DPS Meter Megathread

Demidreamer wrote: »

Tarnish wrote: »

Lets learn from history and just place a DMG and Healer Meter in the game or allow players to create them for the game. They will be used and players in PVE guilds or conducting PVE content will be expected to have one and use one. Biggest reason is to spot a under performing DPS or to figure out if the strategy is not optimal enough.

Thank you for pointing out that if guilds only have a meter, everyone will have to live with a meter.

Tarnish wrote: »

Biggest reason is to spot a under performing DPS or to figure out if the strategy is not optimal enough.

meters lead to toxic behavior
Meters are a tool. Simplifying the game content.

Beating a world boss/dungeon boss should not be easy

AoC is not a game for everyone.

Can you write a constructive comment about something that is not a generalization of meters being toxic?

Toxic people are able to use any tool in the game to express their toxicity. Tell me how you want to stop their toxicity with disabling meters.

Demidreamer wrote: »

Demidreamer wrote: »

Tarnish wrote: »

Lets learn from history and just place a DMG and Healer Meter in the game or allow players to create them for the game. They will be used and players in PVE guilds or conducting PVE content will be expected to have one and use one. Biggest reason is to spot a under performing DPS or to figure out if the strategy is not optimal enough.

Thank you for pointing out that if guilds only have a meter, everyone will have to live with a meter.

Tarnish wrote: »

Biggest reason is to spot a under performing DPS or to figure out if the strategy is not optimal enough.

meters lead to toxic behavior
Meters are a tool. Simplifying the game content.

Beating a world boss/dungeon boss should not be easy

AoC is not a game for everyone.

Meters do not lead to toxic behavior.

If meters are makign content too easy, Intrepid need to hire better content designers.

AoC is indeed not a game for everyone - but who is it a game for?

The core of the game - the ability to lose everything you have in an instant due to caravans, sieges and the death penalty mean it is not a game for those that are poor on time. Most people that are poor on time will end up moving to a game where their in game progress can't be taken from them so easily.

The fact that there is direct obfuscation of information in combat means it is not a game for most people that are willing to put serious time in to the game. Most people with the time to spend will play a game where that time can be put to effective use.

So who is left?

Spartanz

Noaani wrote: »

Tragnar wrote: »

Steven quote:

in my experience

The three words there are the issue.

Steven's MMO history is arguably deep in a number of games, but it is not wide.

Much like players that get kicked from a failing group in WoW, he is blaming combat trackers for something that is not the fault of combat trackers.

He needs to listen to the people he has hired - and if they are telling him to try and keep combat trackers out, he needs to create a work atmosphere where people feel free to disagree with the boss - as there is no point hiring experience if you are going to not let it speak.

Sounds like "If he disagrees with me, he should find someone who does agree with me"

Spartanz wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Tragnar wrote: »

Steven quote:

in my experience

The three words there are the issue.

Steven's MMO history is arguably deep in a number of games, but it is not wide.

Much like players that get kicked from a failing group in WoW, he is blaming combat trackers for something that is not the fault of combat trackers.

He needs to listen to the people he has hired - and if they are telling him to try and keep combat trackers out, he needs to create a work atmosphere where people feel free to disagree with the boss - as there is no point hiring experience if you are going to not let it speak.

Sounds like "If he disagrees with me, he should find someone who does agree with me"

Not at all.

If you watch the videos where they talk about combat trackers, you can see others are physically uncomfortable at what is being said.

If you look at the work history of these people, and understand the games they have worked on, you would know why.

I am hoping you are going to reply to some of the points I mentioned in the last post I addressed to you, as you seem to be in this discussion from a perspective of somewhat incorrect facts in regards to what a combat tracker can do, and also in regard to what is being asked for here.

Noaani wrote: »

So who is left?

you don't win anything by just declaring yourself winner.
you have a perspective, I have a perspective

I want a long lasting game to play for years. For all i know, you want to move on to the next shiney object down the road after achieving your "hard earned" boss kill and say "oh that was a piece of cake".

