Hieromonk said:DPS meter is NOT a tool, it is a visual aid to help those who do not understand the complex equations and formulas of the underlying dice rolls that YOUR CHARACTER is using. Most people who seek dps meters do so because they want arcade style gameplay... instead of knowing their character's capabilities and role. If you want to do ultimate DAMAGE, then be a Wizard.
Again, many who want dps meters, are because they do not want to play a role in Terminus, they just want arcade action & head free entertainment.
Nobody needs DPS meters, they just want them, for ease...
I didn't need a dps meter in eq. I had binders of printout of what the dmg of each weapon was, for my character. And had the formulas worked out. Later on... there where online DPS calculators. It all comes down to how well you prepair your character and perfect your role. Not how much damage one can do... in real time.
Coincidentally, a single landing of a Shaman's SLOW spell, may be more important than any amount of DPS someone is doing. What the DPS meter represent to you, is that HP are all what a MOB is.. and you do not see the value in a well placed spell, or other metrics/actions in combat are as important as DPS. What about heal meters for all the Clerics and healers, to see how much HP per sec they are healing..? Without them, there is no sustained DPS...
Having a DPS meter is a step backwards in a true MMORPG environment and adding it, implies a children's game. A help meter... so you can stay on track and be a good player..? Knowing, and perfecting your role on-the-fly is ROLE PLAYING.
If everyone has a DPS meter, then how would the educated, or vigiliant, or good players... distance themselves from the noobs and bad players..?
My feelings exactly, very well said bro !
Hieromonk said:DPS meter is NOT a tool, it is a visual aid to help those who do not understand the complex equations and formulas of the underlying dice rolls that YOUR CHARACTER is using. Most people who seek dps meters do so because they want arcade style gameplay... instead of knowing their character's capabilities and role. If you want to do ultimate DAMAGE, then be a Wizard.
Again, many who want dps meters, are because they do not want to play a role in Terminus, they just want arcade action & head free entertainment.
Nobody needs DPS meters, they just want them, for ease...
I didn't need a dps meter in eq. I had binders of printout of what the dmg of each weapon was, for my character. And had the formulas worked out. Later on... there where online DPS calculators. It all comes down to how well you prepair your character and perfect your role. Not how much damage one can do... in real time.
Coincidentally, a single landing of a Shaman's SLOW spell, may be more important than any amount of DPS someone is doing. What the DPS meter represent to you, is that HP are all what a MOB is.. and you do not see the value in a well placed spell, or other metrics/actions in combat are as important as DPS. What about heal meters for all the Clerics and healers, to see how much HP per sec they are healing..? Without them, there is no sustained DPS...
Having a DPS meter is a step backwards in a true MMORPG environment and adding it, implies a children's game. A help meter... so you can stay on track and be a good player..? Knowing, and perfecting your role on-the-fly is ROLE PLAYING.
If everyone has a DPS meter, then how would the educated, or vigiliant, or good players... distance themselves from the noobs and bad players..?
I like the way you think, Hiero. :)
I believe there are two seperate things being talked about here that are being lumped in to the same thing. DPS Meters and log parsers do functionally the same thing but there is a distinct difference. What Heiro ranted on is what the "DPS meter" became when the real time on the fly on your game screen "DPS Meter" was introduced to every day game play where they really weren't needed. It became the end all/be all in the eyes of the general populace. Most good raid guilds knew that there were more important things at times such as the slow or a heal as Heiro mentioned but still used their damage log parsers to help defeat content, especially when enrage timers were introduced.
On a side note, I noted most of the recollections of what the dps parser was used for and it almost always involved raids or raiding guilds. I think it's pretty telling that you don't get a lot of complaints about that on various gaming forums regarding it's use in raids. If you are applying for a raid guild and don't meet their requirements, you don't whine about it, you move on. The issue I see is when it is used somewhere it doesn't really belong.
Liav said:A DPS parser doesn't influence how classes are designed. It can influence balance, but that's just about it.
This is the misconception.
A DPS parser isn't about whether or not something is a DPS race. It's about comparing your results. If there are two SKs in a guild and neither of them are tanking, but one of them is doing 25% of the DPS of the other, that is a problem that needs to be sorted. Maybe not in your guild, but in my guild, yes.
