Should dps meters get banned?

[AliamRationem.5172]

@naiasonod.9265 said:

If you're already skilled and knowledgable about builds, you got there by other routes completely and ARCdps won't actually be telling you much of anything you don't already know other than that this build throws out 35k burst and that build throws out 36.5k burst. You will already know why if you can build that in the first place, and IF YOU CANNOT?

ARCdps can't and won't help you with builds. ARCdps can't and won't help you understand how synergies across trait lines works, how fields and power interactions work or give even the faintest hint at why the numbers are what they are.

Data is only useful to those that know what it means and understand how it correlates to the actions that yielded it.

It is a 100% useless tool for people that aren't already pretty expert in builds, building and knowing/understanding things. It will give experts data they can use to guide refinements of builds and rotations, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.

You're simply wrong. Using arcdps gives players their own metric for determining performance. I don't have to wonder whether I performed well or not. I can see the numbers and compare that to my usual performance in the same encounter. I can then change my build and use that same frame of reference for whether or not it's working. How is that not helpful for understanding builds and synergies?

And again, nobody wants ANet touching this. Neither those for or against. The people against dps meters would take it as a sign that ANet officially supports this evil tool. They wouldn't be wrong about that if it happened. The people for dps meters will simply recall the build template debacle. Can you blame them? ANet needs to earn some trust by fixing that failure before anyone is going to trust them to do this right!

[naiasonod.9265]

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

If you're already skilled and knowledgable about builds, you got there by other routes completely and ARCdps won't actually be telling you much of anything you don't already know other than that this build throws out 35k burst and that build throws out 36.5k burst. You will already know why if you can build that in the first place, and IF YOU CANNOT?

ARCdps can't and won't help you with builds. ARCdps can't and won't help you understand how synergies across trait lines works, how fields and power interactions work or give even the faintest hint at why the numbers are what they are.

Data is only useful to those that know what it means and understand how it correlates to the actions that yielded it.

It is a 100% useless tool for people that aren't already pretty expert in builds, building and knowing/understanding things. It will give experts data they can use to guide refinements of builds and rotations, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.

You're simply wrong. Using arcdps gives players their own metric for determining performance. I don't have to wonder whether I performed well or not. I can see the numbers and compare that to my usual performance in the same encounter. I can then change my build and use that same frame of reference for whether or not it's working. How is that not helpful for understanding builds and synergies?

You're coming into the use of this tool with a great deal of foreknowledge about how your stats, skills and traitline synergies work however.

Where did you acquire that knowledge? You, like the rest of us with a high level of knowledge about such things, have probably spent hundreds of hours out of the game watching videos, reading guides, participating in theorycrafting discussions and trying out countless build arrays, and then possibly spending/wasting hundreds of gold on, different gear sets to try to figure out what works, what looks like it should on paper but actually doesn't, what looks like it shouldn't on paper but weirdly does and so on.

ARCdps is a valuable tool for the exact purpose I specified: experts refining and polishing builds.

Anyone with an expert level of knowledge and understanding of how this game's systems work doesn't need ARCdps for jack diddly squat though. You'll be able to put a build together and feel out whether or not its putting out the DPS it should or if its not quite there a lot of the time through sheer, overwhelming experience with what it SHOULD feel like. I don't need ARCdps to even exist for me to know how to build for what the outcome I desire is; I was doing that years before ARCdps was even possible on here. It didn't exist, and I, and countless others, were doing just fine. It helped us polish and refine our builds, but it didn't teach us how to build, and it didn't teach us what we were doing wrong if we were doing something wrong in a rotation.

Having the data is how you go from 35k to 36.5k and work out how to pick up the improvements you couldn't feel. How you go from 5k to 35k...well, ARCdps won't help you with that. It will tell you if you've done that or if you haven't done that. It can't do more.

ARCdps won't help you understand the game better though. ARCdps isn't even a tool the game itself references or provides. You won't even hear about it except from other players, and you have to go to third party sites and download it from third party servers to even get ahold of it.

The raiding guild I'm in does a lot of training and teaching. The officers try super hard to reach out to people, to get more people into doing ANYTHING more advanced than 'run around core Tyria spamming 1 and dodging only by accident'. They're great people and we all make great use of ARCdps.

It's tough to get new players to even download it about half the time. Most common complaint I've seen thus far is that they don't trust Github for whatever usually not-reasonable reason they have, but why should they HAVE to trust Github to play GW2 better?

Why in all creation should ANY player have to go outside of the game to find the tools and resources that will enable them to play the game effectively?

Why is the game not providing these tools and resources internally and with all the power and integration only the devs could ever hope to provide?

[AliamRationem.5172]

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

If you're already skilled and knowledgable about builds, you got there by other routes completely and ARCdps won't actually be telling you much of anything you don't already know other than that this build throws out 35k burst and that build throws out 36.5k burst. You will already know why if you can build that in the first place, and IF YOU CANNOT?

ARCdps can't and won't help you with builds. ARCdps can't and won't help you understand how synergies across trait lines works, how fields and power interactions work or give even the faintest hint at why the numbers are what they are.

Data is only useful to those that know what it means and understand how it correlates to the actions that yielded it.

It is a 100% useless tool for people that aren't already pretty expert in builds, building and knowing/understanding things. It will give experts data they can use to guide refinements of builds and rotations, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.

You're simply wrong. Using arcdps gives players their own metric for determining performance. I don't have to wonder whether I performed well or not. I can see the numbers and compare that to my usual performance in the same encounter. I can then change my build and use that same frame of reference for whether or not it's working. How is that not helpful for understanding builds and synergies?

You're coming into the use of this tool with a great deal of foreknowledge about how your stats, skills and traitline synergies work however.

Where did you acquire that knowledge? You, like the rest of us with a high level of knowledge about such things, have probably spent hundreds of hours out of the game watching videos, reading guides, participating in theorycrafting discussions and trying out countless build arrays, and possibly spending/wasting hundreds of gold on, different gear sets to try to figure out what works, what looks like it should on paper but actually doesn't, what looks like it shouldn't on paper but weirdly does and so on.

ARCdps is a valuable tool for the exact purpose I specified: experts refining and polishing builds.

Anyone with an expert level of knowledge and understanding of how this game's systems work doesn't need ARCdps for jack diddly squat though. You'll be able to put a build together and feel out whether or not its putting out the DPS it should or if its not quite there a lot of the time through sheer, overwhelming experience with what it SHOULD feel like.

Having the data is how you go from 35k to 36.5k and work out how to pick up the improvements you couldn't feel.

ARCdps won't help you understand the game better though. ARCdps isn't even a tool the game itself references or provides. You won't even hear about it except from other players, and you have to go to third party sites and download it from third party servers to even get ahold of it.

The raiding guild I'm in does a lot of training and teaching. The officers try super hard to reach out to people, to get more people into doing ANYTHING more advanced than 'run around core Tyria spamming 1 and dodging only by accident'. They're great people and we all make great use of ARCdps.

It's tough to get new players to even download it about half the time. Most common complaint I've seen thus far is that they don't trust Github for whatever usually not-reasonable reason they have, but why should they HAVE to trust Github to play GW2 better?

Why in all creation should ANY player have to go outside of the game to find the tools and resources that will enable them to play the game effectively?

Why is the game not providing these tools and resources internally and with all the power and integration only the devs could ever hope to provide?

