Is 64 classes still a good idea?

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Wait, that's an important question...

Are you the type that ever reviews your logs yourself?

Cause it's not like I don't know people like that, who are extroverted and social and rely on people like me to do all the number crunching and find the answers for them...

I just don't tend to hang around the type that then takes that 'hey my team is good, we work stuff out' and then argues against the stuff that would make it easier on their teammates. Not saying that your teammates actually do any analysis or checks either, it's just a thought, I've never seen you do it, and you've established yourself firmly in my mind (fairly or not) as a person who doesn't believe in the meanings of data.

So, who in your friend group is actually doing all this work for you, that you can come on here and act like that? I definitely have seen people who 'act like this is a social thing' when what they mean is 'oh yeah I chat with the person who does the analysis in my group when they're done, it's really social'.

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I'll remind you again that you're talking to people who have seen you play Soul Calibur and talked to other people who have similarly interacted with you there.

If you have an actual point to make, make it, but, fair or not, you're not gonna shake the stigma developed from watching/hearing about you flub around on Siegfried.

So at least stop 'appearing to be the same repetitive masher' when you post. No one is here to 'flex on you', you're not someone we consider 'worth flexing on', you're just annoyingly derailing every topic because you have some allergy to spreadsheets or something.

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I feel like at this point if I go down this road it's just gonna turn into bullying you, and that is not what I'm here for. I hope that my teammates have blown off enough steam from having to read your inanity that this can stop here.

Combat logs exist. Combat logs can be parsed. Don't like it, continue to tell Intrepid about that. I'm not trying to drag you.

If you ever have time or willingness to indicate that you have ever actually done this or succeeded in something other than New World early PvP zerging or what have you, I'm happy to hear about it and even tell people to stop having this reaction to you.

For now, all we know about you besides that is that you mash on Siegfried and can't seem to hold a 'civil' conversation on forums without repeating yourself, and we really wish you'd stop.

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Yeah I was really hoping for 'something to relate back', but looks like that's not happening today.

@JustVine @SongRune hit up NiKr's earlier question about logs before you phase out again, would you? Asking here so that he knows to expect the answers.

NiKr wrote: »

I forget if I've asked this before but, @Azherae what's your group's stance on pvp info in the logs?

In other words, if a fire mob hits you with fire and a fire mage hits you with fire, should the log say "you received fire dmg" or should it say "you received dmg from this source", but it'd be on you to know what type of dmg that source puts out?

Cause I want full transparency on pve side (with types/passives/etc shown in the mob nameplate), while barely any transparency on the pvp side. So imo the log should say the latter sentence.

First of all to answer the straightforward part of your question: I think that 'amount of damage' is more important to tell me than 'type'. But ideally you would have the attack name next to the damage number so we'd gain the information through memorizing that through lived experience or information from others.

Well I have two main thoughts on this question since you are asking and it's a little different than Azherae's answer. To me logs serve two primary functions.

1. the logical function we have been arguing about. It's there to inform what happened and therefore is a tool you can use to investigate potential problems or things that confused you. I like to think of it a lot like reviewing match footage.
2. the emotional function. At the end of the day logs give you concrete answers as to why something happened. When people are confused they often can feel emotionally upset and like an injustice occurred. This can lead to a lot of hot or painful emotions to deal with. When you can identify the 'what' of a problem, it let's you focus the 'why' better and let you cool down.

I'm pro logs in PvP for the second reason much more than the first and because PvP is inherently social, I think there is a lot more value to giving tools that address potential emotional friction points. When I play fighting games or moba matches I get to review my footage and review the 'what' happened very easily. This makes it easier for me to ask Azherae 'why', or sometimes ask myself 'why'. At the end of the day, if I'm less confused I get to be less of a salty jerk and I'd rather live that way than have to stew in it until my guild captain is available. When people are less confused, I honestly believe communities are more capable of being healthy and I want Ashes to be a healthy community.

A point you've mentioned in your own responses to this topic have a lot to do with information warfare and quite frankly, this was why I did not want an 'examine' option for gear. To me gear is a part of 'why' not 'what'. I think that revealing the 'what' is sufficient for managing goal 2 of logs. The gear can be it's own mystery and information edge. But at the end of the day I get to have a higher level (strategically, not level wise) battles against opponents when we both have access to more data. I find that much MORE fun.

