DPS Meter Megathread

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Ruerik

Sadly magspy, that approach doesnt work in my experience.

DPS checks exist for a reason, to make dps players do dps. While I am a person advocating for dps meters, I do agree the game should be designed such that no one should need them.

Back to the gameplay not requiring looking at dps::

If the game didnt require dps to be done, then boss fights end up completely trivial to do. You only have to survive by any means necessary (I could come up with an entire mega list of cheese mechanisms to talk about here, but it would derail the topic).

If all I have to do is perform mechanics, then I can stop whatever I am doing while the mechanics are happening to do the dance.

I mean, everyone could play tanks and healers to make it realllllll easy here. See where I am going with this>

I dont agree with you. Doing DPS matters. Its far to easy otherwise. Encounters should require players to both do the mechanic and do their dps stuff at the same time, and bonus for us, pvp should happen also.

(Off topic, Inspired by another four threads on this forum I am actually writing up something of what my perfect vision is for good challenging boss fights that take advantage of the pvp happening, to keep the challenge up, and to keep the risk/reward factor in place, look forward to telling me I want too much difficulty for MMO games)

Mag7spy

Taerrik wrote: »

Sadly magspy, that approach doesnt work in my experience.

DPS checks exist for a reason, to make dps players do dps. While I am a person advocating for dps meters, I do agree the game should be designed such that no one should need them.

Back to the gameplay not requiring looking at dps::

If the game didnt require dps to be done, then boss fights end up completely trivial to do. You only have to survive by any means necessary (I could come up with an entire mega list of cheese mechanisms to talk about here, but it would derail the topic).

If all I have to do is perform mechanics, then I can stop whatever I am doing while the mechanics are happening to do the dance.

I mean, everyone could play tanks and healers to make it realllllll easy here. See where I am going with this>

I dont agree with you. Doing DPS matters. Its far to easy otherwise. Encounters should require players to both do the mechanic and do their dps stuff at the same time, and bonus for us, pvp should happen also.

(Off topic, Inspired by another four threads on this forum I am actually writing up something of what my perfect vision is for good challenging boss fights that take advantage of the pvp happening, to keep the challenge up, and to keep the risk/reward factor in place, look forward to telling me I want too much difficulty for MMO games)

What I'm saying it that with content challenges between the mechanics and dps, their should be a skill curve as well. Since this is going hybrid and not just tab, it allows for more interesting gameplay for that to be a factor. Someone dealing less dmg but doing mechanics right and able to get dmg in while dodging other factors and such being a thing. On the DPs they do less dmg but they also can use their own skill element to stay int he fight, where some people might do high dmg but fail skill checks not dealing as much dmg or dying.

Having other factors makes people care about that less, and want people that can survive these kinds of challenges.

Over the basic tab gameplay where you tank dmg, boss attacks one way towards tank, you heal the random aoe stuff and no one has much threat to worry about besides the mechanics. This kind of old style basic tab gameplay has far more limits on things you can do compared to more modern design.

Anyway point is increase danger to everyone, have all the good old stuff but also include more skill elements and things you need to do and dodge as well. Make dps meters less important and people desiring skill and survival. To take all these elements (not just ones i mentioned) and create a case where people don't care as much about trackers, and less people wanting to use them or worried.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

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).

Taking later comments here into context, I'd say I just disagree with EQ2's whole approach and your preference of it.

I'm a visual learner, so I want to see what the boss/mob does. I'm not talking about ground indicators or whatever, but the effects/animations should be visible imo.

Intrepid have the opportunity to build their models with the feature you're talking about in mind. Give those models the ability to perform a super wide variety of animations. And those animations should be comprised of steps that could weave other abilities into them with proper visual representation of that new ability.

In other words, once again, do better. And my attitude towards this is also why I say that I don't want devs to try and keep pace with trackered top pve players, because I want a much better quality of content instead of a lot of it (while not overworking devs to death). Invisible skills and non-existent animations are not quality imo.

Eh, chances are we'd still get the text either way though.

Xeeg

Dygz wrote: »

You, for some reason, believe that the build that works for a group will suddenly suck when you solo?
And you won't be able to adjust without going to a practice dummy?
How do you plan to change the practice dummy so that it has the combat stats of whatever it is you're fighting solo?

