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DPS Parsing is ruining this game
immudzen
Member Posts: 145 Arc User
Recently I have gotten pretty annoyed at DPS parsing. Mostly because there is so much that it can't count and it distorts the player base as a result.
Lets take a very simple situation. Lets say you are in Argala and facing off against a group of 8 cruisers or so.
Person one is a DPS scimatar and they kill the group in 10 seconds.
Person two is a drain boat and they use tykens rift to shut down all the ships and drop their shields, One ship is blown up and the resulting chain reaction of warp core breaches kills the rest of the ships. Lets say person 2 killed the group in 10 seconds also.
The problem is that Person one will have a VERY high dps parse and Person two will have a very low dps parse. Even though they both killed the same group in the same amount of time. The dps reader can only read the damage done and that only works when you are just burning through defenses. Anything that bypasses defenses or uses any kind of clever way to kill enemies will inherently do badly on the parse.
I think we still need many roles in this game but so many groups are down to just parsing and only wanting people to join them based on parsing. It distorts the game and leads many to undervalue anyone that has abilities that are not easy to parse.
Look at borg disconnected. The pure DPS burn route to that mission makes it harder and on elite usually makes it darn close to impossible. What you want is to control the enemies and kill them as slowly as possible so you don't end up with more powerful Borg. If you can stay with probes and some spheres then the voth, undine and borg will be evently matched and keep each other busy while you rescue ships.
Look at the Azure mission on elite. The easiest way to do that is with a tank that draws the enemies away while others rescue the ships and then the enemies despawn. You can also use a sci to disable the entire group of ships while someone else rescues the target. The DPS burn approach on elite is almost always a failure because the dps needed to burn them is so high compared to what you need to just pull them away.
Cryptic has made missions that are not dps focused but so many players just don't see it and it is making this game worse as a result. You can see it in the comments that many make about how useless engineers and science officers are in space or any ship other than a dps setup ship.
Other ships have roles, they are important roles, they can make a mission go far faster and far easier and since they will never show up on DPS parses they are disregarded. This attitude really needs to end before it takes the game down with it.
Lets take a very simple situation. Lets say you are in Argala and facing off against a group of 8 cruisers or so.
Person one is a DPS scimatar and they kill the group in 10 seconds.
Person two is a drain boat and they use tykens rift to shut down all the ships and drop their shields, One ship is blown up and the resulting chain reaction of warp core breaches kills the rest of the ships. Lets say person 2 killed the group in 10 seconds also.
The problem is that Person one will have a VERY high dps parse and Person two will have a very low dps parse. Even though they both killed the same group in the same amount of time. The dps reader can only read the damage done and that only works when you are just burning through defenses. Anything that bypasses defenses or uses any kind of clever way to kill enemies will inherently do badly on the parse.
I think we still need many roles in this game but so many groups are down to just parsing and only wanting people to join them based on parsing. It distorts the game and leads many to undervalue anyone that has abilities that are not easy to parse.
Look at borg disconnected. The pure DPS burn route to that mission makes it harder and on elite usually makes it darn close to impossible. What you want is to control the enemies and kill them as slowly as possible so you don't end up with more powerful Borg. If you can stay with probes and some spheres then the voth, undine and borg will be evently matched and keep each other busy while you rescue ships.
Look at the Azure mission on elite. The easiest way to do that is with a tank that draws the enemies away while others rescue the ships and then the enemies despawn. You can also use a sci to disable the entire group of ships while someone else rescues the target. The DPS burn approach on elite is almost always a failure because the dps needed to burn them is so high compared to what you need to just pull them away.
Cryptic has made missions that are not dps focused but so many players just don't see it and it is making this game worse as a result. You can see it in the comments that many make about how useless engineers and science officers are in space or any ship other than a dps setup ship.
Other ships have roles, they are important roles, they can make a mission go far faster and far easier and since they will never show up on DPS parses they are disregarded. This attitude really needs to end before it takes the game down with it.
Post edited by immudzen on
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BD is the same, you sit there, and sit there, and sit there. And in the event the reward you get compared to what you get on other missions is not great either (though it depends on what marks you want). Here you can do the same you would do with a CC or a Tank with a dps ship, while the teammate just sits and rescues.
Simply because any viable DPS Ship is a tank on its own. Whenever you need a "tank", which can draw aggro and thus "CC" the enemy, any dps-ship is as good as a fully fledged tank, as those missions usually feature weak mobs.
So, yes, there are missions which can be done nicely without much dps. Because they are timegated.
And no, the desire to improve oneself by being able to analyze what one can do is not a problem. DPS Parsers show a lot of information besides DPS, like healing and tanking abilities (death+damage in).
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Time vs reword.
No DPS'ers didn't didn't ruin the game, Perfect World did. As usual wrong people are blamed. Remov time gates, and people will not care about time.
But not people like me, I like to do things fast. It is your problem that you don't like my approach (and I am not one of those crazy 100k DPS-ers).
Then, they added time based STF, and huge HP pool mobs to kill. Meaning the only way to do it, is to actually have a minimum DPS threshold (simple maths here).
And now, the players are blaming the DPSer because the game is unbalanced, and is DPS oriented ? Wrong target.
You came to the wrong place if you want to use the truth!
Where are these average new players who do 10,000? When I check I'm seeing more like 1500.
oh and p.s. why do you think they added the "huge HP pool mobs to kill."
Ah life looks rosy in simplistic colored glasses.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
You completed missed the main point of my example. I have had exactly the situation I described where I killed something just as fast as a DPS ship but the DPS results show very badly for it.
Do you really care how I killed a group of ships in 10 seconds or do you just care that they where killed?
DPS parsers are inherently not accurate for ANYTHING except pure direct damage. If you so much as use a weapon that has a polaron , tetryon, phaser or disruptor procs your DPS will read lower for the same kill time.
DPS parsers are ONLY accurate for pure damage with nothing special. Considering so many use antiproton it works fine for those builds.
DPS parsers are fundamentally broken and given the data the game provides they CAN NOT BE FIXED. The problem is people make decisions based on them.
If it normally takes you 10 seconds to kill a tac cube but I enable you to kill it in 5 by stripping all the defenses your DPS will read lower and mine will read pretty badly also even though the cube was killed in half the time. A DPS parser can't show this kind of thing.
They will just accuse you of whining because you're jealous. Don't waste your time with complex arguments.
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
And if person 2 had an ounce of intelligence they would quickly realize that draining NPCs is not a smart way to do space combat based on the DPS parse, which also measures drains and heals. Drainboats may work in PVP, but they are complete garbage in all the PVE I am aware of. Cryptic should have given drains more importance against NPCs but instead made them basically immune. At least half the "DPSers" use attack pattern Beta, which buffs everyone more than anything you are talking about in terms of buffs against Cubes, so I am not sure what "help" you are referring to in the example. Sensor Analysis is definitely a big help on bosses, but most sci ship captains do not cry about the slightly lower DPS they do in order to bring that team buff.
As for noobs claiming to be healers. I have met a few, in almost every case they are completely useless. I have never played a healer, so not sure if it is simply impossible to heal someone elses ship that has agro. I have adapted my playstyle to be completely self reliant in regards to heals and clearing debuffs, instead of figuring out why "healers" are complete failures in this game.
As for "taking the game down" it may be a little late as Cryptic has pretty much done that without the help of DPSers. The game is now an endless dilithium grind.
No! No! No! It's your fault! Even though I equip Beam Overload 3 on a 100% cannon/turrets build, it's still your fault!
I parse my guys but I only really parse my tactical officers as they are the ones that rely on dps, but there are other things you can see in the parse not just weapon damage.
From time to time I try the engineer and the science officer but since its not direct weapon damage in most cases its mines (pets) particles etc and debuffing it looks a bit different.
Anyhow people need to stop worrying so much about what joe blow the other guy is doing and just have fun. If he is not breaking the rules or hacking or whatever ignore him and have fun.
However I guess since I parse I am also ruining the game even though I dont share the information and its just for me to have fun with the info for myself.
I know people want to improve. I support them wanting to improve. The problem is the DPS parsers don't do that for anything other than a very narrow niche.
I have done tests where I measured the time to clear a mission with predictable spawns. When I switched to antiproton or plasma setup my DPS went way up but the kill time went DOWN.
If you are trying to improve your performance with a DPS parser then it pretty much only helps in a VERY limited scenario. If you are using antiproton or plasma weapons and you don't use any special abilities that impact enemies in a non-direct damage way then a DPS parser will give accurate results to improve yourself.
Doing it for yourself to have fun is not a problem at all.
There are things you can learn from parsing if you look into the details. However so many I run into just look at the final damage number and that is the end of it.
From parsing I learned that the universal repair platform console was pretty much a waste. When I looked at the total healing it did for the entire team over the entire time of the mission the results where BAD. Just completely horrible. As a result I removed them.
I will probably try to test them some more to see if there are any circumstances where they are a good idea but so far they don't seem to work that well.
Parsing can be useful, but blindly following the parsers and the conviction that DPS rules all THAT, combined with awful attitudes by those who usually don't know how to properly use a parser, is what is ruining the game.
Last week in vortex advanced i handled a whole side by myself, including two cubes from the opposite side and blew the gate in the same time it took the other four people to do the rest.
