Do you support an in game version of Recount. Please give reasons for your answer.

[AlpsStranger]

I can't help him if I can't figure out what he is doing, and what he should be doing. And I can't do that without some analysis tools.

 

N00B! Electron microscopes are ruining science! The *really* good scientists can just squint really hard to see stuff.

[Zhit]

This forum bickering back and forth simply doesn't work. If you feel the game needs damage meters, or an LFG tool, or addons, or whatever else is lacking--vote with your wallet.

 

When you unsubscribe from the game you'll be give a brief poll asking what your reason was along with a small text box to leave a note. Whether anyone at BW ever reads them--that is an story.

 

For me personally, I listed my reason for unsubscribing as "Did not meet my expectations". In the text box I listed my top three reasons why I can't keep paying $15 a month.

 

As the game stands now, damage meters really aren't needed. The content is so easy to beat, no one really needs to perform at their best. So while I am one that would like to have a combat log/damage meters so I can personally know what works best and what doesn't. I'd also like to have content that is challenging. Since neither is in the game--I'll be on the forums until the 21st--at which point--best of luck to those remaining. Hope TOR stays the game you love.

[TheSkate]

My problem is that people are advocating completely gutting the competitive side of the game just to avoid inconvenience and discomfort on whatever you want to call the other side. It seems petty and unnecessarily punitive to me.

 

The "casual" gamer doesn't want a niche. They want to obliterate the "hardcore" gamer completely and plant a "Casual only!!!!" flag on SWTOR.

 

Most other peoples problem is the fact that you and others like you think that NOT ADDING something to the game is somehow gutting the game. How does that work? All you want to do is avoid the inconvenience and discomfort of not finishing all content at the hardest level available before a single casual even finishes it on regular mode. It seems petty and unnecessarily selfish to me.

Only hardcore players are even attempting HM and NM. Are you saying that without adding DPS meter that they will no longer attempt to beat the game?

[AlpsStranger]

Most other peoples problem is the fact that you and others like you think that NOT ADDING something to the game is somehow gutting the game. How does that work? All you want to do is avoid the inconvenience and discomfort of not finishing all content at the hardest level available before a single casual even finishes it on regular mode. It seems petty and unnecessarily selfish to me.

Only hardcore players are even attempting HM and NM. Are you saying that without adding DPS meter that they will no longer attempt to beat the game?

 

What's with the bitter selfishness?

 

This is what I don't get. Why do you guys claim to be "casual" and then care so much about other people's loot?

[DarthBoondock]

I understand the people who dont want mods, I understand the people who dont want to make the game "easier" in general. But if theres one thing I would want it would be a feature in game similar to a damage meter mod. There is no reason for us to not be able to practice and fine tune our play styles to maximize our effectiveness. I vote for a damage meter for sure!!

[TheSkate]

My problem is that people are advocating completely gutting the competitive side of the game just to avoid inconvenience and discomfort on whatever you want to call the other side. It seems petty and unnecessarily punitive to me.

 

The "casual" gamer doesn't want a niche. They want to obliterate the "hardcore" gamer completely and plant a "Casual only!!!!" flag on SWTOR.

 

Most other peoples problem is the fact that you and others like you think that NOT ADDING something to the game is somehow gutting the game. How does that work? All you want to do is avoid the inconvenience and discomfort of not finishing all content at the hardest level available before a single casual even finishes it on regular mode. It seems petty and unnecessarily selfish to me.

Only hardcore players are even attempting HM and NM. Are you saying that without adding DPS meter that they will no longer attempt to beat the game?

 

What's with the bitter selfishness?

 

This is what I don't get. Why do you guys claim to be "casual" and then care so much about other people's loot?

 

What are you blathering about? There is no bitter selfishness in my post.

 

Frankly, I don't give a damn about your loot. What does loot have to do with DPS meters? I said that the lack of a DPS meter is not stopping people from already attempting to beat the hardest raids at the hardest difficulty level with the game not even out for an entire month yet. Where does that tell you or anyone else that DPS meters are wanted or needed? That is all I'm asking.

