DPS Meter Megathread

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Sylvanar

Tragnar wrote: »

What I really dislike about WoW raiding - I guess you'd agree with this is that they are creating the encounters with combat assist mods in mind. Which makes the whole raiding experience a nightmare if you dont download the mod (especially the required weak auras)

And the social experience around raiding is entirely dependant on the people you play with. Blaming the game for guilds not meeting your social expectations is not the game's fault.

Plus watching dps meters during encounter is only hurting your actual dps, because you are dividing your attention to it instead of the encounter. Meters are for post fight checkup on what you did and see if you can do better. Watching meters during the fight can do nothing for your performance or can severely impact it in negative way.

I honestly want the game to be good for as many people as possible and I really dislike that the top-end players will use 3rd party tools, because Intrepid says "no" to a thing that gives players information to make informed decisions.

I agree with you so much.

What kind of excuse is "people will watch dps meter during an encounter"? Those people should quit. In WoW mediocre people just spam 2-4 abilities of any class in a rotation, get average dps and consider themselves good enough cuz addons do all the thinking for them, meanwhile they are staring at the dps meter. So should players who want to improve stunt themselves because of in general mediocrity?

I quit WoW because of addons, but not giving something necessary like a combat meter just encourages people who want to go extra mile to go and somehow build a 3rd party combat tracker for themselves.

I personally dont mind the absence of combat tracker...much because I have faith that I will do well regardless. But I have yet to read a valid reason for not implementing combat tracker other then:
1. People are dumb.
2. People are toxic. So, lets blame the gun.
But that is the case either way.

Now, lets say combat tracker is not provided by Intrepid. Somehow, someone will build one though because combat logs will be available to players. BUT this way Intrepid cannot navigate the do's and dont's of how and what a combat tracker should do.

Combat tracker does not introduce negative aspects. No combat tracker definitely will.

Either way, there is still 2+ years till the game releases and even then, combat tracker wont be needed for at least the first couple of months at least.

Tragnar

Again this comes to bite the most the average "dad" gamers that have real life responsibilities and want to cut down the required time invested into raiding to 8/12 hours per week (2-3 raid nights) and without meters you can prolong the progress on boss fights to months which in turn leads to burnout and burning the raiding guild to ashes (quite poetic end).

And again this is under the assumption that raids are not going to have uncapped amount of raiders in them. Because it doesnt matter that the maximum raid size is 40 if you can bring any number of raid groups in there.

Not the smartest solution is to have enrage mechanics for every boss to deal massive aoe damage to everyone if the number of players is above 40. Which in turn creates a bad dynamic for griefers to hold bosses hostage, because every attempt is ruined by the (rogue archetype is best for this) griefers. The solution would be to have ingame barriers raised up on the boss pull, but still I think there is not much info on how the raiding will look like and how much room they will leave for exploitation.

Sylvanar

I will be a "dad" gamer by the time the game is released...why do you think anyone would want to prolong the raid indefinitely? Me as a gamer with irl job would want to have a buttery smooth run. Hopefully no more than ~3 hours for the entire thing.

Although I have no idea what "hold bosses hostage" is referring to. Are you referring to 'tricks of the trade'?

Tbh I was part of pretty awesome guilds in WoW and quit because life happened. Ironically my favourite class/archetype is rogue.

goemoe

Sylvanar wrote: »

Combat tracker does not introduce negative aspects. No combat tracker definitely will.

I disagree. I have seen that negative way and not only once.

We had a friendly guild of family people enjoying a game. Everybody had fun and we laughed, when we wiped at some group content. At one point one player discovered a dps meter and started to crossread forums and fanpages to get a better score. He wrote and talked about it to other players and devided the guild fast. Half the players got more interested in numbers than in enjoyable company. The guilds whole demeanor changed in a small amount of time. The friendly guild of family people was no more. Some got bored, the rest looked for raid guilds.

It all started with counting the dps. The value of the company shifted from funny/reliable to 'who has the biggest' That was negative.

