Friendly rivalry and spotting slackers with no dps/hps meters?

Honestly I'm excited to play an MMO that isn't going to be cluttered up with a million addons and just have everything you need built in.

That said something that worries me as a guild leader is friendly competition, for example in wow I have 2 hunters in my guild who play the same class and spec and are constantly competing with each other for top dps/performance and they love to bounce ideas off each other for rotation/talents/stat prio/etc. Without any way to measure yourself in Ashes how can they continue their friendly rivalry?

I'm also worried about how to spot and deal with slackers in my guild in Ashes since people tend to take the path of least resistance, if I have a healer that throws up a hot on the tanks and then alt tabs to watch anime during a boss fight how would I as GM know unless I'm watching everyone casting? (impossible in large group sizes). If we're wiping because of no healing going out how can I identify its the lazy healer and not slap the blame on the entire heal team? (which would suck for everyone who is really trying).

I propose a very simplified "meter" that only the group lead is able to see that just provides a breakdown of either active time casting abilities/hitting the mobs/moving around or the ability to see what spell and how often the person is pressing it just to be able to see everyone is participating or at least trying. That or allow only the group lead to see dps/hps meters. It doesn't help with the friendly competition aspect but idk what would. I'd honestly really love the option to "opt in" for dps/hps meters in specific content like only the gm/group in lead in large scale content, or anyone in small groups of 2-3, or perhaps have some ingame target dummies that display dps/hps and you can only see it there.

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Biccus

I disagree with some of what @Noaani is saying. I don't think a fight where damage is random and with no indicators sounds like a good idea. that basically does turn it into a healing check. Damage you can't avoid or mitigate is 100% on your healers, even though you might try and argue against that..
With no audio or visual cues and just using a combat log to see things, are we seriously expecting people to just stare at the logs and be timing abilities every fight? Now that sounds awful.

Maybe the problem with the "easy" content is just having things on set timers. Random timers are in my opinion a decent idea, it'll test reaction speed and decision making. The argument of course in favour of set timers is that it allows high end competition, randomness allows people to discredit fights because the raid "got lucky" with the timer.

Maybe take the things not communicated away from damage and do more interesting things.

Saedu

healing would be very boring (with a good raid team) if all damage was telegraphed and avoidable. Or DPS would just be lazy if the damage was ignored and there wasn't non-avoidable damage to stack on top of it.

There should be a mix of avoidable damage that the raid needs to react to (aka mechanics) + unavoidable damage that the healers need to take care of.

Noaani

Biccus wrote: »

I disagree with some of what Noaani is saying. I don't think a fight where damage is random and with no indicators sounds like a good idea.

I agree with that.

However, what I am talking about isn't random. There are no indicators, but the fact that it isn't known does not mean it is random, it means it needs to be understood.

I don't know where the idea that what I am talking about is random in any way. Just because it isn't known at the start, and may take a few pulls (or even a few days) to figure out, that doesn't mean it is random. It just means it is not yet known.

I am a little surprised so many people want fully known encounters with nothing at all to work our or learn.

Biccus

Noaani wrote: »

I don't know where the idea that what I am talking about is random in any way. Just because it isn't known at the start, and may take a few pulls (or even a few days) to figure out, that doesn't mean it is random. It just means it is not yet known..

While it might not be random, it will certainly feel random.

Biccus wrote: »

With no audio or visual cues and just using a combat log to see things, are we seriously expecting people to just stare at the logs and be timing abilities every fight? Now that sounds awful..

You must have forgot to comment on this one.

Noaani

Biccus wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

I don't know where the idea that what I am talking about is random in any way. Just because it isn't known at the start, and may take a few pulls (or even a few days) to figure out, that doesn't mean it is random. It just means it is not yet known..

While it might not be random, it will certainly feel random.

It will feel random until you and your raid figure it out - this is kind of the point. Assuming this isn't your first ever raid (on such content), you will all know this to be the case, you will work on trying to figure it out, and then you will kill the encounter. You are not supposed to just attempt to carry on with the encounter without working this out.

