Damage Meters

[Morpholinium]

I'd personally like to see how I'm doing other than "I can kill x and y in z seconds."

 

However, I've seen the retardation damage meters can bring out in some people. I don't think I'd be playing with such people anyway, though, so I can't decide whether or not I care.

 

The endgame is obviously not unplayable due to their absence, though.

 

 

edit: oh god no not gear score

please no

 

I agree wholeheartedly. A personal damage log/dps meter is fine. Let's just avoid instituting a tool for arbitrary exclusion.

[Amyiss]

nothing at all, he just decided to call my post a logical fallacy without considering that indeed some people actually prefer to play the game for entertainment and fun value, without all the added pressure of bs meteres, and i responded.

 

did my post offend? im sorry if so

 

Maybe he didn't quite understand how maximizing ones contribution in a raid is 'lazy', as you said. I'm speaking as a former feral druid, which has traditionally been fairly intense. They have a priority system that requires information from literally 3 places in the default UI, and the mod I had brought them all into an adjustable window I could position next to myself.

 

Actually I'm having a hard time with it too.

 

WoW's default ui is gosh darned terrible. SWTOR I'm not so happy with either, because all my damn buttons are blue with a yellow light saber on it.

 

 

 

BTW I don't really suggest using mods that 'suggest' the next ability you press if you already have a good handle on it. I can see them aiding an average or below player, but if you have poor reflexes or latency you're somewhat boned.

 

Why not go whole hog and institutes a gearscore type add on? That way your hard mode op can be even easier by excluding anyone who could actually use a drop from it before you start?

 

Start your own raid. Tada.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Amyiss

[terminova]

With damage meters a group can pinpoint the issues that led to the slow run (and possible wipe as a result of not killing a boss fast enough) and make adjustments accordingly. For instance, when this theoretical group reviews the damage meters they see the following:

 

 

What they'll do is post in chat who had the highest to stroke their e-peen.

[AKfourtyseven]

Damage meters, gearscore, mods that tell you where to stand, what move is coming next ect are about the only things i could name that would result in my sub being cancelled.

 

You dont need a damage meter to know if you are contributing to a raid and especially in a guild raid situation each person should carry a personal responsibility to improve and maximise their play so having some arbitrary system to check it isnt necessary.

 

Also, such meters encourage the mentality of "X Y Z is best" and essentially kills the game for anyone who doesnt want to be a sheep. It still kills me that people ask questions such as "what is the best class for <insert>" "what spec is the best for <insert whatever>" - I remember the days when you built your own template and found your own DPS chains ect. What ever happened to experimenting?

 

Lets leave a tiny bit of "magic" in these games please, jheez, they have already become so linear and prescriptive over the last 5 or so years as it is.

 

All of that being said, we need combat logs so that people can actually take personal responsibility for improving their own performance.

Edited February 16, 2012 by AKfourtyseven

[Morpholinium]

What they'll do is post in chat who had the highest to stroke their e-peen.

 

Or to berate then kick the poor guy who had a cat jump on his keyboard mid-fight, whose mouse batteries died, or who hasn't already done the fight to the point of sleepwalking and vendoring the drops.

[Matic]

there was a recent Q&A with one of the devs and some gaming website, the dev got asked this question and basically stated combat logs and a way to read them easily will be added eventually.

 

Will be staying far away from the forums when that day comes from all the anti meter qqing, gonna be funny

 

hopefully GW2 will be out by then and i wont be here when the WoW scrubs start stroking each others epeens with their l33t dps.

 

go back to WoW

[ironix]

Maybe he didn't quite understand how maximizing ones contribution in a raid is 'lazy', as you said.

 

True, but given that I'm a healer, that point isn't entirely applicable to my own place in the raid. What I would give my left arm for is the ability to see why we're not meeting the enrage or have actual data to explain what's going on with the heals.

 

I'm in a mediocre guild with mediocre players and I play the bottom of the barrel of healers, the operative. When the other healer (usually a sorc) is sub-par, I REALLY notice the difference in healing. However, I cannot bring this up with the other healer or with the raid leader because I have no data upon which to base my claims. There is absolutely nothing I can do about the situation except hope that it gets better on its own. Otherwise I could just try and find another guild that is doing better, but most don't want operative healers for nightmare mode content.

