Rift Combat Parser vs Damage Meter

What is the difference between a Rift combat parser and a Rift DPS meter?  Which is better?  Well, it really has to do with what you want to measure.

A damage meter typically does what it says on the tin, it shows you your current dps.  Some might show you a history of your performance, but the key is that a dps meter is really about YOU not someone else.

A Rift combat parser, on the other hand is generally more full featured.  It is intended to show the full picture of combat.  You generally get a way to select the particular information you are looking for.  So you can slice healing per second away from damage per second and examine the performance of your healers.  You can go on to see who died and why they died.


A good example of a full featured parser is worldoflogs.com for Word of Warcraft.  Another example might be the WoW UI Addon called Recount.  Where Recount touts itself as a dps meter, it is really more of a combat parser.

Examples of Rift Combat Parsers

There are only two parsers for Rift right now.  It seems that anymore, all dps meters are trying to be more full featured combat parsers and calling themselves dps meters.  Anyway your two options are listed on the Rift DPS Meter page.  That page will be updated as I find new meters/parsers that I think are worth mentioning.  Make sure you contact me if you find any that I don't have listed and I will give them a shot.

2012/01/08 Edit: An anonymous commenter pointed me to a DPS meter called "Simple Meter" available on Curse.com.  You can take a look at it and decide if it's something useful for you.

Rift UI Addon Policy

Rift UI Addon Policy is being demystified slowly over on the Official Rift Addon Development Forum.  Here is the current state of the Rift UI Addon Policy:

Trion Worlds, Inc. (“Trion”) has created this policy to formalize the development and distribution of RIFT™ user interface add-ons created by members of the player community (referred to hereafter as "Add-Ons"). The purpose of this policy is to ensure the integrity of RIFT and to continue promoting an enjoyable gaming environment for our players. Failure to abide by the policy may result in measures up to and including formal legal action.

1. All Add-Ons must abide by the RIFT End User License Agreement and Trion’s Terms of Use.
   
2. All Add-Ons, including all versions thereof and all features therein, must be distributed free of charge. Further, Developers may not charge money, or any other form of compensation, for services related to the Add-On.
   
3. Addons may not include advertisements of any kind, including in-game requests for donations, unless expressly permitted by Trion.
   
4. Add-Ons must not contain offensive or objectionable material, and must comply with the ESRB ‘T’ rating (and similar ratings from other ratings boards around the world) for RIFT.
   
5. All Add-On code must be completely visible, not hidden or obfuscated in any way, and freely accessible to and viewable by the general public.
   
6. Add-Ons may not negatively impact RIFT, its shards or other players, including, without limitation, excessive use of the chat system, unnecessary loading from the hard disk, or causing slow frame rates.
   
7. Trion reserves the right to disable any Add-On or Add-On functionality at its sole discretion.

-Link to the UI Policy

It seems that it will be impossible for addon based, in game, paid for guides such as Zygor’s guide per #2 in the current UI policy.  Guides that are fully outside of the game such as Xerxes Guide or Rift Supremacy aren’t affected because they don’t use addons.  I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what the final terms look like.

What do you think?

What do you think about the current state of the Addon Policy?  Are there any points that make more or less sense to you?  Should someone be able to charge for their addon?

Rift DPS Meter Addons / UI Mods

Rift DPS Meter Addons / UI Mods are a much anticipated feature of Rift by some, and a dreaded feature to others.  I don’t think there is any question about whether or not addons are coming, but they aren’t here yet.  If you think that the default UI is the best experience you’re gonna get, you’d better soak it up before TrionWorlds finishes the LUA environment and UI Addons go live!  Just think! In as little as a year you can be there telling everyone how you raided GSB before UI Mods were even possible in Rift.

Okay, to be a bit more serious, it is hard to find information relating to UI Mods and addons in general.  The top result when you google “rift dps meter addon” is a thread on the offical rift forums with 22 pages of arguments about the merits of ui mods.  That isn’t all that useful when you are trying to figure out when or if those mods are coming.  I will link resources I’ve found below.  Leave comments with new resources if you have any that I’ve missed!

 

Rift dps meter addon / ui mod Resources

• Rift Junkies article about addons
• Official Rift Forums Dev Thread
• Official Rift API Forum
• Rift UI Addon Policy

Why Should Rift Have DPS Meters?

Why should Rift have a DPS meter? There are good arguments on both sides of the DPS meter debate.  I will admit that I am in favor of DPS meters in Rift, so I do have a bias here.  Let me lay out my understanding of both arguments and then give my personal perspective.  Let me know what you think in the comments!

Pro DPS Meter Argument

You can’t improve things you can’t measure.  What I mean by this is that without some kind of metric you have no idea how well or poorly you are doing.  This is really the foundation of my support of dps meters.  Just like combat log parses to find out if people are doing their jobs right, a dps meter gives feedback on how well you are doing your job.  Now I keep saying “DPS meter” but I also mean healing information and interrupts, etc.

If you can look at your numbers and compare them to the numbers of other people doing similar jobs then you know about how well you are doing.  If you can break down which ability is doing which % of what desired effect, you can determine which are least effective and which are most effective.  This all adds up to being competent at your job.  It’s the same anywhere in life.

 

Anti DPS Meter Argument

From what I can tell, and I held this argument at one point, the only real argument against dps meters is that they can suck the fun out of the game.  They give people the ability to zone out on just doing max dps instead of paying attention to the rest of their job.  It can create an air of elitism. 

My response to all of that? Pick better people to play with.  If a dps meter is making the people you play with become people you don’t want to play with… STOP PLAYING WITH THEM! I don’t see the complication here.  At any rate, let me know your perspective.  If you have any arguments to add, for or against dps meters, post them in the comments.  If you have a blog just do your own blog post and hit me with a pingback. 

Rift DPS Meters

Rift DPS Meters are not common yet.  There are only a few out there and only a couple of those are worth your time to try.  I will outline the various meters I am aware of and their pros and cons as I see it.  There is a page on this website showing a listing of all of the available dps meters that I have found.

There are a number of arguments for and against having dps meters in rift.  In the end I think the argument falls in favor of having them, but I will discuss my perspective on the pros and cons of dps meters in rift on its own page.

Rift DPS Meter Addons

At the moment there are no in game combat parsers because the LUA add-on environment has not been activated on live servers.  The addon environment does seem to be active on the PTR, so I am hopeful that addons will be coming in the near future.  I will post updates when/if rift dps meters are added into the game UI.