DPS Meter Megathread

Fun fact: Back in the day when particle effects were first born, many of us were forced to play with particle effects off. The only way not to die from invisible particles was to use a tracker.

Azherae wrote: »

We are hoping for the game to be good, right?

Yes. And my problem with trackers is not the alleged toxicity, I got past that too after reading this thread. My lack of knowledge of hardcore pve just can't let me think of a boss that's super easy for bots, but somehow not super easy for people.

Noaani says that half the players will use trackers, even if they're forbidden. That might be the case, just as it allegedly is in FF14, but iirc someone (I think it was Aerlana) said that FF14's bosses haven't really increased in their difficulty too much throughout the years, even though top players all apparently use trackers for them. That leads me to believe that the difficulty of the game doesn't necessarily need to increase, even if people with trackers are able to beat it sooner rather than later. Which in turn leads me to believe that Intrepid's position can remain on the "no addons/meters/trackers" point w/o sacrificing anything really.

Ultimately I want Intrepid to work hard in their hinting designs rather than their dps checks designs. Have some patterns in the boss' mechanics that indicate why/how/when/where he will do another mechanic that leads to a wipe. If the tracker people see that hint through their trackers and not through the fight - good for them, they had their spreadsheet fun. But imo the tracker must not be required to notice that hint pattern.

But Noaani says that this kind of design is impossible to make truly difficult, so what do I know.

Noaani wrote: »

We will have those numbers. That is the information. The spreadsheet just makes that information easier to understand and digest. It means we can process it in our brains easier and faster.

The amount of information available to players hasn't changed at all, the only change is the way it is presented.

Edit; at least, this is how it is in most games. In Ashes, the tracker may need to find it's own information rather than rely on developer supplied logs (which is what trackers generally use as their data source).

Yeah, and like I said before, the speed at which the tracker allows you to go through all that information is my main issue with it. W/o a tracker you'd either need to record video pov of all players and then go through each and go through their battle logs and then match them up and probably know all the buff/ability/positioning information on top of that, just to properly reference all that info across each other.

The tracker presents all of that in a concise packaged form that lets you dissect the encounter immediately after it has happened. I personally dislike that, mainly because I'm a stubborn ram who wants to bash his head against the content instead, until the content finally breaks. But that's just my opinion on it, which seemingly happens to coincide with Steven's. And as I said already, discussing opinions is an endless activity, with this thread being the biggest proof for that.

MaiWaifu

I'm confused with what direction this thread is going.

Is everyone essentially saying:
1) Game is too easy = bots
2) Game is too hard = bots
3) idc about the game, I like programming = bots

I would like to hope IS have the foresight to find a good middle ground in balancing encounters and make them enjoyable enough this isn't the case.

This brings us back to who they balance the game content around, people using trackers or not; what elements make an encounter interesting; what tools should be available to players to properly prepare themselves and improve.

Regardless of it's detectable, I think the game would be garbage and pointless if it's just bots as far as the eye can see. I think discussing the possibility of bots and toxicity is a moot point and just derailing real discussion for the benefits and negatives of trackers; whether any should be added in any form to the game and when should players have access to them.

I'm only against trackers because I feel it gravitates most encounters to gear score number checks instead of skill based gameplay. But I can understand the reason for wanting them in some instances.

Azherae

MaiWaifu wrote: »

I'm confused with what direction this thread is going.

Is everyone essentially saying:
1) Game is too easy = bots
2) Game is too hard = bots
3) idc about the game, I like programming = bots

I would like to hope IS have the foresight to find a good middle ground in balancing encounters and make them enjoyable enough this isn't the case.

This brings us back to who they balance the game content around, people using trackers or not; what elements make an encounter interesting; what tools should be available to players to properly prepare themselves and improve.

Regardless of it's detectable, I think the game would be garbage and pointless if it's just bots as far as the eye can see. I think discussing the possibility of bots and toxicity is a moot point and just derailing real discussion for the benefits and negatives of trackers; whether any should be added in any form to the game and when should players have access to them.

I'm only against trackers because I feel it gravitates most encounters to gear score number checks instead of skill based gameplay. But I can understand the reason for wanting them in some instances.

I just rant because I don't like when people don't understand the core aspects of arguments, so it's probably ignorable.

Competitive games cause some people to want to catch up to the naturally talented by any means necessary.
You can say that you don't like some of those means, but if you can't detect them to ban them, doesn't matter.
Might as well even the playing field while finding some way to keep all the people who don't care about catching up from associating with all the ones that want to catch up and causing toxicity.

Yay for summaries.

Azherae wrote: »

Until someone does. And then others want to, and if they find tools to let them, they use those tools. But this doesn't mean Devs should give up on designing cool things. It means they should give up on designing what they think are 'hard' things and focus on making those things chaotic and fun so that no one even cares about the fact that using the tracker is part of the game at high levels for non-savants.