Well i don't know how complicated they are planning on making builds, how many systems will be interacting with your abilities, or how easy it will be to change. In other games I have practiced against dummies while adjusting builds to see how they respond and hold up. Or change out a +crit item for a +agil item and see how the dps responds, etc.

I mean you were the one that was arguing that none of this information matters because we will be in team and synergy is all that matters. It isn't really fair to then turn around and say that whatever builds we tweak for team synergy perform the same for solo play.

Is it really that game breaking to ask for something like practice dummies in military nodes where people can test out builds/items to see how their dps responds? Or a group goes and practices their synergy and tweaks their builds to see how the dps responds?.

I mean how are we going to know that our synergy is even working as intended? I guess we won't, and that's the point? Lack of knowledge of performance is a "good thing" here? No feedback system other than you win or lose fights and have absolutely no way to know where to improve?

Ruerik

More than one poster here has commented about how people parse on combat dummies.

For those of us that work to improve our performance in game, we dont actually use combat dummy very much after we figure out how the skills work and what basic skill chains are. It turns out, that to get better at playing the game, you have to.... yup, play the game.

Measurement against a combat dummy is pointless, thats why DPs meters exist, so you can look at real combat data.

Practice on combat dummy is pointless beyond day1 figure out how the basic rotation works. Because it doesnt do mechanics. Dead DPS players are worthless dps players, so what if you can do well on a dummy if you cant perform in a fight.

The goal is to do big damages in a fight, and also execute the mechanics at the same time.

Ludullu

Azherae wrote: »

Eh, chances are we'd still get the text either way though.

Was this something I missed or forgot about from A1? Or in what way would the text be the only way to show that there's a skill/mechanic being used by the boss?

Or do you mean smth along the lines of "the boss is about to/doing a mechanic" written across the screen? Cause L2 had those, but I assumed that this shit was like the bottom tier of pve complexity, so I doubt you're talking about that.

Azherae

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Eh, chances are we'd still get the text either way though.

Was this something I missed or forgot about from A1? Or in what way would the text be the only way to show that there's a skill/mechanic being used by the boss?

Or do you mean smth along the lines of "the boss is about to/doing a mechanic" written across the screen? Cause L2 had those, but I assumed that this shit was like the bottom tier of pve complexity, so I doubt you're talking about that.

It's complicated, but remember that I'm not usually talking about what I want or enjoy, moreso 'what I expect and have been told other people enjoy'.

I personally believe you can make it with the text in a specific way, but the other thread I just made is the better place to discuss that. Though we're trying to reach 200 pages, like Ashes, we cannot rush it, we must strive for quality.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Eh, chances are we'd still get the text either way though.

Was this something I missed or forgot about from A1? Or in what way would the text be the only way to show that there's a skill/mechanic being used by the boss?

Or do you mean smth along the lines of "the boss is about to/doing a mechanic" written across the screen? Cause L2 had those, but I assumed that this shit was like the bottom tier of pve complexity, so I doubt you're talking about that.

Yeah, text across the screen like that (for most boss abilities) isnt something I'm a fan of.

The only time I recall it being used in EQ2 was with a boss that had about 18 different abilities going on, and this one ability would trigger kn one person in the raid. Anyone near that person after a few seconds would be killed, so text across the whole screen like this was used so that everyone in the raid knew who to get away from, while not interfering with dealing with the other 17 or so abilities.

Like anything, text across the screen is one of those things that needs more context. If the text is the only ability players need to be watching out for in that 5 second period, it drops encounter complexity down to near zero. If it is something players need to be aware of on top of several other things at the same time, it is fine.

In thinking on that for a minute or two before posting, it occurs to me that the above probably applies to all communication channels. If the only thing players need to be aware of at a given point in time on an encounter is an ability communicated via animation, that is equally low complexity - same if that communication is text in a combat log that requires a tracker, or if it is telegraph based communication.

To me, any time it is only one thing needing to be communicated at a time, it is low complexity. High complexity comes when you need to communicate many things at once, and using different methods is probably a good thing in such cases.

Xeeg

Taerrik wrote: »

For those of us that work to improve our performance in game, we dont actually use combat dummy very much after we figure out how the skills work and what basic skill chains are. It turns out, that to get better at playing the game, you have to.... yup, play the game.

