Metrics, Serious Raiding, SWTOR Has None

[Kaydul]

I come from a time when playing and winning weren't either. The difference is that the best players didn't keep whining about not having their own special super-duper loots, mobs, and content.

 

Those came later, starting with EQ, developing into the full blown OCD that was WoW, and now we've got the same people here.

 

And the amusing thing is, without you the game is a better place. Hardcore raiders are a distraction to the majority of the playerbase. A game designed to be a journey, and all you're concerned about is the ending- and the heck with making 1-49 any better being a priority. They need to put more ubermobs scattered around all the worlds, the better to sate the "gotta beat em all" mentality here.

 

Well considering it was casual players who wanted content catered to them in the first place, so they intoduced harder difficulties, which in turn are now being watered down as well...

 

and I'm not sure why you think the leveling content is where it should be at in an MMO, considering MMOs have always been about the end game. that's where you spend most of your time...

 

this isn't a single player game, where once you hit the cap level you're done. MMOs always start at the cap level, that's where you get gear, and progress through the games content. If MMOs weren't about end game why would they have raids, pvp, or anything... just reroll another alt bro and have at it!

 

MMOs don't have to choose between a journey and endgame content...they can do both. However while the leveling content is FAR more polished than the end game, people want them to focus on the endgame. The game has been out for going on 3 months now, and just about anyone has a cap level toon, if you don't, this thread don't concern you...plain and simple

[Raeln]

 

there has been, and always will be 2 schools of uses for meters.

 

1. epeen measuring tool, most commonly employed by DPS

2. analysis tool, to figure out what is not working

 

i'll let you guess which one i'm interested in.

 

| ----- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

 

Above is my estimation of how much of the population fits into those two schools of thought.

 

I'll let you figure out which is which.

[Trojan]

If you need addons and meters to tell if someone's bad, then the content is already being tuned towards requiring those tools in the first place. This is not only bad, it's damaging to the game in general. It's like saying your parents need a suite of video cameras and high-tech biometric analysis to tell if their kid was fingerpainting on the wall instead of doing their homework.

 

The example given with the child finger painting the walls vs doing their homework is absurd. A raid of 7 to 15 other players vs a child finger painting on the wall isn't the same. Of course the parents wouldnt need to use high-tech gadgetry to deduce that their child with the paint on his/her hands was the culprit. If it were that easy to determine who did what and why, people wouldn't need logs. But because we do not have that ability in MMOs (yet) we need these addons to help us determine why Boss A didnt die when he was supposed to and what caused the wipe.

 

A better example would be, if you were going to go spelunking in a dark cave with no natural light, would you bring a lantern or a blind-fold.

 

Man didn't create fire out of thinking a piece of wood will burn, he made a tool to help him make it burn.

 

 

And when you reduce a mob to a "mathematical problem", it's not a game anymore. It's a math problem and your guildies are part of an equation, not friends and fellow players. When you need the equivalent of doing complex math to properly play a videogame, it's no longer playing a videogame. It becomes a heartless analysis of a program vs. entertainment.

Im sorry to tell you this, but everything you do whether it's work or play _is_ a mathematical equation. Right now you invest your time playing the game your way because you feel it will bring the MOST fun for YOU, and that is fine, play how you want, but don't enforce your ideal onto others, how they play or I play is up to us. Individuals that join and band together to form a guild choose their rules of play, if you don't like that rule, go find others that have the same rules you like to play with.

 

As for turning the group and the game into a mathematical equation. Bioware set that guideline up for any and all players that decide to raid by placing "enrage" timers on certain bosses/battles they turned the core group of players into a mathematical equation. All that "hard core" players are doing is attempting to optimize their gameplay to beat the equal sign

 

Keep that kind of thing as optional as possible and give it a minimum of pride of place in anything related to actual story. Take those six uber mobs and spread them around Corellia and Belsavis and Ilum instead of parking them in some instance. Having buffed versions of instances, sure. But mobs that take that excruciating a level of effort should be left as far away from such things as possible.

 

so in otherwords...if its hard to accomplish, don't bother with it.

 

I am honestly glad that not everyone thinks like this, because if they did, we'd never have the ability to fly, go to the moon, or for some look that girl in the eye and say "wanna dance?"

 

Challenge me, Bioware, I dare you.

[Yaiser]

Imagine if there was no NBA or NFL. Who would you aspire to be, who would you love to watch play, who would you love to criticize?

 

 

 

I aspire to be a hardcore raider!

[roccorossi]

You know what's sad? While reading that well thought-out, fairly insightful post, I knew before scrolling down that the first few replies would be nothing more than the standard head-in-the sand "nuh uh shut up/ok quit then" drivel that is so prevalent in any thread that has the audacity to bring up legitimate concerns and criticisms about the game.

