DPS Meter Megathread

Dygz wrote: »

Or, without DPS meters, fights are not designed to be won in 30 minutes.

1h? same, 15min ? same.
When you design a fight, the less you underestimate how much a raid can do DPS, the easiest your fight will be. Even with complex strategy.
The simple fact you manage to make the fight shorter makes it easier : you will do less error... there is less risk to do 1 error during 10 minute than 1h or 10h. . .

Don't trust me? it is easy to understand with souls/metroidvania bosses. they are all about avoid to be hit. find the good time to damage. When you begin to learn those fight, you hit once, or two, the fight is long, and while the fight is long, you have more avoid to do. Then, you try to take risk, to hit the boss and move at the last time avaible. With managing with those short timing, you get a fight always shorter, so less chance to get hit and to die.

Also, FFXIV or WoW fight are designed with an enrage (soft or hard) for a simple reason : Do a really really hard fight, with really complex mechanics, strategy. this is what those game have. BUT no time limit, those fight become far more easy. because players don't need to take any risk to win the fight... The simple fact there is time limit, it forces people to throw the biggest DPS they have, but to do more DPS you have to take risk. It is far easier to do boss mechanics when you don't care doing the best DPS you can.

Dygz wrote: »

Perhaps wanting a smaller gap between "topend" players and the larger mass of players is similar to wanting separate PvE servers.
You want that, but that doesn't mean the devs want that.

If you are ok to have guild far stronger than other, and reaching point of "too strong" is fine to you... but this would be a really bad thing for the game.
I continue to speak a lot to some big guilds, with players always optimizing their gameplay to insane level. While they love challenge, and would love to have people able to try to fight them, they won't lower their level at all for a false challenge.

i have a long story with bosses strategy. I never found mechanic hard to handle if i didn't have to have the biggest DPS avaible... Even in souls or metroidvania... most of time to train against them, i begin with try where i nearly does no damages, focusing on avoiding their attack, and when i am comfortable enough about it, i begin to hit them, and the more i want do damage, the harder it get.
Managing mechanic/avoiding attacks is never hard if it is the only important thing to do.

There is one kind of game where DPS is not needed to make fight hard : runners (for exemple : meatboy) and similar games (end is nigh) but here, we are on game asking chirurgical precision, does a 0,5 second mistake, or push to hard the input, you are dead.

Aerlana wrote: »

When you design a fight, the less you underestimate how much a raid can do DPS, the easiest your fight will be. Even with complex strategy.
The simple fact you manage to make the fight shorter makes it easier : you will do less error... there is less risk to do 1 error during 10 minute than 1h or 10h. . .

I didn't say anything about devs "making the fight shorter".

Aerlana wrote: »

Find the good time to damage. When you begin to learn those fight, you hit once, or two, the fight is long, and while the fight is long, you have more avoid to do. Then, you try to take risk, to hit the boss and move at the last time available. With managing with those short timing, you get a fight always shorter, so less chance to get hit and to die.

Sounds like a viable strategy. It's not the only one.
Without DPS meters, it will probably tend to longer rather than shorter.
And, even without DPS meters, the topend raids will probably defeat the challenges of the raid more quickly than the masses of other players.

Aerlana wrote: »

Also, FFXIV or WoW fight are designed with an enrage (soft or hard) for a simple reason : Do a really really hard fight, with really complex mechanics, strategy. this is what those game have. BUT no time limit, those fight become far more easy. because players don't need to take any risk to win the fight... The simple fact there is time limit, it forces people to throw the biggest DPS they have, but to do more DPS you have to take risk. It is far easier to do boss mechanics when you don't care doing the best DPS you can.

"Far easier" is subjective.
No DPS meters means raids will likely be easier and not as hardcore as fights designed for DPS meters.
We shall have to see, but if so... that's OK.

Aerlana wrote: »

If you are ok to have guild far stronger than other, and reaching point of "too strong" is fine to you... but this would be a really bad thing for the game.
I continue to speak a lot to some big guilds, with players always optimizing their gameplay to insane level. While they love challenge, and would love to have people able to try to fight them, they won't lower their level at all for a false challenge.

I don't know what "too strong" means, so I am probably OK with that.
In the 20+ years I've played MMORPGs, I have never had the concept of a guild being "too strong" - and don't even think about guilds being strong at all.
But, since Steven loves leading guilds and is against DPS meters - I don't expect this to be an issue

Aerlana wrote: »

I never found mechanic hard to handle if i didn't have to have the biggest DPS avaible... Even in souls or metroidvania... most of time to train against them, i begin with try where i nearly does no damages, focusing on avoiding their attack, and when i am comfortable enough about it, i begin to hit them, and the more i want do damage, the harder it get.
Managing mechanic/avoiding attacks is never hard if it is the only important thing to do.

