It's great to PVE with no Damage Meters

[Shanerion]

All of these crybabies and whiners who support having no damage meter are people that are butthurt that someone once told them that their DPS isn't high enough.

 

The raw fact, is that this is a gear/loot based game, same as any other MMO. The point is to upgrade and max out your gear. Without a meter, you have no tangible way to gauge your progress, to see the real results of your new gear.

 

An MMO, by definition needs a damage meter as long as their is the current loot system in place.

 

Also the meter exists as a protection. Sure there are those people that just want to play to have fun, use the abilities they think are cool and fun, and just want to do their thing without any one else caring. A meter doesn't stop them from that. They just need to group with other casuals. Meter or no meter, skilled players will eventually realize that these people are derping in the back spamming Force Lightning on their Assassin or spamming Thrash on their Sorc, etc.

 

What a lot of people don't realize about MMOs is that they are competitive. Some people play for the single player experience, and don't want to compete with others. They want to have their own fun, and don't want to have to meet someone else's standards. That's fine. You have many options, you can solo, you can specifically group with like minded players, etc.

 

But for those of us who care about being the best we can be, who want to push the limits of what our class is capable of, who want to be a better group than the next group, a better player than the next player, you need a meter to gauge that progress.

[Vaegaknight]

All of these crybabies and whiners who support having no damage meter are people that are butthurt that someone once told them that their DPS isn't high enough.

 

The raw fact, is that this is a gear/loot based game, same as any other MMO. The point is to upgrade and max out your gear. Without a meter, you have no tangible way to gauge your progress, to see the real results of your new gear.

 

An MMO, by definition needs a damage meter as long as their is the current loot system in place.

 

Also the meter exists as a protection. Sure there are those people that just want to play to have fun, use the abilities they think are cool and fun, and just want to do their thing without any one else caring. A meter doesn't stop them from that. They just need to group with other casuals. Meter or no meter, skilled players will eventually realize that these people are derping in the back spamming Force Lightning on their Assassin or spamming Thrash on their Sorc, etc.

 

What a lot of people don't realize about MMOs is that they are competitive. Some people play for the single player experience, and don't want to compete with others. They want to have their own fun, and don't want to have to meet someone else's standards. That's fine. You have many options, you can solo, you can specifically group with like minded players, etc.

 

But for those of us who care about being the best we can be, who want to push the limits of what our class is capable of, who want to be a better group than the next group, a better player than the next player, you need a meter to gauge that progress.

 

Know how you can gauge your progress? Watch how much damage you're doing. MMO's aren't inherently competitive. People are.

 

Deal with it, buddy. I don't want my game watered down by addons like WoW was.

[Shanerion]

damage meters are a tool for mmo bullies to throw their weight around, masquerading in their 'hardcore competitive mmo-player' guise like it really means they own a pair. I've clashed with a few on various games and they are cosnsitent in only one thing: all mouth and no trousers.

 

How do people get this impression?!?! It blows my mind. That's like saying that Knives are only good for murdering people, without mentioning how effective they are in the kitchen. The meter is a tool, there is nothing inherently bad about it. If one douchebag uses it in tandem with his douchebaggery, who cares.

 

Honestly people who say what the quote above says clearly have no competitive spirit or urge to be better, and I wish they would play single player games, if they don't want to be compared to others.

 

The meter is not a tool for bullies to throw their weight around, it's a tool that gauges progress. When you get a new item, you want to see your DPS go up. When you get 10 new items you want to see it REALLY go up. Without a meter, they may as well remove new gear from ever dropping, and have all the gear you get just scale with level.

 

The whole point of gear is to become stronger. Without a meter, you never have any way to gauge your strength.

 

And btw, if someone is drastically out of sorts and their DPS is full on garbage, it's not bully behavior to kick them from the group.

 

Let me use basketball as an example. According to your theory, they shouldn't keep score in basketball. Shouldn't keep track of how many points/assists/rebounds player X has. Why even? You could tell how well they are doing if you pay attention. And who cares what they did as long as you win?

