With the recent combat update, one major concern is DPS meters. While there is no API available, there will be people who can program a screengrab and overlay to pull numbers. (IE, pull all green numbers shown). What can intrepid do to prevent DPS meters.
These already exist - people are using trackers to parse the combat in the combat update video. This has been a thing for a while.
Literally the only way to stop people like myself from having a combat tracker is to not have any information at all available to players.
Is it an advantage? Yes, that is why we use them.
Is it an unfair advantage? No, you can use one as well.
If combat trackers exist, provide an advantage and you refuse to use one, that is you turning down an advantage, not someone else gaining an advantage.
Please add the ability for people to make DPS meters. FFXIV has it and the casuals and the hardcore co-exist pretty well. I believe we can culture that same principle here.
Please add the ability for people to make DPS meters. FFXIV has it and the casuals and the hardcore co-exist pretty well. I believe we can culture that same principle here.
EQ2 has it as well, and it is actually a boon to the community.
0
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Please add the ability for people to make DPS meters. FFXIV has it and the casuals and the hardcore co-exist pretty well. I believe we can culture that same principle here.
I highly doubt that.
Looks like the planned UI effects will provide all the info we need.
Looks like the planned UI effects will provide all the info we need.
All the info YOU need.
You don't get to dictate what info I need - nor does Intrepid.
Yes. They do. They have stated that addons are not allowed and you will be removed from the game for using them. It's pretty clear. It's their game. They lay out the rules and it's up to you to choose to follow them or not. If you break them, expect to be banned. (As you should be)
Yes. They do. They have stated that addons are not allowed and you will be removed from the game for using them. It's pretty clear. It's their game. They lay out the rules and it's up to you to choose to follow them or not. If you break them, expect to be banned. (As you should be)
I think you misread that. Noaani means that Intrepid can't tell other people what they need. They can tell those people what they'll get, and people are free to like or dislike that amount, but Intrepid can't tell them what those people need.
Looks like the planned UI effects will provide all the info we need.
All the info YOU need.
You don't get to dictate what info I need - nor does Intrepid.
Yes. They do. They have stated that addons are not allowed and you will be removed from the game for using them. It's pretty clear. It's their game. They lay out the rules and it's up to you to choose to follow them or not. If you break them, expect to be banned. (As you should be)
What NiKr said above, but also a little more.
Intrepid said no add ons. Cool, most combat trackers are not add ons. Some are, but most (and the one I would use specifically) are not.
They are not add ons because they are their own application - this makes them by definition not an add on.
Now, you could say something like "well, Intrepid don't want you using any third party apps to gain an advantage in game".
Cool, so, no Discord either then? No having a browser open to look things up? No streaming software?
The problem with this is that developers of one piece of software are not really able to tell you what other applications you can be running on the same computer. In fact, it is considered a breech of privacy for them to even attempt to look, in some parts of the world.
Even if they were able to do that though, the combat tracker doesn't even need to be running while the game is running.
Keep in mind, that video Intrepid just released of the current iteration of the combat system - that has been parsed by a combat tracker already. It is lacking some information (there are no names, for example), but it has been parsed.
What this means is that players could simply record combat, go back later and parse it to get all the information they want (the best use of a combat tracker is to look at data after the fact).
What this means is that a player doesn't even need to use the same computer they are playing the game on to parse the data from the game. They could use literally any computer that has an internet connection.
There isn't really a way Intrepid can stop any of that. In fact, none of that is even against the rules - because there are no rules they can make to stop what I do on a computer that doesn't even have the game client.
0
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Looks like the planned UI effects will provide all the info we need.
All the info YOU need.
You don't get to dictate what info I need - nor does Intrepid.
Yes. They do. They have stated that addons are not allowed and you will be removed from the game for using them. It's pretty clear. It's their game. They lay out the rules and it's up to you to choose to follow them or not. If you break them, expect to be banned. (As you should be)
LMAO
1: There is a difference between what you need and what you want.
2: No one has to agree with me. I'm not designing the game, so I can't dictate anything.
3: Steven and the devs will be the final arbiters on what we need. I happen to agree with them.
