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

[TItanten]

Why are you not lobbying BW for some real raid content than the current garbage then?

 

Exactly.

 

I could design, not code, any number of bosses without an enrage mechanic.

[Xploits]

Ok thats what I thought.

 

The SWTOR fights right now are 100% DPS based.

 

The first boss in EV is basically DPS as hard as possible, heal a 15-17k burst, and stack when he missile barrages.

 

The 2nd is basically tank and spank with movement every minute.

 

4th is 100% 1v1 DPS solo boss. (2 minute enrage solo)

 

5th is basically see if you can DPS the boss in order to beat the enrage(which ATM is mathematically impossible)

 

I would love nothing more than to worry more about boss mechanics than DPS, but it is not possible ATM.

 

Quite frankly, this game if its going to have a steady player base raiding will have some sort of parser developed. It going to be in house developed, part of third part mods, connected to APIs, or third parties whom look at raw data.

 

Any I can't for the life of me figure out why put anti parser are being ***** to other players. For the claims of it brewing elitism, your bashing is really is starting to sound like

the very definition your arguing.

 

And as I said it before, Ill like to see some more customizations to the UI, cause apparently I want easy mode, and its not ironic that generalizing the content will actually dull the challenge of the game play.

[Happylol]

So this mythical recount clone is going to make the mathematically impossible boss possible?

 

No and that is not even the fight I am really worried about.

 

Going back and forth with 20 different people is such a waste of time.

[Setanian]

No and that is not even the fight I am really worried about.

 

Going back and forth with 20 different people is such a waste of time.

 

I'm anti-add-on, anti meter, there lot.

 

I raided in EQ1. Never used any of that crap. We did the same raid over, and over, and over again, til everyone knew what to do, when to do and how to do, and we eventually beat it. There was elation and then it went on farm. We did the exact same thing the next new content and the next.

 

There was always a sense of accomplishment, that we persevered and beat it.

 

This whole I want it now and I want to be told, and someone to hold my hand business is just farcical to me.

[Fissile]

Exactly.

 

I could design, not code, any number of bosses without an enrage mechanic.

Enrage timers are there simply to constrain the fight which otherwise could be beaten by 'cheezing it' through stacking healers or other 'clever use of game mechanics' (i.e. finding an exploit).

 

Soft enrages (i.e. some stacking buff/debuff, or increasing raid aura damage, etc) provide the same utility.

 

If you don't do that, then every fight can be reduced to a lot of patience, a tank (or two, or whatever is required for the tank swap mechanic) and a boat-load of healers that don't stand in fire.

 

There aren't a ton of mechanics you can test in a raid encounter to make it interesting for all parties. If you don't have any DPS races, then it simply isn't interesting for the DPS. Same goes for the healers and tanks as well, for their respective 'races'.

[Happylol]

I'm anti-add-on, anti meter, there lot.

 

I raided in EQ1. Never used any of that crap. We did the same raid over, and over, and over again, til everyone knew what to do, when to do and how to do, and we eventually beat it. There was elation and then it went on farm. We did the exact same thing the next new content and the next.

 

There was always a sense of accomplishment, that we persevered and beat it.

 

This whole I want it now and I want to be told, and someone to hold my hand business is just farcical to me.

 

Setanion,

 

Somebody a few posts above who claimed to be at the top of the EQ game, explained that the EQ fights were strat based, which would 100% be possible by trial and error.

 

The current fights in SWTOR are DPS based, and trial and error does not eventually equal a boss kill.

 

Does this make sense?

[TItanten]

Enrage timers are there simply to constrain the fight which otherwise could be beaten by 'cheezing it' through stacking healers or other 'clever use of game mechanics' (i.e. finding an exploit).

 

Soft enrages (i.e. some stacking buff/debuff, or increasing raid aura damage, etc) provide the same utility.

 

If you don't do that, then every fight can be reduced to a lot of patience, a tank (or two, or whatever is required for the tank swap mechanic) and a boat-load of healers that don't stand in fire.

 

There aren't a ton of mechanics you can test in a raid encounter to make it interesting for all parties. If you don't have any DPS races, then it simply isn't interesting for the DPS. Same goes for the healers and tanks as well, for their respective 'races'.