Chunks

But I have yet to read a valid reason for not implementing combat tracker other then:
1. People are dumb.
2. People are toxic. So, lets blame the gun.
But that is the case either way.

So these are valid excuses, but concern for the negative impact on the meta and viable player choices is not?
I dont think Ive seen anybody say those things implicitly, but rather a crutch like dps meters emables people to be lazy, stupid, and the inappropriately over-encompassing "toxic".

Chunks

Sylvanar wrote: »

I will be a "dad" gamer by the time the game is released...why do you think anyone would want to prolong the raid indefinitely? Me as a gamer with irl job would want to have a buttery smooth run.

A lot of MMO players are us boomers with jobs. 3 hours is actually a long play session for a dad.
And I have a hard time believing you want no adversity from end game PvE, or that youd achieve just from having some numbers validating your class selection.

Tragnar

goemoe wrote: »

Sylvanar wrote: »

Combat tracker does not introduce negative aspects. No combat tracker definitely will.

I disagree. I have seen that negative way and not only once.

We had a friendly guild of family people enjoying a game. Everybody had fun and we laughed, when we wiped at some group content. At one point one player discovered a dps meter and started to crossread forums and fanpages to get a better score. He wrote and talked about it to other players and devided the guild fast. Half the players got more interested in numbers than in enjoyable company. The guilds whole demeanor changed in a small amount of time. The friendly guild of family people was no more. Some got bored, the rest looked for raid guilds.

It all started with counting the dps. The value of the company shifted from funny/reliable to 'who has the biggest' That was negative.

Why are you blaming meters when that guy started to look for meta and introduced meta gaming to your guild? If meters didnt exist that same guy would have done the same and instead of showing you numbers he would start meta gaming blaming people for not playing meta builds.

I beg you to stop blaming objective information for people actions. That guy literally was somehow inspired to play better builds and introduced the same concept to your whole guild. It is not the fault of the meters, this is the fault of people changing their minds if they want to play for fun regardless of the outcome or trying their best to play better.

This is life, people change opinions and their goals. And this can destroy guilds as it did yours.

Tragnar

Chunks wrote: »

But I have yet to read a valid reason for not implementing combat tracker other then:
1. People are dumb.
2. People are toxic. So, lets blame the gun.
But that is the case either way.

So these are valid excuses, but concern for the negative impact on the meta and viable player choices is not?
I dont think Ive seen anybody say those things implicitly, but rather a crutch like dps meters emables people to be lazy, stupid, and the inappropriately over-encompassing "toxic".

How can objective information have negative impact on the meta? Without objective information the meta is more susceptible to favor builds that are bad and thus the people that will follow the meta will play much worse.

And what you describe as toxic here will happen regardless, because lazy stupid people will most likely blindly follow the meta regardless and the toxic people bragging about dps numbers will use anything that comes to their mind to shove their "elitism" to your face so they can declare they are superior human beings

Noaani

goemoe wrote: »

Sylvanar wrote: »

Combat tracker does not introduce negative aspects. No combat tracker definitely will.

I disagree. I have seen that negative way and not only once.

We had a friendly guild of family people enjoying a game. Everybody had fun and we laughed, when we wiped at some group content. At one point one player discovered a dps meter and started to crossread forums and fanpages to get a better score. He wrote and talked about it to other players and devided the guild fast. Half the players got more interested in numbers than in enjoyable company. The guilds whole demeanor changed in a small amount of time. The friendly guild of family people was no more. Some got bored, the rest looked for raid guilds.

It all started with counting the dps. The value of the company shifted from funny/reliable to 'who has the biggest' That was negative.

All of this is a natural consequence of a subset of a group wanting to take their game play to the next level, and the rest not wanting to.

There are going to be people playing the game at various levels regardless of combat trackers, and as soon as some people in a group of friends decide they want to go up a level, this scenario is exactly what will play out.

