Keystone.guru: a website for planning your M+ routes

[Wotuu]

I think Shakous biggest problem with the op is the fact that he dismisses the already well established option and didnt even bother to check it out and is now listing some stuff as "advantages" that are total non-issues he would be aware of if he would have looked at MDT.
In that regard I am totally on Shakous side...on the other hand it is a nice other option...but no gamechanger in the grand scheme.

You know, I can agree with this. It's a matter of perspective. Hear me out here. I'm writing this as a reply to 'everyone', it's not aimed at you in particular don't get me wrong. Also see/read https://keystone.guru/about

During Legion: I did plenty of M+ dungeons and the idea of making a website supporting the creation of routes was born. Why a website? See above in one of my posts, but gist of it is that I'm a website developer, not an addon developer. Besides, I wanted to leverage the community in the form of voting for difficult packs/enemies so that people could easily see which enemies were difficult to overcome on certain weeks. If you run a lot of keys this may not be a problem, but for more casual players like me it took a long long time to identify tough packs to skip etc. At this point, literally anyone could see the usefulness of a planning tool in some shape or form.

July 2017: Apparently I started earlier than I thought. See screenshot, I thought it was December 2017. I finally got the idea to start working on it. I started by extracting the maps from the game client, converting the game tiles to a useful set of images, then splitting it back into tiles and plugging them in a Google Maps map.
Eventually I succeeded and the project died for a while while I lost motivation. I didn't know how to make this a fully fledged website, I felt like I lacked the knowledge to do it.

April 2018: My work comes and offers me to spend 10% time on a project of my choosing, using technologies that are useful for my day job. I opted to rebuild a project I shared between friends, but quickly realize that it won't be used as much, and the idea to build up the site again was reborn. Using some new technologies I get the confidence that I can build this website and work is resumed.

May 2018: Initial setup for the website.

Somewhere between here and July 20th (on this day a friend of mine sent some screenshots) I heard of MDT. I decide that an addon is not a website so I continue development. I make this website for fun, some competition isn't going to stop me. If eventually nobody uses my site aside from my group of friends I'd still get my moneys worth since I had fun doing it and learnt a ton.

The gist of this story is, could I have copied the entire idea from MDT? Probably. Can I prove that I didn't? Not really. But honestly if you don't accept my explanations that's gonna be on you. Nobody has to trust me. Nobody has to use my website. If you want to use it, great! You don't for whatever reason? That's cool as well.

--

So back to the original quote, I opted to not look at MDT since I didn't want to steal their work, accidentally or not. I once spent a plane ride to Prague behind a famous Dutch rapper. My girlfriend and I hardly spoke that flight, we were intrigued by their conversation (ethics aside here). He was explaining to the steward that he never listened to Dutch rap, for he was afraid that it'd subconsciously influence his own music. Instead he'd listen to French rap, or rap in other languages he didn't really understand. It stuck with me, and I used the same reasoning to decide that I wasn't going to take a look at MDT since I feared it may influence my design and people would accuse me of copying it. Guess it still happens but I can say with a clear consciousness that I didn't copy a thing because I never looked at it in the first place.

This however does lead me to not fully understand MDT and what it may be capable of. In retrospect, perhaps I did have incorrect assumptions about what an addon can do vrs a website. It was not my intention to 'drag MDT through the mud' to promote my own website. I could've researched before posting, I thought it was correct and I did honestly ask people to form their own opinion about the two. If MDT is superior it's up to me to improve the site so it becomes a valid alternative. It's the basics of society as we know it. Competition drives innovation.

I hope this may quench some of Shakou's questions, even though I think it won't. He's banned now so he won't be able to reply. Perhaps it serves to answer the questions of those that read the thread in full (bless your soul) and have these questions as a result.

I will always be open to criticism, even if you think the website is bad and I should feel bad, if you're constructive about it I'm more than happy to improve the website over time to hopefully gain your support back. I hope this is the last of the discussion of MDT vs Keystone.guru, this thread was not intended for that.

