Guild Wars 2

This would be perfect

Yeah combat log needs some work, especially on some bosses whose 1 shots don’t even register or other “ganky” skills throughout the game never have any indication in the combat log. Also healing numbers would be a huuuuge addition and one sorely needed. If they’re worried about number counting builds, well people already do that but we have to do it on static golems or a friend in the party.

was about to make my own thread suggesting this, but figured i’d use the search first. YES, please improve the combat log. I was almost raging in WvW tonight because the combat log is so worthless.

Control effects need to be logged also. Thanks!

This is so absolutely pointless, and would simply add thousands of lines of spam to my otherwise ok log.

Ranger, longbow 5 in WvW. I don’t need to know that I just hit 40 people 10 times, and how much damage it did, it’s bad enough every one of those numbers came up on my screen.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

This is so absolutely pointless, and would simply add thousands of lines of spam to my otherwise ok log.

Ranger, longbow 5 in WvW. I don’t need to know that I just hit 40 people 10 times, and how much damage it did, it’s bad enough every one of those numbers came up on my screen.

Try to read before post.
I’m suggesting to optionally on/off any of types too.

SilverWF.4789:

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

This is so absolutely pointless, and would simply add thousands of lines of spam to my otherwise ok log.

Ranger, longbow 5 in WvW. I don’t need to know that I just hit 40 people 10 times, and how much damage it did, it’s bad enough every one of those numbers came up on my screen.

Try to read before post.
I’m suggesting to optionally on/off any of types too.

You can already turn off combat chat if you so choose, it would only stand to reason they would allow you to filter it via the actual combat tab (I would hope)

Nay of the Ether.8913:

SilverWF.4789:

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

This is so absolutely pointless, and would simply add thousands of lines of spam to my otherwise ok log.

Ranger, longbow 5 in WvW. I don’t need to know that I just hit 40 people 10 times, and how much damage it did, it’s bad enough every one of those numbers came up on my screen.

Try to read before post.
I’m suggesting to optionally on/off any of types too.

You can already turn off combat chat if you so choose, it would only stand to reason they would allow you to filter it via the actual combat tab (I would hope)

God, man, what you talking about?

If YOU dont want to see something – YOU will be able to uncheck it and never see it.

But I AM want to see EVRETHING! And in the another chat tab!

SilverWF.4789:

Nay of the Ether.8913:

SilverWF.4789:

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

This is so absolutely pointless, and would simply add thousands of lines of spam to my otherwise ok log.

Ranger, longbow 5 in WvW. I don’t need to know that I just hit 40 people 10 times, and how much damage it did, it’s bad enough every one of those numbers came up on my screen.

Try to read before post.
I’m suggesting to optionally on/off any of types too.

You can already turn off combat chat if you so choose, it would only stand to reason they would allow you to filter it via the actual combat tab (I would hope)

God, man, what you talking about?

If YOU dont want to see something – YOU will be able to uncheck it and never see it.

But I AM want to see EVRETHING! And in the another chat tab!

Your wording makes no sense to me, but what I was saying is hopefully if they included a more fleshed out combat tab, they would include filter boxes to uncheck the parts of combat you don’t want to see, therefore YOU can still have your spam-less chat.

Do you even realize how freaking much data there would be in your log?

Say both you and your pet had 8 stacks of Bleed on you. That’s 16 messages that you took the tick damage every single second. Plus, of course, whatever direct hits you’ll take in that time. Similar for Regeneration and pulsing heals like Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Olba.5376:

Do you even realize how freaking much data there would be in your log?

Say both you and your pet had 8 stacks of Bleed on you. That’s 16 messages that you took the tick damage every single second. Plus, of course, whatever direct hits you’ll take in that time. Similar for Regeneration and pulsing heals like Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Which is actually not a problem.
It takes 8 bits to store each character.
I think there would be less than 100 characters per line even with all the fancy stuff that would be added (currently ~40 characters)
Even if it was 100 characters per line, storing 100 000 lines of text would still take up only ~9.5 MB (if you were storing the logs in your computer)
so its not all that much.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Olba.5376:

Do you even realize how freaking much data there would be in your log?

Say both you and your pet had 8 stacks of Bleed on you. That’s 16 messages that you took the tick damage every single second. Plus, of course, whatever direct hits you’ll take in that time. Similar for Regeneration and pulsing heals like Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Which is actually not a problem.
It takes 8 bits to store each character.
I think there would be less than 100 characters per line even with all the fancy stuff that would be added (currently ~40 characters)
Even if it was 100 characters per line, storing 100 000 lines of text would still take up only ~9.5 MB (if you were storing the logs in your computer)
so its not all that much.

