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devs, implement your own ingame dps breakdown
olliereport
Member Posts: 721
it would be nice if the game had this, along with healing and cc being measured
it would galvanize gameplay and build experimentation within the game beyond the minority of people who use external tools
people would have fun switching things up to see what happens
and no, no it wouldn't transform the game into "dps dps dps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", there are too many people that just play for fun
post script - also, I don't think the current breakdown of player cooperation would have occurred if there was an ingame meter, a neutral tool
it would galvanize gameplay and build experimentation within the game beyond the minority of people who use external tools
people would have fun switching things up to see what happens
and no, no it wouldn't transform the game into "dps dps dps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", there are too many people that just play for fun
post script - also, I don't think the current breakdown of player cooperation would have occurred if there was an ingame meter, a neutral tool
Post edited by olliereport on
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I wish I had your faith in humanity.
Am not against more in game tools however... It'ld be funny to see all the treads about the tool being broken cause it say their build is not as great as they think it is.
And yes it would, not that would make it any different then now it's already all about dps . :P
Actually I change my mind I'm ok with my hate for other humans.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
In fact, changing the meta (its not even "changing it back", its a simple "change") it would mean far more fails in pugs, as pugs usually are bad in working together. Especially if you go all the way to implementing trinity (which is stupid setup anyway), and you would need tanks and healer/supporter, pugs would be so horribly fail it would be nice to get a STO-TV to watch it with popcorn.
As for an ingame meter, we would likely get the same as in pvp, which logs so horribly wrong its a joke in itself.
Censoredcraft was big enough to handle that. 1-5% of the community participating in content was enough people to justify the content.
STO is nowhere near Censoredcraft's population size.
The DPS channels, both flavors, have made sure queueing is doomed to a poor experience by pulling out all the experienced players.
The only difference is DPS is marketed by a community while all others are not. There is no organized healing community nor tanking community in game even though there are tools to do it. Probably because it requires a lot of work to make communities work.
Besides, you don't really know where the 3rd party tool is coming from and what it's doing either. With the current bad behavior, I'd actually worry about that now. Now that, that could do some insane damage to this game.
It would be much nicer if it was a non-java company utility/tool.
And, not automatically intrusive on the UI, otherwise people pay attention too it too much, it alters the game, etc. etc.
EDIT: I'm aware that these things are logged, but they aren't really presented in any understandable
Well that, and because you dont win a mission by healing or tanking.
There is a working non-java-variant of CLR.
You guys should try that one... Very professionally done...
Step 1. Download it
Step 2. Set it up and your account
Step 3. Let it find your combatlog folder or find it yourself
Step 4. Do a simple test usually falling works make sure you type /combatlog 1 on chat to start it. /combatlog 0 to stop it. Once you have run what you wanted to parse. Just double click the icon on the taskbar to upload the parse, if you right click you can also bring up a real time minitor,.
And you should be good.
I have tried it. I don't like it.
On a few parses I've checked, it inflates dps rather badly, taking one person from 11.6k (according to CLR's advanced settings) up to 13.1k, and only once got within 200 dps of CLR. ACT, using the settings from the /r/sto wiki, was within 200 dps on all of them.
The reason it has that problem is largely due to how it tracks combat time - it only counts the seconds you're firing or being fired at for dps purposes, so if I was using that parser, I could decloak once, deal 200,000 damage in one second (THY+BO+Iso+Cascade+APA, GDF, RomT5, APO3, EPTW3, DEM1, and any other fun buffs), and it would literally show my dps as 200k because I was only active for one second. Though that's an absurd example, it points out 'relevant' dps - if I can do 30k dps, but only get to targets when they're 1/3rd dead, my only effective dps is 20k, for example.
Furthermore, the base vs actual damage charts there can cause confusion - looking more at that parse, said the 'base' was 15,969 dps, meaning that said person might think that they did nearly 16k dps, as it's the bottom number and usually bigger.
It's breakdown is littered with way too many charts that make it hard for me to focus in on.
It has a few other issues as well.
It's trying to start it's own database, which spreads faulty information - it gives the impression that 138.095k is the current dps record, when that's actually 180.4k as of now- it doesn't get the best players because most of them use the current standard CLR.
To further prove that point, it has 3021 matches uploaded, according to it's homepage, and that's across all of it's users. CLR has 17174 different individuals who it has parse data from since delta rising alone - not counting all the people who have uploaded dozens of their own parses, possibly across multiple characters.