Again, wrong. A new player isn't going to do 40k on a golem benchmark whether they use arcdps or not. But that doesn't mean that arcdps isn't useful to them. They will still be able to observe how changes to their build and strategy impact their performance. Further, the ability to see the breakdown for each skill allows them to easily tell where their damage is coming from. They don't necessarily need to have a deep understanding of the game's mechanics to tell that if 60% of their damage comes from burning, a trait/skill/etc. that improves burn damage would probably be helpful, for instance.

[Dante.1508]

Yes There should be no mods in an mmorpg.. its opens far to many cans of worms and very few mmo's even allow these things without being banned.. Very poor on Anets behalf to allow these hacks.

@yann.1946 said:

@"Thornwolf.9721" said:No mods should exist, close the back door and removing the hackers from the game and show you care about the game in general.

If it were meant to be here, they'd of implemented it. If its not in the game as it is then it doesn't need to exist; This is becoming a "nerf buttons" fiasco like in Warhammer online where you could bypass the GCD and fire multiple of the same skill regardless of cooldown. Thats not here "yet" but hackers are running rampant in all game-modes, the toxicity due to meters existing is at an all time high. Either implement these abundantly used mods into the game as core features and QOL or come out, and say you dont support it and are closing the back door to prevent people from messing with the code and to do so is an instant ban REGARDLESS of who you are.

What about mods who don't mess with the code, just screencap for example?

None at all, you allow one you need to allow all... So no nothing, nada, zilch.

[Noah Salazar.5430]

Definitly No

ppl who vote for yes, don't know how it work or refuse to improve, or can't create team with tags "casual run" "friendly run"

in the feb 2017 arenanet has granted 3rd party tools permission to collect and display combat stats via means previously not allowed.these are runtime modifications only, no changes are made to files on disk.

[naiasonod.9265]

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

If you're already skilled and knowledgable about builds, you got there by other routes completely and ARCdps won't actually be telling you much of anything you don't already know other than that this build throws out 35k burst and that build throws out 36.5k burst. You will already know why if you can build that in the first place, and IF YOU CANNOT?

ARCdps can't and won't help you with builds. ARCdps can't and won't help you understand how synergies across trait lines works, how fields and power interactions work or give even the faintest hint at why the numbers are what they are.

Data is only useful to those that know what it means and understand how it correlates to the actions that yielded it.

It is a 100% useless tool for people that aren't already pretty expert in builds, building and knowing/understanding things. It will give experts data they can use to guide refinements of builds and rotations, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.

You're simply wrong. Using arcdps gives players their own metric for determining performance. I don't have to wonder whether I performed well or not. I can see the numbers and compare that to my usual performance in the same encounter. I can then change my build and use that same frame of reference for whether or not it's working. How is that not helpful for understanding builds and synergies?

You're coming into the use of this tool with a great deal of foreknowledge about how your stats, skills and traitline synergies work however.

Where did you acquire that knowledge? You, like the rest of us with a high level of knowledge about such things, have probably spent hundreds of hours out of the game watching videos, reading guides, participating in theorycrafting discussions and trying out countless build arrays, and possibly spending/wasting hundreds of gold on, different gear sets to try to figure out what works, what looks like it should on paper but actually doesn't, what looks like it shouldn't on paper but weirdly does and so on.

ARCdps is a valuable tool for the exact purpose I specified: experts refining and polishing builds.

Anyone with an expert level of knowledge and understanding of how this game's systems work doesn't need ARCdps for jack diddly squat though. You'll be able to put a build together and feel out whether or not its putting out the DPS it should or if its not quite there a lot of the time through sheer, overwhelming experience with what it SHOULD feel like.

Having the data is how you go from 35k to 36.5k and work out how to pick up the improvements you couldn't feel.

ARCdps won't help you understand the game better though. ARCdps isn't even a tool the game itself references or provides. You won't even hear about it except from other players, and you have to go to third party sites and download it from third party servers to even get ahold of it.

The raiding guild I'm in does a lot of training and teaching. The officers try super hard to reach out to people, to get more people into doing ANYTHING more advanced than 'run around core Tyria spamming 1 and dodging only by accident'. They're great people and we all make great use of ARCdps.

It's tough to get new players to even download it about half the time. Most common complaint I've seen thus far is that they don't trust Github for whatever usually not-reasonable reason they have, but why should they HAVE to trust Github to play GW2 better?

Why in all creation should ANY player have to go outside of the game to find the tools and resources that will enable them to play the game effectively?

Why is the game not providing these tools and resources internally and with all the power and integration only the devs could ever hope to provide?

Again, wrong. A new player isn't going to do 40k on a golem benchmark whether they use arcdps or not. But that doesn't mean that arcdps isn't useful to them. They will still be able to observe how changes to their build and strategy impact their performance. Further, the ability to see the breakdown for each skill allows them to easily tell where their damage is coming from. They don't necessarily need to have a deep understanding of the game's mechanics to tell that if 60% of their damage comes from burning, a trait/skill/etc. that improves burn damage would probably be helpful, for instance.

I'm not sure if you're deliberately being obtuse because it's too painful to admit that I've got a valid point or if you're legitimately incapable of reading, because you're not only addressing what I'm saying, but you're completely failing to acknowledge that nobody comes into this game knowing what the stats, traits and synergies are, mean or how they work at all.

And there's nothing in the game that teaches players these things.

You're clearly not new, and it seems to me that your problem is that you've known how these things work for so long that you're like a fish in the water; you're not even aware of the water anymore. You've taken it for granted that these things are 'just known' to you.

So, I'll ask again; where in the game can I go to learn about Power coefficients as they relate to damage dealt against an armored target?

Where IN. THE. GAME. can I go to be taught, by the game, how to build my class more effectively for any of the roles that might be expected of me in advanced content?

Until ARCdps can make build suggestions and critique your damage log, its a tool that is most useful to the people that need it the least. The people that need help the most...well, it can't help them very much at all.

How, after all, are they supposed to make any kind of informed or useful build choices when nothing in the game tells them anything about...anything, really?

I don't know about you, but when I talk to someone that's got their stats all over the place and they really just don't understand why it was a terrible plan for them to try to run around having 2 pieces of Soldier, 2 pieces of Nomad and 2 pieces of Cleric gear with 2 Berserker weapons while running traits in traitlines that don't synergize what so ever with themselves OR the stats/weapons they've got, I don't get angry or frustrated with the player.

Why? Because the game doesn't teach anyone anything. Their only 'crime' is that they didn't spend tens or hundreds of hours doing freaking homework like GW2 was supposed to be a job or a college course. They don't understand anything because the game taught them nothing.

And so there we are once again, explaining to someone that might've been here for months or even years that no, it isn't actually smart to try to have a little bit of Power and Condition Damage and Healing and Toughness because there is no such thing as 'good at everything, great at nothing' build that isn't utter garbage at everything except perhaps for WvW zerging or attrition weavers, and then you're running Celestial on specific builds which is another discussion entirely.

I get mad at Anet because they fail completely, in every way possible, to enable players to excel at their game.

It's not that they don't do enough; they don't do -anything-. They leave it all up to Joe Random Playerbase.

Well, here we are, eight years deep into exploring that hypothesis.

How are you liking all the compelling group content? Liking the new raids? All the new fractals suiting you?

Oh. Wait. There's so little demand for that content that the fact we're getting a new fractal for the first time in forever is shocking and almost like the annual glance from Anet to see if demand for that kind of thing has somehow magically appeared in the field they refuse to do anything to tend.

