Information for the Masses (or, How to Keep the Players Informed) - Page 11

Machinator · 11/23/07, 1:17 AM

I think its less of there isn't enough information, its that they don't tell people what they really want to know. I have seen several times where a major shift in how a class/spec plays made, and its announced a week ahead of time quoting the patch notes, or is dismissed by an ambiguous one line post.
Weekly blue posts may help, but I would much rather see a monthly piece from the people actually making the decisions and explaining the most important part 'why'. You can make the best changes for balance but people won't see it as that unless you can back it up. I think the last thing you want to do is make players guess why you nerfed something and have it come back later to justify something else.

Also there is the question of how much information Blizzard has internally. I think I remember a comment from Blizzcon about dps warrior gear sucked because it used old stat weightings. (Agi was good at 60, not so much at 70, ect.) It brings up the question of how much do/can they know working a few hours a day over several classes/encounters compared to the guys who spend hours on their character reading EJ and theorycrafting on a single subject.

Jaxtrasi · 11/23/07, 5:33 AM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

The blue tracker is helpful of course but even there you get inundated with Blue spam and the nuggets of interest occasionally slip through my fingers. I think what I want isn't so much the "Game Master's Guide" as the "Dungeon Master's Guide". Having WoW's 'one true path' explicity described wouldn't be fun but neither is discovering that you've spent those hard fought for arena points on the wrong OH weapon.

The discussion of shamans in this resurrected thread particularily pertinent to my new shaman's situation. I had no idea how to play one 'properly' or what to even do with talents or what benefits +1 strength would confer so I started looking for basic information. Unsurprisingly there's little information within EJ's forums for levelling 1-20 so I went to the source. There was literally nothing on the Blizzard website that was useful for me and the Shaman forums weren't particularily useful either for levelling with few stickied threads and those mostly concentrating on information at the level cap. I don't fumble around so much to learn the limits of the shaman, others have already done that, I just want to apply their knowledge and assist my levelling process. Granted, a lot of the information I was looking for will be exposed to me as I level my new toon but that's not good enough.

There's a huge difference between telling you that 1 Str = 2 AP and 1 Agi = 0 AP and providing you with a levelling guide explaining what talents to choose.

Are you really saying it's Blizzard's responsibility to provide you with a walkthrough?

Malan · 11/23/07, 8:52 AM

Originally Posted by Jaxtrasi

There's a huge difference between telling you that 1 Str = 2 AP and 1 Agi = 0 AP and providing you with a levelling guide explaining what talents to choose.

Are you really saying it's Blizzard's responsibility to provide you with a walkthrough?

That huge difference is exactly what he was illustrating, and he said he doesn't want the walkthrough he wants the explanation of the mechanics.

Jaxtrasi · 11/23/07, 8:59 AM

Originally Posted by Malan

That huge difference is exactly what he was illustrating, and he said he doesn't want the walkthrough he wants the explanation of the mechanics.

Well it was a little muddled but that's not how I read it. He complained that certain information wasn't available and that this lack of information "wasn't good enough". I assume this complaint is made towards Blizzard rather than towards the community.

He wanted two pieces of information: what stats do, and what recommendations people could make for levelling. The first one is available (at wowwiki) and the second would appear not to be. Therefore I assume his complaint is about the second, since he (very sensibly) looked at community sources first.

Malan · 11/23/07, 9:10 AM

Yah his second paragraph muddled the point of his first.

We keep going round/round on this topic. It boils down to this -
a) Telling players "how" to play is bad.
b) Giving players the tools and information they need to figure out how to play, is good.

Obviously nobody wants A, and Blizzard isn't going to do that anyways, so that's settled. Blizzard is failing badly at point B though. Not only are they continuing to hide mechanics, they're not even giving us the tools we need to be able to test things on our own.

Pura · 11/23/07, 9:48 AM

I dont really think theres a problem with the way were currently informed, other than incomplete patch notes, but if information wasnt left out of the patch notes, i think that would be effective enough. Anything major ends up with multiple threads about it in class forums, general forums etc. So long as the bulk of the information is in patch notes, and the discussions about such, including CM justifications are on the forums, im pretty happy with that.

I agree with those people saying that the casual users disregard this information as boring, a lot of people i play with are oblivious to things like new instances being ingame days after the patch. Not because of lack of information, but because they dont play the game with the same devotion or care that many of us do, they dont need to know whats going on or if their class is buffed/nerfed. Those of us who want information on things can read patch notes, news, forums, EJ, depending on how far were willing to go to find out every last drop of information about changes.

I know some people are considering it off-topic, but the first thing i thought as i started reading through this thread was the tooltips. Theyre truely awful, when a skill is changed the tooltip should reflect that. The windfury tooltip was a good example, but equally with rogues, rupture says its affected by AP, eviscerate doesnt mention it. However good the method of information delivery they gave us was, people will always disregard or forget some of it, particularly that of classes they dont play, and they cant really be expected to do more than read a tooltip to find out about the basics of a skill.