You may as well blame the content or class build options as much as the combat tracker.

neuroguy

@Noaani
It's not about wanting to win an argument and refusing to compromise, it's just that people assume the general population's experience is similar to their's or their small group of friends/guilds etc. We just have different perceptions of what the average player experiences and the magnitude of the positive vs the negative consequences.

The rest of the post isn't directed at you personally btw :P I just wanted to address that point you made.

Ok so I really freaking hate this stupid "don't blame the tool" argument. You don't provide rocket launchers to people if you don't want to risk them using it. If WoW did not have the ability to view other people's achievements or for them to link it in chat you wouldn't have people asking for achievement links for invites. You don't blame the existence of achievements but if you're a game developer that saw this you can very well decide fuck giving people the ability to view or link them because I don't want that outcome. There are a number of ways tools can be used, if you deem some to be too dangerous you fucking ban the tool, that's why all of the civilized world has banned civilians from owning automatic weapons (I wish I could say semi-automatic too haha). So stop with this dumb argument, yes people will still be toxic but you can curb their ability to impact the community with toxicity by controlling how the toxicity can manifest via what tools they have at their disposal. I bet most people would prefer if there wasn't in-game voice chat outside of parties especially after the NW experience where people just blast loud noises and are hard to mute, you don't blame tools but if you gave them the fucking tool, you expect that outcome... so to avoid it, you can not give them the tool.

In terms of cutting down raid time by giving people a tool to make it more efficient/easier to track what went wrong and improve chances of downing bosses... well that's a fancy way of asking for content to be easier. If you don't want to spend 8 hours doing raid content then don't do that raid. Some raids will be harder and require more effort to get right, with or without a tracker. If you have a restricted schedule, you can't really demand the game be built for you in mind (well you can, but only to a certain extent). If people also complain that they want to achieve flying mounts with 8 hour a week schedule it would also not really make sense. It's not like content will be unbeatable without combat trackers, it is a luxury that makes things more efficient, and we already know content will get more difficult if you perform better so even if you don't perform combat tracker optimized level of good, you can still down bosses but with less loot and prestige perhaps (until you get good and don't need the tracker to optimize your performance). People just have to learn to get good without them, I repeat: it is a luxury not a necessity. There was also some suggestion in an older post that if we have combat trackers they can justifiably implement harder bosses/raids... equally dumb argument because well without the tracker you can still make stuff harder and complicated, it would just be even harder to beat, so in actuality the lack of a tracker is in fact a way to increase difficulty so it's a nonsensical argument.

In terms of the "it helps find bugs" argument. Yeah I mean this one is valid but I think it is grossly over-emphasized. You are not going to be catching 10 bugs a month as a community with combat trackers. Path of exile has no combat tracker and no real way to measure DPS/double check certain things with buffs/resistances etc and I think in the past 3 years I recall maybe 4 instances where they caught bugs where tooltip numbers were wrong/not correctly applied. You just have to trust the developers and QA who have access to this data. PoE is actually a great example of a game where people can get super hardcore and pull out the big spreadsheets or just play and make decisions based on what feels good/efficient intuitively (via trial and error). Again, this is valid argument, I'm not saying it isn't, but I'm saying it's not that big of a freaking deal, you won't find bugs that break the game because if it did, it wouldn't need a combat tracker to find... only subtle bugs will be obscured this way.

Some people propose making combat trackers a guild perk or w.e, but if it is available people will feel obligated to use it as a heuristic. Similar to the achievement linking system in WoW, nobody forced anyone to use achievements to be a basis of party/guild invites but the official sanctioning of linking achievements made it an easy method to adopt. If we don't have an official combat tracker sanctioned by Intrepid, then you can't reasonably ask people for DPS numbers even if a third party tool exists. In all honesty, the more I read, the more I think some third party app for all those who think they can't clear content without it would be best. Just don't officially allow it in game because it will become widely adopted as an easy to use heuristic.

