PLEASE VOTE: Give Us Real Combat Logs

[Starglide]

POLL

 

PART: 3 (Over 2000 posts)

 

 

I want to create this poll to try and get a sensus on combat logs and the importance of real logs along with DPS meters, threat meters and the like. Please keep this discussion civil. Below is what I wrote in the UI thread from the guild summit.

 

Understand, currently the new logs are only accessable outside of the game and only display information that has happened to you. (ie the "what happened to me" button in WoW's combat log). DO NOT VOTE if you do not understand combat logs, what kind of combat logs they are implementing (only self, a lot of people do not understand this as I have read from answers to other threads), or if you intend to troll.

 

NOTE:

 

The main reason I want combat logs is because I am pro-encounters with more mechanics that require on-the-fly analyzing as opposed to encounters with less mechanics with trial and error being the method of progression.

 

BEFORE YOU POST ABOUT PERFORMANCE GAUGING AND FEAR OF PREREQUSITE GROUPING, understand that BioWare has confirmed that they will implement DPS and THREAT meters soon but not in 1.2. Community created interface applications (ie addons) will also be implemented further down the road. The debate for pro-comprehensive on-the-fly combat logs has NOTHING to do with allowing for performance gauge as those things will happen currently and/or based on the aforementioned. Story mode and permanent exclusion of combat macros are BioWare's stance on lowering the barrier for combat entry.

 

Please reevaluate your decision if it is solely based on that premise.

 

Combat logs serve important for the future of DPS meters, threat meters and all around important additions that will help improve the overall performance of players, knowledge of players and most importantly CONTROL of your character.

 

Also understand that it will be MORE DIFFICULT for BioWare to implement TRULY difficult content with more engaging mechanics without the use of combat logs and logging for improvement.

 

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND. Combat logs are used for a plethora of other things besides seeing what someone did wrong. People may misuse combat logs just like they may misuse any other feature a game may provide. This is not a valid argument against the use of combat logs as the benefits severely outweigh the disadvantages. BioWare has created a difficulty setting separate from progression, gearing up and the 'hard core'. It is called STORY MODE. With combat log implemented, no one in this mode will be using it to critique or criticize other playersdue to the demographic within. There is NO NEED for someone who takes the game seriously to do STORY MODE. Therefore, there is no need to take something away from the players of HARD MODE and NIGHTMARE MODE. You are asking BioWare to penalize a certain playstyle to support your own when there is an entirely separate model created just for you that will avoid everything you are afraid of.

BioWare, the changes to 1.2 have me very excited, but your stance on combat logs, threat meters and DPS meters are incredible skewed. A lot of people at the event seem to be in awe about the presence of developers and are not shooting it straight with you.

 

Meters and logs are INCREDIBLE important for leading. You state you do not want people to be judged by this statement, but it directly contradicts your whole philosophy on having separate difficulty levels. You created story mode for those who should not be judged by skills or numbers, but the other difficulties as you stated ARE FOR PROGRESSION. These tools are absolutely DETRIMENTAL to progressing at an incredibly competitive level. Not to mention, not only does logs help others judge another player, but it also allows us to deduce what went wrong. How do you expect a raid leader to try to advance his guild synergy and execution without being able to see what everyone is doing.

 

It is like asking a baseball captain to direct a team to the championship but only allowing him to see himself play ball. Other MMOs have been incredible successful and have these tools. There is absolutely not reason for you to exclude this. Unless you are aiming for casuals to be competing at end game (which is ridiculous), this game will be laughable at any serious competitive level. Any person I have spoken to (verbally) who is again traditional combat logs and meters is extremely arrogant, inexperienced and exaggerates his performance displaying lack of assumption about the genre and classes as a whole (ie thinking his class does most damage).

 

Please reevaluate your stance on combat logs, meters and addons for that matter.

 

Combat Logs are NOT equal to DPS meters or THREAT meters. If you are going to post in here disputing you do NOT want Combat Logs because you are afraid of being judged based on performance or DPS, reevaluate you argument and consider the fact that BioWare has CONFIRMED they will be implementing both DPS meters and THREAT meters in the near future. Posting this response will only allow us to assume you have NO IDEA what the true nature of combat logs are and/or your knowledge of Combat Logs has been skewed based on the views and posts of others.

