No combat log...

[nerfducken]

Awesome, so there is no way or judging if people are pulling their weight or not in Operations or Flashpoints.

Combat parsing should be in the game, it doesn't affect how much fun you have in the game, but it does affect how well I can judge my raiders.

If the tank, healer, and most dps is alive at the end of the fight then you're good. You don't need Meters to tell you that.

[Loaf Lord]

A recount will be inevitable from third party addons unless bioware somehow bans them, they are nice to know your raids dps. And recounts usually tell you which abilities are doing most of your dps, so why exactly do we need combat log again?

[jvbastel]

A recount will be inevitable from third party addons unless bioware somehow bans them, they are nice to know your raids dps. And recounts usually tell you which abilities are doing most of your dps, so why exactly do we need combat log again?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't recount use the combat log to get the data?
I'm not bothered by the lack of a combat log, I will play swtor more casually than I played wow due to my job and irl stuff.
We'll see how it turns out

[namelessone]

Everquest
Everquest 2
DDOnline

thats 3 for starters

and don't take this wrong, its not for starting a flame

but any Raid in Everquest takes 10x more skill then the "hardest" raid mob in wow

With possible exception of Everquest, which was THE MMO back in the day, all the games you mentioned have very low sub numbers. SWTOR is the most expensive MMO development to date. They can't afford to have low subs.

I want to clarify my position. I played TOR beta and I desperately want this game to succeed. But their recent decisions to disallow respecs and not include combat log puzzle me to no end. If all the failed "wow killers" over the past years have taught us something - it is that competitive endgame MAKES OR BREAKS the MMO. BioWare seemed to understand that, and I was happy. But now - it's just bizarre.

[Argroth]

People should just learn to play without having their hand held by add-ons.

LOOK and see how much each hit is doing, NOTICE what killed you, KNOW what moves are appropriate for what situations (don't use a tanking threat move while dpsing). Do these and no combat log or add-ons should be needed.

Otherwise you have people getting cutthroat over doing 10 more dps then another when doing 1000dps. It encourages elitists to make quick and biased decisions.

We don't need another social cesspool like WoW is.

[Dunkman]

Everquest
Everquest 2
DDOnline

thats 3 for starters

and don't take this wrong, its not for starting a flame

but any Raid in Everquest takes 10x more skill then the "hardest" raid mob in wow

If raiding in Everquest was better than it is in WoW then people would be playing it, it's really that simple. I promise you that people are not avoiding it because it's too hard or too awesome. There is something fundamentally broken.

[Puremallace]

And don't people usually figure out their dps with a dps meter like recount? That could easily be implemented with a third party addon.

3rd party add ons like ACT use combatlog.txt to deliver those charts and graphs. Rift had 3rd party programs for a long time until they put in addons. This move completely eliminates any 3rd party program support for ToR.

This is going to make min/max'n TREMENDOUSLY hard and time intensive, but it is still possible if there is a combat tab that shows current damage being taken.

[ptwonline]

Unless group content is faceroll or else the hard/soft enrage timers are very, very loose, you're going to need a combat log of some sort eventually.

If BW does not provide one then eventually someone will hack the downstream info to pull the numbers out.

[Deleted]

People should just learn to play without having their hand held by add-ons.

LOOK and see how much each hit is doing, NOTICE what killed you, KNOW what moves are appropriate for what situations (don't use a tanking threat move while dpsing). Do these and no combat log or add-ons should be needed.

Otherwise you have people getting cutthroat over doing 10 more dps then another when doing 1000dps. It encourages elitists to make quick and biased decisions.

We don't need another social cesspool like WoW is.

How are you gonna judge who's doing 10k dps or 2k dps? Aka who to replace when you wipe to enrage?

[Dunkman]

People should just learn to play without having their hand held by add-ons.

LOOK and see how much each hit is doing, NOTICE what killed you, KNOW what moves are appropriate for what situations (don't use a tanking threat move while dpsing). Do these and no combat log or add-ons should be needed.

Otherwise you have people getting cutthroat over doing 10 more dps then another when doing 1000dps. It encourages elitists to make quick and biased decisions.

We don't need another social cesspool like WoW is.

Don't take this the wrong way, but this discussion applies very well to a single group instance, marginally to a pug raid, and absolutely not at all to any type of more serious raiding. Getting feedback on what is happening during the fight is absolutely critical to developing a winning strategy.