3: Steven and the devs will be the final arbiters on what we need.
No they won't.
They have final say over what information is readily available, but not every player will need that (making your statement false already), and some players like myself will have access to more information.
A "dps meter" would be awesome. Not the typical dps meter though.
You should make a way to see your own total damage within a fight. I wouldnt really care if the rest of the group could see my stats, but i know some people would not like it. Being able to see your own damage would make the game 40% more enjoyable for me and many others. The dps meter gives a way to see how well you are doing and gives a way to experiment on different specs and playstyles. I love tinkering with a build, like you do in POE. I also know many others love it too.
A personal total damage meter would be a total net-positive for the game! If people dont want to use it then they can turn it off in settings.
There are some problems with dps meters in general:
1. Usually the most toxic people about "people not pulling their own weight", they end up doing the most damage in any mmo, because the entire guild leaves because of overly toxic group play. This also is a mechanic that hurts the creators of any mmo, because people who leave guilds also tend to quit the mmo as a whole more often.
2.Macro users (and other cheaters) will get on top of the DPS list just like in a game i did love before it sucked: ESO. That game sucks, because with macro's (automated key pressing by botsoftware) you could have 2x the normal DPS this was because of perfect use of animation-cancelling and perfect spell weaving gives perfect dps.
3. This wil automatically lead to: "you are not puling your weight therefore you should buy a macro-keyboard and cheat just like everybody else".
4. Animation cancelling will not be effective if you have 200 ping. Yes that still exists in this day and age. Therefore you can not play an mmo, because of social pressure.
5. I did pull my weight being 2nd dps on the list of 12 players, but it was a troll-tank, who kept wiping out the group, because he never interrupted the aoe spells from the boss, even after intensive support in training him. So simply the idea that dps is responsible for failing a boss is wrong.
6. Same for healers.
7. The main problem is that people tend to pull the blame card, rather then training people to become better. Therefore if somebody in the group fails, that is because of a bad group leader not caring enough to coach and pick the right people (like troll tanks being selected).
There are some problems with dps meters in general:
1. Usually the most toxic people about "people not pulling their own weight", they end up doing the most damage in any mmo, because the entire guild leaves because of overly toxic group play. This also is a mechanic that hurts the creators of any mmo, because people who leave guilds also tend to quit the mmo as a whole more often.
2.Macro users (and other cheaters) will get on top of the DPS list just like in a game i did love before it sucked: ESO. That game sucks, because with macro's (automated key pressing by botsoftware) you could have 2x the normal DPS this was because of perfect use of animation-cancelling and perfect spell weaving gives perfect dps.
3. This wil automatically lead to: "you are not puling your weight therefore you should buy a macro-keyboard and cheat just like everybody else".
4. Animation cancelling will not be effective if you have 200 ping. Yes that still exists in this day and age. Therefore you can not play an mmo, because of social pressure.
5. I did pull my weight being 2nd dps on the list of 12 players, but it was a troll-tank, who kept wiping out the group, because he never interrupted the aoe spells from the boss, even after intensive support in training him. So simply the idea that dps is responsible for failing a boss is wrong.
6. Same for healers.
7. The main problem is that people tend to pull the blame card, rather then training people to become better. Therefore if somebody in the group fails, that is because of a bad group leader not caring enough to coach and pick the right people (like troll tanks being selected).
1, a toxic person will be toxic with or without a combat tracker.
2 and 3, macros are their own issue that are independent of combat trackers.
4, animation canceling has nothing to do with combat trackers.
5, a combat tracker will tell you that the tank wasn't interrupting the ability they were asked to interrupt.
6, same for healers - a combat tracker will tell you exactly who they heal, when, for how much, etc.
7, I agree, people do tend to pull the blame card and the best thing to do is to train others. However, a combat tracker is literally the first tool in doing that.
First of all, a combat tracker is where you can start to find the issue. In your own example, it is where you can show literally everyone present how many times the ability that the tank was supposed to interrupt actually hit players, thus giving that player an objective data point on how well they are doing that job. Display this at the end of each pull rather than a DPS read out, and see how quickly that tank starts to do their job.
