If anyone played much of Lost Ark and got to end game in it, could you imagine how much worse some classes would be to find groups with if there was a DPS meter in that game?
While this can be an issue in some.cases, combat trackers aren't at fault here.
In games without them, a meta still forms. People still have classes or builds they want, and classes or builds they do not want.
Since all a combat tracker does is give you information, if that information then suggested to you that an entire class in Ashes wasnt worth bringing along on raids, then that is an issue to do with the development of the game, and is absolutely not a combat tracker issue.
And people can do the work and figure out that information themselves and not use a tracker to do it for them.
Why would you not use a tracker when you can instead just use a tracker?
I mean, if the argument is just that trackers save time (which seems to be what you are saying here), then that is an argument for them, not against them.
And people can do the work and figure out that information themselves and not use a tracker to do it for them.
Why would you not use a tracker when you can instead just use a tracker?
I mean, if the argument is just that trackers save time (which seems to be what you are saying here), then that is an argument for them, not against them.
No it means use actually knowledge and figure things out, don't try to use automated tools to do the work for you. There is far more to gain from people talking and learning combat and growing better over the years.
DPS meters are trash and should not be included in a game, it is like saying that is a argument for people to use aim bot in a shooter. There is a reason why everyone is against it and no one wants that trash, I'd rather judge someone with my eyes as a person and help them grow or carry them than have people judging with dps meters. It is toxic in mentality even more so when you are involving groups.
If you want to min max get some paper, some practice and some excel sheets and learn. Though the more action combat elements the more that doesn't matter since people will be missing shots and skill will play a bigger tole than people trying to have easy mode on to say if people are doing the right thing or not.
DPS meters are trash and should not be included in a game, it is like saying that is a argument for people to use aim bot in a shooter. There is a reason why everyone is against it and no one wants that trash, I'd rather judge someone with my eyes as a person and help them grow or carry them than have people judging with dps meters. It is toxic in mentality even more so when you are involving groups.
A combat tracker is nothing at all like an aim bot in an FPS game.
A combat tracker is more akin to the match stats screen that shows up after basically every FPS match.
If you want to compare things in an MMO to an aim bot in an FPS, you would be looking at macros, or at combat assistants.
There is indeed a reason some people are against combat trackers. I've been involved in this thread since before it was this thread. The people against combat trackers so far have basically all fit in to three groups; those that misunderstand what combat trackers can and can not do (this seems to be you), those that attribute outcomes incorrectly to combat trackers (usually either the existence of a games meta, or situations where players are booted mid way through content), and people that basically just say "why cant you just follow the rules?".
There has not been a single valid complaint raised against combat trackers in the 3k+ posts in this thread. There are people that say they are against them, but saying you are against something and having a valid reason for being against it are vastly different things.
If combat trackers bring some advantage and if cannot be prevented being used outside of the game, then it is better to have them in game.
This is accurate.
Combat trackers can be prevented being used outside of the game, if there is no information to be analyzed on client side.
We already have confirmation that we will have this data client side. Intrepid are not at all against players playing the game in an analytical manner.
Ashes is a competitive game. People will use tools to gain what ever advantage they can in that competitive environment. To me, it makes sense to give access to the best tools to all players that want them.
At this point, it honestly does look like an attempt to try and fit an argument around a pre-defined position.
Is your argument to have combat trackers a rational one or an emotional one?
Can you play and enjoy the game without combat trackers?
You are slightly misrepresenting my position here.
I will have a tracker, and in doing so I'll be following the games ToS.
This isnt my argument, as it isnt up for debate.
However, the justification for a tracker is a purely logical one, as is my argument for a tracker to be incorporated in to the games client.
As I have said in the past, from a purely logical perspective, trackers are essential for any healthy MMORPG. They are a tool players can use to give developers much better feedback than we could give them without trackers, and I have given actual examples of this through the thread (a personal one, and Marget talking about how much easier CS is when players have access to objective data). Even just that specific perspective is enough justification - combat trackers objectively make the game as a whole better, even for players that do not use them.
I'm still waiting for any logical argument as to why they should not be built in to the game client.
Just going by your last post, you talk about risk vs reward, yet combat trackers do not alter the risk vs reward aspect of Ashes (risk mostly being PvP related, and combat trackers being made available to all). You say the game is trying to have a community feeling, but combat trackers have no negative impact on that at all.
You say to let Ashes be it's own game - Ashes already has combat trackers, I am suggesting Intrepid do the one thing that no other MMO has done and take control of the trackers used in their game. This literally is me suggesting Ashes be it's own game. I am literally the one standing here saying "Intrepid, have some balls and do something no one else has done", while you are saying "do what FFXIV did, maybe you'll get a better result".
Again, you seem to have come to a conclusion on the matter, and are now searching for justification for that conclusion.
I’m not aware of an MMORPG that has a mechanism to remove an active guild leader from the guild.
Which MMORPG has tools that allow a group leader to be kicked from the group?
All... Really all...
Did it for two guilds, and many party, in Aion, WoW or FFXIV.
And if you read again the message i wrote... you will see :
The kick is not just "right-click => kick" it can also be "lets do a party but not with him"
It works very well... yes you lose some benefits of high levels guilds when this kind of system exist, but... hey, we are here to play and have fun no ? The bonuses will come back in due time. They are just technical things, the fun is priority.
And I don’t want devs to design Ashes content with the expectation that everyone is using DPS meters.
But the wiki also include a quote about hardest content being killable by a single digit percent... The more people will use combat tracker (outside of game like FFXIV) the more will be able to do those content.
FFXIV has the situation you consider the most to come : no ingame combat tracker... And FFXIV is more designed, for the endgame, around DPScheck than wow in my opinion (i did endgame for both until 4 years ago, so maybe it changed, and was just my feeling)
But also... this is a mistake from DEVS to just focus on it. As i said, adding high DPS check will make a fight harder. always. Because it will force players to take more risk. But it remains, most of time, another way to do the fight harder while reducing the DPS check : make the mechanics far more punitiv, and/or far more hard to deal. the damages does around 50% of a DPS health bar? Lets set it to 80% ... or maybe kill ? The players have 10 second to do the mechanic ? reduce to 6 seconds.
The problem around difficulty is the pressure on the player. Incrasing the dps check will force him to take risk... or be better on his DPS (or both) but harder and more punitiv mechanic will work also. This is how the soulslike game are designed... not around DPS but mainly around mechanics highly hard to deal. outside of some cheesy strategies (that are not so much around "DPS" but around the whole game mechanics, so can be patched) even with high mastery of the character and its DPS, the fight will last few minutes.
In such situation, trying to overoptimise DPS is still a way (the shorter is the fight, the less mistake you do... so more able to kill the boss, or farm it) but not what will does the more work to define "the good" and "the bad" players.
