DPS is role name ?

[Sentinel]

In wow it is called DPS aswell, but ppl in this game seem to be using the term DD

[Neptune]

Hi, I'm Japanese player. sorry to my poor English.

I have heard "attaker" or "damage dealer" as damage sauce role.
But that role is called "DPS" at FF14. "DPS" means Damage Per Second, it's a measure of attackpower, not role name, I think.
From when did it come to say so in English ?

Hi. I think it's just laziness / slang. It came from Yoshi-P. He was the first one to say "DPS" as role name. In WoW, where the term became popularized, DD was referred to as RDD or MDD (ranged or melee)

[Pandastirfry]

Hi. I think it's just laziness / slang. It came from Yoshi-P. He was the first one to say "DPS" as role name. In WoW, where the term became popularized, DD was referred to as RDD or MDD (ranged or melee)

I've been playing WoW since Vanilla Closed Beta... I have NEVER heard anyone use RDD or MDD, I have heard rDPS and mDPS. Also, the first time I heard DPS used exclusively to describe Damage centric roles was Star Wars Galaxies, the only games where I've heard Damage Dealer or Attacker used is FFXI and FFXIV

[Neptune]

I've been playing WoW since Vanilla Closed Beta... I have NEVER heard anyone use RDD or MDD, I have heard rDPS and mDPS. Also, the first time I heard DPS used exclusively to describe Damage centric roles was Star Wars Galaxies, the only games where I've heard Damage Dealer or Attacker used is FFXI and FFXIV

Actually yeah you're right. I remember now. I knew there was some capitalization difference but I couldn't recall xD So it did originate in WoW? But yeah Yoshi-P went ahead and adopted the term for FFXIV so that's why people are saying that now.

[Melithea]

I'm an original FFXI player and I've always heard and used DD. It's perfectly descriptive and even shorter than DPS; I see absolutely no reason to change it. Don't even get me started on how Tanks and Healers are also technically "DPS" classes by the same tenuous logic that makes the damage dealer a "DPS" (assuming your White Mage casts so much as a single Aero, and lets face it, sometimes the tank has higher DPS than the DPS does.)

I might use "deeps" or "dips" on occasion, but if I do you can be sure I'm using it in an ironic and derogatory fashion. As in, "The dips in my last party had no idea what they were doing; I ended up healing them as much as the tank through the whole boss fight."

[Archellion]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the CC terms that have been mentioned in this thread have some specific connotations. For instance

• Mez: A crowd control ability which completely disables the target until it is damaged.
• Root: Prevents the target from moving (but not attacking/healing).
• Stun: Completely disables the target even while it is being damaged.
• Slow: Hinders, but does not prevent, the target's movement.

Those are the generic terms used across pretty much every MMO to refer to specific abilities.

Since there are many MMOs, it's helpful to have a standard set of terms to which all players can refer so that we don't need to know the names of specific abilities, of classes we're not familiar with, in order to request or describe desired effects. We can say to the Black Mage, "Hey, can you Mez those guys?" without having to know that the name of the spell is sleep.

[Livilda]

Many terms are also straight from ancient history:
In early Dungeons and Dragons, you would roll the dice to determine your character's stats.
Items or abilities that have a fixed chance of activating an additional effect are termed proc. The term is from some of the first Multi-User Dungeons, text based online RPGs, which called them spec_proc for Special Procedure.

I generally don't care what terms people have for these things, but the ones I tend to use are Character, Tank, Tell, and Raise. I often differentiate DPS between melee, ranged, and casters. I have never heard of 'mez,' and the effect to which Archellion proscribes it is what I've always known as sleep. I've always used whatever term the game uses to describe a game-supported association of players - Free Companies in FFXIV. Patrols may also be pats, and threat and hate are interchangeable; aggro is only something that happens when a monster begins attacking a new target.

Specifically in this game, I've taken to calling stuns interrupts instead, as that's all they seem to be good for.

[LoLo]

Hi, I'm Japanese player. sorry to my poor English.

I have heard "attaker" or "damage dealer" as damage sauce role.
But that role is called "DPS" at FF14. "DPS" means Damage Per Second, it's a measure of attackpower, not role name, I think.
From when did it come to say so in English ?

In Final Fantasy XI we called it Damage Dealer not DPS. I think in WoW calling people DPS was a thing and then people brought it to ARR but its really poor english. Remember that in 1.0 FFXIV no one was called a DPS. I myself never call Damage Dealers DPS because its poor english.

[Altheras]

Pretty sure the DPS thing began in EQ, or possibly even before EQ, then traveled from there to WoW. It did not start in WoW. WoW is just very widely played in the MMO world so everything is automatically WoW's fault. >.>

Mes/Mez is actually also an EQ term which stems from the word Mesmerize which was a type of CC they used which worked very much like sleep tends to do in FF games.

[Begeta]

It's been at least 6 years since 'DPS' has replaced 'DD'

Only in the games you played. I played FFXI from release until 2011 and never saw melee classes referred to as "dps" with the rare exception of the random WoW vet that would wander haplessly into Vanadiel and begin shouting for a party and referring to his/herself as a "dps". That was usually quickly followed by torches, pitchforks, and demands that the individual remove themselves back to WoW. Calling a DD "dps" never bothered me enough to respond to its use but I always did feel it was used inappropriately.