DPS Meter Megathread

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Dizz1

Neurath wrote: »

Dizz wrote: »

No, I think you all over think it, mmo players always find the part they like in one mmo to play, and back in the day we really are play mmos which means not played by it, there are not such time investment BS there, we just login and have fun end game? bis? raid? hardcore players? F that I play the game not the another way around.

Its not overthinking it, its called playing a plethora of MMOs and seeing the majority die. I'm like you but people like us will not keep an MMO alive. People like us get shafted with Free 2 Play and then eventually Private Servers. From my perspective you have rose tinted glasses. It matters not whether I'm correct or not. The simply fact remains that ashes is a PvX game. What in your mind can be added that does not subtract from PvX that can also be counted as a PvP Expansion in Ashes?

In my logic that overthinking or not is depends on the point of view and how the person's brain been wired, so I think we both right, just different point of view and different thinking way make different out come, but I understand you.

Yes and no, I tried some f2p and private server at beginning of mmo start dying in my region but it's not the same, it's too complicated to me to explain with my bad English, in a short way to say when this genre start dying something or some mentalities gone with it and in that time the genre is overwhelmed and for decades the genre is full of shit and...I don't know I just feel angry about that, I looked for the translation about rose tinted glasses but I don't think the translation really translate the full meaning because so much difference between two languages and the cultures behind but I assume you're right, I mean to me Ashes of Creation is the last chance I give to myself to dream about mmo could be good, if it failed I won’t ever bother to care any news about this genre again like how I think about most of mobile games.

Well although it's not relevant to thread topic, I don't know what pvx in your region, in my region pvx is a more causal of play style and player does every part in the game but depends on mood, but to be honest I don’t think that is real what pvx means or even pxv is a misguided term to describe a game design, sometimes even pve and pvp these term are outdated because players and environment now are so different than the background of those terms back in the time them be created and defined, so with that being said keep it in mind that pve and pvp and pvx I talking about after are not exact the same definitions what you used to know.

It's very hard to make a real pvx game in my opinion, a real pvx game in my mind is that no matter which part you play you in a pvx game you won't able to get rid of other part completely, I mean it's hard to feel the joy in this type of game while you are a hard pve player or hard pvp player, and it kind true about pxv game is a more casual play style but I will say it’s more about the game design philosophy to design game fun for most of players who not hard categorized or say in other way for average people wha play games but at the same time that “average” is a misguiding term in a degree too, though to me the game most close to a pvx game I know is Splatoon 2 and SSBU.

I guess will be lots of people not agree with me and think I’m stupid but whatever.

In Splatoon 2, how Nintendo design the core gameplay is the key, when play online with other players basically there are two moves you can choose to focus on: 1. splash ink to claim territory for your team in order to keep the baseline to win the game(please consider this as pve part) or 2. kill enemies to stop them to claim territory(please consider this as pvp part), but you won't always be able to focus on only pve part or pvp part you will be force by your enemies to do pvp part while they attack on you or forced by situations that you need to refilled ink and reposition yourself, Nintendo design Splatoon well connect pvp player and non-pvp player and no matter you are good at aiming or not(but Nintendo make the aim very forgiving and it’s very good in my opinion) so there always have things you can do to be contributed for your team.

In SSBU, when you play with friends or online with other players and turn on the switch stages and random items to have a party game mode to play, this is the part I consider close to pvx, and Sakurai Masahiro design the core gameplay so well that basically same way to control every character in SSBU unlike in MHR:SB you have another set of key assignments to remember while you change weapons, and he not only design the core character controlling very easy to learn but also make the character skill sets so easy to understand and remember so player will easily to have a illusion that I’m good and willing to play the game unlike fighting game have a high entry(but it’s also the reason why fighting game tournaments are so entertaining), so please consider that switch stages and random items are pve part and the rest are basically pvp part, that stages have it own gimmicks and there are a lot of things can happen while fighting and switching stages, and items in SSBU are relative OP than character skill set and player skill so it's not you’re good at pvp so you have better chance to take the items and make better chances to win.

