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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place five days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Comments
I do math too. but you guys still don't get it. not all the info that you need is found in the combat logs.
When seriously playing a game like Ashes, particularly in PvP, your goal is not often to understand either of those things.
Let's ignore the tracker part of this. A Mage's concern in group PvP generally should not be 'highest damage output' or 'saving their mana' in a non-simplistic game. The Mage is probably trying to work out 'exactly how much defense they need to survive long enough for their cooldowns to come back up again' in a certain situation.
For the eight mage Classes in Ashes, this will be different, and then it will depend on their party. And the effectiveness of their party will depend on which class they are, changing their goals. A Mage/Tank might have survivability from Augments but not as much cooldown/mana cost reduction. A Mage/Ranger might be able to apply defense reduction debuffs to enemies, but then be concerned about having survivability from their gear and not care about saving mana at all OR doing their own damage.
Or, because of their party composition, none of that will be true and the Mage/Tank will use their augments in some unconventional way, becoming 'a Lockdown Spellstone build' instead of a 'Disruption Spellstone build' because that's what their team needs.
This is the thing that people do on-the-fly, sometimes twice per hour, in other games. You now seem to be at the point in this Classes discussion where you are saying you just don't want people to be able to figure out how to play their class well, in general. Is it that you somehow value 'people having to struggle much more to understand their class'?
I am not really challenging your desire here, but if 'me getting good at my class' is the thing that leads to 'speedrunning of content' and you're against it for that reason, then isn't your goal to 'artificially inflate the time spent on the game' for some reason?
Arguments like 'people will be less social', 'people will kick others/be toxic and elitist', and 'people will use data wrong and create drama' are all related to trackers, yes, but what you are targeting now doesn't really seem to be about trackers, it's moreso an 'anti-skill' argument...
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
And where do you get those numbers from so you can do the math?
What Information can't I see in the Combat logs?
Actually yeah I'm happy to pivot to that too, at least, since I can at least relate it to classes.
Let's discuss this as JUST Combat Logs, and what we can and can't do with them, because strictly speaking, we're getting to the point where you (@Depraved) and Mag are kinda arguing against combat logs (or basically telling people that you aren't good at these games, I wish I had a different way of seeing it but it is what it is).
The parts that a combat log doesn't show are the parts you should have actual memory of, physically. So what's the deal here? Are we expecting people to 'look at the log and then entirely drop the memory of what was on the screen at the time in the log timestamp?
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Again, you are talking about misused combat trackers. You seem to think people will look at just one aspects of something to make a decision, which is either an illogical or dishonest argument on your part (depends on whether you actually believe what you are saying or not).
A combat tracker isn't going to tell me if auto attacks in any given game are worth using in PvP. What it can do is give me easy access to data from experiments I run in order to evaluate auto attacks in PvP. Using that data, I can then make my own decision.
That data includes everything - it includes damage, combat resources, it includes secondary effects that may be part of or triggered by auto attack (damage procs, interrupts, what ever). Literally everything is in a good combat log (they can be used to recreate exact replications of combat in entierity).
I talk about people doing the best they can, not the best people.
People not putting thought at all in to their build (and thus making poor decisions) are not doing the best they can. The best they can would necessitate at least looking up a good build. That is something that is available to the entire population of any given MMORPG.
No, you are just either failing to understand, or refusing to understand (my guess is refusing - this is really basic stuff).
You use a combat tracker to gain an understanding of the games combat system, and the individual mechancis that make up the combat system.
This means that by the time you get to the point where you need to make a decision, you already know what the right choice is because you have a deeper understanding of the systems at play. Thus you don't need to use a combat tracker at that point in time to get the answer - you have already learned the answer by gaining a basic understanding of the combat system.
The big difference between what you do and what I do is that I understand the outliers. You don't.
I would wager that there is a situation in L2 where auto attacks absolutely are worth using to some degree in PvP. I have absolutely no doubt that you wouldn't be aware of it, but if I played L2, I would.
This is what happened in Archeage. I'm not an overly good PvP player (not shit, but not great). However, because I had data that no one else had in that game, I was easily able to take on 3 or 4 equally geared players at a time. It isn't that I was good, it was that I knew how the games combat system was broken.
An example of that is that I knew which races were more susceptible to CC than the other races. This wasn't something that was known, there was no stated alteration to CC susceptability with race selection - there there were two races that were significantly more susceptable to all forms of CC.
Thus, if I was playing a game where auto attack wasn't worth using in PvP, but had a chance to interrupt component attached to it, and I also knew that there were some races that were more susceptable to CC than others, I would absolutely consider using auto attack if I came up against someone of one of those susceptable races that happened to be a caster or healer.
