It's hard to justify something like a DPS meter in a game that is suppose to focus on social connections and interactions. Meters turn the game into a spreadsheet that cares little for what a player's friendly company has to offer above and beyond the numbers. It's part of the reason why I despise raiding as it dehumanizes the players and turns them into efficient number crunchers who are more worried about results than the actual adventure.
Vorthanion said:It's hard to justify something like a DPS meter in a game that is suppose to focus on social connections and interactions. Meters turn the game into a spreadsheet that cares little for what a player's friendly company has to offer above and beyond the numbers. It's part of the reason why I despise raiding as it dehumanizes the players and turns them into efficient number crunchers who are more worried about results than the actual adventure.
Was about to post a topic on this when I decided to google search and found this. Glad to see they won't be supported through UI by the dev team. I don't mind log parsing, as it serves a similar purpose without the "sheepful" approach of an ingame realtime dps meter.
Since this resurfaced again, I guess I just don't want to see modern technology that simplifies anything. I am not into simple point and click features that make the game easier. Example, a simple program that allows you to measure your DPS or stats or whatever to gage your improvements. Why not get to really know your class on your own, gage all your improvements on your many experiences throughout the world?
Another thing is, I don't want a game that gets me mad obsessed about improving gear constantly. I hope the game offers many things to get involved with other than chasing gear to succeed. I am super old fashioned though, I would still love it if you have to utilize a fresh notepad to take many notes in or draw maps with key land marks. This is what I love...
The problem is that in a game like Pantheon, your DPS is nearly 100% reliant on your gear. The only way to completely optimize your gear for a given situation is to have data available to you to figure it out.
Either the stat system is so simple that some items are very clear upgrades (item level), or you have to do some math. Measuring DPS is just a way of doing math for what is arguably the most numbers-based portion of the game.
Being a good healer and a good tank require you to be very reactionary. Being a good DPS requires you to be reactionary as well, but the role of a DPS is reduced to math more so than any other role in the game.
TL;DR: If you want to optimize, "experience" isn't good enough. Also DPS parsing isn't modern technology, DPS parsers have existed for over a decade in EQ and other games.
I know the concerns about dps meters. But without the knowledge how to play your role/class it will have other consequences. If the dps classes don't know how to make full damage, the fights will last longer an the healers could run out of mana. If the group wipes then the healers will be blamed although it was not their fault. Then the people will stop playing healers because they don't want to be blamed for other players fails and then you will have an overall healer shortage in the game. And a lack of healers is typical for the most mmorpgs.
I find, ingame dps meters are not really bad.
Greetings
DPS meters don't bother me. As a matter of fact, I might actually find them informative.
I'm hoping the community as a whole will discourage the "shaming" that they can be abused to cause. The truth is that a raid leader who would call people out from the results of a DPS meter, will exhibit the same behavior without it, and that's not the kind of guild I would have any interest in being part of in the first place.
If it eventually turns out that that is the only kind of experience I can hope find in a raiding guild, then this just won't be the game for me. I really don't expect that to be the case, though.
DPS Meter, I don't like it, but if it is in the game or not I will probably have to have the ability to get the info and do the math; because later on in the game many people only care about how much damage or healing you can do. You can be a good player and intelligent in a situation gone wrong but it will not matter in the later game if it sinks into Flag, Raid, Rinse, Repeat unless you have a group of actual friends that you have made along the way. Lets hope that almost all content is for grouping, and discovery about a person will mean more than pure numbers.
I always liked being able to parse my DPS. Tweaking my combat rotation/testing damage limits with different gear etc. has always been a hobby for number crunchers like myself, and raw data is needed for that. Besides, didn't I see that they're going to have combat logs somewhere? If there's going to be combat logs, I think this a moot discussion anyway. Unless of course, I misread somewhere.
I hear a lot of people talk about all these douchebags like having dps meters will bring out the pricks who will yell at you if you're not pumping out max damage. I've heard it with the discussion over in-game voice chat where people don't want to have to deal with annoying people or people eating in the microphone or the voice chat being a problem in raids. And I've never had a problem with voice chat in an MMO.
