Kilsin said:jpedrote said:Since third party programs or addons that give extra information or create new functions not present in the base game won't be allowed, Is VR taking a harsh stance (banning) on their creation and use?
I ask this because if a stance is taken from the first moment, players won't event try to develop such things.
They won't be able to as we control the information that is shared from our servers to the clients, they can't make one if we don't give them the game information required to populate them.
Awesome!!! Goodbye Showeq type game play.
No serious it is a good thing, like you said how much information is sent to the client.
jpedrote said:@Reht
The best way to allow the creation of complex encounters without forcing the use of 3rd party programs and addons on players, is by making the bosses animations (swing/attacks/casting) noticeable, telegraphing dangerous attacks this way is awesome.
How I hope attacks are not telegraphed, I despise the “LOOK this attack is lading right here move” type of telegraphing that tells you exactly where everything is going to land.
How do you make them noticeable? Just via animation? While that intrigues me as a gamer, it's going to way too difficult for the average player. So, using telegraphs...where do you draw the line? That eventually becomes red circle on the floor, red pie wedge on the floor, fire on most of the floor, etc. mechanics like every other WoW and WoW clone game i have raided on, and that is a lot of them.
Reht said:How do you make them noticeable? Just via animation? While that intrigues me as a gamer, it's going to way too difficult for the average player. So, using telegraphs...where do you draw the line? That eventually becomes red circle on the floor, red pie wedge on the floor, fire on most of the floor, etc. mechanics like every other WoW and WoW clone game i have raided on, and that is a lot of them.
Yep just animation, or a change in the music or a voice acted line. Making the animations of the really dangerous abilities more noticable should be enough. It doesn't really mater if it's too dificult for the average player because these types of attacks won't be commom, the game won't be like wow, where a boss as a million diferent mechanics. Encounters will have fewer mechanics, they'll be deadlier but the combat is also slower paced and more tactical and emphasized on countering what the boss is doing, it won't be so much about the doing the "dance" and doging attacks.
I don't wanna see any red floor telegraphing they're awful.
jpedrote said:Reht said:How do you make them noticeable? Just via animation? While that intrigues me as a gamer, it's going to way too difficult for the average player. So, using telegraphs...where do you draw the line? That eventually becomes red circle on the floor, red pie wedge on the floor, fire on most of the floor, etc. mechanics like every other WoW and WoW clone game i have raided on, and that is a lot of them.
Yep just animation, or a change in the music or a voice acted line. Making the animations of the really dangerous abilities more noticable should be enough. It doesn't really mater if it's too dificult for the average player because these types of attacks won't be commom, the game won't be like wow, where a boss as a million diferent mechanics. Encounters will have fewer mechanics, they'll be deadlier but the combat is also slower paced and more tactical and emphasized on countering what the boss is doing, it won't be so much about the doing the "dance" and doging attacks.
I don't wanna see any red floor telegraphing they're awful.
Ala Rift ...hopscotch in and out of the red goo and the green poo, jump up and down so as not to die. Annoying and highly distracting from killing your target.
jpedrote said:Reht said:How do you make them noticeable? Just via animation? While that intrigues me as a gamer, it's going to way too difficult for the average player. So, using telegraphs...where do you draw the line? That eventually becomes red circle on the floor, red pie wedge on the floor, fire on most of the floor, etc. mechanics like every other WoW and WoW clone game i have raided on, and that is a lot of them.
Yep just animation, or a change in the music or a voice acted line. Making the animations of the really dangerous abilities more noticable should be enough. It doesn't really mater if it's too dificult for the average player because these types of attacks won't be commom, the game won't be like wow, where a boss as a million diferent mechanics. Encounters will have fewer mechanics, they'll be deadlier but the combat is also slower paced and more tactical and emphasized on countering what the boss is doing, it won't be so much about the doing the "dance" and doging attacks.
I don't wanna see any red floor telegraphing they're awful.
