DPS Meter Megathread

We have not received permission from Strevi to share the quoted post.

Node advancement, guild conflict, empire expansion, claiming or holding their Castle. That's the intent for Ashes, anyway.

We have not received permission from Strevi to share the quoted post.

They'd use it for builds though. Also, not that I'm saying that Ashes will reach this level of gameplay, but I'll give a simple example of how this works in PvP.

So, in a specific situation in Alpha-1 (balance of Alpha-1 was known to be basically not a priority), you could win fights using a specific interaction of Tank's abilities and Cleric's. The problem, is that unless you can see everyone's damage, and I mean quite precisely, you couldn't even tell what the interaction was doing, to execute the thing (or your enemies).

The effect was quite powerful, but relied on a 5 frame window to 'hit confirm' from the Cleric's side, then the Tank activating something else on reaction with another short (I didn't measure this one) frame window. I'm only saying that for PvP players, 'practicing that' can keep them invested for years regardless of their gear because the gear isn't the thing causing it to work, but you still end up 'watching replays' to check it.

Does this require a meter? No, but that's not the derail we're currently on.

tl;dr some games allow for a 'peak human' level of improvement by front-loading the requirements and understanding, which generally means that the player UNDERSTANDS the game quickly, and then practices it for fun for a long time.

In THAT game design type, the faster you can get EVERYONE through the front-loaded part, the better. So the Tracker would be pulling double duty. Helping people hit the ground running for understanding of how to play in the most effective way according to their style , and then 'helping them if they reach the top, where there is too much going on for a normal person to track'.

If anything, I'd say normal players not having so much time to invest is a stronger argument FOR Trackers than against it. Not by much, but it CAN be that way.

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As I see it, if you're using a tracker in any capacity - you're invested enough in the game to do everything else too. And if you're super casual who barely does anything in the game, you'd probably not be using any trackers.

Obviously there'll be exceptions to that kind of rule on both ends of the spectrum though.

We have not received permission from Strevi to share the quoted post.

I obviously can't speak for them all, but frankly... yes.

Of course, I again note that this is only true if the bulk of what is needed to 'git gud' is easy enough to understand or figure out early into a build, or early into synergizing with a group. If the game's INTENTION is to 'hide' what is required for strong play, that would lead to the opposite outcomes, and I think in that case a Tracker would be detrimental.

But based on the psychology of most competitive players I understand (and there's actually a lot of overlap between fighting gamers/MOBA players and 'competitive' MMO players now, I know this from personal discussion with some as well as, well... myself I guess?) the more background you give them to enjoy their battles, the more they will engage with those systems and improve.

It's the sort of person who wants to WIN more than they want to COMPETE that 'ditches a game to a new one' easily (assuming the game's design isn't innately frustrating).

We have not received permission from Strevi to share the quoted post.

Correlation doesn't exactly mean causation. People can still be super invested even w/o trackers. And those who care enough about trackers to never play a game w/o them might've not even gotten interested in the game in the first place, if the content didn't match their standard for what it should be to warrant a deep tracker use.

We have not received permission from koltovince to share the quoted post.

As a Bard, this is the main purpose of a Combat Tracker (mostly nobody in this thread cares about "DPS Meters" that only show one's DPS, that's just malicious naming by Steven). It helps you determine how effective your support actions are, how they affect the states and effectiveness of your group, and where your group might be struggling in somewhat less obvious ways, so you can see whether your group might do better if you went for a buff type instead, as well as helping you identify what went wrong four or five steps back that later resulted in a wipe. The point is "analyze this complex, detailed, fast paced combat experience, and help us understand the subtle interactions and find ways to improve". "Show me my DPS numbers" is not what most people are here for.