So, basically: 1. easy to learn and to be good or be competitive enough in other words blur the line between good player and not good, 2. make playgrounds have own gimmicks and playgrounds landform constantly changing through weather system and landform tool to create the uncertainties to blur the line between win and lose, 3. make pve and pvp basic behaviors cross to each other in those main repeatedly game modes that you want to have replayability in other words make pve and pvp players need each other and this is the most difficult part to do in mmos(a lazy example, implement moba-like gameplay and claim outpost in node war such as mercenaries and minions in moba games and able to create or claim temporary outposts as buff stations or nearer respawn points to make strategy more variety.

I don't want to talk about it too specific because it's not my game.

SongRune

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.

Maybe in some games it's that straightforward.

But if the reason is that the Healer had to heal the Summoner because a Summon fell at the wrong time, and they took an extra hit before they could resummon it due to ability cooldowns, and in that time the boss used a CC ability on the DPS which needed to be cleansed afterward. Then you the Tank took a decent hit but the big heal wasn't off cooldown yet so you used your own, at which point the Healer didn't need to heal you right away, and could prioritize other (originally) less injured party members and finally get around to dealing with the extra Poison effect from the boss that was busy ticking while they were saving the Summoner from a cooldown issue.

Five minutes later when you finally reach the end of the fight, win or lose, the question you the Tank are wondering isn't "Why couldn't you heal me, so we wiped just now?". It's "Why was it so hard to keep my MP up in the last half?"

You don't remember the missing healing, because rhythms shift, and because it's natural to sometimes have to heal yourself.
The summoner never associated them taking that hit with you spending MP in the first place.
The boss just happened to use Poison Aura more often today.
And you, at the end, don't even remember that extra healing beat or two that fell on you, because you were focused on the actual fight for the next 3-4 minutes before things finally broke down, and that self-healing requirement is normal, it just came up a few times too often.

In the end, the ANSWER, wasn't even any of that. The Bard missed an ability speed buff on the Summoner because someone's positioning was a bit off, and the Summoner eventually got unlucky as a result (and maybe that happened twice).

Who do you even ask?

There's not much reason you would remember those specific extra self-heals.
The Healer doesn't know for sure why the Summoner got hit.
The Summoner feels like it was just bad luck on timing.
The Bard didn't notice that the Summoner got knocked back while they were singing the "Speed Boost" buff that was supposed to have fixed the timing.
And the Boss may have even used more abilities later on that also made you spend more MP, as a red herring.

Literally no-one even knows, and those who do don't remember, because to NOBODY was their part of this chain of events more than 10% of what they had to focus on in fight as a whole.

But you could ask a tracker:

Tank: "Where'd my MP go?"
Tracker: "You self-healed more frequently than usual during this period."

Healer: "Then how much was I healing at that point, and who?"
Tracker: "You healed the Summoner 5 times in that part of the fight."
Healer: "Hm. Odd. I should only have needed to heal them two times."

Summoner: "Why'd I have so much trouble getting that summon off? Was the boss just extra lucky today?"
Tracker: "You only managed to heal each summon 3 times today instead of 4, due to cooldowns."
Summoner: "Wait, that's not right, why was I slower than ususal?"

Bard: "Hm? I sang the usual things."
Tracker: "The Summoner was out of range for the third recast of Speed Boost."

Party, after all of this: "Oh."
Summoner: "Well that sucks. I'll watch for that and call out if I get caught by cooldowns again."
Bard: "Hm. Okay, then that means I probably need to stand over here instead, even though I'm more likely to get hurt."
Healer: "I can afford to heal you at that POINT in the fight. The problem only comes up later on, after you're done with your buffing."
Tank: "Okay, cool. I won't fix it, cause it ain't broke, and I'd only end up making things worse."

A difference of perspective.

Maybe Ashes will be simplistic. "You wipe right away." instead of "This problem cost you some of your ability to adapt, and you didn't have enough left later on."

If every mistake instantly ends the raid, rather than demanding adaptation and allowing the opportunity to recover through skill, resources, or luck, I'm going to be a bit disappointed.

Noaani

@SongRune

That's a fairly good write up that maybe illustrates to some people how wrong they are about assumptions they have made in relation to PvE content.

I'm assuming that you have played EQ2, based on much of the above, as that is an exact situation I have seen a number of times in that game.

SongRune

Noaani wrote: »

@SongRune

That's a fairly good write up that maybe illustrates to some people how wrong they are about assumptions they have made in relation to PvE content.

