I never liked damage meters and will never like them. The focus on damage meters is one of the main reasons why mmo fail to have a proper player-skill-based combat. Forget about the numbers and make it more about class versatility, variety, and complexity. How well you play a particular class should be the determining factor on a successful battle against both players and AI.
I know programmers have to use numbers to calculate in game outcomes (damage, hp, etc..), that is fine. Just don't make gameplay rely on those numbers to be good or bad by applying them to gear. A piece of strong gear should never lead to victory if you don't know how to use it and your class. IMO.
It has nothing to do with math in PvP. Higher DPS doesn't win if what you're trying to kill (another player) can sustain the damage or negate it altogether. Pure DPS roles have trouble standing on their own. It was one of the reasons they removed so many amulets over the course of PvP seasons, bunker specs would outlast almost all other types of builds and eventually wear them down even with little to no actual damage, or low damage over time.
Another thing to note is that DPS is calculated and total damage dealt gives out an award at the end of the PvP match. It's not always the highest DPS that gets that award either. As a Mender Elementalist, it's completely possible to get it simply by utilizing overloads in crowded areas. You may never even kill anything yourself, just generally chip away at everyone in the area boosting your numbers. Mender ele's are good at taking out berserker specs of some classes simply due to their sustain.
As I see it is the only useful information I get out of PvP when I take out someone in 1 one on one or not. Sometimes it goes faster then other times and I guess you could compare that as well (but I have to admit I prefer longer close calls since they tend to be way more fun).
If I win all is fine, if I loose my tactics were not right but I think positioning, movement and timed dodges won me far more fights then high DPS.
It might also be slightly useful in small groups against eachother but there I rarely know if I or another player takes the heaviest load unless my buddies suck big times. In large fights there is no reliable way to measure anything, someone might make high DPS but go down a lot and the player who pick them up might do less DPS but still be the reason you win.
Even in PvE is DPS not that great way to measure things, someone that keeps the group alive but not do that much DPS still can be the most important player when they for instance pull the boss away so the rest of the people can get up and continue the fight.
You can't measure how good someone is in this game with a simple meter, there are many factors that makes a player good and DPS is just one of them.
Personally do I think DPS meters is a waste of space but I wont stop if anyone else like them unless they constantly spam the chat with the result and think it is the only thing that matters.
My main is a thief so I generally do a lot of DPS, some of my alts can do less but as long as they are useful to the group and bring in other stuff to the group I am happy with that as well.
The most important factor as I see it is to not die or go down, as long as you are up and do something I have use of you in my group. Nothing hurts a group more then some people constantly getting downed, besides possibly people who are too stupid to take any direction in a dungeon and messes up any puzzle or specific way to kill a boss. It is fine to not know everything you play beforehand but at least listen to the ones who know what they are doing then.
dps meters are good, with that you know if you are playing with scrub or good players who know their rotation and skill, no one like wipe because joe suck at the game, so we can know joe dont do his job and kick him or explain him how to play. with no dps meters you dont know why the boss dont die.
only peoples like joe who are bad at game dont like them
learn2play joe
Apart from Tanks, and healers, and support classes.
Whilst we're on support classes, people who use dps meters as the measure of someone tend to completely forget about the boosts people are getting from support based roles.
That's the problem highlighted by the above post. The dps figures are used in isolation as some kind of standalone verdict on player performance, with no recognition of the effect other party members contributions give.
They are basically an unintelligent tool merely recording hits, that have been escalated to an all encompassing judgement verdict.
Nobody is going to ban you for using a DPS meter as long as you don't go all nazi on the people that are doing subpar. Which is the only gripe ANet has with DPS meters. Toxic players can and will be toxic toward people that don't reach "meta numbers".
Nope, DPS is not a good way of measuring skill in GW2. It's a cancer on the game. Every combat situation is too... situational. There is no way that any meter can take into account the need to heal (since everyone has to), dodge, stack, collect, move, use world items to meet encounter conditions, maintain mitigation, buff, block, debuff.. Etc.
Cancer. This is not that type of game and people are doing it wrong.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
dps meters are good, with that you know if you are playing with scrub or good players who know their rotation and skill, no one like wipe because joe suck at the game, so we can know joe dont do his job and kick him or explain him how to play. with no dps meters you dont know why the boss dont die.
only peoples like joe who are bad at game dont like them
learn2play joe
Do you really need a DPS meter to know if someone sucks?
