In case you missed it: Combat logs are coming, but only for yourself

[ferroz]

Nonsense, what your saying is for progression guilds having dps logs is needed, thats utter nonsense...I was in a top tier progression guild on EQ, and we didnt use logs in any way...We had no trouble with content, if we didnt succeed the first time we made some minor changes based on how the event transpired....guilds can progress without logs, they just need to know the game and its mechanics better, which imho is greater then relying on any logs ANY day.

EQ had logs available from very early on... maybe your guild really didn't use them at all, but I'm skeptical. I find it more likely that you personally didn't use them even though other people in your guild did use them

 

Besides, EQ's content was pretty damn simplistic compared to most modern games.

 

I remember one of the top guild's GM posting somewhere that their original strat for vox/naggy was something like

1. send in melee
   
2. once enough of the melee had died to not lag people out, send in the casters
   
3. Win (hopefully)
   

and that he knew that they had made it as a guild when they skipped step 2, because the dragon died before enough of the melee had died to call the casters in.

 

We're talking a game where rogues talked about turning on autoattack and debated whether it was worth the risk of keyboard macroing an auto backstab macro (which was against the eula) because they were just going to afk for the 45 minutes it took to kill the bosses (I think that conversation was in regards to a VT fight). Or where Royal Norratian guard took 2 full raids on RZ by having one raid kiting adds while the other killed him; I'm trying to remember if they did the same thing for other fights (Rathe, perhaps?)

[GeoLager]

Doing this is only going to make guilds jump through extra hoops.

 

 

Like having every dps run a parser for comparison.

 

 

 

Devs and players need to get over this idea that dps is personal when its an entire raid groups' time on the line.

[Terebor]

I wouldn't hire a developer if he/she did not play WoW at some point. It is the pinnacle of MMO's. There is absolutely nothing wrong with taking a product that does a lot of things right and improving upon it and creating your own unique game.

 

Well said...thats exactly what i missed in this game...taking the improvements other (very successful) MMO has already made and maybe even try makin them better. i really do appreciate the thought of BW tryin on their own BUT why create something completely new (that really looks kinda the same) and in some cases fail hard instead of trying to take working bits and pieces (successfull ones) and make them even better. NOthing wrong with that...and thats kinda what a lot of ppl expected.

[Matte_Black]

I don't know why people are so worried about being "judged" by others if combat logs shows everyone in your group. After all, us healers are already "judged" by the huge green numbers floating over people's heads.

 

This is generally the crux of this issue. You have one side that largely cares about feelings, perception, variety and playing how they want to and another heavily moved by the hardest of facts and a limited number of correct/optimal answers. The folks really wanting the hard data on everything have a harder time understanding the nuanced, subjective elements of being judged by parsers that the opposition cares about.

 

In the end it comes to balancing the wants of both ends of the customer base and this is pretty much the half and half compromise. I'll also point out that according to their comments the devs seem to want the players to be viewing the game as an aural/visual experience over what's lit up on on their ability tray and the numbers rolling up over enemy's heads.

[Blotter]

Doing this is only going to make guilds jump through extra hoops.

 

 

Like having every dps run a parser for comparison.

 

 

 

Devs and players need to get over this idea that dps is personal when its an entire raid groups' time on the line.

 

Everyone just uploads and the 3rd party site comiles the data.

[Cbrinegar]

I understand your point, but to be honest, saying you went in there to do HM Soa with pugs really undermines the example. We did that the other night with a couple pugs and not a single person complained that it took 5 tries to finally get the dps right and that we were up until 6am. FUnny thing is, it all came together when someone finally said "ok, last try, I'm pooped and need sleep." Moreover, nobody got "called out" or yelled at or told they were a slacker or various other turdbrained nonsense that takes place when someone can look at a combat log and use it to "prove" that someone is a "baddy" or whatever. We muddled through and finally succeeded. If you can't take the trial and error repetition of playing a game and want to not have to do things repeatedly in order to learn to get it right, then play Scrabble. That is how a game like this should be as opposed to a Massive Mutliplayer Spreadsheet Wankfest.