[Greyspectre]

Yes. It's a pain in the butt to work out subtle details to improve my rotation without any actual numbers to back it up. It is also harder to find the weak link in a operations group without any way to look at groups dps.

 

The people who run around trying to flaunt their epeen with damage meters will be around without them as well. If it's not damage meters then its the epics they have or the raids they have done, or the rare pets they have. Not having damage meters just deprives the community of an important tool for improvement without actually solving any problems.

[Moondragon]

I actually enjoy this game very much without a combat log so something like recount would just irritate me. Keep in mind, there are definitely exceptions to the below statements and it IS a "gross generalization". Also, I understand that everyone's play style is different and while I have no "WoW experience", I do have a bevy of other MMO experience.

 

• I'm given enough statistics about my gear and attributes, that I can make a fair assessment of what I'm doing and can contrast & compare gear quite easily to try and produce high results. I always strive to update myself within reasonable limitations and have an idea of what I can expect from each class. From this, if I really wanted to, I can simply examine the other group members to figure out what gear they have to get an idea of what they're going to be doing before we even start.
  
• While I may not be in a rush. It took me twice as long to do the same mission in one day...not because of the gear and "output", but because of the group. Not just in this game, but in many other games, I have never really been "let down" by a users gear when they KNEW their class and USED it even with "baseline" gear for that level.
  
• Combat logs stop people from learning a class. It makes them focus on end result STATS. How much heal/damage/absorption am I doing? They want the simplest result with the least amount of work and a combat log does this.
  
• For some elitist, it won't matter if you have have "proof" or not. People will kick you regardless just because they want to and need someone to blame, and you're not "one of them". You can argue all you want, throw proof in their face, but it wont matter. Your out.
  
• True elitist will stop you from grouping based SOLELY on numbers and the fact that your not at the ABSOLUTE BEST gear possible, producing the highest numbers possible.
  
• I can play a class *I* want without having to worry (as much) about people saying they won't group with me because I don't produce the optimal amount of whatever as compared to this other class that does basically the same thing but has higher numbers. That's great...but I didn't want to play that class.
  

 

I don't need to min/max. I don't need to deal with "huge e-peens". I don't need to deal with even more elitism. I just need to play an MMO with some people that enjoy a good story and a bit of a challenge. A combat log would, in my opinion, take quite a bit of that away. If someone kicks me because they think I'm not doing a good job or not at "maximum efficiency", that's fine. Chances are I wouldn't want to group with them anyway and the other 30 groups I had before that one group that did find I did an acceptable (and sometimes great) job...were all wrong (sarcasm).

[IAmTrilkin]

Oh my God, please stop the angsty nonsense. I don't need your help in this cause if that's how you give it.

 

Angsty? That's what you got from it? Really? Not "some people need to be told the hard way?" Because some people need to be told the hard way and be told, in very plain speak, why they're being removed. "u suk" generally isn't descriptive enough and people automatically will assume it really isn't THEIR fault; it's simply elitist people, after all.

 

I have never, EVER, in all of my years of playing MMOs (starting from EQ1) removed nor seen removed someone simply because they were doing a little under what was expected of the class. In fact, it's more often that I'll see someone truly bad/lazy get carried through content that they don't deserve to be carried through. Every time I've removed or seen someone removed, it's because they are truly bad players or are simply not paying any attention. Sometimes they intersect, but not always. The fact that people are removed because they are not performing at maximum at all times is largely a myth spread by people who were kicked typically for other reasons.

 

So what is a bad player? A bad player is the person who always stands in the fire. A bad player is the person who is doing 40-50% less DPS without any other additional utility than someone else of an equivalent spec/gear. A bad player, ultimately, is one that has absolutely no drive to improve their game nor any drive to cooperate regardless of their reasoning. If you're performing poorly, but actually show interest in improvement, I am 100% willing to work with you. It's USUALLY a case of bad speccing and/or bad rotation, and those things can be fixed pretty easily.

