To Recount or not to Recount – that’s the question of the day, and an issue heavily debated on the Star Wars: The Old Republic forums (at least until they were wiped). Do we really need a combat meter system, or can SWTOR survive without it?
More DOTS! More DOTS!
Greetings, TORWarriors! It’s time again for “Open TOR Policy”, where I’ll take a look at the challenges Star Wars: The Old Republic faces as a new and potentially powerful force in the MMO market. Today, I’m examining both the role of a “damage meter” system in massively multiplayer games and the impact of such a meter being present (or absent) in SWTOR.
Damage Meters: Or, What the Hell am I Talking About?
For those who may not be MMO veterans or who like their UI uncluttered by add-ons, damage meters (more accurately, combat meters) are add-on programs designed to take data from a game’s combat log and report it in various useful and statistically appealing ways. One of the best known of these is Recount, which is able to generate a visual report of a player’s total damage done during a fight, their damage per second (DPS), or the percentage of damage they do as part of a group. Add-ons such as Recount are also able to track things such as total healing output per player, heals per second (HPS) and any “overhealing” done, which occurs when a heal hits a target already at 100% health.
Recount has long been used by guilds and groups in That Other MMO SWTOR Is Constantly Compared To in order to assess the performance of players during a boss fight or instance. A group leader can easily see from their damage meter add-on who is pulling their weight, DPS-wise, and who’s lagging behind; in addition, they can also assess the performance of healers and to a lesser extent, tanks. The add-on doesn’t do anything a game doesn’t naturally support – it simply takes data being generated and formats it into something that’s comprehensible.
My DPS is 1. At least.
SWTOR and the Great Meter Debate
Now that damage meter 101 is over, we can get to the heart of the matter: metering SWTOR. Recently, the forums came alive with discussion about the “need” for a DPS meter, with passionate defenses on both sides. At one point, there was concern that BioWare wouldn’t even make combat logs accessible – rendering such meters useless – but as of my last trawl of the forums that was no longer an issue.
What we do know for certain is that when SWOTR launches on December 20th, there will be no support for third-party add-ons, which means that even if a damage meter program did exist it wouldn’t be useful in-game. The developers have talked about making the UI more customizable but there has been no final word on if add-ons will be permitted, helping to stir the pot even more on the forums – some frequent forum-goers find it offensive that BioWare would even release an MMO without such support, but these are generally the same ‘goers that find everything offensive; you can spot them by their inability to divide up paragraphs naturally and the use of ALL CAPS. But I digress – instead of laughing at forum trolls in their natural habitat, let’s briefly delve into the good and bad of a combat meter in SWTOR.
A Metered Response
On the pro side of the DPS meter debate is the argument that such a meter serves as a way to measure not only who does the most damage or healing in a group, but also for individuals to bring up their performance if they are lacking. Once guilds start hitting end-game content in SWTOR they will look for ways to ensure they can clear a given Operation as smoothly as possible – which means having solid healers and damage dealers. Without a combat meter – or so the argument goes – there will be no way to separate the “bad” players from the “good” players.
On the con side of the meter-madness are those who argue that meters only encourage elitism, a common problem in The Game That Must Not Be Named. There, pick-up groups (PUGs) often want proof that a damage-dealer can keep up based on the equipment they’re wearing and the DPS they can put out – if they can’t provide the numbers or slip up even marginally, they may be removed from the group. Some SWTOR fans are worried that the addition of damage meters will pave the way for regular-sized jerks to become massive jerks and make BioWare’s game less fun overall.
Artist's rendering of "reasonable discussion" on the SWTOR forums.
Start the Meter?
Honestly, I’m torn about this one – I’ve used Recount for years and yeah, I like being on top of the charts. The trouble is that I sometimes get so caught up in watching the meter I forget what I’m supposed to be doing and die to a boss mechanic I could have avoided or stay on the boss when I’m supposed to switch targets. I love the data made available by damage meters, but I’ve met enough players in my two-plus years doing end-game MMO content that the bad and the good are easily separated – without the need for a meter.
What do you think, TORWarriors? Does SWTOR need a combat meter to survive in the quest-eat-quest world of MMOs?
SWTOR Community Cantina Audio: Q&A Live With Musco, Hickman, And Schubert
This is such a no brainer IMO. There absolutely should be meters. Players should socialize, join like minded players in guilds, play with in game friends and things like meters just are not a problem. Find like minded players that use the meters in a way that fits your idea of how to use the meter and problems disappear. The problem overwhelmingly stems from PUGs and all players trying to treat a PUG as a guild type run. Meters are good, avoid players that misuse them.
