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Damage meters, yes or no?
Lord.Bachus
Member RarePosts: 9,686
in Guild Wars 2
Eris Flanum said: I’m not sure we want to include damage meters or things like that. I think they maybe tend to focus on the wrong things with everybody concerned about min/maxing things. There are lots of things you just can’t measure, like the DPS somebody is doing, are they helping towns players get back up and that sort of thing. We want to avoid DPS meters.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Comments
They're useless. With dodging in the game you will never get the entire story from a damage meter and they will be missing large portions of information.
Not directly built into the game NO, but as an addon yeah why not. We don't want to have this forced onto the game because it tends to have degenerates use it at will and talk all sorts dumb stuff in groups. OMG my DPS I pwns you!! No thanks man, addons only so idiots have to figure out how to install and use it instead of it being game accessible where they got it already.
Big no.
Dps is one thing out of many circumstances especially in GW2.
It would never show the truth..
SexuaLobster's Grease Portal
I would not want damage meters. I agree that they tend to give people reason to focus on the wrong things. How much damage you can do is never the whole story. In any good encounter, there are things happening beyond shooting the baddie. You have to avoid large attacks or environmental effects, or hit switches or whathaveyou. The only real way to judge another player is to play with them and see how things go.
Ultimately, it is about the success of the mission/dungeon/whatever and how much fun everyone has while doing it. Numbers games like damage meters and gearscores take away from my enjoyment of a game. I want to immerse myself in a somewhat believable world. Focusing on numbers both focuses on the wrong parts of the game, to my mind, and detracts from that immersion.
Edit:
Of course, maybe they are not a totally terrible idea. When I played WoW, they were a pretty good way of determining who I did not want to deal with.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
I voted no, because damage meters won't matter that much in GW2 if you're not even able to hit your target. Just imagine GW2 PvP with barriers & wards going up every couple of seconds, making your 700 DPS score irrelevant and that's not even taking to account the dodging. Also Eric Flannum made a good point that there are a number of none combat orientated dynamic event objectives that also makes min/maxing DPS utterly pointless.
I just hope that certain bosses and elite mobs will be able to actively dodge, thus proving how pointless it would be to have DPS meters in both a PvE & PvP setting. At least I've seen evidence of a mob that can shadow step, so that's a good sign.
we probably need a hit or miss log with damage meters on the hit ones
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
HELL NO, they ruin immersion and spawn all kinds of drama.
That's a cool idea.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Not just NO, but heck NO! I really hope they do not allow 3rd party add-ons so this idiotic manure does not make it into GW2.
No, thanks. Damage meters wont add any fun for me and they don't help the immersion at all.
I don't care if 3rd party add ons does the job however, I never use stuff like that anyways.
So much hate for damage meters...
I LOVE damage meters. Without them everything is just guesswork. Should I buff strength or crit? WHO KNOWS. I know why people don't like them, because stupid people use them to stroke their epeens, but they're just a tool. I consider them to be very helpful.
GW1 has the Master of Damage. I love the concept as a built in damage meter, but in my mind, he's not even enough. How am I supposed to tell how good my minion master hero is against this guy? Or compare minion bomber vs minion master? He's got two adds and they don't attack. I'd love to have some kind of totally comprehensive wowwebstats (or whatever replaced it) log parser to work with. I actually love the idea of an instanced, personalized, customizable target dummy. High armor vs low armor, immune to bleeds or not. No adds or 3 adds.
When I played WoW one of my toons was a hunter, and I used this 14 tab spreadsheet to try to figure out maximum theoretical damage. Of course I know that max is never going to be reached, of course I know that the single most important thing you can do to increase damage is NOT DIE, I know that there's a lot of practical factors that go into playing, like whether you can keep hitting the skill that refreshes that DoT, but without them, you just have no idea what to do. Even in a comparatively simplified system like GW2 you've got comparing weapons, stats, traits, additional skills.
Don't make me have to take a stopwatch out into the world and do it that way.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Just wanted to add a bit to the discussion, after a few thoughts, I vote for absolute NO
Damage meters, for whatever good it does, it turns the game into a number game, it transform the game into a simple minded "Hey I need to get this amount of crit, this amount of DPS to be viable". GW2 tried to break away from this whole nonsense of needing a certain amount of a certain amount of attributes to be able to deal decent damage. I just don't see why it needs a damage meter, when dodging physically (not by using dodge rates and roll a die) makes the damage output so much different, the game requires a sustainable level of aiming without making the game a fps twtich fest.