Your way of going about things isn't going to tell you that. You'll happily just thing that auto attack isn't worth using, and consider that something you now just know.
It is worth putting in here that literally every game I have ever played (EQ, EQ2, WoW, Rift, Archeage, AoC, WAR, DDO, LotRO, STO, EVE, Allods, BDO, ESO, GW2, Aion, several more) has had anomolies like the above in it. It is normal, it is not the exception.
Ashes absolutely will have things like this - you won't know of them.
I will.
Combat trackers don't tell people what to do. They give players specific points of information - that is all.
If a player doesn't take in to account all appropriate information, they may well make the wrong decision. If a player has incorrect information they may also make the wrong decision.
However, that applies to people that don't use combat trackers as well. If you don't use a combat tracker and you also don't take all the appropriate information in to account, you will make a poor decision. If you don't use a combat tracker and have incorrect information, you may still also make a wrong decision.
Having a combat tracker reduces the chances of having bad information, and gives you access to information faster, meaning you can either get it sooner (thus making the decision sooner), or you can get more information, making the information you are making your decision on statistically more accurate.
There is no situation where a properly used combat tracker can lead someone to a wrong choice where it isn't also equally or more viable for someone without a combat tracker to make that same wrong choice.
It is you saying "the combat tracker told you" really is screaming to the rest of us that you only know how to misuse a combat tracker.
This feels like a pretty bad take.
It can feel any which way you want. The fact remains we are still on base archetypes with few if any augments shown. A2 is in Q3 which means augments must exist. As a fundamental aspect of the class dynamics the augments should be shown in full operation prior to A2 alongside the rest of the classes. 8 years is a long time to have shown so little. Each time a class is shown its always half baked and basic principles.
IT isnt 8 years of 300 devs working on the game. That is include preproduction elements, building tech, vertical slice, etc.
ITs a indie studio so they have less resources and have to build a team, etc. Its a lot more work than being already established Ie ubisoft, epic games, bioware, etc.
Yes. I understand the principles of indie development. You skipped over my point entirely - unless the devs are about to encode several thousand augments in 9 months some augments must exist. We don't even have knowledge of all the augment trees for each class yet let alone the standalone trees for augments. Thus, to my mind, a massive chunk of combat is MIA.
Ya im sure most of the stuff is mia. Baseline will be there by alpha 2 and be easier to develop from that point since it wont be blank canvases at that point.
Granted maybe they are further along than we realize hard to share every detail of their development in that hour and half time frame once per month.
Exactly. Noanni you are wasting your time talking to Depraved. He doesn't understand it and he doesn't want to understand it. There are many of us that do understand it and know exactly what you are saying.
When we play a game we can only guess at the underlying mechanics, ie: "How the game actually works". The only way to find out for sure is through testing. All the combat tracker is doing is visually displaying our tests. Every fight you do is a test of the game systems.
Once we understand how the game works, we can design builds and arrange tradeoffs. Without this knowledge it is all guesswork and likely wrong.
I've been advocating for target dummies and trackers on multiple threads but just get brushed off... Shrug.
Don't know how many hours ive spent in games on dummies with trackers tweaking builds and seeing dmg profile responses. Then trading off some dmg here and there for some versatility in order to make a good 2v2 build, or battleground build, or open world build, or raid build.
It sounds like a lot of people in these forums just guess at what seems cool and never verify anything. No wonder they end up using cookie cutter meta builds from other people.
So, Intrepid is wrong, wanting their players to actually play their game?
Instead, you bake your huge cockie in a testing environment rather than going out in the world and enjoying combat, gameplay, and time with your friends.
Getting brushed off on multiple occasions means you do something wrong or it isn't relevant for others.
Make your exact builds, juggle 90% of your time with math, numbers, graphs, and 3rd party tools but don't force your playstyle indirectly on other players who want to have fun with in-house gameplay mechanics.
There are reasons why Intrepid doesn't want to bother with it, accept it!... all of you.
New days - people looking to find out the best thing instantly with as little work and as fast as possible with less social interaction.
Yeah you just suck or are trolling. But you've irritated my group enough that I'm shifting the usual way, have fun with them instead today.
Anyone who thinks that people who use logs/replays to work out stuff are less social and more toxic, can't be counted on for much in tough games.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
You've never been on the internet if you think a group of people can all look at something and agree what happened. The whole point of the log is so they can put in the work.
Otherwise we just get more of "you claiming nobody else knows what they're looking at".
Fist of, combat tracker have been in MMOs for a long time. I know for example that EverQuest 2 had it. So it's not a new thing.
Secondly, people that use combat tracker still very very much do social interactions. And finding the best possible way to play takes times and always changes. A good example is for example the theory crafters for ferals in classic wow. They feral community is Insanely active and shares ideas and theories.
