tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post3596240353774412652..comments2024-03-29T14:47:49.328+00:00Comments on Inventory Full: DPS. It Stands For "Don't Pour Scorn". Bhagpusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-248638865507224852022-04-29T15:22:19.272+01:002022-04-29T15:22:19.272+01:00Several excellent points there. As usual, there...Several excellent points there. As usual, there's a lot more going on than the shorthand suggests. The whole "animations" thing is another one I took years to understand. I read so many different people making comments about it, sometimes saying they wouldn't or couldn't play certain games because of the animations, others talking about how one of the reasons WoW was so successful was because of how well-synced the animations were, even patch notes talking about frames having been removed from animations to make them more effective... I knew what an animation in this context was but I had no real understanding of why it mattered as anything other than an aesthetic.<br /><br />That was mostly because I very rarely look at my character or the enemy during combat. I look at the skill bars. Again, it all goes back to EQ, where I learned most of my mmorpg language and habits. I had those eight spell gems and a spellbook that obscured the entire screen when I meditated, which I did most of the time in groups. My gamepaly largely consisted of a static screen image of an open book and a lot of sound effects. I learned how to time my casts by watching my mana bar refill, standing up, clicking a spell gem and sitting down again. Animations were not an issue!<br /><br />Anyway, writing another post in a comment here. This is a very big topic and it deserves a lot more delving into, preferably by people who understand good deal more about it than me. Suffice to say that I manage to muddle through somehow and have plenty of fun without annoying people I group with too much, which is probably good enough.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-14231690835103467622022-04-29T00:17:05.639+01:002022-04-29T00:17:05.639+01:00I don't claim to understand much of it myself,...I don't claim to understand much of it myself, but I'd love to hear more from someone who has a good overall grasp of the fundamentals across different games. The problem is that most of the theorycrafters tend to be really specifically esoteric for their one particular game (and class/profession) of interest. Rotation and priority also have a tendency to be semantically confused with each other.<br /><br />I think the bigger concept seems to be one of "skill priority - which buttons should one ideally be pressing at any given moment?" For some games and situations, this might even be an interrupt or counter for your opponent's cast, placing higher stress on good timing.<br /><br />A skill rotation is then a subset of that bigger concept, a loop that one relies on when the goal is to do the most amount of damage in a given time, given cooldowns and cast/animation times that flow together in such a way that it is possible to press a sequence of ABCDEF skills and repeat them without change.<br /><br />But what happens if cooldowns and cast/animation times don't sync up in such a way? Then apparently it goes back to a skill priority list - press A if it's off cooldown, then B, etc.<br /><br />Do skill priorities and ideal rotations change at different latencies? Surely a 30ms ping person might be able to fit in more skills than one with 250ms ping? Should variations be experimentally and practically tested in-game, and where? On a practice combat dummy? In a real encounter scenario where one may have to deal with mechanics, being forced to stay at different ranges or move at various intervals?<br /><br />Do games like Dark Souls have a "rotation" if one is basically just trying to squeeze in attacks during optimal windows where the boss isn't about to hit you? Or is it just a skill priority choice between a limited set of actions (light attack, heavy attack, spell?)<br /><br />At some point, it goes a little too deep down the rabbit hole for moi. One has to draw a time/effort line in "sciencing" what is essentially entertainment.Jeromaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02206083433625986970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-22517715657766582852022-04-28T21:34:49.054+01:002022-04-28T21:34:49.054+01:00/flex ! Or should that be /mflex?/flex ! Or should that be /mflex?Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-2150504596512669772022-04-28T19:07:57.886+01:002022-04-28T19:07:57.886+01:00Well, I'm glad I inspired such a flexing of th...Well, I'm glad I inspired such a flexing of the mental muscles!Shintarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16758343475446510635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-9516249044122412102022-04-28T19:01:26.466+01:002022-04-28T19:01:26.466+01:00I hadn't thought about it but it's odd tha...I hadn't thought about it but it's odd that they haven't redone the tool tips to the new formatting that does use commas or periods or scientific notation or whatever the choices are. It's hard to imagine some poor intern had to sit there and transcribe all those seven and eight digit numbers by hand and in fact I have a feeling they adjust in real time according to buffs you have that affect them, so they must be auto-populating from somewhere. It's not like someone would have to go in and adjust each one individually.<br /><br />That said, I haven't been out to kill anything since the patch that changed the notation. I've just been hanging around my Mara Estate or East Freeport docks doing the Overseer missions. For all I know, it changes when you first use it or maybe there settings I need to change. I might have to look into that tomorrow.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-14380224092878361832022-04-28T17:29:58.186+01:002022-04-28T17:29:58.186+01:00The paragraph long skill tooltips in EQII would be...The paragraph long skill tooltips in EQII would be greatly improved by putting comma separators in the damage values since, if you're in the latest content, the values go into the millions and are often somewhat specific numbers or ranges of numbers and I cannot, at a glance, differentiate easily between numbers written out as 1567901 and 15827310.<br /><br />I do occasionally go look up rotations if I seem to be doing very badly. WoW actually tells you, in game, what your best attacks are for your spec, but even there I used and addon once in a while that would literally show you which attack should be next for optimum damage, just to get myself into the swing of things. Especially when playing a class I haven't touched in a while.<br /><br />But mostly I just muddle through if I seem to be succeeding. Wilhelm Arcturushttps://tagn.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com