Guild Wars 2

pokes forum bug

Yes yes yes. Class elitism exists anyways, without good data to support it. Peoples biases stick with them for years despite myriad changes.

There are a lot of features that would be helpful in accounting for utility, but id be happy with very basic meters, the intelligent raid leaders would know to account for a lot of factors. Its tought for players to know now if they really are underperforming or not because you cant compare it to anything

dlonie.6547:

Blaeys.3102:

Pandabro.8743:

So how do you see it going when a guild cannot get a boss down because of an enrage?

In my opinion the drama and hate will be no less, it’ll just be less informed. Wiping is frustrating enough as it is and blame will come down on someone, it way less likely that the person(s) causing the wipes will get blamed if we don’t have tools too gauge performance. It’ll come down on those who play a “sub optimal” build or those playing “inferior” classes, even though we’ll have no idea if those people are actually doing their job or not. It’ll be entirely speculation.

The lack of damage meters won’t cure toxicity in a highly competitive environment where you have multiple people working towards a goal. It WILL let good raid leaders make informed decisions about how to address issues though.

Toxicity issues aside, pure DPS meters wouldntt, in most cases, solve any issue – and, in fact, would probably create them.

DPS in this game is as much about group support as it is about individual contributions. Might/vuln stacking, blast finishers, fury uptime on the party – these are all crucial to success. When you stress the importance of dps meters, you encourage selfish builds that center around personal damage output, rather than group performance. You also encourage players to care less about strategically switching targets so they dont have to ramp up vuln or their condi stacks again.

To your hypothetical about what happens when you wipe, instead of looking at individuals and trying to pick out lower dps, your energy will be better spent looking at why you wiped and which group support functions will keep that from happening again.

DPS meters, more often than not, cause groups to focus on unimportant issues – and, as I’ve said before, cause drama where drama isn’t needed. They simply aren’t useful and act counterproductive to team play.

I think it’s safe to say that when anyone here talks about a “DPS meter”, we mean, ideally, a tool that would provide information on support, healing, etc., not just raw DPS.

But even so, let me take Mr. Pandabro’s example a bit further:

Your DPS team includes a necro and an engi. The necro is playing skillfully, putting out his fair share of damage, and all around performing to the best of his class’s ability. The engi, on the other hand, is using terrible rotations, missing damage modifiers, and spending too much time semi-afk, drinking bourbon, and eating spaghetti during the encounter. He stays near the boss, looks busy, but isn’t putting out nearly as much damage as he should.

Without the DPS meter, who is more likely to get blamed for the wipe?

It is realistically impossible to use a standardized tool to identify all of the factors leading to failure in raids with diverse mechanics. It requires honest communication between members and an understanding of the fight mechanics. If you dont have those two elements, then your raid is doomed to fail regardless.

Here is a theoretical – you and I are in the same raid with exactly the same damage output. A trash mob appears that will cause the boss to do double damage, so it must be killed. You switch to kill it but I don’t. You are IMMEDIATELY doing at least 25% less damage than I am because my target still has 25 stacks of vulnerability. If we are condi classes, it is even worse – you have to start stacking your conditions again, while I’m happily applying 30 bleed stacks every second. If you have to move away from the group – and any might stacking/fury – it is further compounded.

At the end of the raid, the leader looks at the logs (with all of the info you’ve provided). They see that:

a. I did considerably more damage
b. You let might stacks drop off (even though you had no choice)
c. Your fury uptime was around 70 percent while mine was 100.
d. You took more damage/less healing because you were away from the protective boons of the party.

In this example, you were much more valuable to the raid group than I was, but the numbers show the exact opposite. You are removed from the raid while I (the person that ignored all mechanics and just focused on getting high numbers on the meter) get to stay – meaning the group is going to continue wiping.

The point is there are too many factors that make the raw data basically unusable – if not downright deceiving.

Add to this the general toxicity that we historically see with these tools (and it is really bad, trust me), and adding meters to the game is just a horrible idea.

deSade.9437:

Minos.5168:

At which point, someone’s going to just see that Joe’s DPS was the lowest.

/snicker

Yeah, yeah… we all know that Joe gets carried and leeches all the time… kitten Joe.

:<

Blaeys.3102:

Here is a theoretical – you and I are in the same raid with exactly the same damage output. A trash mob appears that will cause the boss to do double damage, so it must be killed. You switch to kill it but I don’t. You are IMMEDIATELY doing at least 25% less damage than I am because my target still has 25 stacks of vulnerability. If we are condi classes, it is even worse – you have to start stacking your conditions again, while I’m happily applying 30 bleed stacks every second. If you have to move away from the group – and any might stacking/fury – it is further compounded.

At the end of the raid, the leader looks at the logs (with all of the info you’ve provided). They see that:

a. I did considerably more damage
b. You let might stacks drop off (even though you had no choice)
c. Your fury uptime was around 70 percent while mine was 100.
d. You took more damage/less healing because you were away from the protective boons of the party.

In this example, you were much more valuable to the raid group than I was, but the numbers show the exact opposite. You are removed from the raid while I (the person that ignored all mechanics and just focused on getting high numbers on the meter) get to stay – meaning the group is going to continue wiping.

