Musings on Mods

[Hyunckel]

I think a problem with Bismarck Ex, especially right now, is its minimal ilvl requirement. You can go in there with ilvl 142 which is total nonsense. Even Neverreap and Fractal require 145.

Well it can AND has been cleared at ilv150 (and ravana 160) lol

It's just that some people plainly suck at rotations, keeping up buffs, positionning etc. Some jobs also underperform in regard to others.

[Nikita]

I've played a lot of WoW. I had always used DPS meters, and I rarely saw people call each other out. I mean hey, I may have made a comment or two over vent to friends about someone who obviously didn't know how to play their class, but I was never rude to them.

Yeah, there are jerks out there. They're going to be jerks weather or not they have DPS meters. What's so wrong with a meter that tells you how people are performing? What's wrong with wanting to find out who is holding your group back vs a DPS check boss?

Now, I've seen some people making comments about people who are clearly emotionally unstable and bursting into tears upon looking at their meters, without any provocation. That's not the meter's fault. They need psychiatric help.

There are already jerks, trolls, and douche bags galore in this game. Guys. Seriously. Calm down. You might perceive people to be more douchey with meters, but they're just channeling that same douche energy in a different way - namely calling out people who are under-performing.

Imagine how much faster CT runs would have went if you could see which summoners were just spamming ruin II and not casting any DoTs!!!

[KisaiTenshi]

That's some pretty interesting math. Unfortunately this sounds like a system that would reward anyone who bothers to step into the encounter room, which would make it redundant. I want to see that idea fleshed out, though. Maybe a feature that only allows the party to /kick people who contribute less than X enmity per second, requiring a specific pack of enemies be defeated before the option becomes available.
...

The math is just aligning it with the Role's purpose.
In a 4 player dungeon under "perfect" conditions:
1 Tank has Enmity 100% of the time
1 Healer does 100% of the healing
2 DPS deals 50%+ of the damage (each responsible for 25%)

In an 8 player dungeon under "perfect" conditions:
2 Tanks have Enmity 100% of the time
2 Healers do 100% healing in tandem with each other
4 DPS deal 50%+ of the damage (each responsible for 12.5%)

In both cases it should be assumed that the Healer does ZERO DPS and thus the DPS players should be able to do 66% of the DPS without an issue if both healers are not doing DPS. In overgeared situations, the Healers may have less need to conserve MP for healing and could probably drive the DPS players portion of DPS down below 50%. So that's when it starts shifting back to the point where a healer may end up doing more DPS than one of the DPS players.

Like what would "improve" the dungeon content management would be to have the dungeon prompt to kick DPS players that can't meet the generous 12.5% or 25% requirement to not be a "lame carry" or kick healers that are spending too much time DPS'ing or attracting enmity with overhealing, or Tanks that are not tanking.

"<Player> DPS is not sufficient to continue the dungeon and will be replaced if the party is KO'd", "<Player>'s healing technique is not sufficient to continue this dungeon and will be replaced upon Party KO", "<Player>'s enmity control is not sufficient to continue this dungeon and will be replaced upon Party KO"

At least that way, it's much easier to get rid of carries, bots, and you don't get situations like what happens in Coil where you wait for 2 hours only to see a vote abandon after the first wipe.

Hence giving a heads-up for the named player to improve or for the rest of the party to be less aggressive on taking other roles (eg Healer tanking, DPS healing, DPS tanking) if they want to keep them.

As for rewarding simply stepping into the encounter room, no if a player can't hit the target, they wouldn't get to "need/greed" on the item, and wouldn't get a clear from such content. For harder "extreme" and "savage" content, the numbers would probably be less generous since they are tuned differently.

My studies (I am a student of game design, hence why I would have case studies on the matter) indicate that while antisocial personality types are equally represented in all communities, there are environmental qualities that encourage these fringe elements (the rough estimate is that these antisocial elements constitute about 15% across the board on all communities) to behave more proactively.

Oh my, you have picked an interesting field.