So I guess those of us that don't work to improve performance in a game, use combat dummies?

Way to come off like a pretentious jerk, buddy. Normally I prefer to be polite to strangers, but I'll make an exception for you. Sounds like you are used to playing basic games with basic skill chains and no complexity. Some of us play complex games with complex rotations and builds that if you aren't spending time refining and tweaking on dummies, you are probably not finding the best builds.

Taerrik wrote: »

Measurement against a combat dummy is pointless, thats why DPs meters exist, so you can look at real combat data.

Yeah cause the time to find out whether or not your build is better than other options you can choose is during a raid fight with a boss. Sounds like a great time to tweak your build.

Its not like you get to practice rotations for minutes during regular monster fights in most games. In complex games rotation vs regular monsters and the rotation vs bosses are way different. But you wouldn't know about that because you play simple games with basic rotations.

Taerrik wrote: »

Practice on combat dummy is pointless beyond day1 figure out how the basic rotation works. Because it doesnt do mechanics. Dead DPS players are worthless dps players, so what if you can do well on a dummy if you cant perform in a fight.

The goal is to do big damages in a fight, and also execute the mechanics at the same time.

Obviously in a boss fight you need to worry about mechanics. The point about dummies is to tweak builds and see how they respond. See when your damage spikes are, how your sustain looks, where your tradeoffs are, etc. Again, it sounds like you play games that are dead simple and have only a few options for rotations and builds, and so dummies aren't useful. Either that or you just look up other people's builds/rotations and never make your own anyways. Not sure what kind of game Ashes will be.

Ruerik

Cool, I earned a personal attack, nice I guess? Guess I only play simple basic games haha. I suppose I need to send you all my logs from all the games I play now, for what? Clout? LOL! Oh right, but I wouldnt know about any of this because I only do simple things. Thanks for the comedy this morning, I appreciate it.

Look, if you want to claim the games you play are so complex you gotta spend hours on a combat dummy. Go for it, I wont judge you. Dummies have their purpose to what you said, but beyond that are pointless as to how real encounters work.

It doesnt matter how good you can do on the combat dummy, if when you pull the boss you cant do anything because you cant handle dealing with the mechanic and doing your rotation at the same time.

It doesnt matter how good you do at the combat dummy, when bosses do things like fly around, go untargetable, or otherwise prevent you from doing your rotation. You think that mega-more-complex-than-mine rotation still works? Do you know that the timing between these boss phases where you cant hit them actually requires you to adjust your rotation? Dummy doesnt tell you that, combat logs do. Do you know that how fast your group actually kills the boss changes things too? Lol, but I dont know this because I only play the simple games.

You talking about your complexity, you realize that all the time you spend not pushing buttons while you look at boss mechanics instead is a huge drop in dps? Your focused so much on not being dead that you cant DPS anymore. So what if you can parse well on a dummy if you have to stop pushing buttons to execute. You need to be able to execute during the fight or all that time you spent was wasted anyway.

TLDR version because you wont read it anyway:
My point is very simple. Being able to execute your rotation is the expectation. It doesn't matter how simple or complex your rotation is, its up to you to be able to do that. That is the purpose of a combat dummy. Everyone in any game can walk up to the dummy and put out great numbers. Few can replicate that during encounters, which is what actually matters. That was what I was saying, but you missed all that because you wanted to make a personal attack instead of read.

almost to 200

Mag7spy

Dps meters and trackers are toxic, glad AoC won't support them

Noaani

Taerrik wrote: »

Cool, I earned a personal attack, nice I guess?

It's quite amusing to me. If you look through this thread, you will see an abundance of people against trackers being toxic to those who want them and thus will have them, and very little going the other direction.

JamesSunderland

NiKr wrote: »

JamesSunderland wrote: »

Yes, the clans/sides i played in the official servers were always on the top, and yes there was eventually "3rd party tools" that were not only bot programs but also helped alot to understand encounters better, Mainly ZRanger and then Adrenaline.

Thx.

My whole existence in this thread is rendered meaningless and my experience is completely made up. Though this does make Steven's opinion even sillier than it already was.