Personally, if I was just booted from the group in that hypothetical, I’d count it as a win for getting myself out of a group full of ridiculous tryhards.

If they weren’t a group of tryhards and decided to use the information constructively instead of flat out kicking me, I could explain what happened and we could discuss ways to address the issue as a team.

Maybe I’d swap to a weapon with a pull CC to pull the add into the boss so we could cleave it down and not lose DPS uptime on the boss. Or perhaps a support player might have nothing to do at that point and be free to run over and kill the add while I stay on the boss.

Whatever the solution, the DPS tool pinpointed the problem and allowed us to address it. It let us identify where things could be improved and come up with a solution that leads us closer to progression.

Of course, this all depends on your party consisting of competent, mature adults who are capable of working as a team. But frankly, that’s the only sort of raid team that I’d consider joining. Let the tryhards tear each others’ throats out over nothing. They’re going to anyway.

Blaeys.3102:

At the end of the raid, the leader looks at the logs (with all of the info you’ve provided). They see that:

a. I did considerably more damage
b. You let might stacks drop off (even though you had no choice)
c. Your fury uptime was around 70 percent while mine was 100.
d. You took more damage/less healing because you were away from the protective boons of the party.

In this example, you were much more valuable to the raid group than I was, but the numbers show the exact opposite. You are removed from the raid while I (the person that ignored all mechanics and just focused on getting high numbers on the meter) get to stay – meaning the group is going to continue wiping.

The point is there are too many factors that make the raw data basically unusable – if not downright deceiving.

Add to this the general toxicity that we historically see with these tools (and it is really bad, trust me), and adding meters to the game is just a horrible idea.

I don’t know what damage meters in other games you’ve been using but generally it’s very easy to see if people are training the wrong mobs. Usually you can check, with in game damage meters, who did how much damage to what mobs. Additionally it’s pretty easy to see in game when people switch to another mob.

The gist of your argument seems to be that:

Bad raid leaders will make poor decisions by not understanding how fights work and use damage meters to justify kicking players from their raids.

Yes that will happen, but it’ll happen regardless of damage meters. If the group hits that point where they are executing mechanics but the boss isn’t dying then something needs to change and raid leaders will start looking to figure out what it is.

The difference is without the tools they need even good raid leaders can make poor decisions because they have nothing but speculation to base their decisions off of.

Pandabro.8743:

Blaeys.3102:

At the end of the raid, the leader looks at the logs (with all of the info you’ve provided). They see that:

a. I did considerably more damage
b. You let might stacks drop off (even though you had no choice)
c. Your fury uptime was around 70 percent while mine was 100.
d. You took more damage/less healing because you were away from the protective boons of the party.

In this example, you were much more valuable to the raid group than I was, but the numbers show the exact opposite. You are removed from the raid while I (the person that ignored all mechanics and just focused on getting high numbers on the meter) get to stay – meaning the group is going to continue wiping.

The point is there are too many factors that make the raw data basically unusable – if not downright deceiving.

Add to this the general toxicity that we historically see with these tools (and it is really bad, trust me), and adding meters to the game is just a horrible idea.

I don’t know what damage meters in other games you’ve been using but generally it’s very easy to see if people are training the wrong mobs. Usually you can check, with in game damage meters, who did how much damage to what mobs. Additionally it’s pretty easy to see in game when people switch to another mob.

The gist of your argument seems to be that:

Bad raid leaders will make poor decisions by not understanding how fights work and use damage meters to justify kicking players from their raids.

Yes that will happen, but it’ll happen regardless of damage meters. If the group hits that point where they are executing mechanics but the boss isn’t dying then something needs to change and raid leaders will start looking to figure out what it is.

The difference is without the tools they need even good raid leaders can make poor decisions because they have nothing but speculation to base their decisions off of.

While I still believe that even the most savvy leader can be misled by numbers in a meter, I at least partially agree with you and with dlonie’s post above yours regarding smart usage. Unfortunately, anyone who has ever raided in any MMO with these tools knows that this isnt the approach the majority of groups will take.

And, that is when these tools become the bile-inducing toxic generators we all know they can be.

It comes back to my original question – is access to these tools, which require a sophisticated understanding of the game to use properly in the first place – and which can still provide misleading data, worth the toxicity that they historically have created in other games?

I say they are not. I realize and respect that you disagree with that.

As a side note – as much as we are disagreeing, I think this has been a healthy discussion and a good use of forum space on both sides.

Blaeys.3102:

Jerus.4350:

Blaeys.3102:

As many are noting, we have years of anecdotal evidence from other games showing that, while some would use them to improve the game, the vocal majority would just use them as a tool to incite drama, encourage exclusionary behavior, and put people down. I realize some of that happens already, but it isnt something Anet should support in any way.

As useful as the information might be, the positives simply do not outweigh the negatives.

My experience is the opposite, in that the majority use it as a tool for improvement and friendly competition, while the minority use it to be kittens.

I started high end progression level raiding in 2006 – and leading those 10 and 25 man raids around 2008. In most cases, when I was raiding as a DPS, I topped the dps charts or came very close (but never linked those charts in chat).

I can say with 100% confidence that, in that time, almost nothing – not even shared loot tables – provided the level of drama and hate in a group as dps meters. Even when groups downed bosses easily, someone always felt the need to call out the lower numbers in the group. It is just the nature of many MMO players to hunt down and belittle those they feel aren’t pulling their weight (even when they are).