This has nothing to do with relaxing environments. If you want to play with people who don't like to play the numbers game, more power to you. Whether or not parsers exist, I'll still be playing with people who care about optimizing their gameplay, and it'll be a relatively exclusivist environment.
That's just MMOs for you.
I quit raiding in Rift..too many egoes/epeen people not talking..stay out of the red goo don't go near the green poo, everyone jump up and down at the same time or die ..raids. :P
DPS meters, I found I was watching that MOST times in raids, (because you know..need for speed above all) more than I was paying attention to my game because of the pressure by your peers to do more and more and more. No thanks, I'll stick to socialization, exploring, crafting..the FUN things (well for me anyway hehe) I'll be looking for all the secret places in Pantheon. And any achieves if they have them. :)
CanadinaXegony said:I quit raiding in Rift..too many egoes/epeen people not talking..stay out of the red goo don't go near the green poo, everyone jump up and down at the same time or die ..raids. :P
DPS meters, I found I was watching that MOST times in raids, (because you know..need for speed above all) more than I was paying attention to my game because of the pressure by your peers to do more and more and more. No thanks, I'll stick to socialization, exploring, crafting..the FUN things (well for me anyway hehe) I'll be looking for all the secret places in Pantheon. And any achieves if they have them. :)
If you spent more time looking at DPS than playing the game, that's your fault as a player.
I've had an extensive raiding career throughout various games, RIFT included. I never even use overlays or anything in-game. DPS is irrelevant information in the middle of a fight. It's a statistic you look at after a fight is already done, to see your performance.
I can only assume you're lying, or that you're simply doing it wrong. I can't think of a single instance where knowing what my DPS is in the middle of a fight is helpful information. This is why I've always used external log parsers.
This isn't even mentioning that the way you described DPS meters in this post makes it sound more like methamphetamine than anything else.
Liav said:CanadinaXegony said:I quit raiding in Rift..too many egoes/epeen people not talking..stay out of the red goo don't go near the green poo, everyone jump up and down at the same time or die ..raids. :P
DPS meters, I found I was watching that MOST times in raids, (because you know..need for speed above all) more than I was paying attention to my game because of the pressure by your peers to do more and more and more. No thanks, I'll stick to socialization, exploring, crafting..the FUN things (well for me anyway hehe) I'll be looking for all the secret places in Pantheon. And any achieves if they have them. :)
If you spent more time looking at DPS than playing the game, that's your fault as a player.
I've had an extensive raiding career throughout various games, RIFT included. I never even use overlays or anything in-game. DPS is irrelevant information in the middle of a fight. It's a statistic you look at after a fight is already done, to see your performance.
I can only assume you're lying, or that you're simply doing it wrong. I can't think of a single instance where knowing what my DPS is in the middle of a fight is helpful information. This is why I've always used external log parsers.
This isn't even mentioning that the way you described DPS meters in this post makes it sound more like methamphetamine than anything else.
You've already stated Liav that you are more of a raid guild kinda guy. What CX described is why a lot of folks don't like them because of what it does to the pickup group. The problem with DPS meters wasn't the raid guilds. It was the regular XP/dungeon crawl group. It didn't happen all the time, but it did happen. With great power comes great responsibility, and lots of EZ mode MMO Gamers can't handle it properly. I'm not really worried about it in Pantheon like I was in Rift.
FierinaFuryfist said:You've already stated Liav that you are more of a raid guild kinda guy. What CX described is why a lot of folks don't like them because of what it does to the pickup group. The problem with DPS meters wasn't the raid guilds. It was the regular XP/dungeon crawl group. It didn't happen all the time, but it did happen. With great power comes great responsibility, and lots of EZ mode MMO Gamers can't handle it properly. I'm not really worried about it in Pantheon like I was in Rift.
I've just never really noticed it in pickup groups. People must have had radically different experiences than me if it happened often enough to be worth mentioning. He also mentioned that he specifically would look at the DPS meter more than the actual game. I can't chalk that up to anything but player error.
