DPS Meter Megathread

Mag7spy wrote: »

Lazy, casual, modern age mmorpgs, used to not ever using ones brain, use to not communicating with other players.

Actually sums up with how much is wrong with this mentality and why you see in this modern mmorpgs everything dumbed down to appeal to these types of players. Which does more harm than anything.

Eh, this depends on the game's design. L2 was simple as nails. The most basic sets of gear with the most obvious choices for what "best set" is.

And I do agree that just knowing that you can enjoy the gameplay itself and not always lose, cause you didn't spend 20h going through spreadsheets and/or YT guides, is quite comforting.

Mag7spy

NiKr wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Lazy, casual, modern age mmorpgs, used to not ever using ones brain, use to not communicating with other players.

Actually sums up with how much is wrong with this mentality and why you see in this modern mmorpgs everything dumbed down to appeal to these types of players. Which does more harm than anything.

Eh, this depends on the game's design. L2 was simple as nails. The most basic sets of gear with the most obvious choices for what "best set" is.

And I do agree that just knowing that you can enjoy the gameplay itself and not always lose, cause you didn't spend 20h going through spreadsheets and/or YT guides, is quite comforting.

I mean more so the argument of player don't want to think for themselves / communicate with others so they need dps meters if combat isn't simple.

Depraved wrote: »

i never said they are useless, and at a personal level they can be useful so you can see which build you are performing better with. maybe an easy to play build is better for me than a hard build with top dps because i cant play it right.

but its hard to say online, unless you have the info of all players, but then most players arent good players, only a small percentage of players is, so most people might have the right build but cant use it. and some builds can go unnoticed because they are too hard to play, even though they are good.

This is absolutely true, but isn't a mark against trackers.

In EQ2 I was in a guild with someone that was a fairly good player. Was about where top end players of her class should be. As the game progressed though, she started falling behind. We looked jn to why, and it turns out that the better builds for her class was improving over time mostly due to becoming faster, and she had hit the point where the latency in her connection just wasn't up to standard (Australian internet in the mod 2000's - if you know, you know).

So, we did some work on exactly how fast her build could be before she hit those issues, and then created a build for her that was at that pace, and added other improvements for the rest of her build.

She wasn't quite at the same level as others of her class, but she got Close.

Nothing in that is a mark against a combat tracker. It allowed us tor know she was a good player, it allowed us to know she was falling behind, it allowed us to work out why, and it allowed us to build the best build we could for her.

Now, some guilds in some games would have booted her for poor performance - this is usually where people start to think negatively about trackers. The problem is, the tracker isn't the thing that made such guilds boot the player in question.

Generally, in games where the game treats players as disposable, players also treat players as disposable. In games where the game treats players with respect, players trest other players with respect.

Both WoW and Archeage treat players as disposable. In WoW, you would get booted for under performing, and in Archeage you would get booted for being the wrong class.

EQ2 (and other games, we just both know EQ2 is my primary experience of this), players were treated with respect - no automated group systems, no stupid daily quests or login rewards etc. As such, it was normal for guilds to try and work through issues as per thr above.

In all of that, I fail to see how anyone can point at combat trackers as being a negative.

Ruerik

Mag7spy wrote: »

I mean more so the argument of player don't want to think for themselves / communicate with others so they need dps meters if combat isn't simple.

This is a argument Ive seen before and just dont understand where its coming from. DPS meters are a reporting tool, not a make combat easier tool.

A dps meter reports what damage was, what healing and shielding or mitigation was.
It can show you which of your skills the majority of your damage comes from, all sorts of things can be analyzed after the fight.

But in no way, does it simplify combat. A lazy player in the game that doesnt want to think for themselves is even less likely to go through the effort of actually using the dps meter in a way that will improve their performance.

NiKr wrote: »

Xeeg wrote: »

You keep saying that Ashes is "dynamic, not static", but by this do you mean that it is going to be like a diablo style randomized selection of resistances/abilities for every monster/boss? Like you go into a forest and the first "Grey Spider" is frost resistance and the second "Grey Spider" is fire resistance? How dynamic are you talking about here? Are all the monsters picking from a randomized table of modifiers every time they spawn? Or just the bosses? The devil is in the details here.

