Sure. Players will always find ways to try to boil things down to numbers. But the way it is you have a “ballpark number”.
You can have 5 builds that all kill Julra in 30s. In players’ eyes, they’re similar builds.
With a DPS meter, though, you’ll have one that does 500k DPS, one that does 510k DPS, one that does 490k DPS, etc. They’re no longer similar builds.
Having a clear DPS meter changes the build meta. We’ve seen this with PoB.
Every build guide I have ever read or seen goes over the rankings (clear speed, bossing and survivability). DPS is absolutely used to get peoples attention but that’s not a bad thing. I’ve never seen anyone solely go off of dps (unless they are extremely new and don’t understand defenses). I’ve never understood the argument against DPS dummies. Whenever people talk about builds they tend to be what they can run (uber bosses, t17maps, and in LE’s case how high of corruption the build can handle). Which boils down to more defense than DPS.
I’m not saying I am against it. Personally, I don’t really care either way, since it’s not something I would use even if it was in the game, since it’s not something I care about.
I’m just saying that this is usually something the devs of a game care about. And that some players do reduce builds to just plain numbers based on DPS and create a whole meta around it.
Sure, in LE defense is a lot more important than DPS (not so much in PoE with the power creep, since even weaker builds tend to have very high defense). But I can totally understand why devs don’t want to facilitate these metrics in-game and let players boil builds down to pure numbers rather than the whole experience.
It’s the same reason why devs are usually hesitant to give numbers about most stuff and you get answers like “we consider a build successful if it can do 300c”, rather than giving out clear explicit numbers on what is a good or bad build.
You’re absolutely right, except you’re forgetting something. If we have 5 builds that can farm 1k corruption without dying, people are going to pick the build that does the most dps inside of those 5 builds. Currently, they have no way of knowing and are more likely to pick a build they find fun over one that has higher dps.
I’ve seen it time and time again, whenever dps meters are added people stop playing classes they enjoyed because the dps was lower than something else, or they complain when their build isn’t viable because it’s now doing 10 less dps after a change while another build is doing 10 more dps after the same change.
My suggestion? Turn all damage numbers off and just enjoy making builds. Otherwise you’ll have to find someone (or you) who can write a mod that reads the damage logs and outputs a DPS. Copy your character over to true offline and use that mod to test it.
I’m with you on the whole WoW thing. It went from grueling 40 man raids to get the BiS gear, to being able to do it in a 5 man pug.
I think the difference here is that WoW is an MMORPG, and as such it’s expected that you’ll be playing with other people for many activities. While LE feels like a single player game with the option to group.
I don’t see some asks like auto pick up of mats to be a dumbing down. Hell, even auto pick up of loot feels like it’s more in keeping with the run and gun style of game play. I’m sure everyone has died simply because they stopped to pick up loot and got killed by something off screen.
David Brevik did exactly this for D2. He wanted something different, and the other people working with him told him that they should take it in a different direction… and they were absolutely correct.
I only remember the anecdote that Brevik wanted to make Diablo (not D2) as a turn-based game, but the idea of a real-time game came up, and the design team voted to go this route.
This probably weren’t players pushing for RT-combat, but fellow game designers or producers/investors.
Wow, I didn’t know that, thank you for sharing, this is amazing!
In Vanilla World of Warcraft, having to run to the dungeon entrance was an inefficient process.
Having to look up for party members was inefficient.
Having to deal with multiple crafting mats for most recipes was redundant.
Having to walk on foot until level 40 was extremely inefficient.
Having to carry spell reagents was very inefficient.
I can go on until tomorrow.
And that’s why you must be very careful which QoL things you decide to implement, because once you do, there’s no going back.
Yes! I am very much the same! So glad to see there are other casual players.
If given the chance, players will optimize the fun out of the game.
But you must care! If developers started implementing such things, the game will very quickly attract the wrong audience, who will start with their own demands very soon.
It’s as if you build a roadside bar and design it for thug bikers, like in the US movies. Once you do it, there’s no going back, and those people will not allow other types of clients to ever set foot there.
I NEVER, EVER, turn on damage numbers and can’t honestly understand people who love watching numbers pop on their screen all the time. Wow, so your char did 2 billion damage? Good job, you must be very skilled!
Not in this instance. First, I don’t think the devs will ever put DPS on the dummies. Second, even if they did, I still trust their vision.
There have been LOTS of people asking for a mastery respec or instant loadouts, but EHG doesn’t budge from their position because it doesn’t belong with the game vision.
So even if they do add DPS meter (which I highly doubt based on previous statements from Mike) I still trust them to keep to their game identity.
if it feels borderline, it probably is!
often times you dont need an exact dps metric, you just need to look at it on a glance. if it is so small you cant even tell, does it even matter? just go with which one feels better.
DJ covers most of my points.
But basically, sometimes builds with less Dps feel better to play. And this is true of items too. Sometimes there is items that are 5% better but offer a weird condition. I often end up choosing the easier to appease condition or the more static one.
For me its alot like food, ill take a 6/10 pizza every time vs rolling the dice on getting a 2/10 pizza or a 9/10 pizza. Consistency is king, and that often leads to lower dps.
You see it in the complaints of warpath, warpath does less damage then most other skills. But thats because it literally cant fail. its the most easy to use skill in the game that also lets you move and dodge while doing damage.
DoT is similar, DoT has lower top end dps then skills that require you to invest more, but have higher dps uptimes so can kill bosses in similar or even potentially lower times then those with higher dps.
DPS is a distracting metric, though probably a important one when minmaxing. What people miss about dps is context
Tier lists in games sometimes get flak, because people often miss the context of what they are rating them on. You probably should squint your eyes at a “everything” tierlist, but a tierlist that is addressing “This is the clear speed of these builds” yeah the bossing build has worse clear speed, but probably is higher in a bossing list. Understanding this context makes it make sense.
The devs just want the community to have to do the work rather then giving tools to players that let them get distracted and frankly tricked by the numbers.