 

You can disguise the soft enrage through a mechanic though.

 

The longer the fight goes on the less area you have to move in, the shorter the cast times become (quicker interrupts needed), etc.

 

Enrage timers are unnecessary and lazy. Especially hard enrages.

 

You can design soft "enrages" that allow good/great players to overcome it, but punish lazy players.

[TorqueoMilitaris]

Searching on the net for boss tactics is acceptable for everyone and that doesn't makes the raids easier, right? But some informative tools does^^

[TItanten]

Searching on the net for boss tactics is acceptable for everyone and that doesn't makes the raids easier, right? But some informative tools does^^

 

It's cheating in my eyes.

 

You're all a bunch of phonies! Googling strats before you even attempt the boss once...

[Fissile]

Well, assuming they're "like WoW", they're more than just DPS based.

 

They put mechanics in that test all sorts of things:

- DPS burst

- DPS overall

- movement mechanics (stack/spreadout)

- healing burst

- healing throughput

- interrupts

- tank swapping

- mob control

 

If you ignore any of these, you end up with a group of players that find no use in participating. No DPS hurdles to overcome? No reason to improve, or participate. Healing way undertuned? Yawnfest for healers.

[DragonAgeOrgins]

The Problem

 

I have a deeply impressed knee-jerk reaction to Recount, Gearscore, and their related ilk because I feel they represent the edge of the slippery slope toward the mathematization of relationships. A system that provides detailed relative data among participants in content is less useful for evaluating one's own performance, and more useful for judging the performance of others. In a sense, Recount is the standard bearer for heavy-handed guild dictatorships and exclusivism. It is the refuge of the min-maxer and a menace to the targets of his ire.

 

That said, I will gladly concede that there may exist in the community a subset of players who value data for data's sake--those players who take no offense to the heavy beast breathing over their shoulders, and embrace the risk of abuse the same way one embraces Vegas slots, with the outstretched hope that perhaps this time things will be different.

 

 

The Solution

 

For those players I would like to propose the following:

 

Do not allow recount. Allow, instead, absolute, complete data transparency. Upon initiation by any group or raid member (with a cooldown for spam control), the party members may vote anonymously to enable data parsing. If parsing is enabled, all players have access to a complete, unabridged record of the group's/raid's activities. To be more blunt, this is a keylogger, and it reports every action taken by a character in-game, with the exception of recording chat as "[timestamp] Entered chat until [timestamp]." It reports actions, cooldowns, player movement (coordinate by coordinate, including facing and rate of turning), button mashing, interface actions, and millisecond-to-millisecond reports of states, statistics, incoming and outgoing damage, healing, and effects. Moreover, it should report the technical calculations involved in getting from base numbers to final numbers. Thus, you can see how much someone would do in base damage and how much the damage is modified by gear. Additionally, you can see the odds of a given occurrence whenever there's interaction between an effect and an enemy, so you can gauge whether a player is performing poorly by his own fault or just unlucky. You can also see if a player is extremely efficient and just undergeared, or performing poorly but being carried by his or her gear.

 

You want data? You got it. All of it. Everything the server knows about what a player is doing during the raid, the system makes available.

 

 

The Reasoning

 

Why all this information? Why not? You want to data mine; have at it. The data is the key to a successful end-game guild.

 

I advocate for this because Recount just doesn't go far enough. It goes far, by MMO standards, but it's ultimately just organizing data the server already reports. It's a tool for judging player performance. If you're getting into the business of judging others, though, why not be more thorough? Would you be shocked to find out that your raid leader never touches his mouse in a five-minute encounter? What if your tank is just coasting along in gear three tiers higher than the content and is only doing the bare minimum to keep aggro (and you were ************ at the sorc for not ramping his dps!)? Maybe you'll discover that someone missed an interrupt because it was on cooldown from the last interrupt--just like he's been telling you for the last six times you ran that fight. Maybe you'll learn that that whore the GM's been cybering is spending more time talking to people during the raid than she is contributing? Who knows what remarkable secrets you might uncover!