 

Get it together, ToR community.

 

 

 

^^ This

 

 

/agree with OP... I dont want to play a Single Player MMO.. I want the community I found in EQ... The Mystry, the wonder....

[DJunior]

Without the "Bads and casuals" SWTOR would be F2P before some people fail to graduate.

 

Sad but true. That's their target audience.

[Paxmendacium]

So basically you want to play WoW?

[Sir-Phobos]

I laugh every time I see someone says that threat meters and boss mods are required for raiding, because I know they never played a MMO before WoW.

 

Remember EQ raiding where there was no threat meter and a poorly timed nuke from a wizard meant one more wizard corpse on the ground? Wizards didn't whine about how they needed the game to tell them how many times they could nuke without getting aggro, they learned to play their class and learned to get a feel for how much damage they could crank out without getting aggro. Getting the most out of your character without getting aggro was considered a skill.

[HellFlame]

So basically you want to play WoW?

 

Seriously i wonder if this is life-threatening... you guys obviously got some problems.. why always compare this game to WoW... no we want an MMO not a SINGLEPLAYER STORY game.

[Artacks]

why always compare this game to WoW... .

 

Because whether you like it or not, WoW is the standard.

[HellFlame]

Because whether you like it or not, WoW is the standard.

 

Because whether you like it or not, i dont understand why you guys always use the "oh you want threat & damage meters and combat log" so you basically want "WoW" card.

[alextrebek]

okay, tired of sifting through posts trying to argue with the OP about why damage meters shouldn't be in the game, that literally could not be less relevant to what he's trying to say

 

gonna go ahead and try to restate the main argument here because i will no doubt come back to this thread in the future and be pissed if i see more **** that's irrelevant to what i was trying to read about in the first place

 

Foundation, this is not what is being argued, it is a fact deducible from statements made by BioWare development

 

The OP is saying that if combat logs, and by extension damage meters, are only made available for viewing/analysis outside of the game, what's going to happen is that every guild, every player who has ever wanted to better themselves even, that wants to address performance deficiencies* outside of the very obvious (standing in fires etc.), is going to have to jump through about 5-15 minutes (this estimate is assuming that this new combat log is as easily analyzable and up-loadable as those in other MMO's) worth of extra loops, (in comparison to other MMO's where Damage/Healing meters are streaming or readily accessible) to find out that Sorceror A actually outhealed Sorceror B by around 15% every single attempt.

 

Beginning of Argument: This is the least speculative set of assumptions

 

Personally, I don't how many guilds will actually force most or all of their players to upload their parses, but I would bet that around a third of this game's guilds aiming for world top 100 kills or better will very grudgingly be uploading their combat data come 1.2 and that upon finishing the content and beginning recruitment for the next push, every single guild in the world top 100, and at least 80% of the players in the top 1000 guilds will evaluate themselves at least once either by being forced to by a raid leader, or even more likely, out of personal curiosity and desire for self-improvement.

 

If these figures are accurate, or even close to accurate (which I expect them to be if competitive raiding in TOR develops in any way similar to competitive raiding in nearly every MMO to come before it), we are looking at somewhere around 10,000 players who will, either by necessity or choice, upload a combat log by the end of 1.2.

 

I know this may seem like a relatively small amount of players forced to deal with a relatively minor inconvenience, but what it portends is actually far more significant... bringing us to the main argument of the OP.

 

The Main Argument

 

The fact that no one at BioWare seems to be able to recognize that they are going to cause 10,000 players * 20-30 minutes of unnecessary inconvenience is frightening to the 5,000+ raiders who no doubt almost-immediately realized the implications of development's decision on the combat log:

 

1. If they want to improve themselves to stay competitive with their guildmates and other guilds, they will be spending a lot more time doing so than they did in the last MMO they played.

 

2. If I and everyone else in my server 1, 2 or whatever guild are able to quickly identify a major and obvious (at least to me and everyone in my guild) flaw in only having an out-of-game combat log, and the BioWare development team is not, then how can I depend on them to relate to my expectations and produce content that I find challenging, worth competing to complete, and most of all, worth playing through at least a couple months of stagnancy to enjoy.

