Perhaps I should have stressed more clearly that DPS does not directly result in the things I said, but rather it creates a paradigm which strongly encourages/inspires other design choices. DPS does not automatically equal simpler gameplay, however, when developers (and players) start treating it as the main property to pay attention to with gear, and then also base other elements of character development on it (such as skills), the entire system gravitates towards treating DPS as a universal constant and the single most important statistic in the game.
Seriously? DPS is bad "mechanic"? DPS is nothing more than an informative number calculated from a couple of other numbers and should be displayed in games to save you time when comparing items/skills/whatever.
As I already said: DPS is a mechanic when it was treated as a mechanic. How is spell/skill/etc. damage scaling off of DPS not a mechanic, for instance?
1. DPS has nothing to do with damage types.
Almost every game I have played which uses DPS as a mechanic almost entirely downplays multiple damage types of any sort. This is not a direct causal relationship but the tendency is that since DPS represents a constant number, damage types need to be reduced to reflect that.
2. This is completely untrue, you can implement shitloads of other mechanics while still providing some basic DPS info.
Not what I'm talking about.
3. How exactly is this bad? As long as you don't sacrifice diversity for balance, then it's a good thing.
The problem is that the way modern RPGs are designed (single character, action-based, soloing) necessitates a level of consistency between characters that did not work in other RPGs where there are more extreme differences (D&D-based games are one example, Fallout is a classless example). By virtue of having combat be the main focus of the game and having every character class be equally effective at combat, you end up with character classes that are often more or less identical between one another, with only the aesthetics differing significantly. Again, not a direct causal relationship, but that is certainly the tendency in pretty much every MMO I have played.
4. Completely untrue. When calculating DPS values you should always consider mechanics like chance to hit, crit chance, crit damage, etc. Therefore I can't see how this mechanic is in any conflict with DPS.
Maybe some developers do take these into account when calculating DPS, but that would be strange because DPS needs to be an objective and consistent standard between players for gear comparison. Maybe some devs implement it as separate "base DPS" and "character DPS" values. Either way, the only significant deviations of this in modern RPGs tend to be criticals. I have seen very few modern RPGs where to-hit chance is significant outside of status effects, and I have read it straight from the mouths of developers that "missing isn't fun, so we got rid of it."
5. This has more to do with stable DPS vs. burst damage and I don't really understand what problem are you trying to point out here. In PvP environment you can't have too much burst without means of countering it as it results in quick player deaths and not much of a PvP is left. In PvE games (singleplayer, cooperative ones) bursts still lead to quick deaths and in games with limited pool of characters this will most likely lead to high frequency of saving/loading which is retarded design. On the other hand having a very stable DPS (fighters in IE games) and having encounters designed around HP bloat and attrition is retarded design as well.
The point is that in more traditional systems, class distinctions were bigger, in part as a result of less homogenized damage output (which is strongly encouraged by using DPS as the sole metric of effectiveness). Wizards would die almost immediately in melee combat but could unleash powerful status effects, area damage, could charm enemies, and so on. These exist in some modern MMOs, however, because of the need for every character to be solo-capable in PvE play, what you end up with is wizards that have more or less the same DPS as fighters, the main distinction being that their gameplay is based around kiting rather than tanking. Many modern RPGs give fighters powerful active area skills, summons, and other abilities which usually overlap with other character classes precisely because the PvE play has been created with it in mind and now every class needs those abilities in order to survive. The end result is that you have classes that play extremely similarly to one another and the tactical considerations you have to make between them are pretty much identical. Once again, not a direct causal relationship, however, what I am discussing are the reasons for and implications of the adoption of DPS as the primary expression of damage potential - and therefore overall effectiveness.