Suggestion: an instance summary screen
by Mike Schramm 
Mar 7th 2007 at 12:26PM
Got this idea while doing a Shadow Labs run with my guildies this weekend: there should be a screen, in instances, that you can pull up to give stats about what players have done in there, just like battlegrounds. During the instance, every player should be able to pull up a screen that lists killing blows, damage done, healing done, and maybe even experience gained or even the loot dropped-- kind of an instance summary at a glance.I know, as with all of my personal ideas, that opposition to this from you readers will likely be strong. I can just hear you saying now: "We can already do this!" Yes, mods like DamageMeters can track damage and healing done, in an instance or out, and across the group or otherwise. But they can't track killing blows and other stats, and not every player has access to the info-- it would benefit from being done by Blizzard (we already know they can do it in the battlegrounds, instances would be no different), and it would give us a standard system to track these kinds of stats for those of us who are interested.
The other objection, I'm sure, will be that some players don't want to know this info. Guilds will sometimes ban DamageMeters output in the chat channels, because they want their raiders to be working for a win, not for individual DPS. But to those objections, I say that if that was a problem, we'd already be dealing with it. If anyone is going to work for individual DPS, what's to stop them from installing DamageMeters and doing it right now? And if someone is working for themselves instead of for the raid, the simple solution is to just not bring them along to the raid. If a meter makes them ignore helping others, who needs them?
Of course, the other objection you might have to this one is that Blizzard should be working on more important things, and on that I can't really argue. But Blizzard, if you're listening and have the time to do it, I'd like to see the numbers on what my party is doing in instances.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Add-Ons, Instances, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Kragragh @ Undermine Mar 7th 2007 12:48PM
we already know they can do it in the battlegrounds, instances would be no different
I'd say that's something of an ignorant statement - I am sure the source code for this game is a little more complex than just "copying and pasting" from the battleground code.
Argent Mar 7th 2007 12:39PM
actually, i rather like this idea and would love to see it in game.
Pritchard Mar 7th 2007 12:50PM
Yeah, I actually think this is a good idea. Why not?
Not sure I give a sh*t about killing blows in an instance though.
Flit Mar 7th 2007 12:57PM
"I'd say that's something of an ignorant statement - I am sure the source code for this game is a little more complex than just "copying and pasting" from the battleground code."
Yes, of course it's not cut and paste, but the underlying code has already been written, or similar coding has already been done. Heck, Damage Meters was coded by an independant person who built an add on. Blizzard could even reference that coding, and half of the work is done.
I think it's a great idea. In our guild, we strive to be a better group working together, so if we see that one guildie who is DPS does the 5th amount of damage, we want to figure out what we need to do to help them become better.
Info that should be easily accessable: Time in instance, killing blows, damage done, healing done, (possibly even healing effectiveness), and even some kind of "CC broken" column and how many times they broke cc. Heck, while we are wishing, why not a "loot rolls won" column, just for fun?
RaydenUni Mar 7th 2007 2:07PM
As a shadow priest I care about killing blows (Spirit tap). Not sure why anyone else would though.
One problem though might be seeing what everyone got for drops at the end of the dungeon. I've been through dungeons where one guy got 3 blue drops and I end it with nothing. Seeing actual data at the end might make this more well known. And then Blizzard would have to change the way they do drops.
Damage output and healing output is not all that matters though. Referring to rogues who care about dps, sometimes to the detriment of gaining aggro. If I see a mage who is taking more damage than the main tank I tell him to cut it out. It's really annoying to have to heal mages more than I heal tanks.
Todd Mar 7th 2007 1:03PM
Brilliant idea. Now someone just needs to make this mod a reality.
I would even go a step further. This mod would be beautiful and awesome if it kept a recorded history of what loot you picked up during your time in an instance. Such as, what loot dropped from x boss, or what loot you gained in "General" from random drops from the instance. That way you can keep track of what you've seen drop (but didn't get) and what you have a track history of gaining.
Halicante Mar 7th 2007 1:03PM
Eh I'm not sure it's relavant...which is the reason so many guilds don't like the damage meters. I run the damage meters on my setup just so I can compare my dps on the boss fights and check on my guildies's dps, but there are often so many other factors that go into these instances. I know that I personally lose dps by having to go resheep targets. In addition, I'm imp scorch specced so I'll be the one throwing up the five lower dps scorches to raise the dps of the other fire mage and the locks and refreshing them every 25 secs. Sure I will turn up a smidge lower on the meter, but those scorches make a huge difference in the dps of the other fire spell users.
A public dps meter just doesn't seem beneficial to me. It's usually pretty obvious when people are sucking.
Doodzin Mar 7th 2007 1:14PM
As a raid priest I always get a little miffed about how much emphasis is put on where this or that person was on the DPS charts.
DPS is highly gear dependent and is not a full indication of how well you did your job. Maybe it would if they added "Number of times Pulled MT's aggro"
People also get obsessed on overhealing percent, which is hard to control when you have multiple healers who heal random targets at any time.
I know many an instance would have been smoother if the DPS classes (for that matter all the classes) spent a little more time paying attention to the strategy and making sure not to pull aggro onto themselves rather than attempting to top the DPS chart.
SilentBob Mar 7th 2007 1:16PM
Here's the problem as I know many are aware... if you post damage info, soon all the Warriors, mages, locks, etc start racing to "Win" the meters race, negating all aggro management. It has been my experience that many warriors in particular should have rolled rogues since they are so obsessed with melee damage and not helping out by holding aggro. I also found myself quite fond of my old guild's no-DamageMeters rule, if you posted, sync'd or even mentioned meter ranks, you were summarily booted from the raid along with the chance that you would loose your slot as well. This helped with our worst offenders greatly. Not that we couldn't RUN DM (I always keep it running just to get an idea of where I'm at with regards to others in my class, usually rogue) we just didn't make it as easy to race the meters.