I'd say you're probably only correct about communities that do not have fulltime PvP. So PvE games, yeah, 15% seems pretty consistent.

PvP games, is all about pulling down "white knights" to the bullies level. So games that have a specific PvP element (eg WoW, SW:TOR, Aion, Archeage) where PvP is engaged all the time, players will go out of their way to cause misery to the other faction "because I can." Other games that have PvP as a criminal element instead (Wizardy Online, Archeage), actually creates a community out of the sociopaths and the role players who can keep their moral sense in check to play with them. Like in Wizardy Online... at least the NA version before it was closed, also had a Permadeath mechanic, so it was not in your best interest to keep throwing yourself at someone, because eventually you'll just get ganged up on. Even then, we had at least one "notorious criminal" that everyone had on their personal KOS (Kill on Site) list. Making friends with the players who play criminals, tends to get you a certain level of "Mafia-like" power in that game. I think most players went to TESO or LOTR who played it when it shutdown. But it makes for an interesting case study in how the toxicity of the player base combined with a mechanic (full time PvP) that allows it, actually keeps people from enjoying or even trying it.

So a small portion of players willingly drive people from the game through various forms of griefing

Which comes back to the mods question. Do not, under any circumstances give players tools to enable griefing. Allowing players to see other players DPS other than their own enables such. In another game I played there was this notorious mod that allowed a decimal value of combat power to be displayed in the game where otherwise would show "weak, weaker, strong, very strong" beside the monster or player's name. That unauthorized mod is so notorious that it's claimed to be the sole excuse to install mods/hacks/cheats into the game client. That mod was the equivalent of being able to see the players maximum DPS, even though it had zero bearing on the players actual skill level as it was only a calculation based off their stats and gear equipped. Still, players would use this unauthorized mod to find PvP targets. I even called out people on this by equipping a kind of twinking gear (gear that deliberately changed the combat power to a low value, to change the skill experience gained when fighting weaker monsters) and standing in places that people same-race PvP, and sure enough there will be every half hour or so, people that just come by entirely to score "weak" kills, when I could kill them in one shot with or without the gear.

Fortunately FFXIV doesn't have such a PvP system, but if a "dueling" system ever came out, this is exactly what would happen if too much access is allowed by authorized mods.

[Carson_The_Brown]

The math is just aligning it with the Role's purpose.
In a 4 player dungeon under "perfect" conditions:
1 Tank has Enmity 100% of the time
1 Healer does 100% of the healing
2 DPS deals 50%+ of the damage (each responsible for 25%)

In an 8 player dungeon under "perfect" conditions:
2 Tanks have Enmity 100% of the time
2 Healers do 100% healing in tandem with each other
4 DPS deal 50%+ of the damage (each responsible for 12.5%)

In both cases it should be assumed that the Healer does ZERO DPS and thus the DPS players should be able to do 66% of the DPS without an issue if both healers are not doing DPS. In overgeared situations, the Healers may have less need to conserve MP for healing and could probably drive the DPS players portion of DPS down below 50%. So that's when it starts shifting back to the point where a healer may end up doing more DPS than one of the DPS players.

Like what would "improve" the dungeon content management would be to have the dungeon prompt to kick DPS players that can't meet the generous 12.5% or 25% requirement to not be a "lame carry" or kick healers that are spending too much time DPS'ing or attracting enmity with overhealing, or Tanks that are not tanking.

"<Player> DPS is not sufficient to continue the dungeon and will be replaced if the party is KO'd", "<Player>'s healing technique is not sufficient to continue this dungeon and will be replaced upon Party KO", "<Player>'s enmity control is not sufficient to continue this dungeon and will be replaced upon Party KO"

At least that way, it's much easier to get rid of carries, bots, and you don't get situations like what happens in Coil where you wait for 2 hours only to see a vote abandon after the first wipe.

Hence giving a heads-up for the named player to improve or for the rest of the party to be less aggressive on taking other roles (eg Healer tanking, DPS healing, DPS tanking) if they want to keep them.