I have thought about this topic more than any other leading up to launch. I am an active WoW raider and rely heavily on add-ons such as recount. However, part of what I loved about the swtor beta, and the retail game (thank you early access) is not worrying about the numbers. However, I sometimes love crunching numbers and finding ways to squeeze out that little extra damage. I would like to think that I can have a little bit of both. (yeah right!)
I have come to the conclusion that I will perhaps approach swotor more as a community as opposed to a competition. I already get my competition fix elsewhere. Maybe ignorance is bliss? I don’t know…
Good article!
I’m in the middle on this one. As a guild/raid leader dps meters are great tools in order to judge where your weakness is. I don’t like that it largely used to pump up epeens. I think if certaint mechanics are left out of boss fights, such as enrage timers, dps meters are not needed nearly as much.
Interesting point.
meters are only essential if people have confidence issues. if someone has the gear to do the raid then they will be fine so long as they know the fight… that simple. get off your high horse people.
Absolutely wrong. I was a serious WoW raider for years. I’ve seen multiple people pass through guilds that were well geared but horrible at playing their class. It’s unfortunately not as simple as get the gear, do the dps.
Once you’ve heard people say ‘Oh, so you don’t need to wait for the fireball to hit before casting your next spell’ you’ll change your mind. I’ve frequently doubled the DPS of similar geared Mages in PUGs by knowing my rotations and when to adjust them, when to use cool-downs, saving instant casts for when I need to move, etc.
Without a way to see DPS this it’s almost impossible to tell who’s pulling their weight. Fingers will get pointed, possibly at the wrong people, people will deny it and everyone gets frustrated because there is no clear way to progress. Does everyone need to improve or do you simply need to replace a few people? Who knows?
I’ve seen it before with Yogg-Saron and the clouds before they added announcements.
I’ve had this happen in SWTOR already as well. On our first Heroic Flashpoint run we were wiping on every single boss and some trash mobs. We even had to skip the optional boss eventually. It ended up taking us about 2-3 hours. We did it the next day with a different healer and DPS (the tank and I were geared exactly the same) and we breased through it in about 30 minutes without breaking a sweat. With damage meter we could have seen the difference in DPS and compared our performance to other peoples to see if it really was hard or just us.
Do you really want to relegate pugs to constantly failing because some people simply can’t pull their weight and there is no way to tell? When you get into end game content there really is a valid reason to have to replace people unfortunately.
If you want to play socially run normal mode Flash points so gear is not an issue – no one will care if you’re terrible. If you want to run challenging content then you have to be prepared to justify your performance, accept feedback and improve where required.
Improving personal performance is actually major argument for meters in my view. I won’t get into it in this post but without detailed feedback there is no way to ensure you are performing at your best.
Meters should be put to rest. If it worked like people say, to inmprove overall performance, it would be a perfect tool.
Sadly, experience tells us that more often than not, it only works as a way to reject other new players. TOR is gonna attract a breed of new players, those that are there for the SW saga, not for the MMO experience, and they deserve to have an equal footing on the game, and not feel outside the loop just because they are not on top of charts.
In the end, people will stick playing with the people they like playing with. Thats a thing that has happened for the last 6 or 7 years that the MMO industry has grown stronger. What this says is that you will find your niche of either hardcore players who like to push to the limits or you will remain very casual, not paying much attention to numbers in game. You dont need an addon to draw a line, you learn it over time, or you have already learned and you are already starting to play with the same friends you made long ago in other games.
You really dont need to top meters to find your spot in a raid. I was a healer for most of my WoW experience, and one of the best moments was not being on top of meters, but the day that a well timed battle rest saved our 40 man raid out of a disastrous situation. What I mean with this is that fixing on the math only creates repetitive actions from players to the point of not making important decisions just because you are paying more attention to the numbers appearing above your character, than the action taking place around your character. Meters will never be able to perceive that.
Meters damaged my experience in wow in ways I dont even want to describe and it was the same for a group of friends of mine. The longer we can remain without meters, the happier me and my guild will be.
You seriously want people that are playing the game because they love SW, have never played an MMO before and are just there for the atmosphere to be on the same footing as people that love SW but are serious about progression and performing their best? The reality is that you will always have a range of players from casual to hardcore and you have to cater for everyone.