We got no clue Dygz just goes off what Steven promised years ago and keeps alleging, but we've yet to see/hear how exactly varied the encounters will be.

I highly doubt it'll be completely different

Indeed.

The more an encounter varies, the easier it will be.

It is worth keeping in mind that Steven has also said he wants guilds to be able to plan to take on an encounter, and head out with character builds in order to facilitate that. This means that the changes to encounters need to be so small that they won't even alter the build you want.

Depraved

Noaani wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

i never said they are useless, and at a personal level they can be useful so you can see which build you are performing better with. maybe an easy to play build is better for me than a hard build with top dps because i cant play it right.

but its hard to say online, unless you have the info of all players, but then most players arent good players, only a small percentage of players is, so most people might have the right build but cant use it. and some builds can go unnoticed because they are too hard to play, even though they are good.

This is absolutely true, but isn't a mark against trackers.

In EQ2 I was in a guild with someone that was a fairly good player. Was about where top end players of her class should be. As the game progressed though, she started falling behind. We looked jn to why, and it turns out that the better builds for her class was improving over time mostly due to becoming faster, and she had hit the point where the latency in her connection just wasn't up to standard (Australian internet in the mod 2000's - if you know, you know).

So, we did some work on exactly how fast her build could be before she hit those issues, and then created a build for her that was at that pace, and added other improvements for the rest of her build.

She wasn't quite at the same level as others of her class, but she got Close.

Nothing in that is a mark against a combat tracker. It allowed us tor know she was a good player, it allowed us to know she was falling behind, it allowed us to work out why, and it allowed us to build the best build we could for her.

Now, some guilds in some games would have booted her for poor performance - this is usually where people start to think negatively about trackers. The problem is, the tracker isn't the thing that made such guilds boot the player in question.

Generally, in games where the game treats players as disposable, players also treat players as disposable. In games where the game treats players with respect, players trest other players with respect.

Both WoW and Archeage treat players as disposable. In WoW, you would get booted for under performing, and in Archeage you would get booted for being the wrong class.

EQ2 (and other games, we just both know EQ2 is my primary experience of this), players were treated with respect - no automated group systems, no stupid daily quests or login rewards etc. As such, it was normal for guilds to try and work through issues as per thr above.

In all of that, I fail to see how anyone can point at combat trackers as being a negative.

let me ask you this, would you guys have booted her if none of you had had a tracker? would other guilds had booted her if no one had had a tracker?

you didnt kick her because you took the time to analyze all the data and help her, and that was my point. at a personal level, they are useful. but how many people are going to takethe time to do that?

if you have 100 guilds in the game, and only 3 would have kept her and the other 97 would have kicked her because of the info on the tracker, even if its not the tracker's fault, dont you think adding it to the game causes more harm than good at a global scale?

also, why would anyone kick her anyways...people could just take someone else to the raid and she could have joined a 2nd party or something if its a raid that is tight on time and you cant really afford someone doing less damage than what they are supposed to be doing and the guild only has the exact amount of players to do that raid. maybe just recruit more people idk, but kickign someone because they are falling behind is silly. how do you know they are falling behind? because the tracker tells you.

with no tracker, other guilds wouldnt have thought about kicking her, and with no tracker would have had to actually experiment and improve and figure things out, instead of having a tool telling you what to do, which is the intent of this game.

