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.

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Vhaeyne

@Juicy Dubs

Yeah you are talking about the "Stone Sea Sky"? I think, IDK I have only used it at the start of an expansion to make sure that I was ready for the first EXs while waiting for savage. That weird time period where you are freshly capped again, and want to make sure you are playing the class right with the new adjustments and abilities. I did this in both Stormblood and Shadowbringers.

In any case I don't think that something like that would ever work well for ashes. With the enchanting system and build flexibility ashes will never be as tightly tuned as FFXIV. Ashes wont even have "proper" rotations(which is good imo). People will use some sort of rotation based on cooldowns in PvE I am sure, but it will not be baked into the job the way it is in FFXIV. Another factor is that bosses are going to "Dynamically" adjust to raid performance. The best we could have is a training dummy that lets you know you are doing "okay" for your level and gear grade/enchant level. I don't bet we would ever see something like that.

I do think it is likely with the stance Intrepid as taken against parsers, we will see a lot of bans if they make talking about DPS actionable. Ashes is going to be a far more directly competitive game with open world PvP and non-instanced raid bosses. I would expect people to be more toxic about not only dying to a boss due to low DPS, but also another raid took that loot. How all of this plays out is going to be interesting to watch at a minimum.

Juicy Dubs

Yep. Stone Sea Sky is still the thing it goes by afaik.

I'm pretty glad to hear rotations won't be as baked into AoC as much as XIV because it is a bit of a stresspoint. "Dynimcal adjustment to performance" is somewhat questionable but I'll guess we'll just have to wait for more details or experience to learn whether this compromises the integrity of the experience.

I'm sure any form of harrassment is banable depending on severity and open talk of parsing that is against ToS. I'm find with it personally but just wanted to express that it's not an inherent evil or negative as its painted out to be.

I've seldome considered myself 'endgame' or 'raider' without capping everything, always leaving that on the neverending to-do list. But as I run out of things to do and begin to explore activities beyond leveling, self improvement has become my main focus. So I learned, and am still learning, but most importantly having fun in the process.

I'm excited for AoC while trying to contain my hype after the Cyberpunk disappointment of 2020. But its aspirations are very deserving of the chance, and I'm certainly welcoming to a change of pace that takes a step aside from the "cap level, raid, repeat and wait" formula I'm feeling from FFXIV.

Saedu

Noaani wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

See what I did there

While true, almost all of the senior developers for Ashes are ex-EQ2 developers.

Intrepid proudly stated as much as far back as the original kickstarter, that games logo is on their kickstarter page (among other games logos).

They have not publically acknowledged that they have any WoW developers on staff.

All the more reason to share good game system examples on this forum from other non EQ2 games to help the devs. Let's home EQ2 doesn't have too much of a bias on this game

GoodCitizen

I know meter's can be important to determine ones overall performance personally but, this game isn't really about that life.

Noaani

Saedu wrote: »

All the more reason to share good game system examples on this forum from other non EQ2 games to help the devs.

What, you think the developers are unable to keep tabs on what others are doing in the very niche industry they have made their profession?

That is showing a complete and total lack of trust in their ability to know what they are doing.

Noaani

Exquizit wrote: »

I know meter's can be important to determine ones overall performance personally but, this game isn't really about that life.

If this game isn't about that life, why have the developers said they will implement a system whereby raids are rewarded based on how well they kill content - not just whether they kill it or not.

Evidence would suggest that this game is more about that life than any other game is.

Saedu

Noaani wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

All the more reason to share good game system examples on this forum from other non EQ2 games to help the devs.

What, you think the developers are unable to keep tabs on what others are doing in the very niche industry they have made their profession?

That is showing a complete and total lack of trust in their ability to know what they are doing.

This has zero to do with a trust or lack of trust with devs. It has 100% to do with good product management best practices that result in delivering world-class products.

I've worked in software product management in a few different companies and I've shipped successful products. I know first hand what it means to keep track of the industry. I also know what it means to listen to customers.