 

Exactly!!!!!! Learn the mechanics, learn HOW to play, learn the system!!! Memories of EQ1 Time raids

[Snoodmaster]

I understand your point, but to be honest, saying you went in there to do HM Soa with pugs really undermines the example. We did that the other night with a couple pugs and not a single person complained that it took 5 tries to finally get the dps right and that we were up until 6am. FUnny thing is, it all came together when someone finally said "ok, last try, I'm pooped and need sleep." Moreover, nobody got "called out" or yelled at or told they were a slacker or various other turdbrained nonsense that takes place when someone can look at a combat log and use it to "prove" that someone is a "baddy" or whatever. We muddled through and finally succeeded. If you can't take the trial and error repetition of playing a game and want to not have to do things repeatedly in order to learn to get it right, then play Scrabble. That is how a game like this should be as opposed to a Massive Mutliplayer Spreadsheet Wankfest.

 

Maybe part of problem is that my guild is mostly made up of fellow classmates from law school. So we don't have the luxury of staying up til 6am to slam our faces against a brick wall on a Sunday night. We aren't the best players either, but fairly skilled, and we were very, very close to getting him down. At one point we even got him to 11k health.

 

 

Personally, I have no problem with being told that I'm screwing up or admitting that I screwed up if I actually screwed up. Nor do the people in my guild. The problem I have is when you have no objective criteria and then people just start making up subjective "feelings" about who is responsible or what needs to get fixed. Because then, since all you have to on is a gut-feeling, one person's gut feeling will be different from another, and when you have 6 opinionated law students with different feelings and no way to be sure who is correct, it gets pretty heated.

 

Edit: My point is that trial and error is extremely frustrating when you don't have any sort of objective criterion to measure to success of each try. There are too many variables in play to just say "hey the boss is dead, success." What if the boss is dead because the BH had a lucky crit even though the sniper was using a suboptimal rotation? What if the mindtraps were up too long, but the healer got ball lightning twice in a row on the burn phase? The next you do it, if you do the same suboptimal strategy because you got lucky once, it will still be supoptimal, and you will likely fail because you didn't notice what you were doing wrong the first time.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Snoodmaster

[ScarletBlaze]

It's kind of sad the community has gotten like this judging people in Pugs like this. There could be a reason someone is having problems.

 

Some could be new to the game and is just learning how to play yet people want to judge them and make comments aobut how they are letting everyone down. Just Great make a person feel bad so that they never want to play again. That is so wrong.

 

Some could have slow connections and at times their computer could be delaying in the action when fighting. I know people who are good in what they do but sometimes their connection is slow. So we judge them?

 

Since when does it become our right to judge someone and make them feel bad. That's why a lot of times you will be asking for groups and no one will join because of this attitude.

 

No one has the right to make someone feel bad no matter what. This is only a game and not like it can't be repeated.

 

You can learn by doing the instances and seeing what went wrong and going by that without having to have everyone read their logs especially if you are a good raider.

 

.

Edited March 6, 2012 by ScarletBlaze

[Snoodmaster]

It's kind of sad the community has gotten like this judging people in Pugs like this. There could be a reason someone is having problems.

 

Some could be new to the game and is just learning how to play yet people want to judge them and make comments aobut how they are letting everyone down. Just Great make a person feel bad so that they never want to play again. That is so wrong.

 

Some could have slow connections and at times their computer could be delaying in the action when fighting. I know people who are good in what they do but sometimes their connection is slow. So we judge them?

 

Since when does it become our right to judge someone and make them feel bad. That's why a lot of times you will be asking for groups and no one will join because of this attitude.

 

No one has the right to make someone feel bad no matter what. This is only a game and not like it can't be repeated.

 

You can learn by doing the instances and seeing what went wrong and going by that without having to have everyone read their logs especially if you are a good raider.