 

This is only exacerbated by the fact that there are two obviously superior alternatives (and doubtlessly even more less obvious ones) to the combat log issue:

 

1. Give every player a personal, streaming combat log with the option to choose whether or not you want to let other players access your combat data. (Yes, I know that people who turn off their meters or whatever will inevitably be whined at, so although this isn't necessarily the optimal solution, it would probably still cause less minutes/hours of player aggravation/inconvenience than the current proposition)

 

2. Keep combat data the way it is, i.e. non-existent. It would literally cause less player aggravation to keep the combat log the way it is than to force those who want to utilize it (and by extension, probably force many who probably don't) to go on a *********** odyssey to do so, god I feel bad for the person who will inevitably spend countless hours putting up the inevitable log-to-meters website.

Edited March 9, 2012 by alextrebek

[HinjuMaspo]

I have some responses to a few arguments posted.

 

1. Warzone meters and Ventrilo are okay, but meters in a raid are not. Implementing meters will make them required for content and start a raid cycle of gearing that leads to a path of failure.

 

This is complete garbage. On one hand you argue that raid meters will ruin the boss encounter tuning and you dislike being required to install third party software to raid, but on the other, using Warzone meters and Ventrilo which is the absolute number one REQUIRED priority for any raid or premade ever is fine? You can't have it both ways.

 

In addition, that raid gearing cycle you're so afraid of? It's ALREADY HERE! Items from normal flashpoints are outclassed by items from hard mode flashpoints. Items from hard mode operations are superior to those from normal operations. Champion gear is more expensive to acquire than Centurion gear. To claim that implementing raid meters will trigger a gear grind meltdown is absurd.

 

 

2. Meters turn the game into a dehumanized number-crunch and take away the overall experience of just playing the game.

 

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but this game has numbers everywhere. Health, resources, damage, healing, credits, range, valor, experience, statistics, armor - they are on your screen all the time. Damage numbers appear over the enemy and your character. Healing numbers appear over your character and the character you are healing. All a meter does is accumulate a total for each player! A simple addition of all the numbers you already see. TOR already does this in Warzones, but I don't see anyone arguing that Warzone meters "dehumanize" the experience.

 

 

3. BioWare plans to implement offline combat logs in the future, so why are you guys whining? You got what you want.

 

Not really. What we get is a long text file full of numbers which is meaningless without a parser and meaningless out of the context of the raid. "Wow, I did X amount of damage! It's too bad that I don't have any data to compare it to." It's ridiculous, particularly with the Warzone damage meters already implemented.

 

 

4.

 

Yes, there are winners and losers. When you play a Huttball match, does it always say 'Victory!' at the end? No, because you LOST. Winning and losing are a part of any game. There are going to be good players and bad players. It's the same way in sports. The better players will be on the first string and the better teams will win more games. You can't make everyone a winner, it's impossible.

 

As for your belief that we want a game of haves and have nots, that's complete garbage. Do you really want everything the game has to offer handed to you in the mail? Enemies that are so weak that any player can kill them under any circumstance? Achievements for running 10 meters in a straight line or for a character's first jump? Because that is what you are arguing for - a game where everybody has everything.

 

You also tell us to make guilds for players like us, and we shouldn't force it on everyone. Really? Could you express the obvious any more clearly? We aren't forcing you to do anything. How could we? If you don't want to raid then don't, and don't complain we are "forcing" an OPTION for challenging content and then tell us how we should play the game. You *********** hypocrite.

 

 

The bottom line.

 

Ultimately, we only want two things:

 

a) Players to be accountable for their performance.

b) Progressively more challenging content with suitable rewards - such as achievements, speeders, vanity pets/clothes, etc.

 

The rewards don't even have to be gear. Contrary to popular belief, WoW raiding wasn't just about the gear grind. A lot of players grouped up just to do raid achievements, me included. We enjoyed the challenge.

 

BioWare doesn't have to give us meters. I don't feel raid meters is asking for much, or as catastrophic as many of you feel, and we can do without. However, without content that is challenging, and without goals to accomplish and achievements to aspire to, the appeal of logging in disappears.

 

The fallacies you have used in false analogy, by comparing pvp to pve. You also used equvication by comparing two ddifferent meanings of winning and losing. You also comitted several other fallacies that im too tired to point out but there is a lot of them.

 

I do not advocate meters at all. People believe, instigated by WoW of course, that we need meters. Can't you tell if someone is good or not? Most encounters will kill or, in some way, fail to be completed because of weaker players. So my point is do we need meters or do you and a bunch of people want meters? That is like saying that you can never tell the quality of someone without seeing a numeric number by there name. You begin to assocaite... ah hell your not going to listen or read this comment anyway.

 

You can make people winners. By teaching people how to be winners you build them up, unless your too much of ajerk to do so. This isnt real life, this isnt a talent (false analogy). In sports people have talents, something you can foster to a certain point. In a game there is mechanics and rotations. By helping somone creat a good rotation, and by teaching them the finer points of their class... you can make them 'good'.

