DPS Meter Megathread

NiKr wrote: »

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 the 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.

Model worked, see above post.

So nah, you're right. It's just the same sort of reaction I have to Steven's mindset about it. I figure in that, you two are the same, even if it's not for the same reason.

When it comes down to it, you kinda don't care about 'everyone getting a chance', and we already knew that. But the point I was making is that in my world, the Content is cleared in X weeks by 7 guilds, and in yours, it's cleared in X weeks by 1-2, and then that number barely rises if at all for a while.

Which is, interestingly, exactly how it worked out even in WoW for the hardest encounters. That, you can find data on.

NiKr wrote: »

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.

i was in a top guild in l2 essence, before that i wasnt in a top guild. and a top guild in offi that went to a p server so i was in the guild when it played in the p server not in offi.

i dont know any1 who used any trackers, but people did use radars and adrenaline T_T if you know you know. it was usually the Russians tho.

but bosses in l2 arent super hard, xcept for antharas and valakas. and well, ive met lots of people who say bosses in l2 are hard, also dion kamaloka is hard according to them x_X this is why i dont trust too much when people tell me they do hard pve or top encounters etc, because they arent usually hard and people are just not that good in general

Depraved wrote: »

dont you think thats bad design?

I think it would be bad design for a modern MMO - I would expect an MMO in development now to include thesr tools (this has been my argument - a combat tracker built in to the game, potentially as a guild perk).

However, for an MMO of the early 2000's, there was an expectation that some outside tools would be used.

Just for the record - ACT isn't mine. Not at all - though it is my combat tracker of choice. There is, however, a short and somewhat boring story behind why I use the icon here. You know I like accurate information, so I thought I'd make that clear before there were any misunderstandings.

Having seen it though, you perhaps have a better understanding of how deep the functionality can go.

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.

If the developer (company, not person) built proper back end tools at the start of development - tools specifically designed to make scripting encounters easier - there shouldn't be an increased workload.

With these tools in place, the bulk of the work for a raid mob is in a unique character model. If you follow the EQ2 model, you use these unique models for end mobs of raid zones and content cycles, for open world encounters, but then you don't shy away from using regular existing models (increased in size perhaps) for lesser named mobs, or if there is a need for "emergency" content where players beat encounters signolificantly faster than expected (will happen on occasion).

Noaani wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

dont you think thats bad design?

I think it would be bad design for a modern MMO - I would expect an MMO in development now to include thesr tools (this has been my argument - a combat tracker built in to the game, potentially as a guild perk).

However, for an MMO of the early 2000's, there was an expectation that some outside tools would be used.

Just for the record - ACT isn't mine. Not at all - though it is my combat tracker of choice. There is, however, a short and somewhat boring story behind why I use the icon here. You know I like accurate information, so I thought I'd make that clear before there were any misunderstandings.

Having seen it though, you perhaps have a better understanding of how deep the functionality can go.

i saw in the wiki that it can tell you when the boss is gonna use an attack, use sound alerts, etc, it can also alert you when you apply weakness or a debuff, soething liek that, so you know what to do next.

so that leads me to 1 of 2 conclusions:

1- people really werent that good that they needed a tracker for these simple stuff. and thats fine, im not as good as how i was when i was in my early 20-late teens. it happens. like i mention in my previous reply, ive ran into lots of players who say that this X encounter is hard, when it isnt. what happens is that they usually arent that good. and thats ok. so i cant really trust too much when someone says something like this is a really really difficult encounter, etc

or

2- the game didnt have (enough) (visual) clarity and feedback for the player so that they knew what was going on, which is bad design, or at least, it could be improved. maybe not the whole game, just that part. but its bad enough that people need an outside tool that wasnt even made by the devs to even know whats going on.

or maybe both.

why do u use the same pic?

Ruerik

Azherae wrote: »

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?

Woah, you sir, enunciated the entire issue perfectly, to the point I wish a moderator would pin your reply to the top of this whole thing.