In reply to the post above, damage meter may show you what you need to stat more and etc, but in a balance game, adding one point to ,for example, strength show provide equal amount of advantage compare to one point to dexterity, it just tailor the character to your liking.
Also damage meter usually make guilds very iffy amount numbers, everything becomes the whole "barrier" to enter certain level of content, and thats just isn't positive for the game.
How much WoW could a WoWhater hate, if a WoWhater could hate WoW?
As much WoW as a WoWhater would, if a WoWhater could hate WoW.
This kind of balance is simply impossible. Not to weigh the post down with math, but an increase to strength (+damage) is only going to be equal to an increase in dexterity (+crit) at very specific values. Otherwise one will always be better than the other. The more damage you have, the more valuable crit becomes because it doubles the high base damage of your hit more often. The less damage you have, the more you need to buff your damage instead of your crit (because doubling a low number is still a low number).
(I'm resisting the urge for a numerical example, but I could provide one if necessary)
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
We'd all like to believe that this game is all about positioning and control and support and dodging and saving your friends and rezzing people and putting out fires and all that. But on its most basic level it's about killing something before it kills you.
The poster before me mentions twitch gaming and it's funny, I don't know if you guys know this but one of the biggest DPS killers in WoW is simply how you press your buttons. Suppose you have one skill that does 1000 damage and you can press it every second. Mash that button so it fires everytime it's off cooldown, you'll do 1000 DPS. But if instead you wait until you see it's off cooldown and then hit it, you'll be adding about 200ms of human reaction time. 1000/(1+0.2) = 833 DPS. You're playing a one button game and doing 17% less DPS than the guy next to you.
This exact situation came up for me in WoW. A guildie and I were both hunters, similar gear, same spec, same rotation, same everything, and he asked me why he wasn't doing nearly what I was doing. We went to Ironforge and finally I had to ask him "how are you pressing the buttons?" Sure enough, it fixed the problem.
Without damage meters, how can he know he's doing something wrong? How can I group with someone and gauge their effectiveness?
Right now in GW1, for grins I take heroes into the Zos Shivros and Dajkah Inlet challenge missions. As you can imagine, I don't do very well. But why don't I do well? I have no idea. There's no way to see how well I'm going, to see if my healers are casting spells effectively, if the dps are doing damage.
If you don't want to see it in game, if it breaks immersion, turns into epeen stroking, whatever, I get it. But at least let us have log parsers so we don't have to beat our heads against the wall trying to figure things out when they could be tabulated for us in a helpful and obvious manner.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
Damage meters would be completely pointless in GW2, just as they would have been in GW. Why? In a nutshell, simply because any build constructed purely for dealing damage is already fail. That's just not how GW (and soon, GW2) are designed. Who cares if you're dealing more damage then the next guy if his support abilities are contributing more? And how exactly are you going to measure the effectiveness of the myriads of types of support a player can provide?
Or to put it another way, if a damage meter were to be useful in GW2 in *any* way, then the game won't be a true successor to GW and will probably fail.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
1) They are useless in Guild Wars 2
2) They destroy fun & games...
If a damage meter is useless in GW1 then why is there one built into the game?
I honestly feel like I'm talking to a wall here (not you, everybody). I'm sorry that damage meters have so many negative connotations for people that you'd rather everybody wander around blindly than have a way to gauge their effectiveness.
There is going to be content in this game that is going to be harder than others. A damage meter against a target dummy is going to be useless at gauging effectiveness in those kinds of encounters. But what a log parser would allow people to do is to gauge practical effectiveness. In the midst of all the dodging and control and support and whatnot, you still need to actually damage your target. Think of encounters in WoW like the Iron Council or Hodir where you have to take advantage of ground effects to boost your output, or even something like Sapphiron. How quickly can you get back into doing damage after hiding from the blast? Those things will be reflected. Even support abilities. How many times did someone put boons on others. How much of their regeneration they provided was overhealing? How often did a mob wander into that trap? How often did the ranger's arrows get the fire damage buff? Is there something the mage or ranger could have done differently to increase the frequency?