Perfect. You will be able to do so in Ashes even without DPS meters.

Aerlana wrote: »

There is one kind of game where DPS is not needed to make fight hard : runners (for exemple : meatboy) and similar games (end is nigh) but here, we are on game asking chirurgical precision, does a 0,5 second mistake, or push to hard the input, you are dead.

Ashes is another game where DPS meters aren't needed.

https://youtu.be/nCcYmY69NL4

Dygz wrote: »

Ashes is anther game where DPS meters aren't needed.

DPS meter is needed in no MMORPG (except maybe wildstar needed it because the game was totally build around hardcore players). even in wow, or FFXIV where there are really good fights, you don't need a combat tracker to play the game and do some content.

Read again the sentence, i didn't speak about DPSmeter...

The problem is not there.
just imagine, you train for a marathon. And you are forbidden to use any kind of way to measure time. Good you can congratule yourself to finish. Now how can you know if this second time you finished the marathon you were faster ? Slower ?

This is exactly this Steven's decision.

Ashes is a game where DPS matter, where DPS is a thing that will matter. even if Steven doesn't want it...
Simply because it exists. 25 years of gaming, with lot of hours each week, i know NO game where there is any kind of DPS, and where DPS was not an important thing. i would be happy to find one, never found it.
Steven is making a game where there will be things stronger than others. He is making a game with a balance for PvP, and a balance for PvE. He is making a game with a meta. All those thing will be written deep in the code.

So, yes, DPS will be an important thing. Not because you say "i don't want people to focus on DPS" that DPS become meaningless.
Steven can want people won't care about DPS, he can hope as much as he wants... this dream will never come true untill he discourage enough people so they will just leave. And it would be really tragic to lose the topend player part of community (as would be tragic to lose any part of the community)

Dont say "the game can't please everyone" i know it. and some bighardcore players won't like this game for numerous reason. but the MMORPG that live well over the time, are those where there is a strong hardcore part of the community. We need them, like we need the most casual part of community.

Dygz wrote: »

I didn't say anything about devs "making the fight shorter".

Devs will have to use a potential DPS value for a raid to design boss fight.
Simple example : you want an add to come every 45seconds during all fight, and you want him to be dangerous enough to be a way to wipe.

If you give him far too much HP, he will die the time the next spawn, so no time to damage the boss => was the problem from C'thun on wow, devs did a fight where, even playing in the totally absolute perfect way with the perfect stuff for each character of the raid, the boss would remain unkillable...

If you give him not enough HP, he will die so fast that he won't be anykind of danger.

You have to give him the good amount of healthpoint, and how? you have ton consider how much DPS people can output. EVEN if people don't have DPSmeter the problem will exist.

Now, devs know, "an average raid with perfect gameplay can reach 10k DPS on this fight, but people have a level of gameplay only allowing to do 5k DPS" you design your whole fight with this, you have a fight "hard enough" for now. But when players are able to do 90% or even 95% of efficiency, doing +80, 90% damages from the value used by devs to design fight, the fight become shorter, and easier... (adds dying too fast to be dangerous, shorter fight so people have less time to do mistakes, etc etc)
So... lets do the boss more around 8k DPS as base value to design it ? If you don't give them combat tracker, or they will just drop it, or they will work out of game calculation to find the "real" meta your code did define...

And this is why that without parser, the gap between topend, and the rest of people will be bigger... I want the boss to be tough enough to be a real challenge, and that those who kill boss are not the "everyone" people. But i also want those able to kill any boss in any MMORPG to be not the only one able to do it in AoC...

Reodor Felgen

I'll love to see advanced stats from fights.
Damake Done, Damage Taken, Healing, Treath, Buffs, Debuffs, Deaths, Interrupts, Dispels, Resources, Casts.

But make it so each player can choose to share information or stay anonymous

In The Elder Scrolls Online there is a tool like this, and it's super helpful.
Almost all end game players spend hours analysing logs, and I personally think is the most fun thing to do.
I never encounter any negative or toxicity with sharing stats, all groups I know use it to learn, improve and help others.

It is especially helpful when you trying to go for some of the harder achievements, that groups / guilds spend months and even years trying to complete.

Here is a short video that briefly explains how it works.