Not only is a combat tracker a great tool to figure out where you need to start training, it is also the best objective way to get a progress report on that training. It may be something as simple as a DPS character doing more DPS, but it may also be a count of how many times that ability that is supposed to be interrupted hit players in the group or raid. It may be how many mobs had CC broken from damage, or it may be how long the group or raid manages to stay alive against the encounter.
Without a combat tracker, all you can do is guess at who needs to improve, and then guess at what it is they need to improve on. This is where *false* blame starts happening, rather than objectively finding the issue and correcting it.
Exactly how you think obfuscating objective data will assist in training players and assessing issues is beyond me.
DPS meter yes yes yes, as well as threat meter. These things provide valuable feedback not only to the player but to the raid leader. While we are at it Master Looter please.
Meters as TOOLS to improve gameplay, not detract from it.
DPS meter (or various meters used in their capacity) can be a great tool to facilitate mentorship when training another player with a similar build/role amongst your friends. This could apply if you're not available for some content that you would normally take lead in and are helping a replacement stand in for you (which was common back when I played MMOs religiously). DPS meters are a tool to illustrate how the same player, on the same boss/monster, can increase their utility with slight build modifications and decide if the improved utility of X build justifies losing whatever dmg that would have had otherwise with the Y build. There are times when I would prefer X build when farming between mobs because it reduced my downtime (thus increasing xp/reagent per hour).
By 'utility' I am referring to variables that are not directly related to damage such as status effects, mobility, regenerative effects, mitigation/defenses, et cetera.
From a competitive perspective, DPS meters could be a fun thing to have between two identically built players (stats, attribute points, talents, whatever) and then go head-to-head and let the meter be the unbiased judge of the better player. I do not think this has a place in a dungeon when content is being learned, though.
If the game is built right, a player will not need additional data. Outside the visual and audio data on the screen.
If people are booting others from guilds because of third party tools, then they can risk a perma ban.
This is true in so much as if a game is built right, it will have all of the information a combat tracker would provide. If the game offers less information, no one should be surprised when people start using trackers.
Looks like the planned UI effects will provide all the info we need.
All the info YOU need.
You don't get to dictate what info I need - nor does Intrepid.
Yes. They do. They have stated that addons are not allowed and you will be removed from the game for using them. It's pretty clear. It's their game. They lay out the rules and it's up to you to choose to follow them or not. If you break them, expect to be banned. (As you should be)
LMAO
1: There is a difference between what you need and what you want.
2: No one has to agree with me. I'm not designing the game, so I can't dictate anything.
3: Steven and the devs will be the final arbiters on what we need. I happen to agree with them.
Your definition of what a player "wants" and "needs" are obviously defined purely by your own subjective opinions on how the players should play the game
To beat the encounter is a player goal - to that end he wants to gather as much information as he can to avoid unnecessary failed attempts.
So if those players are failing in a raid then they will increasingly want more information, it is just a question if the meter information is provided by the base UI of the game or through a third party software analytic tool
this "want" grows stronger until it is undeniably a "need"
nobody can clearly define the line, not even the developers with their design and gameplay intentions
Looks like the planned UI effects will provide all the info we need.
All the info YOU need.
You don't get to dictate what info I need - nor does Intrepid.
Yes. They do. They have stated that addons are not allowed and you will be removed from the game for using them. It's pretty clear. It's their game. They lay out the rules and it's up to you to choose to follow them or not. If you break them, expect to be banned. (As you should be)
LMAO
1: There is a difference between what you need and what you want.
2: No one has to agree with me. I'm not designing the game, so I can't dictate anything.
3: Steven and the devs will be the final arbiters on what we need. I happen to agree with them.
Your definition of what a player "wants" and "needs" are obviously defined purely by your own subjective opinions on how the players should play the game
To beat the encounter is a player goal - to that end he wants to gather as much information as he can to avoid unnecessary failed attempts.
So if those players are failing in a raid then they will increasingly want more information, it is just a question if the meter information is provided by the base UI of the game or through a third party software analytic tool
this "want" grows stronger until it is undeniably a "need"
nobody can clearly define the line, not even the developers with their design and gameplay intentions
Indeed.
