Quote Originally Posted by Ihnako View Post
Your idea isn't bad at first glance (btw. WoW copied the idea from other games - just to name one "Guildwars") but with the limit of 6 lines there isn't much to test what you can't test on any random mob outside of any city.
Thanks for your input!
I only mentioned WoW because that was the only game I have played which had the feature. I wouldn't be surprised if it copied the concept from other games, I just haven't played them yet

Testing on mobs is fine, in fact it's been done up till today to test lots of things, however there are a couple of drawbacks going this route:

1) Level variability - Since we cannot see the actual level of the mob with /check (with the exception of 'Even Match'), what you fight on one mob may not be the same, thus test data can be skewed slightly.

2) Mob family - Every mob differ from each other when you cross family, thus you would have to fight the same mob of the same family to keep data consistent.

3) They fight back - This may not be an issue with mobs several levels lower than you, however for Tough and above, your thoughts shift more towards survival, depending on the job with which you are testing. Furthermore, getting any enfeeble effects on you which may change your stats and thus would skew data as well.

4) They die - This is not desirable when you would like to effectively capture certain things such as DPS, whether a multi-hit weapon activated, or the amount of damage you dealt with a multi-hit WS, since that data could be lost on the final blow. Furthermore, on death you would have to look for another mob with the same attributes (per point #1 and #2)

Having these testable dummies would remove these variables thus creating a good 'control', which I feel would be helpful for those players who want to simply gauge relative damage on different gear, as well as those players who want to get more fine-grained and flesh out formulas. It makes testing things much more convenient.

The 6-line (isn't it 8-line max?) limit could be resolved by applying the right filters, depending on what you want to test, but yeah I agree that the limited line this is a hurdle. Also, it is probably safe to mention that a number of players make this a non-issue by using parsers.