 

Here is the DPS meter and THREAT meter confirmation from the Guild Summit:

 

: Threat meters, dps meters – are they coming? what is bioware’s stance? A: we want reliance on in-game visual cues but that is not we say we won’t give you dps and threat meters. We will have them in but just not in 1.2. We you to have control over what other see about your character – we went for the middle ground – in 1.2 you will be able to use a simple input in the chat system to see what defeated you. we also have a very detailed combat log you can write to your disk – someone enterprising can use it for their guild to see their performance but it will be out of game (3rd party).

 

Source: http://dulfy.net/2012/03/05/swtor-guild-summitlive-blogging/

 

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

 

FOR COMBAT LOGS:

 

This is so obvious, it's painful at this point. I'm just going to have to lay it down for that vocal majority who are against combat logs because you guys are too much.

 

First off, it's very disappointing to see that in this age of information and analysis, a majority of people are against combat logs which scientifically quantify every action you perform in the game. This is invaluable on so many levels, I shouldn't even have to explain the benefits gained from such knowledge.

 

But that resistance to change, that negativity, that fear of numbers has to come from somewhere. The vocal majority who are advocating against the implementation of a public combat log are keeping this stance because of the likelihood of a negative personal (or anecdotal) experience directly related to the combat log. Whether it'd be being called out for performing poorly during an encounter or being called out due to dishing out low DPS or crappy heals across the board, that seems to be the only logical conclusion. For that vocal majority, the combat log is an impediment to their progress within the game; since they see a game as a medium simply to be used for entertainment, more complex analyses simply have no place in this game. Okay, valid argument: you want to keep the game simple and do not care about the historical, quantifiable data behind every single one of your encounters. But that, my friends, is called ignorance.

 

Now, let's investigate the opposite end of the spectrum.

 

Currently, http://www.sithwarrior.com -- all you combat log haters should head there, you might learn a thing or two about your class -- is the only website with any kind of theorycrafting and given the abysmal amount of data available to players, the folks over at SithWarrior have done an incredible job in figuring out all of the mathematical formulas behind each ability; how threat is generated beyond the vague words of Stephen Reid that "taunting automatically puts you on top of the threat table;" and created a complex and complete Excel sheet which lets you theorycraft potential builds given different sets of gear. This is amazing. You see, some people like to discover thing; they like to analyze and understand the consequences behind their actions whether it'd be in a virtual world or the real world. By vocally rallying against the implementation of a standard, public combat log, you are essentially giving the middle finger to statistical and mathematical concepts which developers use every-fricking-day to keep this game running. The irony doesn't get better than that.

 

A good example of what the community over at SithWarrior has done was to debunk the general understanding behind the Taunt mechanic. The process was excruciatingly manual and simply laughable given all of the automation available to us: a few good members of this community actively spent hours hitting Champion mobs in Tatooine and manually recorded every single ability and its related damage; every single parry/dodge/resist; and every attack and damage done by the mob. This was not done in an hour. It took days. And they still discovered the mathematical equation behind Taunting. Now imagine if those folks had a combat log, they could provide us with 100% accurate data that is not reliant on manual human entry that is prone to error. So even though they were able to come up with an equation regarding threat, it is still hypothetical, or in essence theoretical, and cannot be proven with 100% certainty. It's speculation but solid speculation.

 

Anyways, the folks advocating against a combat log fall in the same category of folks who wanted Galileo to be burned alive at the stake for claiming that the earth was round and that it revolved around the sun and not the other way around.

 

AGAINST COMBAT LOGS:

 

I read it and my point stands.

 

They don't have logs and they have found other ways to analyze the data and by their own admission 'figure stuff out'. That's how all of these games used to be before people started requiring the Devs to tell them exactly what is happening in painful detail.

 

Back in the early days of these games (I remember EQ1 specifically) they didn't give you jack for numbers AND the Devs stood firm telling the player community that supplying that information would just turn it into a math game. They eventually broke down and provided that information.. and guess what? They were 100 percent correct on what would happen.

 

You don't NEED to know everything that is happening to effectively play the game. You aren't a better player because you know it than anyone else that doesn't know it - you are better informed but you aren't really 'playing' the game anymore anyway... you are playing the numbers.

 

DEVELOPER RESPONSES:

 

None

Edited March 13, 2012 by Starglide

[Meluna]

Because the previous thread has exceeded our threshold for thread length, we've started this new thread for the community to continue discussing the topic.

 

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[Stupiddrummer]

Jerks will be jerks. play with like-minded people.

 

combat logs and dps meters are just numbers.