 

To the people saying 'what about buff? what about CC? what about what about what about' - log parsing includes all of those things, as people have already stated. You can see who's interrupting, who's cleansing, how much effective raid DPS certain buffs bring, etc, and compensate accordingly. Personal numbers are not all that's important except for pure, raw DPS classes that have no additional utility and nearly everyone knows that.

 

You don't need Recount to identify bad players for the most part, and those people will get removed at some point regardless of whether there's a log to parse or not, leaving the combat log mostly as a tool for people who care enough to improve their game as well as to aid in game balance by showing the devs numbers that they couldn't possibly get via internal testing alone.

Edited January 11, 2012 by IAmTrilkin

[IAmTrilkin]

I actually enjoy this game very much without a combat log so something like recount would just irritate me. Keep in mind, there are definitely exceptions to the below statements and it IS a "gross generalization". Also, I understand that everyone's play style is different and while I have no "WoW experience", I do have a bevy of other MMO experience.

 

If you have a bevy of other MMO experience, you should know the importance of combat logs. Parsing/meters is NOT a WoW phenomenon.

 

I'm given enough statistics about my gear and attributes, that I can make a fair assessment of what I'm doing and can contrast & compare gear quite easily to try and produce high results. I always strive to update myself within reasonable limitations and have an idea of what I can expect from each class. From this, if I really wanted to, I can simply examine the other group members to figure out what gear they have to get an idea of what they're going to be doing before we even start.

 

Without the raw numbers, though, it's hard to determine whether or not the stat choices you make are the most effective ones. For example, in some cases, it might be better to weigh for crit over power depending on what kind of stat coefficients abilities have. You can compare and contrast only to the point where you can say 'this gear has more of this than the other piece' but you can't actually apply a value to anything without knowing its ultimate effects - a thing you really can't tell without parsing numbers. You can theorycraft, but history has proven that theorycrafting is not always 100% correct, especially with RNG systems being what they are. That's just one example.

 

While I may not be in a rush. It took me twice as long to do the same mission in one day...not because of the gear and "output", but because of the group. Not just in this game, but in many other games, I have never really been "let down" by a users gear when they KNEW their class and USED it even with "baseline" gear for that level.

 

How is this at all related?

 

Combat logs stop people from learning a class. It makes them focus on end result STATS. How much heal/damage/absorption am I doing? They want the simplest result with the least amount of work and a combat log does this.

 

No, they want a tangible, accurate representation of what their stat choices are giving them outside of 'well, it feels right!.' It does the exact opposite of what you just described - it allows people to understand the weight of their itemization choices as it applies to their class even MORE. It doesn't stop people from learning their class at all; it encourages them to learn MORE about them so they can determine what benefits them the most. Combat logs don't suddenly stop people from interrupting mobs or tunnel visioning and forgetting to move out of the fire. They're going to do that anyway without them.

 

For some elitist, it won't matter if you have have "proof" or not. People will kick you regardless just because they want to and need someone to blame, and you're not "one of them". You can argue all you want, throw proof in their face, but it wont matter. Your out.

 

This is an argument against combat logs how?

 

True elitist will stop you from grouping based SOLELY on numbers and the fact that your not at the ABSOLUTE BEST gear possible, producing the highest numbers possible.

 

This was more a problem with Gearscore (something that's already built in to TOR, by the way, via armor rating.) Recount never really produced this sentiment - lazy people using Gearscore did. It was made worse by the fact Gearscore really didn't tell you the full picture and it was grossly misused MUCH more than log parses ever were. The ultimate problem comes from people who want to farm the content with as much ease as possible, so they look for people who overgear it rather than people at gear level. This is something that happens regardless of combat logs and Gearscore, though.

 

I can play a class *I* want without having to worry (as much) about people saying they won't group with me because I don't produce the optimal amount of whatever as compared to this other class that does basically the same thing but has higher numbers. That's great...but I didn't want to play that class.

