Make the combat log useful or just get rid of the thing completely...

[pjw]

I took a solid stab at cleaning up the junk in it a while ago....

Most useful would be having (a) timestamps and (b) a UI option to flush it to a file periodically. Do that, and you need not bother cleaning it up; people can then generate their own meaning from the data rather than scrolling through insufficient pages for the thing they really wanted to know about half way through a long fight.

[Seph1roth5]

What if it were like metamagics, where you could right click spells/slas/feats in your hotbar and turn on/off combat log entries for it? Or would that be way more complicated code-wise...?

[Loromir]

How about just give us the ability to dump the data from the combat log into a text file.

[MichelOue]

I took a solid stab at cleaning up the junk in it a while ago, and intended to do a second pass once the dust has settled. If you'd like, I absolutely do not mind telling certain effects to be quiet. Would you mind letting me know what seems to be the loudest?

What I am looking for is not sections of the log (such as "that thing that happens when you equip conflicting gear") but actual singular effects. For example, Warlock Auras used to let you know every 6 seconds or so when they'd refresh, but now they don't.

Captain of bling every logon, although the graphic icon in inventory many designated hat on esthetic....
Doomlet the esthetic sglitter same some times appears some times not...
vom, and evil level 7 item, both equipable trinket, one has necklace drawing, misleading double 5% bonus xp, do not stack the can not be worn together and the icon graphic sis just wrong...
presets, and adjusting volume(s) do I need a button that says yes same settings on all characters...YES
Doi I need button that says ambient, relax full audio, and get down to business only hear whats important, not clang clang no narrator no chat drown out...

[kelavas]

What if it were like metamagics, where you could right click spells/slas/feats in your hotbar and turn on/off combat log entries for it? Or would that be way more complicated code-wise...?

It depends on the type of code. I don't know what they use to create this game, but for Python it is not so complicated, but still takes time. SLA's aren't hard to code for, you're asking for multiple options to be toggled on and off which would take an indefinite amount of time.

I also know a lot more but they aren't popular. Maybe they use C# or C++, who knows. Though to make a game function on that would be good to see.

[bracelet]

Gettng rid of the readouts about what effects were removed when you die would be a huge win. I see the challenge in that though -you probably still want it for situations where you didn't die.

There are some things I think could make it better:

Color in red the blow that killed you.

Color in yellow the blow that killed something.

Don't auto-scroll it when it is not displaying the last line. When I do make the effort to sift through it, it is doubly frustrating when it scrolls back to the bottom by itself long before I found the thing I was looking for.

A stretch goal might be to have an option to suppress incoming beneficial effects. For example how much you healed from some effect. That's generally not why people are looking at the log.

A bigger look-back buffer would be nice.

[Carpone]

Please allow players to save combat logs with timestamps to a file for offline analysis.

The number one thing I look at my combat log for is to answer "How did I die?" Would be great if a UI element popped up on death that displayed the last ~5 damage and healing sources received to make this easy to answer. With all of the spam in the combat log today, you either can't find it easily or you can't scroll back far enough.

Squelch all of the "X effect has been removed from you" combat messages when you die.

[RydeaNikkna]

If we could separate incoming combat affects and damage from outgoing that would be awesome. I know what I'm hitting and I can see the floating numbers, but suddenly I'm hit for 200 and I can't tell the source.

Every time I press the attack button I get around 10 lines in the combat log for each target, that 1 "<mob name> hit you for x..." gets lost in outgoing damage and affect lines.

[DrowsworD]

I agree that making the combat log save to file is possibly the easiest and most useful change. There is already a dndclient.log and a dndbrowserhelper.log

• Use <character-name-timestamp> to create the file name.
• Plain text or - even better - comma-delimted format.
• Allow players to optin/out to save the file, and save location.
• Default save location to the same folder as UserPreferences.ini
• More info, not less - but clean up the clutter. There is stuff in there that is repetitive or not necessarily combat related
• in case all this is impossible, make the log copy-and-paste-able.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

I agree that making the combat log save to file is possibly the easiest and most useful change. There is already a dndclient.log and a dndbrowserhelper.log

I'm surprised that this isn't implemented yet.




I don't remember seeing checks listed for dialog checks.
I'd like to read that, as a story player.
Or checks for finding hidden doors.