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Just no. After playing WoW with DPS meters and FFXIV without, I can honestly say that without is better... at least in the general sense. Namely, while I do agree that a game, especially a long running game like an MMO, should provide tools to help players improve (and I mean all players, not just those that want to squeeze an extra 5% out of their rotation), a general DPS meter is not a particularly effective way to go about it, and as pointed out, comes with several (IMO very bad) downsides.
Personally, I would much rather see more MMOs implement practice fights. i.e. fights that are configurable and provide a repeatable set of circumstances (similar to a fighting game practice mode). Theatrically this mode could track DPS, and other metrics over time, but it should be limited to this mode only.
It's not like i agree or like it, does it even matter anymore? once the decision has been made to allow it, they can't just retract it. The backlash from raid community will be huge. The game has been moving towards elitism anyway. Might as well be done with it and allow dps meter.
Never been a fan and never bothered to download any DPS meter in any game. I have seen what effect this has on the game, the community and brings out the most negative attitudes of people.
It has 1 good thing and tells you YOUR dps, but brings many many many negatives to the board than positives.
This happens and lots of booting eventually WILL end up those people quitting and not even looking back, in fact your would probably give a review of a nasty, hateful community of jumped up a-holes that are all trying to compensate for something they are lacking between their legs.
Take instances, fastest one can be completed say 10 minutes, but it takes 13 minutes to complete my god complaints would abound because it took 3 minutes longer than usual but no wipes or deaths WTF. Attitudes from players when these add-ons hit changed overnight. 1 reason why i stopped playing online games. I play games for enjoyment, not to listen to a-holes winge and complain in chat or voicechat over and over and over again about someone in your group, and then items didnt drop they were after and they up and leave instead of finishing
How can something so popular and highly requested be a taboo topic?
This is what bothers me about the development of Guilds Wars 2 and the decisions the developers take. They have never been about what players want or request, in the forums or with specific feedback requests. It has been the same years ago, shortly after the release and it's still the case today. Oddly enough the developers make changes to accommodate e-sports requests that impact the game for everyone - so is the case with projectiles from auto-attacks (1st skill in most cases).
My most hated thing about this game is how blind the developers are towards what their players want. These dps meters have been long asked for and since ArenaNet refuses to add them, players have to resort to 3rd party tools that may endanger the safety of their accounts. Such meters may prove useful to raiding guilds while at times it may even be a thing of preference. Why can't the developrs accommodate such requests is beyond me. Either way and regardless of the outcome of this I've learnt that Guild Wars is no longer the game for me, mainly because of its development.
From what I have read here "most" people don't want or like DPS meters, maybe for personal use but when it becomes public it changes the game and becomes toxic. Ending up with cookie cutter specs so that people don't get kicked, where's the fun in that ?
dps meters are good, with that you know if you are playing with scrub or good players who know their rotation and skill, no one like wipe because joe suck at the game, so we can know joe dont do his job and kick him or explain him how to play. with no dps meters you dont know why the boss dont die.
only peoples like joe who are bad at game dont like them
learn2play joe
I wonder how good people like you are at life. Anyone that puts this much value on in-game performance has to absolutely suck at life.
The main reason for the majority of wipes (outside of boss rage timers) is not low dps, it is people not knowing mechanics of the fight. Simpleton elitist just go with the numbers though since they lack the critical thinking to come up with this conclusion.
All I know is I bring the dps, if jerks start booting people because they are not pulling a specified amount, I go with them. A game will NEVER make me abandon my morals and values as to how others should be treated. It is a video game, not an esport.
There can only be one pro and that is to discover just how badly the classes are balanced in the game. Even with their changes, this game has been in need of a dps meter since the beginning and as someone who's been there the first time this came up and since the beta, the real reason the developers didn't want a dps meter is because we as players would have hard irrefutable numbers about how poorly the classes and specs were balanced.
The same went for the events where people opened box upon box and there was nothing there, from real money boxes and played for years and never ever got a legendary or precursor drop yet it was somehow the player's imaginations that the math of the situation showed that it was skewed in the favor of the developer of the game and it's shareholders instead of in favor of the players and we're not talking about anecdotal information either. They deleted that thread as quickly as they could in the forums.