 

Then combat logs actually help you more than hurt you, because at some point, just by observation alone, people WILL start to pick up on what class is doing the most DPS. With a combat log, however, you can parse out, with accurate numbers, what your class is doing and if it truly is hopelessly underpowered, you have something you can present to the devs. It is very unlikely you'll be the only one playing this class and your logs along with the logs of others will give the devs a much clearer picture of what their changes REALLY impact.

 

I don't need to min/max. I don't need to deal with "huge e-peens". I don't need to deal with even more elitism. I just need to play an MMO with some people that enjoy a good story and a bit of a challenge.

 

YOU don't need to min/max, but others do. Withholding something because YOU didn't like it is generally significantly more selfish, inherently, than adding something you didn't like. Adding a feature promotes choice. You don't HAVE to utilize the combat log, and it isn't even the 'illusion of choice' either. I know plenty of people that never look at their parses and do perfectly fine because they know their rotation, but they are still benefiting from people that DO because class changes are directly affected by player feedback. When the players can give real, meaningful feedback outside of 'I THINK x CLASS SUCKS,' it only helps everybody in the end.

 

The sentiment of elitism is generally only really found at the absolute top margins of the game - a place most of a game's population never sees, including, I suspect, you. There is some found among the bulk of the population as well, but people in general are more interested in just doing the content with whoever happens to be available at the time rather than spending a lot of time picking and choosing based on class, spec and gear.

 

Mostly everybody (including myself, a min/maxer) will give anyone the benefit of the doubt. As long as you perform within a comfortable margin of what's expected of you and we aren't failing DPS checks/wiping because healers aren't paying attention/healers can't keep up with incoming damage due to bad specs or bad gear on the tank, everyone gets to stay and we get our gear and go home.

 

A combat log would, in my opinion, take quite a bit of that away. If someone kicks me because they think I'm not doing a good job or not at "maximum efficiency", that's fine. Chances are I wouldn't want to group with them anyway and the other 30 groups I had before that one group that did find I did an acceptable (and sometimes great) job...were all wrong (sarcasm).

 

Once again, the 'kicking because you're not doing REAL SOVIET DAMAGE </MikeZ>' thing is largely a myth. People do NOT get kicked for poor DPS unless they're really, truly doing poor DPS that's impacting the success of the raid. If the raid is chugging along without wipes and the content is being done, people don't get kicked. It's as simple as that. When wipes start to happen, though, people start getting scrutinized to determine who's dead weight and if there really is none, re-evaluating how they approach an encounter - again using information provided to them by the combat log to see what, exactly, is causing them to die.

[Rayvonuk]

Please no recount, it does more harm than good.

[Papazooki]

Please no recount, it does more harm than good.

 

Helps people maximize their characters

Helps newbies learn optimal rotations

Makes raiding much easier

Lets you know who is slacking

Lets a ton of people theory craft about a ton of things.

 

 

What harm does it do again?

[IAmTrilkin]

helps people maximize their characters

helps newbies learn optimal rotations

makes raiding much easier

lets you know who is slacking

lets a ton of people theory craft about a ton of things.

 

 

What harm does it do again?

 

"i have to take responsibility for my actions? **** that!"

[Arandmoor]

Helps people maximize their characters

Helps newbies learn optimal rotations

Makes raiding much easier

Lets you know who is slacking

Lets a ton of people theory craft about a ton of things.

 

 

What harm does it do again?

 

Forces people to play *one* spec or ****.

Forces people to play *one* class or ****.

Forces people to respec *every patch* or ****.

 

Leads to people disregarding primary mechanics in order to top the meters.

Leads to people passing the buck in order to top the meters.

 

Okay...I'll admit that the last two are primarily the result of poor encounter design. Good DPS allows a raid to ignore mechanics when they reach certain DPS rates as the raid simply puts out too much DPS for the mechanic in question to have any effect.

 

An example of this from WoW would be Deathbringer Saurfang from Wrath. If you could kill him in less than 40 seconds (I've been in raids that could...even on hard mode though that was primarily stacking a quickie 10m with 25 man geared toons) the blood beasts never became a factor.