People will end up grouping with like minded people – you are correct there. It won’t all be based on meters though. The people that love the game for the atmosphere will not care about meters and can group freely without paying any attention to them. Progression raiders will use them to filter out certain players but the players they are looking for will, in most cases, want the meters as well. If you see on a guild page “requires ” and you don’t like meters – don’t app to that guild. Simple.
Give people a choice. Not everyone will use meters but that’s not a reason to exclude them completely.
Hell, I’d even be happy if they had ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ servers, the first allowing combat logs and mods, the second not. Actually, sounds kind of similar to the distinction between RP and non-RP servers.
Great post. but I think it supports why dps meters should be allowed in the game. How people use them and which people you choose to play with is what really effects your in game enjoyment, not the actual meter. People need to have self control and self confidence. Don’t join a hardcore guild because you want the leet loot, but despise their attendance policies, loot rules, dps requirements, cookie cutter build expectations…join a guild with like minded players. Meters are not the problem, players are..choose wisely who you play with.
This can be solved by allowing it with only seeing your own DPS and making it so that you can’t see anybody else’s DPS. This will allow people to theory craft without the harsh judgement.
Just a thought.
I never thought of that… I do enjoy TC. You can have both.
Great Idea!
That would completely negate any productive aspect of having a dps meter. Not only would only seeing your own dps not give you the ability to compare your dps and know whether or not you are performing well, but the main use of them IS to see what dps / heals / interrupts / dispels / damage taken other people are doing and know whether or not you really want those people to be in your raid group with you.
This game will get stale fast if PUGing constantly leads to groups failing without having the ability to see which specific people are failing that you need to replace.
Falynn’s point was that one use of damage meters is to see if changes you’ve made increase, decrease, or don’t affect your DPS. For that, personal improvement, use of damage meters, being able to only see your own is still very, very useful.
That’d be nice if it was true at all. The only way meters would be useful in that instance would be vs. battle dummies because the natural variation between fights would mean you have to manually keep logs week to week to compare/contrast any changes.
It can be solved by allowing meters, period.
I don’t understand everyone’s aversion to them.
– Do they like using abilities and rotations they they can’t compare?
– Do they like not knowing how they compare to other people?
– Are they afraid they won’t be up to scratch once the data is visible?
– Do they like pulling agro with no warning?
– Do they like holding back on DPS intentionally so they don’t accidentially pull agro when it may not be required and hitting the enrage timer?
The main reason people get rejected from instances because of damage/healing requirements is because there ARE certain damage/healing requirements for the instance. Guess what happens if you don’t meet them. You wipe constantly. Do these people enjoy wiping constantly?
From the number of opinions on this issue there are more than enough people that don’t want meters that they will all be able to stick their heads in the sand together and never have to deal with people that do use them.
*** IF YOU DON’T LIKE METERS DON’T USE THEM OR DON’T GROUP WITH PEOPLE WHO REQUIRE THEIR USE ***
Please don’t make me go back to WoW to satisfy my OCD. I’ve been waiting for another Star Wars MMO since the Galaxies ‘combat update’.
I agree, i’ve had people raging at me if I don’t let them in. It’s not because I don’t want to, it’s just that they don’t push out whats needed. There is some break here and there, but at the end of the day, if a fight is needing a certain ammount of dps to beat timers its nice to see who is doing okay and who might need a little help. It would work the the entire groups advantage, because no one likes constantly having to carry someone (even worse when you wouldn’t know you was doing it) And even worse is constantly worse and not being able to find the “weak link” or plural depending. It’s not elitism, if its needed to pass an encounter, it’s needed.
I think their is some need for them… but this need for them came about once someone made one.. Before the first dmg meter..no one wanted or needed one..
I think Star Wars shouldnt include one.. I dont care if Im doing X amount of damage.. Its easy to tell wether someone is playing well or not.. or is doing good damage or not..
If you need something to tell you this then you are missing out on that vital skill.
Id rather using my head and think and see then having something do the work for me..
A threat meter would be of far more benefit than a DPS meter.
@Sarli Vaal
For a threat meter, no…it’s not needed here. I watched a 16 man raid, at betacake.com where a tank was needed, but not needed. The boss had a “random” aggro table entirely, and so a tank had abilities to protect the group, but wasn’t needed to keep threat.
