SWTOR

[sam, an eggplant]

Without a combatlog you can't improve your performance, because you have no benchmarks.

Also, are you seriously so naive as to think that SWTOR is about story and voiceovers? The solo leveling game is about those things. The endgame will be identical to every other diku. PvP and raids until the expansion pack, then you start over again.

The solo leveling game is where SWTOR excels, because as I've said several times here, it's not much of a MMO. Once you hit max level you have a choice to make

a) start an alt
b) PvP
c) raid

[Mosesandstick]

Bioware has been pretty solid on metrics and surveys.  I'm pretty sure they have a good idea of what their weak areas are and what they 'should have' to meet most reasonable expectations.

I'll say this though, the raid tools you think are essential probably aren't.

I'm going to disagree with this. It's anecdotal, but a lot of the feedback I've heard from anyone who's (mistakenly) being in multiple tests is that a lot of simple things have either not been fixed or taken a long time. I think the list of features that they've said will be implemented in the future miracle patches adds credence to this view.

[sam, an eggplant]

I've been in the beta for a long time, and was in a 3 day preview event way back in june 2010. The game has improved immensely since last year, and each patch in the past 6 months has been pretty damn major. They aren't sitting on their asses at Bio Austin.

They listen to feedback and make changes. They just have a way to go, still.

[Paelos]

Without a combatlog you can't improve your performance, because you have no benchmarks.

Also, are you seriously so naive as to think that SWTOR is about story and voiceovers? Are you new? The solo leveling game is about those things. The endgame will be identical to every other diku. PvP and raids.

I seriously have a mental image of you twirling a mustache as you type.

[Mosesandstick]

I'm not disagreeing with how much the game has changed. The point is that there is either more work that needs to be done, or there are things that they don't think are important and won't fix. They have a slight problem in that they're releasing the game in a month.

[sam, an eggplant]

Did you think the story would last forever, that you would log in nightly and enjoy awesome fully voiced quests in brand new environments noticeably improving your character? That SWTOR is basically a single-player RPG that never ends? That would be pretty damn awesome, but sorry, no.

There's a ton of content in the game, since you basically have ~4 different stories per faction (with some duplication) but at some point you'll run out and be left with a bunch of max-level characters and a choice between the two remaining options.

Yes, SWTOR still needs work, but the core gameplay is sound. They'll have another 6-8 weeks or so for the live team to get endgame support systems working before it actually hurts player perception.

[Mosesandstick]

I think people are overstating the desire to make alts. The game slows down and the MMO elements become more prevalent. Despite the 4 individual and differing stories, I don't see why people would want to go through the same planets, the same areas, the same zones, and the same quests again.

[Ingmar]

If damage meters are causing drama in your non-PUG groups, you need to play with different people. I've found them a really useful tool for improving as a player, and it will be a shame if I can't get that level of feedback on what I'm doing. Same for a lot of other informational mods.

I think people are overstating the desire to make alts. The game slows down and the MMO elements become more prevalent. Despite the 4 individual and differing stories, I don't see why people would want to go through the same planets, the same areas, the same zones, and the same quests again.

People do it in MMOs that *don't* have all that individual story, why wouldn't they do it when there's an even better setup for it?

[DraconianOne]

If damage meters are causing drama in your non-PUG groups, you need to play with different people. I've found them a really useful tool for improving as a player, and it will be a shame if I can't get that level of feedback on what I'm doing. Same for a lot of other informational mods.

A shame is one thing but is it a game-breaker for you?

Let me put it another way - do you play LOTRO and, if not, is the reason for that because there's no damage meter or because the gameplay gets a bit tedious after a while?

[Modern Angel]

I found this in the SA SWTOR thread: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=14239

This... this right here? Is a perfect summation of my feelings about the game. They're complicated, because I'm sitting here getting distracted by the sometimes okay story, the good flashpoints and the whish zoom of lightsabers while wondering how the game could be so utterly samey.

And Paelos, sam's saying the simplest fucking thing in the world and you're misunderstanding him while being a tremendous asshole for no other reason than you hate raiding. Hate raiding so much that you end up looking like a bigger asshole than the raiders.