Yes, I 100% absolutely think that this if most of the team is ex-EQ2 then is increasingly important to share both good and bad examples from non-EQ2 games to these devs. Sharing EQ2 examples are actually less helpful for them as they probably already have knowledge of that space.

Each of us will have our own bias based on our experiences. Developers, Product Managers, even Steven can be influenced by these bias (in both good and bad ways). The "best" products are made through diverse opinions and opening discussing them. Statements that attempt to shut down conversation (e.g. "its WoW so its not valid here") are not helpful in designing the best product.

There's a saying that product managers are often taught early on: "Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant". I hope that Steven and his product team adhere to this saying (and I think they do based on what I've seen in the monthly dev updates).

PMs or game designers (or in this case Steven as the creative director) are the decision makers on what gets built. Their experience (and subsequent opinion/bias) is a two-edged sword. These decision maker's products live or die on their ability to set aside their own bias and understand their customers. Only then can they build the right product.

I've posted more on these forums in the past month then I have in my entire 16+ years playing WoW. Why? Because I believe what Steven says in his dev updates about customer feedback and I see a opportunity to have an influence on an interesting game. I believe that my opinions are being read and weighed with the others on this forum and that to some degree it will help make the game better.

(the ability to troll you a little bit @Noaani is just a bonus for posting here, but wouldn't be reason enough for me to spend time on a forum

)

Saedu

Noaani wrote: »

Exquizit wrote: »

I know meter's can be important to determine ones overall performance personally but, this game isn't really about that life.

If this game isn't about that life, why have the developers said they will implement a system whereby raids are rewarded based on how well they kill content - not just whether they kill it or not.

Evidence would suggest that this game is more about that life than any other game is.

I agree with this statement.

Noaani

Saedu wrote: »

Yes, I 100% absolutely think that this if most of the team is ex-EQ2 then is increasingly important to share both good and bad examples from non-EQ2 games to these devs.

I'd you've worked in any kind of product development, then you would know first hand that keeping a tab on what others in your sector are doing is a key aspect of the job.

You would also know that there is literally nothing at all that your potential customers can offer you that could make your product better, at least not until after it has launched.

You would also know that the specifics of each product, and the goals the company behind each product has for said product, dictate the direction that product will take more than anything else. Since the general public is unaware of theee factors, that just adds to our inability to provide useful information.

All of that taken in, the notion that we could point out to professional MMO developers some of the features of the most successful MMO of all time (which is the only game I have seen you reference) and think that we are providing a useful service and giving the developers information they may not have - thats just odd.

That is like going down to your local gourmet burger place and telling them what McDonalds do. Obviously they know, and they exist to do better burgers than that.

Saedu

Noaani wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

Yes, I 100% absolutely think that this if most of the team is ex-EQ2 then is increasingly important to share both good and bad examples from non-EQ2 games to these devs.

I'd you've worked in any kind of product development, then you would know first hand that keeping a tab on what others in your sector are doing is a key aspect of the job.

You would also know that there is literally nothing at all that your potential customers can offer you that could make your product better, at least not until after it has launched.

You would also know that the specifics of each product, and the goals the company behind each product has for said product, dictate the direction that product will take more than anything else. Since the general public is unaware of theee factors, that just adds to our inability to provide useful information.

All of that taken in, the notion that we could point out to professional MMO developers some of the features of the most successful MMO of all time (which is the only game I have seen you reference) and think that we are providing a useful service and giving the developers information they may not have - thats just odd.

That is like going down to your local gourmet burger place and telling them what McDonalds do. Obviously they know, and they exist to do better burgers than that.

I can tell by your comment that you probably have not worked (successfully) in software product management. That's okay. It's not the most intuitive discipline and I'm happy to share some of is secrets

.

From what I've observed so far...I think IS has been fairly transparent with many of the desires and the vision of this game. I think they are also open to adapting their vision over time and careful to not "lock" in too much. Most importantly, I know Steven has on multiple occasions openly invited/asked us to discuss the game and share feedback (so here I am!). We don't actually have the product in hand, but he wants feedback and he goes out of his way to show us the product each month... That's good product management.

