Damage Meters

Thanks for adding such a well informed opinion to this post. Even if you are "trolling" at least have the common decency to back up a point with facts instead of random observations.

This idea that combat logs/damage meters are "handholding", is so asinine. A combat log will not tell you how to play your class. You as a player are still required to adjust your strategy. A combat log will also identify what causes deaths, something that can't accurately be tracked in the middle of a hectic encounter.

For a lesser example, I am a healer, and was healing a guild run of Hard Mode False Emperor. On the first boss (with the ship) I observed a lot of people getting hit by the rocket strike that you can avoid by staying out of the red targeting reticule. They said they were out of the range of the ability, but on my screen they were in it completely. With how the game can be buggy at times, I could not accurately tell if that was what had happened. With a combat log, I could look in and see if the ability did damage them and make sure that we were being careful to stay out of it.

Combat logs and ui customizations are something that they must gives us. From there, damage meters would be a nice adition.

True, recount can be abused and often is. However a lot of good comes with it too. There's no way to optimize your raid for the hardest content unless you can tell how people are performing. Not everyone has to go destroy Nightmare or whatever but for those that want to it's an invaluable tool.

Dps meters are also a sense of progression/accomplishment/satisfaction for some. I know I have more fun when I'm smashing the meters. If a tank dies in a flashpoint, I get satisfaction being next on the threat list (plus I get to do what I call "hero mode" in which I take over a role I didn't come to do and allow us to succeed).

I dunno, there are pros and cons, but I'd expect meters to be implemented at the very least as a curse add on.

Is it not common sense that this game will never blossom if there are no damage meters?

Why do we have to argue this? It won't wither and die, it is SW after all, but it will not grow.


There are many solutions to whatever beef you may have, but if SWTOR does not receive a damage and heal meter, my friends and I are out the door. For those who think "good riddance", I pity you for not having had the chance to play with us.

It's a fool's stance to be against damage meters when all the encounters have a BLOODY ENRAGE TIMER. If you really want a game where min/max is unimportant you need to remove enrage timers and generally nerf raiding into what it is currently in Warcraft with Looking for Raid.

Lets suppose damage meters are available right now. How would you use them to actually make decisions? Assuming their main purpose is for EV lets go through the boss fights and see how effective they actually are.

Annihilation Droid - Okay I can see a benefit for having meters in this fight but it is totally doable without them so that kind of voids their use.

Gharj - Again doable without meters.

Pillars - I don't see damage meters making any difference in this encounter what so ever.

Council - No need for meters here at all as you can see who finishes their duel early and who does not.

Soa - This is were it gets tricky. Meters would be very helpful here BUT they would have to take into account game mechanics. It is very likely that your best healer and DPS will either get thrown around the room or mind trapped more than your worst healer and DPS so the meters will actually favor your mediocre and bad players.

Damage meters are not going to end your raiding woes and the only real place they are needed is in Soa and the mechanics of the fight such as dodging/soaking orbs and positioning for DPS phase are what really needs to be overcome, not the overall Damage or healing output.

I'm all for combat log, custom UI and macros but meters aren't going to change much.

@codaKing

Fool. You're a child, aren't you? As long as all content is face roll, you don't "need" anything. If everyone can do it, fine. Do you want to play a game where everything is doable by everyone under every circumstance?

Why collect loot, then? Why raid, if it's face roll? What do you want better gear for?

I mean, to be against damage meters shows such a fundamental flaw in ones analytic ability and lack of thought put into the subject, that it really wastes everyones time to speak with these people.

How can people still dont understand?

Meters (and training dummies, and combat log) HELP YOU MAXIMIZE YOUR TOON, so they help in every single fight you can think of, and not only that, they will help your leveling and flashpoint runs too, because, YOUR TOON WOULD BE MAXIMIZED.

It's a matter of self improvement (and after self improvement help others improve as well).

Meters change more than you think, the problem is that you actually have to know what they could be used for.

And no damm MMO should be ever launch without a customizable UI, we are in 2012 god dammit, we dont want the UI the same, we have different tastes for it (and i'm not talking about bars only), its common sense.

PROOF OF THE REAL REASON PEOPLE WANT THIS:


Really? Because the most strident people asking for a combat log want it to determine their optimal DPS rotation. As for facts, I only have personal observations of myself and everyone that's already beaten the content without a baby crutch. Sure, some are asking about it for the purpose of picking apart Flashpoints, but in every flashpoint I've done the cause of death is usually something obvious. Like a grenade landing on you, a missile hitting your face, or a lightsaber through your spine. It isn't rocket science. And again, the boss buff bar or cast bar will tell you what they're doing. It just requires you to be alert. This is why it is, quite literally, handholding. QED.

So, you say you saw them standing directly in the red cross-hair of the missile strike. You think there's really a question of what hit them? This is hand-holding, and no combat log will do anything to fix people being stupid or laggy. You even admit, plainly, that you saw exactly what happened. There is no question of what hit them. If you see the boss 'casting' his missile strike, then see the missile strike land, then see your party die, it might be the missile strike that killed them. Just saying.

I'm not trolling, it's just a silly issue. I've played many other MMO's, and in all of them the only thing people use the parser for is to compare E-Peen DPS. That's it. Perhaps once I've seen it used for E-Peen HPS. That's the only exception. Every other thing can be measured by taking your head out of your behind and using basic observation skills. Will it be 100% accurate and infallible? No. Do you need it to be 100% accurate and infallible? No. People are defeating all the instances with common sense and their giant brains. Therefore it isn't required, therefore it's far below any bug fixes, cosmetic changes, and really anything else should take precedent over hand-holding. The only part of this I don't violently oppose is a customizable UI, that's something I can 100% get behind. The rest is just a way for the hardcore community to try and sqeeze out .036% higher DPS than what was previously thought to be the maximum on a type A-37 spec. IA/S tree. We both know it's true. (Yeah, I just made up that ultra-technical definition but I'm not far off the mark here.)

Combat logs are not hand holding, and yes, meters primary purpose is to maximize your toon, why is that a bad thing? why is that handholding? Respeccing for dozens several builds and testing each of them with an accurate meassurement tool to see which one is better is hand holding?

If you dont want to maximize your toon, if you dont want to check what happened in a fight, then so be it (you clearly show that you have never, ever been even closer to a competitive guild in others MMOs if you say combat logs dont provide info that you might have passed by).

Nothing has more priority than a combat log and target dummies from my point of view. Not even bugs (you will never have 0 bugs).