Here, let me put it simply for you: Bioware put raiding as the endgame. Since they did, there are expectations that go along with that based on how WoW/Rift/EQ2 did it. It's problematic that they don't meet those expectations. That's all. And if you think this won't end up being a raiding focused game a la WoW oooohhhhhhhh buddy are you going to be weeping big buttery tears five months from now.

[Mosesandstick]

People do it in MMOs that *don't* have all that individual story, why wouldn't they do it when there's an even better setup for it?

This is a fair point, but I'm not sure whether SWTOR can be that succesful based on the population who enjoy making alts. I also think it's mechanically weaker game than WoW, and that weakness becomes more apparent the further you progress.

[caladein]

Neither?  The expectations that players have about what a title "should" have/be are out of the developer's control for the most part.

I think you are confusing the expectations that you (or high level raiders) have with the majority of the players. I believe the majority of people do not give a shit about parses or "improving" how they play a game to a min/max standard. Especially in a game that's about story and voice-overs.

"Developers have little control over player expectations" is the part you called out and that part has nothing to do with whatever thoughts I have about specific systems.

I'll say that most players don't care about systems, full stop.  That doesn't mean that they aren't important to their enjoyment of a game.

Something like not having a combat log doesn't just impact high level play, but I feel it leads to a less well balanced title going forward.  And that impacts all players, or at least those that would otherwise not have as fun a time because the spec they think seems really cool leaves them frustrated with X, Y, or Z thing that it can't do that the game expects it to.

Let me put it another way - do you play LOTRO and, if not, is the reason for that because there's no damage meter or because the gameplay gets a bit tedious after a while?

LotRO does (or did, I can't find the download link for CStats), it's just out-of-game and self only.

[sam, an eggplant]

it's mechanically weaker game than WoW, and that weakness becomes more apparent the further you progress.

How so? Most mechanics are effectively identical to WoW, or rather WoW as of a couple years ago. I never got past level 20 or so in the beta, so I'm interested to see what you mean.

[Ingmar]

If damage meters are causing drama in your non-PUG groups, you need to play with different people. I've found them a really useful tool for improving as a player, and it will be a shame if I can't get that level of feedback on what I'm doing. Same for a lot of other informational mods.

A shame is one thing but is it a game-breaker for you?

Let me put it another way - do you play LOTRO and, if not, is the reason for that because there's no damage meter or because the gameplay gets a bit tedious after a while?

I play LOTRO solo so it doesn't really matter. If I was trying to do the group thing with my guild as we do in WoW and plan to in SWTOR, then it would be pretty frustrating I expect. It isn't going to be a game-breaker for me but that's partly because I expect them to fix it somehow eventually.

[Velorath]

Without a combatlog you can't improve your performance, because you have no benchmarks.

To me, improving your performance should be "this enemy has an AOE with a large range so I need to stand back farther if I'm healing", or "I needed to taunt that add who killed the healer, but I was too focused on something else at the time".  In my opinion it shouldn't be "if I use my abilities in this specific order my dps goes up 5%", or "I should have used this healing spell 6 seconds later to keep from overhealing too much".  Once it gets to a certain level of micromanaging, to me you aren't even playing the game anymore, you're playing the min/maxing meta game, which I'm sure is great for some people, but not something I'm interested in.

[Surlyboi]

Without a combatlog you can't improve your performance, because you have no benchmarks.

To me, improving your performance should be "this enemy has an AOE with a large range so I need to stand back farther if I'm healing", or "I needed to taunt that add who killed the healer, but I was too focused on something else at the time".  In my opinion it shouldn't be "if I use my abilities in this specific order my dps goes up 5%", or "I should have used this healing spell 6 seconds later to keep from overhealing too much".  Once it gets to a certain level of micromanaging, to me you aren't even playing the game anymore, you're playing the min/maxing meta game, which I'm sure is great for some people, but not something I'm interested in.

This. If you need a spreadsheet, you failed.

[Simond]

Counterpoint: DPS doing less, well, DPS than the healer.