If someone uses a tool to say "Soandso is great because his numbers are great" then that person is badly interpreting the results of the tool. I can't help that. I'm sorry it happens. Properly used, they're a huge asset.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." -Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
yes from me.i'd like to have a way of checking different builds and see which skills and buffs are more effective,at list useing it on dummies will give an idea whether you are on the right track or not,on the other hand when fighting mobs damage meter might be useless due to combat specific
come on.. a lil competition is always good .... plus you can always ignore the ppl overrating the dmg meters ....
edit: also its another way to know if you're doing thing right or not
The simple truth: A damage metre is the antithesis of Guild Wars 2.
It's that simple.
I suppose you need more than that though if it isn't obvious to you, so okay, let's do a little extrapolation. Everyone likes extrapolating, and it gives me an excuse to monologue up a storm and dump another wall of text (probably). How many will read it? Who knows!
Right, what is the philosophy of combat in Guild Wars 2? It's tactical, visual, and visceral.
Visual: Watching the battlefield instead of the UI and being able to quickly understand and parse what you see is very important. Tactical: The visual element then feeds back to you and you have to make clear-cut tactical decisions in order to shape the battlefield to create the outcome that you want. Visceral: The enjoyment comes from watching the game as it unfolds and feeling a part of the ongoing action.
Now, if you're watching bars or stats, then how can you fall in with the visual, tactical, or visceral elements of this philosophy? How do you even fit Guild Wars 2 at all? I've said it a million times before but I'll say it again: Guild Wars 2 is not WoW, let's stop pretending that it's your second meal in a different skin, because Guild Wars 2 is a completely different beast. Damage metres wouldn't make sense, contrary to them making sense, they'd actually be detrimental because they take away from the core design philosophy of the gameplay mechanics.
Did you have damage metres in SWAT IV? How about God of War? Or even Diablo II? I'm just making a point here. Damage metres aren't at all necessary, not even remotely so, not slightly, and they can be harmful to a game like this. Just consider adding damage metres to SWAT IV for a moment, and everyone is trying to maximise their damage but no one is paying attention to squad tactics, how's that going to work out? It's not. We need to stop trying to jury-rig WoW elements into a game where they don't belong. It's like trying to force guns into Tetris! What point does it serve? None! In fact, it just takes away from the core experience, the sort of game the developers want to deliver.
What possible reason could there be for wanting to actually make the game you're playing not the game you're playing? Look, WoW's going to have more expansions soon, Blizzard has talked about speeding up the rate of expansion development, so if you want to play WoW, then play WoW. WoW is about watching health bars, and button bars, and having a screen so full of UI trash that you can barely see the game. That's great for people that like that sort of thing. But the UI of Guild Wars 2 is almost a work of art in and of itself, it doesn't need trashy damage metres gumming it up, and ruining the experience of the game.
And worse?
Dynamic events are supposed to be about unity, people pulling together regardless of their skill level or how much they've been grinding, casual and hardcore alike, and working toward a common goal. If you have people watching damage metres then you're going to have squabbles and drama (Google 'raid drama') breaking out in the middle of dynamic events. How is that going to help anyone? Are some so brainwashed by WoW that they can't let GW2 be its own game, and more importantly, its own experience?
Damage metres in GW2? NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN NEIN! And I hope the reason as to why I'm saying no is incredibly obvious to everyone. GW2 does not need UI cancer.
I don't use them, but I don't care if other people do. I can't use them myself or I get burned out on the game, always second guessing myself and getting stuck doing things a certain way all the time. If other people use them, I just ignore any information regarding DPS. If people have a problem with my playstyle based on a damage meter, we probably won't be friends. And that's fine. I don't mind advice or criticism, but I often prefer to stray off of the beaten path. I don't like to be reminded I'm doing it wrong every time I join a group, but if it makes other players feel better about themselves, I'm not going to cry.
Absolutely. Any game that comes out will have to deal with players trying to get the developers to make it more like WoW.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Pretty much have the same opinion as Palebane.
However, due to how the combat works in GW2 I feel that DPS meters would be much less useful than in other games.
No meters required. It's a game about teamwork - not outdoing your friends.
Value is placed on the player playing their class well - and since everyone can heal themselves in GW2, damage is only part of a class being played well - strategy goes beyond damage.
I recall in WoW the need for people to post dmg meters. It was a nice little reminder of what your 'worth' was in the raid group and more often than not it was a downer. It never felt like friendly competition. More like snooty bragging rights.
They said no. Why ask?
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky