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  1. #1
    High Overlord Wendyclear's Avatar
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    DPS meters = WoW?

    Starting off, this is merely something I've noticed in my many many years of playing WoW, nothing more. Take from it what you will.

    I feel WoW is pretty much one big damage meter. Anybody who's anybody has a damage meter to see their party/raid damage. BG's have the scoreboards for damage and KB's as well. While I have usually been in the top 3 for whatever I choose to do that day, I can't help but feel this is what it's all about for the majority of players.

    Back in the day, and not only in WoW, but other games as well, it was about group focus/teamwork. Not many people were button mashing and stressing themselves out to see their shiny class color on a meter so they could have a pixel erection and flame their friends/guildmates. Instead, many, like me, were excited just to get the new content down and/or to see the rewards that dropped. At that time, people, at the most, looked at some gear pieces, not a meter which doesn't fully tell the actual skill of a player (and nor does gear ofc, but hopefully you see what I mean).

    I think I enjoyed it more when meters weren't around or at least the life-force of most players. It takes away a lot more from the game than most people care to think about. Back in vanilla (not saying it was the best or anything like that) you knew someone was pretty decent and did fairly good damage when they had epics or the grand marshal gear as well as its title (and granted this wasn't always the case).

    Now it seems that even though Bob is a better player than Sally, they'll take Sally just because she's top dps with 3 buttons or is a certain class that's more valued for arena. My point is, there's no longer a connection. It's merely a one night stand so to speak (or one night month?), until they get nerfed or the comps change again.

    If anyone remembers Ultima Online (I know it's a really diff game in many ways) you could get all kinds of buds to play and no one really cared if you had a might weapon or a vanquisher weapon. You killed monsters and players for the loot, social interaction and satisfaction. I guess that point alone is what I'm focusing on in the scheme of things. Today it's just.. (and not every guild or team ofc) "even though he stands in the fire, hes top 3, get him" "link achievement" "pst ilvl" (granted ilvl is needed for certain things, but you know what I mean).

    Sorry for the long post, tried to separate my thoughts into space. What do you guys think? Do you think this is one of the things that has lowered the quality of life for WoW in one way or another, whether it be big or small?

  2. #2
    What are you trying to imply, bg's are not about kb's? don't be silly
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  3. #3
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    I remember people meter whoring in molten core. So no, this is nothing new.

  4. #4
    It's a game. When you are the top it means you have won said game. "even if technically you can't beat WoW."
    Everyone want's to be the top. It's why we play, because it's fun to win.

  5. #5
    yes and no. the problem with just doing stuff and not really keeping any record is that when you hit a wall and there's something you can't kill you have to look at how you improve and without the numbers there's no way you could know where to shape up.

    that the meters have become such a big thing isn't really anything new. it's always been there in shooters in the leaderboards even when it's team based some1 always just cares for the kills or w/e.

    it's largely because it matters a lot for people playing alone because they don't have any other connections to the people they play with.

  6. #6
    Stood in the Fire lukyl's Avatar
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    Having no meters was more of a reason for 10 of the dps in 40mans to decide they cbf and they'll go get a drink while everyone is busy fighting coz no ones gonna know...

  7. #7
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    I agree fully, a lot of players focus on their own personal DPS over what's actually benefiting the actual group most. Yes, some fights are burn-heavy and you need to be able to pump out that DPS but when you focus on your DPS so much that it causes mistakes then you're being counter-productive, or choosing a talent that may increase your DPS by 3% or the over-all raid DPS by 3% and you choose the personal DPS increase.

    Everybody likes to see big numbers but don't consider what they could do for the over-all group and teamwork. >.> It's silly.

    Obviously it has it's pros as in you can see who's preforming extremely poorly and what not, but the cons are bad for a lot of players. I personally only look at Recount after a fight, whether it be a wipe or down. Focus on the fight and not Recount, a lot of players need to realize that.

  8. #8
    I didn't exactly read your whole post but what really irritates me as a healer is when dps are too cheap to jump as a Crystalspawn Giant starts to casts Quake in Stonecore because they're too focused trying to top the dps chart

  9. #9
    That thing you said about Ultima Online is right to only the same extend as it is in World of Warcraft.

    I don't care about how good at DPSing, Healing or Tanking my friends are when I play with them. But when I'm in a progress guild then I expect people to perform. It's easier/faster to progress if people do high DPS.

    In Ultima Online there were no meters, but trust me, those good at the game didn't just pick up random toddlers to go hunt Wyrms or whatnot.

    So DPS meters is whatever you want them to be for you. I care in progress raids and not anywhere else (I always go for being on top and I always am in casual company, but I don't care that they are below me, I'm just doing it for the social aspect of having fun with friends or random party members).
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  10. #10
    High Overlord Wendyclear's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Araun View Post
    yes and no. the problem with just doing stuff and not really keeping any record is that when you hit a wall and there's something you can't kill you have to look at how you improve and without the numbers there's no way you could know where to shape up.

    that the meters have become such a big thing isn't really anything new. it's always been there in shooters in the leaderboards even when it's team based some1 always just cares for the kills or w/e.

    it's largely because it matters a lot for people playing alone because they don't have any other connections to the people they play with.
    Good points man. I can agree with those. And yes there are scoreboards and whatnot in other games and "Rambo" players as well, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though meters of some sort have been around for a long time, I feel that while they can help some players improve by looking at the data, they really do the opposite the majority of time and are the holy grail of the game these days. Guess I just want better social experiences like I experienced in UO, idk.

  11. #11
    I agree also i played since launch and it was much better without knowing who does what. We just worried about mechanics....oh and it was just world pvp and no resil gear.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Wendyclear View Post
    Good points man. I can agree with those. And yes there are scoreboards and whatnot in other games and "Rambo" players as well, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though meters of some sort have been around for a long time, I feel that while they can help some players improve by looking at the data, they really do the opposite the majority of time and are the holy grail of the game these days. Guess I just want better social experiences like I experienced in UO, idk.
    I agree that it would be better to not have meters in game because people don't know how to use them and do more harm than good when they try to pad them. but in a game as big as WoW it's impossible to avoid sadly

  13. #13
    I don't agree, because other things from the meters can be linked as well, damage taken, healing taken, interrupts, CCs broken, friendly fire, etc.
    However there are some people who tunnel vision on just the dps number, but overall I don't think this is a majority.

    Without meters/logs it would be nearly impossible for raiding to occur at the level it does now. If sally can do more DPS, and still handles fight mechanics sufficiently, obviously they are a better choice when you have a tight enrage timer. If she doesn't they'll link that meter too.

    The meter has more uses than you are attributing to it. progression raiding without logs and meters would be a terrible terrible experience because it would either be next to impossible, or have to be made so easy that when you did have a good group it would be ridiculously boring.

  14. #14
    In raiding at least, DPS Meters are just a tool to measure who is doing their job, how well, and who isn't. If you think it's all about teamwork and awareness, you'd be only half right. Playing your character properly and to the best of its abilities also matters. You can have the best raid awareness in the world, but if you can't play your own character for sh*t, your group is going to suffer.

    In 5 mans they're much less important, but still... if you're doing a boss and 2 DPS are pushing 17-19k, and one guys doing like 4k... you know who isn't pulling their weight. Among friends it may be irrelevant, or even a competition, but with random players with no other connections to each other... it matters.

  15. #15
    Scarab Lord
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    DPS meters originate with WoW.

    Prior to that games only really had offline parsing. Most games still only have this, actually.

    DPS meters are a big reason for WoW's success with both very serious players - who obtain genuinely useful information from them - and hordes of questionable jerks who post them solely to boost their ego, and stop posting them if they're getting spanked.

    They're also good for clearly demonstrating that someone isn't contributing to the group at all.

    Personally, I think they have hurt the game and helped it in almost equal measures. People may say "But u cant raid without them!". Well, actually, you can. Everything you see on raid-meter type sites is possible to obtain from parsing logs, instead of live DPS meters. So long as the game can output logs, you can get that kind of info, just not in-game. To be honest I've rarely seen a serious situation where having live DPS meters was necessary. The only exception is some highly-tuned heroic 5-man stuff, where it can be important to spot if someone isn't performing. But the moment you overgear it, that ceases being relevant, and for most content, even in heroics, they're pretty close to irrelevant. They certainly cause a lot more strife and epeen-waving and unnecessary rudeness than not having them. Yet without them would WoW be as successful as it is? No, it wouldn't. I suspect not having them in WAR genuinely helped to contribute to it's death (esp. as someone managed to crude hack them in before they got patched out again).

    It'll be interesting to see if SWTOR has them. I'm not sure if I hope that it does or it doesn't.

    ---------- Post added 2011-08-15 at 06:51 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by UunaPriest View Post
    I don't agree, because other things from the meters can be linked as well, damage taken, healing taken, interrupts, CCs broken, friendly fire, etc.
    However there are some people who tunnel vision on just the dps number, but overall I don't think this is a majority.
    I feel certain that they are a majority of people who mention the DPS meter at all, actually. Most people don't even understand stuff like interrupts, CCs broken and so on, and linking that in a PUG with problems is a 100% sure way to make the problems worse. So I don't think that has much value.

    Quote Originally Posted by UunaPriest View Post
    Without meters/logs it would be nearly impossible for raiding to occur at the level it does now. If sally can do more DPS, and still handles fight mechanics sufficiently, obviously they are a better choice when you have a tight enrage timer. If she doesn't they'll link that meter too.

    The meter has more uses than you are attributing to it. progression raiding without logs and meters would be a terrible terrible experience because it would either be next to impossible, or have to be made so easy that when you did have a good group it would be ridiculously boring.
    Don't confuse logs and meters. Progression raiding with meters would be fine - if you can't tell that someone is underperforming, and who, the raid must be a PUG, frankly. Progression raiding without logs would be virtually impossible, though.

