DPS Meter Megathread

Ok, ready!

I'd explain the whole strat but it's better if some people don't have to think about it anyway.

EQ2, by all data currently available to me, is a Chess style game for PvE. When you want to make the game more interesting, you change the board. You introduce special rules for different zones or squares. You change the starting configurations of the pieces. The challenge for a player who likes this (Noaani, a few others who normally leave discussion to Noaani):

1) Figure out all the new board zone rules, and when the board expands or shrinks
2) React to this by deciding what pieces to move where, either beforehand, or where to put them after the board change triggers an automove.

FFXI is a 'TCG' style game for PvE. The board usually matters much less, when you want to do something interesting, you 'add an OP card', 'change a rule that normally is there for balance', or alter the function of the limiting resource pool in the game. The challenge for a player who likes this (Mag, George, Depraved sorta, me):

1) Figure out what the new Card does
2) Adapt known strategy to the fact that a weakness that the enemy normally has that keeps them in check, has been removed, or to the fact that your resource pool acts differently

Trackers work on both game types, but 'TCG side' people don't seem to care about all the things that make stuff easier for them, and 'Chess' style people don't seem to care about the dynamism that PvP brings to the TCG style. Understandable.

NiKr, because you want a hard 'TCG style' game, but you're talking to a 'Chess style enthusiast' half the time, you end up trying to ask 'can't this be hard anyway?' But you always offer TCG-style suggestions for difficulty.

If Ashes is TCG-style as a game, it will have less interesting pure owPvE (any situation where no conflict happens counts as this). Mag can stand on the 'but it's not less skillful!' side. NiKr can stand on the 'ffs Mag you're not listening' side.

Ofc you can all just ignore this, I'll reposition everyone whenever George reminds me to.

The current challenge ofc is 'Figuring out what Steven was trying to sell when he said his stuff'. He talks about stuff that means the game can supposedly please both sides, but on the owPvE at least, it kinda can't consistently do both. Our 'Hybrid Combat' offers no clues either, and Tumok told us nothing because WoW is mostly Checkers.

90% of this thread has been 'what is Steven's actual product tho?' and then back and forth between these two 'camps'. Why stop now?

Azherae wrote: »

If Ashes is TCG-style as a game, it will have less interesting pure owPvE (any situation where no conflict happens counts as this).

Situational cards all the waaaay! I wish I had played mtg to know what jokes to make about lands and shit Don't those change the situation on the mat in a somewhat major way? I feel like my insistence on "give players pvx tools, so that pve can still be difficult even in the ow but still doable when it's pvx" would fall under a "I turn this land card to activate pvx combat mode, because there's a new plainswalker on the mat". Or smth like that

Azherae wrote: »

The current challenge ofc is 'Figuring out what Steven was trying to sell when he said his stuff'.

I am curious how deep we'll have to be into A2 to figure this out. Rn my theory is ~1 year.

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Guess I wasn't as removed from the core game as I thought

Ohhh shit, "RPG" mentioned. I was debating whether to post this video or not, but now there's the slightest tiniest bit of relevancy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zrxN3_JHy0

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Yes to all of the above. That sounds like a fun game

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

The problem is that devs have a lot of difficulty, in my experience, tuning content because of their own innate abilities showing through and affecting the requirements.

We can use the same Monster Hunter example, actually. Enemy HP doesn't show in Monster Hunter, until they are low enough to be captured, then you can see them have a visual 'tic' to show it, but ONLY if they aren't pushing to kill you, basically, you have to give them a breather.

If the objective of the quest is to capture, this means you can miss it, and kill the monster, without meaning to, in some cases.

My team relies on me to 'somehow' know its HP well enough with EVERYTHING going on, to line it up so that you can 'set the trap, use the tranquilizers, have it fall into the trap and the damage that is done to it WHILE it is in the trap is what brings it to the HP threshold'.

Why can I do this? We don't know, but there are many things like it, in life. Devs design things off what they THINK is the minimum requirement of skill that they want to work for the content, and can miss the fact that one of their natural talents is making it possible.

Similarly the other way, if a Dev finds a specific thing very hard to do personally and builds an encounter around it and their QA are average/similar to them, then the moment that encounter makes contact with someone who has the related talent, they down it without thinking.

I know that your point is sorta that the game shouldn't necessarily be particularly challenging in the first place, but designing mobs to be a challenge 'without certain talents' doesn't feel like a good strategy for application to the bulk of content.

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

I'm actually a little confused here, Dygz, because I think you've previously implied awareness that most of the time, people just 'upload logs to a website which does the parsing'.

I felt like we were on the same page in terms of your 'understanding' that the two things are minimally different in practice... is this the same as the FF14 thing where as long as no one can talk about it, you're fine with it, so the combat log is ok?