sadre

I was talking to my dogs tonight and I said, dogs, yo, here is what it is, I am in the mood for a rant. Then I shot myself in the head for verging into Randy Jackson-esque blather. Then I said, yo, actually, yes, I am in the mood for a rant.

So here is Mr. Old School Crank.

Back in eq1, there were no parses. Whether or not you were a solid player had to do with if you could roll with the flow of a given encounter. Could you heal your group? Could you *not* die by pulling aggro? Could you be part of a steady team that killed stuff steady and solidly?

in other words, things were based on, let's call it "feel."

in my opinion, this really has not changed much: each encounter, each time you try it, has a flow, a feel to it. Sometimes the MT gets aggro fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes a healer needs to be rezzed and things slowed down till they recover. Sometimes a mob swipes a mage or two, and you need to get them up and rebuffed. Sometimes even a MT goes down, so you need to go with that flow.

Of course, raid sizes were huge in eq1. I have been on raids on the Planes of Time bosses with 200+ people. It was in fact one of the raids I was on that, due to complaints, prompted SOE to institute the 72 person raid cap into the game then. We had taken down ralos zek the warlord, one of the big bosses you need to get toward Plane of Time, with 2 other guilds, and almost 300 players, in order to destroy a cockblock towards the plane of time by the server's top guild. It was outrageous, but by god, we destroyed that cockblock. Utterly and completely lol.

72 people is still huge, of course, compared to our current little 24 player raid cap.

But even in huge raids, emphasis used to be on the flow of the fight. Was it trending effectively toward a win? Were too many people dying? All we wanted was a consistent win, where the flow of fights seemed to favor our victories.

People played well by being aware of the flow of the fight. You payed attention to the actual flow of the **encounter**.

Now, I may just be old and out of step. But it seems to me, in my opinion, the intrusion of parses makes people less aware of how encounters flow. People are concerned with their parse too much, instead of how their char is fitting into the flow of an encounter.

Let me talk of my particular bailiwick, coercers.

In the coercer worldwide channel, 70% of the chat has to do with parses, how to parse better, etc etc. I can't think of any chats about flows of fights, about how to get into a rhythm with an encounter, etc. EVERYONE is concerned with their sheer "numbers" that ACT will show. But does ACT really tell the whole tale?

I will say, this is raid and guild leaders' faults. All too often, and ESPECIALLY in the top guilds, officers and leaders study those parses as if they were holy writ, and determine who is the "best" raider among a class based on that data. Are parses informative? Of course. Are they the easiest way to measure performance? Of course. Are they healthy for the evolution of gameplay philosophy in mmorpgs? Not so much.

Raiding is complex. It is an ebb and flow. it is based on situational awareness that does not always produce measurable stats. Some of us prefer these unmeasurable aspects of the game. Some of us have killed shit effectively and with cold precision on the basis of these unmeasurable aspects.

But in the era where EQ has become a graphical user interface for a spreadsheet program, those unmeasurables fade away.

I'm just saying that sucks for the game, and for online gaming in general.

Short post: boo ACT!



sadre
enchanter main since 99
quite daft ya know

Shaggis

Don't blame the tool for people interpreting the data it provides incorrectly. ACT is a great program on volunteered time.

Loudness

you should make the guild "Negative Parses" and see how far you get imojustsayin

Niber

Sadre owns AoF.. true story.

__________________

sadre

that's what I argued shaggis. parses are valuable, fun, and interesting. But they should not supplant another, unmeasurable aspect of gameplay. I don't think I'm saying something most of us know well. Haven't you known great players, people who would be first choice for a raid, but they parse not so well?

All I'm saying is, overreliance on ACT, not ACT itself, is not a good idea for our little game world.

On raids, I often argue for parses not to be posted, precisely for this reason. It literally makes people take their eyes off the real ball, which is to KSD (Kill Stuff Dead)/

sadre

sadre

Niber ;) Before you get the chance, yes I once amnesiad the AoF. But that was once, at the pull, and come on, even gods bleed

EQAditu

You can sort of blame CombatStats for the clipboard exporting stuff. I wouldn't have gotten anywhere if I hadn't added it. I used to get bombarded by requests for a "simple" version of ACT that *only* did clipboard parsing. I never have though. Advanced Combat Tracker is a raid tool. It was created in order to analyze what mobs do and look at game mechanics.

I'm a Templar. I don't care about DPS, nor do I post parses, nor do I even join my guild's parse channel. I do call AEs though... which I find the tool useful for. I look at avoidance reports... not DPS or healing parses.

But people find that stuff fun, so I include it. If I didn't, they'd just use something else. I shouldn't care since I'm not selling it... but I guess I do find some pride in it.

Reznor

ACT is the hizzle! Hello Aditu

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What a nice compliment |^| I used to be somebody!

Shaggis

I only objected to "boo ACT" ;)

My point is the people misinterpreting the data are the problem, find people who think like you. ACT is not to blame.

You can always leave the parse channel, unless they parse into raid...

Although I have no argument against "people perform based on how they are measured".

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Flipmode

10 bucks says Sadre is a Coercer...

Sorry, overreliance on ACT isnt the Coercers problem. Lack of meaningful utility and/or DPS is. Coercer reactive mechanics are fucked. Dont blame ACT. Blame the incompetent devs for that.