The only way one could both know what they are talking about, and also say that combat trackers wont be needed, is if the encounters in the game are so trivial that there is no risk of failure.
If there is that risk, players just will have trackers. It isnt even a case of want or need at that point, but rather "will have in order to be ready for what ever comes next".
0
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
DPS meters are a huge boon both to gamers as a whole and to the developers as an after the fact balancing tool when they see meta compositions beginning to take effect (which are going to happen ANYWAY without a dps meter, but meters help bring them along faster and make the job easier, so dont go blaming meters for the reason why everyone says you should be running xyz build+gear on your assassin, its something called public perception and will get influenced heavily by reddit, twitch and forums even in the absence of dps meters )
I am solidly pro-DPS meter after years and years of playing MMOs and being able to use the tools to track performance of myself and my friends, go back and look carefully through logs to see what parts of encounters are lacking, what parts are hitting the party the hardest, where mitigation or shielding is being wasted and could be used more effectively. Do hardcore raiders *NEED* these tools? Nope, but they do really help with progression. We will still record our gameplay and review the footage between raid nights to study mechanics and come up with new strategies to try, usually a DPS meter is looked at alongside this to see where the heavy burn phases are and where the heavy healing/mitigation needs to go, and what kind of things can just be shrugged off.
All in all, logging tools are a huge boost, because they let us see what works best, what works well enough, and more importantly what isnt working well enough at all.
I am solidly anti-Deadlyboss mods or any call out the encounter for me tool or tell me where to go tool. And I hope Intrepid are hard at work designing encounters in a way that players have no choice but to watch the game screen for clues on what attacks the enemy will do, instead of relying on some tool to do it for me.
There is nothing wrong with a DPS meter on its own, they are going to exist in some form or another after the game launches and shoving your head in the sand to think Intrepid are going to be able to stop it somehow is a nice dream you are having. There may not be any API in game to give to players but if there is a battle log, that will be parsed quite easily by programs like ACT which have existed since EQ, if there is flying combat text, that will be grabbed off the screen.
They *WILL* exist and Intrepid will have no way to track who is using them other than people saying they are using them.
I think the real discussion here in this 100 page long megathread needs to be, how are we as a community going to handle that. Toxicity is quite rare as a result of DPS meters. And just for clarification, I do not view me being booted from a party because I dont meet some DPS threshold they want as toxic, it is THEIR party after all, they have the right to look for what they want in it. Toxicity is when people are shamed and bullied publicly for being awful at a game. And that kind of thing is very rare in ANY community because that kind of behavior gets a ban very quick regardless of it is from a DPS meter or not.
TLDR: Doesnt matter if we want them or not, DPS meters will be there in some format (real time parsing or after the fact video record scrubbing), it is up to us as a community to keep any toxicity down and be friendly together.
0
DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
TLDR: Doesnt matter if we want them or not, DPS meters will be there in some format...
It matters since I prefer that the devs don't implement them.
And Steven plans not to implement them.
Also, mods are a bannable offense.
That's as good as it gets.
TLDR: Doesnt matter if we want them or not, DPS meters will be there in some format...
It matters since I prefer that the devs don't implement them.
And Steven plans not to implement them.
Also, mods are a bannable offense.
That's as good as it gets.
I am against DPS Meters too.
Nothing good comes out of them.
Plenty good comes out of them.
I personally have identified, confirmed and reported fairly major bugs in games using combat trackers (the games RNG system was essentially incorrect). Fixing that bug was easy, and happened within a week of me pointing it out - and literally made every aspect of the game better.
To say nothing good comes from combat trackers is to say you don't understand what a competent person can do with a combat tracker.
Players wouldn't have noticed those bugs without DPS meters?
I mean, the game was three years old at the time. The developers hadn't noticed, let alone the players.
Many players thought things were "off" with the games RNG in some aspects that were more affected by the issue, but there was no suggestion that the entire RNG system may be off.
As a very basic outline of what happened, the games RNG was rounding. This meant a 0.6 would be a 1.
