Private combat logs?

[AlpsStranger]

Alpsstranger doesn't speak for everyone who wants meters in the game.

 

Hah, that is definitely true. I know I can be a jerk, but I just get sick of the smugness of the so-called "casual" movement that seems ready to casually take a meataxe to anyone who dares not agree with them.

 

This started with the Rift launch for me, so my anger at these people has been simmering for quite a while now.

Edited January 11, 2012 by AlpsStranger

[ironix]

you are misinterpreting what i mean. I say walk in the park meaning experiencing everything. If you are running through it you are not fulling experiencing the park. But thank you from proving my point for me. if you had read any of my other posts you see i'm opposed to making the game easier with mods. how can anyone consider themselves "hardcore" if they are asking for ways to make the game easier a month into it?

 

I was about to go on a rant and decided against it, as it would have relied on presumptions brought up in many a macro/mod thread on these forums. Have a good day sir. =p

[Kurnea]

Hah, that is definitely true. I know I can be a jerk, but I just get sick of the smugness of the so-called "casual" movement that seems ready to casually take a meataxe to anyone who dares not agree with them.

 

This started with the Rift launch for me, so my anger at these people has been simmering for quite a while now.

 

Maybe make a separate thread about how much you hate casuals, then?

[ironix]

Hah, that is definitely true. I know I can be a jerk, but I just get sick of the smugness of the so-called "casual" movement that seems ready to casually take a meataxe to anyone who dares not agree with them.

 

This started with the Rift launch for me, so my anger at these people has been simmering for quite a while now.

 

For myself I am reminded of Star Trek Online and all the fanboys who kept countering anyone with "it's only beta/been out X amount of time. They'll fix it!" So I may be a bit short with people now and then. =/

Edited January 11, 2012 by ironix

[AlpsStranger]

Maybe make a separate thread about how much you hate casuals, then?

 

I actually don't "hate casuals." I just hate the way a certain extreme subset of them is intent on forcing us to play with a clunky UI and next to no hard data.

[Jett-Rinn]

Hah, that is definitely true. I know I can be a jerk, but I just get sick of the smugness of the so-called "casual" movement that seems ready to casually take a meataxe to anyone who dares not agree with them.

 

This started with the Rift launch for me, so my anger at these people has been simmering for quite a while now.

 

Well I hope you don't think I'm taking a meataxe to you...I do understand why some groups want it but what I think they are doing is giving the best of both world now guilds can show each other their damage logs and figure out what's going on...but you won't have Joe Progame screaming that someone isn't doing 10K dps in a Operation that only requires 7K and that is being pugged.

 

I know that isn't good enough of though because many of the pro meter Raid crowd are all or nothing; they don't want any compromise and it just isn't going to go that way this time.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Jett-Rinn

[excentric]

So...lets look at just how many "Competitive guilds" there are in TOR.

 

Not that many.

 

In fact I see a lot of friendly pug raids so far....so a game succeeding without having to embrace a Lord of the Flies mentality.....What's wrong with that? I mean other than the hard-cores desperately wanting it to fail because they aren't kow towing to them.

 

My guild strive for the most dps in other mmo's. It's what drives us and the other players there.

In this game your playing blindfolded while space barring the conversations.

In all games I've played it's the competitive players that drive mmo development forward.

[AlpsStranger]

Well I hope you don't think I'm taking a meataxe to you...I do understand why some groups want it but what I think they are doing is giving the best of both world now guilds can show each other their damage logs and figure out what's going on...but you won't have Joe Progame screaming that someone isn't doing 10K dps in a Operation that only requires 7K.

 

I know that isn't good enough of though because many of the pro meter Raid crowd are all or nothing; they don't want any compromise and it just isn't going to go that way this time.

 

I am as sure that the game cannot survive on altitis and voice acting as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow. They're not going to achieve some kind of casual RP paradise, they're just going to torpedo the game and then desperately try to revive their raid scene once it's too late.

[Zannis]

Private combat logs would be terrible. As much as Bioware would like to protect as many feelings as possible, I would very much like to know who is missing the interrupts on the boss that keeps wiping us.

[aimbotcfg]

Think you missed his point they are looking at how to provide "you" "with more detailed data on your combat performance". but not on other peoples. So you can see what attack hit you and so forth but not on the personal performance of others. So you should be happy. You can post what you did and can ask your friends what they did So I fail to see why you are upset they are looking to give you what you stated you wanted.