 

 

EDIT:

 

First Thread

 

Second Thread

 

Poll that actually works

Edited March 13, 2012 by Stupiddrummer

[DragonAgeOrgins]

r

Here's a more recent (by 3 months) January 26, 2012 Tor-Talk podcast with Stephen Reid who briefly touched on this...

 

SR: "We've always said for example, you know the stuff that people often ask about things like macros or mods or that kind of thing ... we're not completely against that sort of stuff. We just didn't watch for that quite frankly. So you know it's definitely a case of never say never. You know we think that it's still possible."

 

Tor-Talk: "So mods are sort of a potential possibility?"

 

SR: "They're definitely not off the table."

 

http://tor-talk.com/exclusive-interview/ (around minute 16:00)

[GalacticKegger]

Just agree with them so they go away. Oh wait, I already tried that and was flamed for not using logic. LOL ... this is better than watching spitwad fights in the back of a kindergarten classroom.

 

They won't go away. If Bioware ever releases a more detailed combat log they will find another addon they claim is needed to play this game, and if Bioware doesn't add it the game might loose a lot of players...again....and again

Sad but true.

[Andryah]

r

Here's a more recent (by 3 months) January 26, 2012 Tor-Talk podcast with Stephen Reid who briefly touched on this...

 

SR: "We've always said for example, you know the stuff that people often ask about things like macros or mods or that kind of thing ... we're not completely against that sort of stuff. We just didn't watch for that quite frankly. So you know it's definitely a case of never say never. You know we think that it's still possible."

 

Tor-Talk: "So mods are sort of a potential possibility?"

 

SR: "They're definitely not off the table."

 

http://tor-talk.com/exclusive-interview/ (around minute 16:00)

 

Off topic though. This thread is not about mods or macros, and Bioware has already announced their plan for personal combat logs.

[Seregul]

Off topic though. This thread is not about mods or macros, and Bioware has already announced their plan for personal combat logs.

 

Yes, full combat logs inc.

[Quraswren]

Going to throw this back out there since the OP's link is not right.

 

You can either read the note at the poll site on what to do if you get the "you have already voted" statement or just go here:

 

http://poll.pollcode.com/f28b

Edited March 13, 2012 by Quraswren

[Sirsri]

You need a combat log you can understand. Since combat logs by necessity are basically toilpaper scrolls of data neatly formatted for spreadsheets you can see how this creates some problems.

 

A combat log doesn't do you any good if you can't figure out what it says. If you can't figure out what it says without mods, well, then there's not much point in having it. They could build their own parsing tools for the log (well, actually, they already have some sort of analysis tools on the backend obviously), and those should be in the game at launch...er well, kinda late now. But either way. We have a lot of 'what killed me' in our raids, and without a log it's hard to tell what happened. The 'you take one tick from a dot after being resed' thing was a good example of stuff killing us that baffled us far longer than it should have. Sure, it's a bug, but if you don't know what it is you can't even do anything about it.

[Drewser]

He should also add this to the OP as a developer response:

 

Ten Ton Hammer: Yeah, that was one of my main concerns. I love playing alts, but I don’t want to do the world quests over and over again. Ok, asking one last question and changing the topic rapidly to parsable out-of-game logs. How exactly does that work? From my understanding, only you are able to view your logs?

 

James Ohlen: Yes. We’re going to be able to get logs from your combat and you’ll be able to take that information and look at how your group did in a given combat. Right now, there are two schools of thought on it. One group of players don’t want the combat log because it can be exclusionary and it makes it that there’s all this pressure to perform a certain way. There are groups who think that’s the way it’s supposed to be, who want to be the super-elite group. So we made it that if you want to be the super-elite group, it takes a little bit more work. It’s not so easy to be exclusionary. You have to take that extra step to basically parse it out and look at it. You can get the information you need, but it’s something that we’re not making easy to use. It’s kind of a compromise. There’ll be guilds that’ll make use of it and I’m sure that there’ll be guilds that don’t.

 

Ten Ton Hammer: So you are able to see other people’s combat actions if you go out of game and parse the logs?

 

James Ohlen: Yes.

 

http://swtorhub.com/dash-everything-swtor-12-interview-james-ohlen

Edited March 13, 2012 by Drewser

[Matte_Black]

It would be nice if they made it a little more convenient than giving me an out of game text file.

