Damage Meters - Yah or Nay?

Amathe

I came across this YouTube discussion of whether damage meters would be good or bad in Pantheon:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PantheonMMO/comments/cg7f0h/damage_meters_in_pantheon/

Ungood

Wow.. the game is not even live yet, and people are already trying to see how a big an asshat they plan to be.

This game is Looking better and better..

Amathe

Don't kill the messenger. I'm just sharing stuff I found.

vegetableoil

I think it's just going to alienate class that are not dps. Look you are a tank you are useless, look you are a healer you are useless, look you are a crowd control you are also useless. but in all fairness people will probably create their own parsing to measure their dps anyway.

Utinni

vegetableoil said:

I think it's just going to alienate class that are not dps. Look you are a tank you are useless, look you are a healer you are useless, look you are a crowd control you are also useless. but in all fairness people will probably create their own parsing to measure their dps anyway.

I'm not sure you understand what type of game this is.

vegetableoil

Utinni said:

vegetableoil said:

I think it's just going to alienate class that are not dps. Look you are a tank you are useless, look you are a healer you are useless, look you are a crowd control you are also useless. but in all fairness people will probably create their own parsing to measure their dps anyway.

I'm not sure you understand what type of game this is.

 I'm talking about damage meter. 

Xiaoki

Damage meters are just a tool, what you do with it is entirely up to you and the community.

You can read a book and learn from it or you can hit someone in the head with it.

And if the Pantheon community use damage meters to harass and demean then the community is just bad and will find some other way to harass and demean without damage meters.

Albatroes

Meters dont have a real place in a heavily role based game. They can be useful to track certain things but ultimately, general people cant use them as they are intended, thus will result in ppl QQ'ing about a class that is built specifically for CC/Buffing/etc doesn't do as much damage. FFXIV is honestly having this problem atm with DNC (honestly had this problem since 2.0 with bard). People can't understand that the job's damage is lower than most other DPS because it gives another DPS 10%ish increase to damage. NIN has this problem too I suppose because its currently doing comparable damage to DNC and does have a dmg increase debuff but its melee so the damage will only be comparable to DNC if it can keep 100% uptime. All-in-all, general people can't accept that certain classes are just not meant for certain things, which is a common point of contention for people that recount their 'bad' experiences with a game like FFXI.

svann

Damage meters are sometimes useful not just for measuring personal performance and which combination is stronger, but also for measuring whether the abilities are working as intended or not.  Broken abilities have been discovered using parsers, then reported and fixed.  Not allowing us to see the actual damage of our abilities is a very bad idea.

As to the fear that people will be asshats - the solution is to stop grouping with asshats.  You arent going to make them different by taking their parser away.

k61977

I am all good with meters for people to see how they are doing for themselves.  I don't like them when they are used to berate someone who is still learning or has actual physical disabilities an doesn't hit that high dps number.  Personal would like being able to see other peoples numbers removed from all games.  You should be able to see how you do so you know if you are putting out decent dps, but you don't need to know what everyone in a group is doing to be honest.  The only people that look at them constantly are the elitist that think they are the best when they are usually the worst to play with.

NorseGod

When raid leaders ask if everyone has their damage meter add-ons installed. I lie and say yes.

TwoTubes

I'm sure you can all go dig up the infamous thread on the Pantheon forums about dps meters from a few years back that ended up getting closed down.  It was quite long and devolved into bickering in the end but, there is at least some good discussion there.

Iselin

Damage meters are a great tool to tweak your own rotation.

The problems come in when they peep other people's damage and when they have a built in ability to broadcast that in chat. In ESO they blocked the peeping into other's damage in their Addon API although you can still see the global damage and yours as a percentage of that.

Not a perfect solution but it put a stop to most of the PUG asshattery. 

Adamantine

I fail to see the point of damage meters.

I dont want my interface to display more numbers than absolutely necessary.

This is after all a fantasy world - and I dont want it to look like a plane cockpit instead, thank you very much.

Sovrath

Iselin said:

Damage meters are a great tool to tweak your own rotation.

Maybe part the problem is actually having a "rotation." How deadly dull. 

Iselin

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Damage meters are a great tool to tweak your own rotation.

Maybe part the problem is actually having a "rotation." How deadly dull. 

I understand that some people don't care about playing their characters optimally. They're there for the sights and sounds and socializing. That seems dull to me, but whatever floats your boat.

I want to play difficult content and pull my weight in groups whether I'm healing, tanking or doing damage. Anyone who does that kind of content - and there are many of us - cares about rotations.

Sovrath

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Damage meters are a great tool to tweak your own rotation.

Maybe part the problem is actually having a "rotation." How deadly dull. 

I understand that some people don't care about playing their characters optimally. They're there for the sights and sounds and socializing. That seems dull to me, but whatever floats your boat.

I want to play difficult content and pull my weight in groups whether I'm healing, tanking or doing damage. Anyone who does that kind of content - and there are many of us - cares about rotations.

But there shouldn't be rotations. "if one does x, y and z then they are optimal." 

Combat should have surprises. A player should have to gauge the battle, make decisions in the moment.

 I would think that any good combat system would make it so that if a person had a rotation then the ai would take advantage of that. 

But sure, if people want to plug in some rotation and rinse and repeat then great. Whatever floats their boat. But I think it's a problem with game design.

However, to play devil's advocate on that point, I wonder if having it makes the game more accessible to those who aren't capable of quick decisions, thinking in the moment?

Amathe

There were some SWTOR web parsers that even measured and took into account how fast you move from one button to the next. This stuff is crazy these days.