 

Because people who know that they are doing badly and are holding the group back will just lie to not be kicked, because people are selfish. I prefer actual numbers to tell me that someones not wasting my time.

[Jett-Rinn]

My guild strive for the most dps in other mmo's. It's what drives us and the other players there.

In this game your playing blindfolded while space barring the conversations.

In all games I've played it's the competitive players that drive mmo development forward.

 

This was never marketd as a Hardcore Raid or Die MMO...why are you guys expecting it to be? Honestly I don't wish to see anyone leave but I think in this case your guild has the wrong expectations of what TOR is.

[Jett-Rinn]

Because people who know that they are doing badly and are holding the group back will just lie to not be kicked, because people are selfish. I prefer actual numbers to tell me that someones not wasting my time.

 

Simple answer group with folks you know like your guild; if you can't trust them find another guild. PUGs have always been meant to be you take the hand you are dealt and strive to overcome the challenge even if someone isn't quite up to snuff.

[excentric]

This was never marketd as a Hardcore Raid or Die MMO...why are you guys expecting it to be? Honestly I don't wish to see anyone leave but I think in this case your guild has the wrong expectations of what TOR is.

 

Ok, so they make nightmare modes of operations for causual pugs ?

Good luck with that.

Edited January 11, 2012 by excentric

[Kesitah]

There is still some possibilities. In LOTRO for example, someone actually wrote an application which would synchronize the various "personal combat logs" through a client-server application (as this was released I gave up my own combat log parser project which only evaluated the personal data as in the existing combat log) - the result

was then interpreted and displayed using a lua Addon ^^ This was impressive work.

 

From my own experience with writing a combat log parser (without client-server support ^^) on a MMO which does not support the data of ALL players/mobs, but only "your personal stuff" my opinion is:

 

- If you do not have comparisions it is hard to evaluate your performance

- log parsing is not only about damage. Especially for things like "who rupted how often"

or "how does the damage on a certain type of creature split up" only is making sense

if you get the data from ALL involved people.

- Basically if only your OWN stuff is displayed only the more "boring" information (personal dps) will be able to evaluated, the more "interesting" stuff will not be possible sadly

 

I think it would be good to have the following things:

 

- Not only "personal data" will be "in" (though "protection" of people could be done by a UI option to "not be included in the combat log of other people" - but where the option

would exist to actually enable a "global" log)

- things like buffs/debuffs (application, running out etc.) are "in", as well as dot/hot ticks

- Good timing information is "in"

- Everything formatted in a very "standard" way, not some skills this way, some skills another way (in a certain other game this was a pain to parse ^^)

- Information on damage sources (in a very detailed way, like name of the skill, the

source, the target, the amount, the type of damage)

[ironix]

Well I hope you don't think I'm taking a meataxe to you...I do understand why some groups want it but what I think they are doing is giving the best of both world now guilds can show each other their damage logs and figure out what's going on...but you won't have Joe Progame screaming that someone isn't doing 10K dps in a Operation that only requires 7K.

 

I know that isn't good enough of though because many of the pro meter Raid crowd are all or nothing; they don't want any compromise and it just isn't going to go that way this time.

 

Actually it's something, but I am already imagining the logistics of co-ordinating 16 separate parses to discover where a problem lies when a raid is having issues with a difficult raid boss.

 

I just fail to understand the fear involved with people who are so vehemently against any form of public logging. After all, an e-peen obsessed meter-spamming "OMG kick the low DPS" jerk can always be ignored/avoided. I do, however, completely understand my fear of what this game will become if it caters to mediocrity and what my image of casual gamers are.

[guided_by_voices]

I actually don't "hate casuals." I just hate the way a certain extreme subset of them is intent on forcing us to play with a clunky UI and next to no hard data.

 

I'm for customizing the UI but I'm against how the hard data can and has been used in past games. That will effect the game permanently. I prefer err on the side of caution.

[AlpsStranger]

Simple answer group with folks you know like your guild; if you can't trust them find another guild. PUGs have always been meant to be you take the hand you are dealt and strive to overcome the challenge even if someone isn't quite up to snuff.

 

So we have to be ghettoized so that the casuals can remove all accountability from pugs?

[RealAeiouy]

Here's a thought.