- - - Updated - - -

I do, not all routes that top streamers use are made with pugs in mind. Some require some level of communication that isn't generally seen in pugs that are just doing a lvl 2-xx key. I would love to see routes that are specifically made for certain affixes, class comps and aimed for a certain player level. Also I don't really spend a lot of time on twitch, the free time I have I rather spend gaming instead of scouring twitch streams to see if they have new routes. Having a singular source that has people that update routes and have routes for all class comps sounds awesome to me. We're not all top dogs that play at the highest level nor do we need to be, a tool should be accessible for all but also advanced enough for the pro's in my opinion.

This is what the website currently aims to do, it does not have enough features to satisfy the top dogs but with time it can be! I'm glad to see the people for which the site is intended at the moment are actually using it and that it's succeeding in that way

[Speedlance]

had to register to use the site, so noty lol

[Wotuu]

Well now that Shakou has been banned for the umpteenth team we can keep the thread on track :P

It's a decent site, I'm not a fan of having to register but at least there's the try it function to understand what it does. You mention shareable links, didn't have enough time to try it out proper but that what would be pretty useful if I'm organising runs while offline.

I hear you! I've put a story on the backlog a while ago that will allow you to stay anonymous while using the site. I think privacy is a hot topic nowadays and I should offer people the option to protect their privacy. However, for now I want to fix the site's bugs and add a few more features before I start working on this. I will get around to doing it! But for now my priorities lie elsewhere.

For now what you can do is register with a bogus e-mail, you aren't required to click a confirmation mail somewhere. If there's rampant abuse of accounts and/or spammers mindlessly registering I may change this but for now I have no evidence this is happening. If you want to see specific privacy options implemented I'd be happy to hear about them so I can improve! I do want to implement something where users can register using OAuth, think of 'log in using your battle.net account' type of deal. I'll create an issue for this right now.

- - - Updated - - -

You know you're in for a treat when you look at page 1 and the guy who has been insulting everyone is already banned.
@Wotuu:

I really like the idea! I haven't checked every detail of the website, but unlike Shakou, I think this being a website is the main selling point. I really hate the fact that I can't open MDT on my second screen while I'm in a dungeon. I'm one of those filthy casuals who can't memorize every single pull in the entire dungeon and has to re-open MDT every once in a while to look at the route.

With your website, it's possible to just have it open on my second screen, so I can just glance at it between pulls. So even if it might not be perfect, or maybe even not as good as MDT yet (I'm not saying it is, as I said I haven't really tested it that much), it sure has a lot of potential.

I'm glad you like it! We found that we use the site the same way now. We build a route, everyone (that wants to) opens the link on their second monitor and keeps it as a reference while we complete the dungeon. Ideally I wanted to make something that reads your combat log and updates the website as you progress through the dungeon (perhaps even showing dots on the map representing your + enemies movements) but unfortunately the combat log is only saved every 5-10 minutes so this is impossible. In the end some things will go south and you end up deviating from the plan anyways, but with more experience on everyone's part it can become increasingly useful to have everyone stick to the plan.

- - - Updated - - -

had to register to use the site, so noty lol

See my post above! You can browse the site freely without registering, you only have to register if you want to create routes yourself. In due time however, I'll implement something to either allow authentication through a 3rd party (Battle.net for example), or bypass authentication altogether using something like the way Google Sheets does it. Links that, if people know them, anyone can view/edit.

[tikcol]

The only difference between you and me, is that you prefer to discuss people over things and don't even know what you're talking about at all, you're a straight up poser engaging in sciolism and very obviously at that. You prefer to give superfluous praise over an honest opinion and apart from pretty clearly having absolutely no experience in programming or coding whatsoever enough to know how long it would take a single person to develop something like this, also don't even seem to know how long BFA has even been announced, let alone in Beta with dungeons available for testing.

10 months development? Homie BFA was only announced a little over 11 months ago, did not start alpha until a little over 8 months ago and M+ was not available for testing until roughly 4 months ago and dungeons were not at all in the state for testing they are currently in. Hell, not even all dungeons were available for testing before M+ testing began.

But nevertheless, I'm telling you that MDT is actually a better made tool with far more features and a cleaner more user-friendly interface and it certainly wasn't a 10 month process to build, it was developed mainly during the M+ testing period, and people in here are either just reading the OP and saying "thanks" etc without having used the site, or have used MDT but are somehow concluding the site is better for the simple fact that is a website and not an in game addon.

