Goblin Squad Member
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Okay, I work with spreadsheets.
MechWarrior online provides to me statistics on the weapons I use, and I wonder whether it might be something PFO will also do for the players like me who like to figure out what works and what doesn't.
I know the devs will necessarily be building similar information gathering tools overall, but I am concerned only with my own stats not anyone else'. I hope I will be able to access that.
For example if you play MWO you can use the known cycle times for each weapon-type and the weapon stats in your MWO profile stats page. Determine your accuracy with that weapon by finding the number of rounds fired compared to the number of rounds on target. So if you had 80 rounds hit out of a hundred rounds fired, your accuracy with that weapon is 80%. Next discover the amount of damage you deliver with that weapon by dividing the damage done with it by the number of rounds that hit. So if you hit with 2017 AC20 rounds for 38,945 damage the AC20 for you, the way you play, would be providing on average (varies by range)19.30838 damage per hit. Since an AC20 fires 2.5 times in ten seconds, its average damage in ten seconds for you would be 48.27095. Now multiply that by your accuracy percent, and multiply the result by the number of AC20 cannon you are firing (including this detail so you can calculate for multiple Long Range Missile tubes). Call that the weapon value (for my 64% accuracy a single AC20 is worth 30.89892 in weapon value). Compare all your weapon types and you will see your optimal load out for the way you pilot your mech and how accurate your shots are. Bottom line is you can improve your damage output best by improving your accuracy, whatever loadout you run, given you carry enough ammunition and stay alive on target.
In PFO the stats I would need are the number of fights with each weapon and spell, how many times I used that weapon or spell (how many swings with the longsword), how many times I scored a hit, the total damage that weapon caused, and if possible the cycle time between strikes for that weapon.
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If I am understanding correctly you are after a combat parser like tool which you can then use to produce cumulative stats? This usually depends on whether the game provides access to a combat log or not. Assuming the game does then I am sure someone will produce some tool that can process the text files and produce the figures you want.
Possibly simplest therefore to lobby for a combat log system which can automatically be stored in a text file
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Goblin Squad Member
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Possibly simplest therefore to lobby for a combat log system which can automatically be stored in a text file
I'd be fine with that, as long as the data is deliberately presented in an easily parsed format, rather than being deliberately obfuscated.
Sorry. It's not that I expect PFO to want to deliberately obfuscate anything, it's just that I've been playing Vanguard lately. One of the Boss Fight mechanics they use is to have the Boss (Belzane, if you're curious) become immune to certain damage types during the fight, so that those damage types start to heal him. Of course, this immunity isn't listed in the Target Buff Window. Rather, you have to turn on an obscure combat log output type to see it. Ryan has previously talked about not wanting to force the players to wrestle with the UI, and I hope this is another area where that holds true.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually just a webpage providing a list of weapons and spells on the left and sum totals in columns for those weapons would work perfectly.
So lets use a longsword.
Column 1: Longsword
Column 2: I used a longsword in 500 fights.
Column 3: I struck with that sword 3018 times.
Column 4: I hit 1949 times (65% accuracy calculable).
Column 5: Total longsword damage: 10,134 (avg 5.2 damage per hit calculable)
Column 7: Rate of Fire 1 in six seconds or (.6 * 5.2) = 3.2/second
Column 8: (3.2 * 65%)= 2.014871 is my dps with a long sword with my current rate of accuracy.
I have no knowledge of how MechWarrior works however most of the mmo's I have played the simple web page you propose wouldn't work Being. Whereas a combat log may.
The reason I say this is I think most mmo's I have played
damage done, hit ratio depends not only on weapon used but target used against. In addition these figures also depend on what buffs may be present at the time. While I am not saying PfO has these things I am just saying it may do.
I am sure something suitable can be come up with either of the web page type or the log type. Also I concur with Nihimon make it easily parseable and the community will provide third party tools that can digest it and do all sorts with the figures
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure how valuable this data would be over looking at the item and character stats. Unless Ryan has decided to change his stance on twitch combat, accuracy is determined by a comparison between you and your target.
For what you want to know, I don't think they need to go any further than applying character modifiers and showing the final build stats in-game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My memory tells me Ryan said there would be no misses and that critical hits would not produce a spike in damage, only a debuff. There is a six second pulse of stamina. If I properly time my strikes I should attain more damage over a fight than if I time my blows poorly. Substitute the effectiveness of my timing for accuracy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You know how much stamina you have, you know how much stamina your abilities cost. Find the combinations that use your entire bar. If you aren't getting the combinations off, you need improvement, if you are getting the combinations off, you are doing fine.
I would be surprised if this game doesn't have a 'queue up' for the next attack, so you don't have to hit an ability right on the nose, just before the previous ability finishes.