 

You equivicated numbers to health bars etc. This is a fallacy. Yes there are numbers, but numbers that represent a specific thing..not gobbledygook. We know how much damage, roughly, we do based on crits and our power ratings. All a meter does is calculate a base number of damage done, and compare it to other peoples damage (creating a rift between people). Yet, this number fluctuates, at any given point, due to numerous factors that no one can predict nor can change (certain encounters are easier for certain classes). Most people want a meter to say they are better than someone else, the epeen argument. Which in essence, means they want to brag and tell people they should play like them (the 'i'm better than you, na-na-na boo boo, stick you head in doo-doo'.

 

Losing in huttball is not 'losing'. Many times a huttball sucess comes down to mere co-ordination (Vent or mumble premades/ guild runs) and gear. When your outclassed your simply outclassed...but not neccesarily cause you have a crappy team. There are runs where people kill 30-60 people or heal for 915k (e.g. kricket a pub player) and their team still losses (though they racked up tremendous numbers). There are other factors that deal with losing-none of them have to do with meters. Enrage timers tell us if we are lacking in dps, and not clearing content cause our healers are jacked- is pretty evident and does not need clarification.

 

FINAL ARGUEMENT: not all the classes are currently balanced. This means that some classes, by definition, can pump out more dps or aoe heals than another class. By implementing a meter, at this point, would show no depth to what we are doing incorrectly. We will see random numbers, ask what we did wron, and not have a seeable solution-due impart to unbalanced classes. Some classes, like merc, lack good multi heals. So in a scenario, a sorc could out heal based on this principle.

 

Your last statement is incoherent and ignorant. You say i am pointing out something obvious, then call me a hypocrite for saying that meters are being forced into the game. Ive never seen a worse hodge-podge statement in my life (and ive seen some really stupid posts). that means who agree with me, or part of what i am saying. Yet all my premises work together so, you agree with me. This makes you a hypocrite, or at the worst a *******.

 

 

Oh and last time I checked i'm not against challenging content, hell i do nightmare mode, just ignorant fools like you...who think you are right because you dont have something you want. How selfish and egoistic. When games pander to the throngs of ignoramus' like you then it ruins itself. Thats the real reason games die-you.

Edited March 9, 2012 by HinjuMaspo

[Fiddyy]

The fallacies you have used in false analogy, by comparing pvp to pve. You also used equvication by comparing two ddifferent meanings of winning and losing. You also comitted several other fallacies that im too tired to point out but there is a lot of them.

 

I do not advocate meters at all. People believe, instigated by WoW of course, that we need meters. Can't you tell if someone is good or not? Most encounters will kill or, in some way, fail to be completed because of weaker players. So my point is do we need meters or do you and a bunch of people want meters? That is like saying that you can never tell the quality of someone without seeing a numeric number by there name. You begin to assocaite... ah hell your not going to listen or read this comment anyway.

 

You can make people winners. By teaching people how to be winners you build them up, unless your too much of ajerk to do so. This isnt real life, this isnt a talent (false analogy). In sports people have talents, something you can foster to a certain point. In a game there is mechanics and rotations. By helping somone creat a good rotation, and by teaching them the finer points of their class... you can make them 'good'.

 

You equivicated numbers to health bars etc. This is a fallacy. Yes there are numbers, but numbers that represent a specific thing. We kmow how much damage, roughly, we do based on crits and our power. All a meter does is calculate a base number of damage done, and compare it to others. Yet, this number fluctuates, at any given point, do to numerous factors that no one ever cares about (cause they play whos go the biggest epeen). Most people want a meter to say they are better than someone else. Which in essence, means they want to brag-braggarts.

 

Losing in huttball is not 'losing'. Many times a huttbal comes down to more co-ordinated people (Vent or mumble premades/ guild runs) and gear. When your outclassed your simply outclassed...but not neccesarily cause you have a crappy team. There are runs where people kill 30-60 people or heal for 915k (e.g. kricket a pub player) and their team still losses (though they racked up tremendous numbers). There are other factors dealing with losing-none of them have to do with meters.

 

FINAL ARGUEMENT: not all the classes are currently balanced. This means that some classes, by definition, can pump out more dps or aoe heals than another class. By implementing a meter, at this point, would be beyond dumb- for this very reason.

 

Your last statement is incoherent and well ignorant. You say i am pointing out something obvious, then call me a hypocrite for saying that meters are bing forced into the game? Ive never seen a worse hodge-podge statement in my life (and ive seen some really ****** posts). Oh and last time I checked i'm not against challenging content, hell i do nightmare mode, just ignorant ****s like you...who think you are right because you dont have something you want. How selfish and egoistic. When games pander to the throngs of ignoramus' like you then it ruins itself. Thats the real reason games die-you.