Who do you think you're fooling?

You can think whatever you want about me, I don't really care you're a stranger on the internet so you cannot offend me. But you're out of your fucking league here. Like you're a blind pigeon knocking over what you think are chess pieces on a board, but you're actually just kicking rocks and I'm here for genuine discussion about actual things that are actually real.

Like this site and how it can or cannot be very useful and what it's purpose for existing really is. Cuz I'm sketchy and have good reason to be.

I am a web developer myself and this tool would be very similar to something I would do myself if I had the time or willpower at the moment. Perhaps he's a newbie, perhaps he's not but what you're doing here is ugly, very ugly.

It's obvious his app isn't perfect, but telling outright to delete it as fast as possible isn't valid criticism either. All you're doing is praising another tool, promoting it even.

[boz0]

See my post above! You can browse the site freely without registering, you only have to register if you want to create routes yourself. In due time however, I'll implement something to either allow authentication through a 3rd party (Battle.net for example), or bypass authentication altogether using something like the way Google Sheets does it. Links that, if people know them, anyone can view/edit.

You might want to make it more explicit on the front page. Eg, instead of "Try it", name your button "Show routes", or something like that. Right now, as evidenced by this thread, the fact that registration is optional isn't quite obvious.

[Naiyano]

Registration is a big nogo for me. It has to be as easy as possible to be competitive to mdt.

[Wotuu]

You might want to make it more explicit on the front page. Eg, instead of "Try it", name your button "Show routes", or something like that. Right now, as evidenced by this thread, the fact that registration is optional isn't quite obvious.

Yeah perhaps it can be clarified. It can't hurt either way. I figured people would click around and see you don't need to register for themselves. Perhaps the "Register and start planning" is too 'aggressive' so people think they have to register in order to do something. Perhaps even switching that button and the "Try it" button around would help. I'll think of something and update the front page a little.

[dakalro]

10 months development? Homie BFA was only announced a little over 11 months ago, did not start alpha until a little over 8 months ago and M+ was not available for testing until roughly 4 months ago and dungeons were not at all in the state for testing they are currently in. Hell, not even all dungeons were available for testing before M+ testing began.

1. MTD was started for Legion so BFA launch is irrelevant, same for alpha or beta or BFA M+
2. Initial commit on github was on Feb 24, more than 8 months ago and it contained a large amount of pre-existing code. It was also tagged alpha so it had some functionality already.
3. The Ace Library was 1161 alpha, had at least 7 more releases until February with 1 marked as release.

At the latest MTD started development in August 2017 imho.

Do your homework dude.

[Fastlane_hellscream]

1. MTD was started for Legion so BFA launch is irrelevant, same for alpha or beta or BFA M+
2. Initial commit on github was on Feb 24, more than 8 months ago and it contained a large amount of pre-existing code. It was also tagged alpha so it had some functionality already.
3. The Ace Library was 1161 alpha, had at least 7 more releases until February with 1 marked as release.

At the latest MTD started development in August 2017 imho.

Do your homework dude.

No sarcasm in the following statement. I love people like you that dig into details and destroy the arguments of people like Shakou! Feel good story so far...

[Dilemma90]

Now if only Methods Duegon addon didn't already do this..

[Wotuu]

Now if only Methods Duegon addon didn't already do this..

I think we covered this in the previous 4 pages of this thread :P But I wouldn't recommend reading it. The gist is, it's a website so it's a bit different. Try both and see what fits you best and use that. Cheers!