Toxicity does come from combat trackers existing, but its from the casual crowd, the underperformers, who do not like gatekeeping, and who do not want to understand how to perform better themselves. The minmaxers don't go around ruining casuals day to be toxic just because they are better.
This is what most debate around combat tracker showed : people doesnt like to be proven being "bad" . . . Which is often stupid. there are guilds, lot of guilds that fits well with people that don't try to be top players. and just go as far as they go... some guilds are happy to kill Heroic raids just before the new raid is released, while i am able to do in in first weeks as... a pick up.
And also, many guilds have member that HELP gives ADVICE, guide players, and a FAR better way than any guide on internet. (direct explanation, tutoring is far more efficient to learn to another player how to play... always)
And most people kicking for "bad DPS" were... good players, thinking they are top, but clearly not top yet. but their pride is strong, and so, they decide to kick the weak when they see, even if the weak is not the problem. And i already saw some "top DPS" on LFR raid being kicked because, he was one of top DPS sure, but... toxic. and people prefered keep the "low" DPS trying to do their best ,than the toxic angry man with a problem of personnal pride.
How being better neighbor ?
First, have a game when personnal reknown is a thing...
be a toxic guy of any kind in Vanilla/BC and you will be alone, forced to rename or change server.
The problem began mainly... when... Duty Finder came to us. The other players stopped to be players, they were... things you had to do dungeons with. Ninjalooting, insulting, harassing was a problem only with the rules of the game (the sacred saint tos) and nothing else... Because ... you would never see those other players again. . .
Yes sure, it is not a right to become an asshole, but this is what allow them to be...
all old mmorpg players can confirm that they heard name of people because they were ninjalooter, or a problem in any content you do with them. And so, even if you see their call "looking for member to do xxxx" or when they whisp you aftrer your own call... you just ignore them and try to find others... THe community purged itself of the bad parts so... And this is how it should be the best way to do...
As a possible example, the summoner class could do less damage no matter what since with their summons they are prone to having more survivability than other caster types. That entire class and combinations could be taken out of dungeon runs and the like just because of a DPS meter. That is worst case and even if that wouldn't happen completely, it would still make finding groups outside of friends much harder and less worth playing that class in general.
If anyone played much of Lost Ark and got to end game in it, could you imagine how much worse some classes would be to find groups with if there was a DPS meter in that game?
For lost ark, one of the class that has the hardest time to find party is... one with a really excellent DPS. Reaper.
Also, Summoner is one of the biggest DPS, and... one of the least played class. (and it is not so hard to mechanically play it). an optimised summoner does more than an optimised sorc with same ilvl... but the second is faar more played.
Reaper is high DPS but really squichy as fuck. Summoner ? stuffing it is really REALLY expensiv.
In the current LA on west, people are allowing classes the same way as KR... and it is due to a global damages + utility (vary from fight to others) + squichyness. and LA already get a combat tracker build ingame... not for fight (but it wouldnt change a lot for this game in fact... due to how it is designed)
if summoner is not invited in party, or the party is dumb, or simply the summoner is a bad class.
good class can be a class with the lowest DPS... back in BC, shadowpriest were the lowest DPS of the game (aside tank and heal for sure) no one played it... and all raid wanted to have at least one... Because it helped a lot in a party with 4 healers for their mana... and it added some bonus damages on bosses to shadowlock... (which were big DPS... so having them bigger was a good thing)
Bard or summoner will have a lower DPS for sure, it is what i expect, but i epxect them to have enough bonus.utility to have them as mandatory in party than a ranger. And i will play summoner... yep... i will play a class that will (i think) never be a good DPS (if i compare to DPS classes) and i defend combat tracker...
@Noaani how would you look at an anonymous+personal tracker? Every person just has the chat log of all the things they did during any given encounter (I mean they'll have it all the time, but maybe there could be a "recording" function where some duration of that log, set by you, could be recorded into a text file). And the boss itself would have give a UI window that shows all the skills/dmg done to it and all the abilities itself used throughout the fight (seconds by second report), but you would not know who used those skills, so you as a leader would have to still look at the battlefield during the fight rather than just looking at the logs after it.
Any group of people who are completely fine with sharing their personal info with their leader would give him their text files and he'd be able to compile them together with the boss' info and see who did what and when and how.
While in any party that doesn't want to do that, the leader would have to work harder to know who's is really slacking. And the players themselves would know that their leader did their hard work if the player got called out (or it would lead to some internal drama, but the personal proof would always be available so you'd always be able to ultimately find the truth).
Would this kind of tracking work for you? To me this seems to preserve the idea of "I know how the fight went down and can see what can be done better (thanks to the boss info)', but also preserve the anonymity that meter-haters want to have, while still giving the hardcore meter-lovers the ability to do their own calculations. And any given player could work on their own skill betterment if they want to.
DPS meters are trash and should not be included in a game, it is like saying that is a argument for people to use aim bot in a shooter. There is a reason why everyone is against it and no one wants that trash, I'd rather judge someone with my eyes as a person and help them grow or carry them than have people judging with dps meters. It is toxic in mentality even more so when you are involving groups.
A combat tracker is nothing at all like an aim bot in an FPS game.
A combat tracker is more akin to the match stats screen that shows up after basically every FPS match.
If you want to compare things in an MMO to an aim bot in an FPS, you would be looking at macros, or at combat assistants.
There is indeed a reason some people are against combat trackers. I've been involved in this thread since before it was this thread. The people against combat trackers so far have basically all fit in to three groups; those that misunderstand what combat trackers can and can not do (this seems to be you), those that attribute outcomes incorrectly to combat trackers (usually either the existence of a games meta, or situations where players are booted mid way through content), and people that basically just say "why cant you just follow the rules?".
There has not been a single valid complaint raised against combat trackers in the 3k+ posts in this thread. There are people that say they are against them, but saying you are against something and having a valid reason for being against it are vastly different things.
The community doesn't want it period, if you think everyone isn't valid that is fine everyone has their own bias. The community feels our points are valid and if a tiny group doesn't see eye to eye that is fine. It is clear what people want regardless if you choose to argue with everyone. The forums is only a tiny amount of people into games as well so that number of people that don't want it or don't care for it wold only be even more massaive. And I'm not talking about *2 or *10, forum population of games is much less than 1%.
It works very well... yes you lose some benefits of high levels guilds when this kind of system exist, but... hey, we are here to play and have fun no ? The bonuses will come back in due time. They are just technical things, the fun is priority.
That is not kicking. That is leaving and starting a different group or leaving and starting a different guild.
Both of which are irrelevant to this discussion.
People should have the freedom to leave a group or guild if/when they choose. We agree.