 

Being unnecessarily mean has NOTHING to do with accurately pointing out bad dps. If someone is having connection problems that makes them unable to contribute, then they should politely explain and leave the group. Or the raid leader should politely ask why they aren't performing and either figure out a way for them to contribute or politely ask them to leave so the rest of the group can succeed.

 

There's no need for abuse, but there is a need for personal accountability and the ability to know who is not performing at the level required.

 

edit: for example, I once raided (in WoW) on my laptop while on vacation. The graphics engine couldn't handle it, and I lagged really badly so I had to tell everyone that I couldn't be there and let someone else take that spot. Doing anything else would have been selfish and irresponsible.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Snoodmaster

[Blotter]

Well said...thats exactly what i missed in this game...taking the improvements other (very successful) MMO has already made and maybe even try makin them better. i really do appreciate the thought of BW tryin on their own BUT why create something completely new (that really looks kinda the same) and in some cases fail hard instead of trying to take working bits and pieces (successfull ones) and make them even better. NOthing wrong with that...and thats kinda what a lot of ppl expected.

 

Why are you ignoring that BW is doing what you just said they should be doing? rather than implement exactly the same kind of combat logs/dps meters that are available in WoW, they have chosen to recognize the problems inherent in those systems as a large portion of the SWTOR community has explaned and characterized them. Therefore, in an attempt to make such systems better for the community, they taking what was done in WoW and other games and are doing it differently. People who want the data will still get it. People who don't want people looking at their numbers and behaving like jerks won't have to share them. It's win-win...but if, for some reason, the attempt to improve on such systems proves not to work, it can always be changed.

 

What I'm hearing in your post is this: "Companies should look at what other companies have done in the past and attemt to do it even better, but BW should jsut do everything exactly the same as WoW." Fail.

[Terebor]

What I'm hearing in your post is this: "Companies should look at what other companies have done in the past and attemt to do it even better, but BW should jsut do everything exactly the same as WoW." Fail.

 

Well i don't know how "bits and pieces" apply to copy the whole game...and at a certain point there is no option B. A combat Log is a combat log...so if other games have successfully added combat logs in their game BW shouldn't because it aint there invention? Dude what u say there is utterly ********...i just said for me they should have put in some stuff existing in other games...if you see it otherwise...thats fine...but try to read and understand before you judge mate...

 

If you really heard what i quoted above you really should go clean your ears because your view has to be drastically narrow to get that as a conclusion....seriously

Edited March 6, 2012 by Terebor

[ArtMonster]

if this is indeed so.

 

"good."

 

I approve of combat logs for personal log viewing. But not for public.

 

I would rather not open the door for griefing/bullying by letting others see another players logs. There is no use for it that is positive.

 

If you want to improve your personal character by crunching numbers, fine.

.

[cipher_nemo]

This is generally the crux of this issue. You have one side that largely cares about feelings, perception, variety and playing how they want to and another heavily moved by the hardest of facts and a limited number of correct/optimal answers. The folks really wanting the hard data on everything have a harder time understanding the nuanced, subjective elements of being judged by parsers that the opposition cares about.

 

In the end it comes to balancing the wants of both ends of the customer base and this is pretty much the half and half compromise. I'll also point out that according to their comments the devs seem to want the players to be viewing the game as an aural/visual experience over what's lit up on on their ability tray and the numbers rolling up over enemy's heads.

 

That's a good perspective and summary of this scenario.

 

I run ops with a mixture of guildies who are either somewhat hardcore or somewhat casual. I can usually tell when a DPS isn't dishing out enough damage, because I can see their attacks and I know what their gear is like. But they're a guildie so we're running the ops for their sake. When it comes to pugers, it still doesn't matter for me. We're just happy to have them fill a slot we couldn't due to scheduling conflicts.

