Volgaris wrote: » SongRune wrote: » Volgaris wrote: » this seems more like an add-ons discussion. Either Ashes adds a dps meter or they don't. If they do we accept it, if they don't then the question is do they allow add-ons. Nothing like DPS fight Tanks for threat X.X. I lean towards no add-ons. Play the game as the dev designed. Accept the DPS meter they put it in, and ban add-ons, or suffer elitism. It's not, for a slightly subtle reason: It is impossible on a technical level to detect combat trackers. They don't even need to run on the same computer as the game client. You'd have to ban streaming. The discussion isn't so much "will Intrepid allow add-ons or not", it's "Do you prefer that combat trackers are available only to the elite who will ignore your rules, or do you prefer that they are available to everyone?" You don't need to worry that banning trackers will prevent elitism. It won't. It will just give other players less tools to help them catch up. As many defenders have pointed out: Nobody's here to get trackers for themselves. We want everyone to have them, not just the elites. The game's more interesting when more people can keep up. Hmmm. Well put that way, I guess I'd say make it accessible to everyone. It'd be nice to go back to the days of no trackers, but I don't think we can really, as you already put, people will find a way. So I guess the player base will need to evolve with them. Not a bad thing, I like meters, but it would be nice to go away from them if it was possible.
SongRune wrote: » Volgaris wrote: » this seems more like an add-ons discussion. Either Ashes adds a dps meter or they don't. If they do we accept it, if they don't then the question is do they allow add-ons. Nothing like DPS fight Tanks for threat X.X. I lean towards no add-ons. Play the game as the dev designed. Accept the DPS meter they put it in, and ban add-ons, or suffer elitism. It's not, for a slightly subtle reason: It is impossible on a technical level to detect combat trackers. They don't even need to run on the same computer as the game client. You'd have to ban streaming. The discussion isn't so much "will Intrepid allow add-ons or not", it's "Do you prefer that combat trackers are available only to the elite who will ignore your rules, or do you prefer that they are available to everyone?" You don't need to worry that banning trackers will prevent elitism. It won't. It will just give other players less tools to help them catch up. As many defenders have pointed out: Nobody's here to get trackers for themselves. We want everyone to have them, not just the elites. The game's more interesting when more people can keep up.
Volgaris wrote: » this seems more like an add-ons discussion. Either Ashes adds a dps meter or they don't. If they do we accept it, if they don't then the question is do they allow add-ons. Nothing like DPS fight Tanks for threat X.X. I lean towards no add-ons. Play the game as the dev designed. Accept the DPS meter they put it in, and ban add-ons, or suffer elitism.
Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.
mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong. But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want. Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters. If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge. DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult.
mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong. But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want. Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters.
Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong. But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want. Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters. If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge. DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult. How is that what I seem to want? Trackers aren't primarily for DPS. If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser. If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that. The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind.
mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong. But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want. Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters. If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge. DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult. How is that what I seem to want? Trackers aren't primarily for DPS. If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser. If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that. The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind. What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for?
Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong. But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want. Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters. If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge. DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult. How is that what I seem to want? Trackers aren't primarily for DPS. If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser. If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that. The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind. What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for? I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again. It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect. If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be.
mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong. But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want. Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters. If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge. DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult. How is that what I seem to want? Trackers aren't primarily for DPS. If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser. If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that. The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind. What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for? I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again. It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect. If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be. My apologies. I don't mean to cause any distress. Nothing is being won or lost here. This is just a forum we talk about ideas. I'll back off.
Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong. But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want. Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters. If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge. DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult. How is that what I seem to want? Trackers aren't primarily for DPS. If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser. If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that. The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind. What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for? I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again. It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect. If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be. My apologies. I don't mean to cause any distress. Nothing is being won or lost here. This is just a forum we talk about ideas. I'll back off. I thank you. Perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion in the other way, though. What do you consider a PvE challenge in a game like Ashes that does not have a component in which you need to check 'numbers vs time'? I can see how one could make a game where the question is moreso 'did you hit or not', 'did you defend or not', and 'did you activate the correct mechanic' than 'did you do enough damage' or 'did you mitigate enough damage'. Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened. The challenge for me there is 'avoid being CCed', right? The issue is that if you make a game like this, generally the response will be 'just bring more healers so that you don't have to worry about one being CCed'. I consider this less challenge, in the same way that fights which don't 'punish DPS players for just going all out' are less challenge. "Just bring more DPS so the enemy dies faster." The result is that the boss normally has to be 'tuned' so that you 'will not succeed if you have too few or too many' but this is still going to be a 'numbers' result. What do you see as a PvE challenge where you can't just throw more of X class at the problem to get around the mechanics preventing the effectiveness of any individual one?
mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » mcstackerson wrote: » Azherae wrote: » I believe Noaani has said this before, probably multiple times. If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong. But the design that will lead to toxicity is what you seem to want. Trackers will cause toxicity if DPS is essential to a fight. If people are failing fights because they aren't hitting DPS checks, they will become "toxic" towards people who they see are under performing on the meters. If you think meters should be necessary for competitive pve, then i'd assume you think pve needs to have these dps checks as part of its challenge. DPS checks are more of a gating mechanic than something that makes content difficult. There are plenty of none-dps related challenges that can be incorporated in pve to make it difficult. How is that what I seem to want? Trackers aren't primarily for DPS. If Intrepid decided to hide the damage numbers in the log, I'll still need to write the same parser. If Intrepid has a good design for Bard, the Bard will probably decide more about anyone's DPS than any other party member, and it's the Bard who will want to know that. The whole 'people will be mistreated for underperforming in damage' is not a Tracker problem, it's a design problem. I have no more interest in DPS check bosses than any other kind. What aspect of challenging PVE are they necessary for? I'm sorry but I'm really not going through the whole thing again. It's been explained multiple times, and I feel like I don't communicate with you very well as a generality. All I can do is hope that others understand that despite not 'meeting your challenge', I am not explicitly interested in Trackers for the DPS aspect. If you or they choose to take my 'silence' here as admission, then so it must be. My apologies. I don't mean to cause any distress. Nothing is being won or lost here. This is just a forum we talk about ideas. I'll back off. I thank you. Perhaps we can have a meaningful discussion in the other way, though. What do you consider a PvE challenge in a game like Ashes that does not have a component in which you need to check 'numbers vs time'? I can see how one could make a game where the question is moreso 'did you hit or not', 'did you defend or not', and 'did you activate the correct mechanic' than 'did you do enough damage' or 'did you mitigate enough damage'. Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened. The challenge for me there is 'avoid being CCed', right? The issue is that if you make a game like this, generally the response will be 'just bring more healers so that you don't have to worry about one being CCed'. I consider this less challenge, in the same way that fights which don't 'punish DPS players for just going all out' are less challenge. "Just bring more DPS so the enemy dies faster." The result is that the boss normally has to be 'tuned' so that you 'will not succeed if you have too few or too many' but this is still going to be a 'numbers' result. What do you see as a PvE challenge where you can't just throw more of X class at the problem to get around the mechanics preventing the effectiveness of any individual one? I'd say avoidance and puzzle mechanics are not a direct numbers vs time check. I think you need to force mechanics so they can't just dps through the challenge. Boss goes invulnerable until you do the mechanic. Also, have mechanics that require everyone in the area to do something so it's not just a small group doing it all. If necessary, I think capping the dps a boss can take would be a way to limit the effect of a zerg. If there is concern of people spamming healers, have mechanics that trigger based off classes in the area and make the healer one difficult to deal with. Also could have one that triggers based off healing being done in the area. Besides that, the rewards encourages you to bring as few people as possible since the more people you bring, the more people you have to split items with and the less valuable the time will be. If you have to bring another healer for the CC mechanic, then that's a healer you are now competing with for loot.
Azherae wrote: » Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened.
Noaani wrote: » Often times, the thing that went wrong isnt obvious. One mob in particular would explode if your raid DPS on it got too high. No warning, no hint at what went wrong - just boom. Literally the only way to work this out is to notice that it exploded a specific amount of time after your raid DPS hit a specific level. Without a tracker, that just isnt possible. Now, the argument could be made that the developers should have given a hint as to what went wrong- bit I would ask, why? The way it went though, it took people actual hundreds of pulls over actual weeks to work out what the trigger for the explosion was. Some guilds took months (keeping in mind sharing info on top end mobs wasnt a thing). Put simply, without combat trackers, the game has to tell players what is going on. With combat trackers, the game can leave it up to players to figure out. It should then be obvious how one of these willbe inherently harder than the other.
NiKr wrote: » Azherae wrote: » Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened. One question though. Couldn't they just ask the healer? Like, I'm fighting the boss; the boss does some mechanic that brings me to low hp; I see that I'm at low hp and expect a heal; the heal doesn't come, I die and the raid wipes. I then ask the healer why the heal didn't come (assuming that I did everything correct and the boss mechanic wasn't avoidable at that particular moment). Healer just tells me that he was CCd. I played a solo healer for a 36member raid a few times back in L2. The mechanics themselves weren't too complex, but because L2 didn't have any raid addons (or at least I've never used/seen them) - I had to know the voices of players in different groups so that I could heal individual players correctly (L2 didn't have raid-wide heals) and I needed to know mechanics to know when I'd be needed the most. Theoretically, if it's not the very first attempt at the boss, you'd know the potential mechanics of said boss and would know which ones are the most dangerous ones (at least that'd be my expectations for the raid, if I was a RL). So if the raid wipes due to one member dying after a particular mechanic, I'd assume it shouldn't have taken up too much of healer's "ram" to remember that he was CCd during the last mechanic and that was the reason for the wipe. So he'd be able to answer my question w/o much trouble and w/o either side needing a tracker.