 

But you don't always win. And if your Small Forward is consistently shooting 2/12 and getting like 1 rebound and assist per game, you are going to have to bench him and give someone else a shot. The coach isn't being a "bully throwing his weight around" by benching him. In fact he's doing the right thing for the team as a whole by benching him.

 

A damage meter tracks your stats the way a scorekeeper marks it down everytime you get a basket. If one player's DPS is drastically lower than the others in the group, then he is out of his class. That's not to say he is a bad player or a bad person, but he should go find other similar caliber and similar DPS players, and group with them where he will be accepted and appreciated. This isn't CareBears Online. If I'm leading a Group/Raid, I want to be competitive and I want to be with other like minded players with similar interests and goals. If you don't want to mod your gear, if you want to play an Assassin and take STR gear, or if you want to play a Jedi and max out your cunning, if you don't know your rotation and are just basically derping around to have fun, you and I won't coexist well together.

 

Once again, that doesn't mean you are a bad player or a bad person. It means you are a different player/person. And there are others like you, just as there are others like me. You people can all group together, play as you want, do the content at your own pace etc.

 

But the people who want to take the game seriously and be competitive will do so, meter or not.

 

So I'm sorry if you all get butthurt when you get kicked out of a group for not doing enough DPS. It isn't elitism, it's pragmatism. It's not bullying, in fact it's the opposite, you are only doing it because it's for the best of the group. You don't get kicked as a punishment, or to embarass you or to make you feel bad. You get kicked because you are holding back the group, and it doesn't make sense to protect one person's feelings over the progress of an entire group of people.

[Vaegaknight]

@ The above.

 

MOST people use damage meters to brag about how much DPS they're doing or to be exclusive. The people who use it for actual progress? Are a minority.

[Korialstrazs]

Know how you can gauge your progress? Watch how much damage you're doing. MMO's aren't inherently competitive. People are.

 

Deal with it, buddy. I don't want my game watered down by addons like WoW was.

 

It's very easy to watch how much damage 3 dots plus others attacks and procs/crits/surge bonuses and relic activates are doing. Seriously, you can't tell me that you can measure your damage by looking and seeing you're doing big hits. That's like someone assuming the best use of their energy is using the super expensive ability that hits for 10-20 more than the cheap one.

[Serpenttt]

Want to know if your new gear will make you do more damage? Look at your character screen. There is already a thread stating combat logs are coming. That is enough.

[Vaegaknight]

It's easy to watch your own damage. Your damage = bright numbers. Others damage = Greyed out or dark yellow damage. If you can't tell you're doing more than you were previously then that's your own issue.

[Korialstrazs]

Go and fight an enemy and tell me exactly how much damage you're doing when you switch between surge and crit gear. Go and do it when you switch between two different tree's. This isn't something you can just eyeball. If you can then I really will have to get you to do it, because you must be the most brilliant on the spot calculator.

[Talosred]

Alright I have not been doing mmos for a long while what is he point of damage thingies and why are they needed?

 

Just seems silly or maybe I am just out dated.

[Nastrodamous]

@ The above.

 

MOST people use damage meters to brag about how much DPS they're doing or to be exclusive. The people who use it for actual progress? Are a minority.

 

not if you are in an actual guild who is going through content.

[Korialstrazs]

Alright I have not been doing mmos for a long while what is he point of damage thingies and why are they needed?

 

Just seems silly or maybe I am just out dated.

 

It's so you can figure out if you'd do more damage in a certain spec, move a point or two around, use a different type of gear or activated relic. It's also good for figuring out if you're having trouble in a fight because numbers are low, either across the board or because of an outlier in the raid.

[GGTeMpLaR]

it's not great, I want damage meters now, at first I wasn't too interested in them

 

lvl 48 now, will hit 50 tomorrow and I want meters

[Vaegaknight]

not if you are in an actual guild who is going through content.

