Musings on Mods

[Carson_The_Brown]

So, I heard from a fairly popular Youtuber that Square Enix is considering mods. Generally I take a fairly libertarian view towards game design but I think I have a few... reservations... on the matter of mods in MMORPGs.

So, I'm not going to fluff this thing too heavily, lets jump straight at the elephant in the room, namely damage meters. I heard from this youtuber that you can read your DPS against a target dummy, I don't know how that works but I think damage meters are great in the abstract. The problem is when you allow damage meters in the field.

The pro-damage meter argument usually goes like this: "I want to know how well I'm doing compared to other DPS". To that I say: Awesome. My Lich King raid group regularly had friendly arguments about who was top DPS 1 week or the other. This doesn't become a serious issue until you look at the PUG scene. My personal, very unscientific case studies indicate a general attitude of camaraderie among PUG groups in FFXIV. Attitudes typically come down to "did we kill it or not?". I think this is an excellent attitude and I sense it regularly in PUG groups on FFXIV. Seeing as how 90% of the content is geared towards PUGing I wouldn't change it for the world.

Compare and contrast to the PUG scene in World of Warcraft. Damage meter mods are not just expected for raiders, you are actively looked down upon if you choose to keep it off. This, my friends, is very stressful. On top of that, other people can see your damage readings in which case you run headlong into what the folks at Penny Arcade refer to as GIFT (Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory) which is normally formulated as:

(Normal Person)+(Captive Audience)+(Anonymity) = (Complete Asshole)

That usually covers the reason why people become insensitive and generally sociopathic online. I would offer a corollary that I believe includes why this is worse in online games; formulated as:

{(Normal Person) + (Captive Audience) + (Anonymity)}*{1 + (Data Known)/(Data Available)} = (Online Game Troll)

So, what does this Gobbledygook mean? All it means, generally speaking, is that what is considered general internet douchebaggery is amplified by raw data. The type of people who fall victim to GIFT are generally made far worse when given just enough information to give them a sense of empowerment. I point again to World of Warcraft. I played heavily in Lich King (I was a semi-pro Holy Paladin) and PUG raided as a resto druid in Cataclysm. PUG raids in WoW are... pretty vitriolic. All it takes is 1 wipe for people to descend upon the lowest DPS like a pack of ravenous Tonberries. On top of that we have all seen that one mage that is constantly pulling ahead of the tank because he wants to pad his Damage Dealt reading. On top of that, damage meters eventually leak into players' expectations for game design. The drive for optimized builds and streamlined experiences has pushed Blizzard to embrace level design that closer resembles hallways with copy paste monsters than well fleshed, organic zones with mystery and danger like The Vault.

As a quick aside, I would like to point towards Rift : Planes of Telara. specifically the class system. you are allowed to choose 3 classes and mix/match them to suit your play style. This would normally lead to thousands of potential classes but the drive for optimization has slimmed that down to 2 or 3 viable combos per archetype.

To compound this, mods require a great deal of momentum from the player community. We can romanticize all day but ultimately, mod designers do what they do for recognition. This isn't a bad thing, I'm not saying modders are greedy or fame obsessed. All I'm saying is that human beings need to eat. People do in fact make mods because they love the medium, but in the end every modder hopes to bet scouted by an organization that can pay more regularly than a tip jar. For this reason, modders will generally flock to games that guarantee a large payoff in exposure for their input of time and effort.

To illustrate this point I would like to bring Rift back into the argument. Rift does in fact have mods but they aren't nearly as high in quality as World of Warcraft. This is because there was a mad rush initially to become the Tandanu of Rift. Unfortunately, the lack of a very large player base meant that the Curse Spotlight only fell on Rift developers rarely; sure, there were mini spotlights like "Best in Class: Rift" or "Best in Class: Elder Scrolls IV" but the major spotlights always went to WoW and Minecraft and those were the guys getting scooped by talent agents. Nowadays, Rift's mods are out of date and buggy.