The wiki also include a quote about hardest content being killable by a single digit percent... The more people will use combat tracker (outside of game like FFXIV) the more will be able to do those content.
FFXIV has the situation you consider the most to come : no ingame combat tracker... And FFXIV is more designed, for the endgame, around DPScheck than wow in my opinion (i did endgame for both until 4 years ago, so maybe it changed, and was just my feeling)
Just because you jump to a conclusion, does not mean your conclusion is true.
But also... this is a mistake from DEVS to just focus on it. As i said, adding high DPS check will make a fight harder. always. Because it will force players to take more risk. But it remains, most of time, another way to do the fight harder while reducing the DPS check : make the mechanics far more punitiv, and/or far more hard to deal. the damages does around 50% of a DPS health bar? Lets set it to 80% ... or maybe kill ? The players have 10 second to do the mechanic ? reduce to 6 seconds.
Depends on what you consider risk, perhaps, but...
Doesn't matter whether it makes the content harder. What matters is that the encounters are designed for players to focus on players actions and synergizing together, rather than on (false) inferences from a DPS meter that causes people to think there is factually only one way to defeat content.
The problem around difficulty is the pressure on the player. Incrasing the dps check will force him to take risk... or be better on his DPS (or both) but harder and more punitiv mechanic will work also. This is how the soulslike game are designed... not around DPS but mainly around mechanics highly hard to deal. outside of some cheesy strategies (that are not so much around "DPS" but around the whole game mechanics, so can be patched) even with high mastery of the character and its DPS, the fight will last few minutes.
There is a challenge for the group to defeat the content. Defeating content should not solely be focused on DPS check. There should be a variety of obstacles; not just one. Occasionally time can be an obstacle to overcome. Sure.
Ashes is not a Soulslike game. And, yes, in an MMORPG group content should last longer than a few minutes.
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DygzMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
This is what most debate around combat tracker showed : people doesnt like to be proven being "bad" . . . Which is often stupid. there are guilds, lot of guilds that fits well with people that don't try to be top players. and just go as far as they go... some guilds are happy to kill Heroic raids just before the new raid is released, while i am able to do in in first weeks as... a pick up.
LMFAO
No. People don't care about being "proven to be bad".
People care about people getting kicked from the group due to an obsession about conforming to numbers from some tool.
There might be poor perfromers in the group. That doen't mean it's impossible to defeat the challenge with them in the group. Just takes a bit more strategizing to find the proper tactics.
And most people kicking for "bad DPS" were... good players, thinking they are top, but clearly not top yet. but their pride is strong, and so, they decide to kick the weak when they see, even if the weak is not the problem. And i already saw some "top DPS" on LFR raid being kicked because, he was one of top DPS sure, but... toxic. and people prefered keep the "low" DPS trying to do their best ,than the toxic angry man with a problem of personnal pride.
Rather, they are elitists obessed with pursuing what they believe is the META.
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HinotoriMember, Leader of Men, Kickstarter, Alpha One
There is a challenge for the group to defeat the content. Defeating content should not solely be focused on DPS check. There should be a variety of obstacles; not just one. Occasionally time can be an obstacle to overcome. Sure.
Funny because most hardest fight in wow or FFXIV have high DPS check... and DPS is far from the only thing needed to beat them. All hard fight i know have high DPS check, hard mechanics, that are also really punitiv (often source of one shot... if not instawipe of the raid)
Your idea is "Infiltrate, get past that silly ToS... then do what I want!". You start off shady.
While I understand how you would arrive at this conclusion, it isnt quite accurate.
Where I live, software ToS's can only involve discussions about how you use that software directly. Anything removed from that invalidates the entire ToS.
Since I am able to use a combat tracker in association with Ashes without needing to actually be running Ashes at all (and in fact can run my tracker on a computer that doesnt even have Ashes installed), there is literally no legal way I am breaking the ToS - regardless of how it is written.
If you want to say this amounts to infiltrating past the silly ToS, then I guess you can. At best, I would call it malicious compliance. I'll absolutely put my hand up for that one.
So really, if your argument is "if you agree to the terms of service, you should stick to them", then all I can say is that under literally every scenario I have talked about (bar 1 extreme scenario), I have met my legal obligations under those terms - it just so happens that I am not as bound by them as some others may be (living in a place that puts people's rights ahead of company rights is fantastic).
This is why I didnt bother discussing the ToS angel. I'm following the ToS to the level that I am required to follow it, regardless of what the ToS actually ends up saying - simplybecause everything I have talked about falls outside of what a software ToS can prevent me from doing.
Now, going back to the point about good neighbors. Who is the better neighbor here - the person that wants to do an activity they are perfectly entitled to do, but who knows that the activity may upset his neighbors and so attempts to find a means by which said activity wont impact his neighbors, or the neighbor that wants to attempt to make it against the rules for the person to ever do that activity, despite there being no actual legal path to do so?
Given this scenario, I know which of the two I would rather live next door to - clearly the person trying to make it work for both.
Perhaps a better question is, which of these two people would you rather be yourself?
So you will be content to never run Ashes with a combat tracker active. You will close the application of Ashes, then apply your combat tracker. Every time. Scouts honor?
You'll take the extra time of doing it all out of game with Ashes closed. Right? I understand you properly? This is your intention?
@Noaani how would you look at an anonymous+personal tracker? Every person just has the chat log of all the things they did during any given encounter (I mean they'll have it all the time, but maybe there could be a "recording" function where some duration of that log, set by you, could be recorded into a text file). And the boss itself would have give a UI window that shows all the skills/dmg done to it and all the abilities itself used throughout the fight (seconds by second report), but you would not know who used those skills, so you as a leader would have to still look at the battlefield during the fight rather than just looking at the logs after it.
Any group of people who are completely fine with sharing their personal info with their leader would give him their text files and he'd be able to compile them together with the boss' info and see who did what and when and how.
While in any party that doesn't want to do that, the leader would have to work harder to know who's is really slacking. And the players themselves would know that their leader did their hard work if the player got called out (or it would lead to some internal drama, but the personal proof would always be available so you'd always be able to ultimately find the truth).
Would this kind of tracking work for you? To me this seems to preserve the idea of "I know how the fight went down and can see what can be done better (thanks to the boss info)', but also preserve the anonymity that meter-haters want to have, while still giving the hardcore meter-lovers the ability to do their own calculations. And any given player could work on their own skill betterment if they want to.
So people can be like give us your logs or get kicked or have less rights on looting gear? It is simply injecting more issues when they would be avoided by not allowing it to begin with as almost everyone wants. Why would you allow this for less than 1% of player base that is simply being loud. If everyone had a forum account and said their thoughts this wouldn't even be a question, it be drown out by people saying no.