Would DPS meters be useful? Sure. Are they worth the drama and hate? Definitely not.

I feel sorry for people with these types of experiences. I was also a long time raider starting MMOs in ‘99 not really raiding till late 2000 with Velious being released in EQ. DPS meters didn’t become common for quite some time in that game, more like 2004/5ish is when they began to be the status quo.

During that time we would have friendly competitions for the best. Offer help to those who were under performing with their profession with no reason why (early death, busy doing some side mechanic, what have you).

Sometimes there would be a little teasing if someone beat a DPS class with a support/tank class but that’s about it.

The only time it became a real issue is when we began to overfill our raids by quite a few people and such the lowest performers got to ride the bench first, but lets be honest having a bench is going to create drama no matter what else is involved.

I moved on to DCUO as the next game I fell in love with, here you had a scrolling damage meter for the entire time we were in the instance. So yes some people would pull and kill enemies that we didn’t need to, they would refuse to pick people up, refuse to do the side things just tos core better. And you know what we did? We gave them no end of kitten about it, it’s not like you can’t see that person especially in the smaller raid groups (8 there, but just 10 here).

I guess it’s just all about the people you play with. The guys I played with we used to fight about playing the non DPS classes, we would race for fun when we did play DPS, and would use that little meta-game of DPS racing to motivate and drive eachother to get better. So I guess I’ll just say I feel sorry for people who play with jerks.

Blaeys.3102:

While I still believe that even the most savvy leader can be misled by numbers in a meter, I at least partially agree with you and with dlonie’s post above yours regarding smart usage. Unfortunately, anyone who has ever raided in any MMO with these tools knows that this isnt the approach the majority of groups will take.

And, that is when these tools become the bile-inducing toxic generators we all know they can be.

It comes back to my original question – is access to these tools, which require a sophisticated understanding of the game to use properly in the first place – and which can still provide misleading data, worth the toxicity that they historically have created in other games?

I say they are not. I realize and respect that you disagree with that.

As a side note – as much as we are disagreeing, I think this has been a healthy discussion and a good use of forum space on both sides.

I was going to post about how civil this has been as well, bravo team!

I feel like we are over dramatizing how volatile the DPS meters have been in other games. I think we’re putting too much blame on the tool and not enough blame simply on the community involved. This community has always been above that, even our most vile players are basically the standard for other MMOs.

And lets stop beating around the bush, when we talk about other games with DPS meters we’re mostly talking about WoW, I’ve played other MMOs with DPS meters and did not experience the same negativity and toxicity I’ve experienced in that game. And if I’m being honest, the DPS meter was almost never the source of the toxicity, it was just a bad person / player that was the source, the DPS meters just occasionally came up because it’s something people like to point the finger at.

I’ve been in many situations (even in WoW, all my guilds never had a problem with the DPS meters and used them correctly, and I raided top 25 US for the majority of my WoW career) where the DPS meters have helped WAY more than they’ve caused any problems. This game has done an AMAZING job of promoting a friendly community and user base. It’s been shown time and time again that respectful people are capable of utilizing the data correctly, we aren’t the WoW community, and a DPS meter isn’t going to turn all of us into some toxic pool of kittens.

I know that my raid would benefit DRASTICALLY from having some good data to help us form strategies and analyze our mistakes. I already have to pay attention to insane particle effects stacked ontop of each other to try to discern if my players are doing the correct rotations, giving me that data will only allow me to do it more efficiently and better mold my players into more skilled players.

Toxicity exists regardless. It sucks because the meta isnt well supported with data.

To all the people talking about how something could be used smartly and in a nice way.

Too bad, when you design any solution to a problem, you always must consider the ramifications of the wrong use, as well as what the most common uses would be.

For example, group based loot, and rolling on loot. Excellent when used well by a nice group of players.
Horrible implications when used by the masses, or used incorrectly.

The old kick system, horrible when used incorrectly.

Would not be a good idea to support dps meters

phys.7689:

To all the people talking about how something could be used smartly and in a nice way.

Too bad, when you design any solution to a problem, you always must consider the ramifications of the wrong use, as well as what the most common uses would be.

For example, group based loot, and rolling on loot. Excellent when used well by a nice group of players.
Horrible implications when used by the masses, or used incorrectly.

The old kick system, horrible when used incorrectly.

Would not be a good idea to support dps meters

The biggest problem here (IMO) with this argument, is that the thing people are scared of with DPS meters, is players pointing the finger at the bottom of the list and calling them out as the source of the problem.

Well guess what, thats already going to happen, its just with the current system the bottom of the list isn’t getting called out, its the Engineer NOT running the condi spec (even tho they could very will be bringing the same amount of utility with different specs to the raid, or at least enough utility to down the boss).

I want to stop calling it a DPS meter because thats not what I want, I just want logging , I don’t even really want it to be in game, I would just like it to be a combat log that gets saved to disc that we can comb AFTER a fight to determine what went wrong.

Regardless, the only thing this logging gives us is the ability to better identify the problem and fix it. With the way things are now we have to make assumptions and are going to make the wrong call. With the data I could look at the fight and go “well would you look at that, the Engineer is doing fine, the problem was actually the mesmer because they aren’t utilizing XYZ”.

phys.7689:

Would not be a good idea to support dps meters

And you’re basing this solely on the argument that “Some people are jackkittens”.