[Fordel]

Without a combatlog you can't improve your performance, because you have no benchmarks.

To me, improving your performance should be "this enemy has an AOE with a large range so I need to stand back farther if I'm healing", or "I needed to taunt that add who killed the healer, but I was too focused on something else at the time".  In my opinion it shouldn't be "if I use my abilities in this specific order my dps goes up 5%", or "I should have used this healing spell 6 seconds later to keep from overhealing too much".  Once it gets to a certain level of micromanaging, to me you aren't even playing the game anymore, you're playing the min/maxing meta game, which I'm sure is great for some people, but not something I'm interested in.

Our raid parsers tell you those things though, is what some of us are trying to say.

[Mosesandstick]

How so? Most mechanics are effectively identical to WoW, or rather WoW as of a couple years ago. I never got past level 20 or so in the beta, so I'm interested to see what you mean.

I got to 37 playing a sage. I'm not sure if mechanics is the right term, but I'll try and explain my point anyhoo. In terms of solo combat, SWTOR is I think comparable to WoW. It generally feels gratifying, and multiple mobs are more impressive than one. The only major fault is the poor mob AI, and I can't comment on how much it's changed, but as I said previously there's very little variation, and the article Simond linked above goes in to this as well.

The group combat really isn't very good. We've already spent a couple of pages talking about how healers have less options in the game. Most of the fights were very slow-paced boring tank n spank. I've heard this has been improved, but I don't know to what extent. Even worse is how prevalent group quests become. It just becomes nearly impossible to play the game solo, and getting in to a group quest is just a pain. Having to stop whatever it is you're doing, get a group and then go to the dungeon. PITA.

[Fordel]

I'm up to 44 or 45, I haven't at any point "needed" to group for anything.


I've run a few groups just to test out the tank dynamic, but it wasn't a requirement by any stretch of the imagination.

[Mosesandstick]

Did you solo all the Group 2 quests?

[Velorath]

Without a combatlog you can't improve your performance, because you have no benchmarks.

To me, improving your performance should be "this enemy has an AOE with a large range so I need to stand back farther if I'm healing", or "I needed to taunt that add who killed the healer, but I was too focused on something else at the time".  In my opinion it shouldn't be "if I use my abilities in this specific order my dps goes up 5%", or "I should have used this healing spell 6 seconds later to keep from overhealing too much".  Once it gets to a certain level of micromanaging, to me you aren't even playing the game anymore, you're playing the min/maxing meta game, which I'm sure is great for some people, but not something I'm interested in.

Our raid parsers tell you those things though, is what some of us are trying to say.

Those are generally things that the game should be telling you, not some UI mod.  Especially in a game like SWTOR where you can apparently raid with as few as 8 people, it shouldn't be so hard to get a sense of what fucked things up when you fail.  I don't need a parser to tell me someone was standing in AOE range when they shouldn't have been, because I should see the player getting hit by the AOE effect.

[Outlawedprod]

Damage meters and raiding mean nothing imo.

The success of an mmo is dependent on the penultimate factor called drama.  Whether guild, pvp, loot, etc.  You simply need to have some type of mechanisms or a canvas that allows or fosters the player community to have drama.

Ultimately people ride the bandwagon.  WoW became a big success because everyone wanted to be a part of the big thing.  The reason the game is in decline is that the game's player community roles and environment have been tapped dry for drama and pushing new interactive ground.  The game's defining moments no longer happen.  There is nothing that will approach Leeroy Jenkins.   The introduction of Arena in TBC was a huge boon to WoW because it allowed new methods of interactive drama to unfold in the playerbase.  Even if casuals don't take part in said drama they play experience was influenced by it because that arena drama in TBC had bearing on the environment in which the casuals logged into.  This no longer happens because you login and do some single player content or run a dungeon queue.  Casuals no longer interact with the raiders or pvp people who built the foundations of server's environment.

Swtor has a chance to do something new.  The ultimate weak link is that the game is basically focused on single player style storytelling rpg levelling from the start.  This inhibits community.  The saving grace is that the star wars fan base already provides a crutch the community can fall back on.  Both for those who love it and want to be a part of it and those who simply are haters there to harass star wars fans.  Whether anything can be built on it remains to be seen.