 

If your entire point is that we simply don't "need" meters? Why the wall of text? Does it really matter if players do use them? Such a stupid post. HEY GUYS THEY AREN'T NECESSARY TO THE GAME! I HAVE NO LOGICAL REASON TO NOT USE THEM

[va_wanderer]

The example given with the child finger painting the walls vs doing their homework is absurd. A raid of 7 to 15 other players vs a child finger painting on the wall isn't the same. Of course the parents wouldnt need to use high-tech gadgetry to deduce that their child with the paint on his/her hands was the culprit. If it were that easy to determine who did what and why, people wouldn't need logs. But because we do not have that ability in MMOs (yet) we need these addons to help us determine why Boss A didnt die when he was supposed to and what caused the wipe.

 

A better example would be, if you were going to go spelunking in a dark cave with no natural light, would you bring a lantern or a blind-fold.

 

Man didn't create fire out of thinking a piece of wood will burn, he made a tool to help him make it burn.

 

And here I'm calling you absurd. When you need high-tech analysis tools to figure out what's going wrong, it's gone from playing the game to attempting to dismantle the mechanics of the raid in the most technical sense of the word. Reverse-engineering the encounter in intimate detail. Having players "win" by following intimate details that often cannot be done without mechanical aids outside the normal purview of the game.

 

WoW's raiding has become more and more technical not so much as to challenge the player, but to challenge the TOOLS. I don't want to see SWTOR raiding join those ranks. Bad players are pretty darn obvious- the equivalent of your kid with fingerpaint all over their hands. If you need a meter and analysis tools to determine such a narrow margin of error, then the encounter toleranaces are being tuned by the devs beyond reasonable play. This is what Blizzard has been forced to do by the extensive use of third party tools.

 

The "modern raider" isn't spelunking with the choice of a light or a blindfold- they're required to bring a mapping radar, IR goggles and a drilling rig to get things done. That, IMHO is poison to actual play or even a real challenge to a human being.

 

 

Im sorry to tell you this, but everything you do whether it's work or play _is_ a mathematical equation. Right now you invest your time playing the game your way because you feel it will bring the MOST fun for YOU, and that is fine, play how you want, but don't enforce your ideal onto others, how they play or I play is up to us. Individuals that join and band together to form a guild choose their rules of play, if you don't like that rule, go find others that have the same rules you like to play with.

 

How about no. Individuals like YOU reduce the scope of the game for the large majority of the game- and like it or not, you are not a special snowflake. Where do we draw the line? At what level of outside assistance or outright exploitation of the game system? Why do we say "It's a good thing to NEED these complex third-party tools in order to play the game, above and beyond what the game was designed to use in play?"

 

Blizzard accepted those third-party tools and the result was their requirement for a significant portion of gameplay, in an ever increasing cycle of "challenges" that were Blizzard's attempts to compensate for the rapid mechanization of raid gameplay. I view that as an abomination to actual raiding, and I don't want it in SWTOR.

 

As for turning the group and the game into a mathematical equation. Bioware set that guideline up for any and all players that decide to raid by placing "enrage" timers on certain bosses/battles they turned the core group of players into a mathematical equation. All that "hard core" players are doing is attempting to optimize their gameplay to beat the equal sign

 

So, tell me. How many bosses and battles in SWTOR have not been beaten without meters, mods, and metrics to give you this incredibly critical data required to complete content that has otherwise been unconquerable?

 

Oh wait, the answer is zero. There aren't any. And if they WERE put in, then that would mean that content would then require them in order to properly meet said challenges.

 

The presence of one will cause the requirement of the other, as WoW has shown. If SWTOR doesn't build it's content to require such tools, then such tools are un-needed and indeed, to prevent that they become needed, they should not be included to begin with.

 

 

so in otherwords...if its hard to accomplish, don't bother with it.

 

I am honestly glad that not everyone thinks like this, because if they did, we'd never have the ability to fly, go to the moon, or for some look that girl in the eye and say "wanna dance?"

 

Challenge me, Bioware, I dare you.

 

So if they make mobs that are harder and yet you have no measuring tools to accomplish these challenges- will you complain then, if you can succeed? The world doesn't suddenly make itself harder to compensate for better tools- better tools REDUCE challenge in the long run in the real world. It is easier to build a flying machine with computers and robotic factories than a bike shop. It's easier to get to the moon with modern engines and technology than it was with Apollo. It's easier to find that girl on a social networking site than driving around to all the dances.

 

In MMO's, the cycle is:

 

1) Dev makes challenge.