My EQ raiding guild has 3 deaf people....one of the few things i would be adamantly against is sound based (only) notifications. Swing style animations or spell casting animations would be interesting, but how long do they need to telegraph before the effect hits? I don't want to see a giant heft an axe over their head and hold it for 5 seconds before completing it's attack like it got hit with lag.
How do you know how many mechanics these future event will have or what their frequency will be? You don't, neither do I, which is why i am using examples from the different types of notifications and their evolution.
Reht said:My EQ raiding guild has 3 deaf people....one of the few things i would be adamantly against is sound based (only) notifications. Swing style animations or spell casting animations would be interesting, but how long do they need to telegraph before the effect hits? I don't want to see a giant heft an axe over their head and hold it for 5 seconds before completing it's attack like it got hit with lag.
How do you know how many mechanics these future event will have or what their frequency will be? You don't, neither do I, which is why i am using examples from the different types of notifications and their evolution.
Ye sound only would suck in that case, but if it's coupled with a chat line should be fine.
5 seconds is way to long for a swing, 3 seconds would be fine if the mob does a "start up" before the actual swing, imagine if it gives a warcry, a roar or some type of emote and then procedes to do the deadly swing of death xd.
You're right I don't know exactly how many mechanics it will have, but the FAQ says that the combat will be more tactical and in the streams they said it will be slower paced, I'm just making assumptions from what I've heard, but I'm 100% sure encounters will not be like wow, where you spend most of your time dodging things on the floor.
Reht said:Kilsin said:
They are both functions done automatically by a program, not the player using their own senses and situational awareness, which many games are missing these days and something I thought our community wanted us to bring back. ;)
The problem is how do you make advanced scripted events rather than simple tank and spank events using text indicators without them? There is a reason why EQ added them natively to their game. Personally, I have no problem with not having a audiotrigger parser as long as events aren't too overly scripted to the point where we end up playing "UItheon" - spending more time focused on text boxes than the fight, like EQ has become (or would be without using these advanced audiotrigger programs). The flip side is that you can use visual indicators. However it isn't difficult to overdo it on visual indicators (red circles, fire on the ground, etc. on top of spell effects) to the point that you really can't see what's going on like WoW/Rift/etc. My choice would be EQ-style raid mechanic indicators rather than WoW's etc.
I did touch on it a bit in the post above the one you quoted man.
"I think subtly is key, in VG we had some rare sound cues from named mobs but it was mainly seeing a visual symbol above their head, watching them do a specific emote/action or reading the immersive text in chat when they yelled something to know to act but this isn't really what we are talking about, this thread is discussing 3rd party add-ons like DPS meters, Aggro meters and Audio cues to which I am against."
jpedrote said:Kilsin said:I think subtly is key, in VG we had some rare sound cues from named mobs but it was mainly seeing a visual symbol above their head, watching them do a specific emote/action or reading the immersive text in chat when they yelled something to know to act but this isn't really what we are talking about, this thread is discussing 3rd party add-ons like DPS meters, Aggro meters and Audio cues to which I am against.
I would definitely love to see the things I described above from VG implemented into some of our mobs/content but I would not like to allow any 3rd party programs to have access to the game for anything, visual or audible.The audio triggers are still automatically reading a line of text and giving a warning/notification of something that you may have otherwise missed if you were not paying attention, the mere fact that it exists allows the player to relax and not focus on those things knowing an audio trigger warning will tell them, so it is essentially making the game easier and one less thing to worry about, and I thought this community was all about avoiding those types of "easy-mode" features, if we allow these it could open the doors to all kinds of other programs having a legitimate excuse to be allowed also, DPS meters included which is why I brought it up in the first place, you can't allow one and not the other as they are both functions done automatically by a program, not the player using their own senses and situational awareness, which many games are missing these days.
Completely agree, I don't want to see any type of 3rd party programs or addons in Pantheon I hate them with a burning passion!
I wasn’t arguing in favour of 3rd party addons, my suggestion where more directed at things that can be implement in the base game by you guys, so players don’t feel the need for addons or 3rd party programs.