 

It is only then, once you have had the opportunity to examine your colleagues with the most powerful microscope possible and comb through their errors with only the finest instrument, that you can accurately assess whose fault it is that you're not succeeding where you know you should. Only then can you assist them in improving themselves.

 

 

Know that the other members of your guild may fear such a thing, and I trust many of you receive my suggestion with some trepidation at first blush. Once you embrace the power that comes with this knowledge, however, you will find that your guild will succeed and thrive as an organic machine, stripped of the trappings of trust and relationships. This is a computer game, and so it is driven by data, by numbers. The numbers are what matter, and no one has anything to fear who is giving proper dedication to his role in the guild. Often people laugh when someone says poopsock. Those people aren't cut out for end-game content.

 

Your guild members may be angry with you if you suggest that such a thorough, robust system be implemented. Some of them will no doubt become furious at the notion that you or anyone else can prowl through the minutiae of their online behavior during raid time. Remind them that that time is sacrosanct, and it is a sacrifice they must be willing to make to the guild. If they cannot make it, then cast them into darkness. Once they have been cast out and been deprived of life-sustaining end-game epics, they will return, humbled, and submit.

 

Your guild will hate RecountRedux. They will despise it as its claws hook themselves into their petty lives. But it will unite them, unite you as a guild, and make you stronger. You must channel the very reasonable repugnance at the idea that game performance Big Brother is the gateway to success, harness it, and make that repugnance serve you. When your guild begins to squabble, and members fight among themselves over the truth revealed by this system, you have nearly arrived. Direct their fury away from their destroyed relationships and to the unliving, inhuman game content, where it should be. In the end you may find yourself and your guild miserable shells of who you once set out to become, but you will be shells wearing gear with spectacular stats. And that's what matters, isn't it?

 

 

 

TLDR: Recount is the path to the Dark Side. And not the cool storytelling dark side. The guild-imploding, enemy-making one that makes the game antithetical to fun. If you think someone is under-performing, ask. Maybe talk with your raid before and after encounters and find out why things are or aren't working. No one needs a blue ribbon for top DPS or a brown one for worst healer. Build a guild with a raid force composed of people you know and can trust. It might mean that you have to repeat encounters a few more times before you get them down. But you won't end up hating your guild afterwards. That's all.

 

Quoting because it just makes sense.

[Happylol]

Well, assuming they're "like WoW", they're more than just DPS based.

 

They put mechanics in that test all sorts of things:

- DPS burst

- DPS overall

- movement mechanics (stack/spreadout)

- healing burst

- healing throughput

- interrupts

- tank swapping

- mob control

 

If you ignore any of these, you end up with a group of players that find no use in participating. No DPS hurdles to overcome? No reason to improve, or participate. Healing way undertuned? Yawnfest for healers.

 

According to your above mechanics, the current bosses only have

 

- DPS burst

- DPS overall

- movement mechanics (stack/spreadout)

Possible - healing throughput

 

There are 0 interrupts necesarry, tanks are not even required, there is no mob control required aside from somebody moving SoA under the pylon.

 

As a sorc healer I have time to DPS, that is how easy it is to heal the current content.

[Fissile]

You can disguise the soft enrage through a mechanic though.

 

The longer the fight goes on the less area you have to move in, the shorter the cast times become (quicker interrupts needed), etc.

 

Enrage timers are unnecessary and lazy. Especially hard enrages.

 

You can design soft "enrages" that allow good/great players to overcome it, but punish lazy players.

Hard or soft enrage, it's still a DPS race. If you don't have enough, ya don't have enough whether it's because some timer went off and Chimaeron goes berserk or you ran out of gongs to use to prevent Atramedes encounter-ending mechanic.

 

Yes, hard enrages are generally cheap and break the immersiveness of the encounter (though how immersive can you be when you die 100s of times to the same boss?), but the idea of constraining the length of the fight is important to making it interesting for everybody involved.

[hushia]

No, I do not support an in game version of Recount.

 

Because:

 

1. most content is easy enough to pug with random people.

2. if someone is playing badly, I can usually tell by observing.

 

3. recount *will* be used by jerks to play the blame game.

4. recount will be used by people to come to these forums asking for nerfs for other classes.

 

I do support a combat log parser for personal use and for raiding guilds.