 

Another was the Twin Valkyr in the Crusader' Coliseum where you have everyone in your raid go one color, dogpile one of the valks and cross your fingers. If the one you were dogpiling shield&healed, or the other one exploded first you won. If you had enough DPS.

 

I call both of those bad encounter mechanics because they cater to the trinity, and I disagree with the "holy trinity" of Tank-DPS-Healer. I think it's a limited, uninteresting, flawed and ultimately shallow design.

 

IMO, DPS should be something that everyone brings, and is simply a per-person requirement (yes...even healers) with the DPS arm of the trinity replaced with "utility" like CC, interruption, target-switching, add burns (I put these under utility because they usually involve pressing non-standard buttons), burst phases, AoE phases, swaps, vulnerability manipulation, kiting, ping-ponging, and correct positioning.

 

I mean...when was the last time you saw a kiting-train?

 

IMO, if utility wasn't constantly being side-lined, meters wouldn't be a problem because DPS wouldn't be the focus. If combat was multi-faceted then the waters could be appropriately muddied and DPS would simply fall off in importance. Once that happened, a lot of the negative connotations towards meter abuse (which I hate and fully support the existance of despite people saying that people don't abuse meters) would simply disappear.

 

Or, at least, they would be an easy way to tell who the bad players are.

[skiner]

To me Recount is like Poe's Telltale Heart. See, I've been grouping up three friends from the beginning--two of whom are new and one of whom is honestly pretty terrible.

 

The thing is--I've been having a blast. If they add Recount though, I'd have two options:

 

1: I could get it and realize just how bad my friend's dps is and start the unfortunate conversation about learning rotations and priority. Even if I'm nice it kind of sucks to take the focus of the game away from playing and into number crunching.

 

2: I could NOT get it, and wonder about it forever, having it just a few clicks away and driving me eventually insane.

 

I know, the freedom of the players blah blah blah. But you know what? We (speaking as a wow player) don't deserve that freedom anymore. We lost it when the large and VERY visible majority of raiders became snobs. Hell, I was guilty of it. And when I eventually managed to get into a guild so were they.

 

 

TL DR--Recount will force us to choose between either getting swept back up in a number crunching game (and honestly--who wasn't addicted to that in wow?) or constantly reinforcing our resolve to not use it. Either way, we would still have to deal with more jerks than before (I BECOME a recount jerk, so you'll have at least one more for all those naive enough to say it only exposes jerks), ALL of whom would have an additional, streamlined tool for elitism. Honestly, I like gaming for fun now. This is a nice change of pace.

[krinaman]

Helps people maximize their characters

Helps newbies learn optimal rotations

Makes raiding much easier

Lets you know who is slacking

Lets a ton of people theory craft about a ton of things.

 

 

What harm does it do again?

 

 

Causes players to have tunnel vision causing wipes.

[skiner]

Helps people maximize their characters

Helps newbies learn optimal rotations

Makes raiding much easier

Lets you know who is slacking

Lets a ton of people theory craft about a ton of things.

 

 

What harm does it do again?

 

Harm:

Makes people feel like they and everyone around them needs to maximize their characters

Helps newbies learn that a player's only worth is their number on the meter

Makes raiding much easier

Lets you know who to single out when you're frustrated

 

I...actually don't mind TC so you can keep that one.

 

I like how it is now: only the intelligent people will be able to TC and become Elite. The average player won't be able to piggy back on their programming and get to feel like a big man.

 

If mediocre players get to find out how to max themselves out without using their brains, then you breed in an elitism only a few truly deserve to have.

[HalusW]

As the game stands now, damage meters really aren't needed. The content is so easy to beat, no one really needs to perform at their best. So while I am one that would like to have a combat log/damage meters so I can personally know what works best and what doesn't. I'd also like to have content that is challenging. Since neither is in the game--I'll be on the forums until the 21st--at which point--best of luck to those remaining. Hope TOR stays the game you love.