2) Players beat challenge.

3) Dev makes harder challenge, but not TOO hard or it's unbeatable and hence useless.

 

Please note: 3) Doesn't require the devs to make said challenge harder via a gear check or anything of the sort.

 

Nowadays with the inclusion of third-party tools it's:

 

1) Dev makes challenge.

2) Players beat challenge, make tools to make it easier to beat next one.

3) Dev makes harder challenge, having to take said tools into account to provide harder challenge

4) Players not using said tools find themselves stuck at 3) without being able to win. Content completion becomes restricted to players using third-party tools.

 

Harder content is good. That's serious raiding. Harder content that turns into a war between devs and player-assistance tools is bad. Harder content that's a "gear check" is on the bubble- too much and you're putting people through hoops to play the content. The player should be the one challenged, not his gear.

[Lenny]

Death and Taxes are here for 1.2 so is Ensidia. We are/were Nephilum the splinter of DNT after the BC split

 

Am I reading a series of bad typos? There was no splinter of DNT named Nephilum.

[Loendar]

And here I'm calling you absurd. When you need high-tech analysis tools to figure out what's going wrong, it's gone from playing the game to attempting to dismantle the mechanics of the raid in the most technical sense of the word. Reverse-engineering the encounter in intimate detail. Having players "win" by following intimate details that often cannot be done without mechanical aids outside the normal purview of the game.

 

WoW's raiding has become more and more technical not so much as to challenge the player, but to challenge the TOOLS. I don't want to see SWTOR raiding join those ranks. Bad players are pretty darn obvious- the equivalent of your kid with fingerpaint all over their hands. If you need a meter and analysis tools to determine such a narrow margin of error, then the encounter toleranaces are being tuned by the devs beyond reasonable play. This is what Blizzard has been forced to do by the extensive use of third party tools.

 

The "modern raider" isn't spelunking with the choice of a light or a blindfold- they're required to bring a mapping radar, IR goggles and a drilling rig to get things done. That, IMHO is poison to actual play or even a real challenge to a human being.

 

 

 

 

How about no. Individuals like YOU reduce the scope of the game for the large majority of the game- and like it or not, you are not a special snowflake. Where do we draw the line? At what level of outside assistance or outright exploitation of the game system? Why do we say "It's a good thing to NEED these complex third-party tools in order to play the game, above and beyond what the game was designed to use in play?"

 

Blizzard accepted those third-party tools and the result was their requirement for a significant portion of gameplay, in an ever increasing cycle of "challenges" that were Blizzard's attempts to compensate for the rapid mechanization of raid gameplay. I view that as an abomination to actual raiding, and I don't want it in SWTOR.

 

 

 

So, tell me. How many bosses and battles in SWTOR have not been beaten without meters, mods, and metrics to give you this incredibly critical data required to complete content that has otherwise been unconquerable?

 

Oh wait, the answer is zero. There aren't any. And if they WERE put in, then that would mean that content would then require them in order to properly meet said challenges.

 

The presence of one will cause the requirement of the other, as WoW has shown. If SWTOR doesn't build it's content to require such tools, then such tools are un-needed and indeed, to prevent that they become needed, they should not be included to begin with.

 

 

 

 

So if they make mobs that are harder and yet you have no measuring tools to accomplish these challenges- will you complain then, if you can succeed? The world doesn't suddenly make itself harder to compensate for better tools- better tools REDUCE challenge in the long run in the real world. It is easier to build a flying machine with computers and robotic factories than a bike shop. It's easier to get to the moon with modern engines and technology than it was with Apollo. It's easier to find that girl on a social networking site than driving around to all the dances.

 

In MMO's, the cycle is:

 

1) Dev makes challenge.

2) Players beat challenge.

3) Dev makes harder challenge, but not TOO hard or it's unbeatable and hence useless.

 

Please note: 3) Doesn't require the devs to make said challenge harder via a gear check or anything of the sort.

 

Nowadays with the inclusion of third-party tools it's:

 

1) Dev makes challenge.

2) Players beat challenge, make tools to make it easier to beat next one.

3) Dev makes harder challenge, having to take said tools into account to provide harder challenge

4) Players not using said tools find themselves stuck at 3) without being able to win. Content completion becomes restricted to players using third-party tools.

 

Harder content is good. That's serious raiding. Harder content that turns into a war between devs and player-assistance tools is bad. Harder content that's a "gear check" is on the bubble- too much and you're putting people through hoops to play the content. The player should be the one challenged, not his gear.