[Spike`]

Wotuu don't bother with people that are negative or somewhat against more options

more options is always welcome, its a website and brings another way to do what some people use on MDT.
I know alot of people that dont want to install MDT because they dont like having many addons, many dont even want to install DBM/Bigwigs so this is a good alternative

this reminds me of Discord, when it appeared people was like this defending Teamspeak or Mumble, people saying that their discord on website was useless, etc etc etc and now fast forward you have almost all people using discord for anything including pugs on various games using that website interface

So if you love your project and believe that it brings something good for you and for the community continue

i read your reply about just make a random email but many people will not see it and won't want to put its email on that, so for suggestion change the registering/login to be username/password and nothing at all to email

right now this should be your priority really, like you saw in this topic people dont like putting emails so they wont test your website or spread the site at all

peace

[Wotuu]

Wotuu don't bother with people that are negative or somewhat against more options

more options is always welcome, its a website and brings another way to do what some people use on MDT.
I know alot of people that dont want to install MDT because they dont like having many addons, many dont even want to install DBM/Bigwigs so this is a good alternative

this reminds me of Discord, when it appeared people was like this defending Teamspeak or Mumble, people saying that their discord on website was useless, etc etc etc and now fast forward you have almost all people using discord for anything including pugs on various games using that website interface

So if you love your project and believe that it brings something good for you and for the community continue

i read your reply about just make a random email but many people will not see it and won't want to put its email on that, so for suggestion change the registering/login to be username/password and nothing at all to email

right now this should be your priority really, like you saw in this topic people dont like putting emails so they wont test your website or spread the site at all

peace

From the moment I read the first post from Shakou I knew I shouldn't put much energy in him, but I did feel that I should've at least tried to reason with him. I knew it was going to end this way eventually. It doesn't stop me at all from continuing to work on the website, if anything the people here motivated me even more to continue work and make it better than it is now .

As for your suggestion about the e-mail, I think it can be a good one. I can make the e-mail address optional, if that'd make people more inclined to use the website from a privacy point of view. The only functionality you'd lose would be the 'lost your password' thing. I can make a disclaimer that by excluding your e-mail you cannot recover your account and that's that. Somewhere I get the feeling it won't be enough though, I think the people who don't want to register just don't want to register at all, not even with a username + password. But do correct me if I'm wrong. It's not like this will cost me hours and hours to implement, probably 30 mins work if that.

[Spike`]

From the moment I read the first post from Shakou I knew I shouldn't put much energy in him, but I did feel that I should've at least tried to reason with him. I knew it was going to end this way eventually. It doesn't stop me at all from continuing to work on the website, if anything the people here motivated me even more to continue work and make it better than it is now .

As for your suggestion about the e-mail, I think it can be a good one. I can make the e-mail address optional, if that'd make people more inclined to use the website from a privacy point of view. The only functionality you'd lose would be the 'lost your password' thing. I can make a disclaimer that by excluding your e-mail you cannot recover your account and that's that. Somewhere I get the feeling it won't be enough though, I think the people who don't want to register just don't want to register at all, not even with a username + password. But do correct me if I'm wrong. It's not like this will cost me hours and hours to implement, probably 30 mins work if that.

ya i get what you are saying, the suggestion its simply a possible "wall" that you are removing (the email privacy stuff) that many will stay away

in my point of view and correct me if its already this way this should work this way

1. Register only to able to save all your routes, change them, etc
2. The shared link no one is required to register to see it
3. Anyone can make a dungeon route without registering (your Try page) and that can be shared as well but the link expires after X time <- this will help for the ones that don't want to register at first and show to their friends/guild. If they like will potentially register to save them and use in the future on more runs

the main goal its to show all the stuff and facilitating the access to use for every type of person and mentioning what they get if they register like:
1. if you register you can save all the routes, etc
2. if you register with your mail instead of username will have the possibility of recovering the password if forgotten
3. ...

For example take how Discord has done it

1. you enter their site and without any account you click on "Open Discord in your browser"
2. it simply asks for Username, not even a password
3. you enter in the discord web version and add a Server and it gives the link for you to share (the default its 1 day active)
4. people enter and only have to choose the username
5. after all people leave and probably after 1 day (not sure the time) the account and all servers created are deleted if the person dont register

simple, quick and easy like people want and only the ppl that want to use discord and keep the servers will register and that how it helped Discord spread at first

its just my opinion, regardless i will follow your work

[Deleted]

why u have to be a dick to some1 who tries to improve the game?really ? and besides just because of ur shitty attitude most of the ppl here will use the site just to get on ur nerves and show u how wrong you are...and besides! u can use the site to make ur route while u arent online so....eat shit and stop trying to be a dick to some1 who actually tries to make a living..and i'll respect more him then the guys at method...they have all sponsorships and shit and just did that by himself....pay some respect to the hard working ppl....fucktard

