A direction I want to steer clear of, these days, is that where players rely on meters and gear scores to tell then what's going on- basically add-ons which tell us every little bit of info. Players use these to gauge and judge other players, instead of getting to know them or basing anything off of skill and taking into account things such as working as a team. For me this sucks the fun out of the game. It becomes one big competition, you're on stage trying to be a super star, not working together.
Some friends and I have a group where we share info about RIFT and keep in touch during the betas and today I saw a parser linked which set off alarm bells in my head. It's called RIFT combat parser and it claims to:
- View stats for everyone, just your group, or just you.
- Charts of your damage and healing abilities and see which one’s are pulling their weight.
- Charts of your damage types to help you find your strong points
- Know who is pulling their weight or compare rotations in-game with the live stats overlay
I think allowing things like these condones this behavior and pushes elitism while hindering people from working together. Sure this one appears to run in the background but anyone can copy and paste the reports into chat. This is something I really want to get away from and it's a huge let down seeing this kind of stuff so early in the game.
There's a game that's already heavily reliant on this type of play. Why not keep your meters there?! I suppose this gives me some things to think over, I've not yet pre-ordered.
I'm out to have fun not impress pugs with healing meters or dps meters. If anything can push me away from a MMORPG it's this. Let me have my fantasy game without all the bull. Maybe I'm jumping the gun but I can't help but feel a tad disappointed.
-kaozz