Simply because someone is loud does not mean a company needs to bend the knee to some people else we will have full pve servers as well.
So people can be like give us your logs or get kicked or have less rights on looting gear?
Uhm, I can restrict your right completely if I want to, even w/o the meters. That's where your server/node reputation would come in. If the party agreed to a certain set of rules before partying up and you then go against those rules - you're free to reap the consequences of such an action.
I've had this exact interaction in L2 countless times. And anyone who fucked over one of the party members would the become fairly infamous within the farming circle of their lvl of progress.
It's not like the meters are the only source of people being dicks. And either way, I'm 95% sure that random collections of people won't be farming bosses (pretty much the only place where meters will truly matter for most people). And guild reputation will be even more important than the personal one, so if the GL goes against the rules that were agreed upon when he was inviting people - he'll be known as a bad GL, which will damage his guild's future potential.
I'm just trying to find a middle ground where both sides would be as happy as they can.
So people can be like give us your logs or get kicked or have less rights on looting gear?
Uhm, I can restrict your right completely if I want to, even w/o the meters. That's where your server/node reputation would come in. If the party agreed to a certain set of rules before partying up and you then go against those rules - you're free to reap the consequences of such an action.
I've had this exact interaction in L2 countless times. And anyone who fucked over one of the party members would the become fairly infamous within the farming circle of their lvl of progress.
It's not like the meters are the only source of people being dicks. And either way, I'm 95% sure that random collections of people won't be farming bosses (pretty much the only place where meters will truly matter for most people). And guild reputation will be even more important than the personal one, so if the GL goes against the rules that were agreed upon when he was inviting people - he'll be known as a bad GL, which will damage his guild's future potential.
I'm just trying to find a middle ground where both sides would be as happy as they can.
Why do you need to find a middle ground for something almost everyone does not wants which also confirms Steven's thoughts on this agreeing with him?
A tiny handful of people being loud is not a reason to find a middle ground.
Why do you need to find a middle ground for something almost everyone does not wants which also confirms Steven's thoughts on this agreeing with him?
Because I want to have a tool that I can use to improve my own gameplay w/o sacrificing my privacy in any given party event.
In L2 it was just my chat, because L2 logged all your actions in the game and you could look through them after the encounter. If Ashes will have the same feature, I'd personally be fine there.
But my other reason for trying to find a middle ground is because I want as many people to enjoy the game as possible, because I want the game to succeed to its max potential. I want another mmo that I can play for 12 years like I did with L2. And if that requires having some form of dps meter for all the PvE hardcore people to enjoy the game and give me someone to kill around a boss' spawn point - I'm willing to find a way to satisfy their desire w/o giving up my own preferences.
Why do you need to find a middle ground for something almost everyone does not wants which also confirms Steven's thoughts on this agreeing with him?
Because I want to have a tool that I can use to improve my own gameplay w/o sacrificing my privacy in any given party event.
In L2 it was just my chat, because L2 logged all your actions in the game and you could look through them after the encounter. If Ashes will have the same feature, I'd personally be fine there.
But my other reason for trying to find a middle ground is because I want as many people to enjoy the game as possible, because I want the game to succeed to its max potential. I want another mmo that I can play for 12 years like I did with L2. And if that requires having some form of dps meter for all the PvE hardcore people to enjoy the game and give me someone to kill around a boss' spawn point - I'm willing to find a way to satisfy their desire w/o giving up my own preferences.
If people are again something then to get the max amount of people to enjoy the game would be leaning towards that almost everyone else wants which is like 99% of people. I'm sure there will be combat logs in game that should be only for your own personal incoming and receiving damage and you can use that to view how you are preforming.
So what I'm saying there is no need for a middle ground of a dps meter that is not what people want except for a very small handful. Else like i said before you you need to advocate for instanced dungeons since many more people would want that and pve servers.
I'm sure there will be combat logs in game that should be only for your own personal incoming and receiving damage and you can use that to view how you are preforming.
And if it's there then any party can ask for screenshots from it, if they're dicks enough to do so. So this wouldn't be any different from you getting a recording of your log as a text file.
And the boss telling you what he did or what was done to him wouldn't be any different from you just recording your screen during the fight.
And this is why I suggested the thing I suggested. The amount of information available to you would not change in the slightest. The amount of information you retrieve from all that stuff would pretty much remain the same. The only thing that would change is the ease of access (and even that only applies to the boss/mob itself).
I'm sure there will be combat logs in game that should be only for your own personal incoming and receiving damage and you can use that to view how you are preforming.
And if it's there then any party can ask for screenshots from it, if they're dicks enough to do so. So this wouldn't be any different from you getting a recording of your log as a text file.
And the boss telling you what he did or what was done to him wouldn't be any different from you just recording your screen during the fight.
And this is why I suggested the thing I suggested. The amount of information available to you would not change in the slightest. The amount of information you retrieve from all that stuff would pretty much remain the same. The only thing that would change is the ease of access (and even that only applies to the boss/mob itself).
Screen shotting some dmg numbers does not equal a detailed log of what you did right and wrong that is a false comparison unless you are screen shooting page after page of all the combat which isn't' realistic nor gives a proper judge of your total dps per second as well.
Second that would not be the norm of asking for screens shots do to the extreme inconvenience, compared to making it easy and sending a log text base.
So there is a pretty big difference, also almost everyone does not want this, you are fighting against what the community and steven wants.
Screen shotting some dmg numbers does not equal a detailed log of what you did right and wrong that is a false comparison unless you are screen shooting page after page of all the combat which isn't' realistic nor gives a proper judge of your total dps per second as well.
I mean, I'd personally hope that in-game combat log has time stamps (or any chat window for that matter), so it wouldn't even have to be pages and pages. The party/raid leader would just say "give me a screenshot of your combat log from this time" and that'd be that. And as Noaani told you several times, dps meters are not just about how much dps you're doing at any particular moment. If a particular boss mechanic required a particular ability usage from some class in the raid, the raid leader could then ask players of that class to give him screens of the time when they had to use their ability.
The only case where this wouldn't happen is if we don't get an in-game combat log at all.
Second that would not be the norm of asking for screens shots do to the extreme inconvenience, compared to making it easy and sending a log text base.
Yeah, if the game's combat log is trash then yeah, it'd be a hassle. But then I would be against that too, cause, as I said, I want a tool to make myself play better and a proper combat log was usually enough for me in L2.
Oh, and asking the raid members to do anything would be the norm in any hardcorish guild, because you can't be better than others if you don't work on your mistakes. And doing particular things is exactly how you avoid said mistakes.
So there is a pretty big difference, also almost everyone does not want this, you are fighting against what the community and steven wants.
The only thing I'm fighting for here is a good combat log in my chat. Intrepid have already decided to show us the dmg numbers, so I'd assume there'll be a combat log too. And I just want it to look nice and note down all the things I do.