 

If some unscrupulous trooper with a hidden combat log decides to just sit and use hammer shot ad nauseum, and claim he's doing higher dps than he is, how are the rest of us to know? Taking down a boss becomes unlikely, if not out of the question. We lose out on loot and time, and gain only repair bills.

 

I'm sure nobody in this thread would do something so mean, of course.

 

Having access to others' combat data allows us to guard ourselves from such unpleasantness. We can go about our business secure in our knowledge, and just leave that trooper be.

 

 

 

If you can't do a raid without a real time log try harder. People do raids without logs, it is not hard.

[aimbotcfg]

Private combat logs would be terrible. As much as Bioware would like to protect as many feelings as possible, I would very much like to know who is missing the interrupts on the boss that keeps wiping us.

 

This. You can't trust the "ITS JUST A GAME CHILL OUT" people to honestly hold their hand up and say "Sorry, I can't do this I'll go get more gear/practice/respec". If you could then they wouldn't be so adamantly against the meters.

[Devorin_Sargothi]

OK, here's the deal.

 

WoW's lore and characters are "charming", but apart from a bit of occasional indulgence in the mythos and a bit of childlike immersion now and then, few people take the roleplaying in that game "seriously" ("serious" in the context of a game of course), apart from some of the very young players and incurable romantics and furry-lovers

 

It's true that Blizzard are, and always have been, geniuses at creating fast-paced, competitive gameplay. For many players of WoW, they could be playing any old game in any old "virtual world", it's the feel of the combat and the competitive nature of the e-sport (both PvE and PvP) that matters.

 

BioWare aren't trying to compete in that arena. Their strength has never particularly been combat. They are usually competent enough at combat (any deveoper has to be), but it's not their main strength. Their strength, what they're good at, what has made them an AAA developer loved by many, is the roleplay and immersion.

 

So it stands to reason that if they enter the MMO field, their MMO is going to place a great deal of emphasis on storytelling, immersion, VO, dialogue and choices.

 

That doesn't mean they're going to neglect competitive PvE and PvP (and their accoutrements like combat meters, etc.) altogether, of course not. And when it works (when there's no ability delay, as there isn't sometimes), it's fun enough.

 

So competitive players coming to SWTOR are barking up the wrong tree if they're thinking that BioWare are going to turn SWTOR into yet another ultra-competitive game. It would, indeed, be foolish of BW to do so. There are other games that do competitive PvE and PvP better.

 

For BW, their main interest is going to be in attracting people who a) are already fans of the BioWare "style", and b) people who want to roleplay being the Star Wars universe.

 

If they lean too much towards pleasing the competitive crowd, they're going to alienate the crowd they are able to please the most according to what they're best at doing.

 

And I'm not saying it's a black and white thing - it's always going to be a bit of a compromise in some way. I'd say that damage meters for personal use (e.g. test dummies with damage meters) and possibly some kind of metric for Operations, are likely to be the compromise they make. That's as much quantification as min-maxers and competitive players really need, without intruding too much of a competitive aura into a game that's primarily a roleplayer's game.

 

So much for arguments of the type "unless BW turn this into a more competitive game, it will fail". On the contrary, if BW don't play to their strengths, the game will fail. (Min-maxing, remember? )

 

The only valid counter-argument to this line of thought, so far as I can see is: will they be able to make enough roleplaying content to keep the game going? I don't see any reason why not - especially considering that they've said they've got enough VO for another year and a half of content down the pipeline.

 

Then why was this game made to be an mmo, instead of KOTOR 3? Interactions with other people are the whole point of mmos. Everything from pvp, raiding, group questing, mailbox dancing is all about being with other people. The story isn't getting a ship and flying to nar shaada. The story is finding a group for a 2 man heroics, and ending up sticking with them for three hours through four heroic quests and two flashpoints. The story is ambushing that stealther who tried to gank you earlier from around a blind corner. The story is that one rare funny troll mailbox dancing late at night spouting jokes and getting mountain dew all over your keyboard.

 

These things all depend on the players, and players depend on game mechanics. If you want to experience good fiction, read a book, watch a movie, download some anime.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Devorin_Sargothi

[AlpsStranger]

This. You can't trust the "ITS JUST A GAME CHILL OUT" people to honestly hold their hand up and say "Sorry, I can't do this I'll go get more gear/practice/respec". If you could then they wouldn't be so adamantly against the meters.