 

I agree with everything said here. It mirrors a similar conversation we are having in the Combat Logs thread and I couldn't have stated it better myself (and I've tried. )

 

Introducing all these 'tools' rapidly devolved the player base from 'playing the game' to 'playing the numbers'. And there is zero good that can come in the long run from taking that approach.

 

If anything the way that WoW apparently approached this (I'm not a WoW player) and the results of it should be a large warning claxon to any MMO that follows. If you don't want to design your encounters based off 3rd party tools providing every scrap of mechanics information to the player you are best off not to allow it upfront.

[eldelphia]

I never played WoW. I played FFXI for 7 years. I've met a lot of people from other games too. Right now, I don't see the need for much of this stuff because nothing yet, is tough enough to warrant it.

 

It's not that you need to micromanage party set ups in the way that you did in FFXI. The issue with metrics at this stage is they encourage particular setups and exclude everyone else.

 

As an endgame 'guild' (linkshell leader) for many years, you would learn strategies for each fight (raid) and it got to the point where it became almost impossible for some players to participate. Not because they were poor players and didn't play well but because other players would refuse to take them along if they didn't have x or y. In this case it would be a certain class, spec'd in a certain way.

 

I know people want to maximise the potential of their guild and make sure everyone is pulling their weight however so far... I don't think there's anything that pushes the player base to the edge and so we don't need this stuff yet.

 

I'm sure there will be at some point but surely after playing with people for a while you get a feel for who is good/bad at their class.

 

Just as everyone lept on Biochem... everyone will leap on for example having an 'x-spec'd' Sage and a 'y-spec'd' Vanguard etc. I think we're too early in the game's life to need this stuff yet.

 

When raids become serious challenges (i.e. not beaten in a couple of runs) then we'll start to need access to stats.

[navarh]

So, tell me. How many bosses and battles in SWTOR have not been beaten without meters

 

Oh wait, the answer is zero.

zero real bosses - zero beaten as rezult, what so unusual with this?

[Vankris]

are we sure the combat log we're getting is only personal, not group/operation wide?

 

That seems so inconvenient. Not everyone is enough tech savvy or patient to parse and analyse their own log.

 

Wouldn't it be far more simpler to just have one guy in the operation doing the parsing?

 

 

Anyway, the abuse of such tools people are referring to are pure fiction. Player being remove from group happens very rarely, and only when lead judge that the group will not be able to succeed with that player (player probably performing very very poorly)

 

i almost never see it happens in game with damage meters. Especially if it means to stop raiding for an hour time to find a replacement.

 

what happens often is minor annoyance is player linking results of previous boss, thinking this might be wanted information. A simple option in the future API to not have the possibility to write several line in chat in a few milliseconds should fix this.

 

 

I am on the side of freedom. Give the tools, let the playerbase free to organise themselves. Some guild will have ambition and require you to have performance (and will evaluate your performance) other guild will have a more relax approach to the game, but may not progress as far and as fast.

 

Freedom to people to choose their playstyle. Give us the tools, we'll organize ourself in community.

[Narcistic]

Here's our damage meters:

 

 

1. Did you kill the boss?

 

a. Yes - > Go to 2.

 

b. No - > Start back at 1.

 

2. Did most of the raid die?

 

a. Yes - > Clean up your strategy.

 

b. No - > Keep current strategy and go to 3.

 

3. Did you reach enrage timer?

 

a. Yes - > Fine tune your raid. Is it gear? Is it a person? Figure it out.

 

b. No - > Farm next week, great now get purples.

 

 

And yes you can easily tell if it is a person. If you suspect someone not pulling their weight, ask them to step out for someone else for your next weeks attempts and see if anything changes.

Edited March 11, 2012 by Narcistic

[Vankris]

Here's our damage meters:

 

 

1. Did you kill the boss?

 

a. Yes - > Go to 2.

 

b. No - > Start back at 1.

 

2. Did most of the raid die?

 

a. Yes - > Clean up your strategy.

 

b. No - > Keep current strategy and go to 3.

 

3. Did you reach enrage timer?

 

a. Yes - > Fine tune your raid. Is it gear? Is it a person? Figure it out.

 

b. No - > Farm next week, great now get purples.

 

 

And yes you can easily tell if it is a person. If you suspect someone not pulling their weight, ask them to step out for someone else for your next weeks attempts and see if anything changes.

 

 

there are a few shortcut in your analysis i think, for instance

 

Clean up your strategy.

Don't we need to know what went wrong to fine tune the strat?

 

Is it a person? Figure it out.

how?

 

If you suspect someone not pulling their weight, ask them to step out for someone else

So you randomly pick someone in raid, likely based on gear and kick him?

That is so arbitrary, borderlines dictatorship, ultimately unfair.