Edited January 16, 2012 by hushia

[Fissile]

As a sorc healer I have time to DPS, that is how easy it is to heal the current content.

Or how overpowered the sorc healer is

 

But surely nightmare mode is not so easy with the healing?

 

And Bioware has a long way to go if they really want the end game raiding to be compelling if a tank is only there to keep the attention of the boss and has no issues of his own to overcome in the encounters.

[wikimon]

I'm anti-add-on, anti meter, there lot.

 

I raided in EQ1. Never used any of that crap. We did the same raid over, and over, and over again, til everyone knew what to do, when to do and how to do, and we eventually beat it. There was elation and then it went on farm. We did the exact same thing the next new content and the next.

 

There was always a sense of accomplishment, that we persevered and beat it.

 

This whole I want it now and I want to be told, and someone to hold my hand business is just farcical to me.

 

and a damage meter doesn't prevent any of that. you're crying about the moon and its evil beams that make your hair fall out.

[Happylol]

Or how overpowered the sorc healer is

 

But surely nightmare mode is not so easy with the healing?

 

And Bioware has a long way to go if they really want the end game raiding to be compelling if a tank is only there to keep the attention of the boss and has no issues of his own to overcome in the encounters.

 

I know guilds that are using DPS tanks because the bosses hit way too slow and for too small amounts. It seems the overall damage is coming from spells or raid damage.

[Blackardin]

and how do you measure apples to oranges?

 

player a does 1k dps tops meters does nothing else

player b does 750 dps but took the least amount of damge saving healers a headache

player c does 500 dps but interupted, or cc'd the entire fight?

 

who needs to be kicked?

 

As a raid leader, I very rarely used recount and quite frankly, I hated it. I also felt that it created lazy raid leaders, many of whom should never have been leading raids, and would not without this crutch.

 

Once it is implemented, everything focuses on the meter and little else. We had hunters and rogues that could interrupt but did not do so because they did not want to fall down on that meter. We had people stand in the fire far too long because they wanted to get that last cast off before interrupting their rotation. DPS came with gear. It was the least of our problems.

 

In short, they make for lazy fights, change the context of the game from a dynamic event to a singularly focused event centering around one particular aspect. My challenges were always far more about everything except dps. There is so much more to a raid then dps and what dps meters tell you.

 

As the Wow developers stated, content was ramped up to accommodate addons, not the other way around. You put in an addon that trivializes content, the content has to be ramped up to a new level. What eventually occured was a full shift in the dynamic of the game. What that did was to alienate the main demographic they sought to maintain by making the game more about min maxing, outside research, addons, macroing, huge learning curves, all of which detracted for actual game play.

 

SW didn't kill wow. It just gave people the vehicle by which they left a game they were no longer enjoying. Combat addons were a very large reason for this.

[TItanten]

Hard or soft enrage, it's still a DPS race. If you don't have enough, ya don't have enough whether it's because some timer went off and Chimaeron goes berserk or you ran out of gongs to use to prevent Atramedes encounter-ending mechanic.

 

Yes, hard enrages are generally cheap and break the immersiveness of the encounter (though how immersive can you be when you die 100s of times to the same boss?), but the idea of constraining the length of the fight is important to making it interesting for everybody involved.

 

What I was saying is that you can make a "DPS race" that can be overcome by good mechanical play. Such that you'll never wipe if you do the mechanics correctly, but they get nearly impossible to do if the fight drags on long enough. So you have two paths to beat the boss:

 

1. Improve your group DPS.

 

2. Improve your mechanics.

 

An instant kill cast that starts at 4 seconds, but gradually speeds up to .25 seconds.

A boss that gains levels upon killing a character (Yes this is straight out of WoW).

A boss that spreads permanent fire over the battlefield.

More and more adds spawning. Up to an nearly unimaginable number.

Stacking debuff on the tanks getting faster and faster making agro switching precision work. (1 second gap where you need to switch)

Clickable items spawning that buff the boss. More and more over time requiring perfect clicking of multiple raid members.

[Happylol]

As a raid leader, I very rarely used recount and quite frankly, I hated it. I also felt that it created lazy raid leaders, many of whom should never have been leading raids, and would not without this crutch.