The system you describe is good for twitch games, where player dexterity is a large factor. Ryan doesn't seem to want this game to rely largely on player dexterity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You know how much stamina you have, you know how much stamina your abilities cost. Find the combinations that use your entire bar. If you aren't getting the combinations off, you need improvement, if you are getting the combinations off, you are doing fine.
I don't expect it to be that simple.
I am very hopeful that there will be very good reasons to save Stamina - even if that means you end a cycle with unspent Stamina - so that you can react to your opponent if a particular opportunity presents itself. I would hope that capitalizing on that opportunity occasionally would produce better results than always maximizing my use of Stamina.
I actually see a lot of value in the system being proposed (the system Being proposed). (That's a well that never runs dry :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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It will be impossible to minmax one perfect weapon because of the interaction of keywords and skills. Skeletons won't care too much about [slashing] weapons, but are weak to [blunt] ones. Players wearing cloth armor will be much more resistant to [electricity] than one wearing plate. That said, there may be various modifiers to base damage and penetration to allow some weapons to have better penetration than base damage, so they would be better once the target has a specific armor resistance.
There has been a strong implication that people will want to carry multiple weapons and swap out as the need arises. More information would let us plan out with more knowledge which weapon is right for what situation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Even when people do come up with "ideal" combinations (or flavor of the month builds), there's always someone posting a YouTube video of themselves devastating enemies with a less-than-ideal choice.
Knowing how well you do with a given weapon or spell is great. Following the herd to the flavor of the month should never be mandatory.
Note: Flavors of the month tend to change because the devs notice them and re-balance the games to reduce their superiority. This inevitably has the knock-on effect of creating a new flavor of the month.
Play what works/is fun for you. Ignore those who say that unless you field the flavor of the month, you're having bad wrong fun.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What are peoples thoughts on not publishing weapon or spell damage stats? A bastard sword might hit harder than an equivalent longsword, but no stats are published and the combat log just indicates a hit or some type.
Might make things more interesting for those that want to work this stuff out for themselves and it might avoid a FOTM build.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What are peoples thoughts on not publishing weapon or spell damage stats? A bastard sword might hit harder than an equivalent longsword, but no stats are published and the combat log just indicates a hit or some type.
Might make things more interesting for those that want to work this stuff out for themselves and it might avoid a FOTM build.
More like Flavor of the Months build since that is how long it might take to train up to it, hehe.
Anyway, if people want to crunch the numbers, more power to them. It is not going to ruin the fun I will have sticking pointy blades into people's organs.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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What are peoples thoughts on not publishing weapon or spell damage stats? A bastard sword might hit harder than an equivalent longsword, but no stats are published and the combat log just indicates a hit or some type.
Might make things more interesting for those that want to work this stuff out for themselves and it might avoid a FOTM build.
All it would do is increase the barrier to entry for people who want to crunch numbers, and possibly make them slightly less precise and accurate.
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Goblin Squad Member
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All it would do is increase the barrier to entry for people who want to crunch numbers, and possibly make them slightly less precise and accurate.What are peoples thoughts on not publishing weapon or spell damage stats? A bastard sword might hit harder than an equivalent longsword, but no stats are published and the combat log just indicates a hit or some type.
Might make things more interesting for those that want to work this stuff out for themselves and it might avoid a FOTM build.
Is that a good or bad thing, or negligible?
I'm not fussed either way. Just want to explore the alternatives.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I personally would like all stats to remain hidden, I don't like the atmosphere created by too much knowledge, everything becomes about maximizing builds, over-calculating encounters, and comparing stat pages on websites. I like to learn through experimentation, and the knowledge I gain elsewhere was the result of someone else's experimentation.
I don't want somebody to link their killboard to show their ability, I want their reputation to spread by word of mouth. If someone wants attention, they should really have to work for it, not be one of the top 50 when you filter by kill rating.
I don't want to ever feel like I need to be going to some website, or using some application to effectively build my character. I want everything about the game to occur in two places, the PFO website and in-game, and possibly in a smartphone app created by GW.
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I would like to see in-game interactions where you can determine the physical properties of things, in the style of the game-universe. measuring things like weight, purity, and dimensions. This would be done by going to a shop or lab, and interacting with various devices, like a scale, or using a chemical to determine the purity of a substance. There could even be training grounds, where you can test your character's ability to find how fast you are with a weapon. There can even be skills tied to this, and characters could specialize in finding this information for other players, or constructing this equipment.
The bottom line would be that you can't go somewhere online and find how you will do, or how you are doing, you need to go test your self in a controlled environment.