I'm assuming that you have played EQ2, based on much of the above, as that is an exact situation I have seen a number of times in that game.

No, I'm on the FFXI side.

Noaani

SongRune wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

@SongRune

That's a fairly good write up that maybe illustrates to some people how wrong they are about assumptions they have made in relation to PvE content.

I'm assuming that you have played EQ2, based on much of the above, as that is an exact situation I have seen a number of times in that game.

No, I'm on the FFXI side.

Maybe FFXIV is closer to EQ2 than I had thought. This is a good thing - it proves there is still a market for this type of combat in an MMO.

I may have to give it a more in depth look than I have done so far.

SongRune

Noaani wrote: »

SongRune wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

@SongRune

That's a fairly good write up that maybe illustrates to some people how wrong they are about assumptions they have made in relation to PvE content.

I'm assuming that you have played EQ2, based on much of the above, as that is an exact situation I have seen a number of times in that game.

No, I'm on the FFXI side.

Maybe FFXIV is closer to EQ2 than I had thought. This is a good thing - it proves there is still a market for this type of combat in an MMO.

I may have to give it a more in depth look than I have done so far.

No, FFXI. I've never touched FFXIV. (I'd hate for you to end up trying out the wrong game and missing out. I can only vouch for the one.)

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Is part of the reason you are not picking this up because you are assuming exactly the same content either with or without trackers?

No, it's exactly because trackers push the content beyond reasonable design is what leading me to have issues with them.

My main issue with the tools analogy is that trackers are an external tool, that give you omniscient information that you wouldn't have had otherwise. And that is why I related them to the manual of an IKEA drawer. The manual gives you all the information that relates to the "encounter" and then it's on you to figure out what and how to do in order to succeed at completing said encounter. You were not the one who made the manual through knowledge or repetition or collaborative work. You were just presented with the manual.

The content can remain as complex as the developers want it to be. You can hide hints behind several mechanics and only if those mechanics stack onto each other in a particular way. And players then would have to play in exactly the same way, while looking out for any abnormal changes in the overall fight.

We stood in spots 1-4 and the boss used a poison aoe that wiped us. Let us now stand in spots 5-8 and see what he does. He used the poison aoe again, but now we didn't wipe. We did everything in the exact same way, but this time the rng of the boss abilities made him use a vertical slash before that poison aoe, let's stand in the same spots the next time and see if we didn't wipe because of the vertical slash or because of the positioning. And so on and so on.

And in the context of an open world pvp contested boss, you'd be doing these kinds of test under potential pressure and probably only once a day if not way rarer. So it'd take you months to figure out any given pattern. The same would apply to other guilds.

And this kind of approach would still allow for the "human" part of the equation. Maybe some player slipped up on some action and that was the reason for the wipe. If the player didn't realize it and if no one else noticed that he slipped up - imo that's a totally valid reason for your raid to have failed. Everyone still did their personal subjective best, but in that particular encounter it wasn't enough. Maybe you'll get it next time because the same player will not slip up that time.

The tracker would remove that human factor completely, because it gives you god powers of objectively knowing everything that has happened. And when developers are trying to design some encounter for people with trackers, they're literally going up against godmoded players. The dev hid a small attack feint in-between two big abilities that sometimes goes off and triggers a third ability? W/o a tracker at least one player during the raid would have to be observant enough to notice that little feint movement. With a tracker you'd just get a read out:

"During fight 1 the boss used two abilities. These were their cast times, this was the delay between the casts."
"During fight 2 the boss used 3 abilities. These were their cast times, this was the delay between the casts."

You'd see that the delay between the first two abilities in fight 2 was different from the first fight and would know to pay attention there and would be already better prepared for that change in your 3rd fight. That is even in case the tracker doesn't literally just tell you that boss used the ability "feint" there.

In other words, you'd literally get a manual of "if this screw is missing, you can use this other one w/o problems" instead of thinking "hell, I'm missing one screw, what do I do".

SongRune wrote: »

Bard: "Hm? I sang the usual things."
Tracker: "The Summoner was out of range for the third recast of Speed Boost."

Party, after all of this: "Oh."

I dunno how bards/UI worked in other games, but in L2 you could see other people's buffs in your UI, so, when you were casting your buffs, you'd at least glance at whether everyone received your buff. And if you saw that someone was missing it, you'd look at them and see that they were out of range.