And I've never had a problem with people posting results of a dps check. We have fun with it. And we use it to defeat boss fights. I personally like a dps meter so I can learn how to produce as much dps as I can. Sure, I'm a min/maxxer to a degree but I also like people to know they can count on me so I try to know my class inside out. In raids we've always liked to post dps results as a means of friendly competition. But it's never turned into a problem. The people I hang around don't shun people for low 'numbers'. We try to help each other as a team.
I agree to a certain extent that boss fights can become lazy coding/design with the 'dps check' strategy. But it isn't always lazy coding. Requiring players to burn a boss within a certain amount of time is a valid strat just like requiring players to stop dps or only using magic/melee etc etc. If the boss requires you to burn it down and your group is having troubles with the 'dps check' then a dps meter can help determine where the group can pick up some extra dps. A good raid leader will never shame a player for not 'meeting expectations'. A good raid leader will help every player be the best they can be because a lot of challenging bosses require players to be the best they can be and that includes knowing when to cast a skill just as much as knowing how to produce a decent range of dps for your class.
I don't mind add-ons so I would be fine if the game didn't have one and somebody made one. But I do kind of wish the devs would think of these things so that add-ons weren't needed. I feel like add-ons do create 'cheats' and then who can stop who from using them when they are permitted. I never understood how WoW allowed what was it 'boss mods' are whatever? The add-on that basically told you how to fight bosses, when to cast a certain spell, when to interupt, when the boss was going to cast a big spell, when to jump, etc etc. This add-on made it so you never really needed to learn any boss strats, you just follow the add-on's guidance and win. That's crazy to me.
Vorthanion said:It's part of the reason why I despise raiding as it dehumanizes the players and turns them into efficient number crunchers who are more worried about results than the actual adventure.
I don't care about meters one way or the other with the exception of threat meters - I despise those because it makes for a worse player, they never develop a feel for their class. Personally I like to know by feel how I'm doing. It adds a layer of thrill to the game.
I don't use them and don't feel I need to.
As a raid or group leader if you can't tell someone is slacking then you and your group leaders are not doing THEIR job.
One flip side I haven't seen anyone post about (but I may have missed) is the harmful side to the group/raid of meters on individual players. Wanting to be top DPS can lead to someone pulling a mob when they really shouldn't. Leads to healers over healing to top the heal charts (thus using skills/mana they may need later). Leads to tanks having to work harder than they should (also possibly using skills) because people are over healing and over dpsing or tanks trying to draw aggro from other tanks (in Age of Conan, for example, there was a damage taken chart). Trying too hard can screw up an encounter just as much as doing too little.
I feel that, without meters, groups and raids can function as a machine better and it helps players learn their characters better; however, meters are so much a part of modern gaming I don't see them being locked out in any effective way. Compiled outside of game with a link posted in game is simple enough, for example.
FierinaFuryfist said: The ignorance of the players in your example might represent avg_mmo_03 but I'm not too worried about that here. One thing dps meters did is take all the talent choices of games like Rift and Wow and render most of them useless. All those different souls in Rift, many with good synergy, and only a couple out of the seemingly infinite synergistic combinations are valid. EQ had log parsing since raiding was a thing. But it was not a thing while grouping in High Keep or Plane of Justice or Lower Guk. When someone joined a group in Karnor's Castle nobody cared what your dps was. The DPS meter took a useful raid tool and poisoned XP grouping with it. All that said, maturity is key and even if this game came with a dps meter i don't feel it would see as much abuse as other games.
very well said.
What I always despised about DPS meters is that people use their parse as a justification for their playstyle or validation of their playing ability. Cannot count how many times some DPS has posted his parse in group chat trying to show off. Three pulls later he pulls agro and wipes the group. Sometimes DPS forgets that part of their job is agro management. If you outclass your tank signifigantly or the game you are playing does not have easymode tanking and sgro management your parse does not mean a thing if you are screwing the group over. Those guys always blame the tank when things go south, because they were doing more than their share with that awesome parse right?