Teamwork here actually is at an all-time high, even without dps meters. I have not been to a raid in this game as of yet, but I have watched videos. You will be splitting up a lot of times, where you need one “group” in one area and another “group” in another. Even if it is a 4 man, you will split up to 2 sub-groups.
This is why I personally do not think any addon is needed. My theory to this, is why don’t we play the game as designed. Get to level 50 and do a raid or 2, THEN see if we need any of these addons to make it easier for us. Until then, I personally don’t see a reason to have them in there just yet. Try to see if we can down a raid boss even under a “enrage” timer. If we can do this without facerolling and have a challenge still (like maybe we didn’t hit the enrage timer, we died for another reason), then maybe they just aren’t needed and we need to figure out the teamwork that needs to be involved.
It is extremely easy to tell when someone is not pulling their weight in TOR, and just about as easy to tell exactly who that someone is (possibly due to no autoattack?). I don’t think a DPS meter is needed (but I think it would be nice, for personal play).
It’s like a luxury. It’d be nice, but you don’t *reeeaaally* need it.
Meters are important. How else do you gauge your performance? NOT having one is like driving without a speedometer: oh sure, you know you’re going slow, or fast, but you don’t know if you’re where you need to be.
Sure, players will use them and abuse them. It’s a fact of life. But instead of dismissing meters outright, how about improving them? Correlate damage with equipment into a system that takes both into consideration.
One of the things I love about WoW is the iLvl (item level), which shows how advanced your gear is. If a player is wearing high iLvl gear, I expect them to be putting out high damage. If they are in mediocre or poor gear (quest items, no enchants, etc.) then I know to expect less from them. It doesn’t mean they’re necessarily a bad player–but they’re needing to “gear up” and there’s no sense being elitist about it.
As a DPS class, if a tank is in low-lvl gear, then I might throttle back my damage a bit so he doesn’t have a hard time. That’s IMPOSSIBLE to do without a damage meter. As a tank, if I see some of the DPS totally outgears me, I might use different aggro-reducing abilities on them, or keep my finger on the taunt key.
So develop a damage meter that looks at the gear of each party/raid member, and then adjusts (like a gold handicap) what the expectation is for that player. Obviously a player in full end-game gear is going to pump out a lot of dmg, so he’s in the 95-100 percentile. But a fresh max level player might be in the 40-50 percentile.
I’m no programmer, nor a theorycrafter, but I’m sure this type of system could work. Bottom line: damage meters are a great utility, IMO.
By the end of wrath, and somewhat through alot of cata, I never really cared if I pulled aggro off a tank in a dungeon. I was a DK, and I had some pretty damn good gear, so I knew I would pull aggro, I just decided that killing the mob faster was better. Bosses almost the same aswell.
The again, with the armor, and switching to blood presence, and def cd’s, I wasn’t really in any danger of dying, and the group got done faster.
I never, ever, would be whining over a tank who were gearing up in dungeons. Unless I knew that he was doing fuck all. Which some tanks do lol.
Anyway to the article – Damage meters are a necessity imo. Meaning I want them in the game, and I want to use them. If someone wants to create a guild without any kind of addons or anything like that, be my guest, have fun. Don’t, however, try to influence the way I like to play, by limiting me. Limit yourselves if you want to.
“The trouble is that I sometimes get so caught up in watching the meter I forget what I’m supposed to be doing and die to a boss mechanic I could have avoided or stay on the boss when I’m supposed to switch targets.”
- You can have your addon run invisible while your fighting a boss, to pop up after you have killed it. So this is really no argument for the anti-addon crowd.
As others have pointed out, it is easy to tell the bad players from the good. And that’s true, a damage meter isn’t really needed for that. What you do need a damage meter for is telling the mediocre players apart from the completely terrible players.
You can’t expect every player to have bothered with researching the best talent builds and spell rotations for optimum efficiency. But you can expect every player to at least try. And I can’t tell you how many players I ran across in WoW groups who were doing less dps than the tank — and, in some cases, even less than the healer. That’s just not acceptable.
The problem I see is that in a group of, say, 8, how would you tell which DPS’er wasn’t pulling their weight unless you had a meter? It’s impossible. It won’t be obvious unless the player is just standing around not hitting things.
You could have 1 guy spamming the hell out of all of his level 1 abilities in an end-game operation, and without a meter of some kind, nobody would be able to tell if it was HIM that was slacking, or the guy who totally min/maxes everything and has his rotation down to a science.
If the only gauge for how much damage the group is doing is how quickly the boss’s health depletes, that doesn’t help a PLAYER improve.