This meant that anything that looked for a random number between 1 and 10, for example, would have a 1 in 10 chance of getting 2 through to 9, a 1 in 20 chance of getting a 1, and a 3 in 20 chance of getting a 10.
It was always only the first and last number in the range that was affected, the size of the range didn't matter.
However, since some game systems wanted you to roll a lower number, and some wanted you to roll a higher number, and neither the number itself nor the actual roll itself were usually visible to players, the end result was usually that some things just seemed more likely to happen than they should, and some other things just seemed less likely to happen than they should.
However, literally no one had any idea that the actual RNG system of the game could be at fault.
The way I found the bug was by forcing a known RNG roll 10,000 times, and looking at the results - using ACT.
Those who want to test, can organize duels to determine how each piece of equipment and spell works.
More difficult is to test the PvE, as you cannot create the controlled environment so easily.
For testing purpose, we could get a test server, where combat history would presented better.
Do you think we will get that?
If not, then players have to find ways to prove occasional bugs, without breaking the ToS.
I mean, there are already combat trackers working for Ashes. They are able to parse combat from developer showcase videos.
They can't break the ToS, because they don't need to interact directly with the game client. They are interacting with YouTube, and Intrepid doesn't set YouTubes ToS.
The only tool Intrepid have for preventing combat trackers is to prevent players from screen capture at all. This would mean no YouTube videos, and no streamers - so is not all that likely to happen.
I am not familiar with legal stuff, what is allowed to put in ToS and what not.
As a simple point about this in relation to what I am talking about now, the terms of service of a piece of software can only apply to how you use that piece of software.
As such, the terms of service for Ashes of Creation can have literally no say at all in how I interface with my web browser running YouTube.
They could have a system similar to FFXIV where players are banned for basically saying other players are not good enough, but I don't see that being overly viable in a game with a decent amount of PvP.
But such tools can have bugs and consume processing power too.
Having them in game would be an advantage from this point of view, for those who use them.
While it is true they can have bugs, in my experience it is actually more likely that there would be a bug in the games data reporting than in the combat tracker.
However, processing overhead can be real, at times.
This is why I have long been an advocate for intrepid to include a combat tracker in Ashes as a guild perk.
No WoW-style add-ons or nonsense that encourages unchecked elitism and cookie-cutter builds, thanks.
Then everyone ends up running around with the same builds. It might happen anyways, but it will happen sooner with nonsense add-ons.
All that will do is create a stigma around certain classes and be used against players that just want to have fun. Players should be able to enjoy the game without getting kicked from groups because they aren't playing the way some 17+ year WoW war hero military veteran wants.
No WoW-style add-ons or nonsense that encourages unchecked elitism and cookie-cutter builds, thanks.
Then everyone ends up running around with the same builds. It might happen anyways, but it will happen sooner with nonsense add-ons.
All that will do is create a stigma around certain classes and be used against players that just want to have fun. Players should be able to enjoy the game without getting kicked from groups because they aren't playing the way some 17+ year WoW war hero military veteran wants.
Signed,
17+ year WoW war hero military veteran
My assumption on a big part of the reason everyone in WoW had the same build was because everyone had the same gear - or they were at least aiming for it.
In Ashes, that isnt likely to be possible.
EQ2 had heavy combat tracker use, and people in that game were not all running around with the same build.
You could also look at Archeage - a game that is very similar to what Ashes will be. The game had the lowest number of combat tracker users I have ever seen, yet an even greater case of people using and sticking to cookie cutter builds than WoW.
The one thing that is assured - even if my above assumption is not correct - is that combat trackers do not result in cookie cutter builds.
Comments
These already exist - people are using trackers to parse the combat in the combat update video. This has been a thing for a while.
Literally the only way to stop people like myself from having a combat tracker is to not have any information at all available to players.
Is it an advantage? Yes, that is why we use them.
Is it an unfair advantage? No, you can use one as well.
If combat trackers exist, provide an advantage and you refuse to use one, that is you turning down an advantage, not someone else gaining an advantage.
EQ2 has it as well, and it is actually a boon to the community.
Looks like the planned UI effects will provide all the info we need.