Now, an end-of-the-instance only summary MAYBE but I still think it would have people focusing on the wrong "goal".
SilentBob Mar 7th 2007 1:18PM
@5 - Todd
Mod 1 - DamageMeters
Mod 2 - Looto (donno if it's still updated tho)
Zuuler Mar 7th 2007 1:36PM
I really don't see how this could be beneficial in any way. If it was added in it would probably be bugged and take a year to fix, taking even more time away from fixing the real problems.
Just like the armory, its cool and all, but how much time was wasted implementing something like that when they should have been focused on other problems.
I've posted this before, bliz needs to compare new features to bug fixes, find some way of ranking new features and bug fixes into some sort of order, and work on the most important stuff first. I'd rather see a quest that works right everytime you take the quest (instead of being bugged until a server restart, only to be bugged again by someone failing the quest) than a scoreboard that really would serve no real purpose.
xzor Mar 7th 2007 1:39PM
Think about it though, do you really want your dps competing with each other to get at the top of the list? pulling aggro off the tank? running after mobs to be the one to get the killing blow? healers competing with each other to out heal the others? in my guilds experience, damage meters have caused more problems then benefits, and i think a screen like the bg stats screen would only exacerbate the problem.
TarikB Mar 7th 2007 1:48PM
If you need to put a no damage meters rule in to stop people from pulling aggro you need new players not a silly rule. Golden rule of damage meters, cross class comparisons are generally meaningless (apart from general comparisons). This is also added to the fact that for some fights the damage is not the most important factor in determining success, which is why the better mods will also track things like decurses, damage taken, healing done in addtion to just damage output.
Damage meters are still however a valuable tool for analyzing your own performance SWSTATS my personal mod of choice has very useful analysis function that go well beyond how much damage did I do. Allowing you see avg damage per skill, number of times used, crit ratings by skill, which mobs hit you hardest, and a variety of other things that I am sure healers can get value out of also.
Now to contradict myself to a degree, although I sort of hint at it earlier, while cross class pissing contests are generally a bad idea, if you have 3 of you 5 "DPS" classes doing ~20% each one at ~15% and one fighting to do more than the tank, you may want to address that player and see what they are lacking. It may be a gear imbalance issue, an off night, a fight poorly suited to his class or simply the player needs for want of a better expression to "lrn2play" or better yet, be taught to play.
If they don't want to change/learn and you are finding yourself a few percentage short on tough fights, then at least you know where a weak link my lie.
Tazrach
lvl 70 Orc Hunter
Laukidh Mar 7th 2007 2:35PM
How about also adding stats on crowd control and other utility effects that normally get ignored?
I'd be up at the top of the "broke sheep" counter, as I try to pull aggro from the mage/priest over to my tanklock.
Marra Mar 7th 2007 2:42PM
A lot of ppl seem to think this idea as negative. I Dont understand why. This "mod" would be simply for fun.
Dmg meter doesnt show whos skilled and whos not. But its still very fun to see. Especially if your a rogue, cuz pretty much all rogues do is dmg, not much cc or anything else. So this would be fun =)
Also, healing done is always fun. And if blizzard makes it i hope they can make it so it records dmg healed. So if your target has lost 1000hp and you heal for 2000hp it only records 1000hp. That will make it so that healer dont spam heal to take the top position on the healing done chart.
Killing blows. Thats only for fun, killing blows doesnt show anything at all but would be a fun feature =) Killing blows is important for priest (spirit tap) and rogues (remorseless attacks), but not realy somthing u need to know the stats of.
Loot/rolls.
A list of what loots u have gotten, what rolls u won them on and how many ppl you rolled against. That would be a fun feature as well. Alos, how many items u rolled need on.
Experiance gained would be a fun feature aswell, maybe u could even push that a little further and make Reputation gained aswell.
Gernthell Mar 7th 2007 2:45PM
While we're on the topic of suggestions, something I would love to see Blizzard enable is the ability for players to teach their skills to other players.
For example, as a holy pally I could teach holy shock to a priest. The priest would have to give up a comparable talent point and also have enough points in holy to be able to learn the skill.
But this would allow for some seriously customized player setups. Imagine a prot pally with warrior's aggro control skills. Or a warlock with polymorph.
I think it would also eliminate some of the "nerf this class" b/c all skills can potentially be shared across classes.
Just a thought
Karl Mar 7th 2007 4:12PM
I like it and deem it patch-worthy! Good idea Mike.
DontLetsStart Mar 7th 2007 7:11PM
The last thing blizzard needs to do is officially endorse the idiots on the forum who think class balance should be done by damage meters. The meters lead to nothing more than ridiculous conclusions like that team players must suck, since they specced into something that helps other people do damage, thereby making others look better and themselves look worse on the stupid meters.
IMO damage meters are the worst thing to happen to the game and blizzard's time would be better spent breaking the existing mods than making their own.
Chadwick Mar 7th 2007 4:54PM
Sooo...Is this just about damage. Cuz that is all that would be worth tracking, unless you are in a raid.
Tanks...tank...no much damage.
Healers...Heal...no much damage.
CC(mages usually, sometimes others) CC...less damage
I'm guessing those for this are Rogues, Warlocks, Hunters, etc. etc.
I'm a healer. You get aggro one too many times you get kicked or leave. I'm not wasting my time on kids trying to out do one another. You want a damage meter thats fine, but keep it to your self.
Chadwick Mar 7th 2007 4:57PM
Let me reiterate that in a raid this is different as raiding guild can set their own policy with this. I've just been seeing this more on a 5 man or even 10 man scale. It isn't pretty most of the time.