Maybe if they taught players how to play, players would be better at playing and, thus, there would be more players ...I dunno, maybe this is crazy...playing? You know, the advanced content? Insane, right? How do I even go from 'Teach players to play' to 'Players will play more content'? It's like I'm on drugs or something probably.

ARCdps doesn't teach anyone how to play well. It doesn't teach people how to understand builds and synergies better, or at all. It can be used by those with the knowledge to make use of the data provided to guage the success of a build and rotations to make changes that will improve their performance, but without that knowledge, it's not useful to people that don't understand what the numbers mean or what affects them or how they are derived.

It does you no good at all to see that 60% of your damage came from Burning if you don't even know what in your build, gear and rotations can help you do more burning damage, or to understand that your total damage is trash and that 60% of your trash damage being from burning is stupid because everything you picked for traits and utilities is all over the map and you're not actually using the right weapons for a condi build anyway.

[Dante.1508]

Its a major reason i wont do raids.. its makes the content super toxic and pointless to do imo.. I'm not going to add some suspect mod to my game that may or may not track me just to do mmo content.. and having others judge me using these hacks isn't going to make me do raids anytime soon.

[Ashen.2907]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@"Ashen.2907" said:DPS meters are almost exclusively a good thing. They make it easier fora player to demonstrate that their character can meet the group's needs regardless of opinion or bias toward/against a given profession.

Let's not forget that DPS values are a great way to discriminate people who play the way they want, because it's more fun to them than META builds with even fixed rotations.It's far from being "almost exclusively a good thing", it's 50% positive

at best.

DPS meters are not needed for such discrimination. People were being excluded from groups without them for years. DPS meters allowed professions into groups where they had never before been welcome.

That said, people who play how they want because it is more fun for them than META are not impacted by DPS meters. They can still group with others of a similar mindset and playstyle without discrimination. No one has the right to insist that others play with them. The only individual for whom a DPS meter is not a good thing is one attempting to force others who do not share his play style to play with him. So, still, almost exclusively a good thing.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

@SeikeNz.3526 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:

@SeikeNz.3526 said:what i learned from all this:

being elitist and calling people newbies without basic game knowledge, oh but my dps.

kicking people because "don't follow my meta and dps" is ok, being kicked for trash talk on chat is not and it's toxic, ban needed.

when without arguments do personal attacks and call for ban.

if you dare to go against meta you are auto- bad and refuse to learn, also a leecher getting carried by dps gods since they can solo group contents with their dps.

you know everything about the game and every encounter mechanics, if you do good dps with copy paste build.

so many laughs .

btw: i will keep kicking bad players who dare to say the word dps on the party chat, guess what it's not against the rules

Then i shall finally join with auto attack lb core bearbow ranger oh wait its meta open world so its automaticly elitist evil, minionmancher and turret engi aswell so you have kick those as they are meta but you can kick ppl not having asc with ar in t4 like me its toxic

being meta is not evil, is not bad. forcing people play your meta is.joining a party just to do auto atks is leeching, joining a party and playing with any build, but trying, doing your rotation even if it's a bad dps is not leeching.asking for good dps on boss with a rage timer, is ok and understandable, asking for good dps on boss without it is not.

DPS meters force people to do their role well. It doesn't force meta, but it does encourage people to understand why the meta builds are ran in content. Also, groups looking to clear content listed on the LFG (Raids, strikes, fractals, dungeons) are no place for you to test out your off-meta build. Get some friends who enjoy the wild theory crafting and bring it in there, or test it out in public strikes where there are no expectations.

asking for good dps on boss with a rage timer, is ok and understandable, asking for good dps on boss without it is not.

I don't get how you think this way? Is it not advantageous to kill a boss faster so you can avoid the chaos that will likely ensue if the boss is left alive too long? What if there's no hard time limit, but taking too long has the consequences of a hard time limit by making the mechanics impossible to deal with? Remember, the longer a fight goes on, the more likely someone in your party is going to make a mistake with the mechanics, miss a dodge, or get blown up in some fashion by not being on stack.

[Ashen.2907]

@"SeikeNz.3526" said:

being meta is not evil, is not bad. forcing people play your meta is.

It is not physically possible to force people to, "play your meta."

[Ashen.2907]

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@ASP.8093 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:I really wish game devs would provide the tools that have been established as being standard and customary to support skill development in their games, but they always seem to think they're being magnanimous by leaving that up to the players.

Exposing the hooks for third-party tools

is

doing their part, though.

All you folks saying you want to see Arc replaced with an Anet-designed tool don't really see why a community-developed tool is better in this case. The development cycle is more responsive. People can contribute their own changes or fork it if they want to build an alternative. It serves its purpose quite well; any forced transition to a less polished or full-featured tool is going to be a net negative for months or years.

My house is filthy. I'll just leave the door open so anyone that feels like it can come in and clean it if they want to. I will in no way even specifically encourage them to do so, but you know, if they do so, I probably won't ban them from the property. I'll keep that card up my sleeve just in case I'm feeling feisty one day instead.

I'm doing my part to ensure that my home is a welcoming and pleasant place to be.

ANet runs a business and partners with others to expand the options available to those choosing to partake of their product. Partnerships of this sort are not only commonplace but practically ubiquitous. I do not think that your analogy is particularly close to the situation being discussed.

[Dante.1508]

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:DPS meters are almost exclusively a good thing. They make it easier fora player to demonstrate that their character can meet the group's needs regardless of opinion or bias toward/against a given profession.

Let's not forget that DPS values are a great way to discriminate people who play the way they want, because it's more fun to them than META builds with even fixed rotations.It's far from being "almost exclusively a good thing", it's 50% positive

at best.

DPS meters are not needed for such discrimination. People were being excluded from groups without them for years. DPS meters allowed professions into groups where they had never before been welcome.

That said, people who play how they want because it is more fun for them than META are not impacted by DPS meters. They can still group with others of a similar mindset and playstyle without discrimination. No one has the right to insist that others play with them. The only individual for whom a DPS meter is not a good thing is one attempting to force others who do not share his play style to play with him. So, still, almost exclusively a good thing.

You can say whatever you want on this forum but that is exactly what these things are used for.. Discrimination.. If i go into the raid area right now and ask to do raids i will be discriminated against guaranteed.. Its a daily occurrence. The forum can say whatever they like its fact.. I will be told i need arc dps and do all sorts of other stuff and then i will be told no chance or kicked mid raid.

@Ashen.2907 said:

@"SeikeNz.3526" said:

being meta is not evil, is not bad. forcing people play your meta is.

It is not physically possible to force people to, "play your meta."

It is if they want to join in.

[Linken.6345]

@Dante.1508 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:DPS meters are almost exclusively a good thing. They make it easier fora player to demonstrate that their character can meet the group's needs regardless of opinion or bias toward/against a given profession.

Let's not forget that DPS values are a great way to discriminate people who play the way they want, because it's more fun to them than META builds with even fixed rotations.It's far from being "almost exclusively a good thing", it's 50% positive

at best.

DPS meters are not needed for such discrimination. People were being excluded from groups without them for years. DPS meters allowed professions into groups where they had never before been welcome.

That said, people who play how they want because it is more fun for them than META are not impacted by DPS meters. They can still group with others of a similar mindset and playstyle without discrimination. No one has the right to insist that others play with them. The only individual for whom a DPS meter is not a good thing is one attempting to force others who do not share his play style to play with him. So, still, almost exclusively a good thing.