The boss log would be a cherry on top, because, as I said, I'm not asking for insanely detailed info - just what ability he used and what ability was used on him, and all that stuff should be visible during the fight either way, so there'd be no additional info in that log.
But if they don't give us that kind of stuff, it's not like I'll stop playing because of it. But all the hardcore PvErs might. And if Steven really wants to have a PvE scene (with all his talk of super difficult bosses), the very least he could do is give a personal self-improvement tool.
Screen shotting some dmg numbers does not equal a detailed log of what you did right and wrong that is a false comparison unless you are screen shooting page after page of all the combat which isn't' realistic nor gives a proper judge of your total dps per second as well.
I mean, I'd personally hope that in-game combat log has time stamps (or any chat window for that matter), so it wouldn't even have to be pages and pages. The party/raid leader would just say "give me a screenshot of your combat log from this time" and that'd be that. And as Noaani told you several times, dps meters are not just about how much dps you're doing at any particular moment. If a particular boss mechanic required a particular ability usage from some class in the raid, the raid leader could then ask players of that class to give him screens of the time when they had to use their ability.
The only case where this wouldn't happen is if we don't get an in-game combat log at all.
Second that would not be the norm of asking for screens shots do to the extreme inconvenience, compared to making it easy and sending a log text base.
Yeah, if the game's combat log is trash then yeah, it'd be a hassle. But then I would be against that too, cause, as I said, I want a tool to make myself play better and a proper combat log was usually enough for me in L2.
Oh, and asking the raid members to do anything would be the norm in any hardcorish guild, because you can't be better than others if you don't work on your mistakes. And doing particular things is exactly how you avoid said mistakes.
So there is a pretty big difference, also almost everyone does not want this, you are fighting against what the community and steven wants.
The only thing I'm fighting for here is a good combat log in my chat. Intrepid have already decided to show us the dmg numbers, so I'd assume there'll be a combat log too. And I just want it to look nice and note down all the things I do.
The boss log would be a cherry on top, because, as I said, I'm not asking for insanely detailed info - just what ability he used and what ability was used on him, and all that stuff should be visible during the fight either way, so there'd be no additional info in that log.
But if they don't give us that kind of stuff, it's not like I'll stop playing because of it. But all the hardcore PvErs might. And if Steven really wants to have a PvE scene (with all his talk of super difficult bosses), the very least he could do is give a personal self-improvement tool.
You can use your eyes and judge if someone is using the right skill or not and talk to them in voice chat when to call it out. You don't need a dps meter to be doing that for you you have a voice and fingers.
A proper combat log simply says your damage and incoming damage and that is good enough. You will make yourself a better player with good combat IQ and landing skill shots and out playing people as it is hybrid. You also don't need a dps meter to know you made a mistake if there is something you need to do during a mechanic it will be clear and you will know ahead of time talking to your guild and knowing the challenge.
No one has issues with a good combat log that is fine and fair shows damage, shows incoming damage, shows evade or block amount, shows what skills are doing the damage, etc. Of course that should be personal and another person should be seeing your damage stats, if you choose to share it that is fine of course.
People can use the damage log to test things and figure out more damage on their own without any additional tools. And since it will be hybrid combat even if they can sneak some additional programs in (before being banned) it won't be accurate of anyone combat and will have a high skill level to reach the best damage.
You can use your eyes and judge if someone is using the right skill or not and talk to them in voice chat when to call it out. You don't need a dps meter to be doing that for you you have a voice and fingers.
Which is literally why I suggested what I suggested. My suggested "dps meter" wouldn't tell the raid leader who did what, it would be completely anonymous. Hell, a video recording of the fight would tell more about who did what than the combat log I suggest.
A proper combat log simply says your damage and incoming damage and that is good enough. You will make yourself a better player with good combat IQ and landing skill shots and out playing people as it is hybrid. You also don't need a dps meter to know you made a mistake if there is something you need to do during a mechanic it will be clear and you will know ahead of time talking to your guild and knowing the challenge.
No one has issues with a good combat log that is fine and fair shows damage, shows incoming damage, shows evade or block amount, shows what skills are doing the damage, etc. Of course that should be personal and another person should be seeing your damage stats, if you choose to share it that is fine of course.
People can use the damage log to test things and figure out more damage on their own without any additional tools. And since it will be hybrid combat even if they can sneak some additional programs in (before being banned) it won't be accurate of anyone combat and will have a high skill level to reach the best damage.
So you literally fucking agree with me. I just want the in-game combat log to give us all the things that we do (or are done to us) and to be able to save that in text form if I ever want to go through it (the same as I would do to a recording of the fight).
And the boss' log would just be a recording of what he did and what was done to him. Also literally the same as a video of the fight, except with even less info, because the video would tell you who did what, while the log would only indicate that smth was done.
You want to change it?
Steven says: no.
You ask: why?
He avoids the true answer by giving many other answers which are documented on the wiki.
You decided an answer too already regarding why he wants that: he doesn't like them because he thinks they inherently lead to toxicity
and maybe lack of "respect for his community"
Ses, here's the thing.
The reason Steven has given for not wanting combat trackers is that he believes they lead to toxicity in game.
The problem is, this is incorrect, and that is able to be demonstrated. If combat trackers lead to toxicity, games with combat trackers would all need to be toxic, and games without them would need to be non-toxic.
Yet EQ2 and Archeage exist.
EQ2 has heavy combat tracker use, and is not a toxic game at all. Archeage has low combat tracker use, and is more toxic than WoW.
As such, Steven's reason for not wanting trackers simply does not hold as being true.
At this point, it is not a case of what I want or not.
Take a look at cosmetics for a second. I dont like the fact that a player can be wearing cloth, and appear as if they are wearing plate. I think players should be given the option to turn cosmetics off.
However, Steven has said that is how it is, and has given his reason for not adding that option. His reason there is sound, and so that is fine. I may not like the decision, but it is one made with sound reasoning, so not only do I accept it, I point out to others that it is a sound reason.
The reasoning here is not sound. As such, I do not accept it. It isnt a matter of what I want or no.
As to your idea of trying in a combat tracker to military nodes, no. If they are in the game, they should be available to all that want them, not just those that desire to join a military node. You should not need to base everything you do in game around having one (and the requirement to live in a military node does alter everything you do in game).
This is why I believe they should exist at both a guild and family level, that way anyone wanting them can gain access.
@Noaani how would you look at an anonymous+personal tracker? Every person just has the chat log of all the things they did during any given encounter (I mean they'll have it all the time, but maybe there could be a "recording" function where some duration of that log, set by you, could be recorded into a text file). And the boss itself would have give a UI window that shows all the skills/dmg done to it and all the abilities itself used throughout the fight (seconds by second report), but you would not know who used those skills, so you as a leader would have to still look at the battlefield during the fight rather than just looking at the logs after it.