Or we could just have content that holds up giant signs telling us what they are about to do...

Biccus wrote: »

With no audio or visual cues and just using a combat log to see things, are we seriously expecting people to just stare at the logs and be timing abilities every fight? Now that sounds awful..

You must have forgot to comment on this one.

I didn't comment on it because it shows an obvious lack of understanding of how to use a combat tracker.

I have said many times on these forums, I run a combat tracker in the background, and only ever look at it after the nights raiding is over. This applies to nights when we are killing, as well as nights when we are gathering information.

Anyone that is looking at a combat tracker during a fight - or that thinks others have to be looking at one during a fight - doesn't know what they are doing.

Caeryl

Saedu wrote: »

healing would be very boring (with a good raid team) if all damage was telegraphed and avoidable. Or DPS would just be lazy if the damage was ignored and there wasn't non-avoidable damage to stack on top of it.

There should be a mix of avoidable damage that the raid needs to react to (aka mechanics) + unavoidable damage that the healers need to take care of.

No one has suggested that all damage be avoidable, but every piece of damage needs to have a discernible source (either via visual or audible feedback to the player). So far the only one saying otherwise is Ego-Stroker.

Saedu

I'd like to take this moment to point out the irony that what @Noaani is advocating for is basically WoWs modern raid design.

Of course the online guides take away some of the "guild figuring it out" part. That's not the fault of the game dewign though. That's the community and it will happen in every game.

Of course there are also add-ons that give in-game timers when important abilities might happen (or when they may come off CD if they have a randomness to their cast). Some may argue for or against these. I'd probably say they are generally good as without them the game would be ridiculously difficult for 99% of the players. Blizzard would probably have to turn down the difficulty of the encounter if they removed these addons.

However even with those guides/addons guilds still need to put in a lot of effort to figure out the bosses on the highest difficulty. Many guilds with good players put hundreds of pulls into some of those bosses before they get them killed. Most pve guilds will not complete the raid tier on the highest difficulty before the next one comes out.

Vhaeyne

The whole "Guilds figuring it out" then "keeping it a secret" thing @Noaani has talked about a few times on here from EQ2 makes zero sense. It might be part of the reason the game could not stay financially stable with a monthly sub model, and the game had to go F2P.

I mean think about it. If no one in the world knows that their are raids worth doing then why would anyone stay subbed to the game. Personally I am still extremely skeptical that EQ2's raid design was ever worth a damn, but assuming that it was. A system where no one knows if the raids are good or not outside of the raiders. Is not good for the health of any game. People need to know that their is something at the top to strive for in order to stay trying to progress. Otherwise they will just give up on the game. I would bet that is a big part of why EQ2 failed.

Having to figure out raids is still something that can happen. In both FFXIV and WOW, when the new raid tier goes live and their is the race to world first. Raid groups still have the strategize the fights and come up with the most reliable strategy per group. Keeping that information secret really does not do anything for any one. In addition that information needs to be public so that the community can verify top logs are not cheated for WOWlogs and FFlogs.

The whole concept of keeping things secret is just not worth it to me. I also would speculate that if EQ2's raid design was good. There would be videos from players excited to show off kills, but such videos do not exist. I certainly would not want that mentality for Ashes. It would make the game more niche than it is already going to be.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I mean think about it. If no one in the world knows that their are raids worth doing then why would anyone stay subbed to the game.

How did we get from "some of the top end encounters in the game having a number of abilities that are not automatically communicated to players" to the above? I hate to say it, but that is on Dygz level for making connections that dont exist.

And sure, in other games there absolutely is a need to work out a strategy to the encounter. The difference is, in EQ2, you also need to work out what a portion of the encounter is doing, then you work out a strategy. This is why many guilds in EQ2 end up with a different strategy for the same encounter - they followed a different path for working it out.