So unless even the class abilities have some hidden interactions unknown to the player or the UI doesn't provide you the info you'd need for your class to operate correctly in the moment - I feel like every player should be able to do their job properly w/o needing a tracker to tell them what they did wrong/right after the fact.

On my last L2 playthrough I was a bard and a guild leader. During sieges I needed to give orders to my guild, track where my party was and where the other bard was (because of how elf bards worked in L2). And all of that on top of tracking enemies on the horizon or directly in the battle, glancing at chat for any positional callouts and listening to/talking in VC for party callouts of target assists.

My buffs had a 2 min cooldown with a ramping cost. The cost would pretty much double (for me and the other bard) if, instead of staggered buff application with the other bard, I gave my buff first and then he gave his on top of that. Due to flow of the battle, you'd sometimes have fights that lasted 10+ minutes, so you had to recast your full buff 5 times, while your whole party was together (the range was fairly limited), while you still had the previous buff (you'd match animations to the buff countdown so that your buff would replace it as soon as it went down) and while staggering your casts with the other bard.

All of that would be in the middle of fights with potential stuns/silences/agroes/movement. And I managed to do all that throughout a 2h siege with constantly changing variables.

Now I'm obviously not a top lvl pve player, nor do I know how truly difficult it is to participate in top end pve content. But if you're saying that each and every player has an attention requirement higher than what I had, during such sieges, and is pretty much unable to track the proper use of his abilities and what the boss is doing - then yes, I'll agree that trackers will be required for that kind of pve.

SongRune

NiKr wrote: »

SongRune wrote: »

Bard: "Hm? I sang the usual things."
Tracker: "The Summoner was out of range for the third recast of Speed Boost."

Party, after all of this: "Oh."

I dunno how bards/UI worked in other games, but in L2 you could see other people's buffs in your UI, so, when you were casting your buffs, you'd at least glance at whether everyone received your buff. And if you saw that someone was missing it, you'd look at them and see that they were out of range.

So unless even the class abilities have some hidden interactions unknown to the player or the UI doesn't provide you the info you'd need for your class to operate correctly in the moment - I feel like every player should be able to do their job properly w/o needing a tracker to tell them what they did wrong/right after the fact.

On my last L2 playthrough I was a bard and a guild leader. During sieges I needed to give orders to my guild, track where my party was and where the other bard was (because of how elf bards worked in L2). And all of that on top of tracking enemies on the horizon or directly in the battle, glancing at chat for any positional callouts and listening to/talking in VC for party callouts of target assists.

My buffs had a 2 min cooldown with a ramping cost. The cost would pretty much double (for me and the other bard) if, instead of staggered buff application with the other bard, I gave my buff first and then he gave his on top of that. Due to flow of the battle, you'd sometimes have fights that lasted 10+ minutes, so you had to recast your full buff 5 times, while your whole party was together (the range was fairly limited), while you still had the previous buff (you'd match animations to the buff countdown so that your buff would replace it as soon as it went down) and while staggering your casts with the other bard.

All of that would be in the middle of fights with potential stuns/silences/agroes/movement. And I managed to do all that throughout a 2h siege with constantly changing variables.

Now I'm obviously not a top lvl pve player, nor do I know how truly difficult it is to participate in top end pve content. But if you're saying that each and every player has an attention requirement higher than what I had, during such sieges, and is pretty much unable to track the proper use of his abilities and what the boss is doing - then yes, I'll agree that trackers will be required for that kind of pve.

I don't actually need a tracker most of the time because my group leader is borderline superhuman. That's what all the anti-tracker people want. For the 'superhumans' to win. That's fine, I've got mine.

MrPockets

Noaani wrote: »

That's a fairly good write up that maybe illustrates to some people how wrong they are about assumptions they have made in relation to PvE content.

I would like to point out that this is the exact type of language/attitude that the "meters bring toxic behavior" crowd is talking about. (ie: your doing your rotation wrong)

Meters that track EVERYTHING as being described are a double edged sword. They can be used for good, as you want them to be. But as tools become more widespread, they can also be used for more...petty reasons.