Any group of people who are completely fine with sharing their personal info with their leader would give him their text files and he'd be able to compile them together with the boss' info and see who did what and when and how.
While in any party that doesn't want to do that, the leader would have to work harder to know who's is really slacking. And the players themselves would know that their leader did their hard work if the player got called out (or it would lead to some internal drama, but the personal proof would always be available so you'd always be able to ultimately find the truth).
Would this kind of tracking work for you? To me this seems to preserve the idea of "I know how the fight went down and can see what can be done better (thanks to the boss info)', but also preserve the anonymity that meter-haters want to have, while still giving the hardcore meter-lovers the ability to do their own calculations. And any given player could work on their own skill betterment if they want to.
I would be somewhat ok with this - if it went hand in hand with Intrepid allowingncombat tracker use.
In EQ2 we used a cloud based tracker (before it was even called the cloud) for some encounters. Using anloval tracker that only took our logs in to account could get inaccurate on encounters where there was a large amount of space in play. As such, we would sign in to an online tracker, and it would gather data from everyone in the raid and parse it all together.
The downside to the above (as I believe has been mentioned) is that people will require others to log in to such a tracker for raids, and perhaps also for pickup content.
I would personally rather not have that be how the game goes - I would refuse to log directly in to some website like that to run a pickup group, and would assume many others also would.
This is why my suggestion has always been guild based. People will not ask you to quit your guild and join theirs just to run some content. It is the easiest method I can think of to separate those wanting trackers from those not wanting them, allowing the sharing of information between those wanting to share it, but in a way where the information cant just be asked for by anyone.
To me, personally, none of the above is important. However, in discussions with people on the topic, it seems to be important to others, and so I am quite happy to argue their points in this regard.
Comments
In games without them, a meta still forms. People still have classes or builds they want, and classes or builds they do not want.
Since all a combat tracker does is give you information, if that information then suggested to you that an entire class in Ashes wasnt worth bringing along on raids, then that is an issue to do with the development of the game, and is absolutely not a combat tracker issue.
Why would you not use a tracker when you can instead just use a tracker?
I mean, if the argument is just that trackers save time (which seems to be what you are saying here), then that is an argument for them, not against them.
No it means use actually knowledge and figure things out, don't try to use automated tools to do the work for you. There is far more to gain from people talking and learning combat and growing better over the years.
DPS meters are trash and should not be included in a game, it is like saying that is a argument for people to use aim bot in a shooter. There is a reason why everyone is against it and no one wants that trash, I'd rather judge someone with my eyes as a person and help them grow or carry them than have people judging with dps meters. It is toxic in mentality even more so when you are involving groups.
If you want to min max get some paper, some practice and some excel sheets and learn. Though the more action combat elements the more that doesn't matter since people will be missing shots and skill will play a bigger tole than people trying to have easy mode on to say if people are doing the right thing or not.
A combat tracker is nothing at all like an aim bot in an FPS game.
A combat tracker is more akin to the match stats screen that shows up after basically every FPS match.
If you want to compare things in an MMO to an aim bot in an FPS, you would be looking at macros, or at combat assistants.
There is indeed a reason some people are against combat trackers. I've been involved in this thread since before it was this thread. The people against combat trackers so far have basically all fit in to three groups; those that misunderstand what combat trackers can and can not do (this seems to be you), those that attribute outcomes incorrectly to combat trackers (usually either the existence of a games meta, or situations where players are booted mid way through content), and people that basically just say "why cant you just follow the rules?".
There has not been a single valid complaint raised against combat trackers in the 3k+ posts in this thread. There are people that say they are against them, but saying you are against something and having a valid reason for being against it are vastly different things.
Ashes is a competitive game. People will use tools to gain what ever advantage they can in that competitive environment. To me, it makes sense to give access to the best tools to all players that want them.
At this point, it honestly does look like an attempt to try and fit an argument around a pre-defined position.
You are slightly misrepresenting my position here.
I will have a tracker, and in doing so I'll be following the games ToS.
This isnt my argument, as it isnt up for debate.
However, the justification for a tracker is a purely logical one, as is my argument for a tracker to be incorporated in to the games client.
As I have said in the past, from a purely logical perspective, trackers are essential for any healthy MMORPG. They are a tool players can use to give developers much better feedback than we could give them without trackers, and I have given actual examples of this through the thread (a personal one, and Marget talking about how much easier CS is when players have access to objective data). Even just that specific perspective is enough justification - combat trackers objectively make the game as a whole better, even for players that do not use them.
I'm still waiting for any logical argument as to why they should not be built in to the game client.
Just going by your last post, you talk about risk vs reward, yet combat trackers do not alter the risk vs reward aspect of Ashes (risk mostly being PvP related, and combat trackers being made available to all). You say the game is trying to have a community feeling, but combat trackers have no negative impact on that at all.
You say to let Ashes be it's own game - Ashes already has combat trackers, I am suggesting Intrepid do the one thing that no other MMO has done and take control of the trackers used in their game. This literally is me suggesting Ashes be it's own game. I am literally the one standing here saying "Intrepid, have some balls and do something no one else has done", while you are saying "do what FFXIV did, maybe you'll get a better result".
Again, you seem to have come to a conclusion on the matter, and are now searching for justification for that conclusion.
All... Really all...
Did it for two guilds, and many party, in Aion, WoW or FFXIV.
And if you read again the message i wrote... you will see :
It works very well... yes you lose some benefits of high levels guilds when this kind of system exist, but... hey, we are here to play and have fun no ? The bonuses will come back in due time. They are just technical things, the fun is priority.
But the wiki also include a quote about hardest content being killable by a single digit percent... The more people will use combat tracker (outside of game like FFXIV) the more will be able to do those content.
FFXIV has the situation you consider the most to come : no ingame combat tracker... And FFXIV is more designed, for the endgame, around DPScheck than wow in my opinion (i did endgame for both until 4 years ago, so maybe it changed, and was just my feeling)
But also... this is a mistake from DEVS to just focus on it. As i said, adding high DPS check will make a fight harder. always. Because it will force players to take more risk. But it remains, most of time, another way to do the fight harder while reducing the DPS check : make the mechanics far more punitiv, and/or far more hard to deal. the damages does around 50% of a DPS health bar? Lets set it to 80% ... or maybe kill ? The players have 10 second to do the mechanic ? reduce to 6 seconds.