SHE...I am female Liav, and in the groups pickup or otherwise in Rift..it was EXPECTED that you keep up which meant you had to keep watching that meter...and if you weren't as fast as the others, then the shaming would happen. I play to have fun, to be social. I have been online gaming since 1995. Raiding isn't for me..at least not the way it happened in Rift. I remember raiding in Vanilla EQ..where it was a HUGE group of people, everyone paid attention to the raid leader's directions...let the tank gain the agro, and then did their best to nuke down the target. We worked together, ninjas were booted, and everyone had the fun they were looking for. These days its all about the macros and the dps meters. Its work..its not play. Its about egoes...not team work. That's what I saw. I am also an older gamer, which means I am not as quick or my fingers aren't as quick as they used to be. I spent time in many pvp games..over the years, can't do that any more. In my view, there should be room and place for most gamers ..to participate. It takes all kinds to make a community. If people are excluded..because they don't rate...because of elitism ideas, then slowly that community will drift away.
That's been my experience and how I see things. And btw indicating that someone is lying..is not the way to maintain a conversation...just thought I would mention that.
Cana
CanadinaXegony said:SHE...I am female Liav
My fault for the assumption. I wasn't paying attention to your username/avatar, only the content of your post.
CanadinaXegony said:, and in the groups pickup or otherwise in Rift..it was EXPECTED that you keep up which meant you had to keep watching that meter...and if you weren't as fast as the others, then the shaming would happen. I play to have fun, to be social. I have been online gaming since 1995. Raiding isn't for me..at least not the way it happened in Rift. I remember raiding in Vanilla EQ..where it was a HUGE group of people, everyone paid attention to the raid leader's directions...let the tank gain the agro, and then did their best to nuke down the target. We worked together, ninjas were booted, and everyone had the fun they were looking for. These days its all about the macros and the dps meters. Its work..its not play. Its about egoes...not team work. That's what I saw. I am also an older gamer, which means I am not as quick or my fingers aren't as quick as they used to be. I spent time in many pvp games..over the years, can't do that any more. In my view, there should be room and place for most gamers ..to participate. It takes all kinds to make a community. If people are excluded..because they don't rate...because of elitism ideas, then slowly that community will drift away.
That's been my experience and how I see things. And btw indicating that someone is lying..is not the way to maintain a conversation...just thought I would mention that.
Cana
I understand what you're saying. What I'm saying is that I played RIFT as well and outside of the hardmode group/raid encounters, I never saw anyone bitching about parses. Maybe the only exceptions were when a fight was lost due to a DPS check, and there were some fights like that if I recall. You can't participate in a hardmode encounter or a fight with a DPS check, fail it, and then expect to not be called out. That's just how the game works. If someone was less than tactful in how they said it to you, that's a separate issue.
RIFT was also designed from the ground up to be a copy of World of Warcraft with different lore. World of Warcraft have designed their game from the ground up to be dependent on various UI mods. Raid encounters are scripted to take them into account.
There is a categorical difference between a game like that, and Pantheon. EverQuest had log parsing and it never influenced the game that way. I'm sorry that you had a bad experience in RIFT.
I'm noticing a trend, though. A conflation of way too many different concepts amalgamated into this thread. A DPS meter is in its entirety a calculator. A log parsing program that outputs DPS is also, in its entirety, a calculator. It consolidates data that you already have available to you into a more user-friendly format. A game like RIFT that had a relatively open API and allowed for dozens of different UI modifications and scripting is something completely different. You mentioned macros in your post. What do macros have to do with the topic of this thread? Absolutely nothing at all.
If you want to debate about the efficacy of DPS MEASUREMENT, I am all ears. I'm having difficulty wading through the oceans of noise that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, however.
Well I guess my experiences count for naught. I was in a raiding guild that I quit eventually because they weren't willing to teach me the way they do things. Instead they directed me at you-tube and I was supposed to spend long hours studying raid techniques. Macros were required in order to keep up. Matter of fact they told you which macros gave the best results and again you were to keep track of the dps meters to keep up. There are some egoes out there and I have encountered a few. Again I will say...that current day raiding isn't for me...so I'll be sure to check before joining any guild..if they are "hardcore" raiders..then we won't be a match. It was a bad experience..and I haven't forgotten.