I think most of the players advocating for no tracker want to play a game that's fun, social, and engaging...where wacky/memorable situations happen somewhat regularly. Not knowing every small detail that happens in a fight can leads to these situations. In these players' eyes, trackers push the game in the direction of a "job", where analyzing data becomes more important that playing the GAME.

I think the main feeling of "toxicity" happens when the mindset of "people are wrong/bad" starts spreading to the majority of the player base. When people can compare themselves to others in DPS tracking (live or on log websites), most interactions/conversations tend to be around "being on top of the meter", instead of anything else going on.

@Noaani I totally understand your concerns around this hot topic, but it feels like you are not taking the time to understand the other side of the argument.

I truly believe there is a middle ground with this, and I wish the discussion could be around compromises instead of a constant back and forth of each side being "wrong".

Ludullu

SongRune wrote: »

I don't actually need a tracker most of the time because my group leader is borderline superhuman. That's what all the anti-tracker people want. For the 'superhumans' to win. That's fine, I've got mine.

Pretty much

I'm all for superhumans winning over normal players. And I don't even consider myself one of such superhumans. I might get up to their skill lvl through endless repetition, while they'd be up there by default, but it's exactly because of that that I want every player to play their role as they would play it w/o omniscient knowledge of what and where to do.

In other words, let gods be gods. If everyone is a god - no one is.

Mag7spy

^not everyone can be winners, makes the world more interesting when people figure things out until the guides release everywhere.

@NiKr This is where the topic leads of them trying to force trackers regardless of TOS (granted based on gameplay they may not be as effective).

So if devs are making "hard content" for the 1% with people using trackers they have to take in account trackers and up the difficulty to extreme measures based on the tracker information players use. And then it gets in a loop cycle of content around trackers. This is the end game kind of content where they are arguing you need trackers else you are at a disadvantage for this kind of content.

That honestly just sounds like a bad direction of content to me rather than people dealing with difficulty and solving puzzles without having the power of a tracker to tell them everything. The same people want hard pve content yet are actually ruining the content for themselves to begin with by removing difficulty yet asking for difficulty at the same time.

Though AoC isn't like a 15+ year old mmorpg and Steven knows what he wants with no trackers so it is up to them to design the game in a effective way that doesn't rely on people using trackers even if people will break ToS. I'm curious how they will approach it, and imo if people ruin content for themselves along the way that is up to them if worst case scenario trackers are still effective enough.

Dizz1

You guys are so lucky while you playing your mmos, I just want to say.

Noaani

MrPockets wrote: »

I would like to point out that this is the exact type of language/attitude that the "meters bring toxic behavior" crowd is talking about. (ie: your doing your rotation wrong)

Meters that track EVERYTHING as being described are a double edged sword. They can be used for good, as you want them to be. But as tools become more widespread, they can also be used for more...petty reasons.

If you and I are in a group that has specific requirements, and you are not meeting those requirements and so I politely inform you of this but you refuse - who is the toxic one, me or you?

If you refuse to meet the requirements of the content, that means that I as group leader have no option other than to not take you on that content - but that was your decision, not mine. I have my group to think about, not your feelings.

I think most of the players advocating for no tracker want to play a game that's fun, social, and engaging...where wacky/memorable situations happen somewhat regularly. Not knowing every small detail that happens in a fight can leads to these situations. In these players' eyes, trackers push the game in the direction of a "job", where analyzing data becomes more important that playing the GAME.

So, this is all a bad take on things.

In any game, it is less than 0.1% of players that analyze things. Most players just play the game, get pointers from those of us that do analyze the game and then just carry on about their day.

The notion that combat trackers means everyone will need to start analyzing is just a flat out bad read. Even as one of those people that analyzed EQ2 more than all but maybe 4 or 5 players, I still spent less than 5% of my time involved with the game actually analyzing - the other 95% was playing.

I think the main feeling of "toxicity" happens when the mindset of "people are wrong/bad" starts spreading to the majority of the player base. When people can compare themselves to others in DPS tracking (live or on log websites), most interactions/conversations tend to be around "being on top of the meter", instead of anything else going on.

A competition to be on top of the meter isn't inherently bad. If it were, we would all be saying the same thing about arena leaderboards.

I mean, Ashes intends to have PvE leaderboards anyway, so if things like this are the cause of toxicity, then we can't really point to trackers and say they will increase the toxicity in Ashes.