As for rewarding simply stepping into the encounter room, no if a player can't hit the target, they wouldn't get to "need/greed" on the item, and wouldn't get a clear from such content. For harder "extreme" and "savage" content, the numbers would probably be less generous since they are tuned differently.



Oh my, you have picked an interesting field.

I'd say you're probably only correct about communities that do not have fulltime PvP. So PvE games, yeah, 15% seems pretty consistent.

PvP games, is all about pulling down "white knights" to the bullies level. So games that have a specific PvP element (eg WoW, SW:TOR, Aion, Archeage) where PvP is engaged all the time, players will go out of their way to cause misery to the other faction "because I can." Other games that have PvP as a criminal element instead (Wizardy Online, Archeage), actually creates a community out of the sociopaths and the role players who can keep their moral sense in check to play with them. Like in Wizardy Online... at least the NA version before it was closed, also had a Permadeath mechanic, so it was not in your best interest to keep throwing yourself at someone, because eventually you'll just get ganged up on. Even then, we had at least one "notorious criminal" that everyone had on their personal KOS (Kill on Site) list. Making friends with the players who play criminals, tends to get you a certain level of "Mafia-like" power in that game. I think most players went to TESO or LOTR who played it when it shutdown. But it makes for an interesting case study in how the toxicity of the player base combined with a mechanic (full time PvP) that allows it, actually keeps people from enjoying or even trying it.

So a small portion of players willingly drive people from the game through various forms of griefing

Which comes back to the mods question. Do not, under any circumstances give players tools to enable griefing. Allowing players to see other players DPS other than their own enables such. In another game I played there was this notorious mod that allowed a decimal value of combat power to be displayed in the game where otherwise would show "weak, weaker, strong, very strong" beside the monster or player's name. That unauthorized mod is so notorious that it's claimed to be the sole excuse to install mods/hacks/cheats into the game client. That mod was the equivalent of being able to see the players maximum DPS, even though it had zero bearing on the players actual skill level as it was only a calculation based off their stats and gear equipped. Still, players would use this unauthorized mod to find PvP targets. I even called out people on this by equipping a kind of twinking gear (gear that deliberately changed the combat power to a low value, to change the skill experience gained when fighting weaker monsters) and standing in places that people same-race PvP, and sure enough there will be every half hour or so, people that just come by entirely to score "weak" kills, when I could kill them in one shot with or without the gear.

Fortunately FFXIV doesn't have such a PvP system, but if a "dueling" system ever came out, this is exactly what would happen if too much access is allowed by authorized mods.

I think a dueling system would be interesting so long as it was exactly that, 2 explicitly consenting players (that does not mean 1 consenting player and another player that "consents" by being in the same zone; something that involves a button prompt saying "Nosrac has challenged you to a duel, do you accept?") or 2 consenting teams fighting in a format similar to Arenas. I personally abhor violence against moral entities (even in a virtual environment) but some people genuinely find pleasure in PvP.

That being said,

many open world PvP games include a similar mechanic. WoW's level notation (gray for >10 below, yellow for competitive, orange for >2 levels above, red for <6 levels above, and ?? for everything else) a system that tells you the exact power level can be a boon or a bane depending on the general intent of your game. I agree that it would be a system breaker in a game like WoW. How much worse would the griefing be if you could get a handy readout on that Belf saying "you have 50 ilvl over him"? I doubt this would become an issue in FFXIV since SE doesn't really do PVP design.

Also, 15% is actually accurate even in PVP games. Griefers and Campers are actually a very, very small portion of an MMO's community. I mean, if you expand griefer to mean "anyone who has ever intentionally engaged in PVP against a vastly inferior opponent" then I could see the percentage jump up to 60 or 70 percent, closer to 90 or more if you include people who have engaged in the sort of cowboy justice that used to go down in The Burning Crusade; but if you're only defining griefer as "an individual who intentionally and habitually engages in violent behavior against a target to the exclusion of the intended use of the medium" then 15% basically holds true everywhere from ArcheAge to 4chan.