I can definitely understand the appeal of dps meters. Often times when playing other mmo’s, no matter how much info I read from other sites on spec advice and rotation, the only way I can tell if the information is working for me is through the use of a meter. Sometimes even the most “elitist” information just doesn’t work with my play style and the meter helps me sort out what works best for me.
However, through the process of beta testing (keep in mind I wasn’t doing end game content) I found that with SWTOR I was forced to be more involved with my party members in flash points. The need for a true dps’er wasn’t there. All members were required to change their plan on an encounter by encounter basis. I feel that a meter at this point would only serve as a distraction. The ability for so many classes to play multiple roles at the same time is vast. From fight to fight I was required to assess the needs of the party and adjust accordingly. Even as dps I was required occasionally to throw out a few heals and do some mid fight cc. I definitely appreciate the fact that there wasn’t a dps meter as it would have shown my dps to be in a lull comparatively where in fact I was doing what I should have been to progress through the fight. Given the range of classes with this specific MMO I feel that not having a meter will go further with creating well rounded and more competent players. I truly feel this game will give a new definition to “Don’t stand in fire.”
Yes, but if that became the case within this game then the meters wouldn’t really be used just to look at dps. People would look at heals being done and see that you were helping out, look at dispels, and interrupts to see who was doing what they should have been doing. Then if the guy with the top dps wasn’t helping at all and only sitting there dpsing away then he would be the one kicked.
You see these meters are FAR beyond simply being “dps meters”.
No not impossible to do, 3rd time you get smack around you know you got to throttle back, don’t need a meter to tell you that
Is a meter a usefull tool, sure, but the tools that will abuse/misuse it outnumber the smart folks in a ratio, i hope it never ever get put in.
Just because its possible to put a dmg meter in, dont mean it has to be put in
Don’t play with those people then. No one forces you to play with people who want to optimize their gameplay by utilizing meters.
Don’t forget interrupts and dispels, very important reasons to have these combat meters. If they want to have a competitive raiding environment TOR will have to either develop their own meters and DBM type utility or allow add ons.
Honestly, anyone who is against meters is bad, lazy and doesn’t want to take the 10 minutes it would take to learn how to play their character properly.
Don’t allow yourself to ruin this game for other people while you repeatedly screw up their PUG raid and have it impossible for them to figure out you’re the one who’s doing it. If that remains the case no one will ever want to PUG. With meters though you can just pick out the bad, boot and replace, and keep going strong after they’re gone.
Honestly I disagree with this. I previously stated how useful I have found meters to be however I ultimately voted with no. Perhaps a TOR designed meter that works better with the functions of this game would be more useful but recount in its current scope would do more harm then good. I obviously am not saying this because I am “bad, lazy and don’t want to take 10 minutes to learn my character.”
WoW consumed a considerable amount of my time. I spent hours theory crafting and tweaking my spec, reforging and re-gemming to get the ultimate dps and through all that the competition of it all detracted from the gaming experience. Ultimately in a 16 man Operation you will most likely have only a few ppl on dispells at a time for rotational reasons. If these things aren’t getting done properly it will be very noticeable. You don’t need a meter to tell you, the wipe or massive loss of health will do that just fine.
“anyone who is against meters is bad, lazy and doesn’t want to take the 10 minutes it would take to learn how to play their character properly”
Ok, I use recount (as I posted earlier) and prefer it for raiding, but I think your statement is a gross generalization of other peoples opinions, who (like me) may have a deep understanding of what dps metrics can or can’t be used for but still entertain the idea of not having it in swtor.
I agree. I have found them very useful and still use them but I am currently considering the idea of not using them in TOR.
Yes in most guild environments people do look beyond the dps to see who is doing what to help out. A good raider is well versed in the fights and their class and how they can help out. I was mostly referring to the pug situations people had been talking about. I had been kicked out of many pugs because my DPS wasn’t in the top 3 and they were wiping. In pugs meters are dangerous because ppl have no allegiance to the players they are grouped with and kick at a whim out of frustration. I don’t know how many times pug leaders blame the dps, when usually in my experience its a mechanics issue.
No brainer, as far as I’m conerned.
NO, meters should not be allowed.
First of all, this game will be mostly about story, not hitting mobs like “the MMo that shall not be named” is mostly about. Secondly, I think this mmo could get along just fine without mods. The way it was designed, mods are completely unnecessary. And lastly but not leastly, yes, it does encourage elitism, and that’s something that’s always NOT needed.