Reodor Felgen wrote: »

But make it so each player can choose to share information or stay anonymous

A personnal combat tracker would be enough in my mind. guilds needs more each one to be able to train than the raidleader to see everyone (if a guild struggle and suspect a DPS problem, they can just ask everyone to post screenshot on their discord... )

But i admit a system allowing to be seen by other if you are ok with it... why not.

While i reject the "toxicity" argument as a good one to say no to combat tracker, i also want to fight such toxicity (like any other) so never against thing to limit toxicity ! will watch this video with curiosity

Aerlana wrote: »

The problem is not there.
just imagine, you train for a marathon. And you are forbidden to use any kind of way to measure time. Good you can congratule yourself to finish. Now how can you know if this second time you finished the marathon you were faster ? Slower ?

The problem is not there because defeating a boss is not inherently about time.
How long it takes to reach the destination is inconsequential. You don't inherently need to measure time.
Raids are more like climbing Mount Everest than running a marathon.

Aerlana wrote: »

Ashes is a game where DPS matter, where DPS is a thing that will matter. even if Steven doesn't want it...
Simply because it exists. 25 years of gaming, with lot of hours each week, i know NO game where there is any kind of DPS, and where DPS was not an important thing. i would be happy to find one, never found it.
Steven is making a game where there will be things stronger than others. He is making a game with a balance for PvP, and a balance for PvE. He is making a game with a meta. All those thing will be written deep in the code.

I think I disagree.
Some players might decide they want to try race to the top of Mount Everest. They can try that if they wish.
DPS is important to some gamers. And in every MMORPG there are gamers who obsess over DPS. True.
So, I would not say that Ashes is a game where DPS matters. Rather, Ashes is a game that will have some players who obsess over DPS.

Aerlana wrote: »

So, yes, DPS will be an important thing. Not because you say "i don't want people to focus on DPS" that DPS become meaningless.
Steven can want people won't care about DPS, he can hope as much as he wants... this dream will never come true untill he discourage enough people so they will just leave. And it would be really tragic to lose the topend player part of community (as would be tragic to lose any part of the community)

DPS will be an important thing to some players.
Steven will not say that he wants people to not care about DPS. Rather, as much DPS as possible will probably not be in the design for raids and dungeons.
Ashes is unlikely to lose any more of the topend raid community than it will casual PvErs for not having separate PvE-Only servers.

Aerlana wrote: »

Dont say "the game can't please everyone" i know it. and some bighardcore players won't like this game for numerous reason. but the MMORPG that live well over the time, are those where there is a strong hardcore part of the community. We need them, like we need the most casual part of community.

Every playstyle will be finding some form of compromise rather than playing their ideal.

Aerlana wrote: »

Devs will have to use a potential DPS value for a raid to design boss fight.
Simple example : you want an add to come every 45 seconds during all fight, and you want him to be dangerous enough to be a way to wipe.

I'm pretty sure the goal for Ashes is to not have raids so static and scripted that an add will come every 45 seconds.

Aerlana wrote: »

If you give him far too much HP, he will die the time the next spawn, so no time to damage the boss => was the problem from C'thun on wow, devs did a fight where, even playing in the totally absolute perfect way with the perfect stuff for each character of the raid, the boss would remain unkillable...

I could not follow the English of that one. Sorry.
But, I don't think too much HP will be a problem.

Aerlana wrote: »

If you give him not enough HP, he will die so fast that he won't be any kind of danger.

It's not going to be just about HP. HP will regen during combat.
Some people will use a strategy to do as much DPS as quickly as possible, but that's not necessarily the only strategy. We will have to do more damage than the overall HP regen during a span of minutes, but it's fine for that to be Damage Per Minutes rather than Damage Per Seconds.

Aerlana wrote: »

You have to give him the good amount of healthpoint, and how? you have ton consider how much DPS people can output. EVEN if people don't have DPSmeter the problem will exist.

Or Damage Per Minute. Especially if you know that max level players cannot kill the boss in under a minute regardless of Damage Per Second.

Aerlana wrote: »

Now, devs know, "an average raid with perfect gameplay can reach 10k DPS on this fight, but people have a level of gameplay only allowing to do 5k DPS" you design your whole fight with this, you have a fight "hard enough" for now. But when players are able to do 90% or even 95% of efficiency, doing +80, 90% damages from the value used by devs to design fight, the fight become shorter, and easier... (adds dying too fast to be dangerous, shorter fight so people have less time to do mistakes, etc etc)
So... lets do the boss more around 8k DPS as base value to design it ? If you don't give them combat tracker, or they will just drop it, or they will work out of game calculation to find the "real" meta your code did define...