You can say whatever you want on this forum but that is exactly what these things are used for.. Discrimination.. If i go into the raid area right now and ask to do raids i will be discriminated against guaranteed.. Its a daily occurrence. The forum can say whatever they like its fact.. I will be told i need arc dps and do all sorts of other stuff and then i will be told no chance or kicked mid raid.

@Ashen.2907 said:

@"SeikeNz.3526" said:

being meta is not evil, is not bad. forcing people play your meta is.

It is not physically possible to force people to, "play your meta."

It is if they want to join in.

Then make your own group/squad and let everyone join, come back and tell the evil toxic elitst how it went.

[ASP.8093]

@Dante.1508 said:Its a major reason i wont do raids.. its makes the content super toxic and pointless to do imo.. I'm not going to add some suspect mod to my game that may or may not track me just to do mmo content.. and having others judge me using these hacks isn't going to make me do raids anytime soon.

You don't need to install it yourself. In a training group or static, it's enough to just have one person process a dpsreport and then everyone can look at a little spreadsheet on a website when you're done of the night. Which will cover role-based stuff like Quickness uptime in addition to just telling you some raw DPS numbers. I literally cannot run Arc locally and I've benefited from it in this way.

[Dante.1508]

@ASP.8093 said:

@Dante.1508 said:Its a major reason i wont do raids.. its makes the content super toxic and pointless to do imo.. I'm not going to add some suspect mod to my game that may or may not track me just to do mmo content.. and having others judge me using these hacks isn't going to make me do raids anytime soon.

You don't need to install it yourself. In a training group or static, it's enough to just have one person process a dpsreport and then everyone can look at a little spreadsheet on a website when you're done of the night. Which will cover role-based stuff like Quickness uptime in addition to just telling you some raw DPS numbers. I literally

cannot run Arc locally

and I've benefited from it in this way.

I've tried to join multiple times people in the raid areas tell me to F off.. They can tell i've never raided.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

If you're already skilled and knowledgable about builds, you got there by other routes completely and ARCdps won't actually be telling you much of anything you don't already know other than that this build throws out 35k burst and that build throws out 36.5k burst. You will already know why if you can build that in the first place, and IF YOU CANNOT?

ARCdps can't and won't help you with builds. ARCdps can't and won't help you understand how synergies across trait lines works, how fields and power interactions work or give even the faintest hint at why the numbers are what they are.

Data is only useful to those that know what it means and understand how it correlates to the actions that yielded it.

It is a 100% useless tool for people that aren't already pretty expert in builds, building and knowing/understanding things. It will give experts data they can use to guide refinements of builds and rotations, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.

You're simply wrong. Using arcdps gives players their own metric for determining performance. I don't have to wonder whether I performed well or not. I can see the numbers and compare that to my usual performance in the same encounter. I can then change my build and use that same frame of reference for whether or not it's working. How is that not helpful for understanding builds and synergies?

You're coming into the use of this tool with a great deal of foreknowledge about how your stats, skills and traitline synergies work however.

Where did you acquire that knowledge? You, like the rest of us with a high level of knowledge about such things, have probably spent hundreds of hours out of the game watching videos, reading guides, participating in theorycrafting discussions and trying out countless build arrays, and possibly spending/wasting hundreds of gold on, different gear sets to try to figure out what works, what looks like it should on paper but actually doesn't, what looks like it shouldn't on paper but weirdly does and so on.

ARCdps is a valuable tool for the exact purpose I specified: experts refining and polishing builds.

Anyone with an expert level of knowledge and understanding of how this game's systems work doesn't need ARCdps for jack diddly squat though. You'll be able to put a build together and feel out whether or not its putting out the DPS it should or if its not quite there a lot of the time through sheer, overwhelming experience with what it SHOULD feel like.

Having the data is how you go from 35k to 36.5k and work out how to pick up the improvements you couldn't feel.

ARCdps won't help you understand the game better though. ARCdps isn't even a tool the game itself references or provides. You won't even hear about it except from other players, and you have to go to third party sites and download it from third party servers to even get ahold of it.

The raiding guild I'm in does a lot of training and teaching. The officers try super hard to reach out to people, to get more people into doing ANYTHING more advanced than 'run around core Tyria spamming 1 and dodging only by accident'. They're great people and we all make great use of ARCdps.

It's tough to get new players to even download it about half the time. Most common complaint I've seen thus far is that they don't trust Github for whatever usually not-reasonable reason they have, but why should they HAVE to trust Github to play GW2 better?

Why in all creation should ANY player have to go outside of the game to find the tools and resources that will enable them to play the game effectively?

Why is the game not providing these tools and resources internally and with all the power and integration only the devs could ever hope to provide?

Again, wrong. A new player isn't going to do 40k on a golem benchmark whether they use arcdps or not. But that doesn't mean that arcdps isn't useful to them. They will still be able to observe how changes to their build and strategy impact their performance. Further, the ability to see the breakdown for each skill allows them to easily tell where their damage is coming from. They don't necessarily need to have a deep understanding of the game's mechanics to tell that if 60% of their damage comes from burning, a trait/skill/etc. that improves burn damage would probably be helpful, for instance.

I'm not sure if you're deliberately being obtuse because it's too painful to admit that I've got a valid point or if you're legitimately incapable of reading, because you're not only addressing what I'm saying, but you're completely failing to acknowledge that nobody comes into this game knowing what the stats, traits and synergies are, mean or how they work at all.

And there's nothing in the game that teaches players these things.

You're clearly not new, and it seems to me that your problem is that you've known how these things work for so long that you're like a fish in the water; you're not even aware of the water anymore. You've taken it for granted that these things are 'just known' to you.

So, I'll ask again; where in the game can I go to learn about Power coefficients as they relate to damage dealt against an armored target?

Where IN. THE. GAME. can I go to be taught, by the game, how to build my class more effectively for any of the roles that might be expected of me in advanced content?

Until ARCdps can make build suggestions and critique your damage log, its a tool that is most useful to the people that need it the least. The people that need help the most...well, it can't help them very much at all.

How, after all, are they supposed to make any kind of informed or useful build choices when nothing in the game tells them anything about...anything, really?

I don't know about you, but when I talk to someone that's got their stats all over the place and they really just don't understand why it was a terrible plan for them to try to run around having 2 pieces of Soldier, 2 pieces of Nomad and 2 pieces of Cleric gear with 2 Berserker weapons while running traits in traitlines that don't synergize what so ever with themselves OR the stats/weapons they've got, I don't get angry or frustrated with the player.

Why? Because the game doesn't teach anyone anything. Their only 'crime' is that they didn't spend tens or hundreds of hours doing freaking homework like GW2 was supposed to be a job or a college course. They don't understand anything because the game taught them nothing.

And so there we are once again, explaining to someone that might've been here for months or even years that no, it isn't actually smart to try to have a little bit of Power and Condition Damage and Healing and Toughness because there is no such thing as 'good at everything, great at nothing' build that isn't utter garbage at everything except perhaps for WvW zerging or attrition weavers, and then you're running Celestial on specific builds which is another discussion entirely.

I get mad at Anet because they fail completely, in every way possible, to enable players to excel at their game.

It's not that they don't do enough; they don't do -anything-. They leave it all up to Joe Random Playerbase.

Well, here we are, eight years deep into exploring that hypothesis.

How are you liking all the compelling group content? Liking the new raids? All the new fractals suiting you?