 

That is the whole topic in a nutshell, "it would be nice if they made it more convenient". The extra combat log functionality and convenience is not needed, "it would be nice". A majority of the players and the developers realize that making it easier to access realtime would increase behavior they have a problem with and would like to see avoided. No "need". Just preference v. preference and they picked their philosophy alongside the majority of their players with an opinion on it over the minority opinion of "it would be nice if they made it more convenient".

Edited March 13, 2012 by Matte_Black

[DarthKhaos]

That is the whole topic in a nutshell, "it would be nice if they made it more convenient". The extra combat log functionality and convenience is not needed, "it would be nice". A majority of the players and the developers realize that making it easier to access realtime would increase behavior they have a problem with and would like to see avoided. No "need". Just preference v. preference and they picked their philosophy alongside the majority of their players with an opinion on it over the minority opinion of "it would be nice if they made it more convenient".

Exactly. If you need this data to improve having it display information on a fight by fight basis isn't truly showing you how you're doing overall. Ideally you would want to parse the information over a long period of time and then average things out to give a more accurate representation of your progress. Then you make some tweaks and repeat the process over.

 

No where the data of other classes in your group will help show how you can become a better player.

[pmeeps]

Exactly. If you need this data to improve having it display information on a fight by fight basis isn't truly showing you how you're doing overall. Ideally you would want to parse the information over a long period of time and then average things out to give a more accurate representation of your progress. Then you make some tweaks and repeat the process over.

 

No where the data of other classes in your group will help show how you can become a better player.

 

if you actually want to improve as a player one would hope your guildmates would tell you how they feel your mis-stepping.

 

i'm in favor of actual logs.

[Sirsri]

Exactly. If you need this data to improve having it display information on a fight by fight basis isn't truly showing you how you're doing overall. Ideally you would want to parse the information over a long period of time and then average things out to give a more accurate representation of your progress. Then you make some tweaks and repeat the process over.

 

No where the data of other classes in your group will help show how you can become a better player.

 

Uh... you don't do data analysis for a living do you? Watching what other players in your group do is a large part of what will make you a better player. When is that marauder using mini hero? When should I burst? (Or more to the point, when can I burst and not pull threat). What does everyone elses dps function look like? If yours is significantly different you're doing something wrong. Even better if you have someone of the same class in the group, because then you can compare notes directly.

 

What does the incoming damage profile look like? (You should be proactively healing and shielding not reactively where possible).

 

As a tank you may need to burst (burn threat resources) when your dps are doing things that might pull threat. Sometimes that's obvious, sometimes not. Logs all help you with those things.

 

And that's the very simplified version.

[Rebeldad]

I like the compromise they are doing.

[Nagadeath]

honestly i think opening the combat logs is a mistake. i can see op participation dropping even lower than the 36% its at now. when fleet chat changes from "lf2dps *insert op here*" to "lf2dps *insert op here* must share logs, have 3k dps and know all boss fights".

 

in a game that BW has targeted at casual star wars and BW rpg fans. adding a min/maxing tool like that... i just don't see that sitting well with the core audience they have gone after with this game. i think it will probably come back to bite them in the *** later on.

 

i can just picture the long drawn out debates they had on opening up the combat logs. because it just seems to fly in the face of the direction they have gone with the rest of the game.

[fungihoujo]

It's not necessary- outside of mmos no games have this, doesn't mean no other game is capable of being competitive. Observation, trying things, and in some cases even reading up on classes will make you better at the game.

 

Frankly, once upon a time, people used to get better at games by trial and error, by testing new recruits to their guild with actual tests and playing. Now it's just numbers- and frankly, it's not necessary when everyone's on the same page.

 

Whether it's gear score or DPS charts- it turns judging the game purely into math, nothing else. It promotes people to also think about the game purely as math too. Look at the one place where it's actually counted- pvp. Medal farming and trying to get high dps numbers are rampant, yet, almost every time you see someone with 'broke 1 million dps/healing in VS!', you also see a big DEFEAT at the top of the screen. Worse, people start calling for buffs/nerfs and start playing the class based entirely on numbers.

 

Will I be bothered personally if they're added? No, I never have trouble topping them whether I play well or poorly- but, it's far too common for it to be misused, particularly in pugs.

 

For BW to have them but after you're done works perfectly- there's no stupid epeen contests during the dungeon run, and if you want to improve yourself, you can look at it and improve yourself afterwards. This is really a win win situation as it avoids all the negatives, while giving hardcores access fully to all the positives.