Donatra went down swiftly and then someone began talking trash about my perceived 12k DPS. Said person didn't know that the parsers depend on combat logs and that the combat logs don't record anything further away than 50 Km away.
As I fly a drainboat myself, I understand where you are coming from, however, if drain is good or not heavily relays on group-dps in not time-gated encounters. If you happen to fly with 4 30k-ships, your drain wont do much, but your dps will be far less than a fifth 30k player and thus the encounter would take longer than with 5 30k players.
However, if you go in a pug, where the group-dps is quite low, a drainboat can be very helpful, even with 5k capable of replacing a 15...20k pure dps-ship (here not taking into account that those can have GW on board and can very well be solid tanks...).
So, its not only a matter of missiondesign, but also of the team.
Another point I dont understand why a drainship shouldnt do dps (>10k). 2012 I would understand the limitation due to energy, but nowadays energy is flying around like air, and even without plasmonic (=energy) a torpboat scryer, nova, nebula, pathfinder and so on can do this with the full CC/Drain-Array on board.
Sometimes I just think ppl dont wont to do any DPS, even if they have to willingly shoot themselves in the leg. I mean you can do CC, Drain etc., but with a little bit thinking outside the box you can also do decent dps without having to sacrifice CC,Drain, Heal etc...
Well, yeah, even the best tool doesnt replace intellect and common sense. Cant blame the tool for it.
But well, as you can get sued for selling coffee, which is hot and douchebags can hurt themselves with it, that certainly speaks more for a future like "Idiocracy" and not "Star Trek".
They added heaps more health for one simple reason: To slow players down.
People were gaining lots of dil, not through breaking the system, but being very efficient with it. My own fleet, pre-DR, when we had a full team on, could get together, run all 3 Advanced space STFs (not Hive, not worth it due to the length) in about 15-20 minutes, switch toons, and do it all over again.
The huge HP pools weren't added because of the top DPS folk. It was added because of the more 'average Joe' player. Or I suppose more like, 'knows the game decently well and has good gear Joe' player. People who were vets, or perhaps not, but knew the game well enough, had the gear to complete content effectively.
Those were the main ones hurt by it, because that was the point. Then after that, 'hey, here's the upgrade system, now you can pay a heap of dil and resources to bump all your gear up to mk XIV epic-rarity'. So that people would have to pay to get back to the level of gaining dil efficiency they were at before, but have to pay an arm and leg first to do it.
It's not about DPS folk, or even anybody using a DPS parser, it never has been, not truly. It's about the metrics. About keeping things to only a certain level, and they will do ANYTHING they wish to make sure it stays that way.
I don't disagree that a drainboat should be able to do > 10K. I am at 7K right now and will probably hit 20K by the time I am done. However a pure DPS player has to do a lot more than 20K to match the same kill speed.
My issue is so many that just compare the DPS number and end it right there. I have seen too many yell at other teammates and complain about DPS and only DPS.
The problem is that the DPS parsers are not accurate and can't be accurate and judging how someone is doing based on DPS does a poor job of understanding the situation.
Your ludicrous logic is to take away the only tool that give you ANY data and replace it with idiot eyeballing.
Now of course you will get jumped at for threads like these by every gang or league or what ever those ppl are organized in.
Now I am thinking about parsers been the most wretched curse that came upon STO, but some ppl may see it as next best thing since sliced bread. Each has the right to his/hers own opinion.
So how about a better solution: Cryptic to add an option in the privacy tab menu to "Allow other to see my damage/healling" and same thing with ignored players. This way the DPSers will get their big ego stroke from seeing their own DPS :"Yay, everybody look at mee, did this xxk DPS":eek:, while other ppl will mind their own business.
And I think this option is much needed, since I heard some disturbing things (and outrageous ones I might add) as some DPSers are pugging to collect data on ppl for "statistics":rolleyes:. Now I dont mind Cryptic doing this, of course. But its another thing when a group of individuals are doing that, since that data can be easily manipulated to use their own agenda and so on. And maybe some ppl just dont want to be asociated with that certain group of individuals...
So an option to allow others to see or not your data would be best, similar as the ignore function is...
The DPS parser fundamentally does not work and can never work correctly given the information that is has. Basing decisions on it is inaccurate. You can learn some things from it if you look very carefully but in the end the parser can't truly help you because the information necessary for it to do a good job does not exist for it to work with.
Saying that is the only tool we have or that it is better than nothing does not change the situation that it is fundamentally inaccurate and can't be made accurate.
If your fuel level always gave you a number but it was not related to how much fuel you have it would not be useful. It wouldn't' matter if it was the only number you had it would still not be useful.
The bottom line is this: Improve your gameplay. The devs have made STO harder.