 

Right now, given that I cannot analyze data from the combat log in order to help the raid improve as a whole, I can only just sit there and do my best as a healer and hope that somehow those that are holding us back magically improve. =(

[Amiracle]

MaxDPS.com

 

Tells you everything you need to know to max out any class and any spec.

 

No need for a meter anymore.

 

Any changes, give the site a few days and it will be updated.

 

No need for anyone to use a meter in game.

[ironix]

What they'll do is post in chat who had the highest to stroke their e-peen.

 

And that affects your ability to play how? It doesn't.

 

Not that I agree with the e-peen stroking, but it really has no effect on anything, whereas not having access to any of these metrics really does hurt a raids ability to progress.

[_droider_]

Why not go whole hog and institutes a gearscore type add on? That way your hard mode op can be even easier by excluding anyone who could actually use a drop from it before you start?

 

And unfortunate aspect of that system.

 

I enjoyed combat logs in other MMOs. They helped me fix anything i might have been doing wrong, and it was fun to try and compete with others. Right now, the problems with successful NM runs aren't directly tied to max dps or heals, but the individual players' ability to react appropriately to events: moving away from ground indicators, quickly getting out of gravity wells, staying out of frontal conal areas; the list goes on. All those factors are as important or more important than top dps or heals. Meters won't be able to account for that unless they were complex enough to correlate events with dmg taken, dps, hps, in a timeline format.

 

I forgot where I was going with this.

 

tl;dr; I support the non-elitist proactive use of parsers.

[AKfourtyseven]

 

I'm in a mediocre guild with mediocre players and I play the bottom of the barrel of healers, the operative. When the other healer (usually a sorc) is sub-par, I REALLY notice the difference in healing. However, I cannot bring this up with the other healer or with the raid leader because I have no data upon which to base my claims. There is absolutely nothing I can do about the situation except hope that it gets better on its own. Otherwise I could just try and find another guild that is doing better, but most don't want operative healers for nightmare mode content.

 

 

This sounds like an issue within your own guild rather than with the system. In the last MMO i played i was in a pretty serious raiding guild. We would discuss among ourselves issues to do with our class and performance after (our during if necessary) each raid. We never presented a parse or meter, because we understood our class enough to know what we were doing wrong and if we didnt, we knew the game enough to make logical assertions and then we would experiment.

 

Within a guild, you should be able to openly discuss performance and be sharing best practice and tips for constant improvement and nobody should need a meter shoved in their face to make them think twice. As soon as that is needed you are dealing with people who really shouldnt be playing together anyway.

[PjPablo]

This sounds like an issue within your own guild rather than with the system. In the last MMO i played i was in a pretty serious raiding guild. We would discuss among ourselves issues to do with our class and performance after (our during if necessary) each raid. We never presented a parse or meter, because we understood our class enough to know what we were doing wrong and if we didnt, we knew the game enough to make logical assertions and then we would experiment.

 

Within a guild, you should be able to openly discuss performance and be sharing best practice and tips for constant improvement and nobody should need a meter shoved in their face to make them think twice. As soon as that is needed you are dealing with people who really shouldnt be playing together anyway.

 

This mentality is the equivalent of not having grades in an academic setting to measure how much information you are retaining because people would 'just know' whether or not you are learning.

[Morpholinium]

And that affects your ability to play how? It doesn't.

 

Not that I agree with the e-peen stroking, but it really has no effect on anything, whereas not having access to any of these metrics really does hurt a raids ability to progress.

 

Example of how it can affect play:

 

<Boss dies>

 

<Top DPS posts meter to stroke epeen>

 

Everyone notices bottom DPS has half the DPS of most of the others.

 

Rage! Who invited that scrub?! *kick*

 

Friend of kicked player: Bob's asking why he was kicked? He says he had to off heal some of that fight.

 

Guild: Doh!

 

Bob: Rage!!! /gquit

[ljepsen]

how about we get a meter that counts everytime a new thread with this topic is created....

 

 

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting

Edited February 16, 2012 by ljepsen

[Ganjiang]

As long as the Devs don't have to ratchet up the difficulty in ops and HM FPs because the content is too easy for those who like to Min/Max and have used meters.