 

Meters aren't needed.

 

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19850-swtor-enters-the-guinness-book-of-world-records

Does this sound like a game targeted towards the hardcore raiding niche? They will all be back to WOW after their 30 free days are up. Arguing over addons, macros, meters is pretty pointless unless this game that took years to be developed can be revamped and refocused in the next few weeks. I will miss reading these theads.

[TeoHTime]

I'd love to see a poll testing correlation between the people opposed to a combat log/meter, and the people who are devout religous/spiritual nutballs fundamentally opposed to knowledge in general.

[Mandrax]

Georg Zoeller said something interesting in a recent post.

 

 

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge, again, that we do understand that there is a desire for players to get more detailed information what happens to their character in combat. We agree with those requests and are working on various ways to, optionally, get more detailed data on your combat performance.

 

Thanks for your feedback!

 

-- Georg

 

The emphasis he put on your seems to say that BioWare will be adding a way for you personally to see your own performance, yet you will not be able to see others.

 

For those that want to test rotations, specs etc, you will likely have the function to do that at some point, but for those that want to see others performance, it doesn't look like it's coming soon.

 

Source

 

Edit: you can't see the emphasis in my quoted post as quoting puts everything in italics, but you can see it in it's original state in the post I linked.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Mandrax

[Lightmgl]

Meters aren't needed.

 

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19850-swtor-enters-the-guinness-book-of-world-records

Does this sound like a game targeted towards the hardcore raiding niche? They will all be back to WOW after their 30 free days are up. Arguing over addons, macros, meters is pretty pointless unless this game that took years to be developed can be revamped and refocused in the next few weeks. I will miss reading these theads.

 

It does when theres fights in the game, right now, that you can do which require you to play at 90%-100% effectiveness doing DPS or you will wipe to hard enrages over and over again until you replace the bad DPS or the DPS gets better.... We are talking about just regular level 50 HM flashpoints here, beginner level 50 content.

 

Sure the game has brilliant story and dialogue but it also has really nasty boss enrage timers. Once again, if you do not want that sort of pressure in this game the discussion needs to move away from the DPS timers and onto the topic of high DPS based encounters.

 

In fact I'd say right now the Level 50 Flashpoints are harder than WoW's Heroic Dungeons by a good margin, especially beyond Black Talon/Esseles. So right now the game would be targetted at a more hardcore crowd than WoW based on current level 50 content....

Edited January 11, 2012 by Lightmgl

[Strahn]

The second we get gearscores and raidmeters, I'll cancel.

 

Hope that answers your question.

[Eklone]

Seriously, I really want any sort of meter. Bioware or addon, doesn't matter to me. With fights that are actually DPS races, such as the 4th Eternity vault boss group, it sucks not to have a dmg meter to find out what is the best rotation / spec etc. With so many abilities, It's possible that some rotations will work better than others. I could really care less if your not doing great dps, mostly cause this game is on the easy side, but if you're clearly not pulling enough dps i would say something about it, especially if its holding back a group...

[Truga]

I'd love to see a poll testing correlation between the people opposed to a combat log/meter, and the people who are devout religous/spiritual nutballs fundamentally opposed to knowledge in general.

 

Does it matter? They are the majority, and I have a feeling BW is in the end going to cater to them.

 

In these threads, there's always only a couple supporters, with everyone else pretty just one-time posters saying they don't want it. I personally want it, but I won't be demanding it when the majority doesn't want it.

 

And whoever said parsing is a MMO thing, I've yet to play an MMO with group-wide timestamped logs. I'm all for non-timestamped, personal logs so you can examine what was going on with you if you die or after an encounter (almost every game has this I think). The inclusion of timestamped logs and logs that include other people's action is a wow phenomenon, because I haven't seen it in any other game I played. I'd love to see a list of games that include this. I'm curious now, what is "standard" in the genre, when only a very small portion of the games apparently has it.

[DredWes]

I see this thread continues to go nowhere.