 

... That still makes you a minority amongst the vast amount of people who will use it to be *****s.

 

-_- Reading comprehension.

[Talosred]

It's so you can figure out if you'd do more damage in a certain spec, move a point or two around, use a different type of gear or activated relic. It's also good for figuring out if you're having trouble in a fight because numbers are low, either across the board or because of an outlier in the raid.

 

 

Ahh thankies. Just didn't have those really back in the day.

 

 

Sounds better then using other methods to figure such out.

Edited December 26, 2011 by Talosred

[Acri]

I want meters and logs to monitor my own progress and the progress of my guild.

 

I don't care about your damage. I don't pug. I don't gloat and link meters.

 

If it really upsets you that people are linking meters where they're doing more DPS than you, then you have some sort of extreme vulnerability problem that likely came from somewhere outside of the game.

 

Join a guild where they all want to play without meters. Find people who want to play like you do. That's fine, and I am all for you playing how you want to. But don't let that get in the way of how I want to play.

Edited December 26, 2011 by Acri

[TheHauntingBard]

Back in the days PVE had simple mechanics and classes where beyond clunky.

You honestly want to bring the argument ' Ragnarok online didn't needed a damage meter'.

No it didn't because it require you to press 2-3 buttons and had pve mechanics that required no thought at all.

 

 

The majority of the players like recount because they can figure out what is going wrong.

The damage display is a small part of an add on like recount.

Some DPS do find it fun to compete with each other but well can't blame them.

 

 

The argument about the good old days doesn't hold up well.

People claiming how people will harass you with a DPS meter are just being ridiculous.

Parsers have been in many MMO's and it isn't all that common that people use it as a tool to pester others.

 

EQ 1/EQ 2 come to mind, even in WOW it isn't as bad as people make it out to be.

I fact it's rare that some one does it there.

[markdienekes]

I played as an elemental shaman for five years in Warcraft, and pretty much all the time I'd be out-damaged by lots of the other classes. It got pretty depressing viewing raid damage that it got to the point where I didn't want to play anymore. I can understand it's uses, perhaps the dps classes are more even in SWTOR than they are in Warcraft? Edited December 26, 2011 by markdienekes

[Carnerous]

A fail from a healer or tank is visible for all but DD´s want to be a special snowflake?

[Shanerion]

Alright I have not been doing mmos for a long while what is he point of damage thingies and why are they needed?

 

Just seems silly or maybe I am just out dated.

 

The intended use of meters (griefing aside) is for optimization. And to be honest, this entire thread is absolutely filled with half truths and massive exaggerations. Greifing using a meter rarely ever, ever, ever happens. It would have to be an egregious case of one person's DPS being so much higher than the rest, or one person's being comically low for it to be worth mentioning at all.

 

Say you are testing out whether Stat A or Stat B is more beneficial to you. You put on gear with stat A and take a parse, meaning you deal damage for a long enough amount of time that you reach an average. Then you do the same with gear that has Stat B. If you deal more damage with one than the other, then you've just found out which stat, and which piece of gear is better for your character.

 

Also it's not just for gear. Say you are a Sith Inquisitor. Do you choose Lightning or Madness for PvE? You spec Lightning and take a few parses. Now go respec to Madness and take a few parses. You will see which one is putting our more damage.

 

Even within a Tree. Say you end up choosing Madness. You can now use the meter to practice your Rotation. You can take parse after parse, seeing what combination of abilities in different orders produce the most effective damage.

 

Another use it has is within a group. It gives satisfaction to the person who is doing the best, and it gives motivation to the person who is doing the worst. Well, as long as they have a competitive spirit. From what we have seen in this thread, some people would rather not know what their damage is if there is a chance that they might learn that it is bad.