Haha a bit dramatic, but yes, i do understand Steven's opinion but sadly disagree with it, restricting things like DPS/AGGRO meters is meaningless and will only hurt people who doesn't use it, as long as it proves to be useful people will still develop and use them anyway, knowledge is power, the data acquirable through such hard to prevent/detect 3rd party tools is very valuable and will provide advantage for those with access to it.

Ruerik

Hot take, but what would be a real middle ground (though impossible because, addon writers have ways around everything), is if there was no way to view things in real time, preventing any automated callout type addons such as deadlybossmods or cactbot.

Instead after encounters give a full combat log, option to save into a txt file if we want it. Anti addon crowd can just manually read the log, and addon crowd can use something like ACT to read and format into nice charts and such.

I just want the numbers in any way I can get them.

Ludullu

Taerrik wrote: »

is if there was no way to view things in real time, preventing any automated callout type addons such as deadlybossmods or cactbot.

Are you suggesting we play the game completely blind?

Or can ACT only make callouts if it reads smth in the game's log? Iirc either Noaani or Azherae said there're ways to have visual trackers that would just parse animations and stuff like that, so even if you have completely no written text related to the encounter - people will still have boss ability callouts.

Noaani

Taerrik wrote: »

Hot take, but what would be a real middle ground (though impossible because, addon writers have ways around everything), is if there was no way to view things in real time, preventing any automated callout type addons such as deadlybossmods or cactbot.

Instead after encounters give a full combat log, option to save into a txt file if we want it. Anti addon crowd can just manually read the log, and addon crowd can use something like ACT to read and format into nice charts and such.

Without going in to any details at all with this statement, I'm just going to say that it isn't out of the realm of possibility for a combat tracker to exist on the games server, bypassing this restriction.

That said, the value of a combat tracker isn't to be had during the encounter. It is at its most valuable after the fight.

Noaani

NiKr wrote: »

Taerrik wrote: »

is if there was no way to view things in real time, preventing any automated callout type addons such as deadlybossmods or cactbot.

Are you suggesting we play the game completely blind?

Or can ACT only make callouts if it reads smth in the game's log? Iirc either Noaani or Azherae said there're ways to have visual trackers that would just parse animations and stuff like that, so even if you have completely no written text related to the encounter - people will still have boss ability callouts.

The in game floating combat feedback can be parsed.

It would be possible to set a combat tracker up to recognize animations, but this isn't going to assist in in depth data analysis. The only real use for it would be in regards to warnings for incoming abilities.

Ruerik

I am suggesting we dont have a program do mechanic callouts, or worse, draw overlay on your screen to tell you where to stand.

ACT works by reading the datapackets in the network data sent to the client, getting numbers that way. Although you can get the same numbers just reading the combat log.

ACT can make custom triggers from the real time combat log too, making a callout that "MECHANIC A is happening"
ACT plugins like cactbot in ff14 for example, can also read the datapackets, to go one step further than that. If mechanic A had several variations for instance, it can know exactly which variation is going to happen even if that is never sent in text to the real time combat log.

I am sure other apps can do the same thing maybe by just watching the screen, but ACT is very efficient at it.

I think having automated callouts is a bad thing, it removes the requirement to have awareness from the raid team. As in, why need someone to take a leadership shot caller role in the raid, if a machine can do it for me better.

In the end though, for theorycrafters to do their craft, they just need numbers, from the encounter itself so all variables are accounted for. If Ashes gives us a text file combat log we wouldnt even need addons to collect the data for us. Though I would write my own python script to parse and format the data for me.

George_Black

2 more to go.

Noaani

Taerrik wrote: »

I think having automated callouts is a bad thing, it removes the requirement to have awareness from the raid team.

I think this is context dependent. If there are many things happening and the challenge of the encounter is in dealing with those things, automated callouts of what ever form are good.

If the encounter is all about awareness, then automating awareness would probably make it too easy. I say "probably" because the only encounter I've ever played that required awareness not something that ACT could track, so it couldn't assist at all.

To me, that is the key thing though. If awareness of players is the goal, you use mechanics that can't be called out by a tracker.

Making an encounter where you want players to be aware, but then making the things they need to be aware of easily able to be called out just seems naive.

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