KashQuests

As a min-max player myself, I both love and hate DPS meters. They can refine your skill in a game, prove you're contributing to the group and assure your group is filled with strong players. However, they can also alienate players and create a divide. Some players may be great at certain aspects of the game, but just not skilled in parsing a training dummy. I've spent too much time in games beating on a dummy to increase numbers and practicing perfect rotations (looking at you and your silly light attack weaving, ESO). It definitely feels like lost time. Time I could have been spending exploring lands and learning lore. What's more, I'd rather organically learn my class and help others learn theirs. This is a much more cohesive way to make friends and build community. I'd rather play with friends of all skill levels and get better as a group. I am personally very happy DPS meters will not be in Ashes

KashQuests wrote: »

As a min-max player myself, I both love and hate DPS meters. They can refine your skill in a game, prove you're contributing to the group and assure your group is filled with strong players. However, they can also alienate players and create a divide. Some players may be great at certain aspects of the game, but just not skilled in parsing a training dummy. I've spent too much time in games beating on a dummy to increase numbers and practicing perfect rotations (looking at you and your silly light attack weaving, ESO). It definitely feels like lost time. Time I could have been spending exploring lands and learning lore. What's more, I'd rather organically learn my class and help others learn theirs. This is a much more cohesive way to make friends and build community. I'd rather play with friends of all skill levels and get better as a group. I am personally very happy DPS meters will not be in Ashes

Most interesting person so far.

So you tend to minmax, you HAVE used them, you're happy they 'won't be in Ashes'.

Some people already have one for Ashes. You're like me then, in that you don't wanna bother using it, so the fact that the game won't let anyone ask you whether you actually did all the grinding or not, is good?

Also do you like Armored Core?

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Give people a combat tracker though, and everyone has access to data to prove their build is good or not, there are more people posting good builds on forums and such, more people using more different builds, and thus more acceptance of a greater variety of builds.

This still supports my issue of "game is cleared faster/easier".

Though it's obviously dependent on the pve design and we got no info on any of that, so it's hard to say how builds could be influenced by it.

In itself, sure.

The thing is, you need to look at both things together.

Sure, giving people a combat tracker will help them build better classes faster, and in isolation that means players get through content faster.

But that same combat tracker allows developers to develop more intricate content, meaning good developers should be able to produce content that takes players as long to clear as those developers want it to take.

Depraved wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

i never said they are useless, and at a personal level they can be useful so you can see which build you are performing better with. maybe an easy to play build is better for me than a hard build with top dps because i cant play it right.

but its hard to say online, unless you have the info of all players, but then most players arent good players, only a small percentage of players is, so most people might have the right build but cant use it. and some builds can go unnoticed because they are too hard to play, even though they are good.

This is absolutely true, but isn't a mark against trackers.

In EQ2 I was in a guild with someone that was a fairly good player. Was about where top end players of her class should be. As the game progressed though, she started falling behind. We looked jn to why, and it turns out that the better builds for her class was improving over time mostly due to becoming faster, and she had hit the point where the latency in her connection just wasn't up to standard (Australian internet in the mod 2000's - if you know, you know).

So, we did some work on exactly how fast her build could be before she hit those issues, and then created a build for her that was at that pace, and added other improvements for the rest of her build.

She wasn't quite at the same level as others of her class, but she got Close.

Nothing in that is a mark against a combat tracker. It allowed us tor know she was a good player, it allowed us to know she was falling behind, it allowed us to work out why, and it allowed us to build the best build we could for her.

Now, some guilds in some games would have booted her for poor performance - this is usually where people start to think negatively about trackers. The problem is, the tracker isn't the thing that made such guilds boot the player in question.

Generally, in games where the game treats players as disposable, players also treat players as disposable. In games where the game treats players with respect, players trest other players with respect.

Both WoW and Archeage treat players as disposable. In WoW, you would get booted for under performing, and in Archeage you would get booted for being the wrong class.

EQ2 (and other games, we just both know EQ2 is my primary experience of this), players were treated with respect - no automated group systems, no stupid daily quests or login rewards etc. As such, it was normal for guilds to try and work through issues as per thr above.

In all of that, I fail to see how anyone can point at combat trackers as being a negative.

let me ask you this, would you guys have booted her if none of you had had a tracker? would other guilds had booted her if no one had had a tracker?

Having literally never having playdd an MMORPG without a tracker, i dont feel qualified to answer this as factually as the rest of my statements in this thread.

Not having a tracker would also mean (in that game) that we simply were not working on top end content like we were - straight up not possible in EQ2.