 

No one is mad when they are top DPS. If you see someone whining about meters in this thread, then you can be sure that at some point in WoW, they were either ridiculed, scolded, or flat out kicked for their DPS. What you need to remember is, mean people will be mean, whether they have a meter or not. The meter is an extremely useful tool, and to try to make the claim that it's better to not have it at all than to have it and have a small % of people use it for the wrong reasons if plain old silly.

 

Also people drastically overblow and overexaggerate people using to to brag/be mean. I played WoW competitively for years, raided 20 hours a week which isn't hardcore raiding but certainly isn't casual either. And in all that time I basically never experienced this phenomenon. The worst that happens is someone who is doing well on the meters links them too often to the group to satisfy their ego, in which case you can mute them or not group with them again in the future.

 

Games like this are meant to be played with the same people consistently. It is up to each person to find a guild/friends/group of people who won't do that, who won't abuse the meters, and who has similar interests to your own. Some people don't want to see meters, cause to them, the game is about the story, the game is about fun and a break from work/family etc. To others, the game is a second job, you treat it seriously, and it hampers your play experience when you are grouped with someone who doesn't take it seriously in the same way you do.

 

The final and maybe most important use of meters is on progression fights, which means a boss that you have not yet killed. If you walk up to a boss and kill it first try, well it's no big deal. But if you have wiped 100 times in a row (and believe me this can happen), it can be very frustrating for the officers and for the players who are doing their job properly.

 

As an ex-officer of a successul Hardmode Raiding Guild, this is the point where you need to study the logs, study the meter and find out what's going wrong. This is a good time to point out, that even though people keep saying Damage Meters, damage is one of very many options on a combat log meter. They record number of deaths, damage taken, damage done as well as damage per second, healing done, healing received, interrupts, etc. They monitor every level of play.

 

If you are grouped with 7 other randoms in a pick up group for an Operation, and you are continually wiping, open up your meter. You will see who is the weak link. Maybe there is someone who is only pulling 50% of the Damage dealt of the other damage dealers. What makes more sense, to protect that one person's feelings and try to make them feel better, or try to replace them with someone who will be able to perform their job/role, so that the group can win? If you replace that DPS with another who's DPS is on par with the level of the group, you have just gained a nice chunk of damage.

 

Maybe it's not the DPS at all. If you open up healing done you might notice that one of the healers is not even close to the other healers and is way way behind. Would it be better to keep them and try not to hurt their feelings, or replace them with a healer who will do their job?

 

Maybe you open damage taken and see that the Tank does not have nearly enough mitigation and is just getting slammed to the point where the healers can't sustain him and their resource at the same time.

 

Maybe you open damage taken, and see that DPS X or DPS Y is taking an inordinate amount of damage in relation to the other DPS, putting a strain on the healer.

 

Whatever it is, you would not be able to find any of this out without a meter. The meter is what lets you chart the progress of your character, give your character a tangible number to attach to the progression of your gear, (for DPS and Healers, tanks are more subjective), lets you figure out which gear/spec is optimal, which rotation is optimal, gives you satisfaction and accomplishment as you climb the meters, or motivation and incentive as you fall on the meters, to be better.

 

The uses for a meter are nearly endless.

Edited December 26, 2011 by Shanerion

[Shanerion]

I played as an elemental shaman for five years in Warcraft, and pretty much all the time I'd be out-damaged by lots of the other classes. It got pretty depressing viewing raid damage that it got to the point where I didn't want to play anymore. I can understand it's uses, perhaps the dps classes are more even in SWTOR than they are in Warcraft?

 

You make a great point. And the fact is, that's not your fault, or the fault of the meter. For some reason, Blizzard wasn't ever able to properly balance the Ele Shaman, and they always lagged behind in damage. From a philosophical standpoint one would hope that all DPS specs would be within 5% of each other and this would be a non issue.