CanadinaXegony said:Well I guess my experiences count for naught. I was in a raiding guild that I quit eventually because they weren't willing to teach me the way they do things. Instead they directed me at you-tube and I was supposed to spend long hours studying raid techniques. Macros were required in order to keep up. Matter of fact they told you which macros gave the best results and again you were to keep track of the dps meters to keep up. There are some egoes out there and I have encountered a few. Again I will say...that current day raiding isn't for me...so I'll be sure to check before joining any guild..if they are "hardcore" raiders..then we won't be a match. It was a bad experience..and I haven't forgotten.
I wouldnt lump "current day raiding" all into one bucket. That's perhaps part of the problem you're facing. I've been in guilds that run the spectrum from the type you're describing where everyone is hyper-elitist over-achievers, to guilds that "raid" the bosses from 3-4 expansions back with about a 50% success rate and have a blast doing it. If you're not the type of person who wants to commit to the standards of a particular guild, don't join that guild. But none of that really has a damn thing to do with a DPS meter existing or not. Either the people you're with are going to give a crap about that or they arent. If they do give a crap, and you dont like that, find different people.
I am in it for fun as well, not spamming ROTATIONS because it is KNOWN for highest DPS...
Although I have done high end raiding as DPS and tank, heck even heals, I am done being that intense in games anymore. It just is not worth my time... I would rather hang out with friends, help everyone achieve our goals together. As you progress in gear and abilities, I would imagine that the game should get slightly easier, especially after getting to know what your class can do in situations.
As stated many times before, I really hope pure DPS won't matter in Pantheon and it comes down to group effort on controlling mini events within a fight. Success should be measured by "did the boss die" not burn it down in a specific amount of time!!
Pyye said:As stated many times before, I really hope pure DPS won't matter in Pantheon and it comes down to group effort on controlling mini events within a fight. Success should be measured by "did the boss die" not burn it down in a specific amount of time!!
But the devs have repeatedly described the intent of the design to be a role-based game. That every class will fill a role, and that we should not expect a person to be able to fill multiple roles. They want the interdependency of defined and limited roles. What you're describing is a game in which those traditional roles of tank, healer, dps, cc, are somewhat meaningless; a game in which everyone is performing utility function in swatting down sub-fights or puzzle-like whack-a-mole scripted events. If being capable of producing sufficient damage to end the fight before the group is overwhelmed by these alternate events, then the dps role need not exist. Does that mean that the healing role also doesnt? The tanking role?
Pyye said:As stated many times before, I really hope pure DPS won't matter in Pantheon and it comes down to group effort on controlling mini events within a fight. Success should be measured by "did the boss die" not burn it down in a specific amount of time!!
That's too bad, considering that the trinity is a fundamental tenet of Pantheon's gameplay.
Edit: This thread is getting derailed as ****. Can we start a new one?
I've said it a few times in this thread already I think, but the more you let players see streamlined info and "peek behind the curtain", the more you turn any game from an RPG to a spreadsheet game. As others have echoed, there is no NEED for meters or to see how much attack STR gives or how much crit AGI gives at all. They should do everything in their power to keep important information OUT of our hands. Content lasts much, much, much longer that way.
I agree that its better for the details and exact formulas to remain a mystery. It adds more meta to the game for sure. However, what makes it fun is the process of determining what is best. Without a way to do that you are just leaving players in the dark for no good reason.
I'm really not sure why this thread continues. There will be logging and people will parse those logs. If that sort of thing was truly against Pantheon or VRs goals, they could easily take steps to prevent it.
picks86 said:I've said it a few times in this thread already I think, but the more you let players see streamlined info and "peek behind the curtain", the more you turn any game from an RPG to a spreadsheet game. As others have echoed, there is no NEED for meters or to see how much attack STR gives or how much crit AGI gives at all. They should do everything in their power to keep important information OUT of our hands. Content lasts much, much, much longer that way.
At its base, this sounds nice. However in reality it quickly becomes unworkable and un-fun.
Put it this way: You enjoy finding new gear I bet? Isnt it fun to go to loot after a big fight with a named, and there's a huge upgrade! How do you know? You know because you're looking at stats. You know because you look at the gear and see that you're going to add a ton to your STR, you're increasing your base damage, and the weapons is faster. What's also fun and interesting to many is when there's a complex consideration to make; Well, technically the base damage on this weapon is higher, but I'll lose a little DEX and speed, but it has a wicked proc that does X damage...
