DPS Meter Megathread

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Ludullu

JamesSunderland wrote: »

First time i remember seeing it with the L2Walker name was around 2006,
First time i remember seeing it with the Adrenaline name was around 2007,
First time i remember seeing it with the Zranger name was around 2008.

Guess I wasn't as removed from the core game as I thought

Dygz

Korela wrote: »

To save time for anyone reading this or planning to respond, could you briefly remind us how you plan to play?

How I plan to play does not affect the game design.

Dygz

Neurath wrote: »

You don't need to know the health or mana to have an active trackers though. Does a bloodhound know how many pints of blood a target has? 🤔

You can be sure that a bloodhound has a variety of ways to determine blood loss and the health of its targets - most of that will not be visual.
In video games, we lack most of the senses and cues we would rely on to determine health of prey in the real world. Which is why video games have visual health meters.

Songcaller

Dygz wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

You don't need to know the health or mana to have an active trackers though. Does a bloodhound know how many pints of blood a target has? 🤔

You can be sure that a bloodhound has a variety of ways to determine blood loss and the health of its targets - most of that will not be visual.
In video games, we lack most of the senses and cues we would rely on to determine health of prey in the real world. Which is why video games have visual health meters.

We have visual health meters because of static combat and the inability to actually wound a target. In hack and slash games you tend not to have health bars. Merely have limbs removed, heads removed, wounds shown etc. 😀

Dygz

We have visual health meters because we lack other senses that would help us determine the health of our opponents/prey.
In Hack and Slash games, the TTK is exceedingly small. Also, doesn't really matter what abilities you use.
Button mash enough and your target will die.
RPGs are intended to be more strategic than that.

Ludullu

Ohhh shit, "RPG" mentioned. I was debating whether to post this video or not, but now there's the slightest tiniest bit of relevancy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zrxN3_JHy0

Songcaller

Dygz wrote: »

We have visual health meters because we lack other senses that would help us determine the health of our opponents/prey.
In Hack and Slash games, the TTK is exceedingly small. Also, doesn't really matter what abilities you use.
Button mash enough and your target will die.
RPGs are intended to be more strategic than that.

We don't lack the senses. Visual cues and hearing anguished cries are enough stimulus in a video game. Health bars are quite redundant in a modern game.

Dygz

We do lack other senses - which is why we have health bars in RPGs.
List some Online RPGs that have no health bars.
And then describe what they use instead of health bars.

Songcaller

Dygz wrote: »

We do lack other senses - which is why we have health bars in RPGs.
List some Online RPGs that have no health bars.
And then describe what they use instead of health bars.

Monster hunter has no health bars and monster hunter works out well. Not sure you'd class monster hunter as a rpg though.

Dygz

Isn't this Monster Hunter gameplay?
I see a health meter. And that health meter is a visual indication of Health that is there because in video games we lack senses - like pain.
(Same reason there is a Stamina meter)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL5NiOc64ag

Songcaller

You can see the player health yeah. You just can't see the health of the bosses. I thought we were talking about tracking targets, not the player disposition of the self.

Noaani

Neurath wrote: »

You can see the player health yeah. You just can't see the health of the bosses. I thought we were talking about tracking targets, not the player disposition of the self.

I would think that is what we are talking about as well. Especially true considering we should be able to see exact health percentages of those in your group or raid.

Xeeg

Honestly some of these anti-knowledge/anti-math/anti-DPS meter comments don't really make any sense.

So a talent tree isn't going to say +20/40/60 shadow damage, its just going to say + min/mid/max shadow damage? Then what, you get a +shadow damage item and it says (+something in between min and mid?) lol

You pick up a new sword and it has no stats, no swing damage, no attack speed? I mean, those are the things that make it "better" than another sword. If you don't have the numbers you can't accurately compare.

You get in a fight and there is no health bar? You have no idea that the monster can kill you in 4 more hits because you don't know that you have 400 health and the monster is doing 101 damage. You also don't know the ability giving you -2 received damage will turn it into 5 more hits. And this is supposed to be better?

I mean I can understand some of the arguments against DPS meters, kind of. Really the main argument is that they don't like when people prioritize DPS over other mechanics in the game. So I guess they will take a level 1 person then, because DPS doesn't matter? Oh wait, we can't have numbers, so we can't have levels. Any numerical metric that indicates if something is better than another thing is "bad"? So you take any player that you see and immediately they join the group and no one has any way to tell if they are helping or not?

Math is about ACCURACY.

People arguing about removing all numbers from the game are advocating that players have no accurate metric to determine relative strengths and weaknesses of any particular decision they make. This will just make players blind and frustrated because they don't know what decisions they can make to make them better.

MAYBE there are a couple areas of the game where this blindness is a good thing, and makes the play more fun. But lets not get carried away here.

Ludullu

Xeeg wrote: »

Honestly some of these anti-knowledge/anti-math/anti-DPS meter comments don't really make any sense.