Why let the terrorists win? You don’t have to play with those people. Remember that this content is intended for static raid groups, not pugs — just keep looking until you find group of adults.

Blaeys.3102:

As many are noting, we have years of anecdotal evidence from other games showing that, while some would use them to improve the game, the vocal majority would just use them as a tool to incite drama, encourage exclusionary behavior, and put people down. I realize some of that happens already, but it isnt something Anet should support in any way.

As useful as the information might be, the positives simply do not outweigh the negatives.

I’d agree with this also.

While I would want to have it mainly so I can tweak my own performance and build. I would also use it to see how others are performing and would form negative opinions about under performing individuals. Its human nature and thus serves as a divisive tool. Currently, if a group under performs you shrug it off since you can’t really pinpoint who the weak links are and in the end you benefit from it by having less stress.

GW2 is a game made for casuals so that any random group of people can join together and beat content. Content is made with this in mind and doesn’t require people to be running only the most optimal builds to beat it and I prefer it stay that way. Having a DPS meter encourages elitism and I’m guilty of this myself when I played WoW.

Cookiezz.5261:

I would just like it to be a combat log that gets saved to disc that we can comb AFTER a fight to determine what went wrong.

Yea it doesnt needs to be a live DPS Counter on my screen , it is even enough to see some combat details after the fight is done.

Leodon.1564:

Blaeys.3102:

As many are noting, we have years of anecdotal evidence from other games showing that, while some would use them to improve the game, the vocal majority would just use them as a tool to incite drama, encourage exclusionary behavior, and put people down. I realize some of that happens already, but it isnt something Anet should support in any way.

As useful as the information might be, the positives simply do not outweigh the negatives.

I’d agree with this also.

While I would want to have it mainly so I can tweak my own performance and build. I would also use it to see how others are performing and would form negative opinions about under performing individuals. Its human nature and thus serves as a divisive tool. Currently, if a group under performs you shrug it off since you can’t really pinpoint who the weak links are and in the end you benefit from it by having less stress.

GW2 is a game made for casuals so that any random group of people can join together and beat content. Content is made with this in mind and doesn’t require people to be running only the most optimal builds to beat it and I prefer it stay that way. Having a DPS meter encourages elitism and I’m guilty of this myself when I played WoW.

While my previous post is against this line of argument, what if we compromised and just made the tool show our own personal performance (how you used your skills, your own damage, etc etc). The community could then post benchmarks online and you could use those to tune your play.

Of course raid leaders could request that you share that information, but then it is YOUR choice to share it. That gives you the player more control over how the data is used. Then it just comes back to finding a group of players that you get along with and would be comfortable sharing that information.

I’d also like to point out that the intention of raids was to be mostly guild groups. Or simply not random pugs. DPS meters typically cause drama in LFR and other PUG situations, raids are intended to be pre constructed groups. If you are having this much toxicity in your group, please send me an in game mail and I’ll put you with some adults in a situation where you can have fun and grow with each other. The people who are going to use a tool like this for ill will are people you don’t want to be playing with anyways.

Leodon.1564:

GW2 is a game made for casuals so that any random group of people can join together and beat content. Content is made with this in mind and doesn’t require people to be running only the most optimal builds to beat it and I prefer it stay that way. Having a DPS meter encourages elitism and I’m guilty of this myself when I played WoW.

Hnggghh-ugh… gaaaaaah. Gllllgglglglgl.

That’s pretty much what I thought when I read this. It clearly is stated by anet themselves that “any random group of people can join together and beat content” in raids, right? That’s exactly what they said, right? how they hyped raids?
NO. YOU HEARD IT WRONG.

DPS Meter shows only damage. What we need is Contribution Meter. Live meter during encounter or maybe just a static overview one after each encounter/raid ends.

And raids are and probably will be run by organized groups ie guild runs, and in guild runs kicks due to low “contribution” are extremely unlikely.

deSade.9437:

Leodon.1564:

GW2 is a game made for casuals so that any random group of people can join together and beat content. Content is made with this in mind and doesn’t require people to be running only the most optimal builds to beat it and I prefer it stay that way. Having a DPS meter encourages elitism and I’m guilty of this myself when I played WoW.

Hnggghh-ugh… gaaaaaah. Gllllgglglglgl.

That’s pretty much what I thought when I read this. It clearly is stated by anet themselves that “any random group of people can join together and beat content” in raids, right? That’s exactly what they said, right? how they hyped raids?
NO. YOU HEARD IT WRONG.

Please keep this conversation civil, there is no need to freak out on someone. We all clearly have conflicting opinions on this topic, we’re getting nowhere just screaming at each other. This conversation has been very productive so far between multiple people, lets not turn it into a flame fest.

@Leodon.1564 the point deSade.9437 is trying to make is that ANet has stated numerous times that raids are NOT going to be pugable (or not intended to be pugable). Thus leaving it up to the individual players to find a group of friends that they can enjoy content with.

I would envision this tool posting after a boss encounter, sortof like how at the end of a PvP match it gives you a board of statistics. That would keep the tool in the raids, where constructed groups will be playing, and leave the pug situations alone.

lol, deSade. Blunt, but true.