We have no idea who's running this. CLR, while there have been events that I'm not going to talk about here involving it's creator, still has well known names attached to it, people who are well known for knowing how to DPS, and has the reputation of the DPS-Metals channels behind. There will be an alternative to CLR coming out soon, which will again have known faces and the reputation of the DPS-Numbers channels behind it. And I trust a java program significantly more than I trust an application that needs admin permissions to run.
Conclusion: I'd stay away.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
Tacs are overrated.
Game's best wiki
Build questions? Look here!
The in game meter would be used to justify the elitists opinion that only damage matters.
If it were hidden and players could only see their own values, and further if they were absracted to bad-poor_ok-good-great, THEN it would be safe.
But I cannot think of a single example from all human history where sharing easily compared numbers in a contest has ever reduced narcissism, ego and/or conflict. Instead every example I can think of increases all three. Spedomoeters and street racing? Sports fans and team/player stats? Countries/political parties and socioeconomic data? I can't find one example where the data being available reduces the pissing contest nor encourages good behavior.
When people use the tool for good it is a testament to the virtue of the person, not the tool.
I'd have to agree. We've already got discrimination based on DPS against less experienced players and those who don't want to fly the uberl33t cookie cutter DPS builds or shunning certain ships because "They are incapable of achieving the 'required' deeps so therefor that player obviously fails at STO".
What we need is a way to encourage players, not divide the playerbase even more than it already is. Right now we've got a divide between at least 3 groups.
Hardcore
Casual
PvP
Most of the less experienced players IMO fall under the Casual category, which I believe is also the largest category in the game. Hardcore players are those who try and squeeze out every last iota of performance out of their ships, and sometimes, not all the time and not everyone mind you, feel that everyone else should be up to their standards. PvP... that's just a class all its own really.
One casual gets in with a "subpar" build, and that's the target for blaim if the STF fails. Generally no advice on how to improve the build, just "Learn2Play N00b". Sometimes its from an Elitest, sometimes its from some jerk who is all bark, no bite, no real skill and inflated ego. But the fact remains people who don't "Perform" to someone's percived level is bashed for it, even if they are just starting out or are on an alt that isn't as geared up as their mains.
I have a pretty decent Phantom packing Phased Biomatter weapons. She averages about 10k DPS and I feel that's not too bad. I admit she doesn't have the current mod flavor of choice CrtDx3 everything, but she can hold her own. I've got a Scryer that can manage about 3k, but she's not a damage boat, she's a Crowd Control Science JuJu boat. Basically a support build. And then there's my cruisers with 6 Acc x3 Phaser Arrays that falls somewhere between my Scryer and Phantom. Not the best, but still viable all of them. And a friend of mine actually said those Acc x3 Phasers are a PvPers nightmare.
Instead of bashing people... we, as more experienced players, should be more open to giving advice on how people can improve, and do so in a way that also fits their preferred playstyle. If someone wants to run with Tetryon weapons... that's fine. Let them know what they can use to improve Tetryon like the Nukara set.
Call me a mutant for wanting to help people, but that's just the way I see things. We shouldn't rip people a new one who try and fail, we should encourage them to improve. Now people who fail on purpose like Trolls... yea. Rip 'em apart.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
you know, I know. there is a dark side to the dps bs. the 14yo squeeker ranting all about dps. it's ugly.
but I can think of two positive concrete examples
one is the speed racing they have been doing on the salt flats for almost 100 years. it's not just one big bundle, there are classes and sub-classes and different categories where speed is measured. sure, people are competing but no one in some rocket car is taunting and laughing at someone in the vintage motorcycle class that they are going faster. it's a very positive environment.
the second here in STO. the dps channels have been a very positive place. the only spot I've seen annoying elitism is in the lower ranks, 10k. and it's wasn't that often and when it was there someone would eventually step in and let the air out of their hot heads.
I'd have to say, compared to wow or other games that have dps utilities, this is very laid back here. People say hey I hit XXXX dps in (some classic cannon fed ship) with phasers or some cannon klingon ship with disruptors and everyone says "hey, sweet!" I've rarely seen people point and laugh in the channels for no good reason. And the rare times that I have seen it, I've seen someone step in and say some equivalent of "grow up".