It is however true that some played just want to "Winn the game" as fast as possible and don't do any social interactions or try and get game knowledge by them self. But that's not the type of players you are currently talking to.
The point of the log is to reduce work and make things faster else people wouldn't use it.
Goes both ways my group thinks u have no clue what you are talking about.
When you have a bunch of WoW and Ff players that can go to a website look someone or a build up and use that as a judgement sounds like you are skipping a lot of social elements. This is what happens when you are sitting in a bubble with the same people.
The point of a good combat log is to compile the combat data in a readable and effective way. Instead of having to do it by recording screen and the rewatching it to do calculations by hand (pen and paper).
Oh, so you are against combat logs and such. That makes so much more sense now.
I admit to being entirely foolish enough to think that somehow you were making a real argument that logs are fine but trackers are bad, but you just don't like people having data.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
Personal combat logs are fine, I'm against trackers and everything it leads to as well as tracking everyone around you automatically, and combat logs viewing other players around you.
When you get hit by NPCS imo you should have limited information from that as well. As in damage and not types (though I'm sure that wont be happening and you will have more detailed information).
Figure out NPcs knowing their strengths and weaknesses for gearing should as well be part of the challenge. Even more so with AoC being as it is to make up for parts of challenges lost because of the nature of the game.
Personal only and hand and paper is what you should do. It means more work going in and some people will be known for that. Everyone will find out different things and theorycraft on it. When we are getting to the point of some program reading insane detailed analytics and that is what is doing all the work so you can figure things out faster and alone. That is a issue to me that leads to less social interaction, allows you to run content faster, allows you to optimize your build faster, etc.
Respect for the journey is loss and you are effectively just being a half cyborg at that point. The next level becomes AI being very effective in giving exact answers instantly. Which all this gets deeper, lopng story short you aren't actually clearing content yourself.
And to bring back the thread at least partially...
If Intrepid doesn't want to bother with 'people doing things in testing environments' they should probably take the BDO/Quinfall route and simplify builds to have less variety.
Obviously, players just 'create their own testing environments' in some way otherwise. You read too much into Xeeg's post, too.
Note this part:
"Once we understand how the game works, we can design builds and arrange tradeoffs. Without this knowledge it is all guesswork and likely wrong."
The thing that is happening isn't 'this is telling me what to do', it is 'I have a goal and I want to check if my goal is achieved with this gear setup, against a consistent situation'. Without this, the game turns into 'everyone of this type trying to go out and find their one simplistic consistent mob to do the same tests on'.
I don't care about Training Dummies vs not, but Intrepid would have to change the design of the game to be much shallower if they 'don't want to bother with it', or so complex and dynamic that the people who don't do this, won't even want to play (for many reasons).
So, if Intrepid somehow actually had a goal of 'making it a bad idea to parse their combat log and use training dummies or mob equivalents of training dummies', then having 64 classes is definitely a bad idea, even before any consideration of the high freedom allowed in builds, weapons, and augments.
"For what...?"
"Just about everything, really."
"People shouldn't wear glasses, it makes it faster and easier to see the stuff on screen." It doesn't automatically problem solve to have transparent information about enemies. It doesn't even really make it 'easier' unless we count 'putting glasses on' instead of squinting making math or tactical problems 'easier'.
I am glad modern designers have moved towards data transparency. Less time wasted on arguing with otherwise reasonable people who just forgot to put their glasses on. Less toxic.
It also means that less players will be able to and have the time to do analysis of the combat. Meaning that people will have to listen to other players even more since "they have done the pen and paper calculations". A casual player could never do their own quick analysis to confirm or deny. So there will be less detailed theory crafting and more guess work and not actually getting anywhere.
A good example of this is actually wow. Since wow classic came out in 2019 there have been crazy theory crafting on all classes and new ways of playing/breaking a class. This would never happen back in 2005, since combat logs and theory crafting, did exist, was much less common (and less people playing the game).
You can still play wow classic without logs or doing/listing to theory crafting, but you probably won't be able to play with the top top end players that requires you to do simulations and pushing your class to the limits. And that's fine.
I personally don't see the point that the "journey is lost"... For me it's more that the journey opens up more at the end game when I do a little bit of optimizing and theory crafting with (or without) combat logs at max level.
In other words, if a fire mob hits you with fire and a fire mage hits you with fire, should the log say "you received fire dmg" or should it say "you received dmg from this source", but it'd be on you to know what type of dmg that source puts out?
Cause I want full transparency on pve side (with types/passives/etc shown in the mob nameplate), while barely any transparency on the pvp side. So imo the log should say the latter sentence.