We all been talking this or that, for or against, but this is the first post I saw to explain why there is a need to talk about it.

George_Black

Are you still talking about needing crutches in an mmo which you yourselves bemoan about not having challenging PvE raids, due to it's open world PvX nature?

Are you still talking about the need for dps meters, trackers, or whatever other hair-splitting term you are willing to waste your time over, even though there are no dps sets, due to the nature of this mmo, in which pvp can happen anytime; so it's stupid just to spec into dps since there is no scenario in which you will, without obstruction, just dps like you would on a dummy?

Are you still talking about the need to measure and improve/kick guild/group members which you already know how good or bad they are at the game, in which the need to perform at much more than dps: product wealth, complete quests, fend off enemy players, complete the various tasks; having played for lengthy occurences, because this isn't a solo themepark, but a challenging world?
Do you still need a program to give you that image, even though this isn't a lobby mmo that you queue with random tank/healer/dps from a zerg guild, as just explained?

Are you still unwilling to rely on natural responses and a better screen without all the clutter?

Are you still trying to reach 200 pages?

Depraved wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Depraved wrote: »

dont you think thats bad design?

I think it would be bad design for a modern MMO - I would expect an MMO in development now to include thesr tools (this has been my argument - a combat tracker built in to the game, potentially as a guild perk).

However, for an MMO of the early 2000's, there was an expectation that some outside tools would be used.

Just for the record - ACT isn't mine. Not at all - though it is my combat tracker of choice. There is, however, a short and somewhat boring story behind why I use the icon here. You know I like accurate information, so I thought I'd make that clear before there were any misunderstandings.

Having seen it though, you perhaps have a better understanding of how deep the functionality can go.

i saw in the wiki that it can tell you when the boss is gonna use an attack, use sound alerts, etc, it can also alert you when you apply weakness or a debuff, soething liek that, so you know what to do next.

It can, but you need to set it to tell it what to tell you (ie, when the tracker sees a specific row of text in the combat log, it performs the specific action you tell it to perform). You also need to decide what it is you are going to do for each ability you set it to give you an alert for.

The reality of this for EQ2 (the game it was originally designed for) is that some encounters would use abilities so often, it was impossible to communicate every ability via animation. While the animation for one ability was playing, there could be two other abilities also being used.

There was also the fact that some raid mobs used larger versions of regular mobs in order to save development time (see my discussion with NiKr), which meant some raid mobs simply didn't have enough casting animations to be able to have a unique animation for each ability.

Thus, text was the way these were communicated to players. I would say it dealt with both issues, but the reality is that text (and thus trackers) was the means of communicating abilities long before the above potential issues actually became apparent. Thus, this system prevented the issues from being issues in the first place, and in hindsight may well be a major part of the reason EQ2 was able to keep pace with players in terms of content creation vs consumption.

Then there is also the fact that abilities in EQ2 weren't telegraphed. There were no big red circles to tell you where the fire was about to be. You had to know and understand each ability and it's effect size and shape.

Part of the reason I don't consider WoW encounters to be actual top end is because they do telegraph most AoE abilities. In combination with a system like the above that tells you an ability is incoming, it does make things quite easy.

So, in regards to your two possible conclusions from your above post, one could say that the game didn't have enough visual information going to players - but that made the game better, not worse.

Having a unique animation for every ability and using that as a means of communicating the ability is about to be used means you are limited in how often a mob can use such abilities. A 2 second casting animation is a hard barrier to other abilities being used that also need to be communicated - that is realistically 3 or 4 seconds in which other abilities can't be used at all.

Thus, using animation as your only communication tool leads to more simple encounters, but in a way that takes more work from developers (unique models take more time than scripting the encounter, assuming proper tools are in place).