NO. i want a game that lasts.. because legendary gear actually should take a legendary group of players. Not a bunch of random joes toting add-ons and dps meters.

MMO's should not wham bam and done.

For all I know you sound to me like a player that is hyped for launch and not playing afterwards.

I want the same thing, I just don't view information gathering as trivializing factor. The content should 100% be hard, but if it becomes trivial once you figure out the trick then it was never hard to begin with.

isn't that the nature of the beast? once you know "the trick" it becomes "oh that's easy"

why do you need to hasten the process?

Demidreamer wrote: »

isn't that the nature of the beast? once you know "the trick" it becomes "oh that's easy"

why do you need to hasten the process?

No, that is the nature of poorly designed content.

Well designed content is still very much a challenge, even if you have all the objective data on it that you could ever want.

In games where the developers don't give players detailed strategies on encounters during beta (a combat tracker does not give you a strategy), raids will have to spend time just pulling the encounter to see what it does.

This process lasts until the raid knows what to expect from the encounter, and then they work in coming up with a strategy for killing it. Then, they have to work on executing that strategy.

A combat tracker assists guilds with that first part - the part virtually no one enjoys. Most of the raid are just punching bags during this stage, with the entire point of each pull being to gather information.

This seems to be the part that Steven wants to extend - literally the least enjoyable aspect of raiding. On the other hand, if you allow the collection of objective data to be easier, but make the encounter require a more difficult execution to he able to kill, you move the time spent working on raids from the part no one enjoys, over to the part most people enjoy.

This seems to be a good idea to me. The notion that raid success should be based upon guesswork though - Intrepids stated plan for making raids hard - seems somewhat ludicrous an unenjoyable to me.

Don't get me wrong, I want raids in Ashes to be enjoyable for everyone involved. Having to guess how to kill encounter though - that isn't fun.

As far as I am concerned - that isn't even raiding.

Demidreamer wrote: »

isn't that the nature of the beast? once you know "the trick" it becomes "oh that's easy"

why do you need to hasten the process?

Knowing what to do is never the same as actually doing it. To swim across the atlantic is quite simple, but incredibly hard. To know that you need juggle main tanks on the boss while healers need to rotate their healing targets, because on that fight every heal they make reduces the next heal from them to the same target is quite a simple strategy, but requires a quite a big coordination.

"the trick" to every possible iteration of a boss will be known on the internet before your average player steps foot into any raid

Caeryl

Noaani wrote: »

Spartanz wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Tragnar wrote: »

Steven quote:

in my experience

The three words there are the issue.

Steven's MMO history is arguably deep in a number of games, but it is not wide.

Much like players that get kicked from a failing group in WoW, he is blaming combat trackers for something that is not the fault of combat trackers.

He needs to listen to the people he has hired - and if they are telling him to try and keep combat trackers out, he needs to create a work atmosphere where people feel free to disagree with the boss - as there is no point hiring experience if you are going to not let it speak.

Sounds like "If he disagrees with me, he should find someone who does agree with me"

Not at all.

If you watch the videos where they talk about combat trackers, you can see others are physically uncomfortable at what is being said.

If you look at the work history of these people, and understand the games they have worked on, you would know why.

I am hoping you are going to reply to some of the points I mentioned in the last post I addressed to you, as you seem to be in this discussion from a perspective of somewhat incorrect facts in regards to what a combat tracker can do, and also in regard to what is being asked for here.

I still remember Jeff practically cringing when Steven went on a rant about combat trackers and toxicity

Information is never the root toxicity. A game in which players are disposal is the root of toxicity.