We can argue at length the value of X over Y. At the end of the day the dev's choose the most cost effective means to monetize the game. If you're following the Glassdoor thread, it's seems that the current management doesn't actually play the game. Gecko outed himself in the P1 #200 podcast - he simply didn't know how players could break 100K.
That speaks volumes about how they plan this game.
DPS is now a requirement to grind. Yup, I said it. It's a requirement to move forward.
10K can be achieved with common gear, while maintaining whatever RP-aspect of the game you'd like. All it takes is basic understanding of how to use your skills.
For example, if I'm doing Infected, Ground, I like to have someone who can keep healing us as we go go go.
Khitomer? Someone who can blow the TRIBBLE out of the power generators with mines.
Cure? Well, this is a raw dps mission to be honest so all tacs.
Hive? I'd say a team of engineers and tacs can dominate this level. Used to be that sci were extremely effective and useful here. They still are, but not as critical as before.
Some aspects of the game are raw dps, such as Bug Hunt. There's not much requirement for skills anymore.
In the past, it used to be that skills count and not so much dps. engineers would stall, tank and do heavy single target damage while doing the interaction necessary to advance the storyline. Tacs would kill and enhance your destructive abilities and science would both cause havoc on the battlefield and heal you. Engineers are extremely useful for certain missions on Defera.
What needs to happen is that engineers need to be given a stronger health boost and abilities to make themselves more of a tank. Science needs to be given more crowd control abilities for ground. Tacs are fine as they are. That's for ground.
For space, we need to be given missions where science abilities are more necessary, where tanking and healing are more necessary. The Mirror invasion is a pretty decent start on that.
The parser have limitations, true. However, it's a simple tool that does what it's built to do : IE read a combat log and makes "simple" maths, like calculating DPS. It's not wrong, if you do 5000damage in a one second, then you are doing 5K dps. It's fact, logic, whatever you like. No magic. You can calculate the same thing, pull the combat log, add the damage, divide by time. Magic !
Now, in other games, it's not enough, as, for example, a tank or heal will have a ridiculously low parser, and are yet essential.
But in STO, everything is about DPS, so, yeah, the parser is actually the only tool you need.
For example, in the OP's example.
Your drain boat is useless compared to a good DPS team. Yeah, I know it sucks. Blame the game, not me.
I'll explain why.
Most opponent, for example the Borg, have a ridiculously low amount of shield, when they have one(I'm looking at you transformers and gates). IE something like 10-20k shield, I don't know. It's truly low compared to their hull.
Usually, you can strip them in seconds. Or just ignore them, and go directly for the hull.
So disabling them is...worthless. Since they'll go down even faster if you do DPS instead, and thus, won't do much damage anyway.
And before you start with the warp core breach and all, well, BFAW, and warp core breach to. Just saying.
As I said, blame the game, not me. I also want to have drain boat, tank, heal, support, and whatever that's not DPS related. I fully support more variety in this game.
But the fact is, everything is so much easier and faster when everyone is pulling a lot of DPS.
Having access to a parser is not going to change anything.
BTW I'm talking space, not ground, before someone start that way.
And considering how many people use BFAW and other area effects in Infected, and that there are now more NPCs spawning in there, I would not be surprised if the values there have been inflated compared to before Delta Rising.
I would, however, not worry that much about your example. If you really don't need any longer than a high DPS build, and this is something you can actually apply to other game scenarios (like Infected), then even if your DPS figure is low, all it means is that you might not get to join the high DPS channels. You will still be a welcome guest for most advanced or elite runs, because you still bring results.
Of course, if you can only pull this off in Argala but someone can use his Scimitard DPS build in every mission... then I am afraid yes, your build is still weaker overall.
^^^^This! A thousand times THIS! The Dev's made this game focus on DPS more than anything, and they haven't changed!
[/SIGPIC]
Indeed. They could had timegated the Elite, and left the advanced queres the way they are. Let the DSPers rip through the Elite and test our epeen there while allowing those who are learning the ability to learn.
Parsers are not bad for the game. Players that do not understand the mechanics are bad for the game. Closing your eyes and pretending that the problem does not exist will not solve anything.
I understand that a parse that says you did basically nothing in an STF will make you feel bad - but that's only because, in all likelihood, you did next to nothing. Parses may not be absolutely exact, but they are, actually, quite accurate when used correctly.
I understand the parsers are improving... beside it'd be nice when they can tell us what type of damage we're doing. It's too simple right now. I'd love to know how my mate's exotic damage did when he tosses out grav wells. The info I'd like would be number of targets hit by grav wells and total damage inflicted by grav wells
Have you ever actually used a parser? Because it sounds like you think that all they do is give out a final DPS number. That is far, far from the truth. The detail available when you run your own parses is quite amazing.
To be honest, no I haven't. The numbers i got when I asked for exotic damage didn't give how many targets were hit by them.