If IS did not want our feedback/active discussion on these forums, they would be much more in stealth mode at the moment. MMOs are competitive and they risk competitors taking good ideas here.

One of the top flaws in product development is to assume you know best just because you are a expert in your industry. Countless companies have failed by doing this. Please show me a single product management book that that tells you to not get feedback from your customers... Most books actually focus on the criticality of getting prototypes or the actual product into the customers hands ASAP and iterating based on customer feedback (not what your internal team thinks is right).

Your analogy of the burger joint sounds fun, but is flawed. Regardless I'll play along... who cares how good your hamburgers are if not enough people are buying them for you to stay in business? (Yes Steven has invested $30m, but that won't last very long, especially on California salaries. Maybe two years tops with a ~50 person team). So priority 1 is building a product that can generate enough customer interest to be profitable. It doesn't have to meet all customers needs, but you need to have a big enough target market to sustain your product (and AoC is a very ambitious product vision). This doesn't mean you "downgrade" your product to be exactly like your competitors, but you probably want to know what the successful companies are doing and see what you can do to appeal better to the market. Maybe its the new mobile app that has nothing to do with the actual product people eat, but its now more convenient to order in a COVID-19 world? or maybe that app was a total flop and not something you put any time into. Maybe its the silly wrapping of the food that provides a better "experience"? Maybe its the staff and how they treat the guests? Maybe its the speed/convenience is more important than the quality of the food for these customers?

If you want to know why the competitor is winning... you go ask the competitors loyal customers... lots of them (you also ask your own customers to see why/where you are winning). Yes, you should also try the competitors offering, but asking their customers is still far better than your own experience (as you have a natural bias against the competitors product so you are not a fair judge of it).

You then see what changes you can make that will or will not fit or not fit with the mission of your company. You don't blindly follow what the competitor is doing. You don't try to do everything the opposite of the competitor just to spite them. You make the data-driven connections on what you think will work the best, and then you test your theories by bringing prototypes of these ideas back to those customers you were talking to and see how they react.

Noaani

Saedu wrote: »

Your analogy of the burger joint sounds fun, but is flawed. Regardless I'll play along... who cares how good your hamburgers are if not enough people are buying them for you to stay in business?

Why would you assume that a burger place isn't doing good business, just because they aren't copying McDonalds?

That is a really odd assumption to make.

As to you being a software, well anything. The fact that you think WoW is good essentially excludes the possibility of you working with software competently.

Saedu

Noaani wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

Your analogy of the burger joint sounds fun, but is flawed. Regardless I'll play along... who cares how good your hamburgers are if not enough people are buying them for you to stay in business?

Why would you assume that a burger place isn't doing good business, just because they aren't copying McDonalds?

That is a really odd assumption to make.

As to you being a software, well anything. The fact that you think WoW is good essentially excludes the possibility of you working with software competently.

I wasn't assuming the burger joint was doing well or not. Just saying being profitable is the bare minimum. You should always be talking with customers and getting feedback regardless of your success status. If you don't, you will be obsolete when your customers shift enough.

Yes I've played WoW. Yes I'm in product management. I've also played many other games. I just like to use the WoW examples because there are so many (both good and bad) and it's what I currently play.

You do realize there have been a number of points you have made on these forums that align with WoW design principles at some point or another. Not everything of course. I know you try to keep your anti-WoW image up

Noaani

Saedu wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

Your analogy of the burger joint sounds fun, but is flawed. Regardless I'll play along... who cares how good your hamburgers are if not enough people are buying them for you to stay in business?

Why would you assume that a burger place isn't doing good business, just because they aren't copying McDonalds?

That is a really odd assumption to make.

As to you being a software, well anything. The fact that you think WoW is good essentially excludes the possibility of you working with software competently.

I wasn't assuming the burger joint was doing well or not. Just saying being profitable is the bare minimum. You should always be talking with customers and getting feedback regardless of your success status. If you don't, you will be obsolete when your customers shift enough

You should always be looking at how you can do better, but it is never the average customer that is able to tell you how to do that.