And you might lose a player that actually was an asset

Wouldn't have the actual numbers members of the raid pulling be more fair?

 

 

and last but not least, your scheme could be apply to every single encounter.

Which make it so boring, you don't go into specifics, because you can't and thus keep on hitting the wall with your head and hope it breaks.

[navarh]

1. Did you kill the boss?

 

a. Yes - > Go to 2.

 

b. No - > Start back at 1.

in fact things are like this:

you pull boss and he die in few minutes

or

you encounter another bug and die

nothing else

Edited March 11, 2012 by navarh

[va_wanderer]

zero real bosses - zero beaten as rezult, what so unusual with this?

 

My point is that metrics are utterly un-needed at SWTOR's level of difficulty- indeed, they wouldn't be even if the toughness of fights was significantly increased - and that fights should not need the crutch of third-party mods in order to function properly for players. Ever. I have zero problem with tougher encounters. I have great amounts of problems with people insisting we need to automate raiding.

 

Anyway, the abuse of such tools people are referring to are pure fiction. Player being remove from group happens very rarely, and only when lead judge that the group will not be able to succeed with that player (player probably performing very very poorly)

 

i almost never see it happens in game with damage meters. Especially if it means to stop raiding for an hour time to find a replacement.

 

Apparently, you were on a kinder server than I was on WoW. Saw it happen all the time during Wrath. Raid leaders would use Recount, check DPS/HPS, and if it fell below a specific line- they'd /ignore the player in question and not invite them back. No "using it for improvement". It was an elimination tool. Doubly so for failures on a specific boss.

 

I am on the side of freedom. Give the tools, let the playerbase free to organise themselves. Some guild will have ambition and require you to have performance (and will evaluate your performance) other guild will have a more relax approach to the game, but may not progress as far and as fast.

 

Tools like these aren't freedom. They're a chain waiting to be wrapped around new content. If they go in, they will become non-optional...and that's where WoW stepped too far out for raiding. They put the tolerance level for encounters to a line that required detailed, automated analysis of the raid in order to succeed.

 

That's not raiding, that's death-by-accounting.

 

Freedom to people to choose their playstyle. Give us the tools, we'll organize ourself in community.

[Kaydul]

My point is that metrics are utterly un-needed at SWTOR's level of difficulty- indeed, they wouldn't be even if the toughness of fights was significantly increased - and that fights should not need the crutch of third-party mods in order to function properly for players. Ever. I have zero problem with tougher encounters. I have great amounts of problems with people insisting we need to automate raiding.

 

 

 

Apparently, you were on a kinder server than I was on WoW. Saw it happen all the time during Wrath. Raid leaders would use Recount, check DPS/HPS, and if it fell below a specific line- they'd /ignore the player in question and not invite them back. No "using it for improvement". It was an elimination tool. Doubly so for failures on a specific boss.

 

 

 

Tools like these aren't freedom. They're a chain waiting to be wrapped around new content. If they go in, they will become non-optional...and that's where WoW stepped too far out for raiding. They put the tolerance level for encounters to a line that required detailed, automated analysis of the raid in order to succeed.

 

That's not raiding, that's death-by-accounting.

 

Freedom to people to choose their playstyle. Give us the tools, we'll organize ourself in community.

sounds like you were one of the baddies kicked! lol l2p noob

 

I’ve been a raid leader, and our rule was simple...pull your weight. we had a minimum DPS requirement, and no it wasn't unobtainable, it was 10k in ICC HM, how hard was that to achieve? Really, really easy, if you couldn't pull it, we didn't kick you from the raid, we just didn't give you loot. plain and simple. Now people look at that and say "but what about *random reason*, or *random reason*, or *random reason*! That's why they didn't do 10k dps!!!" we took those into account...

 

if you get kicked from a raid, who cares, don't raid with them next week, or find a new guild. they obviously weren't your friends if they kicked you so I doubt you have a real attachment to those people...and for the "Well I was saved to a run I got kicked from!!!" my response is "Cool story bro, it resets in 7 days, try again and quit your ************. If you don't want to get kicked, do better."

 

is that elitist? probably, but it's not like this game or any mmo is brain surgery, they're easy. mash buttons, don't stand in ****, pop cds when told...THAT'S IT, boss dies, get loot, do it again next week. if that's to hard go back to wow bro

 

there is way too much fear mongering in this game. People scared that when tools are available to determine dps that others will realize how bad they are and stop inviting them. That is it, that is the only reason dps meters are feared. you will be exposed as a baddie who gets carried through content. quit being lazy and learn your class, that's the number 1 way to get better dps.

Edited March 11, 2012 by Kaydul