Unfortunately, Finagle's Law is a real thing that needs to be tended to. You can rely on people using any given thing for the most perverse possible ends. That's why I typically believe MMORPGs need to be highly controlled environments. Your average individual cant really be trusted to police itself.

[Whiteroom]

I wouldn't say it's exaggerating to say mods like damage meters can cause a cultural shift that makes DPS feel even worse. It does, absolutely. It's giving the jerks we have now a legitimate megaphone with which they can be jerks.

As opposed to how it is now, where just the heals and tanks get crapped on for not doing their jobs?

I'm all for dps meters, yeah you will have your people that are jerks about it, but most of them.are being jerks already. I would much rather see my dps so that I would know where I stand and if I need improving. Also it does yet you know if there are weak links. Right now so many parties arent passing BEX because they cant get enough dps. I would much prefer to know why. Is it that everyone is a sub par dpsnin the group, or is one or two people really not doing their job.

[Slirith]

Wish SE would just patch out the parsers....just adds toxicity in every game where they are allowed

[Callinon]

Wish SE would just patch out the parsers....just adds toxicity in every game where they are allowed

A: That's impossible
B: Jerks don't need a tool in order to be jerks. Trust me, they'd find a way without it.

[Carson_The_Brown]

As opposed to how it is now, where just the heals and tanks get crapped on for not doing their jobs?

I am not sure that "other people are jerks so we can be jerks back" is really a helpful argument. It kind of feels like the American argument that says "The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun". Yes, DPS are frequently culprits in this, does this mean we want to arm tanks and heals with the capacity to retaliate?

Also, how many people on all 3 sides of this debate are going to pre-emptively strike bad damage dealers? In my, admittedly, exhaustive experience with PUGging in addon-enabled MMOs has shown that people doing low damage lashing at the tanks for not surviving adds and heals for not keeping the tanks in check occurs just as often as you see tanks preemptively vote kicking DPS because the first boss didn't go down fast enough. If the issue is really DPS wanting to know if they are measuring up then there are better ways to do it than making any failure publicly available.

Shaming people for being bad at their job doesn't actually help them improve. It only makes them more nervous.

I think the answer to tanks and heals getting flamed is regulation, not more fire. The commendation system is designed to incentivise more cooperation. The devs should focus there for eliminating hostility towards tanks and heals. The fact that tanks and healers are largely pacifistic at this point (though my sample pool is hardly representative) is good. As a DPS myself I think the answer is to encourage DPS to be less hostile.

If the driving issue behind enabling mods revolves around damage meters then I might suggest a different solution. What do you think would happen if SE decided to add a separate commendation that can only be given to PUG DPS? Greater scientists than I have already proven that the lower vitriol among tanks and heals can be linked to them getting most of the Coms. I think the hope of getting the commendation could help to alleviate the issue of harassing DPS better than giving tanks and healers a way to bash back.

In short, if the reason for damage meters is to check unruly DPS, the answer is letting them know that there are consequences for their actions and letting the know that those consequences don't have to be negative. These people are cruel because they need attention, lets give it to them.

[Kaedan94]

Doesn't really matter what some random youtuber says, even if they are popular.

SE has been "considering" addons for years. The fact they are still "considering" it speaks worlds. Protip: In Japan, if your boss is "considering" an idea that you've put forth, what they are really saying is NO. They are just being polite by not flat out rejecting you.

[Nikita]

Doesn't really matter what some random youtuber says, even if they are popular.

SE has been "considering" addons for years. The fact they are still "considering" it speaks worlds. Protip: In Japan, if your boss is "considering" an idea that you've put forth, what they are really saying is NO. They are just being polite by not flat out rejecting you.

Hate to break it to you, they've moved on from "considering" it long ago, it's since been confirmed to be in the works.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ff-.../1100-6425730/