That also means I'd RATHER have some form of information related to the frame data and hitboxes of attacks as those are really essential for a lot of PvP moments. BUT I don't really personally need those things since I can just ask Azherae about hitboxes or Songrune about frame data without needing a built in tool. But idk, it just feels like information IS could easily give even just 'to let us as a community update the wiki'. It makes talking about class balance much more rational.

To add to above, if I had to have a preference, that would be it. I care about the 'what happened' not 'how did the player manage to make it happen. In simple games where the only real 'what' that can happen is damage, then this tends to explain most things, and might therefore feel like it is unfortunate to have all that information available, but I don't think this is a good path for an ambitious MMO that is aiming for interesting combat, to have.

So if, for example, a Tank/Fighter has a damage bonus against 'a person who does damage to someone they are protecting', and they have a gear piece that enhances critical chance against that person too, and then a Fighter augment on top of that which increases their Crit chance/damage further as a baseline, I don't need to know anything other than 'wow that hit really hard'.

But I would still want the log to tell me 'That was a Critical Hit' instead of just 'you took damage'. As for damage types... I feel that's a thing I should get to see? Like, magic and physical damage would, realistically 'feel different' to my character. Similarly, said character would know 'that attack came from my left and hit me' and therefore be able to 'know who hit them' to some extent.

If Intrepid wants to make it so that two mages casting Black Hole in the same chokepoint causes the logs to say 'took damage from Black Hole' instead of 'took damage from X's Black Hole' and 'took Damage from Y's Black Hole' separately, I'm fine with that.

They can go all the way to 'You are taking damage from Hallowed Ground' without any indicator of whose Hallowed Ground it is, but if an Oracle's Hallowed Ground is doing Lightning Damage, I feel like you should be able to tell that is happening when you review the log, if things were chaotic around you while it was happening. The log is part of 'your character's memory' meant to make up for the inability to see everything perfectly at all times. Your character certainly should 'remember getting electrocuted', even if all you saw was a mess of damage numbers popping up.

I'm on exactly the same page as @JustVine and @Azherae here.

• I want to know what abilities people used, and if they're not templated, who they targeted and whether they missed or hit), and how much damage you did. Exactly how you achieved that within your build, etc, I don't need to know. This lets me see the overall flow of battle, which is fundamental to both adaptation and strategy, particularly in post-analysis. (Assuming I'm not expected to be recording every second of gameplay to YouTube - I can just die (or win), go home, and read my scrollback.)
• I want crits marked, so I can interpret the incoming damage values. There's no reason for 'how much damage I take overall' to be obscured that way. How you did it? Sure maybe.
• I'm on the fence about "what element is this damage". I feel like it's probably okay to have to interpret that from what ability you used or the animation (which should be clear) most of the time, depending on the style of game. Still. I should be able to tell what I'm getting hurt by. You can require me to interpret "oh thats because of fire arrows" or "thats because of ability Y". But tell me it's Lightning my character's feeling.
• I want to see healing (not Regeneration, just Burst Heal). This is similar 'basic flow of battle'. Having some perspective on how strong your healer is seems reasonable enough. This is again an 'overall flow of battle' type thing, particularly in post-analysis.
• If someone gets a buff or debuff, I want that logged. Same thing. If I'm looking back later, this is the part where positioning 'has mattered'.

Philosophically: Clearly represent the overall flow of battle, and exactly how much damage I'm taking from where (and what my character can obviously feel about that damage). It's fine to hide builds or 'how they got that much fire damage'. If I missed some buff going up, or other aspects of the flow during a fight, that's natural. It's because my enemy gave me too much (or something else) to focus on, and I dropped the data. But for similar reasons to @JustVine , I feel it's best to be able to look through it afterwards. You could argue that this ruins tactics by making things less repeatable in PvP, but realistically it only stops Gimmicks. Mixups, trickery, etc, are all still going to work. You just vary your movement, or get some counter-play going. Bring fire twice, then Ice the third time. Switch up 'who attacks when', and how or when you use various tactics. The game will be fine, and people get to learn, be less salty, and experience cycles of adaptation and outwitting eachother, rather than getting stomped 10 times until finally "THAT's what he was doing?!". That might be fun for him the first time, but it's not healthy for anyone (or the game), long term.

We have not received permission from Mag7spy to share the quoted post.

Lack of information is NOT lack of mindset/desire for that information, if you're going to derail a good thread for this, please at least understand this much. In other words, people haven't actually changed over time, the only thing that changed is how easily they can compile the information, not how much social interaction they seek or how "lazy" they wanna be.