Iselin

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Damage meters are a great tool to tweak your own rotation.

Maybe part the problem is actually having a "rotation." How deadly dull. 

I understand that some people don't care about playing their characters optimally. They're there for the sights and sounds and socializing. That seems dull to me, but whatever floats your boat.

I want to play difficult content and pull my weight in groups whether I'm healing, tanking or doing damage. Anyone who does that kind of content - and there are many of us - cares about rotations.

But there shouldn't be rotations. "if one does x, y and z then they are optimal." 

Combat should have surprises. A player should have to gauge the battle, make decisions in the moment.

 I would think that any good combat system would make it so that if a person had a rotation then the ai would take advantage of that. 

But sure, if people want to plug in some rotation and rinse and repeat then great. Whatever floats their boat. But I think it's a problem with game design.

However, to play devil's advocate on that point, I wonder if having it makes the game more accessible to those who aren't capable of quick decisions, thinking in the moment?

That's nonsense. Games with good battle systems have complex rotations with a lot of situational if/then alternatives. I think the problem is your misunderstanding that rotations imply brain dead simplicity. They don't. There are simple ones in simple games and more complex ones in complex games as well.

And there are always better and worse ways of reacting to situations and sequencing your response. Good rotations are an intelligent optimal response to game stimulus as opposed to just throwing shit out there and hoping something works.

Utinni

100% for damage/healing meters. The amount of people who basically afk in raids in oldschool mmos is insane. 

Panther2103

I like the idea of being able to see your total damage, but I don't like the idea of seeing everyones damage. It brings forth the toxic players who want everyone to play the game optimally, and kick people who aren't doing very well or at least make a stink that the player isn't doing good. Ideally that player could look at it, and maybe after tell the other player what they did wrong but that would never work. 

Sovrath

Iselin said:

Well,  maybe that's why I do better with "action combat" or any combat that is more reflex/aim driven.

Though I'll add, it still seems pretty brain dead. This situation? Do this ad nauseum. It changes? do this ad nauseum.

But again, I guess I just don't get it.

OGDeathRow

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Sovrath said:

Iselin said:

Damage meters are a great tool to tweak your own rotation.

Maybe part the problem is actually having a "rotation." How deadly dull. 

I understand that some people don't care about playing their characters optimally. They're there for the sights and sounds and socializing. That seems dull to me, but whatever floats your boat.

I want to play difficult content and pull my weight in groups whether I'm healing, tanking or doing damage. Anyone who does that kind of content - and there are many of us - cares about rotations.

But there shouldn't be rotations. "if one does x, y and z then they are optimal." 

Combat should have surprises. A player should have to gauge the battle, make decisions in the moment.

 I would think that any good combat system would make it so that if a person had a rotation then the ai would take advantage of that. 

But sure, if people want to plug in some rotation and rinse and repeat then great. Whatever floats their boat. But I think it's a problem with game design.

However, to play devil's advocate on that point, I wonder if having it makes the game more accessible to those who aren't capable of quick decisions, thinking in the moment?

That's nonsense. Games with good battle systems have complex rotations with a lot of situational if/then alternatives. I think the problem is your misunderstanding that rotations imply brain dead simplicity. They don't. There are simple ones in simple games and more complex ones in complex games as well.

And there are always better and worse ways of reacting to situations and sequencing your response. Good rotations are an intelligent optimal response to game stimulus as opposed to just throwing shit out there and hoping something works.

+1 for this person

I can play sub optimal and have fun, but sometimes you gotta bring out the big guns to benifit the rest of the people you are raiding/grouping with.

IceAge

Yes, for me is a big yes, especially in WoW. 

Last night, in a group of irl friends we were doing a dungeon, and normally, I was top dps. However, this run, I saw that one of my friends was out damaging me in almost every fight. This situation then lead to a funny ..DPS race for the entire dungeon. 

Point is, Damage Meter is very good to see how well you are doing in a dungeon compared to others and if you are struggling, then there is good reason that you are doing something wrong, which will lead you to search the internet and get to know your class/spec/etc better. 

Another exemple is, I was doing a SM Lib run with randoms and there was this warlock which I ( as a tank ) would out damage him in almost every fight. This lead to several wipes because we lacked damage by lot. 

Normally, the ones who are against damage meters are the ones who goes by "is a game, relax". Yes, it is a game, but do your job well , or else go play with friends or solo and don't ruin other's run by not wanting to actually play your class as it should be. Wanna play it on your own peace? Again, go solo! Nothing wrong to do that, but .. messing dungeon run's with other people, is just bad. 

Is nothing "elitism" in here. Is like playing Counter Strike, LoL, etc and you just go in without a strategy, and .."suicide" yourself because.."is just a game and you are playing it for fun". 

alkarionlog

matters little if people like or don't, the ones who want to use will make a mod for such, just get used to it

Xatsh

I am not a fan of damage meters because it ends up turning the game into a contest to see who does the most damage.

Who is the best tank, well the one who does the most dmg.

Who is the best healer, well the one who does the most dmg.

Who is the best support/CC, well the one who does the most dmg.

Aka this above is pure stupidity but it is how the community in general works when parsers are involved.

In a game like pantheon hopefully it is more of a game where Maximizing dps 100% of the time is not the best way to go. More like the FFXI or Older model where a dps going full out 100% of the time is literally just going to pull agro and die a horrible death. I am a not a fan of the current model of Tanks pull unlimited threat. Aka FFXIV where tanks generate around 10xs the threat of a dps, auto attacks can almost hold threat in that game.......