I still think it's really going to be more about Damage Per Minute than Damage Per Second.
Some people will try to calculate a meta, but without a group combat tracker, it will be more difficult to lay blame on individuals based on numbers. Which will, thereby, reduce toxicity.

Aerlana wrote: »

And this is why that without parser, the gap between topend, and the rest of people will be bigger... I want the boss to be tough enough to be a real challenge, and that those who kill boss are not the "everyone" people. But i also want those able to kill any boss in any MMORPG to be not the only one able to do it in AoC...

What you want may not be what Steven wants.
Again - there are people who want a separate PvE-Only server. That doesn't mean that's what Steven will give them.

Iffithy

It will be fine without any meters. We will just take turns hitting the tank and timing how long till he dies. Or a Tulnar

Dygz wrote: »

What you want may not be what Steven wants.
Again - there are people who want a separate PvE-Only server. That doesn't mean that's what Steven will give them.

What devs want is not what players will do...
If there is one thing that players does in video game, is playing the game the way they like, and don't care anything the devs want...

Regen ? don't change anything about all i said... really. Regen is just "more HP"
And you didn't prove that DPS will be meaningless in Ashes... i won't take time to answer to what you said, all your last post is far from all reality already saw in MMORPG, from everquest to the most recent...

If you really think that ashes of creation will be able to do what no other did, free to you... i will continue to defend what will help the game to have the topend community any MMORPG need

I'm not trying to prove that DPS will be meaningless in Ashes. You are the one who introduced the concept of DPS being meaningless into the discussion.
I said that time to defeat the boss is inconsequential. As in, the boss doesn't have to be killed as quickly as possible. Dungeons and raids don't have to be speed runs.
You can "continue to defend what will help the game to have the topend community any MMORPG needs". It's likely to be as fruitful as championing a separate PvE-Only server.

Just because some players want to meta and speed their way through dungeons and raids doesn't mean the devs have to help them do so.

Dygz wrote: »

I said that time to defeat the boss is inconsequential.

In your dream it will be... in the game, it will be other... i said it.
Because boss are designed with the DPS (or Damage per minute if you want... change nearly nothing) in mind, because time to kill will have a really huge impact on difficulty of ANY fght in ANY RPG, even more in MMORPG.

I mean, even on most pen&paper RPG i played, damages was one of the biggest thing for the fight part ... being a DM, i always had to build my encounters in the end of the campaign with the builds my player made in mind, to avoid doing a fight too easy or too hard... and damages was part of the thing...

Of course encounters are designed with damage in mind. "Kill as fast as possible" is not.
Specifically, meta and speed runs are inconsequential - just some (bored) players love to obsess over that... because most MMORPGs have people stuck in endgame waiting for new content for years at a time.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

Dungeons and raids don't have to be speed runs.

Actually, quite often, they do.

As someone that has actually run top end raids (which you haven't), you often have a limited window in which to get things done - and if things don't get done in that time, they just don't get done. If your guild is not getting things done, then people join guilds that are getting things done.

People have things like jobs, kinds, partners, other hobbies. These things all demand their time. Any raid leader that doesn't respect that should not be leading a raid, nor any raid leader that doesn't try to get as much done in the time they have their raid assembled.

I have said this so many times I can't even count them - raid leaders are responsible for the time of 40 people in Ashes. This means they ARE speed runs, or you are not doing your job as a raid leader properly.

rikardp98

Dygz wrote: »

The problem is not there because defeating a boss is not inherently about time.
How long it takes to reach the destination is inconsequential. You don't inherently need to measure time.
Raids are more like climbing Mount Everest than running a marathon

This is true, but what do you need to know before climbing Mount everest? You need to know the weather, wind, temperature, how many people you going to climb with, how much food you will need, water, tent, right cloths. You need a lot of data before you can climb mount everest.

The first person to climb Mount Everest went in blind, just like new players in new raids, but after years of climbing we have gotten a lot of data, just like old raids from combat trackers. So now we can optimized the climbing experience and make it better, smother and easier. Just like old raids will via the use of combat trackers.

Still, all of this is experience by doing, no automation.

Yep. You don't need a PC to parse that data and calculate the meta so you can speed run that adventure.
You can figure out that data with out a digital parser.
It's actually just like old raids without combat trackers.
These days, a helicopter might be the meta for reaching the top of Mt. Everest.