I think you folks need to trust in your own skills and abilities a bit more (you will do just fine without a combat tracker) and accept that this game has some more "hardcore" components and maybe think of the lack of combat tracker as one of them to help accept its absence. Yeah it would also save time for a gamer dad if the game had teleportation to anywhere you want, but it doesn't, why don't you complain about that? Yeah the game could be easier to kill bosses if they published all boss behaviors and made an in-game guide for that, so why don't you complain about that? It would surely make raiding more efficient. It is a design decision. Both teleportation and an in game boss guide have positives too, but I don't see many people championing them. I understand this is a slippery slop and design decisions should be based on what is fun, but just saying thinking about it this way may make it easier to accept its absence.

Noaani

Chunks wrote: »

So these are valid excuses, but concern for the negative impact on the meta and viable player choices is not?

I'm still trying to work out why people think combat trackers will have a negative impact on a games meta.

We have exactly one example of a game with PvP content and low combat tracker use.

Archeage.

That games meta is static - it is the same meta in that game now as it was in 2013.

Now, there is some room for an argument that factors other than low combat tracker use have contributed to this - but there is absolutely no doubt that the low use of combat trackers is the single major cause of this.

So, we have an actual example case of what could happen without a combat tracker in Ashes - and it is not good.

Anything else that I have seen people say could happen is just a baseless assumption - it is people saying what they hope the meta will be, and then saying it needs to not have a combat tracker to happen.

So, the question I have for you @Chunks is - what is it that makes you think no combat tracker in Ashes will not only avoid this situation from the *only* example we have, but will actually make the games meta better than it would be with a combat tracker?

From my position, without an answer to this question, people are literally ignoring the only example we have and are just stating what they want to be true. That is not good debate or discussion, which is why Ihave been trying to get an answer to this question for quite a while now.

If you think it will lower player choice, that is again just an assumption. We have no idea how many builds people will decide are viable without a combat tracker, it may well only be one build for each of the 8 classes - there is literally no reason to assume this will not be the case without a combat tracker. If this happens, there is literally no one to take this to in order to get it fixed.

If you are a player that choses to stick with the games meta, only having one acceptable build for your entire archetype would suck.

On the other hand, if the game has a combat tracker, players will find all viable builds - and if there is only 1 viable build per archetype, players have every reason to go to Intrepid and complain about a complete lack of balance.

Chunks

Noaani wrote: »

So, the question I have for you @Chunks is - what is it that makes you think no combat tracker in Ashes will not only avoid this situation from the *only* example we have, but will actually make the games meta better than it would be with a combat tracker?

From my position, without an answer to this question, people are literally ignoring the only example we have and are just stating what they want to be true. That is not good debate or discussion, which is why Ihave been trying to get an answer to this question for quite a while now.

You have a one dimensional view of what makes a meta "good". Your idea of a "good" meta is a meta that downs end game content with the least amount of effort. My idea of a "good" meta is one that is not incredibly exclusive in the pursuit of epeen damage meter numbers. It can still be a meta, even if the concept of it being more inclusive contradicts our use of the vocabulary. We want to see the meta impact the game in different ways, neither of us is wrong for what we desire.

You have been receiving answers. You are choosing to not necessarily debate but instead defer that any opposing view is just objectively implausible, or delusion, or extremely limited context that in no way would ever happen to Ashes or its' community. This is the reason I stopped answering your replies before. It just felt moot, bro.

neuroguy wrote: »

@Noaani
We just have different perceptions of what the average player experiences and the magnitude of the positive vs the negative consequences.

I think this sums it up perfectly. You're not right or wrong. I'm not right or wrong. We both have the capacity to be correct here, and I think we both would/will be correct. What we disagree on is if the juice is worth the squeeze (assuming you can agree there is squeeze).

In my eyes, the point can be reduced to very simple gamble. We can !risk! (nothing is certain, so it feels like we need to assume these are equal opportunity) either sacrificing an unknown degree min/maxing or the health of the community, which I'd expect to correlate to the health of the game as a whole.

You're getting answers, homie. And most people on the opposite side of the fence understand and hear what you're asking for and why. We simply don't think there is enough benefit relative to the expectation of the trade-offs that we are concerned with.