The problem around difficulty is the pressure on the player. Incrasing the dps check will force him to take risk... or be better on his DPS (or both) but harder and more punitiv mechanic will work also. This is how the soulslike game are designed... not around DPS but mainly around mechanics highly hard to deal. outside of some cheesy strategies (that are not so much around "DPS" but around the whole game mechanics, so can be patched) even with high mastery of the character and its DPS, the fight will last few minutes.
In such situation, trying to overoptimise DPS is still a way (the shorter is the fight, the less mistake you do... so more able to kill the boss, or farm it) but not what will does the more work to define "the good" and "the bad" players.
the ** is important because gatekeeping can fast become a problem. *look at FFXIV/WoW party asking to have already kill bosses at the 2nd week >_< *
but gatekeeping around factual performance is not toxic yes.
This is what most debate around combat tracker showed : people doesnt like to be proven being "bad" . . . Which is often stupid. there are guilds, lot of guilds that fits well with people that don't try to be top players. and just go as far as they go... some guilds are happy to kill Heroic raids just before the new raid is released, while i am able to do in in first weeks as... a pick up.
And also, many guilds have member that HELP gives ADVICE, guide players, and a FAR better way than any guide on internet. (direct explanation, tutoring is far more efficient to learn to another player how to play... always)
And most people kicking for "bad DPS" were... good players, thinking they are top, but clearly not top yet. but their pride is strong, and so, they decide to kick the weak when they see, even if the weak is not the problem. And i already saw some "top DPS" on LFR raid being kicked because, he was one of top DPS sure, but... toxic. and people prefered keep the "low" DPS trying to do their best ,than the toxic angry man with a problem of personnal pride.
How being better neighbor ?
First, have a game when personnal reknown is a thing...
be a toxic guy of any kind in Vanilla/BC and you will be alone, forced to rename or change server.
The problem began mainly... when... Duty Finder came to us. The other players stopped to be players, they were... things you had to do dungeons with. Ninjalooting, insulting, harassing was a problem only with the rules of the game (the sacred saint tos) and nothing else... Because ... you would never see those other players again. . .
Yes sure, it is not a right to become an asshole, but this is what allow them to be...
all old mmorpg players can confirm that they heard name of people because they were ninjalooter, or a problem in any content you do with them. And so, even if you see their call "looking for member to do xxxx" or when they whisp you aftrer your own call... you just ignore them and try to find others... THe community purged itself of the bad parts so... And this is how it should be the best way to do...
For lost ark, one of the class that has the hardest time to find party is... one with a really excellent DPS. Reaper.
Also, Summoner is one of the biggest DPS, and... one of the least played class. (and it is not so hard to mechanically play it). an optimised summoner does more than an optimised sorc with same ilvl... but the second is faar more played.
Reaper is high DPS but really squichy as fuck. Summoner ? stuffing it is really REALLY expensiv.
In the current LA on west, people are allowing classes the same way as KR... and it is due to a global damages + utility (vary from fight to others) + squichyness. and LA already get a combat tracker build ingame... not for fight (but it wouldnt change a lot for this game in fact... due to how it is designed)
if summoner is not invited in party, or the party is dumb, or simply the summoner is a bad class.
good class can be a class with the lowest DPS... back in BC, shadowpriest were the lowest DPS of the game (aside tank and heal for sure) no one played it... and all raid wanted to have at least one... Because it helped a lot in a party with 4 healers for their mana... and it added some bonus damages on bosses to shadowlock... (which were big DPS... so having them bigger was a good thing)
Bard or summoner will have a lower DPS for sure, it is what i expect, but i epxect them to have enough bonus.utility to have them as mandatory in party than a ranger. And i will play summoner... yep... i will play a class that will (i think) never be a good DPS (if i compare to DPS classes) and i defend combat tracker...
Any group of people who are completely fine with sharing their personal info with their leader would give him their text files and he'd be able to compile them together with the boss' info and see who did what and when and how.
While in any party that doesn't want to do that, the leader would have to work harder to know who's is really slacking. And the players themselves would know that their leader did their hard work if the player got called out (or it would lead to some internal drama, but the personal proof would always be available so you'd always be able to ultimately find the truth).
Would this kind of tracking work for you? To me this seems to preserve the idea of "I know how the fight went down and can see what can be done better (thanks to the boss info)', but also preserve the anonymity that meter-haters want to have, while still giving the hardcore meter-lovers the ability to do their own calculations. And any given player could work on their own skill betterment if they want to.
The community doesn't want it period, if you think everyone isn't valid that is fine everyone has their own bias. The community feels our points are valid and if a tiny group doesn't see eye to eye that is fine. It is clear what people want regardless if you choose to argue with everyone. The forums is only a tiny amount of people into games as well so that number of people that don't want it or don't care for it wold only be even more massaive. And I'm not talking about *2 or *10, forum population of games is much less than 1%.
Both of which are irrelevant to this discussion.
People should have the freedom to leave a group or guild if/when they choose. We agree.
Just because you jump to a conclusion, does not mean your conclusion is true.
Depends on what you consider risk, perhaps, but...
Doesn't matter whether it makes the content harder. What matters is that the encounters are designed for players to focus on players actions and synergizing together, rather than on (false) inferences from a DPS meter that causes people to think there is factually only one way to defeat content.
There is a challenge for the group to defeat the content. Defeating content should not solely be focused on DPS check. There should be a variety of obstacles; not just one. Occasionally time can be an obstacle to overcome. Sure.
Ashes is not a Soulslike game. And, yes, in an MMORPG group content should last longer than a few minutes.
No. People don't care about being "proven to be bad".
People care about people getting kicked from the group due to an obsession about conforming to numbers from some tool.
There might be poor perfromers in the group. That doen't mean it's impossible to defeat the challenge with them in the group. Just takes a bit more strategizing to find the proper tactics.
Rather, they are elitists obessed with pursuing what they believe is the META.
Funny because most hardest fight in wow or FFXIV have high DPS check... and DPS is far from the only thing needed to beat them. All hard fight i know have high DPS check, hard mechanics, that are also really punitiv (often source of one shot... if not instawipe of the raid)
So you will be content to never run Ashes with a combat tracker active. You will close the application of Ashes, then apply your combat tracker. Every time. Scouts honor?
You'll take the extra time of doing it all out of game with Ashes closed. Right? I understand you properly? This is your intention?
So people can be like give us your logs or get kicked or have less rights on looting gear? It is simply injecting more issues when they would be avoided by not allowing it to begin with as almost everyone wants. Why would you allow this for less than 1% of player base that is simply being loud. If everyone had a forum account and said their thoughts this wouldn't even be a question, it be drown out by people saying no.
Simply because someone is loud does not mean a company needs to bend the knee to some people else we will have full pve servers as well.
I've had this exact interaction in L2 countless times. And anyone who fucked over one of the party members would the become fairly infamous within the farming circle of their lvl of progress.