Yeah, I got what you meant but I have to post in a more general manner for everyone that reads my posts from outside the community ;)
Amris said:Kilsin said:It doesn't matter, though, immersion is subjective to each person, the fact of the matter is whether it is an audio or visual trigger it is still a 3rd party program automating something that a player would have to otherwise manage themselves, if I know a sound alert will warn me if something happens, I no longer need to pay attention to that thing, I can now focus on something else and just rely on this automated program to read text and tell me when I need to act.
They are both functions done automatically by a program, not the player using their own senses and situational awareness, which many games are missing these days and something I thought our community wanted us to bring back. ;)
I have argued vociferously against things like Healbot, aggro meters, and the like. So yeah, I wouldn't want those things. IF they have to be there, then.. auditory.
I loathed, loathed, loathed Healbot. All I did was stare at hitbars. Then they had huge circles on the ground so you'd know where not to stand... and stuff like that.... then aggro meters and other stuff. I didn't even like the "target circles" on the ground in EQ.
So we're on the same exact page. I was NOT arguing for third party apps, and especially not for ones that make the game easier. They always become "use it or get left behind" and I despise that in cases where it makes me more involved in my UI than my world...
I know we both agree on this, I just have to drive it home and make our stance crystal clear to everyone else reading :)
Kilsin said:
"I think subtly is key, in VG we had some rare sound cues from named mobs but it was mainly seeing a visual symbol above their head, watching them do a specific emote/action or reading the immersive text in chat when they yelled something to know to act but this isn't really what we are talking about, this thread is discussing 3rd party add-ons like DPS meters, Aggro meters and Audio cues to which I am against."
and i am discussing audio cues.....and your comment about thinking we, at least some of us, didn't want a game like that.
Reht said:Kilsin said:
"I think subtly is key, in VG we had some rare sound cues from named mobs but it was mainly seeing a visual symbol above their head, watching them do a specific emote/action or reading the immersive text in chat when they yelled something to know to act but this isn't really what we are talking about, this thread is discussing 3rd party add-ons like DPS meters, Aggro meters and Audio cues to which I am against."
and i am discussing audio cues.....and your comment about thinking we, at least some of us, didn't want a game like that.
Third party Add-ons, it's in the title man, I am not sure where the confusion is coming from?
I recalled something from VG's gameplay/raiding, I was explaining that in VG we had an in-game audio cue on rare occasions from the named mobs themselves casting spells, they also had visuals and emotes all for the same action, so whether you were deaf, blind or had some other disability or impairment, everyone had equal chance to react accordingly and that is very different from automated program cues that read data for you and sounds an alert to signal you to react instead of paying attention yourself, which I am against. ;)
So I guess my question is going to be a flat out request for information. Will there be a combat log that is readable ? If the answer is yes, will things like Advanced Combat Tracker be allowed ? It simply gives a time based break down of skill/spell rotations based on the combat file and provides a dps graph in real time.
It does not inject anything into the client , but simply reads the log file.
That is all I want to know.
Personally I feel add-ons destroyed a entire generation of raiders who now rely on them to do encounters. Personally, I don't like add-ons. They take away from immersion into the game and give some people egos (dps meters). When I played EverQuest, you had to keep timers and watch for ques from the targets to know when the script was changing and to adjust. Things in EQ might of changed since I last played it in 2004. When I went to EverQuest ][, it didn't have many add-ons as well. Raiding was still by visual que or audible changes in the script. Since I left in 2009, things might of changed as well. When I got talked into playing World of Warcraft add-ons where everwhere. If you raided you had to run them to do the encounters and if you didn't, you didn't raid as well it destroyed immersion with the content. However, some add-ons started to become part of the base ui in this game since I left in 2011. My last MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic didn't use add-ons to help encounters. You just needed to know the scripts and what to do when the visual or audible ques happened. Since I left in 2015 its possible they started to allow them in the game.