Cookiezz.5261:

While my previous post is against this line of argument, what if we compromised and just made the tool show our own personal performance (how you used your skills, your own damage, etc etc). The community could then post benchmarks online and you could use those to tune your play.

Of course raid leaders could request that you share that information, but then it is YOUR choice to share it. That gives you the player more control over how the data is used. Then it just comes back to finding a group of players that you get along with and would be comfortable sharing that information.

Hmm….and the API team recently added authenticated endpoints…

Perhaps your personal combat log could be accessible via API, and you could opt-in to send your raid leader an API key so they could view your performance?

As a first pass, it could be as simple as converting the combat log into serialized JSON and letting third party apps do the parsing/analysis. Storage might be an issue, but even a 24-hour expiration would be enough time to compile a team’s information.

If you are having this much toxicity in your group, please send me an in game mail and I’ll put you with some adults in a situation where you can have fun and grow with each other.

Ditto.

Brayzz.6524:

GW2 is realy like driving a car without a Tachometer. Imagine, you need to calculate everytime how fast you drive from A to B, because your car has no Tachometer.

If Raids are going to be that hard, that only the experienced and coordinated players can kill it, than give us please a DPS Tool, at least the ability to see our own DPS. With “Enrage Timers” I rly want to know how much DPS I`m doing, without knowing your DPS, you cant improve your gameplay. Players will start to test new builds, new rotations etc. I know from other MMORPGs that you are never going to use the same build/rotation for every raid boss, it will be different. In a 10min fight you are going to mess up a lot with your rotation, but with a DPS tool, you will start to improve yourself each week.

Raids are for Guilds, if you are in a Guild than the people will accept you, they are not going to kick you out of a raid because of your DPS. They will accept you and even teach you to get better at the game.

BTW there is already a META or KICK without any DPS tools, so it will not change anything for the pugs. Im only asking for a personal DPS Tool, that only shows your own DPS.

Car analogy is a bad one…
1. a tachometer tells you how fast your engine spins, not how fast you’re going.
2. People know the distance between A and B. In guildwars, there’s no #’s on healthbars.

It’s much more like driving as fast as you can without an odometer, and without a speedometer. Which, GW2 and car driving, it’s really not that hard to tell if you’re going faster than you did last time….

You can’t include DPS bars without exposing Healthbar #‘s.
There is a reason the devs have not supplied these numbers. I highly doubt they’ll go back on this.

dlonie.6547:

Perhaps your personal combat log could be accessible via API.

This is the holy grail I’d LOVE to get my hands on. Either an ANet managed API (ie api.guildwars2.com/mah-combat-log.stream) or a local socket a 3rd party client can connect to and pull data from would be perfect.

frifox.5283:

DPS Meter shows only damage. What we need is Contribution Meter. Live meter during encounter or maybe just a static overview one after each encounter/raid ends.

And raids are and probably will be run by organized groups ie guild runs, and in guild runs kicks due to low “contribution” are extremely unlikely.

Absolutely, I want Damage, Condi damage, physical damage, damage taken, boons given, objectives involved in, kills involved in, pick ups involved in, Heals out, If they can Damage mitigated, give me everything you can, who knows if it might be useful.

I’d rather get an In game pop up window than an API as then you have to give everyone your API code and blah blah, and arg, just give me a pop up window in the UI. After each attempt at an encounter win or lose the window pops up we can scroll through it, and then move on. Maybe even an option to dump it to a file for later viewing.

deSade.9437:

Leodon.1564:

GW2 is a game made for casuals so that any random group of people can join together and beat content. Content is made with this in mind and doesn’t require people to be running only the most optimal builds to beat it and I prefer it stay that way. Having a DPS meter encourages elitism and I’m guilty of this myself when I played WoW.

Hnggghh-ugh… gaaaaaah. Gllllgglglglgl.

That’s pretty much what I thought when I read this. It clearly is stated by anet themselves that “any random group of people can join together and beat content” in raids, right? That’s exactly what they said, right? how they hyped raids?
NO. YOU HEARD IT WRONG.

True, I was thinking more of the base game than on raids when I wrote my statement. However, you proved my point that there are all types of individuals that play this game. I would argue that the playerbase of this game is no different from any other game. There is just less reason for people to get excited/stressed/angry over things in this game compared to other games that causes people to just be more friendly.

Not having a DPS meter could be just one of the contributing factors to creating this type of environment that fosters a friendlier playerbase; players like my good friend deSade. Who is to know?

In regards to raids, how challenging it will be is relative to the tools currently available to us. Adding a DPS meter is a tool that players can use to increase efficiency and provide them with an edge, but that is a double edged sword because developers are then just going to design content to be more challenging to keep up with the increase in player efficiency, so that the relative challenge remains the same.

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

Windsagio.1340:

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

As dlonie, you’re letting the terrorists win. Shun those drama queens if they try to create an issue due to stats being shown. It’s really quite easy. My friends list is full of people who wouldn’t be like that.