And we've agreed on this before. I'm all for complete or, at the very least, semi-controlled chaos that somewhat disregards trackers.

As for the chess analogy, I'm too content with the unfairness of the world to compete with the savants. In my ideal world the rules of unfairness would be perfectly upheld, so that the savants are always at the top because they should be, while everyone else is lesser. But obviously that doesn't apply to the real world, so people will always use tools to equalize the playing field. If Intrepid manage to outdesign either of those approaches - awesome. If they just go "fuck it, do whatever you want and we'll give you our own trackers too", I won't necessarily care all that much and just won't use a tracker out of principle.

MaiWaifu wrote: »

I'm confused with what direction this thread is going.

I think discussing the possibility of bots and toxicity is a moot point and just derailing real discussion for the benefits and negatives of trackers; whether any should be added in any form to the game and when should players have access to them.

You think this thread somehow stays on any kind of concrete discussion

Oh sweet summer child.

Azherae

Then all I ask is this. Idk about Noaani but I'm not here 'supporting tracker use'. If they could magicban them, I won't care if the general populace doesn't.

But they can't. So all I want is for the conversation to stop being about 'should we have trackers or not?' and move to being about 'how can we keep toxicity low, given that trackers will exist?'

I hope you find like-minded people who also want to ram their heads against the content tracker-less. I don't know what you will do if you find out your GuildMates are using them and giving you advice based on parsing you, but I believe you will always aim to be...

The GOAT.

Azherae wrote: »

But they can't. So all I want is for the conversation to stop being about 'should we have trackers or not?' and move to being about 'how can we keep toxicity low, given that trackers will exist?'

Imo toxicity doesn't have to do anything with the post-factum trackers. It's only the active dps meters that seem to be the problem. Though even those are just the catalyst for the underlying toxicity of the people who use them to be toxic.

Azherae wrote: »

I hope you find like-minded people who also want to ram their heads against the content tracker-less. I don't know what you will do if you find out your GuildMates are using them and giving you advice based on parsing you, but I believe you will always aim to be...

The GOAT.

This is mainly why I just started making my own guild ~4 years into my L2 "career". And I'm one hell of a tyrant when it comes to GLing. It's my way or the highway. No one can tell me what to do or how to do it. And they're always free to leave if they have an issue with my rulings.

But because I AM THE GOAT! (jk) I usually have pretty big and successful guilds (well, relatively speaking). Though I'd mainly chuck that up to my social skills and not really gameplay prowess or anything of that sort.

It doesn't make sense anyway. A 40 man guild in a raid group will do higher dps than a 40 man raid from a 300 member guild. Such is the way with guild buffs.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

We are hoping for the game to be good, right?

Yes. And my problem with trackers is not the alleged toxicity, I got past that too after reading this thread. My lack of knowledge of hardcore pve just can't let me think of a boss that's super easy for bots, but somehow not super easy for people.

Noaani says that half the players will use trackers, even if they're forbidden. That might be the case, just as it allegedly is in FF14, but iirc someone (I think it was Aerlana) said that FF14's bosses haven't really increased in their difficulty too much throughout the years, even though top players all apparently use trackers for them. That leads me to believe that the difficulty of the game doesn't necessarily need to increase, even if people with trackers are able to beat it sooner rather than later. Which in turn leads me to believe that Intrepid's position can remain on the "no addons/meters/trackers" point w/o sacrificing anything really.

Ultimately I want Intrepid to work hard in their hinting designs rather than their dps checks designs. Have some patterns in the boss' mechanics that indicate why/how/when/where he will do another mechanic that leads to a wipe. If the tracker people see that hint through their trackers and not through the fight - good for them, they had their spreadsheet fun. But imo the tracker must not be required to notice that hint pattern.

But Noaani says that this kind of design is impossible to make truly difficult, so what do I know.

Noaani wrote: »

We will have those numbers. That is the information. The spreadsheet just makes that information easier to understand and digest. It means we can process it in our brains easier and faster.

The amount of information available to players hasn't changed at all, the only change is the way it is presented.

Edit; at least, this is how it is in most games. In Ashes, the tracker may need to find it's own information rather than rely on developer supplied logs (which is what trackers generally use as their data source).

Yeah, and like I said before, the speed at which the tracker allows you to go through all that information is my main issue with it. W/o a tracker you'd either need to record video pov of all players and then go through each and go through their battle logs and then match them up and probably know all the buff/ability/positioning information on top of that, just to properly reference all that info across each other.

The tracker presents all of that in a concise packaged form that lets you dissect the encounter immediately after it has happened. I personally dislike that, mainly because I'm a stubborn ram who wants to bash his head against the content instead, until the content finally breaks. But that's just my opinion on it, which seemingly happens to coincide with Steven's. And as I said already, discussing opinions is an endless activity, with this thread being the biggest proof for that.