Another quick aside, Optimization. 1 guy in his basement can't ensure that his killer app will work on every PC out there, let alone the PS3/PS4. when Blizzard allowed DBM in WoW it worked... okay because it allowed them to slack on encounter design (specifically conveyance) because DBM could pick up the slack. Will there be mods on PS4? if so, what kind of quality control could you possibly enforce? how do you know Tandanu will develop for all 3 platforms? Hell, I cant even get Recount to work right on my top of the line 2011 PC. We cant expect someone working for free to make a mod that will run equally well on an '08 laptop and a PS4 while maintaining the 30 FPS minimum necessary to remain competitive. That kind of thing takes dozens of programmers and QA personnel with fleets of computers testing on a wide array of hardware skews. WoW modders can (kind of) get away without the professional QA testers because the player base is so incredibly huge that the reams of metrics data provided by the 6 million players allows for them to pull off--- admittedly half assed--- quality control but those same devs would have to hire entirely new teams to develop for the PS3 and PS4.

TL;DR: Square Enix is one of my favourite development firms, but I seriously doubt they have the infrastructure to do it. just because Blizzard can (barely) pull off mods that doesn't mean that its a good thing for every MMORPG, or even any MMORPG.

[AlphaFox]

Just a tip, you can edit your post to bypass the limit. Personally I've heard nothing of the sort.

[Risvertasashi]

SE has been promising addon support since before ARR's release. They just keep pushing it back, again and again and again. It's not a huge deal since people are making useful addons anyway, just we can't talk about them.

...Still no third party replacement for party bars that show when a party member is out of range, alas, but not really something that can be done with an overlay. So maybe we'll get official support, someday, and it will be nice...

[Callinon]

Damage meters are a tool. Every tool that has ever been created can and has been abused (I'm looking at you, awl... you know what you did).

The reason "people will be jerks" is not a reason not to do something. You are never going to stop people being jerks. So if we accept that "jerks exist" as a given we cannot change, there's no longer a reason not to provide the tools.

As someone else also pointed out, damage meters exist right now. You can't talk about them in-game because they involve third party programs which are technically against the TOS (though Yoshi P has said in the past that he's fine with people using them... just don't be a jerk with them). So it's a tool that some of us have right now. Keeping it in this state is really unfair to console players because there's no way to make it available to them.

Also, have you seen the dps checks in this game? They're the realest. It actually IS important for me to know not only if I am doing my job properly, but that everyone else is too. Otherwise you can't fix problems.

[nyttyn]

if they didn't want people to be annoyed about people putting forth poor DPS, they shouldn't have put such extremely strict DPS checks into heavensward.

(hello Bismarck EX)


any single argument anyone might have about "oh but people will use it to harass" is outweighed by the fact that you absolutely need to put forth a certain amount of DPS to clear specific heavensward fights, and being unable to tell who is dead weight on your team is a severe handicap as a result.

not that i condone harassment of course, but it's extremely stupid that the current extreme primal fights have such strict DPS checks, with absolutely no way ingame to tell who's lagging behind if you cannot pass said checks .

[Ayuhra]

I have a mixed feeling about addons.

WoW is almost unplayable at advanced levels when you go in naked. Deadly Boss Mods and damage meters are a must as are mods that change the UI. Raiding Guilds used to ask for screenshots of your UI to be sure you were modded. It's a bit silly and...I think DBM has ruined my ability to play this game. How do I move out of AoEs without a sound blaring in my ear? I'm having to teach myself to rely on visual queues only after a long time of heavy reliance on audio ones. Honestly a part of me would love to have a DBM and a timer addon to help me manage BLM a little better but I shouldn't NEED such things to play. If they became available I'd need them because you are just crippling yourself without such things.