[TheHauntingBard]

The intended use of meters (griefing aside) is for optimization. And to be honest, this entire thread is absolutely filled with half truths and massive exaggerations. Greifing using a meter rarely ever, ever, ever happens. It would have to be an egregious case of one person's DPS being so much higher than the rest, or one person's being comically low for it to be worth mentioning at all.

 

Say you are testing out whether Stat A or Stat B is more beneficial to you. You put on gear with stat A and take a parse, meaning you deal damage for a long enough amount of time that you reach an average. Then you do the same with gear that has Stat B. If you deal more damage with one than the other, then you've just found out which stat, and which piece of gear is better for your character.

 

Also it's not just for gear. Say you are a Sith Inquisitor. Do you choose Lightning or Madness for PvE? You spec Lightning and take a few parses. Now go respec to Madness and take a few parses. You will see which one is putting our more damage.

 

Even within a Tree. Say you end up choosing Madness. You can now use the meter to practice your Rotation. You can take parse after parse, seeing what combination of abilities in different orders produce the most effective damage.

 

Another use it has is within a group. It gives satisfaction to the person who is doing the best, and it gives motivation to the person who is doing the worst. Well, as long as they have a competitive spirit. From what we have seen in this thread, some people would rather not know what their damage is if there is a chance that they might learn that it is bad.

 

No one is mad when they are top DPS. If you see someone whining about meters in this thread, then you can be sure that at some point in WoW, they were either ridiculed, scolded, or flat out kicked for their DPS. What you need to remember is, mean people will be mean, whether they have a meter or not. The meter is an extremely useful tool, and to try to make the claim that it's better to not have it at all than to have it and have a small % of people use it for the wrong reasons if plain old silly.

 

Also people drastically overblow and overexaggerate people using to to brag/be mean. I played WoW competitively for years, raided 20 hours a week which isn't hardcore raiding but certainly isn't casual either. And in all that time I basically never experienced this phenomenon. The worst that happens is someone who is doing well on the meters links them too often to the group to satisfy their ego, in which case you can mute them or not group with them again in the future.

 

Games like this are meant to be played with the same people consistently. It is up to each person to find a guild/friends/group of people who won't do that, who won't abuse the meters, and who has similar interests to your own. Some people don't want to see meters, cause to them, the game is about the story, the game is about fun and a break from work/family etc. To others, the game is a second job, you treat it seriously, and it hampers your play experience when you are grouped with someone who doesn't take it seriously in the same way you do.

 

The final and maybe most important use of meters is on progression fights, which means a boss that you have not yet killed. If you walk up to a boss and kill it first try, well it's no big deal. But if you have wiped 100 times in a row (and believe me this can happen), it can be very frustrating for the officers and for the players who are doing their job properly.

 

As an ex-officer of a successul Hardmode Raiding Guild, this is the point where you need to study the logs, study the meter and find out what's going wrong. This is a good time to point out, that even though people keep saying Damage Meters, damage is one of very many options on a combat log meter. They record number of deaths, damage taken, damage done as well as damage per second, healing done, healing received, interrupts, etc. They monitor every level of play.

 

If you are grouped with 7 other randoms in a pick up group for an Operation, and you are continually wiping, open up your meter. You will see who is the weak link. Maybe there is someone who is only pulling 50% of the Damage dealt of the other damage dealers. What makes more sense, to protect that one person's feelings and try to make them feel better, or try to replace them with someone who will be able to perform their job/role, so that the group can win? If you replace that DPS with another who's DPS is on par with the level of the group, you have just gained a nice chunk of damage.

 

Maybe it's not the DPS at all. If you open up healing done you might notice that one of the healers is not even close to the other healers and is way way behind. Would it be better to keep them and try not to hurt their feelings, or replace them with a healer who will do their job?

 

Maybe you open damage taken and see that the Tank does not have nearly enough mitigation and is just getting slammed to the point where the healers can't sustain him and their resource at the same time.

 

Maybe you open damage taken, and see that DPS X or DPS Y is taking an inordinate amount of damage in relation to the other DPS, putting a strain on the healer.