I dont expect enrage timers to be so strict that everyone will need to play 100% most optimal builds, and the variety of utilities required even just for vale guardian mean for many comps you will be required to take suboptimal traits, weapons or utilities to meet those needs. Whats also an important distinction about gw2 from something like wow is the ability to swap on the fly at any time out of combat. It would often require additional sets of gear but that increases the value of something like legendary equips. Although I know it would result in some elitism, it would result in better players overall. You could figure out what does and doesnt work in a spec easier. We’re in this weird purgatory right now that I hate. The QT dps tool needs enhancements, it doesnt snapshot often or large enough (8 lines of the log every second I think? ), and others are questionable if theyre allowed. Its a really kittenty place to be. I dont expect gw2 to get to wow levels of “you can only be x spec and your only rotation is y”, because of everything else needed in raids

As long as dps is comparable and the trade offs seem reasonable, I dont foresee many players getting excluded from reasonable people. I just want to better myself as a player and prove that my non-meta builds are viable and mayve even superior. Right now I just have conjecture.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

As dlonie, you’re letting the terrorists win. Shun those drama queens if they try to create an issue due to stats being shown. It’s really quite easy. My friends list is full of people who wouldn’t be like that.

I admire your optimism :p Been around the block enough times to know how meters are used when released into the wild.

More importantly, PHIW rhetoric aside, Arenanet doesn’t want us playing that way. They don’t want us absolutely optimizing, and they certainly don’t want us excluding players based on a spreadsheet.

And again, I want to stress, most people will misuse a meter, even a detailed one like you’re requesting — and people in harder contexts will be the worst.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

As dlonie, you’re letting the terrorists win. Shun those drama queens if they try to create an issue due to stats being shown. It’s really quite easy. My friends list is full of people who wouldn’t be like that.

I hate to see the “majority of players would want this or that” argument being used. You shouldn’t refrain from doing something only because few people will benefit a lot from it; there are much better reasons for giving up. People can’t filter players and select who they wanna play with tho, so maybe that’s why they see it as a huge, umanageable problem. Building a friendlist requires lots of initiative, and most players won’t even bother posting an lfg and won’t get over some pugs kicking them… meaning, giving this kind of people more “tools” is like giving a swiss knife to a toddler.

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

As dlonie, you’re letting the terrorists win. Shun those drama queens if they try to create an issue due to stats being shown. It’s really quite easy. My friends list is full of people who wouldn’t be like that.

The first time “terrorists” was brought up in a forum post about DPS meters, I was going to let it slide but this is just silly. People, who shout out terrorist usually have no basis for an argument and thus pull out the “terrorist” card to incite people’s baser emotions.

I reread dlonie’s post and if you were to replace DPS meters with guns, it would be paraphrased as follows:

dlonie) We live in a society where guns are banned but I think they should be allowed
B) No, some people will use them to kill others
dlonie) Just because some people are bad and will shoot others, you’re going to let the terrorists win?

WTF?

The fact that Jerus not only agreed to this, but quoted it himself, just shows the kind of leaps in logic some of the people in this thread are employing.

Talks about leaps in logic…. the irony…

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

Windsagio.1340:

We can’t have DPS meters without a change of player mindset. Meters are ultimately far more of a cause of conflict than they are an efficiency tool.

Anet knows this, and they don’t want the pain — and they probably don’t want us playing to the spreadsheet anyways (knowing that some people certainly enjoy that).

It’s a huge potential CS problem for a tool that a small % of the population will use and an even smaller % will use right.

As dlonie, you’re letting the terrorists win. Shun those drama queens if they try to create an issue due to stats being shown. It’s really quite easy. My friends list is full of people who wouldn’t be like that.

I admire your optimism :p Been around the block enough times to know how meters are used when released into the wild.

More importantly, PHIW rhetoric aside, Arenanet doesn’t want us playing that way. They don’t want us absolutely optimizing, and they certainly don’t want us excluding players based on a spreadsheet.

And again, I want to stress, most people will misuse a meter, even a detailed one like you’re requesting — and people in harder contexts will be the worst.

People already play this way on bad data! People get excluded based on dated perceptions. You make baseless generalizations of the player pop. I dont look forward to wiping on enrages with a “good” comp and having no idea why. I already saw this happening last week. What can a raid leader do then? Bash their head until they quit?

Leodon.1564:

People, who shout out terrorist usually have no basis for an argument and thus pull out the “terrorist” card to incite people’s baser emotions.

If you really think I have no basis for an argument, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention.

The ‘letting the terrorists win’ bit was meant as a piece of satirical rhetoric, not to be taken literally. Sorry for any confusion — it wasn’t intended to ‘incite’ or anything of the sort, but merely point out that you’re letting fear of abusive players govern the options available to reasonable players. The ‘terrorist’ jab was honestly not very well apt anyway — terrorists attacks can affect unwilling people, but DPS-meter drama only affects people who choose to play with tryhards (which is a much more accurate term than terrorist).

Let’s not turn this into a terrorist/gun control/any other strawman. I apologize for making a remark that was open to misinterpretation, and I hope I’ve cleared up my intent.

I got ya dlonie, I meant it the same way. Just a nod to the idea of letting the negative ruin the positive. I also meant nothing more in referencing it.