Damage Meters are.... How to discuss damage meters. Any DPS would love to have a live parse on their screen telling them how they are doing. It helps you tighten rotations when you know exactly what you're contributing to a fight. The problem is meters change the environment of playing a DPS especially in a PUG. Whereas before you were a united front against a boss now you are engaged in a competition with everyone around you to not get kicked from the group. This attitude has actually destroyed the self esteem of some WoW players. I know some players who came here, tried their best, and kicked themselves if they felt they were underperforming (heck I do this). One person I know tried healing a Trial for the first time and after seven wipes she was in tears and had to leave even though the rest of the group was trying to encourage her to try again. It's hard to feel good about anything when MMO addons have taught you to see yourself as a number and nothing else. You know how people in FFXIV will usually attempt something a few times before voting disband? In WoW people usually only have one attempt in them. If the numbers don't look fantastic they will leave, to heck with people who've never done the content before (they're usually vote kicked anyway)

If SE allows addon support they will have to be careful in its implementation. I worry addons could change some things about the community. They are great tools but tools are all they ever should be.

That was probably a rambling post, sorry, never had my coffee today.

[hobostew]

I really hate posts that grossly exaggerate the "harassment" caused by parsers. I played WoW for years and can count in one hand the times a meter maid caused drama and they are always promptly told to stop by everyone else. People seem to only remember the few times they run into jerks but disregard all the hundreds of other times were nothing at all happened. I'll also add that parsers aren't required by most raid groups. In fact, there are very few addons that groups usually require (can only think of DBM but even that isn't always required).

[Ayuhra]

if they didn't want people to be annoyed about people putting forth poor DPS, they shouldn't have put such extremely strict DPS checks into heavensward.

(hello Bismarck EX)


any single argument anyone might have about "oh but people will use it to harass" is outweighed by the fact that you absolutely need to put forth a certain amount of DPS to clear specific heavensward fights, and being unable to tell who is dead weight on your team is a severe handicap as a result.

not that i condone harassment of course, but it's extremely stupid that the current extreme primal fights have such strict DPS checks, with absolutely no way ingame to tell who's lagging behind if you cannot pass said checks .

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.

[KisaiTenshi]

if they didn't want people to be annoyed about people putting forth poor DPS, they shouldn't have put such extremely strict DPS checks into heavensward.

(hello Bismarck EX)


any single argument anyone might have about "oh but people will use it to harass" is outweighed by the fact that you absolutely need to put forth a certain amount of DPS to clear specific heavensward fights, and being unable to tell who is dead weight on your team is a severe handicap as a result.

not that i condone harassment of course, but it's extremely stupid that the current extreme primal fights have such strict DPS checks, with absolutely no way ingame to tell who's lagging behind if you cannot pass said checks .

It's a BS response to tell people "you're dead weight according to my unauthorized mod that tells me you suck"

SE clearly has the ability to tell the player/party who is purposely dragging down the party, it exists in the PvP content.

What needs to happen is that the rewards need to scale by participation. So you can't "carry" dead weight, or better yet "can't sell clears"

A dungeon should not be clearable with one person being dead weight. Regardless of the gear creep.

But to the OP...

Mods are extremely abused in MMO's, especially mods that give the player access to content they should never ever have. I'd rather the status quo stay, and SE hand out a better carrot for preventing bad behavior and breaking existing DPS mods than opening add-on's up and someone figuring out how to automate the fight due to too much information being present in the client.

[Nikita]

Besides the fact that this topic has already been beaten to death, I would just like to point out that DPS meters are already a thing in FFXIV. They are against the ToS however. Just 2 days ago I was being complimented on how I was outdamaging their MNK in a duty finder party.

DPS meters are here to stay. Not going anywhere, sorry. That's just a fact of the genre. People can already parse you and if you're in a group with a few jerks playing together they can see on their meter that you're low they can kick you. Now, if they're smart they won't flat out tell you that it was your damage, but the fact remains the same.

I like DPS meters. I would like to glance down and be able to tell my friend to stop paying so much attention to Netflix because he's slowing us down.

I hope they allow them when they eventually introduce addon support.