to focus on my skills not the build. With a simpler system, an introductory skill level should suffice, so that would encourage me to build a "whatever da'fuq" character. This is the way I determine character effectiveness in all the other RPG's I play, I'm pretty sure it will work for Ashes too.
noaani wrote: » This all works well and good when you are solo or in a small group, but when you are in a large group or a raid, how are you supposed to know how effective you are being? You can tell how effective the group or raid as a whole is by the level of success it has, but you can't break down how well any individual within that group or raid is doing - yourself included. So, while success levels on content are absolutely a valid way to measure the combined effectiveness of the whole, whether that whole is someone soloing, a group or a raid, it fails to measure the individual within that whole.
seaber wrote: » Why do you need to measure any individuals? You forgo your individual ambitions in order to further the progress of the whole. The raid's success is all that matters.
noaani wrote: » seaber wrote: » Why do you need to measure any individuals? You forgo your individual ambitions in order to further the progress of the whole. The raid's success is all that matters. Sometimes, when a thing isn't working, it's only not working because one or two components of the thing aren't working. When this is the case, you need to diagnose where the problem is, and then you can address that problem. You don't swap out a car's engine just because the spark plugs are not working, you simply diagnose the issue, and deal with the one component. A combat tracker is literally a diagnostic tool. It allows you to find what part of the whole needs attention - how you then deal with the need to fix something is then up to the individuals involved, but if you don't know where the problem is, there isn't much you can do to fix it. The notion that you don't need a combat tracker because you put aside the individual in order to further the whole can only come from the perspective of only using a combat tracker as a means of e-peen waiving, which is all many people know how to do. However, that is a misuse of a combat tracker as a tool, and in no way takes away from the value of it when used correctly. To me, this is no different than someone using their cars dyno results to gloat to others - when the actual purpose for putting your car on a dyno is to make sure all the individual components of the car work in harmony, and that improvements made to it provide the expected results.
wanderingmist wrote: » noaani wrote: » seaber wrote: » Why do you need to measure any individuals? You forgo your individual ambitions in order to further the progress of the whole. The raid's success is all that matters. Sometimes, when a thing isn't working, it's only not working because one or two components of the thing aren't working. When this is the case, you need to diagnose where the problem is, and then you can address that problem. You don't swap out a car's engine just because the spark plugs are not working, you simply diagnose the issue, and deal with the one component. A combat tracker is literally a diagnostic tool. It allows you to find what part of the whole needs attention - how you then deal with the need to fix something is then up to the individuals involved, but if you don't know where the problem is, there isn't much you can do to fix it. The notion that you don't need a combat tracker because you put aside the individual in order to further the whole can only come from the perspective of only using a combat tracker as a means of e-peen waiving, which is all many people know how to do. However, that is a misuse of a combat tracker as a tool, and in no way takes away from the value of it when used correctly. To me, this is no different than someone using their cars dyno results to gloat to others - when the actual purpose for putting your car on a dyno is to make sure all the individual components of the car work in harmony, and that improvements made to it provide the expected results. I know we've gone over this point before but depending on how the combat and raid encounters work, you might be able to diagnose the problem without needing a combat tracker. If that's the case then looking too deeply into the combat analysis will just muddy the waters and make it harder to discover the real issue. Any doctor will tell you how easy it is to get set on a line of questioning and analysis that leads to the completely wrong diagnosis, and start ordering tests which are totally pointless. Sometimes too much information can cause problems, which is why I'm very fond of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid). In the case of a raid encounter, let's say someone died at a crucial moment, so the raid leader digs deep into the combat tracker to find the problem. They see that one of the healers who was assigned to that group reduced their healing output, when really all that happened was the person who died was stood in the wrong place. But now because the combat tracker says that the healing output was low, the raid leader gets fixated on that and tries to get the healer to do better. If they had just looked at the position of their raid team instead of going immediately to the combat tracker, they would have picked up on that problem instead of being lead down a rabbit hole to a very wrong conclusion. Yes this is a completely hypothetical problem but it's still worth addressing. I believe that if you can do the raids and diagnose any problems without a combat tracker, then there is no point putting one in the game. If it turns out that you physically can't do without a combat tracker I will be one of the first to ask Intrepid to put one into the game. Until then though, I am content to see if we need one or not. There's no point putting something in the game that we don't need and is just going to cause problems.
noaani wrote: » Sometimes, when a thing isn't working, it's only not working because one or two components of the thing aren't working. When this is the case, you need to diagnose where the problem is, and then you can address that problem. You don't swap out a car's engine just because the spark plugs are not working, you simply diagnose the issue, and deal with the one component. A combat tracker is literally a diagnostic tool. It allows you to find what part of the whole needs attention - how you then deal with the need to fix something is then up to the individuals involved, but if you don't know where the problem is, there isn't much you can do to fix it. The notion that you don't need a combat tracker because you put aside the individual in order to further the whole can only come from the perspective of only using a combat tracker as a means of e-peen waiving, which is all many people know how to do. However, that is a misuse of a combat tracker as a tool, and in no way takes away from the value of it when used correctly. To me, this is no different than someone using their cars dyno results to gloat to others - when the actual purpose for putting your car on a dyno is to make sure all the individual components of the car work in harmony, and that improvements made to it provide the expected results.