I’ve been around the block Windsagio as well, and my experience is that people that take DPS meters to mean more than they do are the kind of people not worth playing with. In fact I’d love them just to weed out more unwanted players. I’d like to point out that DPS meters would likely have a whole bunch of elitist players shoving their foots in their mouths. “omg you’re not zerk, you suck” as they continue to run a terrible rotation and end up doing 75% of the damage that the knights geared guy put out. Or being able to point out how much healing that guy took in, if that supportive player wasn’t there he’d be dead. Anyways though, I don’t want them for anything but raids, well, I do, but I think for raids all the negatives should be ignores, raids aren’t for those people. If they want to join them they need to shut up, listen and play as a team.

Dps has it’s place but in a raid glass cannons will drop to the ground first. This won’t be like wow. Balance is what will be needed. Raids are not a citadel of flame speed run. If you are so concerned then create your own raid group. As we have already seen in gw2 the overpowered builds will change. It really depends on so many different factors example take a fast moving boss greatsword builds will suffer and casters and rangers will excel. Then that boss might be immune to burning but weak to bleeds. There’s just to many factors to calculate. True players by time they do raids should know there class well enough to survive. But turning raids into a speed warrior only citadel of flame run with everyone playing the same boring build honestly was not much fun. A raid calculator would kill the very thing that makes gw2 different and more gun from other mmos,

Jerus.4350:

I got ya dlonie, I meant it the same way. Just a nod to the idea of letting the negative ruin the positive. I also meant nothing more in referencing it.

I’ve been around the block Windsagio as well, and my experience is that people that take DPS meters to mean more than they do are the kind of people not worth playing with. In fact I’d love them just to weed out more unwanted players. I’d like to point out that DPS meters would likely have a whole bunch of elitist players shoving their foots in their mouths. “omg you’re not zerk, you suck” as they continue to run a terrible rotation and end up doing 75% of the damage that the knights geared guy put out. Or being able to point out how much healing that guy took in, if that supportive player wasn’t there he’d be dead. Anyways though, I don’t want them for anything but raids, well, I do, but I think for raids all the negatives should be ignores, raids aren’t for those people. If they want to join them they need to shut up, listen and play as a team.

It becomes a net effect question. Is the positive of people weeding out underperforming players (presuming that’s taken as a positive) worth the negative of misuse and even stronger build regimentation?

In general I think there’s an unavoidable problem that adding meters leads to people playing to the meters instead of playing to the game. In worst case scenarios it can even lead to ‘meter-greed’ getting people killed (This being ‘worst case outside behavioral problems and blaming’).

Looking at it as a designer, rather than a player with a need, it ends up looking like a pretty big loss in general.

Windsagio.1340:

Jerus.4350:

I got ya dlonie, I meant it the same way. Just a nod to the idea of letting the negative ruin the positive. I also meant nothing more in referencing it.

I’ve been around the block Windsagio as well, and my experience is that people that take DPS meters to mean more than they do are the kind of people not worth playing with. In fact I’d love them just to weed out more unwanted players. I’d like to point out that DPS meters would likely have a whole bunch of elitist players shoving their foots in their mouths. “omg you’re not zerk, you suck” as they continue to run a terrible rotation and end up doing 75% of the damage that the knights geared guy put out. Or being able to point out how much healing that guy took in, if that supportive player wasn’t there he’d be dead. Anyways though, I don’t want them for anything but raids, well, I do, but I think for raids all the negatives should be ignores, raids aren’t for those people. If they want to join them they need to shut up, listen and play as a team.

It becomes a net effect question. Is the positive of people weeding out underperforming players (presuming that’s taken as a positive) worth the negative of misuse and even stronger build regimentation?

In general I think there’s an unavoidable problem that adding meters leads to people playing to the meters instead of playing to the game. In worst case scenarios it can even lead to ‘meter-greed’ getting people killed (This being ‘worst case outside behavioral problems and blaming’).

Looking at it as a designer, rather than a player with a need, it ends up looking like a pretty big loss in general.

Not looking at it as weeding out at all. That’s the wrong take. It’s about being able to pinpoint your weaknesses so you can work on them. If Joe is doing less dps, why? The answer may not be Joe slacking at all but the group slacking on a role that Joe’s excelling at. For example in the latest raid maybe Joe was at every lightning field while the other DPS were focusing on DPS and hitting maybe 1 or 2 making the support join Joe. Maybe that’s on purpose and Joe isn’t underperforming at all but in reality the other DPS are because Joe wasn’t all that far behind.

Point is it gives you information for you to base your questions around. It gives you the information to help you answer those questions. And once it’s farm status, it creates a fun little competitive game for you and your other dps brethren to play. Joe beats you but doesn’t get any lightning fields (which should also somehow be recorded) you give Joe crap for being a greedy kitten focused puss. But all in good fun at least that’s how it was for me for a good 10+ years of raiding.

Last thing though, meter-greed is about the only thing I’d kick someone for in regards to DPS. That is non constructive behavior and if they refuse to stop, welp, you’re not the kind of player I want to raid with. Winning comes first, that meta-game of win the chart is a distant second.

Maybe I"m just a pessimist, or thinking of some specific experiences.

In one case specifically, meter-focus essentially tore apart a fairly competitive guild (the meter-centered faction went on to form one of the many incarnations of DnT – this was years ago), so I’ve seem the dark side of it from very competitive players personally.