However, I don't think that most people here would see that as "important", because to them, combat is the most important thing.
I disagree, but I'm a "silent minority", so to say.
( Well, that was my try at passive-aggressive posting. )

[0ldschool]

Saving it to a log file and making the contents be easily parse-able would be very helpful. If you can go back and look at the contents in an external file and filter the information there that would save the time trying to build it all into the app. I would expect that the community would quickly produce some log analysis tools that would cover most peoples needs if the data made to the log.

Agree 100%. As a new player, I tried desperately to pull useful information out of the log after combat, but it is often simply too short of a buffer, and what is there is really difficult to parse out. Being able to save it to a log file would be extremely helpful!

[Erofen]

Made some changes, hope you approve. Also approve the idea for reduced clutter/spam.

This type of thing would be lovely. Probably some punctuation changes, but the idea is great. Each hit should have a line, not each effect. So everything that we see with a icon next to it and a number as we are dealing damage converted into a text form. Here is an example: "(Combat): You critically hit Kobold Shaman for 345 piercing, 72 sneak attack, 5 fire, 12 sonic, and 1 force damage after 42 were blocked by pierce damage reduction." A timestamp before it would be cool as well, but not sure how much extra load that would put on the game.


I also agree with other posters that the buffs removed on death spam should be completely removed. We already know that personal buffs get removed on death and you can see which lasted through at the top of your screen anyways. We don't need it spamming the combat log.

[kelavas]

This type of thing would be lovely. Probably some punctuation changes, but the idea is great. Each hit should have a line, not each effect. So everything that we see with a icon next to it and a number as we are dealing damage converted into a text form. Here is an example: "(Combat): You critically hit Kobold Shaman for 345 piercing, 72 sneak attack, 5 fire, 12 sonic, and 1 force damage after 42 were blocked by pierce damage reduction." A timestamp before it would be cool as well, but not sure how much extra load that would put on the game.


I also agree with other posters that the buffs removed on death spam should be completely removed. We already know that personal buffs get removed on death and you can see which lasted through at the top of your screen anyways. We don't need it spamming the combat log.

That was the basic idea, you basically changed the 'damage' from each word and placed it at the end. Otherwise, yes that would look very nice, and flow well.
As for the time stamp.. Like I said - don't work at SSG but familiar with code. What do you mean by timestamp? You mean use server time and say,
"(Combat): You critically hit Kobold Shaman for 345 piercing, 72 sneak attack, 5 fire, 12 sonic, and 1 force damage after 42 were blocked by pierce damage reduction at 10:51 standard server time" or? like timestamp in the quest? so...
"(Combat): You critically hit Kobold Shaman for 345 piercing, 72 sneak attack, 5 fire, 12 sonic, and 1 force damage after 42 were blocked by pierce damage reduction at 7 minutes and 41 seconds."

[Lynnabel]

@ Lynnabel, most of the time what my friends and I want from the combat log is to figure out what killed us. Any way to separate that? Or make it a different incoming text type rather than combat?

I turned it bright red, does that help?

[Swimms]

I turned it bright red, does that help?

I like it, also don't forgot to use that gold roll!!

[aoeusnth]

I turned it bright red, does that help?

Nice

[LightBear]

I turned it bright red, does that help?

Only if you put a heart emoji at the end of every line where someone misses you.

[droid327]

Quick! Someone figure out what Alchemist's hit die and SP progression is at L20

[erethizon]

I took a solid stab at cleaning up the junk in it a while ago, and intended to do a second pass once the dust has settled. If you'd like, I absolutely do not mind telling certain effects to be quiet. Would you mind letting me know what seems to be the loudest?

What I am looking for is not sections of the log (such as "that thing that happens when you equip conflicting gear") but actual singular effects. For example, Warlock Auras used to let you know every 6 seconds or so when they'd refresh, but now they don't.

I realize this is not listing singular effects like you requested but my single biggest complaint is that when you die it tells you, one by one, every single buff you had that was lost when you died. We know that all buffs, other than center ship buffs, are lost when we die so ideally it would not even mention them. When you go to the combat log after death the last thing listed should be what killed you (and nothing else should populate your combat log until you are alive again).

[ice584]

IMHO, the best solution by far, would be to give us an option to duplicate all the output (combat, standard, etc) to text files. Then we could write parsers to read/collate the data we need ourselves. Plus, you wouldn't have to clean up anything. At that point, the more granular you could make it, the easier it would be to parse and the more efficiently we could collate the data. That would REALLY give us the ability to start calculating some useful statistical data.