Two in-game "DPS meter alternative" ideas I might suggest implementing

Community General Discussion
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I get it; most people use addons. And having an in-game DPS meter probably isn’t the mindset Blizzard wants players to have, as it could potentially lead to even more griefing.

So, I’d like to suggest two possible solutions.

The first is simple; a revamped “Target-dummy”. When you walk up to a target-dummy, it is instead an NPC that gives you two options: “I’d like to test my abilities against a single combatant” and “I’d like to test my abilities against multiple combatants”.

Whatever you click, it spawns in a hostile dummy or a group of dummies, and a timer appears on your screen… You get a 5-second count-down, and then the on-screen timer starts counting down. I’d say give it a 2-3 minute timer. Once the timer expires, the game tells you how much damage you did in the allotted time.

Easy peasy. Gives players a rough benchmark of their performance, and they can ask other players of a damage number to shoot for.

The second idea is what I’ll just call “Anonymous DPS meters”. Which is… exactly what it sounds like. Once you complete either a full dungeon, or a single raid-boss, have it show your performance in comparison to other people in your raid – however, it doesn’t show their names or even classes, simply how much damage you did, and how much damage “other” people did.

My thinking is that by keeping anonymity, it attempts to alleviate any sort of witch-hunt (at least, using in-game tools), and also relieves potential anxiety by allowing the player to feel like even if they perform poorly, they can sort of “hide” behind that anonymity.

I think either, or both, of these approaches would be great.

The objective here is simply allow a player to gauge your own performance, without the express need to use third-party tools. It also lowers the barrier to entry for newer players to see their relative performance and see how much they might be lagging, but with some context for what’s possible, without anyone feeling like a spotlight is being shone on them if they’re struggling.

Just a couple of ideas that I feel like would be relatively easy to implement, but could go a long ways towards helping players improve their performance.

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Or people could stop grouping with random strangers on the internet and then getting emotional about what random strangers on the internet say to them.

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maybe we should stick to possible solutions not pie in the sky dreams that will never come true.

I mean can you imagine not caring what random people you only just meet and will probably never see again, think of you?

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No. Want carefree groups? Find a casual raiding guild that’s in your own league and then work up. This is just a roundabout way of letting bad pugs stick around and ruin the rest of the group’s day.

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Having a ‘DPS threshold’ to beat doesn’t really seem to work too well in WoW considering the number of constantly changing factors such as spec, allied buffs, gear optimization and item level, spacing and movement, GCDs spent on non-damaging abilities, etc. Generally, DPS alone rarely determines if a DPS is ready for certain content like higher M+ keys because tunneling is bad.

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DPS meters are one of the most effective learning tools. How do you know if you’re doing better or worse if you can’t tell if your doing better or worse?

Plus you can look at your break downs and see what’s doing most of your damage.

We have a handful of people in my guild that have the “DPS meters are toxic” mindset. An incident that sticks out is we were running keys a couple seasons ago while on voice. Weren’t doing super high keys and had a mixed group of experienced and carry. One of the carries was getting excited about how well we were doing and asked to see the meters for the run.

They felt they were doing great. They were doing less damage than the tank. The sound of disappointment in their voice was sad to hear.

And that’s the problem with this mindset. You don’t even know if your helping or not. Don’t know if you have a lot of room for improvement. And you don’t even know if anything you’ve done has helped you improved or not.

So how much help is it to never tell someone they have room to improve? Just let them run around thinking they’re doing a great job, and since they think they’re doing a great job they never improve and go around the game thinking everyone is toxic when they leave groups because they are in a pug with someone that isn’t even doing a quarter of what’s expected from them and what’s needed to be succesful.

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I think that idea is lovely.

My elitist nephew thinks you are cracked because then he ‘wouldn’t know who to blame when things go south’. (Because it is never his fault, lol)

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I like the idea of improving target dummies. I’d like that.

As a PVP player I always viewed DPS meters as bait. They give you false information and redirect your focus away from the actual goal. Which is to kill X.

Like imagine telling somebody they’re bad for doing low dps and yet they have completed all high end content and are gladiator. If they’re not dying and the enemy is, does their dps really matter?

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I don’t see how Blizz is going to be able to do this without making DPS meters a bannable offense. And that would be wild and drive away more players than you’d think.

There are absolutely elitist players who will and have been abusing DPS meters as a catch-all for gameplay, even though we have so many variables in any given fight.

At the same time, DPS meters allow you to test and tune a build. They allow you to see if you’re improving or not, which is great. When you raid with a Guild and you’re getting ready for progression or in progression, it allows you to give actual meaningful feedback to each person individually (How someone gives feedback is completely a person problem).

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How do you know if you’re doing better or worse if you can’t tell if your doing better or worse?

Is the enemy dead? If yes, then you’re doing fine.

Also dps meters really aren’t even a sufficient sim tool to determine rotations in modern WoW. Aint a ton of people in retail WoW determining their rotation by looking at dps meters. They look at guides created by simulators.

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Just buy boost with gold, don’t drag the rest of us into it. Ty.

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DPS meters are more for the “If NO” result. And in raiding and M+ “If No” Happens.

These are Co-op activities with a fail state. You can go through the game thinking the group owes you a carry, or you can go through the game thinking you owe the group your best effort.

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If they didn’t want players to have it then they wouldn’t allow it. Also, you can’t “grief” someone over a dps meter. lol

No doubt he already does, there’s only 1 reason to not want others to see your dps and that’s because it’s insanely low.

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It’s like my old GM told one raider from my group back in the day when he gave Shadowmourne mats to my DK who did less damage than them. That player melted down about my DPS sucking and how he should get the items. The GM said and I quote, “Hey dude? Chill out or find another team. Dead DPS do no damage. He survived consistently. You did not.”

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That which gets measured, gets managed.

I do not want to have my damage output “managed” by anyone, myself included. It quite literally sucks the fun out of the game for me. I genuinely don’t mind if that means not doing higher-difficulty content; in fact, that’s what I already do.

So a HELL NO to DPS meters being made a default feature. I’d prefer they’d remove them even as an add-on functionality, but that won’t happen.

But if they were forced into the game by default? I’d be looking to disable it right away. And it’d only hasten how quickly I’d leave the game. It would also be a barrier whenever I’d consider coming back.

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And that’s a perfectly valid opinion. And it’s pretty accurate take on what the trade offs are.

My guild has become more this way, and will see next expansion, but I think it’s finally killing it. Not that there isn’t an abundant number of ways a progress guild can implode, but with these types of guilds what usually happens is all the capable players leave. And then progress on a normal becomes hard. Then people stop showing up.

Can’t let them vote with their feet.

But it’s a game so you can’t stop them.

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it’s so funny how majority wow players should be playing FFXIV but instead scoff at FFXIV but it is exactly what they actually want based on their own comments

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There we go. :+1:

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They could just take details and add it to the game like they did with, Grid, Xperl, Dominos, Quest Helper, ect

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Kind of hard not to be a jerk when there’s undisputable proof right in front of you. It’s especially hard not to be a jerk when pointing out said proof can be perceived as rude even if you’re extraordinarily nice about it.

Bottom line is, folks who hate DPS meters should learn to take some criticism. Same could be said for the elitist butts. They could learn to be nicer about crap.

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