 

I don't care if a player wants to know how to min/max using data from a meter but I sure as hell don't want to be told how to play my character and have end game content sealed away from me because I won't min/max.

 

Call me a Bad all you want but expect Elitest remarks coming back your way.

 

It is a game not a job and I pay my monthly subscription just like you do. Play the way you want and I will do the same.

 

This is just silly. Intentionally being suboptimal is cool on your own time I guess, but when you engage in GROUP content, a certain level of competency is expected from everyone. In a HM FP, if one person isn't doing their job, the group will most likely fail. Notice that I'm not calling you or your play style bad, but the "don't tell me how to play, bro!" mentality really creates a suboptimal way to play. If you can find other players that want to do end-game content and don't mind that you're not as good as you could be, then good for you and continue enjoying the game. The reason I use the word "suboptimal" is because it is exactly that: less than what is optimal.

 

The Old Republic IS a numbers game. Performance is quantified and measured using numbers. DPS output, healing done, threat generation, resource management, damage mitigation, etc. are all expressed by numbers which are derived from formulae that the player can take advantage of. This is reflected by two things; static elements (gear, talents, whathaveyou) and dynamic skill... which is how well the player implements abilities, awareness, and positioning.

 

You are absolutely correct in the regard that this is a game, not a job. We both agree games should be fun, yes? A lot of people (including myself) think theorycrafting, experimentation, and improvement are fun and interesting hobbies. Crunching numbers and testing theories isn't work for me, it's play. Granted, there is also a lot of folks out there that have different ideas of "fun" and do not particularly like dealing with numbers. Fortunately for them, running crazy amounts of numbers isn't mandatory to be a decent player as long as they recognize where the numbers are coming from.

 

We do pay the same subscription fee, but neither of us are entitled to anything. You want to always be able to do end-game content without the skills/knowledge required? That's cool. I want full battlemaster gear, but I don't want to grind for bags. I pay the same amount every month as someone who has BM, so I should be entitled to what he has as well? Right?

 

When content becomes difficult, it's not me telling you how to play, it's BW.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Ganjiang

[ironix]

Within a guild, you should be able to openly discuss performance and be sharing best practice and tips for constant improvement and nobody should need a meter shoved in their face to make them think twice. As soon as that is needed you are dealing with people who really shouldnt be playing together anyway.

 

How exactly do I bring up the fact that it FEELS like the other healer isn't pulling his weight? What if the other healer FEELS like he's playing to the best of his abilities and it is me that isn't pulling his weight (and to a point he'd be correct since I'm an operative).

 

I'd rather deal with healing/DPS output problems with actual data other than telling the raid leader or other healer that I FEEL they aren't pulling their wight. There's nothing stopping people from simply saying "no, I'm going all out here" and from their point of view they'd may be correct, but simply awful players.

[Calsetes]

Hyperbole much? There's absolutely no situation in the world where someone would be idiotic enough to boot someone for a minuscule DPS difference.

 

More like "Billy is doing 20% less DPS than the next lowest DPS, we should figure out why." or "Billy is lower than the tanks in DPS, this is a problem."

 

Or would you rather Billy and his sub-tank DPS continue to be the reason you can't beat a boss' enrage timer?

 

I know it's a miniscule amount - that's an exaggeration on the point I'm trying to make. If Group X likes Player Y but hates Player Z, they can say that Reason A is the reason why they're booting Y but not Z. Is it a BS reason? Sure, but "they have the numbers to back it up." Hence, why I'm down for a personal DPS meter, but not a group-based DPS meter.

 

If Billy's DPS is lower than the tanks' DPS, that's something you can probably find out from looking at what Billy the Boy Wonder is using skill-wise in a fight, without the use of a DPS meter. If Billy is only using Strike and his basic attack, then there's a serious problem there that someone should talk to Billy about.

 

Sounds like we agree on the basics, but I see the abuse of a tool being worse than the positives of it.

[ferroz]

hopefully GW2 will be out by then and i wont be here when the WoW scrubs start stroking each others epeens with their l33t dps.

 

go back to WoW

GW2 is going to have a combat log.

 

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/irc-dev-chat-transcription-with-t12616.html

[noxicon] Will GW2 feature a combat log, or any method of reviewing combat events after the fact?

