Please add damage meters, Yoshi P.

[Packetdancer]

To be clear, though, I don't think even bringing just a scribble (a raw dps parser) to an art show (what all is usefully doable) would outright add any toxicity, nor is my problem with such basic tools that they're live.

So, anything else aside, the reason I think having a DPS meter built into the game would increase visible/open toxicity is not because the DPS meter itself is inherently toxic, but because in every game community you have a non-zero number of jerks. And in my experience, the jerks in question will sometimes feel like the game giving them performance information is permission to be jerks.

Or, as I've put it in other threads, "if the devs didn't want us telling the black mage they're doing less DPS than a dead healer, they wouldn't give us the numbers to know that!"

I'm not sure that obscuring the information necessarily reduces toxicity, but it (generally) makes the jerks in question less likely to be openly such jerks, simply because some are likely to stay quiet not because they think of "using this information to be a jerk" as being wrong, but because the act of openly admitting to having that information in-game is itself a TOS violation.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Shurrikhan]

And in my experience, the jerks in question will sometimes feel like the game giving them performance information is permission to be jerks.

Admittedly, my experience has largely been the opposite: that people tend to be especially jerks when the facts are still in question, leaving room to push oneself up at others expense.

Given conflicting anecdotes, perhaps we should approach it more from a hypothetical? If I give you a thermometer, do you feel like you've been given implicit permission to cuss out others' cooking?

There's a point at which, yes, one could point to the numbers and rightly say "You are getting us repeatedly crushed," be it in a video game or by confinement to a toilet, but... seeing the numbers isn't what triggered that. They merely measure a fact already there, already visible through the wipes or the evenings/mornings after your friend's undercooked meals.



Feel free to swap out my analogy, as none will be a perfect fit but you could probably do better than my spitball here, but... I'm not yet seeing the warrant there. At worst, I suspect that with X span of information being made more convenient, all that is not-X might be faintly obscured (say, the value of non-rDPS utility, etc.) until the community (re)discovers how to account for it, but that, while complex, doesn't lend itself to an increase in toxicity.

A lack of tool still comprises an interface, after all, complete with all its own biases (many of which are far less comprehensive, well-weighed, or telling, even, than raw dps); it's just one ruled by whatever is most easily eyeballed (late raidbuffs, deaths, etc.).

[Magikazam]

You're not looking at the big picture though.

There are two ways a company deals with increased workload.
1. increase manpower by shifting workers from other activities, ie. content, or
2. increase manpower by increasing staff, more money.

So, we either end up with less content less often, ie. pushing out patches every 6 months with less content and expansions every three years, OR increase the sub price to compensate for increased payroll.
Which one would you suggest?

1. You know nothing of how videogame industry work if you think they would take someone from, let say the sound design team to go be a GM in game.
2. They are currently hiring.

Sub price and content developement time has nothing to do with Game master. you're just talking out of your ass.

[Magikazam]

Are ya winning son?

What!? After 86 pages they still haven't agreed to your own point of view? Well maybe within the next 86 pages they will finally see your side.

Keep at it Champ!

Yes, let stop supporting anything people can't agree on and never update the game. Someone think endwalker should be the last xpac? Well to bad we never get 7.0 unless forum change his mind!

[Renalt]

Yes, let stop supporting anything people can't agree on and never update the game. Someone think endwalker should be the last xpac? Well to bad we never get 7.0 unless forum change his mind!

Are you high? I've said nothing about stopping everything about the game. I just think it's stupid to try to change someone's mind over something as simple as "Damage meters". You are either for it or against it and unless you can summon a primal yourself...you aren't changing their mind. For EITHER side. If it hasn't happened in this many pages...do you PERSONALLY think you can do it within the next 86? I invite you to try.

[Joven]

Are you high? I've said nothing about stopping everything about the game. I just think it's stupid to try to change someone's mind over something as simple as "Damage meters". You are either for it or against it and unless you can summon a primal yourself...you aren't changing their mind. For EITHER side. If it hasn't happened in this many pages...do you PERSONALLY think you can do it within the next 86? I invite you to try.

[Renalt]

Vaas can always tell me the definition of insanity...again and again.

[Shurrikhan]

Are you high? I've said nothing about stopping everything about the game. I just think it's stupid to try to change someone's mind over something as simple as "Damage meters".

It isn't particularly simple though, as 87 pages (even if bloated by... none too productive of posts) of complicating contexts have demonstrated. You're making the case that, for example, "it's just one button" to an EW Summoner on the verge of losing Ruin IV with no replacement (or, say, that casters should [not] be able to precast / change targets mid-cast); there's a lot more history and precedent bundled up in this, and far more at stake because of what all is intertwined with it.

Worse, "There will be no changing of minds anyways," has only ever been a prelude to loss.


The current policies have done more harm than good, and have increasingly denied players means to improve, or even know that they should, by arming them with threats against anyone who might tell them otherwise. It has deepened divides, and formed whole meta-groupings of players, not per some more natural spectrum of how much they enjoy engaging with combat and its little points here and there of optimization, but instead per boogieman dichotomies of "(toxic) elitists" and "(lazy) casuals." There is amble gains to be had through improvements to the way the game handles these things.

Now, that's not to say that a raw DPS parser is some cure-all, either, but it's something whose appearance would require those policies to be reevaluated.

Nor would --or should-- it stop there. You could instead have the default render its measure as relative potency dealt, as not to be so swayed by primary stat. You could dually have it show buff value given and owed. You could as easily have something many other metrics tracked, allow players to set their own holistic means of personal evaluation by accounting as they wish around avoidable damage, mitigation, healing efficiency -- whatever they may take interest in, atop a default or different imported weights. You could easily include after-action reports, or even allow players to check their (breaks in) rotation. Etc., etc.

[SieyaM]

How much trouble are you all having clearing roulettes? If you're out there chasing world first or best parses you already know what to use and have the tools available to do so. The only thing adding meters in game for everything will do get people to berate players for not doing the same DPS in a dungeon roulette that the top players are doing in savage with BiS. It is also completely unnecessary, I can't be just lucky enough to do the 90 and expert roulette 4 or 5 times a week and have them take no longer than 15 minutes each.

[Joven]

Vaas can always tell me the definition of insanity...again and again.

Such a great villain only to be relegated to a side character.