You communicate with customers, sure. But you dont ask them what they thought of your product and how it could be better, because that will never result in useful feedback.

You ask your customers how they found using your product (or preferably, you just observe them using it).

As I said earlier the path taken for how to improve a product depends more on specifics internal to the product and company, and these are things your customers have no grasp of. As such, they are able to offer literally zero insight as to what path you decide to take on your product.

Saedu

Noaani wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

Your analogy of the burger joint sounds fun, but is flawed. Regardless I'll play along... who cares how good your hamburgers are if not enough people are buying them for you to stay in business?

Why would you assume that a burger place isn't doing good business, just because they aren't copying McDonalds?

That is a really odd assumption to make.

As to you being a software, well anything. The fact that you think WoW is good essentially excludes the possibility of you working with software competently.

I wasn't assuming the burger joint was doing well or not. Just saying being profitable is the bare minimum. You should always be talking with customers and getting feedback regardless of your success status. If you don't, you will be obsolete when your customers shift enough

You should always be looking at how you can do better, but it is never the average customer that is able to tell you how to do that.

You communicate with customers, sure. But you dont ask them what they thought of your product and how it could be better, because that will never result in useful feedback.

You ask your customers how they found using your product (or preferably, you just observe them using it).

As I said earlier the path taken for how to improve a product depends more on specifics internal to the product and company, and these are things your customers have no grasp of. As such, they are able to offer literally zero insight as to what path you decide to take on your product.

hmm... Nice try, but not quite right on your assumptions here. No worries, here's some more product management tips for you

You absolutely do want to deeply understand your "average customer". Actually, you want to go further than that. You want to ask lots various questions to your customers/prospective customers so you can start to see the common themes in your customer base. You also want to analyze their behavior with your product (hard to do right now of course, but hopefully the Alpha's help here). Then you start to create personas that group these customers together (and with in-game analytics I think you could potentially measure the size of these personas based on what they do/don't do + time spent). When you go and design features, you can talk about what persona the feature is for or how each persona might react to the given feature. For example, In a MMO, some basic personas might be a mix of the types of content + the duration of gameplay that users do. E.g. you might have the hardcore PvP persona, the casual quester persona, etc. Talking to these customers will provide significant insight to understand they why behind their behavior.

You absolutely do ask your customers for thoughts/ideas on how you can do better, then you dig past those to find out the why and the problems. You ask all sorts of various questions that I'm not going to go into detail on here.

That doesn't mean that if a person is saying "you should do feature x this way" its the good/right way to do it. That is often how customers might express themselves and that's okay because its how customers think. A good PM wants to dig deeper into that and understand the why behind it. They are looking for the core "problem" that the customer is trying to solve for. The PM can then see which problems make sense for their business to solve for (and which ones do not). They can then cross reference that against their persona's and their userbase to see how their decisions might impact their business.

+1 point to you for the idea of observing. That's even better than asking, but it can take more time. You want to use both tactics to varying degrees. Sometimes you want to go broad and ask lots of customers (e.g. via a survey), sometimes you want to go deep with some targeted customers (focus groups, usability studies, alpha testing, streamer interviews, etc). You also mix this with other types of data collection (e.g. in game analytics, course that only works after the game is live

).

"literally zero insight" is an massively incorrect statement and frankly extremely wrong. Of course your customers are not making the actual product decisions, but what they say, feel, and do, are your most important sources of input for your decisions as a PM (far more important than what you personally think is right based on your own experience). Customers are the people you are solving the problems for and without them, you do not have a product.

Here's a quote for you from the book "Empowered" (written by Marty Cagen for product management leaders. Marty is one of the foremost experts on product management in the world):

"In strong product companies, the purpose of the product team is to serve customers by creating products customers love, yet work for the business"

The customer, not the business, comes first. Of course you must balance both or you wont have a profitable business to solve the customers' needs. However, far too many businesses out there put themselves first and that results in sub-par customer experiences that ultimately leads to failed products.