    Meters aren't useless, but they hurt as well as helping. Logs are what is essential.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by bigfootbigd View Post
    I didn't exactly read your whole post but what really irritates me as a healer is when dps are too cheap to jump as a Crystalspawn Giant starts to casts Quake in Stonecore because they're too focused trying to top the dps chart
    What really irritates me as a DPS who jumps against a Crystalspawn Giant is that it doesn't take that much effort and requires zero sacrifice in DPS to do it. I like being better than everyone else, and, barring AoE heavy fights, I pull that off by avoiding boss damage, topping meters, topping interrupts, topping offensive dispels (unless a Spellstealing mage is being awesome), and completing fight objectives like CC, blocking beams, and what-have-you. It's even great when someone is like "omfg I win on deepz" and I can respond, "Sure, you beat my by 500, but I took less damage, didn't let my add beat on the healer, and interrupted everything the boss tried to cast. Who played better?"

  17. #17
    It's really just one part of the whole of gameplay.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Wendyclear View Post
    Sorry for the long post, tried to separate my thoughts into space. What do you guys think? Do you think this is one of the things that has lowered the quality of life for WoW in one way or another, whether it be big or small?
    In the past very few people had damage meters. Performance was measured by how well your guild was progressing, which was a team accomplishment. Now that we have damage meters, they've become a virtual scoreboard that updates every millisecond, instead of competing as a team against other guilds people are competing as individuals against everyone, and in the race to be top a lot of things such as control, damage avoidance, team work and fun all get placed on the back burner.

    On the positive side I suspect that many people have a much better understanding of their class, their rotations, their gear and many other aspects of their game, and generally perform in certain aspects far better than they might have before damage meters began to take over.

    But there certainly are downsides.

  19. #19
    Back in the day, and not only in WoW, but other games as well, it was about group focus/teamwork. Not many people were button mashing and stressing themselves out to see their shiny class color on a meter so they could have a pixel erection and flame their friends/guildmates. Instead, many, like me, were excited just to get the new content down and/or to see the rewards that dropped. At that time, people, at the most, looked at some gear pieces, not a meter which doesn't fully tell the actual skill of a player (and nor does gear ofc, but hopefully you see what I mean).
    Don't really see what you mean, unless you're trying to say times where better when you couldn't get a decent measure of how well folks are playing to the content. Kinda nice to be able to say "Jimmy...you're doing 5k DPS. On Baleroc. GTFO of my raid." The damage meter now shows you who isn't pulling their weight. So if you want to bring up team work, the damage meter is telling you whose wanking off in the corner instead of helping.

    Back in vanilla (not saying it was the best or anything like that) you knew someone was pretty decent and did fairly good damage when they had epics or the grand marshal gear as well as its title (and granted this wasn't always the case).
    Just as you knew with fair certainty someone sporting Heroic LK gear and Light of Dawn during Wrath was pretty decent. Or that someone with dragonslayer is pretty decent. Your point..?

    Now it seems that even though Bob is a better player than Sally, they'll take Sally just because she's top dps with 3 buttons or is a certain class that's more valued for arena.
    Crazy talk. The DPS differences between classes at equivalent gearing is pretty minimal for the most part. 99.99% of the player base can't play the classes at the level needed to produce these crazy ass results where there is a 5-6k DPS difference between classes. The better player is going to be taken along, PvE wise. Classes are left behind by top guilds only, because they're min-maxing to extreme levels. The only time I've seen a crappy player brought over a good player was with a Shaman before bloodlust went to mages too.

    Arena was always about FOTM comps, and always will be. DPS meters hardly change anything there.

    Today it's just.. (and not every guild or team ofc) "even though he stands in the fire, hes top 3, get him" "link achievement" "pst ilvl" (granted ilvl is needed for certain things, but you know what I mean).
    Then you run with fucking tards. He stands in the fire? Dead DPS = 0 DPS. Ergo, he's top 3 on the charts for the first minute...and below the tanks by the end of the fight. "Link achieve" is because people are tired of training new people all the time. Halfus was fun as a progression the first time. Not so fun as a progression fight the 30th time. ilvl is kinda important too. I can't see into your mind and know if you are or are not Gods Gift To MURDER in this game. If I don't know you, I need some basis to judge you upon. I have 10 players to go kill everything with. We can afford to carry only so much dead weight.

    Really, your complaints are about the realities that accompanied smaller raid sizes. Carrying is harder in smaller groups, ergo, we are more concerned with weeding out carries.

    or choosing a talent that may increase your DPS by 3% or the over-all raid DPS by 3% and you choose the personal DPS increase.
    And get yelled at by the raid leader for being a fucking tard....

    Seriously, it's a tool. A tool. You use it to fix whats broken. If some tard can't figure out how to use it, they are the problem, not the tool.

  20. #20
    Mechagnome Ignorance's Avatar
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    I use it as merely a reference point to gauge my performance vs others. It wouldn't be fun being a DPS and not competing to be the top DPS (since it is your role).

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