The point is all that is a meta-game in and of itself. The process of determining if an item should be used over what you already have. Without stats, without hard numbers, without information, you arent able to make an educated assessment. The only alternative to that is to have the item bounce up and down in your inventory and say "Hey! I'm an upgrade! Use me!".
Now compound all this with the fact that this game will require people to make those assessments, not just in a general sense, but repeatedly based on environments.
This is of course all just the foundation of a game that will inherently require players to assess hard numbers, and data. Even if you didnt give the players any of it you can be very assured that people would do whatever it takes to deconstruct the game and get the data. It wouldnt be long at all before people were using routines to parse the health bar of mobs to start getting data on what the underlying numbers are. They may not get it perfect, but they'd get it close.
There's a truism in computer security circles : Security thru obscurity. Hide the fact that the thing exists, or bury it so far under layers of garbage that it becomes more of a pain than its worth to attack. It's generally considered a pretty weak method of security. In some ways it entices people to dig, because if someone went thru that much effort to hide it, there's got to be something people want to get to. It demonstrates some basic human nature. People WILL get the data. They will get a parser functioning, and they will get out-of-game DPS meters working. They will do so despite the best intentions of any dev. And at that point, they will have an advantage over every player who isnt using those tools and data.
So you can either embrace the idea that you can choose to use the tools that those mean, rude, elitist power-gamers are using. Or you can accept that you have widened the gap between yourselves and them even more than would exist otherwise simply because you want things to be obscure. And you'll remove a lot of the fun you might not admit to yourself that you're having in these games.
@Feyshtey If I read the data that the top tier monks have gleaned regarding weapon and gear upgrades(for EQ1 this was available for anyone to read online @ monkly business) how does that make me any less of a monk just because I may or may not have a DPS Meter? Those cutting edge folks who are theorycrafting the hell out of everything are not the problem with a DPS meter.
I'll admit to there being a pretty big equipment gap between top tier raiding monks and those PUGGING max level XP groups. But you know what? Those Puggers weren't denied a group because of what some parser said about their damage output.
FierinaFuryfist said:@Feyshtey If I read the data that the top tier monks have gleaned regarding weapon and gear upgrades(for EQ1 this was available for anyone to read online @ monkly business) how does that make me any less of a monk just because I may or may not have a DPS Meter? Those cutting edge folks who are theorycrafting the hell out of everything are not the problem with a DPS meter.
I'll admit to there being a pretty big equipment gap between top tier raiding monks and those PUGGING max level XP groups. But you know what? Those Puggers weren't denied a group because of what some parser said about their damage output.
Absolutely agree! This is a good tool but with anything and how competitive everything has gotten this will get abused. In my WoW days I can recall not getting allowed to go on a raid not due to gear it was how I was using it. I did not fall in the top 5% of what the group wanted. I pretty much told them to kiss my bow and went with another group.
I have mixed feelings here but I think it would be a good tool for some. Just worried that people will start the same old stuff here.
Ox
Oxillion said:Absolutely agree! This is a good tool but with anything and how competitive everything has gotten this will get abused. In my WoW days I can recall not getting allowed to go on a raid not due to gear it was how I was using it. I did not fall in the top 5% of what the group wanted. I pretty much told them to kiss my bow and went with another group.
I have mixed feelings here but I think it would be a good tool for some. Just worried that people will start the same old stuff here.
Ox
I mean, that would happen independent of parsing. If we're fighting a dragon and someone's MR is so low that they're going to get feared 95% of the time, there's no reason I should allow them into my guild/group/whatever.
Casual guilds simply won't be clearing the harder raid content. They won't have gear requirements as strict as upper echelon guilds. That is the raiding dynamic that has existed in games for about two decades, before log parsing and DPS meters were ever popular. If I can look at someone's gear and tell that they will not be useful on an encounter, they will not be participating in that encounter with me.
It's not mean. It's not elitist. If I wanted to be a dick about it, I definitely could, but there's no need for that. If someone asks for a group invite and I look at their HP and see that they will get one shotted by an AOE, I can tell them "I'm sorry but your gear isn't quite good enough for this, you need a lot more HP". I could also say "lel **** off newb, your gear is bad and you should feel bad".