Basically you need to learn and master your class, and learn some of the basics of other classes so you can adjust and adapt to the situations. Learn the scripts and signs which will lead to many deaths to know what to do next. As people learn the encounters some people will give information as what to do so future raiders have a basic idea of the encounters. Besides, if a dps is being a peon and intentially trying to grab aggro then tanks and healers will always let you die, thats how we row.
Sincerely,
Robert A. Frederick Jr.
Kilsin said:Third party Add-ons, it's in the title man, I am not sure where the confusion is coming from?
I recalled something from VG's gameplay/raiding, I was explaining that in VG we had an in-game audio cue on rare occasions from the named mobs themselves casting spells, they also had visuals and emotes all for the same action, so whether you were deaf, blind or had some other disability or impairment, everyone had equal chance to react accordingly and that is very different from automated program cues that read data for you and sounds an alert to signal you to react instead of paying attention yourself, which I am against. ;)
There is no confusion except possibly on your part. I am and have been talking about third party addons, particularly Gamtexttriggers and GINA and the differences between mechanic notification systems, one of which gave birth to those two programs (and why) and some of their pros and cons.
Addons are horribly mis-used. Especially combat loggers, DPS meters etc. I personally wouldn't mind them for my personal use but I think I don't want them at all because - unfortunately for every 20 people using them just fine in private to hone combinations and rotations, there's always 1 complete tool who ends up constantly spamming scores in chat; and epeen raid leads using them to rate people, grant or reject raid spots and harrassing people. Add to that the way few people really know how to properly interpret the numbers.. The number of times I've seen "yay I'm top of the heal meter" with me saying "well yeah but you're also top of the overheal meter and about 1/3 of the way up on effective heals"; or "XXX sucks at mage they're always near the bottom"; "yeah but they're doing CC, and they're also not pulling aggro every 20 seconds, check the healing received meter".... At the end of the day if you read the meters and layer on all the interpretations based on group roles, sinbgle target vs AOE etc etc etc.. you always end up with a conclusion of 'yeah ok that reflects what went on' and the only learnings re. who is especially 'good' and who is especially 'bad' are moot because that much is obvious without meters. The most useful meter in raids I've found to be 'healing received', so you know who 'needs a little more practise'. The only time I ever found damage meters helpful is to control phases on boss fights at raid lead level (e.g. getting close to 50% or whatever it was on Ragnaros; or checking if we had enough overall burn rate for Vaelestraz). And even then all it did was to save organising a failed trip for 40 people with the resulting repair bills and wipes and impact on morale.
Sometimes in the fine tuning meters can also be a little unreliable. I had one case of an 'underperforming' mage, who always got lowest spot. So mage lead and I put her on 'remediation'. We went out and specifically hunted for all the gear to bring her up to par with mage lead (who topped the meters); specced her exactly the same and practised the same rotations. In one fight I watched closely as he and mage lead faught sie by side - equally geared, requally specced, equally buffed - literally everything equal. Checked rotations and frequency - exactly the same. DPS improved but still too removed from mage lead to be plausible. Everyone completely stumped what on earth was going on and in the end we put it down to meters just being silly. But just think of the injustice if we'd been all 'hardcore' about it, just looked at the meters and denied her a raid space and told her she was too rubbish...
Xxar said:So I guess my question is going to be a flat out request for information. Will there be a combat log that is readable ? If the answer is yes, will things like Advanced Combat Tracker be allowed ? It simply gives a time based break down of skill/spell rotations based on the combat file and provides a dps graph in real time.
It does not inject anything into the client , but simply reads the log file.
That is all I want to know.
I believe what they have stated is that you can do all the things you described by use of the game logs, but you can't modify the in-game UI to display it. Meaning, if you want that all running on an independent ap on your 2nd monitor there's not much VR can do about that. But they wont allow you to modify the game UI to display it.