It's not like the meters are the only source of people being dicks. And either way, I'm 95% sure that random collections of people won't be farming bosses (pretty much the only place where meters will truly matter for most people). And guild reputation will be even more important than the personal one, so if the GL goes against the rules that were agreed upon when he was inviting people - he'll be known as a bad GL, which will damage his guild's future potential.
I'm just trying to find a middle ground where both sides would be as happy as they can.
Why do you need to find a middle ground for something almost everyone does not wants which also confirms Steven's thoughts on this agreeing with him?
A tiny handful of people being loud is not a reason to find a middle ground.
In L2 it was just my chat, because L2 logged all your actions in the game and you could look through them after the encounter. If Ashes will have the same feature, I'd personally be fine there.
But my other reason for trying to find a middle ground is because I want as many people to enjoy the game as possible, because I want the game to succeed to its max potential. I want another mmo that I can play for 12 years like I did with L2. And if that requires having some form of dps meter for all the PvE hardcore people to enjoy the game and give me someone to kill around a boss' spawn point - I'm willing to find a way to satisfy their desire w/o giving up my own preferences.
If people are again something then to get the max amount of people to enjoy the game would be leaning towards that almost everyone else wants which is like 99% of people. I'm sure there will be combat logs in game that should be only for your own personal incoming and receiving damage and you can use that to view how you are preforming.
So what I'm saying there is no need for a middle ground of a dps meter that is not what people want except for a very small handful. Else like i said before you you need to advocate for instanced dungeons since many more people would want that and pve servers.
And the boss telling you what he did or what was done to him wouldn't be any different from you just recording your screen during the fight.
And this is why I suggested the thing I suggested. The amount of information available to you would not change in the slightest. The amount of information you retrieve from all that stuff would pretty much remain the same. The only thing that would change is the ease of access (and even that only applies to the boss/mob itself).
Screen shotting some dmg numbers does not equal a detailed log of what you did right and wrong that is a false comparison unless you are screen shooting page after page of all the combat which isn't' realistic nor gives a proper judge of your total dps per second as well.
Second that would not be the norm of asking for screens shots do to the extreme inconvenience, compared to making it easy and sending a log text base.
So there is a pretty big difference, also almost everyone does not want this, you are fighting against what the community and steven wants.
The only case where this wouldn't happen is if we don't get an in-game combat log at all. Yeah, if the game's combat log is trash then yeah, it'd be a hassle. But then I would be against that too, cause, as I said, I want a tool to make myself play better and a proper combat log was usually enough for me in L2.
Oh, and asking the raid members to do anything would be the norm in any hardcorish guild, because you can't be better than others if you don't work on your mistakes. And doing particular things is exactly how you avoid said mistakes. The only thing I'm fighting for here is a good combat log in my chat. Intrepid have already decided to show us the dmg numbers, so I'd assume there'll be a combat log too. And I just want it to look nice and note down all the things I do.
The boss log would be a cherry on top, because, as I said, I'm not asking for insanely detailed info - just what ability he used and what ability was used on him, and all that stuff should be visible during the fight either way, so there'd be no additional info in that log.
But if they don't give us that kind of stuff, it's not like I'll stop playing because of it. But all the hardcore PvErs might. And if Steven really wants to have a PvE scene (with all his talk of super difficult bosses), the very least he could do is give a personal self-improvement tool.
You can use your eyes and judge if someone is using the right skill or not and talk to them in voice chat when to call it out. You don't need a dps meter to be doing that for you you have a voice and fingers.
A proper combat log simply says your damage and incoming damage and that is good enough. You will make yourself a better player with good combat IQ and landing skill shots and out playing people as it is hybrid. You also don't need a dps meter to know you made a mistake if there is something you need to do during a mechanic it will be clear and you will know ahead of time talking to your guild and knowing the challenge.
No one has issues with a good combat log that is fine and fair shows damage, shows incoming damage, shows evade or block amount, shows what skills are doing the damage, etc. Of course that should be personal and another person should be seeing your damage stats, if you choose to share it that is fine of course.
People can use the damage log to test things and figure out more damage on their own without any additional tools. And since it will be hybrid combat even if they can sneak some additional programs in (before being banned) it won't be accurate of anyone combat and will have a high skill level to reach the best damage.
And the boss' log would just be a recording of what he did and what was done to him. Also literally the same as a video of the fight, except with even less info, because the video would tell you who did what, while the log would only indicate that smth was done.
The reason Steven has given for not wanting combat trackers is that he believes they lead to toxicity in game.
The problem is, this is incorrect, and that is able to be demonstrated. If combat trackers lead to toxicity, games with combat trackers would all need to be toxic, and games without them would need to be non-toxic.
Yet EQ2 and Archeage exist.
EQ2 has heavy combat tracker use, and is not a toxic game at all. Archeage has low combat tracker use, and is more toxic than WoW.
As such, Steven's reason for not wanting trackers simply does not hold as being true.
At this point, it is not a case of what I want or not.
Take a look at cosmetics for a second. I dont like the fact that a player can be wearing cloth, and appear as if they are wearing plate. I think players should be given the option to turn cosmetics off.
However, Steven has said that is how it is, and has given his reason for not adding that option. His reason there is sound, and so that is fine. I may not like the decision, but it is one made with sound reasoning, so not only do I accept it, I point out to others that it is a sound reason.
The reasoning here is not sound. As such, I do not accept it. It isnt a matter of what I want or no.
As to your idea of trying in a combat tracker to military nodes, no. If they are in the game, they should be available to all that want them, not just those that desire to join a military node. You should not need to base everything you do in game around having one (and the requirement to live in a military node does alter everything you do in game).
This is why I believe they should exist at both a guild and family level, that way anyone wanting them can gain access.
I would be somewhat ok with this - if it went hand in hand with Intrepid allowingncombat tracker use.
In EQ2 we used a cloud based tracker (before it was even called the cloud) for some encounters. Using anloval tracker that only took our logs in to account could get inaccurate on encounters where there was a large amount of space in play. As such, we would sign in to an online tracker, and it would gather data from everyone in the raid and parse it all together.
The downside to the above (as I believe has been mentioned) is that people will require others to log in to such a tracker for raids, and perhaps also for pickup content.
I would personally rather not have that be how the game goes - I would refuse to log directly in to some website like that to run a pickup group, and would assume many others also would.
This is why my suggestion has always been guild based. People will not ask you to quit your guild and join theirs just to run some content. It is the easiest method I can think of to separate those wanting trackers from those not wanting them, allowing the sharing of information between those wanting to share it, but in a way where the information cant just be asked for by anyone.
To me, personally, none of the above is important. However, in discussions with people on the topic, it seems to be important to others, and so I am quite happy to argue their points in this regard.