[genesiser]

He should also add this to the OP as a developer response:

 

Ten Ton Hammer: Yeah, that was one of my main concerns. I love playing alts, but I don’t want to do the world quests over and over again. Ok, asking one last question and changing the topic rapidly to parsable out-of-game logs. How exactly does that work? From my understanding, only you are able to view your logs?

 

James Ohlen: Yes. We’re going to be able to get logs from your combat and you’ll be able to take that information and look at how your group did in a given combat. Right now, there are two schools of thought on it. One group of players don’t want the combat log because it can be exclusionary and it makes it that there’s all this pressure to perform a certain way. There are groups who think that’s the way it’s supposed to be, who want to be the super-elite group. So we made it that if you want to be the super-elite group, it takes a little bit more work. It’s not so easy to be exclusionary. You have to take that extra step to basically parse it out and look at it. You can get the information you need, but it’s something that we’re not making easy to use. It’s kind of a compromise. There’ll be guilds that’ll make use of it and I’m sure that there’ll be guilds that don’t.

 

Ten Ton Hammer: So you are able to see other people’s combat actions if you go out of game and parse the logs?

 

James Ohlen: Yes.

 

http://swtorhub.com/dash-everything-swtor-12-interview-james-ohlen

 

 

So basically, here's what I gather is going to happen.

 

You join a group and fight the first boss. Someone will say, "BRB" and that person will alt-tab the game, open the log, parse it real quick, and get the results just like if he had been using a dps meter. He will find that craptastic low dps guy and tell the group to kick to him. In other words, the same worry people had with damage meters will occur, now you just have to wait for someone to alt-tab the game instead of just looking at the meter.

 

They might as well just go the extra step and make in game damage meters.

 

I find it amusing how the anti damage meter crowd is saying, "Good compromise" when it's the same thing as damage meters except an extra step is required to get the information. Oh well, it's better than only seeing your own stuff because now you can evaluate your group. Parsing the info will only take a few seconds once someone creates a good parser. Looks like in the end, the damage meter crowd wins.

Edited March 13, 2012 by genesiser

[ScarletBlaze]

So basically, here's what I gather is going to happen.

 

You join a group and fight the first boss. Someone will say, "BRB" and that person will alt-tab the game, open the log, parse it real quick, and get the results just like if he had been using a dps meter. He will find that craptastic low dps guy and tell the group to kick to him. In other words, the same worry people had with damage meters will occur, now you just have to wait for someone to alt-tab the game instead of just looking at the meter.

 

They might as well just go the extra step and make in game damage meters.

 

I find it amusing how the anti damage meter crowd is saying, "Good compromise" when it's the same thing as damage meters except an extra step is required to get the information. Oh well, it's better than only seeing your own stuff because now you can evaluate your group. Parsing the info will only take a few seconds once someone creates a good parser.

 

So what your saying your in a middle of an operation and someone decides to go check the logs while you are in a middle of an operation? Right they do that and come back and say we should kick so and so because of his logs.

 

Oh right like I will listen to him/her. He/she decided to do that instead of helping on the operation so tell me who do you really think I will kick. The person who may have low logs or the one that decided to make us wait or fight while he/she decides to go check logs in the middle of an operation.

[genesiser]

So what your saying your in a middle of an operation and someone decides to go check the logs while you are in a middle of an operation? Right they do that and come back and say we should kick so and so because of his logs.

 

Oh right like I will listen to him/her. He/she decided to do that instead of helping on the operation so tell me who do you really think I will kick. The person who may have low logs or the one that decided to make us wait or fight while he/she decides to go check logs in the middle of an operation.

 

Considering I'm sure in some point in the near future someone will create a parser that can parse the log in a matter of seconds, you won't be waiting that long for that person to alt tab the game to check it out. If you play in windowed full screen mode there's no loading screen when you tab back into the game. So they could leave that parser open, fight the boss, have it parse the data, get the info, clear the log, get back into the game in less than 10 seconds.

 

Now that I know I'll be able to see everyone's data without having the need to get the info from them, all I have to say is... "Great compromise BW. Sure it's a tiny hassle, but I'll get the info needed in a matter of seconds."

[Loendar]

So what your saying your in a middle of an operation and someone decides to go check the logs while you are in a middle of an operation? Right they do that and come back and say we should kick so and so because of his logs.

 

Oh right like I will listen to him/her. He/she decided to do that instead of helping on the operation so tell me who do you really think I will kick. The person who may have low logs or the one that decided to make us wait or fight while he/she decides to go check logs in the middle of an operation.