 

But then again, we're doing normal mode ops and hard mode flashpoints, so we're not hitting much of a gear requirement yet. When we get to hard and nightmare mode ops, we'll probably be judging whether to allow a character or not based on gear, not damage logs. I'd rather have a patient, friendly person run with us that meets the ops' requirements, rather than just anyone that can dish out more DPS as shown in logs.

 

Requirements are one thing, but performance is quite another.

Edited March 6, 2012 by cipher_nemo

[Cbrinegar]

EQ had logs available from very early on... maybe your guild really didn't use them at all, but I'm skeptical. I find it more likely that you personally didn't use them even though other people in your guild did use them

 

Besides, EQ's content was pretty damn simplistic compared to most modern games.

 

I remember one of the top guild's GM posting somewhere that their original strat for vox/naggy was something like

1. send in melee
   
2. once enough of the melee had died to not lag people out, send in the casters
   
3. Win (hopefully)
   

and that he knew that they had made it as a guild when they skipped step 2, because the dragon died before enough of the melee had died to call the casters in.

 

We're talking a game where rogues talked about turning on autoattack and debated whether it was worth the risk of keyboard macroing an auto backstab macro (which was against the eula) because they were just going to afk for the 45 minutes it took to kill the bosses (I think that conversation was in regards to a VT fight). Or where Royal Norratian guard took 2 full raids on RZ by having one raid kiting adds while the other killed him; I'm trying to remember if they did the same thing for other fights (Rathe, perhaps?)

 

 

I agree, Eq release content was trivial when looking back, But it took 50+ people at first to take down..You had to learn how to run the encounter, not just rely on logs, which yes existed in eq VERY early on, and no i assure you being an officer, DPS logs were never EVER mentioned in Office chat, DKP system was, DPS no. There is just no need to concern yourself with DPS logs to progress, learn to ADAPT, learn to CHANGE, try something different. Use your brain, not rely on some DPS log.

 

Dont get me wrong i love looking at my output in WZ's and constantly try to improve it, but thats just for my own personal reference as it should stay. I can stay on average around the top 5 on WZ's, but at times have sucked too, im hard enough on myself when i have bad days, ill be damned if ill tolerate some punk mouthing me in a raid about my poor performance one day however.

[ScarletBlaze]

Being unnecessarily mean has NOTHING to do with accurately pointing out bad dps. If someone is having connection problems that makes them unable to contribute, then they should politely explain and leave the group. Or the raid leader should politely ask why they aren't performing and either figure out a way for them to contribute or politely ask them to leave so the rest of the group can succeed.

 

There's no need for abuse, but there is a need for personal accountability and the ability to know who is not performing at the level required.

 

edit: for example, I once raided (in WoW) on my laptop while on vacation. The graphics engine couldn't handle it, and I lagged really badly so I had to tell everyone that I couldn't be there and let someone else take that spot. Doing anything else would have been selfish and irresponsible.

 

 

 

So instead of working with the person that has connection problem we just dismiss them so that they never get to do an operation. Yea that's a good idea. Just say well so sorry but you can't play with us.

 

Sorry I'm not made that way. I will find a way to include everyone in my guild and make everyone feel included.

[Terebor]

if this is indeed so.

 

"good."

 

I approve of combat logs for personal log viewing. But not for public.

 

I would rather not open the door for griefing/bullying by letting others see another players logs. There is no use for it that is positive.

 

If you want to improve your personal character by crunching numbers, fine.

.

 

I believe the most important thing about a combat log should be to gather information about incoming damage, thus to understand where it comes from and even to find out how minimize or even completely lose said damage. I think if the combat log is only personal it still would do its main job so i agree with you, tho i wouldnt mind a general one. this gives guild/raid leaders an additional tool to work with.

[ThiborF]

Why would you need to lie, unless you were slacking, being a leech.

 

Just to screw with people who can't step towards the light of "they died, we lived" and choose to remain shackled their spreadsheets and meters.

[Pravis]

Doing this is only going to make guilds jump through extra hoops.