Here's two examples for you from WoW:
1) Covenant system
Blizzard gathered months of feedback before the release of their latest expansion, Shadowlands. For months their average players, streamers, and almost all of their personas were saying "the covenant system is bad". Blizzard decided that the players were wrong and they went ahead and released the feature. Guess what, its bad... the players were right.

The sad thing is Blizzard really did put a lot of effort into listening to their customers feedback on the concerns with the covenant system. Several webcasts with streamers, lots of discussions, etc. But they didn't truly listen to their customers...they disagreed with their player base because they thought they knew better. They tried to spend time convincing the players that it would be awesome and everything would be good and balanced. They were wrong and the game is not as good because of their decision. Many players feel forced to pick covenant A for the abilities when they would rather be doing covenant B for the story (or vice versa). One of their signature feature for the expansion is considered a failure by most of the players (search up #pulltheripcord and you will probably find lots of this feedback).

2) PvP gearing system
The pvp gearing system is much better this time around. Players earn conquest points with a weekly cap (and catch up mechanic if you miss prior weeks). Plus the rating system is still in place and higher rating is needed to upgrade gear to higher levels. This system worked well for both more casual and more dedicated players. This system was actually so successful that the PvE only personas were complaining they didn't have a similar system (and Blizzard recently patched in a similar system for them). Guess what, this system was heavily influenced by the customers and Blizzard listened to them! Coincidence? I think not!

Noaani

Saedu wrote: »

Blah blah

What I dont get is - where in all of that is the value of unsolicited advice from people that have never used one of your products before?

Because remember, that is what you are advocating, and what I am saying has no real value.

Saedu

Noaani wrote: »

Saedu wrote: »

Blah blah

What I dont get is - where in all of that is the value of unsolicited advice from people that have never used one of your products before?

Because remember, that is what you are advocating, and what I am saying has no real value.

Great question. Keep in mind that this feedback is NOT unsolicited. Steven has literally asked for it in dev updates this year and he is right for doing so. Go back and listen closely to the last few dev updates. They ask for feedback and engagement from us every time.

Why do you think IS is doing the monthly dev updates? Why are they asking for the community to provide input when they know that most of us have only seen their gameplay videos? It's not marketing hype (that's best done when closer to release and IS has been talking about this game for years). They want to understand the perspectives of their target customers so they can build the best product possible. It's easier to make changes now than later. We know this feedback has already saved them from some bad decisions (e.g. daily login rewards got axed).

Like I said before, good product management is not directly intuitive and thats okay. I hope you're learning from all of this (I could be spending my time right now playing WoW instead, but I have hope for this game).

Saedu

@Noaani : March update:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD5WKztW0S4&t=393s

About 6:30 in Steven goes into some detail asking for feedback. He even talks about the whole combat system being reworked (not a small change, may have implications to the vision?!?!). Again around 34:00...

He had an even better quote from one of the other ones where he asked for open discussion to challenge the pros/cons of systems, but I don't remember what update that one was in so I don't have a reference for you.

Weders

This seems like a conversation similar to questioning whether grading systems are necessary in schooling. Any thoughts or insights from this juxtaposition?

maouw

Weders wrote: »

This seems like a conversation similar to questioning whether grading systems are necessary in schooling. Any thoughts or insights from this juxtaposition?

For me, your analogy captures the idea of education becoming tunnel-vision focused on the grading system pretty well. And the advantages of multi-stage grading that helps you easily judge good and bad learners, pick out the ones who need extra attention, etc.

I think the major flaw in the analogy is:
- In the education system, without a grading system you cannot objectively sample learning (until someone finds a better way to do so)
- In gaming, you can still beat a boss without a DPS meter and that in itself is a test of sorts.

Noaani

maouw wrote: »

- In gaming, you can still beat a boss without a DPS meter and that in itself is a test of sorts.

Not if said boss is tuned to not allow for underperformance at all, and such encounters do indeed exist. Without a combat tracker, you dont even know what underperforming is - you have no way of knowing.

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