You don't need a dps meter to know if the dps in your group or raid is pulling their weight. It will be known on the first pull. And by doing a quick gear check you can almost certianly find out where your weak link is without a dps meter. Ranks right up there with addons that tell you when to joust or when to cure.
Not many will side with me on this from the looks of it thus far... However, I would love it if gamers just played and progressed because they learn how they play their class well. A person playing their class well, does the key things during fights to add to success (manages mana correctly, situationally correct, high DPS when needed, etc..) I still do not get why someone needs to monitor "data" to become better Or be given this info for bragging rights. This seems artificial to me, like we are being given information that is not a part of the game itself.
I have defeated MANY solo games in my time and never had to have "data" to assist me. There were many tough fights and I always stuck with it, improved what I needed to do, and succeeded. Just because it is an MMO, you suddenly need data? In the big picture of what games have become, do you think this all design related?
I was one of the top PvP'ers in Archeage and never once had to parse data to become good. I experimented out in the world against other players or the mobs and figured out the best combos etc...
Does anyone out there see my points at all?? I will play the game either way, just stating why I stand where I do on DPS meters.
Pyye said:Not many will side with me on this from the looks of it thus far... However, I would love it if gamers just played and progressed because they learn how they play their class well. A person playing their class well, does the key things during fights to add to success (manages mana correctly, situationally correct, high DPS when needed, etc..) I still do not get why someone needs to monitor "data" to become better Or be given this info for bragging rights. This seems artificial to me, like we are being given information that is not a part of the game itself.
I have defeated MANY solo games in my time and never had to have "data" to assist me. There were many tough fights and I always stuck with it, improved what I needed to do, and succeeded. Just because it is an MMO, you suddenly need data? In the big picture of what games have become, do you think this all design related?
I was one of the top PvP'ers in Archeage and never once had to parse data to become good. I experimented out in the world against other players or the mobs and figured out the best combos etc...
Does anyone out there see my points at all?? I will play the game either way, just stating why I stand where I do on DPS meters.
On this site I think you'll be in the majority. Other sites you would be extreme minority. I fought against it during Rift beta, and was pushing for logs that can be parsed by an external program(what it appears we will be getting here). We had that from launch until about 2 minutes after the api was released for add ons...
Pyye said:Does anyone out there see my points at all?? I will play the game either way, just stating why I stand where I do on DPS meters.
In games where DPS is the main function of a group, a DPS meter can be exactly what many are saying. A way for d-bags to show off and be pretentious about their skillz. I think we can all agree that nobody likes that guy.
The difference - hopefully - between Pantheon and those other MMO's is that there will be more to a fight than DPS. There will be crowd control, aggro management, positioning. Strategy! Yes, you'll have those few jacks that will wipe a group because they just can't stop themselves from showing off that DPS meter, but this kind of goes back to the community policing itself.
If they do that, don't group with them. If this game doesn't allow off the cuff name changes and server transfers, reputation matters. So fine, let them wipe the group, and let us blacklist them.
There is nothing wrong with a tool. A tool is exactly that, a tool. It's where the tool is present and how to the tool is used that creates friction. In Pantheon, hopefully, this tool will be used exactly as it's intended. As a way for the individual to have data available to them in helping to improve their character. There is no harm in that.
With that said, about the aggro meters, yea ...I don't much like that. Like, seriously, you need a meter to show that you can't hold aggro? We already have that tool. It's called a health bar.
-Tralyan
NoobieDoo and Tralyan...
Great posts in response to mine so thanks for the input. I am leaning toward a game where the majority of the bosses will not be pure DPS checks to succeed. Teaching someone how to be situationally correct in fights is always a LOT harder when it comes to managing mana, and keeping people alive (which = DPS). We all know those people that drain healers because they can't grasp situational mechanics!!
I am excited and really think the Devs will not chase pure DPS check bosses. There will be some for sure, and I can see where parsing will be necessary for serious guilds to improve on.
Thanks again...