I totally understand your concerns around this hot topic, but it feels like you are not taking the time to understand the other side of the argument.

I truly believe there is a middle ground with this, and I wish the discussion could be around compromises instead of a constant back and forth of each side being "wrong".

I agree, there is a middle ground.

That middle ground is Intrepid implementing a tracker in to the game client itself, setting it up as a guild perk that is optional, and limiting it to only track players within your guild.

This is the resolution to the tracker situation that I have been arguing for since 2019.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

No, it's exactly because trackers push the content beyond reasonable design is what leading me to have issues with them.

What is reasonable design?

If by "reasonable design" you mean that having trackers in the game would mean that someone in the guild would need to know how to use them in order to take on the top 2 or 3 encounters in the game, then yeah.

If you mean anything else, then I disagree.

The manual gives you all the information that relates to the "encounter" and then it's on you to figure out what and how to do in order to succeed at completing said encounter.

If anything, a combat tracker would be more akin to a spec sheet, or a circuit diagram for an electronic device. It isn't a manual, because it doesn't tell you how to do anything at all. All it tells you is how things are - and you need to figure out what to do from there.

The dev hid a small attack feint in-between two big abilities that sometimes goes off and triggers a third ability? W/o a tracker at least one player during the raid would have to be observant enough to notice that little feint movement. With a tracker you'd just get a read out:

"During fight 1 the boss used two abilities. These were their cast times, this was the delay between the casts."
"During fight 2 the boss used 3 abilities. These were their cast times, this was the delay between the casts."

You'd see that the delay between the first two abilities in fight 2 was different from the first fight and would know to pay attention there and would be already better prepared for that change in your 3rd fight. That is even in case the tracker doesn't literally just tell you that boss used the ability "feint" there.

Something as minor as that isn't something that people are going to use a tracker to find. It really doesn't matter in the context of the fight as a whole.

While I know you were using it as an example, I am pointing out to you that it doesn't matter as an example as well.

The only way a raid guild would concern themselves with that attack is if it had an effect that wiped the raid if it connected. If that were the case, and if the developers were developing with an assumption of no trackers, they would add in narration around the attack.

Your comment that the developers can make content as complex as they want is actually false - they can only make content as complex as players can cope with - just as IKEA can only create furniture as complex as people can assemble.

Dygz

Azherae wrote: »

.
If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.

Because it’s designed to include and support combat trackers. Yes. We agree.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

.
If Trackers are causing toxicity in your game in a serious way, your game is designed wrong.

Because it’s designed to include and support combat trackers. Yes. We agree.

I mean, trackers will be in an MMO whether the game is designed for it or not.

If they are causing toxicity, it is because the game is designed wrong.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Your comment that the developers can make content as complex as they want is actually false - they can only make content as complex as players can cope with - just as IKEA can only create furniture as complex as people can assemble.

But if the example I gave did in fact lead to a wipe mechanic, with the hint being the little feint that boss does w/o any audio cues - wouldn't that be a good "difficult" mechanic that still doesn't require you to have a tracker, but instead just pay attention?

That's my whole point. I understand that you're so used to having trackers for your pve, but I'm giving you a directly opposite pov. To me, that kind of mechanic would be fair. The hint is still there, but you gotta notice it to use it. The fight didn't suddenly become easier because the hint was there.

In other words, I want developers to do better. Which, afaik, is your wish as well. It's just that you want them to make encounters that would push the tracker-based difficulty, while I want them to design fights that would be as difficult as tracker-based content, but with subtle hints that require players to pay attention to different things during the encounter and learn to recognize patterns within the fight.

That small example was just the most basic one I could come up with. I'm sure there's countless ways to design a fight that's still really difficult, but has several hints to what you need to do to beat it.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

But if the example I gave did in fact lead to a wipe mechanic, with the hint being the little faint that boss does w/o any audio cues - wouldn't that be a good "difficult" mechanic that still doesn't require you to have a tracker, but instead just pay attention?

Yeah, but it is still a simple mechanic. It is still the encounter essentially telling you what is happening, rather than you having to figure it out. It is just an animation rather than text.

Which is the problem.

Take that fight, but make it so that players don't see that feint. Now, after a days raiding, they need to go back through the logs, look at what happened, try and work out WHY the thing they know happened actually happened, come up with a plan for it, and then attempt to execute it the following day. Realistically though, by the time they have worked out what actually happened, and come up with a theory as to why it happened, it is probably a week or two later, not just the next day.