[Rascal Bob]

Uh no I totally get that, but simply not being nice or even talking down to people is not the same thing as personally insulting someone. To personally insult someone means to use personal insults. I never called the OP names or belittled him personally. Y'all in here flaming me and trying to act like I did something wrong because you don't agree with me. And you probably won't agree with me here but it's not really condescending when you're right.[/B] [B]Sometimes people actually just have a superior intellect. And I'm not going to apologize to you for having one.
Infracted

You can be condescending while you're right or wrong, it doesn't change a thing. Being right while also being condescending just makes you not come off as an idiot that is all. And I was never flaming you, I just explained to you how you could have gotten all of your concerns( I agree on some by the way) across without having people point at you for being a dick. I will not debate the fact wetter you have great intellect or not, I don't know you and you don't know me. It's just weird that an intellectual goes into a discussion like this, because they usually actually want to get their points across and word their arguments in such a way. I've had tons of discussions, I basically make my living out of it. I think almost all my past participants would agree that being condescending or whatever you call your way of discussion is a bad way to go about it if you actually care about the discussion.

So like check it, because there are a lot of people who develop World of Warcraft AddOns and yet there is only 1 that does what Nnogga's addon does, Method Dungeon Tools, it is extremely unlikely that the OP started developing his website without being fully aware of MDT. It is even more unlikely that he was "just trying to improve the community" because he chose to make a website and not an addon. To reach people who aren't even the same target audience. Well that sounds cool but in practice like raider.io has monopolized us all, if enough people use this website so to will there be no real room for competition. It's exactly like Wal-Mart pushing local businesses out, only it's another indy developer apeing on an already niche product.

But regardless, true competition is only possible on an equal level playing field, like we don't have Olympic games where crippled people compete against world class athletes who are not disabled, for example. And we don't criticize car manufacturers because they're not aviators.

If he made an addon and it was superior or was different enough that both could co-exist while playing to different market, it would be no issue. But instead this has the potential to keep people from using MDT in the first place simply because more people use the World Wide Web than play World of Warcraft and certainly more than WOW players who are savvy when it comes to addons. So ya I do have a problem with that. Because MDT is a superior tool that can seriously help people better learn these dungeons, it's not just a way for some guy to share an instruction manual for you to read or a list of directions.
Infracted

You take the one example of where we want an even playing field and that's because it's sport. In sport we want things to be fair and the best should win. In terms of businesses or whatever we don't care, we just want what's best and preferably at the cheapest cost. And right now this site might not be it, but it surely has potential. Do you think the second car manufacturer didn't "ape" the idea from the first? We approve of this as long as long as they didn't copy designs 1 for 1 and actually strive to make a better product, that's competition. If we were to stop trying to do something better ourselves when we've seen someone doing something we would be nowhere near as where we are now. In the end I don't care if the OP knew or didn't know, I would if it was just an exact copy.

If it remains worse then people will still use MDT above this site.

This is complete nonsense, the routes top streamers use are the way they are because they provide the path of least resistance to time the key. If timing the key isn't your goal you do not need a route, and you certainly don't need that level of preplanning to run low level keys.

But hey if you want to do that fine, but don't try to act like it's about "the greater good" or anything like that to use a different tool over a pre-existing one that is better made to achieve the same goals.

You know what would be useful, actually? I said it in my first post here but y'all so focused on harassing and flaming me because I really don't like what this guy is doing with this website and have pretty solid reasons for not liking it, but it'd be great if we had a website that simply listed out people's dungeon routes. What we do not need is that website replacing the better made tool we already have to make said routes.