@Caeryl Do you know in which one? I only heard about that stance from Asmongold's interview

Edit:
I found it and I had to laugh

However I understand the Iron man style trial and error, but I disagree that you need to hide information from players for them to enjoy raiding. For me raiding was always a group of people working together to overcome a challenge. Not to waste time in figuring out what doesnt work and guesswork what might be killing people

Edit2:
Plus there is difference if you Iron man solo or Iron man as 40+ people on raidnights

tragnar
Servers will not be the same everywhere to my understanding, so finding the trick to one will be less advantageous to other servers. AI will hopefully change, therefore your meta should change, yea? I hope for a changing set of scenarios for bosses, so finding the perfect meta for one boss will or could be the opposite hard counter to the next boss. This will express a need for players to be versatile based on circumstances happening atm rather then what happened before.
or not~ wouldn't surprise me. At work i start doing something one way just to get it done, just to find out the plan has changed. life goes on either way

Yuyukoyay

Coming back after the counter to dps meters grew a little is a little fun. xD

I am at the conclusion that the pro DPS meter people just don't know what they are talking about. They don't want to provide an actual viable feedback they just trying to force the game into a bad direction. It's pretty obvious they don't have any actual points when they attack other members on the forums instead of bringing up actual points. When your argument becomes something other than the issue at hand then you have lost the argument.

DPS meters being in the game in any possible way at all is the method that forces others to play in that way. The entire basis of the anti dps meter crowd is they don't want to deal with the negatives of them being in the game. Having a choice on the issue does not matter because it is not an issue where having the option to turn it off or on can be a fix. The neutral state a game is in is without the dps meters that is fair to everyone. That is why they want it that way.

I also don't think a basis on what other games do is fair or valid criticism because the game's not out yet. You can't use Lineage 2, WoW, Archeage or any other mmo as a comparison because they are not the same type of game. The only thing those games have in common with what this game is going to be is they are MMO's. Which tells you nothing about how the game is going to play.

Most MMO's fail so I don't see how you could even make an argument about it being the norm either. Just as many successful MMO's don't use them as use them.

If you can't see the toxicity behind it as an issue then you are the one who is toxic.

You might as well treat this as the summary because neither side is going to back down. It's a deadlock.

Caeryl

It seems infinitely more clear that anti-combat-tracker crowd doesn’t know what they’re taking about.

You claim objective information inherently causes toxicity. Explain how. How does knowing who needs help inherently mean the primary way people will respond is to get rid of them? The only reason communities lean toward removal over assistance is how easy it is to replace someone, and how few consequences come from kicking them, like in WoW.

In games where community is important, where players can attack your guild just because they don’t like you, who’s really going to be willing to present themselves as toxic?

It’s absolutely baffling that Steven would think information is going to suddenly make players toxic when the basic game systems are built on destroying and stealing other people’s stuff to grow your own.

Edit: The “I don’t wanna have to play a certain way” argument is bunk anyway, as those people shouldn’t be trying to get into groups that have very high standards. No one is required to play a certain way, but they are most definitely not entitled to complete all content, nor are they entitled to waste other players time.

halbarz

Yuyukoyay wrote: »

Coming back after the counter to dps meters grew a little is a little fun. xD

I am at the conclusion that the pro DPS meter people just don't know what they are talking about. They don't want to provide an actual viable feedback they just trying to force the game into a bad direction. It's pretty obvious they don't have any actual points when they attack other members on the forums instead of bringing up actual points. When your argument becomes something other than the issue at hand then you have lost the argument.

DPS meters being in the game in any possible way at all is the method that forces others to play in that way. The entire basis of the anti dps meter crowd is they don't want to deal with the negatives of them being in the game. Having a choice on the issue does not matter because it is not an issue where having the option to turn it off or on can be a fix. The neutral state a game is in is without the dps meters that is fair to everyone. That is why they want it that way.

I also don't think a basis on what other games do is fair or valid criticism because the game's not out yet. You can't use Lineage 2, WoW, Archeage or any other mmo as a comparison because they are not the same type of game. The only thing those games have in common with what this game is going to be is they are MMO's. Which tells you nothing about how the game is going to play.

Most MMO's fail so I don't see how you could even make an argument about it being the norm either. Just as many successful MMO's don't use them as use them.

If you can't see the toxicity behind it as an issue then you are the one who is toxic.

You might as well treat this as the summary because neither side is going to back down. It's a deadlock.