 

Well - I imagine that he means in-between each boss fight the raid leader or associated 'log manager' will be popping out and doing that. Or, if they are like me (despite I'm anti-combat log), they have multiple workstations and would just run it on the one next to me.

 

The information presented in that Dev chat that I don't think we had before (or I hadn't seen) was that they seem to indicate that it isn't a personal log but a group/op log. If that is the case then it will still be slightly annoying to use being out of game BUT it will give people wanting a full combat log a lot more than was previously indicated.

[MasterKayote]

So basically, here's what I gather is going to happen. You join a group and fight the first boss. Someone will say, "BRB" and that person will alt-tab the game, open the log, parse it real quick, and get the results just like if he had been using a dps meter. He will find that craptastic low dps guy and tell the group to kick to him. In other words, the same worry people had with damage meters will occur, now you just have to wait for someone to alt-tab the game instead of just looking at the meter.

 

They might as well just go the extra step and make in game damage meters.

 

I find it amusing how the anti damage meter crowd is saying, "Good compromise" when it's the same thing as damage meters except an extra step is required to get the information. Oh well, it's better than only seeing your own stuff because now you can evaluate your group. Parsing the info will only take a few seconds once someone creates a good parser. Looks like in the end, the damage meter crowd wins.

 

I dont see it as any different from before where you have to send your logs to someone for them to be parsed, same as before. That still falls under being "able to see other people’s combat actions if you go out of game and parse the logs."

 

Either way, my problem with it was in pugs, if its suddenly changed then its the same as it was back when I was in Rift (they didnt/dont have in game UI's) which was enough to deter anyone from starting b/s ... at least in the pugs I was in. If thats true though they'll have to limit the addons from being able to access any outside files, otherwise we'd get another effin Recount sooner or later anyway.

[genesiser]

I dont see it as any different from before where you have to send your logs to someone for them to be parsed, same as before. That still falls under being "able to see other people’s combat actions if you go out of game and parse the logs."

 

Either way, my problem with it was in pugs, if its suddenly changed then its the same as it was back when I was in Rift (they didnt/dont have in game UI's) which was enough to deter anyone from starting b/s ... at least in the pugs I was in. If thats true though they'll have to limit the addons from being able to access any outside files, otherwise we'd get another effin Recount sooner or later anyway.

 

The guy said the log will have logs of all group members so you don't have have them send you their logs and that's what we previously thought you would have to do. Seeing as that's how it is going to be, I don't really mind their compromise because as soon as someone makes a quick and efficient parser, it'll just take a matter of seconds to evaluate your group. I would still prefer real time meters like recount, but I can live with this.

Edited March 13, 2012 by genesiser

[Snoodmaster]

So what your saying your in a middle of an operation and someone decides to go check the logs while you are in a middle of an operation? Right they do that and come back and say we should kick so and so because of his logs.

 

Oh right like I will listen to him/her. He/she decided to do that instead of helping on the operation so tell me who do you really think I will kick. The person who may have low logs or the one that decided to make us wait or fight while he/she decides to go check logs in the middle of an operation.

 

You've already said that you would be running an operation where you don't care about what dps people are doing. So it wouldn't matter to you either way whether that person alt-tabs or links it from an ingame meter.

 

Personally, I will indeed be doing what the person you quoted suggested on every raid I'm in. I won't even have to alt-tab. I have dual monitors and I always raid with the second monitor up to show boss fight strats, vent/mumble and other useful information. This implementation just means I'll have the log parser showing on that other monitor.

 

If I'm not leading the raid, the info will just be for personal consumption (or to know when to bail from a failing group) but if I'm raid leading, I'll definitely be watching for people who are severely underperforming.

[terminova]

So basically, here's what I gather is going to happen.

 

You join a group and fight the first boss. Someone will say, "BRB" and that person will alt-tab the game, open the log, parse it real quick, and get the results just like if he had been using a dps meter. He will find that craptastic low dps guy and tell the group to kick to him. In other words, the same worry people had with damage meters will occur, now you just have to wait for someone to alt-tab the game instead of just looking at the meter.

 

They might as well just go the extra step and make in game damage meters.

 

I find it amusing how the anti damage meter crowd is saying, "Good compromise" when it's the same thing as damage meters except an extra step is required to get the information. Oh well, it's better than only seeing your own stuff because now you can evaluate your group. Parsing the info will only take a few seconds once someone creates a good parser. Looks like in the end, the damage meter crowd wins.

 

That someone will get booted or left behind if they want to pull something like that.