What I'm getting at is that this has nothing to do with log parsing, or DPS. Pantheon doesn't have revolutionary game mechanics that let you slay endgame dragons while wearing a Cloth Cap. If it did, I'm sure that would have been stated in the tenets. The same principles apply at all facets of gameplay.
If someone wants to participate in specific content, there are standards that need to be met:
You can insert any facet of a player's gameplay into this, and it will come out the same way. DPS is simply one measurement by which player performance is measured. The same paradigm will exist independent of how easily we can access information about other player's performance. Even if we had absolutely zero information about another player (gear, DPS, etc) it simply means they're going to be invited to do content they can't reasonably do. When that player ends up dead on the ground every time an AOE goes off, some facet of their gameplay is bad. It's either gear, they're not jousting enough, we're not meeting DPS checks, etc.
Simply put, EQ and VG both allowed parsing. And I think it would be hard to find even a few people on these forums who didn't love at least one of those games. So it would appear that parsing, even though permitted in those games, never ruined the experience for you. So fear not, PRotF's experience will not be harmed by parsers being permitted.
PRotF will have many different combat strategies. And while it will be far from a complete dps race, dps checks will most likely be found here and there. It's just one of many different techniques encounters will have. Dps checks are not cheap, they are not the cause of lazy developers. It is a valid combat strategy as long as it's not used in every fight which it never has nor does it seem like it ever will be in PRotF.
FierinaFuryfist said:@Feyshtey If I read the data that the top tier monks have gleaned regarding weapon and gear upgrades(for EQ1 this was available for anyone to read online @ monkly business) how does that make me any less of a monk just because I may or may not have a DPS Meter? Those cutting edge folks who are theorycrafting the hell out of everything are not the problem with a DPS meter.
It doesnt make you any less of a monk. It can potentially make you more effective in dealing damage in some scenarios, but a lot of those old EQ classes took a little finesse with the background knowledge too. But that's really not the point of the convesation. If those cutting edge folks are not the problem, who is? The people that just want pickup groups? Or to play casually with their friends? (I fall into this category, btw.) Do you assume that those people arent interested at all in knowing if they are doing things well, or if so, how well? Should they have a tool to measure their effectiveness? Or should the game, by deliberate design, leave that player to the inevitable uncomfortable conversation no matter how well intentioneed, that someone has to tell them that they really kinda suck?
FierinaFuryfist said:I'll admit to there being a pretty big equipment gap between top tier raiding monks and those PUGGING max level XP groups. But you know what? Those Puggers weren't denied a group because of what some parser said about their damage output.
1) Parsing is going to happen with or without DPS meters. No getting around it, and its just going to be a fact of life in some (most?) guilds/raids.
2) No one is suggesting a DPS meter than gives a real-time assessment of anyone's performance other than your own. So this is irrevelent to any conversation about PUGs.
Feyshtey said:2) No one is suggesting a DPS meter than gives a real-time assessment of anyone's performance other than your own. So this is irrevelent to any conversation about PUGs.
I've never played a game with parsing that didn't give you access to other player's parses.
Oxillion said:Absolutely agree! This is a good tool but with anything and how competitive everything has gotten this will get abused. In my WoW days I can recall not getting allowed to go on a raid not due to gear it was how I was using it. I did not fall in the top 5% of what the group wanted. I pretty much told them to kiss my bow and went with another group.
I have mixed feelings here but I think it would be a good tool for some. Just worried that people will start the same old stuff here.
Ox
No one is promoting a DPS meter as a means to judge anyone but yourself, so I'm not really sure why we keep getting derailed into this notion of it preventing anyone getting a group or a raid invite.
Log parsing may do that, but only in two scenarios; 1) if you are attending a second event with a guild or group and they have data from the last time you went with showing that you were not up to a certain standard, or 2) if someone in a group/raid is actively parsing and evaluating the data real-time. I dont think I've ever seen that done, and I've never seen someone told to leave a raid or group because of it. I've seen people kciked out for being idiots, or being jerks, or it being painfully obvious that they really had no idea at all what they were doing. But frankly if you've done a minimum to try to help someone and they just dont get it, your night's play should not be at risk of being nothing but corpse recoveries just to save someone's feelings. And this is still not the point of the thread.