There can only be one pro and that is to discover just how badly the classes are balanced in the game. Even with their changes, this game has been in need of a dps meter since the beginning and as someone who's been there the first time this came up and since the beta, the real reason the developers didn't want a dps meter is because we as players would have hard irrefutable numbers about how poorly the classes and specs were balanced.
The same went for the events where people opened box upon box and there was nothing there, from real money boxes and played for years and never ever got a legendary or precursor drop yet it was somehow the player's imaginations that the math of the situation showed that it was skewed in the favor of the developer of the game and it's shareholders instead of in favor of the players and we're not talking about anecdotal information either. They deleted that thread as quickly as they could in the forums.
There is no need for one - period. A DPS meter would have to take into account all the buffs, etc that a player has and how they roll off and get reapplied. I have not seen a meter that can do that with any accuracy. Also, DPS meters, do not take into account any Condi's and with many bosses, that is the only way you can kill them.
There can only be one pro and that is to discover just how badly the classes are balanced in the game. Even with their changes, this game has been in need of a dps meter since the beginning and as someone who's been there the first time this came up and since the beta, the real reason the developers didn't want a dps meter is because we as players would have hard irrefutable numbers about how poorly the classes and specs were balanced.
The same went for the events where people opened box upon box and there was nothing there, from real money boxes and played for years and never ever got a legendary or precursor drop yet it was somehow the player's imaginations that the math of the situation showed that it was skewed in the favor of the developer of the game and it's shareholders instead of in favor of the players and we're not talking about anecdotal information either. They deleted that thread as quickly as they could in the forums.
There is no need for one - period. A DPS meter would have to take into account all the buffs, etc that a player has and how they roll off and get reapplied. I have not seen a meter that can do that with any accuracy. Also, DPS meters, do not take into account any Condi's and with many bosses, that is the only way you can kill them.
DPS meters, opium for the arrogant.
Technically it doesn't have to take into account any buffs. Just to test I downloaded GW2SPECS DPS meter, and it did fine at reading DPS, Condition DPS, crit chance, etc.
It doesn't matter what the buffs are that you use, it factors it in based on damage, and I don't see how it would matter in the end. If you really want to know your DPS and how much food or certain buffs add, just track your DPS without it, then with it.
Overall after trying the DPS meter, it's an interesting tool. It lets you export everything into a txt or CSV file, and what I found really handy about the SPECS one aside from the easy setup is that I didn't have to mess with the game files at all to get it to work. Will I use it in the future? Probably not.
DPS meters don't help me personally, but maybe for giggles one day on the indestructible target golem to see my overall condi DPS on my engi or necro.
People don't like DPS meters because they can be used as hard proof of how terrible a player is. Now, do some people abuse that information, yes, of course. However other people who are looking to actually improve their ability can use things like DPS meters to great affect. Or perhaps you have a friend who is just completely convinced that their ice/fire/poison dot/dd/heavy armor wizard build is the bees knees. You can use that information to show them that the build is in fact, useless.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Nope, DPS is not a good way of measuring skill in GW2. It's a cancer on the game. Every combat situation is too... situational. There is no way that any meter can take into account the need to heal (since everyone has to), dodge, stack, collect, move, use world items to meet encounter conditions, maintain mitigation, buff, block, debuff.. Etc.
Cancer. This is not that type of game and people are doing it wrong.
Cancer is a bit of an overstatement, they are more like a cold, annoying but not deadly. Hrimnir said:
People don't like DPS meters because they can be used as hard proof of how terrible a player is. Now, do some people abuse that information, yes, of course. However other people who are looking to actually improve their ability can use things like DPS meters to great affect. Or perhaps you have a friend who is just completely convinced that their ice/fire/poison dot/dd/heavy armor wizard build is the bees knees. You can use that information to show them that the build is in fact, useless.
DPS meters are a good tool if you use it to determine how you do more damage, yes. But GW2 do not just have DPS classes no matter what some people think.
A good support character is extremely useful both in PvE and PvP even if their DPS suck, stuff like getting up players, kiting the boss, healing, put up combos for the rest of the group and similar can't really be measured.
For PvP, going 1 Vs 1 versus a good opponent tells you far more then any meter. In PvE it is really co-ordination that wins the hard fights, a group of uncoordinated players will be useless in hard content no matter how high their DPS is.
For me personally who plays a thief is it no biggie, I am supposed to do most DPS in most situations but I don't need a meter to see if someone in my group doesn't work, it is pretty obvious when you do something that is hard.