 

Once it is implemented, everything focuses on the meter and little else. We had hunters and rogues that could interrupt but did not do so because they did not want to fall down on that meter. We had people stand in the fire far too long because they wanted to get that last cast off before interrupting their rotation. DPS came with gear. It was the least of our problems.

 

In short, they make for lazy fights, change the context of the game from a dynamic event to a singularly focused event centering around one particular aspect. My challenges were always far more about everything except dps. There is so much more to a raid then dps and what dps meters tell you.

 

As the Wow developers stated, content was ramped up to accommodate addons, not the other way around. You put in an addon that trivializes content, the content has to be ramped up to a new level. What eventually occured was a full shift in the dynamic of the game. What that did was to alienate the main demographic they sought to maintain by making the game more about min maxing, outside research, addons, macroing, huge learning curves, all of which detracted for actual game play.

 

SW didn't kill wow. It just gave people the vehicle by which they left a game they were no longer enjoying. Combat addons were a very large reason for this.

 

You think addons were the reason people left WoW?

 

Honestly, WoW is vastly superior to SWTOR in almost every aspect of the game, aside from storyline and questing(both of which end at lvl 50). This is pretty much proven due to the fact that they copied almost 100% of the game from WoW(which yes was copied from the earlier MMO's).

 

WoW is an amazing game, but after 7+ years of being out people get bored. It had nothing to do with addons.

 

I hope SWTOR becomes a great game because it definitely has the foundation to do so, however I feel they launched about 2 months too early, which I think will eventually end up ruining the game.

Edited January 16, 2012 by Happylol

[Fissile]

Only one item on that list (possibly 2) is it possible to ignore DPS and 'execute correctly' and win.

 

All the others have an increasing difficulty as time goes on, eventually reaching "impossible" if you ignore DPS.

[wikimon]

Once it is implemented, everything focuses on the meter and little else. We had hunters and rogues that could interrupt but did not do so because they did not want to fall down on that meter. We had people stand in the fire far too long because they wanted to get that last cast off before interrupting their rotation. DPS came with gear. It was the least of our problems..

 

run your raid without a meter. how hard is that.

 

if you can't beat the content without a meter, you simply suck. what else can you blame at that point?

 

people with meter = content beat

people no meter = no win

 

it can't be more clear cut than that. if you CAN do it without a meter, why you crying? if you CAN'T then you obviously needed the meter to police your members who can't perform properly without you babysitting them

 

either way you slice it, you have no argument

[TItanten]

Only one item on that list (possibly 2) is it possible to ignore DPS and 'execute correctly' and win.

 

All the others have an increasing difficulty as time goes on, eventually reaching "impossible" if you ignore DPS.

 

That's just tuning issue.

 

All you have to do is make it hard enough that people have the choice between execution and dps.

[X-rapture]

Generally speaking, raid type encounters require two types of people, leaders and followers. Leaders will want recount because they take the extra step of accepting responsibility for the group as a whole. When I was leading 10 mans in rift, I can honestly say that without parsers it would have taken me at least 10x as long to clear the fights which (for the last boss in GP) was already a multiple month long process.

 

You see, there is this sense among followers (I know because I was more in that role during my WoW days) that complete incompetence is a myth. Sure people may spec their chars a little crazy but the difference is inconsequential.

 

THIS IS A LIE. There are people who do less dps in full epics than a competent player would do in quest gear. These people single handedly hold back progress for whole guilds. I was never the type to rush into snap decisions but the one time I ever had to take away a raiding position to a new dps it was like night and day. A boss that seemed hopeless after weeks of effort was defeated in a single try because our new dps (with worse gear) did 500 more dps.

 

It may not be an issue for this game yet as it seems all end game content is super ez pz but I find it hard to believe anybody who says that wiping on content forever and ever is fun.

 

PS : To all you people claiming that somehow raid leaders should be able to track the rotations and behavior of entire raid groups without a parser, you are insane.

[Deyjarl]

Never needed it in any of the hard core raiding guilds in other games. Not once.

 

Nightmare modes already taken down in this game without.

 

 

Its a myth its needed, and a crutch.