In that case at least, it was not ‘how can this person be improved’, but instead ‘replace this person’. (Normal ego-note, I was not one of the people in trouble over this) DPS meters were utilized and referenced extensively in the arguments.

It’s possible I had just fallen in with some bad folks, but it’s behaviour and comment patterns I see all the time. I think ti’s hopelessly optimistic to think anything would be different, especially if the raids are actually difficult.

That sucks. Sounds like it was originally a group of people that were playing for different reasons.

I’d definitely have found another group to play with if I wasn’t in the mood for that.

Problem: poof

Not to trivialize it, but players are different. If you put different types of players together, sometimes there will be conflict. If there are a lot of large egos in the mix, there will definitely be conflict. Odds are good that the players that ended up acting like kittens would have ended up acting like kittens anyway — the DPS meter was just the stat they chose to focus on.

Ask yourself — what’s the alternative? AP points? Linking gear stats? Class exclusion? That’s what we have today, and those measurements aren’t even indicators of skill level.

We already have the problems you’re afraid of, except they’re being enforced using meaningless skill indicators that discriminate a lot of good players too — without even getting a chance to prove themselves.

It seems like a lot of people don’t realize that there are some groups that they just won’t mix with, and that they’re not stuck with whatever group they end up in. If you take responsibility for your experience in this game and search for a group that you fit in with, you don’t have to worry about any of these problems.

Can I just say Ditto?

“Replace this person” should not be coming up because these are raids designed for organised teams. Which means there should be mutual trust and so on going on. If not then the team is doomed to have a hard time anyway. And may as well be considered a glorified pug in disguise. Which means they are not suited for the content.

you guys are still not getting it, this isnt a natural survival of the fittest environment. This is a an engineered reality.
You keep looking at it like, sure some people will abuse it, and it might be negative, but you shouldnt associate with those people anyway..

Thats not the way you design a system thats meant to be used by a lot of people, you dont design to the self selected few. You design to the most common use. While your tight knit highly selective friend group may be fine, its a problem if you as a designer, design a system that is prone to abuse, or creates degenerative play.

Yes, you guys might use them greatly, no, the vast majority of people see a meter and a rank, they see winners and losers. Pass or fail.

Sure you few guys might love to test so you can figure out how to help poor timmy do math, but the company and colleges test so that they can get the people who are already good at something.

not to mention, they dont want you playing the UI or the spreadsheet.

I’d also like to see the stats track lost heals, to look at if you have healing potential getting wasted by having too much support.

And the holy grail of stats, taking damage caused by player given buffs and attributing it to their dps, so you can see how much damage a player dealt, and how much they are responsible for among the other players. Have a column for both total damage dealt by a player, and the percentage of it(plus the actual amount) that was sourced to them by team members.

It’s kind of like:

…If a Meter is actually useful, I’ll be deeply dissapointed in Raids.

In a vanilla RPG we’re used to seeing the context of a situation as easily extrapolated assumptions based on the summary numbers of an encounter. But in an Action game the numbers are only half the story, only worth noticing in the extremes of massive and minor quantities because it lacks the context 3D Space provides.

Adding Meters on the basis of them being honestly valuable, basically amounts to an omission of continued failure to engage space meaningfully and deliver on this game’s action game elements in PvE.

And good gravy that sucks.

I do not want to see Meters. Not because I think Raids would be more entertaining if they weren’t around, but I think them not being around indicates Raids are probably more entertaining.

/edit: whoops. missed a ‘not’ there. sort of muddy’s the message a bit o.o

DPS meters aside I wonder how long it’ll be until raids are on farm mode. I’m thinking maybe 3 months for the tactics to spread… Then even the lowliest of pugs will be waltzing through them.

remember when dungeons and fractals were hard? yeahhhhh

They’re never going to add a DPS meter because it’d reveal just how significant the disparity in class performance is. It would show the horrid job done these past years with PvE balance.

The whole point of not having meters is to keep everything obscured so that players can’t come back to developers with data to back up their complaints. Sure, people like NikeEU can make their own meter but developers can just pretend to question its accuracy or can simply look at ways to punish players announcing they’re using parsers outside the game like they did in FFXIV.

Yes, it’s all a conspiracy because players just know so much more about balance than the designers do.

It does accidentally make a good point though – a meter would limit the design space something fierce because you’d kind of have to design in such a way as all classes were in the same range in the meters. Just another way that dps meters feed misery.

Windsagio.1340:

Yes, it’s all a conspiracy because players just know so much more about balance than the designers do.

It does accidentally make a good point though – a meter would limit the design space something fierce because you’d kind of have to design in such a way as all classes were in the same range in the meters. Just another way that dps meters feed misery.

lol and 3 years of “ELE/ELE/WARRIOR/THIEF/GUARD ONLY” totally isn’t misery, right.

Zenith.7301:

They’re never going to add a DPS meter because it’d reveal just how significant the disparity in class performance is. It would show the horrid job done these past years with PvE balance.

The whole point of not having meters is to keep everything obscured so that players can’t come back to developers with data to back up their complaints. Sure, people like NikeEU can make their own meter but developers can just pretend to question its accuracy or can simply look at ways to punish players announcing they’re using parsers outside the game like they did in FFXIV.

do you really think a dps meter is needed to figure out dps of every class?