Of course people who play badly wont like anything that points to them not doing their share but DPS is hardly a perfect measurement to how good someone play and people who post everyones DPS every 10 seconds in group chat tends to be rather annoying. A support character is not really supposed to do as much damage as a full DPS character, that means that they either don't support at all and/or that the DPs guy suck. The problem is that some people just don't get that and that makes DPS meters annoying (even if it is more the person who spams the results who is the annoying one).
Being able to maximise a DPS meter doesn't mean the player is actually any good, its not after all, a measure of the players abilities and is an easy way for a player to gain confidence in abilities that they do not possess, in PVP it just means they lose more often than not, in PVE, they are rarely able to achieve that 'high dps' they think they have. Instead i think all it really leads to is players waving around those dps meter figures like some kind of badge, in a nonsensical 'my dad is bigger than your dad' argument
Lol I played this game to 20 something. You have like 1 auto attack, 5 other attack, 1 heal, 1 I win button and 2 slots for passive abilities. Almost every ability you can use except auto has long cooldowns.
There is no tactics in this game it requires zero skill. In pvp you just press every thing that is not on cooldown and auto. The game looks great, the quests are fun but the combat is terrible, same with ESO which has similar combat style - great world, everything is great except for the bland combat.
I tried another one of these 'console' mmorpg's - neverwinter. Again the same thing, great graphics, boring combat.
I bet some players still think that these games mentioned are too complex and advanced. Lol I suddenly remembered the presentation of Fable 3 where the designer said '' You can do every thing in this game with just one button - and I mean JUST ONE BUTTON!! ''
I think DPS meters are useful sometimes. Other times it creates situations where people require crazy DPS for something that doesn't need that much so they can get it over with faster. It splits communities occasionally. I like them to measure what I need to do to get better at damage, but I think the meters need to show other aspects too. Like threat per second, or like in wow the heals per second. People never look at those though, and leave the other classes alone it's a bit odd that DPS is the only thing looked at. It does work for what it is though, I just wish players weren't so toxic about it all the time. You can tell by looking through this thread people are as well, "hard proof of how terrible a player is" things like that. Just creates weird overly angry players in a lot of situations.
The last ting this game needed is DPS meters encouraging people to stand in one spot hitting something. Next they will have one button macros, oh boy. Not a fan.
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"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Comments
I know programmers have to use numbers to calculate in game outcomes (damage, hp, etc..), that is fine. Just don't make gameplay rely on those numbers to be good or bad by applying them to gear. A piece of strong gear should never lead to victory if you don't know how to use it and your class. IMO.
If I win all is fine, if I loose my tactics were not right but I think positioning, movement and timed dodges won me far more fights then high DPS.
It might also be slightly useful in small groups against eachother but there I rarely know if I or another player takes the heaviest load unless my buddies suck big times. In large fights there is no reliable way to measure anything, someone might make high DPS but go down a lot and the player who pick them up might do less DPS but still be the reason you win.
Even in PvE is DPS not that great way to measure things, someone that keeps the group alive but not do that much DPS still can be the most important player when they for instance pull the boss away so the rest of the people can get up and continue the fight.
You can't measure how good someone is in this game with a simple meter, there are many factors that makes a player good and DPS is just one of them.
Personally do I think DPS meters is a waste of space but I wont stop if anyone else like them unless they constantly spam the chat with the result and think it is the only thing that matters.
My main is a thief so I generally do a lot of DPS, some of my alts can do less but as long as they are useful to the group and bring in other stuff to the group I am happy with that as well.
The most important factor as I see it is to not die or go down, as long as you are up and do something I have use of you in my group. Nothing hurts a group more then some people constantly getting downed, besides possibly people who are too stupid to take any direction in a dungeon and messes up any puzzle or specific way to kill a boss. It is fine to not know everything you play beforehand but at least listen to the ones who know what they are doing then.
Apart from Tanks, and healers, and support classes.
Whilst we're on support classes, people who use dps meters as the measure of someone tend to completely forget about the boosts people are getting from support based roles.
That's the problem highlighted by the above post. The dps figures are used in isolation as some kind of standalone verdict on player performance, with no recognition of the effect other party members contributions give.
They are basically an unintelligent tool merely recording hits, that have been escalated to an all encompassing judgement verdict.