You don't get to dictate what info I need - nor does Intrepid.
Yes. They do. They have stated that addons are not allowed and you will be removed from the game for using them. It's pretty clear. It's their game. They lay out the rules and it's up to you to choose to follow them or not. If you break them, expect to be banned. (As you should be)
What NiKr said above, but also a little more.
Intrepid said no add ons. Cool, most combat trackers are not add ons. Some are, but most (and the one I would use specifically) are not.
They are not add ons because they are their own application - this makes them by definition not an add on.
Now, you could say something like "well, Intrepid don't want you using any third party apps to gain an advantage in game".
Cool, so, no Discord either then? No having a browser open to look things up? No streaming software?
The problem with this is that developers of one piece of software are not really able to tell you what other applications you can be running on the same computer. In fact, it is considered a breech of privacy for them to even attempt to look, in some parts of the world.
Even if they were able to do that though, the combat tracker doesn't even need to be running while the game is running.
Keep in mind, that video Intrepid just released of the current iteration of the combat system - that has been parsed by a combat tracker already. It is lacking some information (there are no names, for example), but it has been parsed.
What this means is that players could simply record combat, go back later and parse it to get all the information they want (the best use of a combat tracker is to look at data after the fact).
What this means is that a player doesn't even need to use the same computer they are playing the game on to parse the data from the game. They could use literally any computer that has an internet connection.
There isn't really a way Intrepid can stop any of that. In fact, none of that is even against the rules - because there are no rules they can make to stop what I do on a computer that doesn't even have the game client.
1: There is a difference between what you need and what you want.
2: No one has to agree with me. I'm not designing the game, so I can't dictate anything.
3: Steven and the devs will be the final arbiters on what we need. I happen to agree with them.
They have final say over what information is readily available, but not every player will need that (making your statement false already), and some players like myself will have access to more information.
You should make a way to see your own total damage within a fight. I wouldnt really care if the rest of the group could see my stats, but i know some people would not like it. Being able to see your own damage would make the game 40% more enjoyable for me and many others. The dps meter gives a way to see how well you are doing and gives a way to experiment on different specs and playstyles. I love tinkering with a build, like you do in POE. I also know many others love it too.
A personal total damage meter would be a total net-positive for the game! If people dont want to use it then they can turn it off in settings.
1. Usually the most toxic people about "people not pulling their own weight", they end up doing the most damage in any mmo, because the entire guild leaves because of overly toxic group play. This also is a mechanic that hurts the creators of any mmo, because people who leave guilds also tend to quit the mmo as a whole more often.
2.Macro users (and other cheaters) will get on top of the DPS list just like in a game i did love before it sucked: ESO. That game sucks, because with macro's (automated key pressing by botsoftware) you could have 2x the normal DPS this was because of perfect use of animation-cancelling and perfect spell weaving gives perfect dps.
3. This wil automatically lead to: "you are not puling your weight therefore you should buy a macro-keyboard and cheat just like everybody else".
4. Animation cancelling will not be effective if you have 200 ping. Yes that still exists in this day and age. Therefore you can not play an mmo, because of social pressure.
5. I did pull my weight being 2nd dps on the list of 12 players, but it was a troll-tank, who kept wiping out the group, because he never interrupted the aoe spells from the boss, even after intensive support in training him. So simply the idea that dps is responsible for failing a boss is wrong.
6. Same for healers.
7. The main problem is that people tend to pull the blame card, rather then training people to become better. Therefore if somebody in the group fails, that is because of a bad group leader not caring enough to coach and pick the right people (like troll tanks being selected).
1, a toxic person will be toxic with or without a combat tracker.
2 and 3, macros are their own issue that are independent of combat trackers.
4, animation canceling has nothing to do with combat trackers.
5, a combat tracker will tell you that the tank wasn't interrupting the ability they were asked to interrupt.
6, same for healers - a combat tracker will tell you exactly who they heal, when, for how much, etc.
7, I agree, people do tend to pull the blame card and the best thing to do is to train others. However, a combat tracker is literally the first tool in doing that.
First of all, a combat tracker is where you can start to find the issue. In your own example, it is where you can show literally everyone present how many times the ability that the tank was supposed to interrupt actually hit players, thus giving that player an objective data point on how well they are doing that job. Display this at the end of each pull rather than a DPS read out, and see how quickly that tank starts to do their job.
Not only is a combat tracker a great tool to figure out where you need to start training, it is also the best objective way to get a progress report on that training. It may be something as simple as a DPS character doing more DPS, but it may also be a count of how many times that ability that is supposed to be interrupted hit players in the group or raid. It may be how many mobs had CC broken from damage, or it may be how long the group or raid manages to stay alive against the encounter.
Without a combat tracker, all you can do is guess at who needs to improve, and then guess at what it is they need to improve on. This is where *false* blame starts happening, rather than objectively finding the issue and correcting it.
Exactly how you think obfuscating objective data will assist in training players and assessing issues is beyond me.
If people are booting others from guilds because of third party tools, then they can risk a perma ban.
DPS meter (or various meters used in their capacity) can be a great tool to facilitate mentorship when training another player with a similar build/role amongst your friends. This could apply if you're not available for some content that you would normally take lead in and are helping a replacement stand in for you (which was common back when I played MMOs religiously). DPS meters are a tool to illustrate how the same player, on the same boss/monster, can increase their utility with slight build modifications and decide if the improved utility of X build justifies losing whatever dmg that would have had otherwise with the Y build. There are times when I would prefer X build when farming between mobs because it reduced my downtime (thus increasing xp/reagent per hour).
By 'utility' I am referring to variables that are not directly related to damage such as status effects, mobility, regenerative effects, mitigation/defenses, et cetera.
From a competitive perspective, DPS meters could be a fun thing to have between two identically built players (stats, attribute points, talents, whatever) and then go head-to-head and let the meter be the unbiased judge of the better player. I do not think this has a place in a dungeon when content is being learned, though.
This is true in so much as if a game is built right, it will have all of the information a combat tracker would provide. If the game offers less information, no one should be surprised when people start using trackers.
Your definition of what a player "wants" and "needs" are obviously defined purely by your own subjective opinions on how the players should play the game
To beat the encounter is a player goal - to that end he wants to gather as much information as he can to avoid unnecessary failed attempts.
So if those players are failing in a raid then they will increasingly want more information, it is just a question if the meter information is provided by the base UI of the game or through a third party software analytic tool
this "want" grows stronger until it is undeniably a "need"
nobody can clearly define the line, not even the developers with their design and gameplay intentions
― Plato
Indeed.
The only way one could both know what they are talking about, and also say that combat trackers wont be needed, is if the encounters in the game are so trivial that there is no risk of failure.
If there is that risk, players just will have trackers. It isnt even a case of want or need at that point, but rather "will have in order to be ready for what ever comes next".
I am solidly pro-DPS meter after years and years of playing MMOs and being able to use the tools to track performance of myself and my friends, go back and look carefully through logs to see what parts of encounters are lacking, what parts are hitting the party the hardest, where mitigation or shielding is being wasted and could be used more effectively. Do hardcore raiders *NEED* these tools? Nope, but they do really help with progression. We will still record our gameplay and review the footage between raid nights to study mechanics and come up with new strategies to try, usually a DPS meter is looked at alongside this to see where the heavy burn phases are and where the heavy healing/mitigation needs to go, and what kind of things can just be shrugged off.
All in all, logging tools are a huge boost, because they let us see what works best, what works well enough, and more importantly what isnt working well enough at all.
I am solidly anti-Deadlyboss mods or any call out the encounter for me tool or tell me where to go tool. And I hope Intrepid are hard at work designing encounters in a way that players have no choice but to watch the game screen for clues on what attacks the enemy will do, instead of relying on some tool to do it for me.
There is nothing wrong with a DPS meter on its own, they are going to exist in some form or another after the game launches and shoving your head in the sand to think Intrepid are going to be able to stop it somehow is a nice dream you are having. There may not be any API in game to give to players but if there is a battle log, that will be parsed quite easily by programs like ACT which have existed since EQ, if there is flying combat text, that will be grabbed off the screen.