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Goblin Squad Member
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City of Heroes ran for a long time without any displayed stats. Players very rapidly reverse engineered not only the stats, but the actual mechanics being used. Occasionally even to the point that their math was more accurate than the developers (because the experimental data included glitches the devs were unaware of). The end result, though, was that the data was all widely available. The devs finally did give the players numbers a couple years in, and pretty much nothing changed. I'd rather see the majority of the information displayed, if only for accessibility to new players. Vets will know them either way.
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Goblin Squad Member
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How does combat parsing avoid minmaxing your way to "the best weapon", and all others becoming "useless"?
By factoring accuracy (or stamina efficiency in this case, as far as I have been able to surmise, and by factoring whatever skills I have selected my dps will vary from that of most with the same weapon. Yes, certainly, the weapon will have its innate potential dps, but my style of fighting and my eventually unique combination of acquired skills/feats will mean a different effective dps for my character.
So say I have two characters and I play them exactly the same. One has a 'mighty blow' where the other has 'dual wield'. I should see a different dps value for any weapon I wield, even if both weapons are identical.
So what I am requesting is the means to either see or calculate how relatively good this particular weapon is for this particular character.
In the beginning there will be little difference it is true, but after a year of building my character differently fro the way you build yours I will have different specs I seek in my weaponry.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Player dissection, interpretation, and evaluation is going to come to PFO in the form of player created websites and apps anyway. Though how they breakdown and determine real DPS with so many variables kind of boggles this little brain. The number of different possible combinations of builds with equipment/buffs vs. target builds and equipment/buffs alone....
There will be guides on the maximum/quickest/best way to do everything eventually. Would it be nice to have those measuring tools in place at the start to guide the pioneers in building their PCs? Yes. Is it something that GW should spend precious time on at for a viable product? Only if they have the extra time and budget. I would rather have more well developed mechanics and graphics and well thought out systems, etc....
There are hints and clues that I have read about some kind of "pit fighting" or "arena" app experience or somesuch planned. If that is true, players will likely have a great deal of numbers crunched before EE. That is despite changes made during "pit fighting" testing to refine weapon/character modifiers.
Weapon stats vs. PC build measuring tools if reasonably feasible (as Being asked)? Yes. It is going to happen anyway.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Trikk
It does take away a great deal of the mystery and wonder of discovery. I am looking for that "first time feeling" every time I sit down to play a TT with friends. Never quite find exactly that old feeling though.
Most MMOs that I have played may give you a weapon damage range, special effects, etc... but you need to hit the net to get real breakdowns and calculations for min/max info. This game will have the pit fighting to test weapons/spells vs. skills vs. armor vs. buffs/debuffs before even EE. That will take away a great deal of the mystery right there.
How do you propose to keep player written guides, etc. off of the internet?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe it's just me, but I like when games are a bit mysterious and everything isn't delivered on a platter for you. I prefer an RPG like Nethack over an RPG like Diablo 3, and an FPS like Quake over an FPS like Borderlands 2. Games that don't show you exact, scientific data over every possible equipment choice makes it much more fun to try different things.
Eve Online is called Spreadsheets in Space by many, because that's mostly how you play it. You look at spreadsheets, determine dps and there's very little mystique to playing it. There's an optimal way to play and very many bad ways of playing. If you come to a fleet with a ship that has a unique fitting, people will mostly ridicule you because it's not the mathematically most efficient way of doing what you are doing.
I think this is unavoidable if you add all the stats easily accessible to the player. It's like allowing your players to read the Bestiary and Gamemaster Guide in pen and paper. If someone decides to use sub-optimal weaponry and such, everyone will immediately trash him and there will be no point in making characters that are not optimized. This issue is only exacerbated in a hardcore PvP ruleset MMO like this will be.
I believe the key problem in most MMO's etc... is DPS being the key. Fire rate etc... If damage is all that is going on, then yes, no matter how you slice it, 76 DPS, is more powerful than 74 DPS.
When you add other factors, knockbacks, Debuffs, control options, situational damage (IE X type hurts more against X armor type), elemental stregnths/weaknesses, changes to movement speed, resistances/bonuses to different categories of magic, you can very much maximize the quantity of decisions that are good.
What is worth pointing out, is what is told/not told, is irrelevant in the context of an MMO. You mention the preference of Nethack, because it doesn't tell you everything. Guess what though, if you look up net-hack guides, every object, every item etc.... is fully detailed and accounted for. Now admitted nethack certainly has the advantage of "well you can't chose what items you get". Quite true, but well without permadeath, there's no way that can be accomplished.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It may take away some of the mystery, and that will matter to explorer types I am sure. It will add considerable substance for the builder types, however. Gaining the ability to meaningfully tweak your character's skills to achieve a desired potential is serving very savory meat on the builder's plate.