Oh. Wait. There's so little demand for that content that the fact we're getting a new fractal for the first time in forever is shocking and almost like the annual glance from Anet to see if demand for that kind of thing has somehow magically appeared in the field they refuse to do anything to tend.

Maybe if they taught players how to play, players would be better at playing and, thus, there would be more players ...I dunno, maybe this is crazy...playing? You know, the advanced content? Insane, right? How do I even go from 'Teach players to play' to 'Players will play more content'? It's like I'm on drugs or something probably.

ARCdps doesn't teach anyone how to play well. It doesn't teach people how to understand builds and synergies better, or at all. It can be used by those with the knowledge to make use of the data provided to guage the success of a build and rotations to make changes that will improve their performance, but without that knowledge, it's not useful to people that don't understand what the numbers mean or what affects them or how they are derived.

It does you no good at all to see that 60% of your damage came from Burning if you don't even know what in your build, gear and rotations can help you do more burning damage, or to understand that your total damage is trash and that 60% of your trash damage being from burning is stupid because everything you picked for traits and utilities is all over the map and you're not actually using the right weapons for a condi build anyway.

If you can't figure out that having the information provided by arcdps is useful for improvement to absolutely any player who cares to utilize the information, I don't know what to tell you. Your argument is completely ridiculous all over. Also, what is the premise here? Only experts who already know everything and absolute beginners who have no frame of reference for the information provided by arcdps exist? Nobody inbetween that could use this? What are you even talking about, man?

[AliamRationem.5172]

@Dante.1508 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:DPS meters are almost exclusively a good thing. They make it easier fora player to demonstrate that their character can meet the group's needs regardless of opinion or bias toward/against a given profession.

Let's not forget that DPS values are a great way to discriminate people who play the way they want, because it's more fun to them than META builds with even fixed rotations.It's far from being "almost exclusively a good thing", it's 50% positive

at best.

DPS meters are not needed for such discrimination. People were being excluded from groups without them for years. DPS meters allowed professions into groups where they had never before been welcome.

That said, people who play how they want because it is more fun for them than META are not impacted by DPS meters. They can still group with others of a similar mindset and playstyle without discrimination. No one has the right to insist that others play with them. The only individual for whom a DPS meter is not a good thing is one attempting to force others who do not share his play style to play with him. So, still, almost exclusively a good thing.

You can say whatever you want on this forum but that is exactly what these things are used for.. Discrimination.. If i go into the raid area right now and ask to do raids i will be discriminated against guaranteed.. Its a daily occurrence. The forum can say whatever they like its fact.. I will be told i need arc dps and do all sorts of other stuff and then i will be told no chance or kicked mid raid.

@Ashen.2907 said:

@"SeikeNz.3526" said:

being meta is not evil, is not bad. forcing people play your meta is.

It is not physically possible to force people to, "play your meta."

It is if they want to join in.

Nonsense. Nobody is going to tell you that you need to install arcdps. But they will have it installed themselves and if you're holding the group back with your performance, they'll know.

Would it be a good idea to grab arcdps yourself so you can see how you're doing? If you want to run raids, strikes, and t4 fractals/cms I would highly recommend it. Maybe you're doing just fine and maybe you aren't. But you don't have any way of objectively measuring your performance relative to others performing the same role if you don't ever view the numbers. Common sense here, isn't it?

[Linken.6345]

@Dante.1508 said:

@ASP.8093 said:

@Dante.1508 said:Its a major reason i wont do raids.. its makes the content super toxic and pointless to do imo.. I'm not going to add some suspect mod to my game that may or may not track me just to do mmo content.. and having others judge me using these hacks isn't going to make me do raids anytime soon.

You don't need to install it yourself. In a training group or static, it's enough to just have one person process a dpsreport and then everyone can look at a little spreadsheet on a website when you're done of the night. Which will cover role-based stuff like Quickness uptime in addition to just telling you some raw DPS numbers. I literally

cannot run Arc locally

and I've benefited from it in this way.

I've tried to join multiple times people in the raid areas tell me to F off.. They can tell i've never raided.

Well if you join group that is experienced and looking to clear ofcourse they would say we dont want you mate.Try to find a training raid or join a guild that train their memebers.

[Ashen.2907]

@Dante.1508 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Ashen.2907 said:DPS meters are almost exclusively a good thing. They make it easier fora player to demonstrate that their character can meet the group's needs regardless of opinion or bias toward/against a given profession.

Let's not forget that DPS values are a great way to discriminate people who play the way they want, because it's more fun to them than META builds with even fixed rotations.It's far from being "almost exclusively a good thing", it's 50% positive

at best.

DPS meters are not needed for such discrimination. People were being excluded from groups without them for years. DPS meters allowed professions into groups where they had never before been welcome.

That said, people who play how they want because it is more fun for them than META are not impacted by DPS meters. They can still group with others of a similar mindset and playstyle without discrimination. No one has the right to insist that others play with them. The only individual for whom a DPS meter is not a good thing is one attempting to force others who do not share his play style to play with him. So, still, almost exclusively a good thing.

You can say whatever you want on this forum but that is exactly what these things are used for.. Discrimination.. If i go into the raid area right now and ask to do raids i will be discriminated against guaranteed.. Its a daily occurrence. The forum can say whatever they like its fact.. I will be told i need arc dps and do all sorts of other stuff and then i will be told no chance or kicked mid raid.

I did not say that DPS meters couldn't be used to discriminate. But discrimination occurred before the existence of DPS meters so the meters are not the source of the discrimination, but rather the most recent tool. Discrimination is not inherently a bad thing. It is, in fact, often a very good thing. I choose, for example, to not play with, to discriminate against, people who spam sexist and/or racist garbage, and the like, in chat. People choosing to play with others who share their preferred playstyle is a good thing,

[Vegeta.2563]

DPS meters help improve overall group dps and show you what you are doing wrong. DPS meters aren't the reason why some raid groups are toxic. That is just their own stupidity in thinking you can get exact dps in a raid vs the training golem. So what if you are behind by like 4k dps. If the boss still dies that's all that matters.

Btw people that usually get kicked from a raid group are the people that fail the mechanics more than 5 times in a row.

[ASP.8093]

@SeikeNz.3526 said:Meta is there for people that can't think and need a premade build made from someone else, most of the times meta is not even the best build available, it's just a common copy paste build, because people who get a good build don't share.

Nah, the speed-clear record-chasing people post their builds constantly.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

@SeikeNz.3526 said:Meta is there for people that can't think and need a premade build made from someone else, most of the times meta is not even the best build available, it's just a common copy paste build, because people who get a good build don't share.

Meta is meta for a reason. You don't do good damage without boons and buffs. Healers have a hard time healing without giving certain buffs, tanks can't tank without certain skills on certain bosses. If your entire off-meta party doesn't at least cover some of the buffs annd boons, you're going to have at a boss for a long time or/and a frustrating time

@SeikeNz.3526 said:im 100% sure if anet allowed only the self dps on arcdps people would stop using it because they want to harass others not being better.

Some would, but not all, and ArcDPS still keeps accurate logs. People would just ask to see those before grouping so they'd know that you know how to do your rotation at least if not kill the boss before.

@SeikeNz.3526 said:there some people on this thread out of reality, one even said that the only acceptable dmg was 20-35k, wich is the best rotation dps of some classes on a static golem full buffed and debuffed,

And I've personally seen people pull that regularly on any and all bosses, but just because one person in this thread is saying that doesn't mean all people arguing against you believe that. There are group DPS thresholds that need to be met for certain common strategies to work. (Think no updrafts Gorseval). Most people won't care at all so long as the people in the DPS roles are pulling 12k DPS or higher.