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You're misunderstanding what happened a bit, but thankfully this does tie back into the topic, pretty well too.

Information gathering is an important part of a PvP game. As you say, checking information on enemies and working out how to beat them, putting in the time and effort to counter and understand potential opponents. So what actually happened was that at some point a potential opponent (you have challenged me/my group/half of the forum honestly at this point, many times) gave a piece of information about themselves that could be used to trace aspects of their approach and personality.

So, the options, if people were going to be group of tryhards (as we are) was to do exactly what you want people to have to do. We 'received the capacity to gather a large amount of information' and analyse it, the slow way.

Which we did. Now, in Ashes, let's assume this became about Classes. And we knew that you were a Fighter/Fighter (not that you are, just an assumption), and we knew a bunch of things about Fighter abilities and possible Fighter gear. Then wouldn't it fit your entire model of how people should behave, for us to 'take the time and data from what we actually know' and prepare for PvP based on it? (remember, again, you have challenged people for this, you've even challenged people IN SC6).

Now, if Ashes has enough variety in classes, we won't be able to guess how you'll fight, because we don't know for sure that you'll be Fighter/Fighter. But we could look at how you play other games, and assume that even if you try to play something else to throw us off, you'll still fight LIKE a Fighter/Fighter, and that will cause you to do certain things which might be suboptimal for you, but only if we're expecting them.

This is the benefit of a robust class system, because we get more interplay, you could then 'actually adapt', and try to overcome our 'predictions of your behaviour and instincts'. But the more information we have, the more likely we know what your primary adaptations are, and so on down the line.

So it's twofold related. The data flow, your attempts to bluff, our willingness to call your bluff based on talking to people you've fought who put pressure on you enough to adapt, etc. So, you're being 'insulted' because we are tryhards who 'know a bunch of stuff about you' specifically because we did the exact thing you want people to actually do. We didn't just 'check your stats', we didn't make a bunch of assumptions. We did the equivalent of 'pen and paper', and then drew conclusions based on that.

Our impressions of you are set because of the very thing you wanted. And a proper class system takes that further. It gives you options. It gives you bluffs, and style changes. It takes it beyond 'I know how to beat your X, and I know how to beat your Y if you try to change to that because you think I don't know about it'. Without it, nothing changes.

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So what happened here is you basically called on people to make inferences and assumptions about their obstacles, then discuss their perspectives on it as a group. So we actually did that, right here in front of you, in this thread and you didn't like it, simply because it happened to be about you.

Your opinion is clearly wrong, but it's obvious to everyone you really believe in it. What that means for us is that we MUST make assumptions and inferences about who you are based on what we know about you. It's the only way to understand where you are coming from, ie why you have your opinion. But you don't like when people do that.

So let me ask you this, then: do you have any reason at all to believe you would like it more if this happened to you in PvP when Ashes releases? Because we'd do the same thing...

Is there any reason at all why you aren't just one of those people who vehemently asks for a thing because they don't understand what it means for them?

Great, then stop being so sensitive about it.

The way you talk has you come across as a crybaby who talks big and then can't back it up, repeating themselves over and over. So people tell you that the way you talk causes that, and also gives them certain impressions of you. If you want to change their impression of you, that's all I was suggesting.

If you are a person who can be more coherent/eloquent than this, and you aren't just trolling, please do so. I just have a lot of data that indicates this is how you always are.

That's why I brought up the SC6 thing in the first place. You fight like a crybaby too, in all the matches they have seen and the people talked to have reported the same impression of you.

Change the impression. Or don't, but at least stop filling every thread with your knee-jerk reactions to whatever it is that has upset you about people forming an impression of you based on the data they have . You can't both argue 'we're making assumptions' and then also 'people should have to gather information on their own'.

I'm aware that this is insulting. But the main thing I want you to understand is that on the internet, only the way you present yourself matters. Your internet persona is the 'only one anyone knows'. And you know it's the same for PvP, particularly in fighting games. If someone watches you spam and get whiff punished for 18 matches, you can say 'you're just assuming I'll spam and get whiff punished if I fight you, but you can't prove it, you have to fight me'.

I'm asking you to change because this is really not a good look. These forums are not that active. If every time someone states a fact you come in with your oversensitive random takes and then get into a fight with them, I feel it's not so great, so I try to stop you, mostly because you're irritating.

Every pearl starts as an irritating grain of sand.