No one is forcing you to play with elitist people. If you don’t like people who use meters then don’t play with them.
I think you just missed the point. My point is, it encourages elitism and before you know it you have a community just like WoW’s, which, for me at least, would be a freakin nightmare.
I’m convinced that damage meters aren’t needed to succesfully complet a Operation or Flashpoint. Just think back to the time where such things didn’t even exist… The dungeon and raid bosses still wasn’t safe, and I’ve had enough bad experiense with recount jorks in wow…
Stil this isn’t a major problem, if they decide to add it, then I guess I’ll live with it, on the other hand it would be cool to not have it blocking comunities.
If you want TOR to have challenging end game raiding there MUST be combat meters.
Without some method of being able to parse not just who’s most effective but what strategies are most effective there is no objective way to be able to improve your raid. As a result, the average capability of all raids will be less than they would be were raids able to optimize, and thus all content must be made to be easier than it otherwise would have been.
So if you are in favor of a challenging PVE end game you MUST support combat meters.
Or BioWare could focus on designing bosses whose challenge comes from interesting mechanics rather than a constant numbers arms race with the players. Yeah that’s easier said than done, but BioWare hasn’t exactly been half-assing anything in this game in the first place.
I would vote no, simply because I don’t want devs to produce content that acknowledges the presence of DPS and threat meters. I want them to make a game that has more interesting mechanics than the standard “kill it before it wipes the group” and “don’t stand in the fire.” So far, this game is different. DPS meters have been the cause of a lot of angst for my WoW friends, but in LOTRO (with one of the greatest communities in all of MMOdom) we have very little elitism and no group DPS meters (only personal) and no threat meters whatsoever. This is because Turbine limits how much of the game addons can access. This allows those that want to improve do so, but we don’t kick people out for not pulling their weight. Most of the arguments I’ve heard for DPS meters involve “separating the good player from the bad,” which is exactly the elitist crap that I hope is never prevalent in SWTOR.
DPS meters to watch everyone else is going to do the same thing as the gear score BS did… people will not look at you unless you hit peak with a toon, which never made sense considering you have to run with groups to get good gear and you would be kicked for not having it….or I normally do well and one time I wasn’t on top of things so I get kicked possibly banned because of one time I wasn’t performing the best…. To me I rather deal with mechanics of a fight rather than a DPS fight… I just dont like the fact that people judge others based on their gear/DPS output… If I want to play the number game I will play WoW or D&D… I am not saying I wouldn’t like to shape up my DPS with a meter to see how I can make it the best I can and I am not saying I can’t push out the best DPS if I had those tools. What I am saying I don’t think people should be judged based on numbers rather just have fun with it.
I don’t know what WoW you played, but GS/Recount elitism was never an issue for me, at least as far as gearing up. If you want raid gear, you pretty much need to be in a raiding guild, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. If that wasn’t the case, the encounters would be far too easy for an organized group.
For the most part in 5mans, your gear wasn’t an issue as long as it wasn’t completely terrible for the content, outside of the toughest heroics. (Interestingly enough, the dungeon queues all but eliminated gear elitism among PUGs. Psychologically, it’s a lot easier to not invite someone to a group than it is to kick them once they’re already in)
I look at numbers all day at work. The last thing I want to do is look at numbers in my gaming and get stressed out over whether I hit some metric. The only thing I care about is if the boss is lying on the ground dead. If s/he is, then we all did our job. If we had fun doing the mission, then we were really successful.
And you don’t think a tool that helps a ton to figure out WHY you were/n’t successful is useful?
No kidding killing the boss is success, any idiot knows that. Meters are about BECOMING successful.
YES YES YES. I can’t imagine this game going all the way without meters.
While I understand both sides of the debate and both definitely have merit, personally I think that having a meter takes all the fun out of running my build through my graphing calculator.
Allow BioWare to create dps meters but only so the user can see their own stats. If the whole group is able to see eachother’s stats, then it only enables elitism; whether it happens or not. By having access to your own stats, then you can have a bar to measure yourself against to make improvements. It then becomes a tool for self-betterment.
TBH the main reason I want a metter is to judge my own dps and see how I can improve. I really want my meter.
The question isn’t about damage meters first, but mainly about addons.
I think it is a big mistake that SWTOR has no API for creating third party addons.