I’m not talking about the memory usage, I’m talking about the actual printed lines of text. It would be absolutely out of control. You could literally be having 10-20 lines of text updating on your log every second if you happen to be running a bleeding build.

The combat log only saves a finite number of lines before it starts deleting older ones, so the end result would be that you would also be losing relevant information at a much higher pace, thus negating the effect of adding it in the first place.

Olba.5376:

Do you even realize how freaking much data there would be in your log?

Say both you and your pet had 8 stacks of Bleed on you. That’s 16 messages that you took the tick damage every single second. Plus, of course, whatever direct hits you’ll take in that time. Similar for Regeneration and pulsing heals like Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Don’t be afraid for MY log, OK?
I’ve played in the WAR and this never was a problem, but it was very-very helpful.

Olba.5376:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Olba.5376:

Do you even realize how freaking much data there would be in your log?

Say both you and your pet had 8 stacks of Bleed on you. That’s 16 messages that you took the tick damage every single second. Plus, of course, whatever direct hits you’ll take in that time. Similar for Regeneration and pulsing heals like Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Which is actually not a problem.
It takes 8 bits to store each character.
I think there would be less than 100 characters per line even with all the fancy stuff that would be added (currently ~40 characters)
Even if it was 100 characters per line, storing 100 000 lines of text would still take up only ~9.5 MB (if you were storing the logs in your computer)
so its not all that much.

I’m not talking about the memory usage, I’m talking about the actual printed lines of text. It would be absolutely out of control. You could literally be having 10-20 lines of text updating on your log every second if you happen to be running a bleeding build.

The combat log only saves a finite number of lines before it starts deleting older ones, so the end result would be that you would also be losing relevant information at a much higher pace, thus negating the effect of adding it in the first place.

Oh, I see. I don’t really run condition based builds, but when I tested with some fire damage, it seems the combat log only shows the first burn… So how do you make use of the combat log in determining how much damage you deal?
Well, just logging the final total damage after the burn would be way better than logging the initial.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Olba.5376:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Olba.5376:

Do you even realize how freaking much data there would be in your log?

Say both you and your pet had 8 stacks of Bleed on you. That’s 16 messages that you took the tick damage every single second. Plus, of course, whatever direct hits you’ll take in that time. Similar for Regeneration and pulsing heals like Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Which is actually not a problem.
It takes 8 bits to store each character.
I think there would be less than 100 characters per line even with all the fancy stuff that would be added (currently ~40 characters)
Even if it was 100 characters per line, storing 100 000 lines of text would still take up only ~9.5 MB (if you were storing the logs in your computer)
so its not all that much.

I’m not talking about the memory usage, I’m talking about the actual printed lines of text. It would be absolutely out of control. You could literally be having 10-20 lines of text updating on your log every second if you happen to be running a bleeding build.

The combat log only saves a finite number of lines before it starts deleting older ones, so the end result would be that you would also be losing relevant information at a much higher pace, thus negating the effect of adding it in the first place.

Oh, I see. I don’t really run condition based builds, but when I tested with some fire damage, it seems the combat log only shows the first burn… So how do you make use of the combat log in determining how much damage you deal?
Well, just logging the final total damage after the burn would be way better than logging the initial.

Burn is a very simple condition, as it only stacks duration. Bleeds, on the other hand, stack intensity. For example, having 8 stacks of bleed means that the opponent receives 8 ticks of bleed damage every second. And what’s more, this damage can change any moment if you happen to have might stacks.

Take a 1v1 situation with two bleed builds, like a Thief and a Warrior. The Thief will probably maintain 5-7 stacks of bleed on the warrior, while the warrior can probably maintain about 8 on the Thief. Either way, if the combat log shows all the damage you take and all the damage you deal, this would mean that both sides are seeing 13 updates for bleed damage every second.

What’s worse, the sword on a Warrior has some frontal aoe, which means that they could easily be putting those 8 bleeds on 2-3 people at the same time. Now that’ll be 24 updates every second, just for the damage that he’s dealing.

And since conditions are damage over time, it’s really not helpful at all if you get to know your damage after it’s already stopped on your enemy.

I just don’t see how it’d be feasible to report damage for conditions that stack intensity without it clogging the combat log to a point where it’s unusable.

Olba.5376:

Burn is a very simple condition, as it only stacks duration. Bleeds, on the other hand, stack intensity. For example, having 8 stacks of bleed means that the opponent receives 8 ticks of bleed damage every second. And what’s more, this damage can change any moment if you happen to have might stacks.