So a talent tree isn't going to say +20/40/60 shadow damage, its just going to say + min/mid/max shadow damage? Then what, you get a +shadow damage item and it says (+something in between min and mid?) lol

You pick up a new sword and it has no stats, no swing damage, no attack speed? I mean, those are the things that make it "better" than another sword. If you don't have the numbers you can't accurately compare.

You get in a fight and there is no health bar? You have no idea that the monster can kill you in 4 more hits because you don't know that you have 400 health and the monster is doing 101 damage. You also don't know the ability giving you -2 received damage will turn it into 5 more hits. And this is supposed to be better?

Yes to all of the above. That sounds like a fun game

Ruerik

These are fun ideas to be fair,

Its just, if the point is to prevent any possibility of a dps meter, then its necessary to look at the network traffic.
Since data is sent from the server, to your computer, about how much damage or healing you did to update your client on the world status, as a end user you actually have access to that, because it is data on your computer.

Even if the screen doesnt show anything to us as a player. Its a very challenging problem to keep information private.

Dygz

Neurath wrote: »

You can see the player health yeah. You just can't see the health of the bosses. I thought we were talking about tracking targets, not the player disposition of the self.

We are talking about why CRPGs have Health meters. And floating damage numbers.
And the reason is because, in video games, we lack most of the senses we would use in the real world to help us determine health and when something is close to death. And visual cues are the quickest and easiest way to help us determine that.
You don't need to do maths to determine that. It's easy enough to just look at a meter and see dwindling health. And you don't really need to "do maths" to know that a hit of 75 dmg is greater than a hit of 10 dmg.

Songcaller

Dygz wrote: »

Neurath wrote: »

You can see the player health yeah. You just can't see the health of the bosses. I thought we were talking about tracking targets, not the player disposition of the self.

We are talking about why CRPGs have Health meters.

If there were no sources of heals there would be no health bars - even health regen is heals. If stamina was unlimited there would be no stamina bar. Same with mana. Its why few games had health bars on the mega drive. They just had multiple lives.

Dygz

Xeeg wrote: »

So a talent tree isn't going to say +20/40/60 shadow damage, its just going to say + min/mid/max shadow damage? Then what, you get a +shadow damage item and it says (+something in between min and mid?)

You don't need to "do maths" to min/mid/max a stat.
You also don't need to "do maths" to place more points in a desired stat.

Xeeg wrote: »

You pick up a new sword and it has no stats, no swing damage, no attack speed? I mean, those are the things that make it "better" than another sword. If you don't have the numbers you can't accurately compare.

I don't need to "do maths" to recognize that a sword has a Shadow stat on it rather than a Fire stat.
I also don't really need to "do maths" to know that +75 Shadow is higher than +10 Shadow.

Xeeg wrote: »

You get in a fight and there is no health bar? You have no idea that the monster can kill you in 4 more hits because you don't know that you have 400 health and the monster is doing 101 damage. You also don't know the ability giving you -2 received damage will turn it into 5 more hits. And this is supposed to be better?

Health bars don't have to display numbers.
Steven says that Ashes Health bars will not display numbers. Especially not on subjects outside of your group.
You won't necessarily have to see numbers to see how much of an impact an attack had on your Health bar.
We can expect visual Health meters in Ashes. They won't necessarily be numerical. And we probably won't be using "maths" to determine how much damage we did to our opponents - especially not in PvP.
That is part of Steven's vision of Risk.

Xeeg wrote: »

I mean I can understand some of the arguments against DPS meters, kind of. Really the main argument is that they don't like when people prioritize DPS over other mechanics in the game. So I guess they will take a level 1 person then, because DPS doesn't matter? Oh wait, we can't have numbers, so we can't have levels. Any numerical metric that indicates if something is better than another thing is "bad"? So you take any player that you see and immediately they join the group and no one has any way to tell if they are helping or not?

Ideally, we should be Roleplaying rather than rollplaying.
I'm not aware of people using absolutes like "any" - that is something you are adding in order to concoct a strawman argument.

Xeeg wrote: »

Math is about ACCURACY.

Irrelevant.

Xeeg wrote: »

People arguing about removing all numbers from the game are advocating that players have no accurate metric to determine relative strengths and weaknesses of any particular decision they make. This will just make players blind and frustrated because they don't know what decisions they can make to make them better.

Who advocated removing all numbers?

Dygz

Taerrik wrote: »

These are fun ideas to be fair,

Its just, if the point is to prevent any possibility of a dps meter, then its necessary to look at the network traffic.
Since data is sent from the server, to your computer, about how much damage or healing you did to update your client on the world status, as a end user you actually have access to that, because it is data on your computer.

Even if the screen doesnt show anything to us as a player. Its a very challenging problem to keep information private.

The point is devs should not implement a UI for DPS meters and therefore not design mobs with the expectation that we must rely on precise calculations derived from DPS meters in order to defeat boss encounters.

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

You don't need to "do maths" to min/mid/max a stat.

Actually, you do.

How else would you know, for example, if adding 10 constitution will give you more HP than adding 100 raw HP?

Math is literally required to min/max, as without it you don't actually know of you are min/maxing at all.

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