- The UI isn’t very good, it has severe shortcoming, and addons to fix this would greatly improve the game. Furthermore, the UI is a personal choice, and not a one-size-fits all matter. Healers will need different info than DDs, who need other key indicators and reports than tanks. The same is true for people who play PvE vs. PvP, craft, trade, quest (although the questing interface seems nice to me), grind, etc. Add personal color preferences, bars vs. circles, visual representation for cooldowns or buffs, etc., and without addons you are in a world filled with choices, options and hard hard work. This work could be done by people in their spare time.
- You can never use the creativity of the community if you do not offer them the tools to do so. People will work for you for free and add value to the product if given the opportunity. 80% of the addons will suck, 16% will be mediocre, 3% will be good and 1% incredibly brillant.
- Having recount is just a matter of offering a combat log plus addons.
Furthermore, the discussion is really facts vs. ideology. All the counter arguments are on the level of “oh, if this happens some people will behave bad”. But this argument forgets that these people are idiots in the first place. They do not need a damage meter to behave on a social level that is not compatible with your personal preferences.
If you do not like Elitists, do not play with them.
Not having Addons is a huge mistake by Bioware, and will cost a lot of lost money. You just cannot add useful stuff to the game as fast as 5.000 hobby developers who just do it because they like the game or the challenge. The result will be that non-critical issues will never be addressed at all, or very very late. The Add-On developers would take care of that.
A missed chance. And I really don’t know why every single MMO after the market leader was too ignorant to admit that this was a very good move worth to copy.
Yust have missed an interview that said the UI is definately being improved, modded and movable, scalable and all that…..I feel sorry for your lack of research.
[...] con side, it encourages elitism by constantly comparing yourself against everyone else. Check out the full article and participate to become a part of this not-soon-to-be-over [...]
Jesus christ…Yes..Yes..Yes!
They should be in the damn game already..
It’s a tool..
Don’t take a great tool away from players, because some noobs and retarded players cant use is properly, maybe u should stop listening to people that annoy u?
Dont take away a tool that is the pinnacle of Theorycrafting.
We was the realm firsts in my guild for most major WoW content and we did it without recount… In fact our Raid Leader forbid it… It’s useless, assign players to interrupt/heal/tank and your laughing. You don’t need to see what everyone else is doing because it makes you lose concentration on what YOU are doing and it’s obvious to see who is not pulling their weight. The damn things a tool for drama and I’m glad it’s not here, it ruins the community.
Wow look at what the writer said “The trouble is that I sometimes get so caught up in watching the meter I forget what I’m supposed to be doing and die to a boss mechanic I could have avoided or stay on the boss when I’m supposed to switch targets” You are FAIL. You focus on staring at the meter? I can tell your one of those ratards who don’t know how to prioritize what do when playing the game, lol staring at the meter gets you killed…. being mentaly incompetant is your real flaw.
Honestly I don’t ever use damage meters like recount for competition or brag rights. I like to get a new piece of pvp gear and go on the dummy and say wow my dots are ticking for 200 more or wow my mortal strike hits for 45k now. Its things like that that keeps me motivated to keep grinding gear knowing and seeing the difference so in my opinion how could I play without a damage meter. The option of having one is better than nothing.
As a raid leader I find recount in WoW invaluable. Not so I can boot low dps players but so I can see why we struggle on certain points in certain fights and see if there is anything someone could be doing that they aren’t.
As a first stop I would say that combat logging would solve many of these problems as I am sure that as soon as combat logs can be parsed there will be a ‘World of Logs’ for SWTOR which will give me all the information I need allbeit at the end of a raid instead of in realtime.
I would be happy to leave it at this as I am also aware how a real time damage meters can change the way a person plays. Many a raid has been ruined by people doing AOE on adds to up the meters when they were given the job of dpssing the boss. THIS would be a reason to boot a player as they are jeopardising a boss kill just to boost their dps ego.
I think that once we can parse the information from combat logs, the min/maxers will be happy as they have something coherent to analyse. The raid leaders will be happyer as they will be able to see who in their team needs help to improve, and the ‘casuals’ who do not want damage meters will not have anything to complain about as the combat log will not affect their group until it is all over.
I think it’s silly to not have one. It seems like a lot of people just don’t want to be yelled at for sucking in that case.
Look. If Bioware is tuning the content right for Hardmode/Nightmare, You are GOING to need the best. You are going to need to find out what stats are the best. You are going to need to find out who is slacking. It’s not about convenience and peoples feelings getting hurt; It’s about being good, and wanting to be better.