"Back in the day, when MMOs were great, you had to win your encounters through trial and error. You didn't have a DPS meter telling you, 'Oh! We need to get up to 67.7% damage in order to achieve the whatever!' It wasn't some mechanical bullshit experience where you got to look at a graph or chart and say, 'Oh! We need to do exactly this.' Instead, you actually had to be present, you had to watch what was happening, you had to help your fellow guild members learn how to play the game and you had to excel as a group.
Now, that is the type of experience we want to replicate: that everybody is in this together type of scenario where we build the teams we are friends with up and we accomplish content together. It kind of also provides this mystery effect, where you're required to actually participate and watch what's going on and not just rely on that DPS meter."
---Steven

It is all about how hard the raids are actually going to be and what the difference between the top minmax builds and the average ones being used are

I can very well see a world where competetive minmaxing guilds are just oneshotting open world raids and are just "raid gatherers", because those raids pose no threat

Just look at classic tbc currently - when people were playing it originally in 2007/8 they were doing less than half the damage of people doing today and that is with 25 man raid where the compounding difference is way smaller.

In other words - there are always ways of playing better and if you don't have parsers then most of your community is so behind that it feels like they are still tribal hunters when the top players are already past industrial revolution

And the most damaging thing this brings is that you get youtube videos of the hardest raids being oneshotted under 1-2 minutes per boss and the public perception is going to be "Dood, look at that - this raid is a joke"

If you are boasting as a developer that you will create hard encounters that only small percentage of players is able to beat then the public perception of you is that you don't know a thing about hard encounters, because it is getting demolished to the point of ridiculousness.

But I can see that they actually could tune everything for top players "like they have meters" just to make it impossible for the most of community to beat it, because if you don't know where the problem is then you don't know what you should improve on so you then are actually just waiting on better gear and improving your rotations

Dygz wrote: »

Yep. You don't need a PC to parse that data and calculate the meta so you can speed run that adventure.
You can figure out that data with out a digital parser.
It's actually just like old raids without combat trackers.

"Back in the day, when MMOs were great, you had to win your encounters through trial and error. You didn't have a DPS meter telling you, 'Oh! We need to get up to 67.7% damage in order to achieve the whatever!' It wasn't some mechanical bullshit experience where you got to look at a graph or chart and say, 'Oh! We need to do exactly this.' Instead, you actually had to be present, you had to watch what was happening, you had to help your fellow guild members learn how to play the game and you had to excel as a group.
Now, that is the type of experience we want to replicate: that everybody is in this together type of scenario where we build the teams we are friends with up and we accomplish content together. It kind of also provides this mystery effect, where you're required to actually participate and watch what's going on and not just rely on that DPS meter."
---Steven

actually one the most embarassing quotes you could find, because it is literally detached from reality - you never are aiming to "get a dps quota", but you are looking for mistakesin decision making and on what players are doing - for example it is about "hey look he f-d up his rotation and was on a bad spot, so let's move him here and after the raid ends we can talk to him to help him improve on how to press buttons"

Steven's perspective is about rose tinted glasses about a past where everything was a joke and the difficulty was in the fact that players had no clue what they were doing

Noaani

Tragnar wrote: »

Steven's perspective is about rose tinted glasses about a past where everything was a joke and the difficulty was in the fact that players had no clue what they were doing

Indeed.

Not only that, but the PvE content wasn't actually even good back then.

If MMO's hadn't moved on to more compelling PvE content - which combat trackers are a key component of - they would have died as a genre before SWG was released.

There is still the possibility (some may say that this is likely to happen) of raids being of not difficulty at all and only about bringing enough people to it so you can ignore the "intended" or "designed" way of clearing in favor of just zerging it down for guild mats into the guild bank

Truth is that ashes has VERY ambitious systems and a lot of them need to work in practice and not only on a design document in order for raiding to be somewhat succesful

I would very much hate to see for those design systems to fail, because players are always going the path of least resistance. So far the only succesfully challenging raids have been instanced, because all of the open world encounters are designed for casual groups "stumbling" upon them for some fun - however this has never stood against organised guilds that go for the loot as effeciently as possible

You can argue that the raids will be challenging with pvp happening around - what I say is that I want the baseline difficulty of a proper raid to be impossible with a full blown pvp around it otherwise when the pvp doesnt happen the raid transforms literally into chests just waiting for the raid to loot

Bosses are supposed to become tougher the more people you bring to the fight, so zerging is not really supposed to be a thing. But, especially with augments, meta builds are not really supposed to be a thing, either. There will always be some players who proclaim they have discovered the meta - that doesn't mean what they say is truth.

Steven wants people to fail more often than we are typically used to.
Just because you stumble upon a raid boss does not mean you should be able to (easily) kill it.
"Growing together is a good thing, and that includes failing together as a means to drive for success together."
---Steven