[Ingmar]

Without a combatlog you can't improve your performance, because you have no benchmarks.

To me, improving your performance should be "this enemy has an AOE with a large range so I need to stand back farther if I'm healing", or "I needed to taunt that add who killed the healer, but I was too focused on something else at the time".  In my opinion it shouldn't be "if I use my abilities in this specific order my dps goes up 5%", or "I should have used this healing spell 6 seconds later to keep from overhealing too much".  Once it gets to a certain level of micromanaging, to me you aren't even playing the game anymore, you're playing the min/maxing meta game, which I'm sure is great for some people, but not something I'm interested in.

This. If you need a spreadsheet, you failed.

Again, these logs are perhaps not what you imagine them to be. They help you figure stuff like that out, but *most importantly* they help the person in charge figure it out for people who don't understand the big picture of what is going on. And when you play with people because you like them instead of because they're super awesome players, it is extraordinarily helpful for the leader to have a way to spot things that are causing problems so he can gently (or perhaps passive-aggressively) give advice.  

[Rokal]

Fuck, that doesn't sound fun at all.  If I have to go through logs after every raid to figure out the we failed because Joe didn't do the correct shot rotation to maximize his DPS, and Bob overhealed 40%, I'd just rather not bother.

It's really not that involved. Identifying what caused you to wipe usually takes less than 10 seconds, and you're only reviewing a few lines of activity, not the entire fight. When our raid says 'okay, why did person X die?' I can look at the death recount and see that they didn't get healed for 8 seconds, or they died to something they were supposed to avoid. Then we can correct the problem next time we try the fight. Without logs? It's much more guess work, which is a lot more frustrating and likely to cause tempers to flare.

Rift style macros are horrible. It reduced everything to mashing one button and I think that's one of the main things making the game feel so dull.

Rift macros are pretty disgusting, it's one of my major turn-offs with the game. Every time you see someone recommending a certain build, they include 1 or 2 macros that play the build for you. I only have a few shift-cast macros set up in Rift, but I would be less competitive than someone that did macro all of their abilities to one or two buttons. They really should have put a stop to the macro abuse early, as now it's in the game to stay.

Hasn't almost everything since EQ2 and WoW launched with very limited or no customization on the UI?

Almost every major MMO since WoW (and even a few before it) has allowed you to move the UI around. LOTRO and Rift have really excellent UI customization without (until recently) allowing any mod use. There is really no reason that Bioware has for not allowing you to move things like action bars and the chat box around. It's insane.

[Fordel]

Skipped almost all of them, they aren't crucial to the level to content XP curve. You can do like 2-3 space mission dailies to even your self off if you think you are behind.

Doing ALL the Heroics leads you to really out leveling the content by quite a bit.



Velo - It's not even a mod, it's just a parsing of the base combat log after the fact. It's also pretty hard to have total vision and awareness of everyone's actions during a raid in real time. Any encounter in which you CAN have total awareness of everyone, is usually a pretty straight forward and simple one.

[Ingmar]

Yeah Rokal is spot on with the death log, being able to see the last 10 seconds or whatever of what was hitting a player before they died is 100% gold. Players are wrong like 80% of the time on what actually killed them vs. why they think they died. 

[Furiously]

You also can't do ZOR chains with your friends in space.

[Sheepherder]

To me, improving your performance should be "this enemy has an AOE with a large range so I need to stand back farther if I'm healing", or "I needed to taunt that add who killed the healer, but I was too focused on something else at the time".  In my opinion it shouldn't be "if I use my abilities in this specific order my dps goes up 5%", or "I should have used this healing spell 6 seconds later to keep from overhealing too much".  Once it gets to a certain level of micromanaging, to me you aren't even playing the game anymore, you're playing the min/maxing meta game, which I'm sure is great for some people, but not something I'm interested in.

This. If you need a spreadsheet, you failed.

We use combat logs to see HOW people are screwing up, and if we can fix it.