In an attempt to answer your question assuming we just wave away the above two points, I'd say that we would have noticed the drop in performance, and would have attempted to do what we could to help. If we couldn't get her back up to a place we were all happy with, we wouldn't have booted her, she would have left ss that is just how the guild operated. Everyone in it was mostly friends with everyone else, we were there to take on top end content, if someone was stopping that they would have stepped aside in order to not hold back their friends.

Guilds in EQ2 were generally kept as lean as reasonably possible due to the way guild leveling worked. If someone wasn't raiding, they weren't in the guild. This is why I've said many times that if a game asks for raids of 24 people, I'll run guilds of 27 people.

We do usually also have a friends/family/alt guild, and in the above actuation this is probably where she would have gone (though we would all understand and support her decision if she wanted to join a lower tier raiding guild, he alts and such are still welcome in the alt guild).

with no tracker, other guilds wouldnt have thought about kicking her, and with no tracker would have had to actually experiment and improve and figure things out, instead of having a tool telling you what to do, which is the intent of this game.

The part about this you are forgetting is that it means the guild is now dragging someone under performing.

In games with actual top end content, this means the whole guilds progression is stopped. So, where you say without trackers the guild wouldn't kick her in the first place, I say that without trackers the entire guilds progression is stopped. Kicking her (not that we would do that, as per above) would upset one player. The guilds progression stopping upsets one guild.

The only way to prevent the whole guilds progression stopping is if encounters are intentionally designed where a guild can carry under performing players even if they don't realize. Basically, if the developers don't make too end encounters at all.

Depraved

well that makes sense. but if she had moved to the alt guild, thats technically not kicking i guess.

Not having a tracker would also mean (in that game) that we simply were not working on top end content like we were - straight up not possible in EQ2.

dont you think thats bad design? because you need an external tool to complete the game (not to get extras, like 100%, guides, etc). maybe eq didnt adjust the difficulty because people were clearing it, thanks to a combat tracker and they thought maybe it wasnt as hard? idk. but i cant imagine making a game on purpose that depends on players designing and programming an external tool that tells you how to play the game.

players should be able to play and beat the game without having to install extra software to assist in completing the game, otherwise, they cant.

also, unrelated, found ur site, now i know what ACT means /facepalm. I thought it would be something more interesting, like act now or time to act! lol

Noaani wrote: »

But that same combat tracker allows developers to develop more intricate content, meaning good developers should be able to produce content that takes players as long to clear as those developers want it to take.

This is the exact content distillation I was talking about. Devs either have to increase their workload to make enough content for the entire spectrum of players or they have to forget about one of the extremes.

Also, I guess it's cause I'm not a competitive pver, but wouldn't "encounters that require trackers because devs made them with trackers" mean that there's only one way to beat the encounter, which means there's only one "raid build", which then comes back to the toxicity of "you either adhere to this build or you can't raid with us on this"?

You say that AA guilds kicked people for not having the proper class, but wouldn't trackers just support this, and the only reason why you'd be ok with that is because tracker is objectively correct so it's fine to filter people through it instead of for subjective reasons?

Also, if it isn't just one build then couldn't a non-tracker guild just beat the boss sooner or later through trial and error?

Noaani wrote: »

EQ2 (and other games, we just both know EQ2 is my primary experience of this), players were treated with respect - no automated group systems, no stupid daily quests or login rewards etc. As such, it was normal for guilds to try and work through issues as per thr above.

In all of that, I fail to see how anyone can point at combat trackers as being a negative.

L2 also treated its players well and people would only get kicked if there was some huge drama or if they wanted to switch guilds.

And the self-imposed limitations of "we should bring as few people to this encounter as possible to maximize the reward" created the higher difficulty for the guilds who wanted it, so most encounters were really difficult for the hardcore guilds.

@JamesSunderland @Depraved were either of you in any top guilds on the official servers? Did they use any types of 3rd party tools to understand encounters better? Cause I've never heard of those, outside the basic bot cause everyone and their mother wanted to bot the game.

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

But that same combat tracker allows developers to develop more intricate content, meaning good developers should be able to produce content that takes players as long to clear as those developers want it to take.