A speech on vent and in guild-chat isn’t going to magically make the slackers do more dps. You need to SHOW them. Yes, I have run raiding. I have fun knowing I am not carrying bads through content to.
Give me a damn recount.
I’m fine not having damage meters during the fight, its pretty common for people to ignore core mechanics to pad the meters.
BUT, I feel like I need something to MEASURE my effectiveness even if only for min-maxing. Theory crafting is great, but I need experimental data to back it up. Even something as simple as a target dummy with a fixed amount of health and a timer would be sufficient. It bothers me that I can’t tell which spec is more effective, and what rotation is optimal at what gear level.
I don’t even understand why there is an argument here. A dps meter is a tool that can be used.
The tool does not define the community. The tool does not define how itself is used by that community either.
Placing a DPS meter in the game does not suddenly make every casual gamer in swtor an ‘epeen elitist prick’ or vice versus.
All the arguments against a dps meter are being made by people who will never play with the type of person they are so terrified of giving the dps meter to in the first place.
I want the ability to use a dps meter. If the other guy doesn’t want to use it, he doesn’t have to. But I won’t raid with that guy and I am sure he wouldn’t want to raid with me either.
And to the guy from LOTRO who said they don’t have elitists in their game. That’s a joke. LoTRo is full of elitist trolls just like any other mmo. And while you may think you have the best community in the mmo universe, that doesn’t make up for the fact you have the worst development team in the history of gamingm putting out crap content and it only took like 4 years for them to actually listen to their players input regarding class/pvp/pve balance. How do I know? –> Champ / Warden / Hunter / Burg / Loremaster, all end game. Ironically however, the guys at Bioware are approaching class balance in the same manner Turbine did when they screwed up their own game for like 2 years straight. Lets see how it goes shall we?
I am having fun playing SWTOR without the meters. I do miss the addons I have in WOW, but in some ways it’s easier to relax and have fun if you are not constantly worried about your numbers.
There is a huge issue with damage meters in WOW. Meters cause people to play the game in a way that causes problems, especially for tanks. When I tank in WOW (I don’t have a tank up in SWTOR yet) I try to turn the boss away from the dps because they crit more when they hit the boss from behind. I have a certain way I like to do things and it’s difficult sometimes when you have dps with twitchy trigger fingers who can’t wait a microsecond before opening up full bore. If they would wait a beat or two and allow me to get good aggro on an entire group of mobs, and let me get them turned away from them, their dps would be higher. Do they listen? NO. They would rather wipe than take a chance their dps would fall by a tiny smidge.
People don’t play smart when they are being judged by meters. Sometimes a fight’s mechanics can have a big effect on the dps of a particular class. I have a warlock. I don’t have many instant cast spells. I’m Affliction, which means my full rotation is about 10 spells. I can’t cast most of them while moving, so if I have to move a lot during a fight my numbers will suffer. I’m at a disadvantage compared to other classes in that respect. Some players will chose casting over moving to keep their numbers up, and that places a burden on the healers. They don’t play smart.
I agree with people who say meters encourage elitism. I don’t like what the end game has become in WOW. I don’t want to see the same happen in SWTOR.
Well, the elitism has indeed happend in SWTOR without meters. I find the use of add ons of any type to kind of unbalance things, like the addition of Cartel coins that people who have more money can by more of. Kind if makes things unbalanced.
There will always be the butt-heads who just think their stuff don’t stink and are unwilling to help new or inexperienced people at Heroics, Flashpoints etc.
It’s hard to get experience with no good LEADERS out there. Once you reach top level you are Expected to know how to do everything and that just isn’t the case.
It’s a game for pete’s sake and the need for add-ons, meters and other stuff is an ego self esteem issue with most.
Perhaps the NUMBER 1 Issue in End Game/Heroic or any group for that matter is the inability of the leader to EXPLAIN things at the beginning like Loot rules, who is the main/off tank,cc, etc.
Some people in these games just like to be a bully or to think they are all that..Hence a problem that will never go away meter/add-ons or not
I did a search for meters when my raid leader suggested we check our rotations this evening. Personally I do not believe in the use of any temptation to turn a fun game into a reason to alienate people. I would like to be able to use a meter as a tool to maximize my game and be certain I am doing everything I can to contribute to our group. I have an ops dummy on my ship, perhaps coupled with a meter this could become the tool I would like it to be.