Like one of the most common problems we have in our groups and raids in regards to people doing low DPS, was that they simply weren't casting ENOUGH. They would be pressing the right buttons, but not often enough. Our top DPS would have 95+ percent activity, while the guys who were always lagging behind would have like 80%. So when someone asked me "How can I do more DPS?", I could tell them "Cast more!".

Without the raid parser, that is the kind of problem that is hard to identify on the fly.

-fake edit- Our raid parser had a 'who took what damage in the raid and how they died' section too. IE: Who died in the fire meter 

Pernicious consequences of the WoW style of game design are effectively impossible to diagnose without computer support.  In Fordel's case, the guys are losing ~20% of the damage they could be doing because they're carefully taking the time to figure out which button is the best, when the correct answer is "press any key".

[Mosesandstick]

Skipped almost all of them, they aren't crucial to the level to content XP curve. You can do like 2-3 space mission dailies to even your self off if you think you are behind.

Doing ALL the Heroics leads you to really out leveling the content by quite a bit.

Cool, there was mixed feedback in my test over what you needed to do. I think one guy ran out of quests at 49  . I thought heroics were only going to be at level 50? Or is that something else I've mixed it up with?

How many people avoid group quests? Being slightly OCD and playing a story-based MMO I would never miss a quest.

[Ingmar]

Pernicious consequences of the WoW style of game design are effectively impossible to diagnose without computer support.  In Fordel's case, the guys are losing ~20% of the damage they could be doing because they're carefully taking the time to figure out which button is the best, when the correct answer is "press any key".

No, actually that's not it. It was a case of losing 20% of possible casts to latency - watching cast bar finish all the way, then pushing next spell. Quartz fixed the issue for the player as I recall, since it showed you your latency as part of your cast bar so you could actually cast as fast as you were supposed to be able to.

[Paelos]

Ok, for those of you advocating the use of the parses, are you still playing WoW?

Are you still raiding in WoW? If not, when did you stop?

If SWTOR doesn't do it for you, will you go back to WoW, or will you play both at the same time to remain on the fence?

[Fordel]

Skipped almost all of them, they aren't crucial to the level to content XP curve. You can do like 2-3 space mission dailies to even your self off if you think you are behind.

Doing ALL the Heroics leads you to really out leveling the content by quite a bit.

Cool, there was mixed feedback in my test over what you needed to do. I think one guy ran out of quests at 49  . I thought heroics were only going to be at level 50? Or is that something else I've mixed it up with?

How many people avoid group quests? Being slightly OCD and playing a story-based MMO I would never miss a quest.

Group quests are labeled as HEROIC 2 or HEROIC 4, and they are almost always repeatable (not even daily, just you can do them, hand in and do them again and again if you so desire) and use SWTOR's phase/instanced system. Some of them are pretty elaborate and are like mini-dungeons. Fall of Locust on Taris is a good example on the republic side. There always seem to be people LFG in general for them (assuming the planet has people on it at least, the higher level planets are pretty damn lonely since not everyone is a poopsocker like me   ) and the few times I wanted to do one, I got a group together in less then 5 minutes.

I'm also a tank though, so your mileage may vary!

I believe they have their own 'Hardmode' dungeons at 50 as well, but I am not there yet myself to check. Hardmodes being low level dungeons re-tuned for 50.

[Sjofn]

We have proof.

Quiet, you.

[Fordel]

Pernicious consequences of the WoW style of game design are effectively impossible to diagnose without computer support.  In Fordel's case, the guys are losing ~20% of the damage they could be doing because they're carefully taking the time to figure out which button is the best, when the correct answer is "press any key".

No, actually that's not it. It was a case of losing 20% of possible casts to latency - watching cast bar finish all the way, then pushing next spell. Quartz fixed the issue for the player as I recall, since it showed you your latency as part of your cast bar so you could actually cast as fast as you were supposed to be able to.

No, we had some problems where the solution was "press any key" as well Ing.  

But yea, one of the bigger cases of "y u no DPS" was simply a case of needing quartz to manage latency. Install one castbar mod and DPS increases by like 50%!