@SeikeNz.3526 said:the medium dps on fractals is like 10k/s while a healer is doing 4k/s leechers 500-1k/s, the best dps that i saw was 24k/s and im 100% sure the dps show was bugged.

It's not. 10k/s DPS in fractals is alacrity renegade levels. If people have potions (Which they should) they should be hitting much higher than that as the offensive potion give precision based on Agony Resistance along with 3% extra outgoing damage per stack, up to 5 stacks for a total of 15%. Even auto attacking consistently on classes has higher damage output than 10k dp/s.

@SeikeNz.3526 said:i saw people trash talk to others just because they did like 8k/s but he was doing the right mechanics while the "good dps" was doing like 11k/s and failling mechanics.

I doubt this very much. Someone failing mechanics is going to be performing worse DPS on the boss. You use ArcDPS, right? I swear I read you admitting to it. You've got logs. Share them because I don't believe this one bit. If they aren't performing worse with mechanics, then they're causing other people to die (Arkk bomb for example) or they'll be dead themselves soon enough.

@SeikeNz.3526 said:of course killing faster is advantageous, but not necessary, unless the guy is only auto atking doing 1k/s wich in case he is leeching and will take like 30 min more to kill, most off meta builds do like 2k less dmg and guess what? some people trash talk because of that, just because they will take 1 minute longer to kill something.&guess what nothing of this dps check matter because the content can be done in a fast time even with 6k/s, people use it just to trash talk

Sigh Oh boy. I've already done the math but here we go again. Let's say, for example, a boss has 21m HP. Every 7m HP it has a phase. Getting it to this phase as fast as possible is advantageous as it skips some seriously high pressure mechanics. The DPS here is average overall, it is not burst and it assumes my 21m total, 7m hp to phase boss monster.

With a poor group, 3x DPS doing 6k a second with the healer and boon support doing 2k each, that's a total party DPS of 22k. At this DPS, it'll take the group 318.18s to phase the boss. Let's round that number to something easy to read. 318 seconds is 5 minutes 18 seconds. That's a total of 15 minutes 54 seconds to kill this boss assuming consistent total party dps of 22k. That's quite slow.

With your example, 5x doing 6k dps is only 30k/s for the group. 30k/s lowers the time to 233.33s. That's a full 84.85s faster than the poor group but still 134.74s slower than an a skilled group. Let's round to 233s. That's 3 minutes 53 seconds per phase or 11 minutes 39 seconds assuming the party dps is consistent.

Now let's turn this into the average I see in CM+T4 groups where 3x dps pulling 15k, an alac that pulls 4k, and a heals that pulls 1400 dps. That's 138.89s to phase. Rounding that down to 138, that's 2min 18sec per phase or 6 min 54 sec to kill.

Bumping it up to a more skilled group now 3x dps pull 20k each, healer pulls 3k, and alac/boons pulls 8k. That's 71k dps. At this group DPS it'll take roughly 98.59s to phase the boss. Now lets' round this to an even 98s. That's 1m 38s per phase or 4min 54 seconds to kill.

EDIT:"But 21m is raid boss numbers, not fractal numbers!" Okay, so let's pull that down to 12m with 4m hp phases with the same numbers as before for DPS and assuming it's consistent DPS throughout the fight.

Phases:Group 1: 4,000,000 / 22,000 = 181.81 sec Phase (3min, 1.81 sec)Group 2: 4,000,000 / 30,000 = 133.33 sec Phase (2 min, 13.33 sec)Group 3: 4,000,000 / 50,400 = 79.37 sec Phase (1 min, 19.37 sec)Group 4: 4,000,000 / 71,000 = 56.34 sec Phase (0 min, 56.34 sec)Phase time difference between slowest (Group 1) and fastest (Group 4) = 125.48 sec. (2 min, 5.48 sec)

Kill times:Group 1: 12,000,000 / 22,000 = 545.45 sec Kill (9 minutes, 5.45 sec)Group 2: 12,000,000 / 30,000 = 400 sec Kill (6 min, 40 sec)Group 3: 12,000,000 / 50,400 = 238.10 sec kill (3 min, 58.10 sec)Group 4: 12,000,000 / 71,000 = 169.01 sec kill (2min, 49.01 sec)Kill time difference between slowest (Group 1) and fastest (Group 4) = 376.44 sec (6min, 16.44 sec)

The difference between low DPS groups and high DPS groups is night and day. It's at least 40% faster for kills if not just twice as fast as the slowest DPS you've seen.

Now think of how many bosses you kill regularly in fractals. A full CM run has at least 9 bosses within it. Add in T4s for another 4-6 bosses (Boss=champion mob or higher). Most average about 14-21m 12m-18m hp, so being able to phase fast isn't about just skipping mechanics, but at this point, it's about saving a ton of time. 10 minutes per boss is at least 2h clear for all fractals while 3 min a boss keeps it within an hour.

[naiasonod.9265]

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

If you're already skilled and knowledgable about builds, you got there by other routes completely and ARCdps won't actually be telling you much of anything you don't already know other than that this build throws out 35k burst and that build throws out 36.5k burst. You will already know why if you can build that in the first place, and IF YOU CANNOT?

ARCdps can't and won't help you with builds. ARCdps can't and won't help you understand how synergies across trait lines works, how fields and power interactions work or give even the faintest hint at why the numbers are what they are.

Data is only useful to those that know what it means and understand how it correlates to the actions that yielded it.

It is a 100% useless tool for people that aren't already pretty expert in builds, building and knowing/understanding things. It will give experts data they can use to guide refinements of builds and rotations, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.

You're simply wrong. Using arcdps gives players their own metric for determining performance. I don't have to wonder whether I performed well or not. I can see the numbers and compare that to my usual performance in the same encounter. I can then change my build and use that same frame of reference for whether or not it's working. How is that not helpful for understanding builds and synergies?

You're coming into the use of this tool with a great deal of foreknowledge about how your stats, skills and traitline synergies work however.

Where did you acquire that knowledge? You, like the rest of us with a high level of knowledge about such things, have probably spent hundreds of hours out of the game watching videos, reading guides, participating in theorycrafting discussions and trying out countless build arrays, and possibly spending/wasting hundreds of gold on, different gear sets to try to figure out what works, what looks like it should on paper but actually doesn't, what looks like it shouldn't on paper but weirdly does and so on.

ARCdps is a valuable tool for the exact purpose I specified: experts refining and polishing builds.

Anyone with an expert level of knowledge and understanding of how this game's systems work doesn't need ARCdps for jack diddly squat though. You'll be able to put a build together and feel out whether or not its putting out the DPS it should or if its not quite there a lot of the time through sheer, overwhelming experience with what it SHOULD feel like.

Having the data is how you go from 35k to 36.5k and work out how to pick up the improvements you couldn't feel.

ARCdps won't help you understand the game better though. ARCdps isn't even a tool the game itself references or provides. You won't even hear about it except from other players, and you have to go to third party sites and download it from third party servers to even get ahold of it.

The raiding guild I'm in does a lot of training and teaching. The officers try super hard to reach out to people, to get more people into doing ANYTHING more advanced than 'run around core Tyria spamming 1 and dodging only by accident'. They're great people and we all make great use of ARCdps.