Sylvanar

Chunks wrote: »

Sylvanar wrote: »

I will be a "dad" gamer by the time the game is released...why do you think anyone would want to prolong the raid indefinitely? Me as a gamer with irl job would want to have a buttery smooth run.

A lot of MMO players are us boomers with jobs. 3 hours is actually a long play session for a dad.
And I have a hard time believing you want no adversity from end game PvE, or that youd achieve just from having some numbers validating your class selection.

I would like a buttery smooth run despite the adversity from raids, I am referring to heroic or mythic kind of raids. But that does not mean that if the raid wipes I would leave my group high and dry.
I dont need numbers to validate my class selection. I will only ever play what I like no matter what any meter says.

Tragnar

Chunks wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

So, the question I have for you @Chunks is - what is it that makes you think no combat tracker in Ashes will not only avoid this situation from the *only* example we have, but will actually make the games meta better than it would be with a combat tracker?

From my position, without an answer to this question, people are literally ignoring the only example we have and are just stating what they want to be true. That is not good debate or discussion, which is why Ihave been trying to get an answer to this question for quite a while now.

You have a one dimensional view of what makes a meta "good". Your idea of a "good" meta is a meta that downs end game content with the least amount of effort. My idea of a "good" meta is one that is not incredibly exclusive in the pursuit of epeen damage meter numbers. It can still be a meta, even if the concept of it being more inclusive contradicts our use of the vocabulary. We want to see the meta impact the game in different ways, neither of us is wrong for what we desire.

You have been receiving answers. You are choosing to not necessarily debate but instead defer that any opposing view is just objectively implausible, or delusion, or extremely limited context that in no way would ever happen to Ashes or its' community. This is the reason I stopped answering your replies before. It just felt moot, bro.

neuroguy wrote: »

@Noaani
We just have different perceptions of what the average player experiences and the magnitude of the positive vs the negative consequences.

I think this sums it up perfectly. You're not right or wrong. I'm not right or wrong. We both have the capacity to be correct here, and I think we both would/will be correct. What we disagree on is if the juice is worth the squeeze (assuming you can agree there is squeeze).

In my eyes, the point can be reduced to very simple gamble. We can !risk! (nothing is certain, so it feels like we need to assume these are equal opportunity) either sacrificing an unknown degree min/maxing or the health of the community, which I'd expect to correlate to the health of the game as a whole.

You're getting answers, homie. And most people on the opposite side of the fence understand and hear what you're asking for and why. We simply don't think there is enough benefit relative to the expectation of the trade-offs that we are concerned with.

Do you realize that instead to answer his question you break it down in order to criticize his motivation behind it and just making a conclusion the debate is pointless and to think the only thing we can do is just blindly not have meters. Because not having information has historically helped so many people.

Also I hate the comparison of meters to a toxicity weapons, yes you can choose to use information as a weapon, but it is not its purpose. I doubt that you will call all educational institutions weapon dealers.

Noaani

Chunks wrote: »

You have a one dimensional view of what makes a meta "good". Your idea of a "good" meta is a meta that downs end game content with the least amount of effort.

I'll be honest, I don't think you know me well enough to know what I want in a meta.

What I can say, without any hesitation, is that I don't care if the meta can down end game content - because I and my guild don't follow the meta.

If anything, we help create it.

We will run the builds we want, based on either what players want to be running, or what the content we are taking on requires us to run.

The meta of a game isn't for the top end players - it is for the people that do not want to think of a build for themselves.

That said, I still have an idea of what I consider to be a good meta for a game like Ashes. My idea of a good meta is one that provides players with a wide variety of viable build options - that is all.

My idea of a "good" meta is one that is not incredibly exclusive in the pursuit of epeen damage meter numbers. It can still be a meta, even if the concept of it being more inclusive contradicts our use of the vocabulary. We want to see the meta impact the game in different ways, neither of us is wrong for what we desire.