NiKr wrote: » Azherae wrote: » Let's assume that a team member is counting on me to heal them and I keep getting frozen/stunned/knocked back when I try to, the Tracker tells them 'during this period no healing happened'. The Combat Log parser often tells them WHY no healing happened. One question though. Couldn't they just ask the healer? Like, I'm fighting the boss; the boss does some mechanic that brings me to low hp; I see that I'm at low hp and expect a heal; the heal doesn't come, I die and the raid wipes. I then ask the healer why the heal didn't come (assuming that I did everything correct and the boss mechanic wasn't avoidable at that particular moment). Healer just tells me that he was CCd. I played a solo healer for a 36member raid a few times back in L2. The mechanics themselves weren't too complex, but because L2 didn't have any raid addons (or at least I've never used/seen them) - I had to know the voices of players in different groups so that I could heal individual players correctly (L2 didn't have raid-wide heals) and I needed to know mechanics to know when I'd be needed the most. Theoretically, if it's not the very first attempt at the boss, you'd know the potential mechanics of said boss and would know which ones are the most dangerous ones (at least that'd be my expectations for the raid, if I was a RL). So if the raid wipes due to one member dying after a particular mechanic, I'd assume it shouldn't have taken up too much of healer's "ram" to remember that he was CCd during the last mechanic and that was the reason for the wipe. So he'd be able to answer my question w/o much trouble and w/o either side needing a tracker. Now, I'll ask about the solution to the CCd problem below. Noaani wrote: » Often times, the thing that went wrong isnt obvious. One mob in particular would explode if your raid DPS on it got too high. No warning, no hint at what went wrong - just boom. Literally the only way to work this out is to notice that it exploded a specific amount of time after your raid DPS hit a specific level. Without a tracker, that just isnt possible. Now, the argument could be made that the developers should have given a hint as to what went wrong- bit I would ask, why? The way it went though, it took people actual hundreds of pulls over actual weeks to work out what the trigger for the explosion was. Some guilds took months (keeping in mind sharing info on top end mobs wasnt a thing). Put simply, without combat trackers, the game has to tell players what is going on. With combat trackers, the game can leave it up to players to figure out. It should then be obvious how one of these willbe inherently harder than the other. So what you're saying is that developers made a design that is literally unsolvable w/o an additional non-game-mechanic tool, but we're somehow supposed to just have said tool and accept that the design is good? Maybe I'm just too elitist and selfish at this point, but why in the living hell should you have a tool that helps you beat smth difficult? It takes a guild months to figure out why they wipe? Great! It's a difficult content that requires them to try countless setups and pay attention to what everyone does during the raid. Fuck the tool that just shows you the most likely solution. This to me just sounds like "devs made a shitty encounter, so it's completely fine to "cheat' and solve the encounter by being omniscient and knowing every detail of the fight". I consider that weak. And this ties to the "CCd" problem from Azherae's example. The raid failed because the healer got CCd? Well then make several runs where the healer tries different char placements or resist buffs against the CC or multiple other potential solutions. It takes you several weeks to do this? Great! You have the whole rest of the game to play between those attempts, while having a difficult encounter to do in-between the rest of the gameplay. This is what I was talking about when I said that trackers speed up content consumption. Except the issue is even deeper, because with the kind of mechanics Noaani wants, literally no one would be able to beat the bosses unless they were using a non-gameplay tool.
Mag7spy wrote: » Remember when i brought up its cheating and akin to aim bot but they dismissed it because it doesn't fit their narrative
NiKr wrote: » So what you're saying is that developers made a design that is literally unsolvable w/o an additional non-game-mechanic tool, but we're somehow supposed to just have said tool and accept that the design is good? Maybe I'm just too elitist and selfish at this point, but why in the living hell should you have a tool that helps you beat smth difficult?
Noaani wrote: » Now, I wouldn't know where to begin if I were to make a set of drawers from scratch, just as you may not know what PvE content that requires a tracker looks like. These are both fine, I am happy to take the word of a joiner that they need all of those tools, and I hope you take our word for it that non-IKEA PvE content also requires tools. I hope this helps you understanding things a little better.
NiKr wrote: » Noaani wrote: » Now, I wouldn't know where to begin if I were to make a set of drawers from scratch, just as you may not know what PvE content that requires a tracker looks like. These are both fine, I am happy to take the word of a joiner that they need all of those tools, and I hope you take our word for it that non-IKEA PvE content also requires tools. I hope this helps you understanding things a little better. The issue to me is that if "make a drawer" is your goal, the tracker is the IKEA, because it gives you everything you need to figure out how to make that drawer.