I can't speak to the upper ranks in the dps channels. I have a friend who went from 30k to 80-100k+ (in random groups) in the course of months. He did say that it was a little odd there. Perhaps he just hadn't earned his "cred" yet or something. Probably it was the underlying drama, that he was unaware of.
Before this current dustup, which I don't really want to go into too much because they will close this thread, it all looked to be just for fun here.
EDIT: in summary, I think there's room for a first-party parser utility in this game
that sounds like fun, it's all about fun. there's more room than people think for different ships. I'd think though, with all the novel traits (reputation and otherwise) and gear, just about anything can do adequate dps for any task, excepting a few of the elite pve-que games. in fact, the some ships that aren't min/maxed can be even more fun, there's room for some of the tricky universal consoles.
I'm going to be brief because this really is a simple process...
1. Download Desktop Client
2. Open the Desktop Client
3. Sign in / create an account if you need to
4. Open STO
5. Type /combatlog 1 into chat
6. Do actual combat don't just fall and go oh that's damage... The log size has to be met before it can process your log. The client will tell you if you've meet the requirements or not.
7. When done double click the Desktop Client in your system tray to process your log
If that doesn't work verify that Combatlog.Log exists in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Star Trek Online\Star Trek Online\Live\logs\GameClient
^ This directory is specific to your account.
If this all checks out then something is blocking the application from doing it's job. Most likely an antivirus is viewing the client's behavior as a false positive because it's accessing your Program Files directory.
Last resort manually delete the combatlog file and try again.
If it still doesn't work then I don't know what to tell you...
Good Luck!
I'll do a more detailed guide on how to use it... hopefully it will be more understandable...
Exactly! This is a game. Its supposed to be fun.
I was one of those weird people who actually enjoyed a Tetryon build for a long time. And IMO Tetryon can get some of the same numbers as other damage types if done properly too. I mean... get the exact same build on two ships except for one's packing Phaser and ones packing Tetryon, same mods and everything... they'll perform about the same. Slap a Nukara set on the Tet build... might get a bit more out of her than the Phaser build mentioned earlier.
All these cookie cutter builds take away that fun of experimentation. Its all "MUST have this and this with these BOff powers and these DOffs and you must fly this way..."
I like to fly my own way thank you very much. Heck... I came up with a Singularity Jump, Subspace Jump combo on my Romulan that was kinda fun. Drop a singularity to inhibit movement, immediately subspace jump to get forward guns back on target. For added fun... could drop some torps out the back before the subspace jump, be it the crafting plasma torps or Grav Photons for teh lulz.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
It's doomed to be a poor experience regardless.
When I first played this game, before the DPS channels even existed (or were in their infancy), queues were abyssmal. Far worse than they are now, actually. And this despite being far more PUG friendly.
The cost of acquisition and the cost of upgrading are two major barriers which reinforce cookie cutter builds.
I'm not fooling around with a plasma build or a polaron build precisely because the investment cost is so high that I haven't even finished working on a AP build.
Instead, I focus on ground content, because for the same cost of one space build I can upgrade multiple ground sets.
With my DR I planned for something unconventional that looked decent on paper, hasn't played out as I expected, and will likely be redone with a much more bland almost-cookie cutter replacement.
Oddly enough, the DR's ground gear is now a mix of epic and ultra-rare gear (say what you want but the Imperial Romulan Navy gear is pretty darned good for free gear and my first romulan repeater, which I wisely held on to, was a CrtD/CrtH and ended up CrtDx2/CrtHx2 and went gold on it's first upgrade kit).
Thankfully all the rep gear I sunk dilithium in to acquire was solely paid for by what the DR made during the event and from hitting T5 in the reps, so my small overall hoard wasn't hit too hard, but it still keeps me from wanting to experiment much.
Which is also why my torpedo Corvette, which had plasma and trans load outs before Delta Rising, became a strict plasma boat. Being projectile weapons on top of a lot of rep torpedoes makes it very expensive to upgrade.
Again, it is the people themselves that determine the effect, not the speedometer tool that provides the numbers. We can have all the benefit without cryptic providing the tool. The tool will be used for more harm than good in this community at this time.
Again, it is the people. When you look at not just the dustup, but the reputation DPs people have, it is because there are lots of bad apples. I guarantee that if we start a thread about bad experiences with people posting parser numbers after a pug and a second with good experiences, here and on reedit, both will have vastly more unique negative stories. Because DPs parsers appeal to the competitive "I'm better than him" mentality so they naturally are used by the second worst segment of the gaming population (behind only greifers).