There is not much to add to your post, you summarized everything a lot of people have been saying.

I mentioned this as well in the past that having one indirectly forces it on people. What many forget is that ... if you introduce a meter at launch it is difficult to remove it as people will take it for granted. By not adding this, the only thing you got to take care of as a community or studio is saying NO thx, but feel free to play the game and have fun.

KarfunkelTV

So after reading some comments i think the solution is obvious.
Hardcore players will search and find hardcore guilds.
Casual players will find casuals guilds.
No need for sorting out no one!
DPS meters information should only be available for developers so they can decide if a class is to buff or to nerf. But you hardcore player probably don't like that, don't you? You just want to take the world first clear for yourself and probably you're also a wow player but the wow forums and the game itself feels dead and you also watched the "10'000 hour mage" video from pint and felt disgusted but at the same time sexually excited.
Ah i lost track where was I?

The most things I read are: Can't pull their weight, mediocre dmg, sorting out.
Are you all playing classic wow or what? Like standing in the same spot for the entire boss fight and pressing 1 to cast frostbolt aren't gonna be the mechanics of this game. (I hope so)

Position changing, dodging, dynamic surroundings, spawns, luck.. this things matter much more!
Just imagine your necromancer is unlucky and always attacked by random spawns and then he also has to move because the floor changed. He will never do the dmg he "should".
With so many people how can the raid leader really see that. He will just read the dps meter and sort him out and search for another necromancer that can "pUlL hIs WeIgHt"

Another example: A player build his class for high mobility and it helps him dodge some spawning traps on the floor faster. He gets faster to do his dps. Now another class or another build did more dps because he could cast freely out of luck but has low mobility. So you will find situations where some classes are more stable for raiding, not because of the dps, but because they die less. But thats another statistic. Nothing to do with dps. Take a Mage fighter and you will clear in average 10 minutes faster, but has 30 % chance of failing to do that dmg because of his lack of mobility.
Now with a ranger the clear is slower but the success rate is much higher. Now make the math.
Really that kind of server cross data can only the developers get so they should be the one tasked with "sorting out" but i mean like buffing or nerfing.

Having said that... I also accept that my examples may not be perfect, for some of you even totally out of context, maybe, maybe not, my english is also limited like my braincells.

But now imagine this:
If you're a guild leader and you set a time in a week to raid, and the player always show up, is in a good mood, is not toxic, just a chill person, he even sends sometimes photos of his son that had his 5 birthday in the discord guild chat, socializes.. I mean that person is a real treasure and I don't give a quack if he can "pUlL hIs WeIgHt" or not, i will carry his ass and get him better gear if it has to be, but this dude is gonna stay.
You're all traumatized from wow dudes... really. Relax. Im really sorry if someone found this offensive i really didn't meant to, but at the same time i did. Mixed feelings about this topic. The gains are too small for the losses it carries with it. Karfunkel Out. (mic drop)

@Demidreamer

Demidreamer wrote: »

Servers will not be the same everywhere to my understanding, so finding the trick to one will be less advantageous to other servers. AI will hopefully change, therefore your meta should change, yea? I hope for a changing set of scenarios for bosses, so finding the perfect meta for one boss will or could be the opposite hard counter to the next boss. This will express a need for players to be versatile based on circumstances happening atm rather then what happened before.
or not~ wouldn't surprise me. At work i start doing something one way just to get it done, just to find out the plan has changed. life goes on either way

While this is absolutely possible - it will only ever be achieved if combat trackers are a feature - either first or third party.

If the game does not have combat trackers, players are not going to want to deviate from the established meta - one that will be established during beta.

The absolute most that could happen is that raids may insist that some players of some classes have some specific abilities - which would then make those abilities a part of that class' meta.

In order for guilds to be willing to run different class builds on different encounters, and in order for there to be a different meta on different servers, players need to have information to know that what they are doing is actually the best thing for their situation. Without that information, players and guilds will not want to risk the potential of running a build that is actually worse than what everyone else is running - they will simply stick to the meta.