 

 

Like having every dps run a parser for comparison.

 

 

 

Devs and players need to get over this idea that dps is personal when its an entire raid groups' time on the line.

 

A small minority of players (<10%) are in a situation where you need to min/max your character in a way that damage meters are needed. If you want your guild raid to be that "competitive" than all it takes is a simple "send the Ops leader your dos" after each fight to determine what needs to be done. And if you happen to be in that situation you should have no problem being honest to improve.

 

The remaining 90% don't need anything more than their own data.

[Blotter]

Maybe part of problem is that my guild is mostly made up of fellow classmates from law school. So we don't have the luxury of staying up til 6am to slam our faces against a brick wall on a Sunday night. We aren't the best players either, but fairly skilled, and we were very, very close to getting him down. At one point we even got him to 11k health.

 

 

Personally, I have no problem with being told that I'm screwing up or admitting that I screwed up if I actually screwed up. Nor do the people in my guild. The problem I have is when you have no objective criteria and then people just start making up subjective "feelings" about who is responsible or what needs to get fixed. Because then, since all you have to on is a gut-feeling, one person's gut feeling will be different from another, and when you have 6 opinionated law students with different feelings and no way to be sure who is correct, it gets pretty heated.

 

Edit: My point is that trial and error is extremely frustrating when you don't have any sort of objective criterion to measure to success of each try. There are too many variables in play to just say "hey the boss is dead, success." What if the boss is dead because the BH had a lucky crit even though the sniper was using a suboptimal rotation? What if the mindtraps were up too long, but the healer got ball lightning twice in a row on the burn phase? The next you do it, if you do the same suboptimal strategy because you got lucky once, it will still be supoptimal, and you will likely fail because you didn't notice what you were doing wrong the first time.

 

I know the feeling...one of our wipes, I happened to be the last one left...a healer, so I was only able to get him down to literally 800hp before he one-shot me lol. Was a loss, but it was one of those moments when Vent goes nuts and everyone's shouting "go go go" and then "aaaaww, dmn!!!!" all at once haha. Was a fun moment that didn't turn into people flaming each other (or me) for lacking dps or whatever based on some silly combat log. We all jsut took it in stride. I was, admittedly, a little disappointed I didn't get to be the big hero tho lol.

 

You do have objective criterion to measure each try. You can see how close you got. You can see what others are doing on the screen and who is dying from stupid mistakes. You can see who is, for example, failnig to dps the mind traps when they pop up. You can see that mind traps aren't going down fast enough if they're not. You can see whether his health is ticking down fast enough when he's vulnerable. There's tons of objective criterion that require you to pay attention, observe the game itself (instead of gluing your face to some number ticker) and immerse yourself in the boss attempt.

 

Here's the rub, man...

 

"What if the boss is dead because the BH had a lucky crit even though the sniper was using a suboptimal rotation?"

 

Then the boss is dead and it doesn't matter. For realz.

 

"There are too many variables in play to just say "hey the boss is dead, success."

 

And that will be true every single time you try to do it if you want it to stay even remotely interesting. Moreover, combat logs won't change the fact that it will be rife with variables every time anyway.

 

You shouldn't have to be a nitpicky CPA to play the game...this isn't Massive Multi-Accountant Online Algebra Wars. The more BW prevents their game from turning into that, the better.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Blotter

[Terebor]

I'd rather have a patient, friendly person run with us that meets the ops' requirements, rather than just anyone that can dish out more DPS as shown in logs.

 

Requirements are one thing, but performance is quite another.

 

I get what i mean but beeing friendly and patient is a requirement for everyone in the raid, doesn't matter if they are able to dish out max dps or not. If i have to choose between 2 friendly and patient guys i judge them on performance...cause thats the only measurement thats left. So i'd rather have a undergeared member that knows what he's doing then take a well geard but underperforming one.

 

As i said the friendly and patient part applys to anyone for me.