Feyshtey said: ... I believe what they have stated is that you can do all the things you described by use of the game logs, but you can't modify the in-game UI to display it. Meaning, if you want that all running on an independent ap on your 2nd monitor there's not much VR can do about that. But they wont allow you to modify the game UI to display it.
Yep, that's my understanding as well.
Which would make it the same as: Everquest, Everquest2, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft, RIFT, GW2, ESO, and more that I've likely missed.
In other words, exactly the same as every other game that has a combat/text logfile. :)
vjek said:Feyshtey said: ... I believe what they have stated is that you can do all the things you described by use of the game logs, but you can't modify the in-game UI to display it. Meaning, if you want that all running on an independent ap on your 2nd monitor there's not much VR can do about that. But they wont allow you to modify the game UI to display it.Yep, that's my understanding as well.
Which would make it the same as: Everquest, Everquest2, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft, RIFT, GW2, ESO, and more that I've likely missed.
In other words, exactly the same as every other game that has a combat/text logfile. :)
Wow at least definitely allows 3rd party DPS meters to be displayed in-game on the UI. It also allows 3rd party to create "node trackers" on the map (then they went so far as to include it, standard, I think. Either that or mine just never needed an update).
WoW is very, very loose with what they allow to be displayed by the UI... Aggro meters, DPS meters, buftimers... I'm not sure what they DON'T allow...
vjek said:Yep, that's my understanding as well.
Which would make it the same as: Everquest, Everquest2, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call 2, Star Wars Galaxies, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Warhammer Online, World of Warcraft, RIFT, GW2, ESO, and more that I've likely missed.
In other words, exactly the same as every other game that has a combat/text logfile. :)
No, it's not exactly the same. Addons for games like WoW, Rift, ESO, GW2 etc. are built using a macro/scripting language (see WoW LUA for an example) that are added directly into the game as in-game functioning elements which can receive a wide variety of the data directly from the game servers via API not logfiles.
Amris said:
Wow at least definitely allows 3rd party DPS meters to be displayed in-game on the UI. It also allows 3rd party to create "node trackers" on the map (then they went so far as to include it, standard, I think. Either that or mine just never needed an update).
WoW is very, very loose with what they allow to be displayed by the UI... Aggro meters, DPS meters, buftimers... I'm not sure what they DON'T allow...
And thats excatly the lesson VR has learned. They dont want people to dumb down their experience in game to the point that they dont even have to pay attention to their surroundings and can have an add-on do it for them. Dissallowing any and all add-ons right out of the chute precludes the need to evaluate which ones you allow because you believe them to be benign, and which ones you dont allow because you believe they are counter to the core tenents of the game. A hard and fast rule eliminates the balancing act.
I just hope that the log absolutely does NOT show you the damage other players are doing in any way/shape/form so that ACT and programs like it have no idea what the DPS/HPS of others in your group/raid are and you can only use it to monitor your own damage/healing if you really want.
Iksar said:I just hope that the log absolutely does NOT show you the damage other players are doing in any way/shape/form so that ACT and programs like it have no idea what the DPS/HPS of others in your group/raid are and you can only use it to monitor your own damage/healing if you really want.
I think is a really solid idea, but it would have to be implemented in-game. If it's output to a log file, someone just would end up making an app to merge individual log files and that would probably become standard use for most guilds or they would require screenshots and really wouldn't mitigate people's concerns.
Reht said:Iksar said:I just hope that the log absolutely does NOT show you the damage other players are doing in any way/shape/form so that ACT and programs like it have no idea what the DPS/HPS of others in your group/raid are and you can only use it to monitor your own damage/healing if you really want.
I think is a really solid idea, but it would have to be implemented in-game. If it's output to a log file, someone just would end up making an app to merge individual log files and that would probably become standard use for most guilds or they would require screenshots and really wouldn't mitigate people's concerns.
I agree that the min/max thing can and sometimes does go too far. But I dont think it's unreasonable for a guild to want to ensure that inviduals are pulling their weight. Especially when a couple of dozen people are relying on someone to fulfill their role.