The reason I use this picture is because some forum regulars (people that no longer post here, mostly) complained once that I didn't have a custom picture at that point in time. This was in conjunction with capitalizing the first letter of our user name (couldn't use capitals when this forum started up), iirc they were surprised that i capitalized my name but didnt have a custom pic. This was at a point in time where Steven had just said they thought they would be able to detect anyone using a combat tracker with Ashes (probably the most naive comment he has ever made in relation to this game - more naive than saying the game will be out by 2020). So, because I'm both defiant and a bit of a dick, I changed it to what I have now.

lol.

well, 5 more pages lets go >_<

Depraved wrote: »

lol.

well, 5 more pages lets go >_<

True, but don't expect me to stop posting at 200 pages.

While I've never bumped this thread, or posted to it if it wasn't on the first page,it is a thread in which I will always reply to, and will always attempt to clear uo any misconceptions presented.

George_Black wrote: »

Any takers?

35-40min in.

Wasn't that what you wanted here, George?

To get us another 10 pages?

We can do it! Armored Core 6 will get us there. Nothing like Hybrid Combat to move things forward.

Azherae wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Any takers?

35-40min in.

Wasn't that what you wanted here, George?

To get us another 10 pages?

We can do it! Armored Core 6 will get us there. Nothing like Hybrid Combat to move things forward.

armored core is overrated

Mag7spy wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Any takers?

35-40min in.

Wasn't that what you wanted here, George?

To get us another 10 pages?

We can do it! Armored Core 6 will get us there. Nothing like Hybrid Combat to move things forward.

armored core is overrated

That is an entirely unsurprising opinion. I hope you're joking about it, but so it goes.

Wait, do you mean the series or the latest one?

Azherae wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Any takers?

35-40min in.

Wasn't that what you wanted here, George?

To get us another 10 pages?

We can do it! Armored Core 6 will get us there. Nothing like Hybrid Combat to move things forward.

armored core is overrated

That is an entirely unsurprising opinion. I hope you're joking about it, but so it goes.

Wait, do you mean the series or the latest one?

I'm not actually being serious lol.

Honestly i should have said "elden ring is better"

Ignore the previous comment about being overrated that one is boring.

Mag7spy wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Any takers?

35-40min in.

Wasn't that what you wanted here, George?

To get us another 10 pages?

We can do it! Armored Core 6 will get us there. Nothing like Hybrid Combat to move things forward.

armored core is overrated

That is an entirely unsurprising opinion. I hope you're joking about it, but so it goes.

Wait, do you mean the series or the latest one?

I'm not actually being serious lol.

Honestly i should have said "elden ring is better"

Ignore the previous comment about being overrated that one is boring.

That's the spirit!

Hopefully the modders will get things up soon so we can fight Malenia/Morgott in our ACs.

Azherae wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Mag7spy wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Any takers?

35-40min in.

Wasn't that what you wanted here, George?

To get us another 10 pages?

We can do it! Armored Core 6 will get us there. Nothing like Hybrid Combat to move things forward.

armored core is overrated

That is an entirely unsurprising opinion. I hope you're joking about it, but so it goes.

Wait, do you mean the series or the latest one?

I'm not actually being serious lol.

Honestly i should have said "elden ring is better"

Ignore the previous comment about being overrated that one is boring.

That's the spirit!

Hopefully the modders will get things up soon so we can fight Malenia/Morgott in our ACs.

loooooooooooooooooool

i'm glad the game is out though so now they can go full focus on the DLC for elden ring.

George_Black

Azherae wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Any takers?

35-40min in.

Wasn't that what you wanted here, George?

To get us another 10 pages?

We can do it! Armored Core 6 will get us there. Nothing like Hybrid Combat to move things forward.

I was baiting, wasn't it obvious?

Azherae wrote: »

George_Black wrote: »

Any takers?

35-40min in.

Wasn't that what you wanted here, George?

To get us another 10 pages?

We can do it! Armored Core 6 will get us there. Nothing like Hybrid Combat to move things forward.

why ru obsessed with armored core? =x