They *WILL* exist and Intrepid will have no way to track who is using them other than people saying they are using them.
I think the real discussion here in this 100 page long megathread needs to be, how are we as a community going to handle that. Toxicity is quite rare as a result of DPS meters. And just for clarification, I do not view me being booted from a party because I dont meet some DPS threshold they want as toxic, it is THEIR party after all, they have the right to look for what they want in it. Toxicity is when people are shamed and bullied publicly for being awful at a game. And that kind of thing is very rare in ANY community because that kind of behavior gets a ban very quick regardless of it is from a DPS meter or not.
TLDR: Doesnt matter if we want them or not, DPS meters will be there in some format (real time parsing or after the fact video record scrubbing), it is up to us as a community to keep any toxicity down and be friendly together.
And Steven plans not to implement them.
Also, mods are a bannable offense.
That's as good as it gets.
Kinda like Corruption.
You dont need a mod to parse data.
ACT is - by definition - not a mod.
Plenty good comes out of them.
I personally have identified, confirmed and reported fairly major bugs in games using combat trackers (the games RNG system was essentially incorrect). Fixing that bug was easy, and happened within a week of me pointing it out - and literally made every aspect of the game better.
To say nothing good comes from combat trackers is to say you don't understand what a competent person can do with a combat tracker.
Many players thought things were "off" with the games RNG in some aspects that were more affected by the issue, but there was no suggestion that the entire RNG system may be off.
As a very basic outline of what happened, the games RNG was rounding. This meant a 0.6 would be a 1.
This meant that anything that looked for a random number between 1 and 10, for example, would have a 1 in 10 chance of getting 2 through to 9, a 1 in 20 chance of getting a 1, and a 3 in 20 chance of getting a 10.
It was always only the first and last number in the range that was affected, the size of the range didn't matter.
However, since some game systems wanted you to roll a lower number, and some wanted you to roll a higher number, and neither the number itself nor the actual roll itself were usually visible to players, the end result was usually that some things just seemed more likely to happen than they should, and some other things just seemed less likely to happen than they should.
However, literally no one had any idea that the actual RNG system of the game could be at fault.
The way I found the bug was by forcing a known RNG roll 10,000 times, and looking at the results - using ACT. I mean, there are already combat trackers working for Ashes. They are able to parse combat from developer showcase videos.
They can't break the ToS, because they don't need to interact directly with the game client. They are interacting with YouTube, and Intrepid doesn't set YouTubes ToS.
The only tool Intrepid have for preventing combat trackers is to prevent players from screen capture at all. This would mean no YouTube videos, and no streamers - so is not all that likely to happen.
As such, the terms of service for Ashes of Creation can have literally no say at all in how I interface with my web browser running YouTube.
They could have a system similar to FFXIV where players are banned for basically saying other players are not good enough, but I don't see that being overly viable in a game with a decent amount of PvP. While it is true they can have bugs, in my experience it is actually more likely that there would be a bug in the games data reporting than in the combat tracker.
However, processing overhead can be real, at times.
This is why I have long been an advocate for intrepid to include a combat tracker in Ashes as a guild perk.
best way for this issue is to have it available ingame, but the devs can limit access to it by their own requirements and on their terms.
otherwise it just becomes necessary program you install if you get to certain types of guilds that just aim higher than casuals
― Plato
Then everyone ends up running around with the same builds. It might happen anyways, but it will happen sooner with nonsense add-ons.
All that will do is create a stigma around certain classes and be used against players that just want to have fun. Players should be able to enjoy the game without getting kicked from groups because they aren't playing the way some 17+ year WoW war hero military veteran wants.
Signed,
17+ year WoW war hero military veteran
In Ashes, that isnt likely to be possible.
EQ2 had heavy combat tracker use, and people in that game were not all running around with the same build.
You could also look at Archeage - a game that is very similar to what Ashes will be. The game had the lowest number of combat tracker users I have ever seen, yet an even greater case of people using and sticking to cookie cutter builds than WoW.
The one thing that is assured - even if my above assumption is not correct - is that combat trackers do not result in cookie cutter builds.