Damage Meters

This sounds like an issue within your own guild rather than with the system. In the last MMO i played i was in a pretty serious raiding guild. We would discuss among ourselves issues to do with our class and performance after (our during if necessary) each raid. We never presented a parse or meter, because we understood our class enough to know what we were doing wrong and if we didnt, we knew the game enough to make logical assertions and then we would experiment.

Within a guild, you should be able to openly discuss performance and be sharing best practice and tips for constant improvement and nobody should need a meter shoved in their face to make them think twice. As soon as that is needed you are dealing with people who really shouldnt be playing together anyway.

This mentality is the equivalent of not having grades in an academic setting to measure how much information you are retaining because people would 'just know' whether or not you are learning.

Example of how it can affect play:

<Boss dies>

<Top DPS posts meter to stroke epeen>

Everyone notices bottom DPS has half the DPS of most of the others.

Rage! Who invited that scrub?! *kick*

Friend of kicked player: Bob's asking why he was kicked? He says he had to off heal some of that fight.

Guild: Doh!

Bob: Rage!!! /gquit

how about we get a meter that counts everytime a new thread with this topic is created....


http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/posting

This is just silly. Intentionally being suboptimal is cool on your own time I guess, but when you engage in GROUP content, a certain level of competency is expected from everyone. In a HM FP, if one person isn't doing their job, the group will most likely fail. Notice that I'm not calling you or your play style bad, but the "don't tell me how to play, bro!" mentality really creates a suboptimal way to play. If you can find other players that want to do end-game content and don't mind that you're not as good as you could be, then good for you and continue enjoying the game. The reason I use the word "suboptimal" is because it is exactly that: less than what is optimal.

The Old Republic IS a numbers game. Performance is quantified and measured using numbers. DPS output, healing done, threat generation, resource management, damage mitigation, etc. are all expressed by numbers which are derived from formulae that the player can take advantage of. This is reflected by two things; static elements (gear, talents, whathaveyou) and dynamic skill... which is how well the player implements abilities, awareness, and positioning.

You are absolutely correct in the regard that this is a game, not a job. We both agree games should be fun, yes? A lot of people (including myself) think theorycrafting, experimentation, and improvement are fun and interesting hobbies. Crunching numbers and testing theories isn't work for me, it's play. Granted, there is also a lot of folks out there that have different ideas of "fun" and do not particularly like dealing with numbers. Fortunately for them, running crazy amounts of numbers isn't mandatory to be a decent player as long as they recognize where the numbers are coming from.

We do pay the same subscription fee, but neither of us are entitled to anything. You want to always be able to do end-game content without the skills/knowledge required? That's cool. I want full battlemaster gear, but I don't want to grind for bags. I pay the same amount every month as someone who has BM, so I should be entitled to what he has as well? Right?

When content becomes difficult, it's not me telling you how to play, it's BW.

How exactly do I bring up the fact that it FEELS like the other healer isn't pulling his weight? What if the other healer FEELS like he's playing to the best of his abilities and it is me that isn't pulling his weight (and to a point he'd be correct since I'm an operative).

I'd rather deal with healing/DPS output problems with actual data other than telling the raid leader or other healer that I FEEL they aren't pulling their wight. There's nothing stopping people from simply saying "no, I'm going all out here" and from their point of view they'd may be correct, but simply awful players.

I know it's a miniscule amount - that's an exaggeration on the point I'm trying to make. If Group X likes Player Y but hates Player Z, they can say that Reason A is the reason why they're booting Y but not Z. Is it a BS reason? Sure, but "they have the numbers to back it up." Hence, why I'm down for a personal DPS meter, but not a group-based DPS meter.

If Billy's DPS is lower than the tanks' DPS, that's something you can probably find out from looking at what Billy the Boy Wonder is using skill-wise in a fight, without the use of a DPS meter. If Billy is only using Strike and his basic attack, then there's a serious problem there that someone should talk to Billy about.

Sounds like we agree on the basics, but I see the abuse of a tool being worse than the positives of it.

GW2 is going to have a combat log.

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/...th-t12616.html
combat log = people will live parse it and paste it into chat, just like they did in rift.

In fact, I found that people posted the dps much more in rift pugs than they did in wow. I suspect that it was because people assume that everyone in wow can already see the numbers. So an in game meter is a much better situation than an out of game parser, at least for the people who don't like to see damage parse spam.

The problem has never been the people that try to do better, it the ones that don't. Usually they're easy to point out, but thats not always the case. In meaningful raids, everyone has a job to do. In high-stress battles, people cannot be asked to watch so-and-so to make sure they're doing what is expected of them (which is our only method of quality control right now; sans fraps). Personal logs or not, there are people that will not take responsibility for what's expected of them.

General note to other posts:

Facts are needed to provide necessary checks and balances; assumptions based on splash text are just that...assumptions. Simply saying that "x boss died and we didn't" is not a valid defense for not needing a combat log.

No, I expected you to respond to what I posted, in the thread that you quoted. Not what I posted elsewhere, or what someone else posted. Which is the reason that I asked why you thought the text you posted was relevant to the text you quoted...