[isaiahCartwright] Yes there will be a combat log, we fell people should be informed about how skills work so they can understand how combat works, this allows people to better understand the game and make better decisions about how to play the game. It's not practical to play the combat log up nor do we expect players to play with it up but we do believe in giving players as much info as people and let them

[isaiahCartwright] use it as they like.

 

combat log = people will live parse it and paste it into chat, just like they did in rift.

 

In fact, I found that people posted the dps much more in rift pugs than they did in wow. I suspect that it was because people assume that everyone in wow can already see the numbers. So an in game meter is a much better situation than an out of game parser, at least for the people who don't like to see damage parse spam.

Edited February 16, 2012 by ferroz

[_droider_]

Damage meters, gearscore, mods that tell you where to stand, what move is coming next ect are about the only things i could name that would result in my sub being cancelled.

 

You dont need a damage meter to know if you are contributing to a raid and especially in a guild raid situation each person should carry a personal responsibility to improve and maximise their play so having some arbitrary system to check it isnt necessary.

 

Also, such meters encourage the mentality of "X Y Z is best" and essentially kills the game for anyone who doesnt want to be a sheep. It still kills me that people ask questions such as "what is the best class for <insert>" "what spec is the best for <insert whatever>" - I remember the days when you built your own template and found your own DPS chains ect. What ever happened to experimenting?

 

Lets leave a tiny bit of "magic" in these games please, jheez, they have already become so linear and prescriptive over the last 5 or so years as it is.

 

All of that being said, we need combat logs so that people can actually take personal responsibility for improving their own performance.

 

The problem has never been the people that try to do better, it the ones that don't. Usually they're easy to point out, but thats not always the case. In meaningful raids, everyone has a job to do. In high-stress battles, people cannot be asked to watch so-and-so to make sure they're doing what is expected of them (which is our only method of quality control right now; sans fraps). Personal logs or not, there are people that will not take responsibility for what's expected of them.

 

General note to other posts:

 

Facts are needed to provide necessary checks and balances; assumptions based on splash text are just that...assumptions. Simply saying that "x boss died and we didn't" is not a valid defense for not needing a combat log.

[ferroz]

You quoted me, and expected me to remember all the things you were saying in the thread.

No, I expected you to respond to what I posted, in the thread that you quoted. Not what I posted elsewhere, or what someone else posted. Which is the reason that I asked why you thought the text you posted was relevant to the text you quoted...

[ferroz]

MaxDPS.com

Nah, I like figuring out the info on my own from combat logs, so that site doesn't help me.

[ferroz]

Yes there is, I have looked it up on WoW. They tell you use ability X, then Y, then Z, back at X when cooldown is done, and so on....

Can you link any of them?

 

because as far as I'm aware, no class in wow actually uses a rotation any more... they're all priority systems.

 

They usually list it as Death Knight Blood Spec Damage Guide or something.

Blood = tank spec, not dps.

[terminova]

And that affects your ability to play how? It doesn't.

 

Not that I agree with the e-peen stroking, but it really has no effect on anything, whereas not having access to any of these metrics really does hurt a raids ability to progress.

 

My point is that group-wide damage meters rarely get used for their intended purpose in groups.

[ferroz]

***Disclaimer: I don't consider someone genuinely trying, but using a less than ideal build/rotation/priority system as being "carried".***

YAy, changing to a semantic argument... how great.

 

They're the ones doing nothing half the time, using the same one or two abilities every cool down and nothing else, "healing"*, stealthed in the corner the whole time, etc.

No, the shadow priest who was constantly casting but still only doing 1k dps in voa when the tanks were doing 4-6k was being carried.

 

She had a combination of "bad spec" (she had all of her points in shadow, and was missing key talents from outside that tree) and "casting the wrong stuff" ... mostly the latter. but she was constantly casting something or channeling.

 

It's also possible to be in melee, auto attacking the whole time so that you're not standing around doing nothing, but still not genuinely trying.

 

and honestly, when I'm tanking there are often times where I can't even see everyone in my party, let alone be watching what they're doing.

Edited February 16, 2012 by ferroz

[ferroz]

Why not go whole hog and institutes a gearscore type add on?

If you want to petition for that, go ahead. But that doesn't give me any information that I'm interested in. I never used that addon in wow; I never raided with anyone who asked for my gearscore, and never had any problem pugging raids.