And for the record, it is the raiding aspect of EQ2 that is keeping it live still. Any MMO that has been live continuously for 16+ years and is still getting full expansions yearly is worthy of every MMO players respect, even if they have not played it themself.

Wildstar failed. Tabula Rasa failed. City of Heroes/Villans failed. Asherons Call failed. The Steam version of Bless failed.

EQ2 may not be as successful as WoW, but to say the game failed when it is still getting yearly expansions (does WoW get expansions every year?) is to ignore actual reality. You are better than that.

Noaani

Saedu wrote: »

I'd like to take this moment to point out the irony that what Noaani is advocating for is basically WoWs modern raid design.

If this is the case, I'd like to point out the irony that WoW's modern raid design is based off of the raid design that EQ2 was using 16 years ago.

Vhaeyne

Noaani wrote: »

How did we get from "some of the top end encounters in the game having a number of abilities that are not automatically communicated to players" to the above? I hate to say it, but that is on Dygz level cor making connections that dont exist.

Was lurking in the thread. Your ideas of "Good" raid design always comes from your EQ2 prospective. I just can't get that "Raids keeping secrets" crap out of my head since you brought in up in other threads. I know here you are talking about how you think ability's should be communicated, but every time you talk about raids now. All I can think about is how stupid it would be to have end game content no one knows about.

It is a bit of a leap to bring it up here, but I just can't get it out of my mind lol.

Lets have hard raids, and no evidence of hard raids... There are 8 people playing EQ2 on twitch right now. Imagine if there were raids to watch? It could not hurt the health of the game.

I could have brought this up in another thread, but I thought YOLO.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

There are 8 people playing EQ2 on twitch right now.

That is more than I would have thought for a game based on actual 20 year old technology. Most of the people watching it on twitch wouldn't even be that old.

Fun fact, EQ2 was originally optimised for a 6ghz singe core CPU, because multi-core chips weren't popular when it was being developed, and the speed of chips was constantly increasing.

Vhaeyne

Noaani wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

There are 8 people playing EQ2 on twitch right now.

That is more than I would have thought for a game based on actual 20 year old technology. Most of the people watching it on twitch wouldn't even be that old.

DDO is about the same age, has 91.

EQ1 has 249 atm...

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Vhaeyne wrote: »

There are 8 people playing EQ2 on twitch right now.

That is more than I would have thought for a game based on actual 20 year old technology. Most of the people watching it on twitch wouldn't even be that old.

DDO is about the same age, has 91.

EQ1 has 249 atm...

How many does Wildstar have?

Vhaeyne

Noaani wrote: »

How many does Wildstar have?

1... broken heart.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

How many does Wildstar have?

1... broken heart.

I mean, if we are going to use twitch players as a metric for determining which games are good and which aren't...

I've said many times that EQ2 has its issues. There are reasons why I never went back to it, even if the cash shop was the reason I left.

However, those issues are not in the raiding aspect of the game, nor in the games success as an MMORPG in general.

If indeed it is true that recent WoW raids are copying the way EQ2 has done things for a very long time, as another poster suggested, then taking in to account the generally positive comments I have heard about WoW raiding recently, I don't see how you could look at that aspect of EQ2 as anything other than positive - even if it is one you do not understand.

Vhaeyne

Noaani wrote: »

I mean, if we are going to use twitch players as a metric for determining which games are good and which aren't...

I've said many times that EQ2 has its issues. There are reasons why I never went back to it, even if the cash shop was the reason I left.

However, those issues are not in the raiding aspect of the game, nor in the games success as an MMORPG in general.

If indeed it is true that recent WoW raids are copying the way EQ2 has done things for a very long time, as another poster suggested, then taking in to account the generally positive comments I have heard about WoW raiding recently, I don't see how you could look at that aspect of EQ2 as anything other than positive - even if it is one you do not understand.

Was using twitch as a metric for what is still active.