I dont think delivery methods are the problem. I think the problem lies with the quality of the information. If skill changes were reflected on tooltips, aswell as patch notes being correct at the time of patch release and perhaps also patch notes were made more attractive to read all those casual players would have all the basic information to hand.

Northerner · 11/23/07, 11:05 AM

I would say Malan that either is a valid way to proceed but this is a strange new world we live in regardless. The single most paradigm-changing thing that has ever happened in MMOs was Conquest's "screw you guys then, we're gonna leak it all" and the results are still felt to this day.

Coming from a cutting-edge EQ background and raiding WoW through to the modern "cutting edge" with open spoilers as the norm makes for a very, very strange experience. I won't kid you, I personally miss the whole time of at least holding top-level targets as need-to-know but fun can be derived from both ways I suppose. It's not quite the same though when you don't get to do blind pulls and formulate your own strats without spelldat info and so on. MMO encounters have never been really that crazily complex but I did like when you needed at least a pull or three to get basic info.

I would counter by saying I think you need to allow your players a methodology to determine functionality (parsing targets, a math model that is open to analysis and so on) but I'm no fan of pure transparency. If players want to produce spoilers across the board then you will need to adapt as developers but that's far from the ideal situation.

KinetiK · 11/23/07, 11:19 AM

Originally Posted by Jaxtrasi

There's a huge difference between telling you that 1 Str = 2 AP and 1 Agi = 0 AP and providing you with a levelling guide explaining what talents to choose.

Are you really saying it's Blizzard's responsibility to provide you with a walkthrough?

No, not a walkthrough. I think it's important that noobs can find the 1 Str = 2 AP on World of Warcraft's main site though. As said earlier in the thread, most of you here have no idea how casual many casuals are. I have friends who have been playing and paying $15/mo since June 2005 and still don't have a level 50 character. They have no idea how their class works and don't actually know where to turn for that information. So I send them here and they say, this is for hardcores, where's my "WoW for dummies?"

Malan · 11/23/07, 11:21 AM

I wonder, would such a book would be financially successful?

Jaxtrasi · 11/23/07, 11:38 AM

Originally Posted by Malan

I wonder, would such a book would be financially successful?

At Christmas time, absolutely.

I was toying with idea of writing a "WoW for beleagured relatives" site at one point, filled with analogous explanations with the aim of eventually pawning it off to a broadsheet newspaper.

Nezralix · 11/23/07, 11:54 AM

Originally Posted by KinetiK

No, not a walkthrough. I think it's important that noobs can find the 1 Str = 2 AP on World of Warcraft's main site though. As said earlier in the thread, most of you here have no idea how casual many casuals are. I have friends who have been playing and paying $15/mo since June 2005 and still don't have a level 50 character. They have no idea how their class works and don't actually know where to turn for that information. So I send them here and they say, this is for hardcores, where's my "WoW for dummies?"

In my experience, this forum is absolutely useless for anyone who isn't willing to plunk down at least an hour reading through a single thread for some class information, and they'll have to sift through a fair amount of nerdrage in any case. WoW Wiki has a good amount of easily-accessible specific information, and frankly the Blizzard class forums occasionally have some useful stickies for the big "overview" threads.

Corinthian · 11/23/07, 12:04 PM

One of the biggest things I miss from Eve Online is the tremendous amount of direct dev/player communication. Granted, that same level of interaction is most likely made possible by the smaller, more mature playerbase of the game. But I think Blizzard could take something useful from the devblog method used at CCP. (EVE Online | EVE Insider | Dev Blog for reference)

If Devs were expected to make regular public entries about what they're working on, it would go a long way toward correcting some of the communication problems.

Gogusrl · 11/23/07, 3:32 PM

Originally Posted by Corinthian

One of the biggest things I miss from Eve Online is the tremendous amount of direct dev/player communication. Granted, that same level of interaction is most likely made possible by the smaller, more mature playerbase of the game. But I think Blizzard could take something useful from the devblog method used at CCP. (EVE Online | EVE Insider | Dev Blog for reference)

If Devs were expected to make regular public entries about what they're working on, it would go a long way toward correcting some of the communication problems.

Even if I stoped playing EVE for over 1 year now, I still read their blogs / forums weekly amazed at the level they play. But that`s offtopic.
On topic, dev blogs would be the best option compared to other suggestions I`ve seen around like forums with restricted access.

Vectivus · 11/23/07, 3:57 PM

I think the only thing stopping Blizzard, or any third party, from developing a thorough resource on the game's mechanics is the sheer magnitude of such an undertaking.

Part of it is also resource allocation - maybe we'd have an in-depth WoW encyclopedia, but we wouldn't have the Armory. I would suggest that the Armory has been a more useful tool to a broader spectrum of players - more people probably look at their Armory profiles than would look at the formulae used to calculate how they got their last crit.

Ninjerk · 11/23/07, 9:43 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

I wonder, would such a book would be financially successful?

I wonder, would it go the way of the original Official WoW strategy guide that remained outdated for months, possibly years? I believe the original guide had the paladin abilities listed and explained from Beta.