Take a 1v1 situation with two bleed builds, like a Thief and a Warrior. The Thief will probably maintain 5-7 stacks of bleed on the warrior, while the warrior can probably maintain about 8 on the Thief. Either way, if the combat log shows all the damage you take and all the damage you deal, this would mean that both sides are seeing 13 updates for bleed damage every second.

Which is why I suggested:

Well, just logging the final total damage after the burn would be way better than logging the initial.

Olba.5376:

And since conditions are damage over time, it’s really not helpful at all if you get to know your damage after it’s already stopped on your enemy.

Well, it is still whole lot better than the log showing you did 16 bleeding damage once. And even smarter system would be to report the total final damage with total duration (and average damage per secon on top of that) from the condition. Even if you only see that after your opponent went down, you’d still get a better idea of what your condition was doing, as opposed to showing just “You hit with bleed for 16 damage”. Once.

The game calculating all of this damage/healing kinds anyway! What you talking about?
I just want to see all of this numbers in my log.
If you don’t - just turn it of!! Have you even read 1st post?

100% support for OP.

Olba.5376:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Olba.5376:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Olba.5376:

Do you even realize how freaking much data there would be in your log?

Say both you and your pet had 8 stacks of Bleed on you. That’s 16 messages that you took the tick damage every single second. Plus, of course, whatever direct hits you’ll take in that time. Similar for Regeneration and pulsing heals like Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Which is actually not a problem.
It takes 8 bits to store each character.
I think there would be less than 100 characters per line even with all the fancy stuff that would be added (currently ~40 characters)
Even if it was 100 characters per line, storing 100 000 lines of text would still take up only ~9.5 MB (if you were storing the logs in your computer)
so its not all that much.

I’m not talking about the memory usage, I’m talking about the actual printed lines of text. It would be absolutely out of control. You could literally be having 10-20 lines of text updating on your log every second if you happen to be running a bleeding build.

The combat log only saves a finite number of lines before it starts deleting older ones, so the end result would be that you would also be losing relevant information at a much higher pace, thus negating the effect of adding it in the first place.

Oh, I see. I don’t really run condition based builds, but when I tested with some fire damage, it seems the combat log only shows the first burn… So how do you make use of the combat log in determining how much damage you deal?
Well, just logging the final total damage after the burn would be way better than logging the initial.

Burn is a very simple condition, as it only stacks duration. Bleeds, on the other hand, stack intensity. For example, having 8 stacks of bleed means that the opponent receives 8 ticks of bleed damage every second. And what’s more, this damage can change any moment if you happen to have might stacks.

Take a 1v1 situation with two bleed builds, like a Thief and a Warrior. The Thief will probably maintain 5-7 stacks of bleed on the warrior, while the warrior can probably maintain about 8 on the Thief. Either way, if the combat log shows all the damage you take and all the damage you deal, this would mean that both sides are seeing 13 updates for bleed damage every second.

What’s worse, the sword on a Warrior has some frontal aoe, which means that they could easily be putting those 8 bleeds on 2-3 people at the same time. Now that’ll be 24 updates every second, just for the damage that he’s dealing.

And since conditions are damage over time, it’s really not helpful at all if you get to know your damage after it’s already stopped on your enemy.

I just don’t see how it’d be feasible to report damage for conditions that stack intensity without it clogging the combat log to a point where it’s unusable.

Ideally they could solve that by doing something they should really have done anyway and condense the ticks, we really don’t need to see upto 25 little numbers every second, it would be much simpler if the number you saw pop up every second was the sum of all the stacks from that target, so if you’ve applied 25 stacks of bleed doing 100 damage instead of 25 “100” events you’d get the singular “2500” event, if your being bled by 3 people each doing 5 stacks of 100 damage instead of getting 15 “100” events each second you’d get 3 “500” events a second.

Good suggestions; I’d like to add one more: make chat tabs “Tear-off”, so you can have different chat windows floating in other areas of the UI. That way you could have the combat log displaying at the same time as another chat window.
I understand the developers want to preserve the look of their user interface, but at its basic level, the user interface should be what the user wants to see, not what the developer wants them to see.

I support OP message

I stopped reading the responses when they got too long (reading from work today), so I don’t know if anyone else made this point already, but here it goes; it won’t happen. AreaNet is trying to keep DPS and damage meters from being a viable thing, there’s already people parsing the combat logs and they need more information to make any kind of educated theory crafting. It is for this reason that the information given to us is so limited, no damage meters, no hard-core parsing, no major theory crafting and telling the other folks how to play.

ANet please pay your attention here!