Like I said, my main problem is EQ2 was the culture you talked about where everyone wants to keep the content secret. That has to be part of the reason they went to a cash shop model. When subs wont keep your game alive you have to pivot to a more lucrative method of funding your game.

I don't know how or why people came up with the idea that keeping raids secret was a good idea, but it seems like it has to be related to why the game failed.

I will admit that a major part of why Wildstar failed was the failed raid scene. Brought on by massive difficulty spikes and annoying flagging quests.

End game content can be 20/10, but if no one knows about it or can access it than it might as well not exist.

tautau

I hope that I will be known for my personal reputation...a good party member, responsible guild~mate, creative role-player, and the best healer on the server.

DPS is a very shallow measure of player quality.

Noaani

Vhaeyne wrote: »

That has to be part of the reason they went to a cash shop model.

They went to the cash shop model because that was what all the MMO's were doing at the time. Like any business, they researched it and thought they were able to make more money. It wasn't about keeping the game alive or letting it die, it was about making $10,000,000 profit a year vs making $15,000,000 profit (made up numbers, I have no idea).

As I am sure you know, that is how business operates - maximize profits.

Lets imagine you are a competitive e-sports player. The title doesn't matter, but maybe there are competitions with prize money. You come across an idea that will destroy anyone attempting to play the game based on the current meta.

According to your thoughts on how EQ2 raiding worked, the first thing you should then do with this new meta-breaking idea is make a video and let everyone know.

Obviously that isn't what you are going to do. You are going to keep this idea to yourself, and make use of it at the most opportune time - the final of a competition or some such.

That is EQ2 raiding. Raids come up with ideas, and they keep them so that they can be more competitive. While the game didn't have the websites to log kills and such that WoW has, the game was far more competitive between guilds early on than WoW was - with the developers occasionally interviewing leaders of guilds getting world firsts. The biggest difference is that since there were no cash prizes, since your meta-breaking idea wasn't being used on other players, and since new content was always being added, there was never a point where that idea had to leave the confines of your guild.

The game is not that competitive now, but that aspect of the game is still present.

The idea that in a competitive setting, people should share their secrets for success is just odd to me - especially when that secret could have taken weeks or months to work out.

I understand it with WoW raids, because for the most part there is only one way to tackle them. With the way websites work with WoW's API, there is no possible way to keep a strategy secret even if you did come up with a novel method for killing an encounter. As such, you may as well just publish videos of your kills - there is no reason not to.

Vhaeyne

@Noaani

I still have my money on: "If the subs were high, they would not have switched to F2P". No reason to dramatically shift your business model if it is working. I mean they could have just been naive in time before it was obvious that going F2P is sign to the MMO community to never take the game seriously again.

The problem with your example is that in every competitive format I am aware of. Everyone knows what everyone is doing after the first competition. People have to see you dominating to verify success. This is true with raiding. Both the WOW and FFXIV world first races are streamed on twitch. Not only do they both generate a ton of positive attention for the game, but they are needed to that people can know who actually won. During this process everyone can see everyone's strategies, believe it or not there is multiple strategies in most WOW and FFXIV boss fights.

There is also the factor where its like: "Why would you care if other guilds knew your giga brain strategy for executing a raid boss?". Other groups using your strategy does not take loot from you. After the race to world first the only thing left to compete for is better parses. It becomes about execution. Seeing other groups strategies might give your raid ideas for how they can improve some phases of a fight, but it is not going to magically execute the strategies well.

Still you are telling me there is no "EQ2 logs" site. So where is all of this "Competition" happening? Are people just sending logs at each other via e-mail with no video proof that the parses are valid?

It still makes zero sense to me in the context of PvE raiding. If this was a PvP tournament we are talking about and you had a team comp that no one had seen, sure keep it secret until the tournament, but after you use it everyone is going to see your strategy, and use it or improve on it.

Again it is like: "What is the point in competing if no one can see you win?"

Child Item