Cancer. This is not that type of game and people are doing it wrong.
Maybe he needs to "learn2play?"
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Personally, I would much rather see more MMOs implement practice fights. i.e. fights that are configurable and provide a repeatable set of circumstances (similar to a fighting game practice mode). Theatrically this mode could track DPS, and other metrics over time, but it should be limited to this mode only.
The game has been moving towards elitism anyway. Might as well be done with it and allow dps meter.
It has 1 good thing and tells you YOUR dps, but brings many many many negatives to the board than positives.
This happens and lots of booting eventually WILL end up those people quitting and not even looking back, in fact your would probably give a review of a nasty, hateful community of jumped up a-holes that are all trying to compensate for something they are lacking between their legs.
Take instances, fastest one can be completed say 10 minutes, but it takes 13 minutes to complete my god complaints would abound because it took 3 minutes longer than usual but no wipes or deaths WTF. Attitudes from players when these add-ons hit changed overnight. 1 reason why i stopped playing online games. I play games for enjoyment, not to listen to a-holes winge and complain in chat or voicechat over and over and over again about someone in your group, and then items didnt drop they were after and they up and leave instead of finishing
I wonder how good people like you are at life. Anyone that puts this much value on in-game performance has to absolutely suck at life.
The main reason for the majority of wipes (outside of boss rage timers) is not low dps, it is people not knowing mechanics of the fight. Simpleton elitist just go with the numbers though since they lack the critical thinking to come up with this conclusion.
All I know is I bring the dps, if jerks start booting people because they are not pulling a specified amount, I go with them. A game will NEVER make me abandon my morals and values as to how others should be treated. It is a video game, not an esport.
There is no need for one - period. A DPS meter would have to take into account all the buffs, etc that a player has and how they roll off and get reapplied. I have not seen a meter that can do that with any accuracy. Also, DPS meters, do not take into account any Condi's and with many bosses, that is the only way you can kill them.
DPS meters, opium for the arrogant.
It doesn't matter what the buffs are that you use, it factors it in based on damage, and I don't see how it would matter in the end. If you really want to know your DPS and how much food or certain buffs add, just track your DPS without it, then with it.
Overall after trying the DPS meter, it's an interesting tool. It lets you export everything into a txt or CSV file, and what I found really handy about the SPECS one aside from the easy setup is that I didn't have to mess with the game files at all to get it to work. Will I use it in the future? Probably not.
DPS meters don't help me personally, but maybe for giggles one day on the indestructible target golem to see my overall condi DPS on my engi or necro.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Hrimnir said: DPS meters are a good tool if you use it to determine how you do more damage, yes. But GW2 do not just have DPS classes no matter what some people think.
A good support character is extremely useful both in PvE and PvP even if their DPS suck, stuff like getting up players, kiting the boss, healing, put up combos for the rest of the group and similar can't really be measured.
For PvP, going 1 Vs 1 versus a good opponent tells you far more then any meter. In PvE it is really co-ordination that wins the hard fights, a group of uncoordinated players will be useless in hard content no matter how high their DPS is.
For me personally who plays a thief is it no biggie, I am supposed to do most DPS in most situations but I don't need a meter to see if someone in my group doesn't work, it is pretty obvious when you do something that is hard.
Of course people who play badly wont like anything that points to them not doing their share but DPS is hardly a perfect measurement to how good someone play and people who post everyones DPS every 10 seconds in group chat tends to be rather annoying. A support character is not really supposed to do as much damage as a full DPS character, that means that they either don't support at all and/or that the DPs guy suck. The problem is that some people just don't get that and that makes DPS meters annoying (even if it is more the person who spams the results who is the annoying one).
Instead i think all it really leads to is players waving around those dps meter figures like some kind of badge, in a nonsensical 'my dad is bigger than your dad' argument
There is no tactics in this game it requires zero skill. In pvp you just press every thing that is not on cooldown and auto. The game looks great, the quests are fun but the combat is terrible, same with ESO which has similar combat style - great world, everything is great except for the bland combat.
I tried another one of these 'console' mmorpg's - neverwinter. Again the same thing, great graphics, boring combat.
I bet some players still think that these games mentioned are too complex and advanced. Lol I suddenly remembered the presentation of Fable 3 where the designer said '' You can do every thing in this game with just one button - and I mean JUST ONE BUTTON!! ''
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
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