[Smitzelplix]

With possible exception of Everquest, which was THE MMO back in the day, all the games you mentioned have very low sub numbers. SWTOR is the most expensive MMO development to date. They can't afford to have low subs.

I want to clarify my position. I played TOR beta and I desperately want this game to succeed. But their recent decisions to disallow respecs and not include combat log puzzle me to no end. If all the failed "wow killers" over the past years have taught us something - it is that competitive endgame MAKES OR BREAKS the MMO. BioWare seemed to understand that, and I was happy. But now - it's just bizarre.

Why does it have to be a "competitive" endgame, why can't it just be an endgame that is fun? By competitive I imagine you mean world firsts and stuff like that. Also I think a lot of the past MMOs didn't "kill WoW" (which lets be fair, no game will kill WoW, and WoW killer should really be removed from people's vocab), not because they lacked a "competitive" endgame, but the fact they lacked an endgame altogether.

[LexLuthier]

People who don't want Damage meters = People who aren't very good and want to go unnoticed for their poor play/want to get carried/have gotten harrased for being bad before and they don't want to do that again.

Someone had to say it.

If you don't like meters don't play with people who do. No one is forcing you. I'm going to use a parser as soon as it is available and figure out exactly what is the best for my class because I like to min max, and while you can figure out some things just by watching numbers fly, you will never know for sure.

[Deleted]

Oh my god really? That's it. I will not buy a game becasue Bioware doesn't care about us anymore.

Seriously..get a life.

[Dakia]

People should just learn to play without having their hand held by add-ons.

After the fact informational reports, like what we have on WoL, is not hand holding. Such informational sites are a necessity if they ever want to retain competitive raiders. I'm fine with no in game addons, but parsing in a must.

[jvbastel]

People who don't want Damage meters = People who aren't very good and want to go unnoticed for their poor play/want to get carried/have gotten harrased for being bad before and they don't want to do that again.

Some people don't like dmg meters because some people become too focused on the dps. The problem in wow is, you can get away with ignoring support and just dps'ing like a mad chicken. That doesn't work in some other games, and I really hope swtor is one of them. After all, standing still and spamming your rotation, only moving when there's red stuff under you is not really all that fun isn't it?

[Smitzelplix]

If raiding in Everquest was better than it is in WoW then people would be playing it, it's really that simple. I promise you that people are not avoiding it because it's too hard or too awesome. There is something fundamentally broken.

The majority of the population does not raid in WoW, or at least they don't raid at a progression level, that's one of the major reasons that WoW is getting the raid finder next patch. Also people are still playing Everquest, the game still gets expansions and everything.

[Raeli]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't recount use the combat log to get the data?
I'm not bothered by the lack of a combat log, I will play swtor more casually than I played wow due to my job and irl stuff.
We'll see how it turns out

There's a big difference. The Combat Log that WoL etc. uses is initiated on commaned by /combatlog and it sends all information that is sent to the client about combat into that file.

Recount on the other hand uses the information directly, in the game. Without the ability to create in game addons, you couldn't have something like Recount, but you could still have a Combat Log saved to a file by the game itself.

[torftw]

Combat logs are kinda important, even if you don't want to be an elitist. Without a combat log you can't even go back and find out why you died.

I don't use recount in wow, (except for personal info if my class changed), and could care less about how much better dps I do that others. But I do care about playing my best, and without a combat log of any kind all I can do is guess about what would be a good idea. You think people complaining about how classes are OP is wow is bad? Imagine if all you had to go on was what people "felt" was OP.

On the darth hater's recent podcast, they said that the devs didn't want it in the game until they could do it 110% correctly. In general this is a nice way to ensure quality, but even a super basic combat log is important at launch.

This will be something I will put in a lot of feedback about during my beta weekend. I suggest everyone else that cares does the same.

[jvbastel]

There's a big difference. The Combat Log that WoL etc. uses is initiated on commaned by /combatlog and it sends all information that is sent to the client about combat into that file.

Recount on the other hand uses the information directly, in the game. Without the ability to create in game addons, you couldn't have something like Recount, but you could still have a Combat Log saved to a file by the game itself.

I always called the realtime combat chat thingy the combat log as well, will this be out as well or is it only the exportable combat log that's out?

[Harpocrates]

if you want to judge people who pull their weight, watch them attack the correct targets, have them cc and not break it. watching the dps meter the entire fight is utterly stupid. I dunno if they will add a combat log or not but i hope to god it can't be worked with for damage meters etc