That data - data that is absolutely required in order for the game to have a varied meta - will only ever be available to players if combat trackers are available to players.

With combat trackers, there will be peopel that post builds that are generally good, but then others will come along with alterations to that build based on specific cirsumstance that your server, node or guild may find themselves in, with numbers backing them up.

Without combat trackers, people will post builds they think are generally good, and that is about all that will happen.

@Yuyukoyay

Yuyukoyay wrote: »

Coming back after the counter to dps meters grew a little is a little fun. xD

I am at the conclusion that the pro DPS meter people just don't know what they are talking about. They don't want to provide an actual viable feedback they just trying to force the game into a bad direction.

Right, lets be absolutely clear here.

You are the person that came in to this thread with a pre-formed opinion, and then blatantly lied in order to try and back that opinion up.

That is not good "feedback", nor is it a place discussion or debate can be furthered on from. I'd like to reference this specific quote;

StevenSharif wrote: »

I felt Noaani articulated the position in favor of DPS meters very well.

and suggest to you that if you feel there is not good debate and discussion around your posts, that is likely due to the inherent dishonest nature of your previous posts in this thread. It is not a reflection on the thread in general.

DPS meters being in the game in any possible way at all is the method that forces others to play in that way.

If a given player does not have access to combat trackers, and no player has the ability to use a combat tracker on that player, then that player experiences zero impact from combat trackers.

The only potential argument is "but people will say what the best builds are and people will be expected to follow them".

This is actually a very true argument, the problem is, it is a fact that will hold true with or without combat trackers.

Both GW2 and Archeage had no combat trackers when each game launched. Both had them before long, but the use of them was slow to pick up.

This meant that the meta of both games was formed without combat trackers - and in both games that meta was formed during beta.

Once the game went live, players that felt the need to do what others thought was best had that meta to follow, and players that didn't feel the need to do what others thought was best did what ever they wanted. When GW2 got combat trackers, people realized the meta was wrong, it was altered, and then the players that felt the need to do what others thought was best had that new meta to follow, and players that didn't feel the need to do what others thought was best did what ever they wanted.

The only thing that a combat tracker would do is make it so that initial meta is slightly better. Players will still either follow the existing meta because they want to, or not follow the existing meta because they don't want to.

Again, a combat tracker has no bearing on this.

If this is not what you are talking about when you say that the existance of a combat tracker that only some people have access to and that only allows tracking of their guild mates will still force all players to play "in that way", then by all means, correct me as to what it is you are saying.

Alterantively, you could cower and run off for a week or two again, like last time, then come back and make completely baseless conjecture that some people don't know what they are talking about, when really all that is going on is you are too scared to actually discuss the topic for fear of being proven both wrong, and lacking in knowledge on the topic.

I also don't think a basis on what other games do is fair or valid criticism because the game's not out yet. You can't use Lineage 2, WoW, Archeage or any other mmo as a comparison because they are not the same type of game. The only thing those games have in common with what this game is going to be is they are MMO's. Which tells you nothing about how the game is going to play.

I agree that you can't compare it to any one game.

You can, however, look at all games (more than what you have listed), look at a number of systems, look at the effects those systems had on the game and on the player based, and come to some fairly obvious conclusions in regards to how Ashes will fare.

WoW and Archeage both have very toxic communities. They are also both games in which players are able to treat others like dirt and get away with it. There is a clear connection here (one that has been studied at length for over a hundred years as a general principle - though obviously not all related to computer games).

This is a connection that absolutely can and should be drawn. Not making that connection is asinine in regards to discussing an MMO, let alone developing one.

You might as well treat this as the summary because neither side is going to back down.

As a final point - I don't want Steven to listen to me, nor do I want him to listen to you.

I want Steven to listen to the years of experience he has hired to help him make the game. Right now, he is clearly either ignoring that experience, or has created a work environment similar to that of Ellen DeGenerous - where people are afraid to speak up unless they know it is what the boss wants to hear.

It would be amazingly ironic attempting to make a toxicity free game in such a workplace.