It's tough to get new players to even download it about half the time. Most common complaint I've seen thus far is that they don't trust Github for whatever usually not-reasonable reason they have, but why should they HAVE to trust Github to play GW2 better?

Why in all creation should ANY player have to go outside of the game to find the tools and resources that will enable them to play the game effectively?

Why is the game not providing these tools and resources internally and with all the power and integration only the devs could ever hope to provide?

Again, wrong. A new player isn't going to do 40k on a golem benchmark whether they use arcdps or not. But that doesn't mean that arcdps isn't useful to them. They will still be able to observe how changes to their build and strategy impact their performance. Further, the ability to see the breakdown for each skill allows them to easily tell where their damage is coming from. They don't necessarily need to have a deep understanding of the game's mechanics to tell that if 60% of their damage comes from burning, a trait/skill/etc. that improves burn damage would probably be helpful, for instance.

I'm not sure if you're deliberately being obtuse because it's too painful to admit that I've got a valid point or if you're legitimately incapable of reading, because you're not only addressing what I'm saying, but you're completely failing to acknowledge that nobody comes into this game knowing what the stats, traits and synergies are, mean or how they work at all.

And there's nothing in the game that teaches players these things.

You're clearly not new, and it seems to me that your problem is that you've known how these things work for so long that you're like a fish in the water; you're not even aware of the water anymore. You've taken it for granted that these things are 'just known' to you.

So, I'll ask again; where in the game can I go to learn about Power coefficients as they relate to damage dealt against an armored target?

Where IN. THE. GAME. can I go to be taught, by the game, how to build my class more effectively for any of the roles that might be expected of me in advanced content?

Until ARCdps can make build suggestions and critique your damage log, its a tool that is most useful to the people that need it the least. The people that need help the most...well, it can't help them very much at all.

How, after all, are they supposed to make any kind of informed or useful build choices when nothing in the game tells them anything about...anything, really?

I don't know about you, but when I talk to someone that's got their stats all over the place and they really just don't understand why it was a terrible plan for them to try to run around having 2 pieces of Soldier, 2 pieces of Nomad and 2 pieces of Cleric gear with 2 Berserker weapons while running traits in traitlines that don't synergize what so ever with themselves OR the stats/weapons they've got, I don't get angry or frustrated with the player.

Why? Because the game doesn't teach anyone anything. Their only 'crime' is that they didn't spend tens or hundreds of hours doing freaking homework like GW2 was supposed to be a job or a college course. They don't understand anything because the game taught them nothing.

And so there we are once again, explaining to someone that might've been here for months or even years that no, it isn't actually smart to try to have a little bit of Power and Condition Damage and Healing and Toughness because there is no such thing as 'good at everything, great at nothing' build that isn't utter garbage at everything except perhaps for WvW zerging or attrition weavers, and then you're running Celestial on specific builds which is another discussion entirely.

I get mad at Anet because they fail completely, in every way possible, to enable players to excel at their game.

It's not that they don't do enough; they don't do -anything-. They leave it all up to Joe Random Playerbase.

Well, here we are, eight years deep into exploring that hypothesis.

How are you liking all the compelling group content? Liking the new raids? All the new fractals suiting you?

Oh. Wait. There's so little demand for that content that the fact we're getting a new fractal for the first time in forever is shocking and almost like the annual glance from Anet to see if demand for that kind of thing has somehow magically appeared in the field they refuse to do anything to tend.

Maybe if they taught players how to play, players would be better at playing and, thus, there would be more players ...I dunno, maybe this is crazy...playing? You know, the advanced content? Insane, right? How do I even go from 'Teach players to play' to 'Players will play more content'? It's like I'm on drugs or something probably.

ARCdps doesn't teach anyone how to play well. It doesn't teach people how to understand builds and synergies better, or at all. It can be used by those with the knowledge to make use of the data provided to guage the success of a build and rotations to make changes that will improve their performance, but without that knowledge, it's not useful to people that don't understand what the numbers mean or what affects them or how they are derived.

It does you no good at all to see that 60% of your damage came from Burning if you don't even know what in your build, gear and rotations can help you do more burning damage, or to understand that your total damage is trash and that 60% of your trash damage being from burning is stupid because everything you picked for traits and utilities is all over the map and you're not actually using the right weapons for a condi build anyway.

If you can't figure out that having the information provided by arcdps is useful for improvement to absolutely any player who cares to utilize the information, I don't know what to tell you. Your argument is completely ridiculous all over. Also, what is the premise here? Only experts who already know everything and absolute beginners who have no frame of reference for the information provided by arcdps exist? Nobody inbetween that could use this? What are you even talking about, man?

Of course everything I'm saying went whoosh. I should've expected it to.

Enjoy your persistent lack of compelling group content and perpetual confusion about why more people don't care about it or want to get into it, I guess.

[naiasonod.9265]

@Ashen.2907 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@ASP.8093 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:I really wish game devs would provide the tools that have been established as being standard and customary to support skill development in their games, but they always seem to think they're being magnanimous by leaving that up to the players.

Exposing the hooks for third-party tools

is

doing their part, though.

All you folks saying you want to see Arc replaced with an Anet-designed tool don't really see why a community-developed tool is better in this case. The development cycle is more responsive. People can contribute their own changes or fork it if they want to build an alternative. It serves its purpose quite well; any forced transition to a less polished or full-featured tool is going to be a net negative for months or years.

My house is filthy. I'll just leave the door open so anyone that feels like it can come in and clean it if they want to. I will in no way even specifically encourage them to do so, but you know, if they do so, I probably won't ban them from the property. I'll keep that card up my sleeve just in case I'm feeling feisty one day instead.

I'm doing my part to ensure that my home is a welcoming and pleasant place to be.

ANet runs a business and partners with others to expand the options available to those choosing to partake of their product. Partnerships of this sort are not only commonplace but practically ubiquitous. I do not think that your analogy is particularly close to the situation being discussed.

Cool. Cool cool. Lets do nothing, leave the door open and call the people that come to clean up our messes partners.

My name is Tom Sawyer and I've got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a master of fence-painting to let you in on.

Brilliant solution, that. Absolves Anet from having to do anything at all to make the tools and provide the resources for people to get to play their game, and they'll give some headpats and kudos to the people that do their work for them. We'll just call them partners and smile thrillingly at them aaaaaaaaaaand...

...And after eight years its abundantly clear that this 'lets let the playerbase be solely responsible for teaching the playerbase how to play the game' model is a total wash, and every single complaint higher-tier players ever post, speak or whisper to themselves about how terrible it is that everyone's so bad at the game is proof.

More proof? Every single complaint anyone's ever had about why high-end group content gets neglected for years and we almost never get anything new on that front. Why would we? There's so little demand for it because almost nobody can play the game well enough to want to play that stuff.

If only there were some kind of solution to that.

If only there were something the devs could do.

[AliamRationem.5172]

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@naiasonod.9265 said:

If you're already skilled and knowledgable about builds, you got there by other routes completely and ARCdps won't actually be telling you much of anything you don't already know other than that this build throws out 35k burst and that build throws out 36.5k burst. You will already know why if you can build that in the first place, and IF YOU CANNOT?

ARCdps can't and won't help you with builds. ARCdps can't and won't help you understand how synergies across trait lines works, how fields and power interactions work or give even the faintest hint at why the numbers are what they are.

Data is only useful to those that know what it means and understand how it correlates to the actions that yielded it.