Whereas with your suggestion - you kill the mob on the second pull.

It's funny, people say trackers make it so players breeze through content faster - that is only if developers develop easy content. If developers develop content that requires trackers, it slows down the pace at which players get through content massively.

I want them to design fights that would be as difficult as tracker-based content, but with subtle hints that require players to pay attention to different things during the encounter and learn to recognize patterns within the fight.

Perhaps what you are not realizing is that exactly this happens in games with trackers.

If you attempt to look at a combat tracker after a days raiding and you have no clue at all what happened in the encounter, you will spend a few hours staring at numbers and graphs, and still have no idea. You need to recognize patterns in combat, you need to have an eye out to see what - if anything - is going on around you, you need to pay attention. And then you confirm what you think you saw in a tracker.

If the developers are good, they will find a way where you need to recognize that pattern or what ever, but then they subvert your expectation in some manner. This way, the encounter requires you to first see the thing that is going on, but then require you to look in to it more closely, and only then - after both observing and analyzing - can you get a true picture of what is happening.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Yeah, but it is still a simple mechanic. It is still the encounter essentially telling you what is happening, rather than you having to figure it out. It is just an animation rather than text.

Which is the problem.

You do realize that you just said "make mechanics only visible to those who use trackers", right?

Me seeing what I need to do during the fight is the same as you reading the tracker that shows you the same thing, except your does so in unreasonable detail, while I can only infer whether what I saw is actually the hint for what I need to do.

Again, that example was the very basic one. You could have misdirections, double or tripple triggered mechanics, ability pattern based mechanics (that would only show up if a particular string of abilities happened within the rng use of boss abilities), class combo mechanics (at which point every single raid would have their own mechanics and might never see different ones, if they don't change their raid setup). And of course you could have the combination of all of the above and more.

Again, what I'm asking for is "make the game that anyone could solve by just playing it, rather than looking at an external tool that gives you all the info about the fight. Make it still very hard and complex, but not to a point where you literally don't see mechanics that you're meant to solve".

That Azherae example of how agro worked in ff11 is great example of this. Devs made a completely hidden design mechanic, yet expected people to figure out how it worked w/o external tools. And if I'm recalling the explanation correctly, people could only figure it out after pretty much doing a hardcore parse of the whole system. In other words, they used a "tracker" to solve the problem.

To me that's just bad design from devs. Now I don't know which methods the players used before that hardcore parsing, nor am I saying that I could've somehow magically understood how the mechanic worked, but I'm assuming they've tried all kinds of stuff, so if there was ever any kind of hint as to how the system might've worked - they would've found it. But they didn't, so I'm assuming there was no hint and it was just a hidden mechanic for the sake of making the game more difficult. Which in turn pushed people to use trackers.

I want the game to just present us with our classes/gear/party combinations and say "you've got everything you need to beat anything in the game - go do it". And then base the difficulty off of those "tools", instead of giving us god powers and expecting us not to beat everything within a few months.

Ludullu

Noaani wrote: »

Perhaps what you are not realizing is that exactly this happens in games with trackers.

If you attempt to look at a combat tracker after a days raiding and you have no clue at all what happened in the encounter, you will spend a few hours staring at numbers and graphs, and still have no idea. You need to recognize patterns in combat, you need to have an eye out to see what - if anything - is going on around you, you need to pay attention. And then you confirm what you think you saw in a tracker.

If the developers are good, they will find a way where you need to recognize that pattern or what ever, but then they subvert your expectation in some manner. This way, the encounter requires you to first see the thing that is going on, but then require you to look in to it more closely, and only then - after both observing and analyzing - can you get a true picture of what is happening.

I guess my approach is just different. I want to see that and then apply what I thought I saw in the next fight. And then the next and the next and so on, iterating on my gameplay until I win. But do all of that with just the info that I and my raidmates see, instead of what the omniscient tracker sees.

Either way, we're back to running in circles w/o really changing anyone's mind. We comes from too different of a backgrounds to truly see each other's points. So I might as well just let Mag call trackers cheating and all the hardcore pvers toxic, even if I only semi-agree with one of those points

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