DPS Meter Megathread

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Case in point It's the people - not the game.

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

I see 2 paths from that though. It's either "Intrepid stops making content that's being pushed ever further by trackers and all the top pvers leave because of that, pulling a ton of lower tier pvers with them, which snowballs into game "dying"" or we get what you described in a previous post, where Intrepid is pretty much just trying to outpace the top pvers' ability to clear content, which creates an ever-bigger divide between the top 1% and the bottom 99%, because, just as you said, most people who won't use trackers won't be able to clear that top content and will be behind in gear by miles. All while the top 1% pvers can farm top gear for their pvpers and pretty much dominate most pvx encounters. And this then snowballs into the top 1% being happy, while the bottom 99% are not only failing to clear pve but also failing to win pvp.

I've seen both of these situations happen in L2 servers. Except there it was all based around pvx, so the top 1% would usually just get bored because people would stop fighting them after realizing that they just can't win. I'd assume hardcore pvers wouldn't really care about that because they'll have their super hardcore bosses to farm, while everyone else either leaves or just goes around telling everyone that game is dying, which in turn just manifests it into a fact.

I'm sure EQ2 somehow avoided this issue, but I'd assume that mainly stems from its playerbase being on the older side and not caring about such things too much. While in this day and age it'd already be very difficult to hold your audience's attention. And it'll be waaay harder to do that when said audience start to hear that the game is dying.

So while I completely understand the hunger and drive to push the limits of gameplay, I personally see the presence of trackers as a detriment to the longevity of the game. I'm sure that there's enough people like you who'll use them even if Intrepid tries their hardest to ban that use, so imo the downfall of the game is kinda inevitable. I hope I'm wrong on this, but I've seen this snowballing happen too many times even with oldschool hardcore players, let alone the current gen of "I'll play this game for a few weeks while my favorite streamer plays it and then leave it" gamers.

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Guess I'll just have to see what kind of top end content Intrepid envisions before making my decision to either agree or disagree with this statement.

Yes, they want to have content that's only clearable by <10%, but I don't think they've explained how exactly they wanna achieve that kind of difficulty. And my limited experience with top end pve just can't allow me to imagine an open world encounter that's so truly complex that you need a tracker to defeat it. Dearly hope we see such a boss in the earlier stages of alpha2 rather than later ones.

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FF14 is a difficult thing to compare to other things, because it's so story-driven that majority of people couldn't care less about how to beat the top-end content. And as have been said before here, ff14 has guilds that use trackers, so it's not like there's none there either.

Btw, on the topic of ff14, I forgot to ask @Aerlana . Have you played ff14 from the early expansions or just the recent ones? I was interested in the information about whether ultimates became more complex/harder throughout the expansions. I'd imagine they did, but by how much (at least feel-wise)? And just to cast a broader net, @Azherae do you have people on your team that have played ff14 at top lvl for a long time? Same question for them, if you have.

NiKr wrote: »

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FF14 is a difficult thing to compare to other things, because it's so story-driven that majority of people couldn't care less about how to beat the top-end content. And as have been said before here, ff14 has guilds that use trackers, so it's not like there's none there either.

Btw, on the topic of ff14, I forgot to ask @Aerlana . Have you played ff14 from the early expansions or just the recent ones? I was interested in the information about whether ultimates became more complex/harder throughout the expansions. I'd imagine they did, but by how much (at least feel-wise)? And just to cast a broader net, @Azherae do you have people on your team that have played ff14 at top lvl for a long time? Same question for them, if you have.

I only have two friends that bothered, and one of them quit quite early due to being relatively 'bored'.

The gulf created by the style difference of the two games is hard to bridge .

(the EDIT: Zumi poster in that thread is the Mag7 expy)

I didn't receive any information about 'harder', but that is probably because my friends would not count 'react to this in time' or 'move to this spot when you see this move start' as difficulty until they got really deep in, and they stopped before that, so I don't think I have any useful data there.

But the link given is probably a clear enough 'extension' to explain why.

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Which is exactly my point. If they go down the path of "peak pve is open world" then, just as you implied, I can't see how they'll make it super complex w/o making it pretty much impossible. And if they go down the path of semi or full instance - then it kinda goes against the "open world" promise and would not even be repeatable if they go with full instance.

And if they go with a less complex open world boss - any real pvers like you would say it's boring as fuck (I'd assume) and there wouldn't be a "proper" pve scene.

In other words, currently it's just a mess of promises that tells us literally nothing, which is why I said that I want to wait until they show us a boss that's explicitly "top end".

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

But it is exactly because of Ashes being a themebox and not a themepark that there's a higher chance of more people being influenced by top end players. All of ff14 is cooperative, so the overall attitude towards content and players is positive and kind (with the sprout icon being the greatest example). But quite a huge chunk of Ashes will be competitive. Especially when it comes to bosses and their loot, because they'll be open world. I know that you don't care about the loot part of the encounter, but a ton of people will be fighting over being the ones to beat the dragon first and then do their best to keep being the only ones who kill that same dragon on his future spawns.

And a big part of the pvx spectrum will be looking at such events with huge interest. And if they hear from the pioneers of farming that these events turn out to be dull and boring (for whichever reason), I'd assume this would cast a pretty dark shade on the entire experience. Especially if those non-pioneers can't even get a chance to experience the event for themselves (which will most likely be the case).

Again, I hope this is not the case, but I can definitely see how it could go down exactly like this.

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If the design philosophy around 'Raiding' is moreso going to be 'can you play this game at a reasonable level', then I would not bother to write a log parser (hypothetically, because I have no intention of doing this for Ashes).

I would also not feel like 'choosing to not use a Tracker/parser, knowing that many others will' would be a disadvantage, because the only advantage required among the 'high skill gamer population' will be 'show up' and 'make sure you are as coordinated as you usually are'.

I don't think this would invalidate the claim, gaming has become a large spread now, 7% of people being 'coordinated at all and understand mechanics' is valid. It's probably the same NUMBER of people as it has been for years, overall, but there are many more others now.

Raid content being 'inclusive' isn't an issue to me in a PvX game, so if the design goal (I'm trusting you know more than me here) is for it to be 'a way to pass the time' for skilled players, rather than a real challenge, then this is acceptable to me, as long as that is consistent throughout the game.

i.e. I don't want a game where the bosses are easy (to me) and then aspects of actually getting to fight them is quite hard.

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Would you actually like or want that?

Unique people with constant discussion? Just say the word.

(I'm really just calling you out again on your flawed logic, but there's a chance!)