This is the exact content distillation I was talking about. Devs either have to increase their workload to make enough content for the entire spectrum of players or they have to forget about one of the extremes.

Also, I guess it's cause I'm not a competitive pver, but wouldn't "encounters that require trackers because devs made them with trackers" mean that there's only one way to beat the encounter, which means there's only one "raid build", which then comes back to the toxicity of "you either adhere to this build or you can't raid with us on this"?

You say that AA guilds kicked people for not having the proper class, but wouldn't trackers just support this, and the only reason why you'd be ok with that is because tracker is objectively correct so it's fine to filter people through it instead of for subjective reasons?

Also, if it isn't just one build then couldn't a non-tracker guild just beat the boss sooner or later through trial and error?

Aww come on don't loop back here...

No, it does not mean that.

No, trackers don't support that.

And no, non-tracker guilds NORMALLY do not defeat the boss through trial and error unless its WoW just-above-mid-tier.

Seriously, this time at least, just trust the UltraGymLords on this part, because if we wanna reach 200 pages, dis is not da wae.

Ruerik

If Noaani is advocating for a tracker that makes all the mechanic calls, tells you where to go, how to solve and get the clear without thinking. I havent been following this closely enough to know if this is the case. Yes its possible for certain tools to do this depending on what information is sent to the client.

Then yes, while that does allow developers to make more intricate fights, it also completely destroys the original vision the devs had for the encounter, trivializing everything and removing carefully crafted challenge and fun. Learning to recognize the mechanic in the ways we are intended to watch the signs is part of the encounter.

A DPS meter should not provide this ability, and the devs should be very careful about how server information is sent client side regarding mechanics, so that parsers cannot recognize when and where mechanics happen. Gamers on all parts of the skill spectrum can agree on this. The folks that want autobattle addons to run the game for them dont actually care for enjoying the gaming, they just want the clear and the loot and the bragging rights.

DPS measurement is necessary for a strong raid community, and for strong theorycrafting community and players to craft builds and explore all sorts of things in the game. One way or another, this measurement is going to happen, either very easily by reading datapackets sent from the server (such as in ACT), or very meticulously frame by frame capture of the screen itself (such as what had to be done in GW2 before arcdps became a thing).

If its not obvious I am strongly in favor of being able to see DPS during encounters, and be able to analyze the data carefully afterwards. In any RPG, its a numbers game underneath everything after all, from tanking, to healing, to mitigating, numbers and stats have a lot of meaning.

Any capability beyond measurement, I am not in favor of.

Technically I guess I should use the previous discussion.

What happens is that the person using the Tracker or the person who 'might as well be a Tracker' just gathers up all the Dumbass Casuals and tells them what to do. You get two types. The type you are, who ends up building their own whole entire guild and then eventually gets frustrated and relies on external information long after the boss has been beaten by someone else repeatedly (but they're still not doing it by trial and error) .
And the second type, who knows that they don't want to care but decide to just rely on the Tracker/Tracker user for instructions, and then that's it. And of course, as you can guess, if your guild is full of a certain type of Tracker-averse person and you don't want to start drama, you just tell them how to improve without telling them that you parsed them.

The sort of person who gets told 'Use this FCS because the Ricochet mechanic is stopping you from winning' and goes 'oh hey thanks' and never thinks about the amount of work it would have taken to know that was the problem, can go through hundreds of hours of a game without knowing who is parsing what.

Azherae wrote: »

Seriously, this time at least, just trust the UltraGymLords on this part, because if we wanna reach 200 pages, dis is not da wae.

I still haven't gone back to AC so I got nothing else to talk about

I'm either too dumb or just so damn entrenched in my bias that I simply cannot understand tracker use. Even though I seemingly understand what they do and how they work and how people are supposedly using them, but when I say "trackers make the game ultimately easier and progression faster and if they can figure out the objectively best build that means that people can objectively tell you to use that and disregard anything else" - yet I'm told I'm wrong in that assumption.