 

Besides, what good is it going to do if they just respec from "Whatever icons looked cool last Thursday" to "whichever icons look cool today?"

[Tahana]

Hah, that is definitely true. I know I can be a jerk, but I just get sick of the smugness of the so-called "casual" movement that seems ready to casually take a meataxe to anyone who dares not agree with them.

 

This started with the Rift launch for me, so my anger at these people has been simmering for quite a while now.

 

Why though.. In that game Trion defaulted to the hard core raiders for the most part. They had a combat log which you could use with an external tracker, they have started to include code for the API which has brought out some, albeit simplistic dps meters. They put out a very difficult raid in HK, which self admittedly some of the most arduous stuff was the bugginess, but there are whole guilds that splintered over the Akylios fight.

 

The biggest problem I saw with that game is they tried to do much to fast in their attempts to appease everyone and noone was satisfied.

 

Personally I got tired of their Devs constant breaking of the game, and having to find a new guild all of the time because for whatever reason they couldn't be held together..

[Devorin_Sargothi]

What I'm asking for is an anecdote from someone who did some dungeon or something and performed their job sufficiently, and later someone used data from the run to incriminate them. Surely with all the animosity on display here, someone must have a story to tell.

 

Still waiting on this testimony, by the way.

[AlpsStranger]

Why though.. In that game Trion defaulted to the hard core raiders for the most part. They had a combat log which you could use with an external tracker, they have started to include code for the API which has brought out some, albeit simplistic dps meters. They put out a very difficult raid in HK, which self admittedly some of the most arduous stuff was the bugginess, but there are whole guilds that splintered over the Akylios fight.

 

The biggest problem I saw with that game is they tried to do much to fast in their attempts to appease everyone and noone was satisfied.

 

Personally I got tired of their Devs constant breaking of the game, and having to find a new guild all of the time because for whatever reason they couldn't be held together..

 

I wasn't so much sick of Trion, but sick of the people that kept demanding stuff just like here. People wanted the combat log disabled in Rift since day 1.

[Truga]

you are misinterpreting what i mean. I say walk in the park meaning experiencing everything. If you are running through it you are not fulling experiencing the park. But thank you from proving my point for me. if you had read any of my other posts you see i'm opposed to making the game easier with mods. how can anyone consider themselves "hardcore" if they are asking for ways to make the game easier a month into it?

 

As a person who's currently doing the walk in the park way of going through _all_ the content available while levels, what's to stop me from min/maxing while doing it? Just because someone likes min/maxing doesn't mean they automatically don't like anything else.

 

I personally build all my characters with extended reading and pre-planning. I start the research before I even hit the character creation screen:

 

1) First and foremost, is the gameplay enjoyable to me, personally? I really like playing DPS, but if said DPS is composed of single target abilities, average CC and weak AoE (see DPS sage/sorcerer), I won't play it.

 

2) Is the style of this character enjoyable to me? As a huge wizard fan, I always loathed how wizards play in MMOs. If I can't destroy continents with my abilities, it's not a wizard and I probably won't play it. Thankfully, SWTOR doesn't really have this problem.

 

3) Will it still be viable once I hit end-game? With re-spec the weight of this doesn't matter that much anymore, but if it changes 1), I probably won't play this character after I cap.

 

4) I like managing resources. A large pool of a very limited resource is fun. Again see sage/sorc, they get 600 force, but once you're dry, you might as well quit. Gives you a strategic touch, where you have to decide on the long run if spending a load of your resource now is better than some resource later.

 

And finally 5), Can this thing win any and every _solo_ content by just auto-attacking? If the game allows it (sadly this one doesn't even have autoattack), I'll build one of these for when I want to just be lazy and grind something. Fortunately, I now have a Dwarf in Lineage 2 for this, because that game is now free and I don't have to sub and can play whenever.

 

After all of these are considered, only then will I hit the character creation screen.

 

After I'm about level 15-16, and have most of my basic skills, I'll start calculating what kind of rotation will give me the most dps for the least resource used for PVE and the combo that will give me the highest damage spike for PVP.

 

None of these, all of which are pretty much a theorycrafter's number crunching practices, doesn't do anything against me enjoying the actual content, however.

 

So tell me, how is trying to be good at the game and being good at a class I like playing disabling me from playing any content anyone else can enjoy?