It is a 100% useless tool for people that aren't already pretty expert in builds, building and knowing/understanding things. It will give experts data they can use to guide refinements of builds and rotations, and that's fine. Nothing wrong with that at all.

You're simply wrong. Using arcdps gives players their own metric for determining performance. I don't have to wonder whether I performed well or not. I can see the numbers and compare that to my usual performance in the same encounter. I can then change my build and use that same frame of reference for whether or not it's working. How is that not helpful for understanding builds and synergies?

You're coming into the use of this tool with a great deal of foreknowledge about how your stats, skills and traitline synergies work however.

Where did you acquire that knowledge? You, like the rest of us with a high level of knowledge about such things, have probably spent hundreds of hours out of the game watching videos, reading guides, participating in theorycrafting discussions and trying out countless build arrays, and possibly spending/wasting hundreds of gold on, different gear sets to try to figure out what works, what looks like it should on paper but actually doesn't, what looks like it shouldn't on paper but weirdly does and so on.

ARCdps is a valuable tool for the exact purpose I specified: experts refining and polishing builds.

Anyone with an expert level of knowledge and understanding of how this game's systems work doesn't need ARCdps for jack diddly squat though. You'll be able to put a build together and feel out whether or not its putting out the DPS it should or if its not quite there a lot of the time through sheer, overwhelming experience with what it SHOULD feel like.

Having the data is how you go from 35k to 36.5k and work out how to pick up the improvements you couldn't feel.

ARCdps won't help you understand the game better though. ARCdps isn't even a tool the game itself references or provides. You won't even hear about it except from other players, and you have to go to third party sites and download it from third party servers to even get ahold of it.

The raiding guild I'm in does a lot of training and teaching. The officers try super hard to reach out to people, to get more people into doing ANYTHING more advanced than 'run around core Tyria spamming 1 and dodging only by accident'. They're great people and we all make great use of ARCdps.

It's tough to get new players to even download it about half the time. Most common complaint I've seen thus far is that they don't trust Github for whatever usually not-reasonable reason they have, but why should they HAVE to trust Github to play GW2 better?

Why in all creation should ANY player have to go outside of the game to find the tools and resources that will enable them to play the game effectively?

Why is the game not providing these tools and resources internally and with all the power and integration only the devs could ever hope to provide?

Again, wrong. A new player isn't going to do 40k on a golem benchmark whether they use arcdps or not. But that doesn't mean that arcdps isn't useful to them. They will still be able to observe how changes to their build and strategy impact their performance. Further, the ability to see the breakdown for each skill allows them to easily tell where their damage is coming from. They don't necessarily need to have a deep understanding of the game's mechanics to tell that if 60% of their damage comes from burning, a trait/skill/etc. that improves burn damage would probably be helpful, for instance.

I'm not sure if you're deliberately being obtuse because it's too painful to admit that I've got a valid point or if you're legitimately incapable of reading, because you're not only addressing what I'm saying, but you're completely failing to acknowledge that nobody comes into this game knowing what the stats, traits and synergies are, mean or how they work at all.

And there's nothing in the game that teaches players these things.

You're clearly not new, and it seems to me that your problem is that you've known how these things work for so long that you're like a fish in the water; you're not even aware of the water anymore. You've taken it for granted that these things are 'just known' to you.

So, I'll ask again; where in the game can I go to learn about Power coefficients as they relate to damage dealt against an armored target?

Where IN. THE. GAME. can I go to be taught, by the game, how to build my class more effectively for any of the roles that might be expected of me in advanced content?

Until ARCdps can make build suggestions and critique your damage log, its a tool that is most useful to the people that need it the least. The people that need help the most...well, it can't help them very much at all.

How, after all, are they supposed to make any kind of informed or useful build choices when nothing in the game tells them anything about...anything, really?

I don't know about you, but when I talk to someone that's got their stats all over the place and they really just don't understand why it was a terrible plan for them to try to run around having 2 pieces of Soldier, 2 pieces of Nomad and 2 pieces of Cleric gear with 2 Berserker weapons while running traits in traitlines that don't synergize what so ever with themselves OR the stats/weapons they've got, I don't get angry or frustrated with the player.

Why? Because the game doesn't teach anyone anything. Their only 'crime' is that they didn't spend tens or hundreds of hours doing freaking homework like GW2 was supposed to be a job or a college course. They don't understand anything because the game taught them nothing.

And so there we are once again, explaining to someone that might've been here for months or even years that no, it isn't actually smart to try to have a little bit of Power and Condition Damage and Healing and Toughness because there is no such thing as 'good at everything, great at nothing' build that isn't utter garbage at everything except perhaps for WvW zerging or attrition weavers, and then you're running Celestial on specific builds which is another discussion entirely.

I get mad at Anet because they fail completely, in every way possible, to enable players to excel at their game.

It's not that they don't do enough; they don't do -anything-. They leave it all up to Joe Random Playerbase.

Well, here we are, eight years deep into exploring that hypothesis.

How are you liking all the compelling group content? Liking the new raids? All the new fractals suiting you?

Oh. Wait. There's so little demand for that content that the fact we're getting a new fractal for the first time in forever is shocking and almost like the annual glance from Anet to see if demand for that kind of thing has somehow magically appeared in the field they refuse to do anything to tend.

Maybe if they taught players how to play, players would be better at playing and, thus, there would be more players ...I dunno, maybe this is crazy...playing? You know, the advanced content? Insane, right? How do I even go from 'Teach players to play' to 'Players will play more content'? It's like I'm on drugs or something probably.

ARCdps doesn't teach anyone how to play well. It doesn't teach people how to understand builds and synergies better, or at all. It can be used by those with the knowledge to make use of the data provided to guage the success of a build and rotations to make changes that will improve their performance, but without that knowledge, it's not useful to people that don't understand what the numbers mean or what affects them or how they are derived.

It does you no good at all to see that 60% of your damage came from Burning if you don't even know what in your build, gear and rotations can help you do more burning damage, or to understand that your total damage is trash and that 60% of your trash damage being from burning is stupid because everything you picked for traits and utilities is all over the map and you're not actually using the right weapons for a condi build anyway.

If you can't figure out that having the information provided by arcdps is useful for improvement to absolutely any player who cares to utilize the information, I don't know what to tell you. Your argument is completely ridiculous all over. Also, what is the premise here? Only experts who already know everything and absolute beginners who have no frame of reference for the information provided by arcdps exist? Nobody inbetween that could use this? What are you even talking about, man?

Of course everything I'm saying went whoosh. I should've expected it to.

Enjoy your persistent lack of compelling group content and perpetual confusion about why more people don't care about it or want to get into it, I guess.

I'm sorry. If your rather extensive thesis ranged beyond the discussion of arcdps, I wasn't paying attention. Having said that, I do agree that group content in this game is not particularly compelling, which is why I am mostly a solo open world/PvE player with forays into PvP and WvW roaming. Raids/strikes/fractals have never been a particular focus of mine. If it is your position that the game should have a dps meter built-in then again, I agree in principle. However, like I said, I don't trust ANet after what they did with build templates and I'd rather things stay just the way they are.

Also, FWIW, I develop builds that make open world play easier for players to get into. With or without a dps meter, players require time to learn. Time they likely won't have to practice if they're dying so quickly and so frequently that they don't have time to learn anything! You do have to enjoy the gameplay first in order to truly learn and appreciate its depth, after all. I'm not a developer. I do what I can.