If OP actually makes a better product out of this great, so far it's demonstrably not that.
Infracted

The routes top streamers use are indeed the paths of least resistance, more often then not they're also high risk for high reward routes. For example I've seen drjay run TD on stream. Now the route might have changed in the meantime but they ran with a warlock and soulstoned the healer to bypass all the canons and their trash. What happens if they wipe after the canons? You would probably have to clear trash that brings you above the 100% threshold and is therefore unneeded. The big players don't care because they're probably not gonna get that 17 or 18 or whatever they're doing if they fuck up anyways. I want a route that shaves of as much time as possible from my lower key(x -15) while also keeping in mind that I'm probably running with people I might not know that can fuck up at any moment. Some skips and routes are just not feasible with that in mind. We might never do a record key but that doesn't matter for the general audience and if you think that's nonsense then you clearly don't know the general playerbase of the game.

Again, if MDT were to have an easy way to acces and evaluate routes, filtering for class comps, affixes and maybe pug groups vs premades that would be awesome. Basically the same way I can evaluate players using rio(although it's rough for players getting back into the game and what not.) then I'd agree and say why make this site, right now I see it's potential just solely because MDT didn't fill that need. And you denying it's there doesn't make it so it isn't.

Most people really don't care enough to invest as much time into making routes, this is the same reason why everyone looks up class guides where people have tested and simmed stats and talents, they don't care enough to invest the time to find the results but they want the results. People want easy acces and MDT isn't providing it by having a central location for the routes. You'd have to go to twitch streamers or other sources to find your routes.

[Wotuu]

ya i get what you are saying, the suggestion its simply a possible "wall" that you are removing (the email privacy stuff) that many will stay away

in my point of view and correct me if its already this way this should work this way

1. Register only to able to save all your routes, change them, etc
2. The shared link no one is required to register to see it
3. Anyone can make a dungeon route without registering (your Try page) and that can be shared as well but the link expires after X time <- this will help for the ones that don't want to register at first and show to their friends/guild. If they like will potentially register to save them and use in the future on more runs

the main goal its to show all the stuff and facilitating the access to use for every type of person and mentioning what they get if they register like:
1. if you register you can save all the routes, etc
2. if you register with your mail instead of username will have the possibility of recovering the password if forgotten
3. ...

For example take how Discord has done it

1. you enter their site and without any account you click on "Open Discord in your browser"
2. it simply asks for Username, not even a password
3. you enter in the discord web version and add a Server and it gives the link for you to share (the default its 1 day active)
4. people enter and only have to choose the username
5. after all people leave and probably after 1 day (not sure the time) the account and all servers created are deleted if the person dont register

simple, quick and easy like people want and only the ppl that want to use discord and keep the servers will register and that how it helped Discord spread at first

its just my opinion, regardless i will follow your work

Thanks for helping to think about it . I'll put your advice with the ticket to allow anonymous users to use the website, it will help me for sure! I'll have to conjure up a priority list on what I'm going to do when. I'm working on improving the map now (making it full screen), then I think I'm going to work on revamping/fixing the Routes page. After that is a bit of a blur, depends on what is needed most I guess!

[SharpSky17]

Oh my, It was my dream, that someone would do something like this. I even started to go on courses of front end developer. So I can make my dream come true. But you were first so congrats. I was having some problems with understanding sometimes, so I think I need more practice. I was using website downloader from site of my friend because you know sometimes code can be a little hard for me.

[Trend]

Nonononono you stop making personal comments about ME. YOU. It is OKAY for people not to like THINGS and express why they do not like THEM. It is NOT OKAY for YOU to personally put me down because I don't like something that you do. Get it? Thanks.

If you can't read your replies and understand that you've been a total dick I don't know what to tell you. I can't believe how nice the guy has been in responding to you after what an insulting asshole you've been. I've seen tons of your posts over the years and I always thought you were a pretty smart poster until now. From your very first response you accused him of stealing someone else's work and money grubbing among other things, but then you cry about being put down personally? Seriously?

I don't care what you think and you're on my ignore list now anyway. This is for the benefit of other people who might otherwise be tempted to think your approach is valid.

[Flura]

Good thing wow on 1 monitor website on the other monitor.

lil off topic:

U play the same class as "the streamer"
play the same spec as "the streamer"
u take the traits like "the streamer"
take the same talents as "the streamer"
play the same routes like "the streamer"
take the same trinkets as "the streamer"
press the same buttons as "the streamer"

maybe let "the streamer" play ur character since u are just a copy of him