This is like saying "I don't like mushrooms because I don't like mushrooms". It is restating the point, rather than offering an explanation as to why that is the point being made.

As far as mushrooms go, most people that don't like then actually dislike the texture, not the flavor. If you give most people something made with mushrooms that doesn't have the texture, they enjoy it. When this happens, these people are then able to say they enjoy mushrooms for flavor, but not the texture - actual useful information.

This is what I am trying to get from you.

You think a combat tracker will lead to a rush to max damage - but why do you assume this won't be the case without a combat tracker?

If the encounters people are taking on require nothing more than max damage to take on, the meta will reflect this. The builds that people suggest (which is what a meta is) will all be about max damage. If the content requires something other than max damage, the builds that people suggest will reflect that need.

As such, your desire to have a meta that isn't just about max DPS (one that I agree with - I'd like more variety than that) is more tied to the content the game has than it is to the presence or absence of a combat tracker. The only difference a combat tracker will make to this is that with one, viable builds will be found faster, increasing the number of viable builds for players to pick from.

I've said all of this before, and the responses I have had back were to essentially disregard all if this, as well as disregard the fact that we have an actual example of all of this in Archeage.

What you are saying you want in terms of a meta is all good - everyone wants that (despite your misunderstanding of people like myself). Thing is, getting that is a result of content, not combat trackers. A meta is a reflection of what people want from a build, and what people want from a build is a reflection of what the content asks of players.

Now, let's just completely ignore all of the above, and assume that somehow the presence of a combat tracker magically means people only care about max damage (which honestly sounds like a cool cartoon hero name). This is a complete hypothetical, but we are making the assumption here that you are right, so let's go with it.

In this scenario, where players just want max damage, how exactly would the presence of a combat tracker as per the suggestion I have been making in this thread turn everything in to an epeen contest for that elusive max damage? If it were implemented, the vast majority of people (90%+) simply wouldn't be able to compare their damage output with anyone else, and the few that can are only able to do so within the same guild as themselves. And ion all honesty, a little bit of dick measuring between friends in a guild is perfectly acceptable - and if someone doesn't like that and their guild is doing it, it is a sure sign that they are in the wrong guild.

So even if you are right, and that a combat tracker would lead to this epeening that you so fear (that again, no one wants in regards to pick up content), the suggestion made in this thread still makes that kind of behavior totally impossible.

This is why I am still asking for the reasons as to why you think a combat tracker will negatively impact a games meta - it's like you are neglecting to tell me about some middle step in the process that would completely change everything from the only example of this that we have.

Again, all of this has been gone over, and there has been no response to any of it. All that has been said from people saying they think that a combat tracker will negatively impact the meta is to simply repeat that one statement without actually engaging in any further discussion.

So, as a TL;DR, the basic questions left are;
1, What makes you think not haivng a combat tracker would stop people wanting max damage.
2, Why do you think the meta will be initially shaped by anything other than the requirements of PvE content, followed by counters to the builds that are common in PvE content.
3, Even if this were all true, how would a combat tracker that can only be used within a small number of guilds (and only on members of those guilds) really be considered to be that bad to people outside of those guilds?

I think this sums it up perfectly. You're not right or wrong. I'm not right or wrong. We both have the capacity to be correct here, and I think we both would/will be correct.

I agree with this - and I am not saying you don't have a point.

What I am saying is;

Since every game has a combat tracker, the assumption should be made that the balance of good vs bad for having a combat tracker is at least even.

If we can then take some of the negative aspects - or indeed most of the negative aspects - of combat trackers existing in a game and eliminate them based on designing around them, then we can undoubtidly tip that balance well and truely in favor of combat trackers being an overwhelmingly overall good thing for the game as a whole. There *may* still be the occasional negative aspect to them existing, but the balance will be well and truely tipped to them being good.

To further that point, I am saying that literally the only way this can happen is if combat trackers are developed in to the game client directly - and that if this is not done before the game goes to live (or to beta 2, realistically) it will be too late and the option of adding a combat tracker with restrictions will be lost until the next game.