This si how content is suppose to be, people want to be consumers and do all content instantly as fast as possible and not spend time to figure it out and learn through experience. So they make tools to make games easier for them, then complain there isn't enough content or the game is to easy. Part of this issue relates to old school mmorpgs with skill rotations as well as players figuring out the puzzles making the content easier as they know what to do. (this is why pvp will always be more challenging than pve content). AoC content just needs to be what its content is and not be made around the 1% of tracker people. It needs to be made to make as much of their tracker information as useless as possible so there is less reason for people to care about it.

In this thread with the same people are trying to have it be the other way around and make more reason to care about trackers, that is why you won't see them talking about ways to make content that will make trackers less effective and not nearly matter as much. Their goal here is to have content work around trackers at the end of the day and copy their game so they can relive it everquest 2 for example.

There is more than 1% of tracker people. The 1% refers to difficulty, not to the tracker populace.

MaiWaifu wrote: »

I'm confused with what direction this thread is going.

Is everyone essentially saying:
1) Game is too easy = bots
2) Game is too hard = bots
3) idc about the game, I like programming = bots

I would like to hope IS have the foresight to find a good middle ground in balancing encounters and make them enjoyable enough this isn't the case.

This brings us back to who they balance the game content around, people using trackers or not; what elements make an encounter interesting; what tools should be available to players to properly prepare themselves and improve.

Regardless of it's detectable, I think the game would be garbage and pointless if it's just bots as far as the eye can see. I think discussing the possibility of bots and toxicity is a moot point and just derailing real discussion for the benefits and negatives of trackers; whether any should be added in any form to the game and when should players have access to them.

I'm only against trackers because I feel it gravitates most encounters to gear score number checks instead of skill based gameplay. But I can understand the reason for wanting them in some instances.

No clue what they are talking about, its fluff to confuse people to try to confusing convince people of their point. Very weird way to go about it, doesn't really matter though.

Bots are not going to be a thing for hard content, I didn't see a single bot in raid content for lost ark and that game was infested. People are just exaggerating what bots can do in a game.

Neurath wrote: »

There is more than 1% of tracker people. The 1% refers to difficulty, not to the tracker populace.

There is a difference between people using trackers because they are there and no one cares and people that are supporting and wanting trackers. So i throw them in the 1% as well as it is a certain type of player.

If people want to see their DPS if it is improve or not they simply can test that out in game it doesn't need to use of trackers for seeing if your damage is better or not or your rotation.

now if the game hides all dps numbers, and exact damage done than it is even more difficult to find out though not impossible.

The only argument I can see that should prevent the use of trackers is the hidden or shielded health in pvp. I see no reason to stop a different display format for the combat log. It's equal to the devs saying 'Ashes will only be 8k at 120hz, Please prepare to spend 25,000 on the lg screen because its the only visual format we support.'

Neurath wrote: »

The only argument I can see that should prevent the use of trackers is the hidden or shielded health in pvp. I see no reason to stop a different display format for the combat log. It's equal to the devs saying 'Ashes will only be 8k at 120hz, Please prepare to spend 25,000 on the lg screen because its the only visual format we support.'

If it is just a different format of the combat log then they should have no issue simply using the combat log. They want to track all dps and actions around them, party, players, mobs, and have detailed information on what is going on more than normal.

There are conflicted references here. The girls often threaten to use trackers either way because girls break rules for the things they love.

What has actually been requested is an IS Combat Tracker placed in the Guild Buffs, or, my request of just having an IS Combat Tracker for one and all.

You might only get the rebellious side of the equation because you exaggerate the issues somewhat.

MaiWaifu

Neurath wrote: »

It's equal to the devs saying 'Ashes will only be 8k at 120hz, Please prepare to spend 25,000 on the lg screen because its the only visual format we support.'

Technically they do say this...

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/System_requirements

I'm still gaming with a GeForce 7100 and 800x600 CRT.

Neurath wrote: »

There are conflicted references here. The girls often threaten to use trackers either way because girls break rules for the things they love.

What has actually been requested is an IS Combat Tracker placed in the Guild Buffs, or, my request of just having an IS Combat Tracker for one and all.

You might only get the rebellious side of the equation because you exaggerate the issues somewhat.

We have already gone over combat trackers in guilds and how that is pointless as only a way to push for use of combat trackers int he game overall. People wouldn't use the guild perk and simply use third party trackers now that is already in the game. Which I'm sure they can adjust and improve on it gain even more information if they are locked off knowing certain kinds of information.

The back isn't being designed and built for trackers so it doesn't need to be implemented in the game nor supported.

Again the point was anyway if it really was the same as the combat log then they can simply use the combat log.