They also appeal to the best group of gamers: those who seek to improve and are willing to help others.
Sadly, the former outnumber the latter by a large number.
And, quite frankly, they did in the DPs crowd even before his dustup. Several of the Admins and others have been famous for mocking and shaming people in the public and 10k channel for years. But you could only see what they were saying being those people's backs if you had access to the higher channels.
I can tell you that I've seen complaints about the DPs community going back to the very first day I'm logged into the forums in 2013.
Again, it is the people. There are great people (val aka mastajdog aka jarvisandalfred and kam aka sarcasm detector aka Jena are two). There are terrible people I will not name. But our community is not mature enough to use a first party DPs meter for good.
We only need to look at all!the negativity from the top three scores in the crystal catastrophe for evidence. Instead of being a tool to help people get better that top three system is a source of "lol noob I can get first with white gear, you must be some special kind of tard" and every gross form of racism, homophobia and derogatory insult imaginable. No one is improving their game play because of that top three scoreboard. Instead, it is a source of insults.
A DPs meter would be the same.
1) People complain that the game is too much DPS based. And that's true.
2) There is a game mode that's not based on DPS. PvP.
3) PvP is broken, nobody plays it, can't be used.
4) People return to PvE.
5) Return to step 1.
How about asking for a way to fix PvP in order to not go beyond step 2? Because really, asking to make PvE less DPS-focused isn't really a genius idea.
I've heard of this, but I never saw it. I never saw anything that wasn't stopped cold by some random good nature person. and it was only in 10k, like kids talking tough, trying to be bigger than they are. That's not to say I haven't needed to step in and try to say "grow up" in some form, generally I found that if you give some respect while saying this it all works out.
If you are going to reside in any community, this kind of participation, this kind of fostering, this kind of effort to improve things, it is required. That's true whether or not it's a DPS channel, a RP channel, a fleet, anything. You don't let things slide.
how can anyone using a pc, mobilephone and modern technology be against
measuring outcomes by parameters in evidence based manner?
its whats makes people improve, if they actually know how good or bad they are.
everything speaking against it, doesnt relate to parsing, but to its interpretation by others using it for discrimination.
thats not the parsers problem. its the communities.
i would appreciate:
a simpler game base mechanic (more structured with exclusive names. (eg: i never know: is radiation dmg exotic? are all exotic dmg the same, is plasma radiation or exotic or just plasma ...)
and a dev-based parser for actually logging dps and damge done, healing done and dmg taken.
only then I and others actually have a chance! to improve. i cant improve cause basically im not knowing where i stand.
there will be those ignoring bad parsed results, and those that will discriminate others for it.
yet i think a decent structured game dmg mechanic and a corresponding parser would improve the group game by a lot.
ive played censoredcraft a long time, and the runs overall got better after ppl realized if they were doing good or extremely bad. (now that you cant really misspecc your char anymore the uses for recount dissappeared ...)
but since sto is such a massively complicated game, a reliable parser would be nice.
and, like i said: some clearing up with naming dmg types.
whats the difference between physical and kinetic? why is some radiation exotic, and others is not, why are plasma procs exotic, but the proc from kin and beam plasma is "just plasma" (i know why, but the naming! the naming makes it difficult to "guess" what counts as which type)
Anyway, maybe the multi-channel approach is outdated. There's enough room for e-peen stroking in the leaderboards. Higher channels only seem to reinforce the sense that elitism is rampant, despite never being seen in 10k.
You'll be waiting eternally for the community to "mature." Actually, it would mature faster if it had access to such a tool. Admittedly, there might be a rather unsightly transitional period, though I feel forecasts of that doom are overblown.
There is more business and less nonsense talk the higher the channels.
If you are after casual chat, the higher channels aren't for you. but you get better advice the higher the channel.
That is what you see. From what I see, I see a lot higher than 10k channel players going at 10k channel either with their main toon or alt toon. Either you dont know them or you missed them looking for a group.
As much as I'd like to discuss it further, I know Paul's going to shut this thread down if it keeps turning to last weeks issues.
One word: fear.
Don't forget, you'r dealing with the generations that instituted trigger warnings (boomers and gen Xers), and ones who are being raised on that sort of nonsense (millenials).