The one button “good enough” DPS rotation assist feature was always going to dominate the discussion here, but I think that massively undersells the very cultural statement of a baked in DPS meter intended down the road!
People that avoid WoW, in many cases, do so because of DPS meter culture. While it may be a short leap between “everyone has one anyway” (I personally do not) and “it’s officially part of the official UI now,” it’s still a leap that heavily supports WoW’s slow move toward the cultural change needed for WoW’s faction agnostic future: “play with friends or play alone.”
The “among randos” game of WoW will get worse with the combination of rotation assist and built in DPS meters, and I say this as someone who intends to liberally utilize the one button rotation assist on DPS alts in delves. So long as you remain alone or with friends, these features and their potentially toxic interaction won’t harm you. If you don’t PUG, you can’t be harassed for what faction or race you are in unrestricted cross-faction groups either, and that’s a future WoW needs to mechanically prepare for. Delves are a big part of that. Story mode and follower dungeons as well!
It’s all related. It’s all very intentional. I’m surprised more people aren’t talking about it!
I liked the scoreboards in co-op game Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One and Vermintide. Rating not just damage done but quite a few things, like items collected (in R&C). Blizzard could make it fun like that, rather than just an excuse for people to ditch M+ runs.
The only addon I truly care about is details because being able to read data allows me to understand what is going on. Why did this player die? Well, they got hit by a melee hit while being a mage. How much damage am I doing? Is the healer healing? What is the uptime on this trinket’s buff? Being able to answer these questions for myself with an addon without having to ask and ruffle feathers is wonderful.
Okay but why? People who would harass you over low dps are already using a meter and you not having one doesn’t change that.
If used properly, the rotation assist will help some people not have quite such low dps, and people who already do good dps won’t need it. All it does is raise the floor with no effect on the ceiling.
How will you know you perform okayish? You could be under the assumption you’re doing great but are far below the tank and being a dead weight to the party or raid.
The real kicker is if/when Blizzard pulls the trigger and kills Cheap Auras (or at least neuters it to the point of uselessness) and how A LOT of people who “think” they’re good are going to find they are absolutely not. I can’t wait for that.
Who cares about an ingame DPS meter. BGs have already had a version of it forever and UNLIKE cheap auras, a built in DPS meter is a necessary thing anyone going beyond queue content levels (and maybe normal raids) needs access to in order to weed out the left of bell curves who are anchoring a group down too much past the point of being able to be carried.
Blizzard should be designing specs and encounters to play within the realistic bounds of a human being…not having specs be so convoluted with nigh invisible interactions and impossible to parse data (let alone a barrage of mechanics also requiring ever quicker reaction time) requiring a computer to speedily process and give the simple monkey human brain an audio or visual tell to act upon.
Anyway, DPS meters are important, because sometimes an encounter is decided by a numbers game. H Bandit, H Mug, if you don’t down it fast enough at that last 30%, you’re dead. If people aren’t getting Highroller, you’re dead. If Mug is using Double Minded Fury, you’re dead. It’s a raw numbers game at that point and the thing needs dead, or you’re going down first.
I don’t use one, I don’t raid lead so my success matrix is ‘did the thing die’, but those who do raid lead can make use of the data and try to make improvements.
I was kinda fearing that they’d go the FF14 route of preventing any way to track metrics. Which makes sense, and there is an argument for that, but I don’t think that’s helpful when the core of the problem is, just flat out, the numbers are too low.
We should have DPS meters. And if anything, this one-button stuff should mean players are given breakdowns of what they did or didn’t do right during their rotation. No one will ever play completely perfect but Blizz can at least help push them in the right direction.
Pretty much anybody who does dungeons or raids has a damage meter. Bliz adding one organically is no more news than their native cd tracker.
Honestly, even when I’m doing solo content I refer to my dps meter to track how I’m doing or if gear upgrades are really making a difference.
Your play style is in the fringe minority. That’s not to say’s it’s bad or wrong, just that not many people play your way. Since you are in a kind of personal bubble I can see how you are surprised but nobody else is.
Sure, if you’re playing solo, by yourself. You got all the time in the world.
But if you’re playing with other people just getting the boss to die isn’t enough. No one enjoys a 10 minute fight because they’re being held back by someone who has no clue how they’re performing dps wise. And if you have to rely on other people, who do have a dps meter to tell you that, you’re playing selfish at the expense of the others.
Compare it to driving a car with no speedometer. There’s a speed limit on the road you’re driving but you feel you’re going fast enough and meanwhile there’s a whole jam behind you because your feeling of going fast enough is 20 miles under the limit.
I’ve never been in a 10 minute boss fight, so we’re good.
Putting a damage meter in the game won’t make its use mandatory, and there are people like me who queue in no less than a trio, so like… see you out there.
The toxic part is slowing everybody down by voluntarily underperforming because of the 1 button rotation feature. That is so much more toxic than any word anyone can type in a game chatbox. You’re coming at this with the mentality of “I can do whatever I want regardless of the consequences on others but they should never be allowed to say what they want”, and that’s pathetic. Stop loving to be mediocre.