Musings on Mods

[Ayuhra]

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This is how I feel too sometimes. Luckily I fell into the arms of an FC with pretty decent players who have been willing to let me learn the game and my class. I suspect I am still bad at Black Maging. I can keep our rotation up on a target dummy but any time I have to target switch or move I flail a bit. I aetherial manipulate, offensively convert, use my shields where needed to spare the healer grief but my raw damage output I can tell still needs some tightening. Frankly, I don't think the new rotation is very fun but with some QoL tweaks it could be. It's frustrating to lose a rotation for 30 seconds due to movement or because a faster class finished off a mob before you could hit it (No my Blizz IV didn't land, I needed that!)

snip.

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. I'm not saying it would ruin the game. I played WoW for eight years sometimes casually sometimes as a progression raider and I certainly would not have done that if I felt like I was going to watch someone punch my mom for hours each time I logged in. And I used damage meters to measure my own performance and found them a valuable tool. I like the idea of them, I'm just always a bit unsure about introducing them to a new game.

[Carson_The_Brown]

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. I'm not saying it would ruin the game. I played WoW for eight years sometimes casually sometimes as a progression raider and I certainly would not have done that if I felt like I was going to watch someone punch my mom for hours each time I logged in. And I used damage meters to measure my own performance and found them a valuable tool. I like the idea of them, I'm just always a bit unsure about introducing them to a new game.

This was largely what I was referring to in this general warning. I don't think mods are inherently bad. At the risk of sounding hokey, I think that we are at a critical junction and the soul of the community is being discussed. Do we want to be like WoW's community. Many people come here because the WoW community is vitriolic and they want to play with a more laid back community. Do we want to take a step towards WoW for the sake of a little convenience or do we want to continue to be a community that is welcoming to casuals and newcomers?

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I admit. mods are awesome, in WoW I have GTFO, Gatherer, DBM, and ElvUI and my Monk and Death Knights were damn good. I left WoW because it's community was unneccisarily mean to people who were even slightly behind in the learning curve. I have seen DPS get kicked, not because they caused a wipe, but because the DPS was less than 5% outside of expectation for their ilvl. I want us all to consider this thoroughly before we push SE to enable mods. If we feel the convenience of mods is worth the risk to our collective soul then I fully support the community's push for mods. I merely intend to urge caution before jumping headlong into what many of us think we want

[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.

[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.

[Whiteroom]

I am not sure that "other people are jerks so we can be jerks back" is really a helpful argument.

Funny that that is what you got out of it. It's not about being jerks back. The whole argument against parsers is summed up as, "people will be jerks to dps.". Well guess what, tanks and healers already get this, but I don't see anyone talking about babying them. The parser is more than a tool for improving your own dps. While it is primarily that, it also allows you to see if people in the party are not doing their job. When I join a party, I want to carry my weight, and I am in the right to want others to do the same.

While people can take the time to teach if someone if they feel like it, they are by no means obligated to, or are a bad person for not wanting to. Sometimes I'm in the mood to help, others, I really don't want to.

This is a game with many dps checks, and no way, save passing them, to know how you are doing. Unless someone is obviously terrible, there is no way to know where you are going wrong. How many dps entering BEX right now are going, "I thought I was good, but I can't clear this check." When maybe they are preforming and getting stuck with those who aren't. In a couple of my runs that failed, I've had the same DRG, DPS isn't coming close, is it him? I don't know. But he is a common member in low dps parties. So, is he unfortunate enough to be just getting stuck with bad dps, or is he the issue? Right now, when I join a party and hes in it, I'm not thinking "Yay! Clear for sure!"

Also, your solution of comming dps goes nowhere if people don't know who is performing.

I saw a lot of abuse of the parse system in DCUO. A lot of people who didn't know what they were talking about slamming people. But you have slamming anyway. And hey, if there is a parse system, maybe, just maybe, that lippy dps who likes to yell at everyone, will think twice after seeing where he stands. Instead of thinking only of the abuse the system will cause, maybe we can look at some of the abuse it will alleviate.

[Carson_The_Brown]

so, a number of interesting ideas here. let me address them paragraph by paragraph.

firstly, you say right here

Funny that that is what you got out of it. It's not about being jerks back. The whole argument against parsers is summed up as, "people will be jerks to dps.". Well guess what, tanks and healers already get this, but I don't see anyone talking about babying them. The parser is more than a tool for improving your own dps. While it is primarily that, it also allows you to see if people in the party are not doing their job. When I join a party, I want to carry my weight, and I am in the right to want others to do the same.

Okay, I really don't want to strawman you so let me first verify your point. I see here "The issue isnt that people will be jerks to DPS" followed immediately by "people are already jerks to tanks and healers, why should DPS get a pass". I believe I might be misunderstanding you so I would ask you to elaborate.

This is a game with many dps checks, and no way, save passing them, to know how you are doing. Unless someone is obviously terrible, there is no way to know where you are going wrong. How many dps entering BEX right now are going, "I thought I was good, but I can't clear this check." When maybe they are preforming and getting stuck with those who aren't. In a couple of my runs that failed, I've had the same DRG, DPS isn't coming close, is it him? I don't know. But he is a common member in low dps parties. So, is he unfortunate enough to be just getting stuck with bad dps, or is he the issue? Right now, when I join a party and hes in it, I'm not thinking "Yay! Clear for sure!"

I find from my personal experience with XIV that I don't need to see a number in this game to know I'm under performing. In fact, I would argue that the stringent nature of the DPS checks kind of makes it apparent with no uncertain terms. I understand that my experience is very personal and may not be reflective of the average player. If you are regularly clearing a dungeon but you show up once and the DPS checks aren't getting passed then you can be largely certain its that Dragoon you were referring to. If all of your dungeons are clearing really slow then you can be certain it's your own doing. As far as this Bard is concerned, that particular binary--- whether the checks are getting passed regularly--- is the only important part of the readout and you don't need a 3rd party posting leaderboards after every single trash pull, which, I am sad to say, happens in about 10% (speculative, not calculated) of my solo WoW PUGs.

Also, your solution of comming dps goes nowhere if people don't know who is performing.

At the risk of sounding like a no good hippie lib, I think commendations should be handed to the players that take an active interest in the community, not the ones pumping out big numbers. I speculate adding a commendation that can only go to DPS would help promote this philosophy.

I remind all this is a socially-aspected game, not a spreadsheet simulator.

I saw a lot of abuse of the parse system in DCUO. A lot of people who didn't know what they were talking about slamming people. But you have slamming anyway. And hey, if there is a parse system, maybe, just maybe, that lippy dps who likes to yell at everyone, will think twice after seeing where he stands. Instead of thinking only of the abuse the system will cause, maybe we can look at some of the abuse it will alleviate.

While little peer reviewed research has been done on how this affects video games, there are a plethora of studies concerning the comparative effects of positive and negative reinforcement in relation to behavioral modification. For your perusal I have placed links here and here, along with a hilarious short comic on why buisinesses hate yelp here simply because I think this comic explains perfectly why giving people the unfettered means to complain about each other is a universally bad thing.