Rhadek

problem here even with personal dps meters is that guilds or group wil ask you to post a screenshot of your dps in their discord. so nah id rather not have them, dps isnt everything

Tragnar

If they ask them then dont join those guilds - play with likeminded people. If raids are supposed to be challenging content in the game then guilds that invite through screenshot of dps meter are not going to able to clear such things.

Raid team needs players with brain to understand what the leader wants them to do and what role they are supposed to have and understandably what build should then they be running.

Being rejected into a guild that is not planning to play the game same way you want to is not a bad thing @Rhadek

Noaani

Rhadek wrote: »

problem here even with personal dps meters is that guilds or group wil ask you to post a screenshot of your dps in their discord. so nah id rather not have them, dps isnt everything

As @Tragnar said above, if you do not want to share your DPS ability with others, don't group with people that would want you to. If someone is that kind of player, chances are there are other things about them that would also cause you to not enjoy grouping with them.

Better off knowing before you are 30 minutes in to a dungeon.

That said, the prevailing suggestion in this thread wouldn't allow for that - as the combat tracker that is being suggested wouldn't be available to the type of player that would be in a pick up group.

You can't realistically ask players to produce numbers for you that they have no way of producing.

Abominatus

In software development we have a concept called "Security by Obfuscation" in which the developer tries to secure the system by hiding where data is kept and not documenting it rather than by encrypting or otherwise preventing access to it. This is rightly considered the weakest form of security because it is acknowledged that a dedicated attacker will expend the effort required to find the data they need regardless of your efforts to obscure it.

That principle is applicable here. Trying to hide performance data by not having an explicit meter for it is destined to be futile. The people who want that data will have it. Unless steps are taken to make the damage data entirely inaccessible to the players, logs will be used to analyse player performance. If needed, there will be enterprising developers willing to screen-scrape data to get what they want. I'm passing no judgement on that activity, merely stating that in a community as focused and dedicated as an MMO community can be, this will happen.

So therefore assuming that there is any means to gather damage data, theorycrafters will discover min-max builds, and some guild leaders will use that information to assess the performance of their members and of prospective candidates. Evaluating members this way is short-sighted and foolish, but short-sighted and foolish is a good description for a significant percentage of the human race.

Alternatively, you can completely foreclose the ability of players to gather information about their performance. No logs at all. Maybe not even floating combat text. That makes it very hard to optimize for your own benefit, and means that ultimately PvE boss tuning can't really take place because the developers are working from compete information while the players are groping in the dark. The boss killed us.. why? *shrug* What can we do to improve our performance on the next pull? *shrug*. Such an environment might be fun for some portion of the playerbase, but is more likely to lead to either frustration with the difficulty of the encounters or alternatively disinterest because the encounters are insufficiently challenging to the most informed.

Damage meters can be abused. Many players in fact use them inappropriately. But in my opinion a high-information environment is almost always superior to a low-information one. If the level of information available exposes shortcomings in the game itself in the form of imbalance, then that's not a problem with providing the information, that's a problem with the underlying systems that need to be addressed.

Ultimately if the argument against a damage meter is that toxic and/or stupid people will abuse it then the solution is to simply not associate with those people. A good guild leader will stamp hard on the abusers in their ranks and those people will either educate themselves or leave, and a bad guild leader... well, perhaps you should consider finding another guild?

Chunks

Noaani wrote: »

So, as a TL;DR, the basic questions left are;
1, What makes you think not haivng a combat tracker would stop people wanting max damage.
2, Why do you think the meta will be initially shaped by anything other than the requirements of PvE content, followed by counters to the builds that are common in PvE content.
3, Even if this were all true, how would a combat tracker that can only be used within a small number of guilds (and only on members of those guilds) really be considered to be that bad to people outside of those guilds?

The first two questions have already been addressed by Neuroguy and I, repeatedly.

And youre back to asking about combat trackers in the third question in a damage meter thread.

We discussed it with you in the few previous pages. Enjoy, my friend!

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