I like to understand things, which is why I keep going in circles on the same damn topics again and again, but my inability to understand this frustrates me to no end. And I guess there's no way to simply do smth that would make me understand.

Well, nothing except for spending like a year in EQ2, grinding the game and its knowledge and relationships with people until I manage to get to the top and try the bosses that Noaani refuses to tell us about (if there are any of that type even left in the game at this point). Or at least I'd hit the wall that makes me understand why trackers are so valued.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Seriously, this time at least, just trust the UltraGymLords on this part, because if we wanna reach 200 pages, dis is not da wae.

I still haven't gone back to AC so I got nothing else to talk about

I'm either too dumb or just so damn entrenched in my bias that I simply cannot understand tracker use. Even though I seemingly understand what they do and how they work and how people are supposedly using them, but when I say "trackers make the game ultimately easier and progression faster and if they can figure out the objectively best build that means that people can objectively tell you to use that and disregard anything else" - yet I'm told I'm wrong in that assumption.

I like to understand things, which is why I keep going in circles on the same damn topics again and again, but my inability to understand this frustrates me to no end. And I guess there's no way to simply do smth that would make me understand.

Well, nothing except for spending like a year in EQ2, grinding the game and its knowledge and relationships with people until I manage to get to the top and try the bosses that Noaani refuses to tell us about (if there are any of that type even left in the game at this point). Or at least I'd hit the wall that makes me understand why trackers are so valued.

I think I can actually give an answer, but normally this type of answer gets held back because of how it comes off, and this ain't the best community for giving it, but here you go.

The sort of person who builds the Tracker doesn't often need to build it for themselves. It benefits them, don't get me wrong, they can definitely use it and it is obviously more accurate than 'eyeballing'.

But they build it because they want to shorten or automate something they were already doing, to the point where they can get other people to do it. Why? Because helping each person would take too long. If you tell me 'no trackers' I literally don't have the time to work out what is wrong with some friend's build relative to a target.

Close friends? Sure, I can manage, or have the investment. Acquaintances? Nah.

So what happens? If you say 'no trackers and can enforce it' all the people who enjoy progression end up gravitating together. They want to progress and enjoy the content, every person who has a problem is just slowing them down even if they really want to help. So then not only does nothing get cleared any slower, you basically made your game more elitist.

It's so elitist that no one is even 'bothering' to 'kick a stubborn Dumbass Casual out of their guild'. They never even got to join the guild with the people who tend to do the analytics. Then next stage (in this era) is 'well there's no competition and we already did everything first so we're bored so let's take all that data and make some guides or something for clout'.

See where this goes?

Azherae wrote: »

See where this goes?

I think I might've understood my problem. I'm a naïve elitist idealist boomer who lives in the past that's built on a "cog in the machine" culture.

Because to me, all of this

Azherae wrote: »

So what happens? If you say 'no trackers and can enforce it' all the people who enjoy progression end up gravitating together. They want to progress and enjoy the content, every person who has a problem is just slowing them down even if they really want to help. So then not only does nothing get cleared any slower, you basically made your game more elitist.

It's so elitist that no one is even 'bothering' to 'kick a stubborn Dumbass Casual out of their guild'. They never even got to join the guild with the people who tend to do the analytics. Then next stage (in this era) is 'well there's no competition and we already did everything first so we're bored so let's take all that data and make some guides or something for clout'.

is completely fine and "how it should be". The overall progression of the game is slow (because it takes longer to figure out things w/o trackers). There's super elites who put all of that time into progressing and removed any weak links in their ranks. There's everyone else who don't get the content or get it after that last part of the quote.

And by the time those elitists get to make those guides, the devs should release a big update that's gonna entertain them for the same long amount of time.

To me, this kind of setup is what makes sense. I'm completely positive that this setup would never happen, because not only can one not truly enforce the "no trackers" rule, but the overall gaming culture is just way too different. People just can't exist in a slow-paced environment. And the ones who can are playing on classic servers or their private alternatives.

In other words, I really need to go play AC so that we have something else to discuss

but for now I'll just go to bed.