 

Whatever it is, you would not be able to find any of this out without a meter. The meter is what lets you chart the progress of your character, give your character a tangible number to attach to the progression of your gear, (for DPS and Healers, tanks are more subjective), lets you figure out which gear/spec is optimal, which rotation is optimal, gives you satisfaction and accomplishment as you climb the meters, or motivation and incentive as you fall on the meters, to be better.

 

The uses for a meter are nearly endless.

 

Nice post can add some as well.

 

 

Some bosses require you to hold DPS, with out a meter I can't tell if a melee DPS was still hitting it for a few seconds more.

I can't tell if healer A is not dispelling or if DPS B is interrupting.

 

I don't know who took too much unavoidable damage neither do I know how the tank died.

Was it a bug or was it poor healing?.

 

As some one else mentioned when healers/tanks make mistakes they tend to be obvious.

But with DPS it isn't that easy to see, and DPS can be very bad.

[Shanerion]

A fail from a healer or tank is visible for all but DD´s want to be a special snowflake?

 

This is a great point. Healers and tanks do the actual mechanical work during an encounter. All DPS do is decide the length of the encounter. All three things though rely on each other.

 

The tank does the mechanical work. The DPS determines how long the encounter will be. The length of the encounter effects how long the healers will be able to sustain the Tank.

 

If group DPS is too low, the healers will OOM and the group will wipe. If the Heals are too low, the Tank will die and the group will wipe. If the Tank is too squishy, the heals won't be able to keep him up and the group will wipe.

 

If a Tank sucks, you will see him taking massive spike damage and dying. If a healer sucks, you will see a Tank fall further and further behind in HP. If DPS sucks there's no way to tell besides healers running OOM and the fight dragging on too long. If you are against a meter, then you are basically for Healers and Tanks having obviously visible fails, but if you are a DPS then you should be protected and no one should get to know that you aren't cutting it? I'm missing the logic.

[Granyala]

A fail from a healer or tank is visible for all but DD´s want to be a special snowflake?

 

Q F F T ! (No that does not mean "Quoted fast fourier transformation")

 

Even as DPS this game annoys me because I have no Idea if I'm even doing it right.

 

As a healer I just yell "Why is that guy still alive?" :<

Edited December 26, 2011 by Granyala

[TheHauntingBard]

That's exactly why a lot of people don't want damage meters, they want to avoid taking responsibility.

It's alright to blame your tank or healer, or let them play pixel perfect to make up for your mistakes because you don't want a tool that helps you improve.

 

It's a MMORPG and that type of attitude is ' it's all about me'.

[Shanerion]

That's exactly why a lot of people don't want damage meters, they want to avoid taking responsibility.

It's alright to blame your tank or healer, or let them play pixel perfect to make up for your mistakes because you don't want a tool that helps you improve.

 

It's a MMORPG and that type of attitude is ' it's all about me'.

 

Yeah... the real problem with MMORPG communities is that there are too many demographics that need to all be represented by the same in game systems. There are too many people in these games who don't want to be held accountable and who don't want to be compared to anyone else. Unfortunately, that has nothing to do with game, or with meters, but with being human. If you want to do your own thing, deal your own damage in your own kind of way, wear the gear you want to wear, use the abilities you want to use, and then you don't want to be held accountable if that leads to damage that isn't acceptable in a group setting, then the MMO genre might not be for you. You can play Skyrim, and no one can ever tell you that you are doing it wrong.

 

But in an MMO it really isn't to each their own, unless you plan on Soloing only. As long you as group with other people, you have a responsibility to those people to perform at the very least, adequately, and hopefully if you have any pride exceptionally. But if you are performing poorly, and then get mad/hurt when someone tells you so, either you need to play something else, or use that as motivation to get good enough to at least perform adequately.

 

The only reason someone wouldn't want a meter in this game, is because they plan on performing poorly, and don't want to be heckled about it.