[psychodad]

The people who want logs say they need meters to let them gauge their own performance as a point of personal pride.

 

It is NOT a point of personal pride. As a tank how am I supposed to build to stay alive if I have no idea what it was that killed me? Same for any kind of challenging encounter. What damage type was it? Who did the damage? How much did I absorb? Etc, etc, etc.

[Snoodmaster]

A small minority of players (<10%) are in a situation where you need to min/max your character in a way that damage meters are needed. If you want your guild raid to be that "competitive" than all it takes is a simple "send the Ops leader your dos" after each fight to determine what needs to be done. And if you happen to be in that situation you should have no problem being honest to improve.

 

The problem with that solution is threefold.

 

(1) People will lie.

Even if 15 out of the 16 (or 7/8) people on your NM Ops team are honest, forthright people, having that 16th person lie about his dps throws the whole system out of whack. Generally, this isn't an issue in guilds because after the first couple of lies the guy gets booted, but it takes time and extra effort to figure out the lies.

 

(2) You can't fix what already happened.

Having to upload logs after the fight means that you will be doing the analysis post-fight rather than in the middle of the action. Which means that if someone is screwing up and causing a wipe, you can't fix it right then and prevent the wipe, but instead have to do a post-mortem afterward.

 

(3) It creates more delay.

I've working with out of combat log parsing before. It just takes more time to upload and analyze than looking at a screen in game.

 

That said, to forestall any replies about how those aren't "real issues", I personally find the planned 'solution' to be an agreeable compromise. I'm just pointing out that it does have problems from the side of people wanting more data.

Edited March 6, 2012 by Snoodmaster

[Matte_Black]

I think I would rather be judged on whether I buy into shared parsing and downloading some sort of 3rd party bootleg real-time parser or upload my parser to the group leader or not than on whether I have made the the "right" gear, build or playstyle choices and up to snuff.

 

Odds are if we aren't of the same mind on the importance of the data from parsers we aren't going to make great group members anyway. There is no need to have exact numbers of questionable relevance just to prove that out.

[Blotter]

It is NOT a point of personal pride. As a tank how am I supposed to build to stay alive if I have no idea what it was that killed me? Same for any kind of challenging encounter. What damage type was it? Who did the damage? How much did I absorb? Etc, etc, etc.

 

Irrelevant. You will be able to see all of that with what BW is giving us.

[Blotter]

The problem with that solution is threefold.

 

(1) People will lie.

Even if 15 out of the 16 (or 7/8) people on your NM Ops team are honest, forthright people, having that 16th person lie about his dps throws the whole system out of whack. Generally, this isn't an issue in guilds because after the first couple of lies the guy gets booted, but it takes time and extra effort to figure out the lies.

 

(2) You can't fix what already happened.

Having to upload logs after the fight means that you will be doing the analysis post-fight rather than in the middle of the action. Which means that if someone is screwing up and causing a wipe, you can't fix it right then and prevent the wipe, but instead have to do a post-mortem afterward.

 

(3) It creates more delay.

I've working with out of combat log parsing before. It just takes more time to upload and analyze than looking at a screen in game.

 

That said, to forestall any replies about how those aren't "real issues", I personally find the planned 'solution' to be an agreeable compromise. I'm just pointing out that it does have problems from the side of people wanting more data.

 

When it comes to guilds or teams, it is perfectly reasonable to say "hey, yuo want to run this with us, yuo have to share your data log after so we can parse the data on that 3rd party website." Problem of lying entirely, 100% solved. It's voluntary. Run with us and particiapate according to guild rules and share or don't. Period.

 

As for it being a "problem" that you can't do it in the middle of the fight, well, yuo shoudl be paying attention to the fight. I can personally attest to wipes occuring BECAUSE of dps meters, not despite them and not because of a lack of them.

 

If you really feel the need to look beyond he 4th wall and at the game's underlying mechanics, I really have no sympathy for comlpaints about suffering a slight delay in being able to play video game accountant.