Brakar

I think Blizzard offering true advice of how to play is getting into very dangerous territory of how much to tell and accuracy of the advice. That's a huge can of worms I don't think they'll ever open. However, they should have the information available so a thinking person can figure them out. There should be no hidden cooldowns, there should be no hidden proc rates. When a tooltip like Windfury reads (according to wowhead which I believe is the same as in game.)
There is absolutely nothing in that tooltip to indicate a 3s cooldown. If it instead read:
A thinking person can see this and reasonably wonder if a near 3s speed weapon is better. This type of wording is in game now on items like [Power Infused Mushroom]. It shouldn't take guesswork and large numbers of trials (with time stamps) to determine how an item works. I don't mean the details of what the item does, but just how it works.

Even the vague description a previous poster proposed would be better as you are at least aware there IS a cooldown and then may go searching for the exact values. The current tooltip isn't just wrong, it's extremely misleading.

I also think there should be an official repository of how the mechanics work. A specified conversion for the different ratings, the formulas used for calculating different effects, etc. Having this "forced" on people ingame is too much as most people still don't care. For those of us that do care, it would be nice to take the guesswork out of mechanics like weapon rating, resist rates, scaling, etc. Not a site with damage spreadsheets, how to gear your character, or similar. A site with the details of exactly how things are supposed to work. Besides allowing more accurate theorycrafting, it also allows more oversight in case there is a bug as the expected behavior is well known.

As others have mentioned, the patch notes should also be far more accurate, complete, and well organized. Especially with the mega patches that have notes pages and pages long. With these, only reading the section with regards to your class does not mean you actually get the details of what has changed for your class. Regularly, changes are listed under General when they affect only one class and are not under that classes heading and are easy to miss.

 

srljstr

The thing that I hate the most about PTR, patch notes, etc is the covert nerfing/hotfixes that don't make it into the notes and take detective work on the part of the playerbase to discover. It's dishonest and lazy in so many ways, and I know of a few people who go to PTR just to check on this type of stuff, to see what Blizz tried to sneak under the radar. We need to be pushing for honest and up to date patch notes as concise and direct communication from Blizz isn't too much to ask for, IMO.

I agree that it is largely on the individual to be informed though there are people who will sit back and wait for those who do like to read everything to filter the info their way, and you can't really control that side of it. Rather than putting patch notes in the game as announcements I think it would be better to have a post in each section on WoW forums with a summary of the patch notes as pertaining to the section (each class board, profession board, pvp board, RnD board, etc) with a link to the complete patch notes so that if I only want to dig through patch notes pertaining to my class and professions and raid changes I can, and if I feel like looking at the complete patch notes I can go to any of those boards and get the link to such. It's not that difficult to separate the changes and make posts in each class forum, in profession forum etc so you can go directly to what is immediately pertinent.

 

Drunken Mongoose

In the guild I'm in I've been trying to get people to discuss patch notes more than "omg nerf" and to even read these forums. I've also started introducing WWS to them to try to help people understand why they die/wipe.

So far just my guild leader and about 6 other people have even bothered, it's pretty disheartening that some people won't even bother to try and be informed.

 

• Disquette

Actually, the reason mine was even vague-er than the one you posted, is that the one you posted would be incorrect too! That's another problem with windfury mechanics that not many people realize - your chance to proc a windfury outside the 3 second cooldown is 36% chance *if* you're dual wielding and *if* both weapons have windfury imbue on them. I was trying to make a very correct tooltip without making it many sentences long.

The shaman mechanics are not very simple, in reality. At least if a vague wording were given, people could take that as a flag to say "hey, we need to find out how often the "every few seconds" is and what is the chance to proc. It would at least encourage people to test the mechanics instead of just accepting the lies that Blizzard provides on the tooltip. (and no, I don't think that's too harsh a word, since Blizzard has admitted that the tooltip is wrong, and chooses not to fix it).

 

PSGarak

Once again, I'm just going to point out that an excellent place to draw the line is between explaining how the mechanics work, and what you should do based on those mechanics.

Is anybody else starting to get paranoid about what random unexplained mechanics we aren't aware of yet? The windfury thing seems like the least-obvious one so far that someone caught, it got me worried about what we haven't seen =P.

 

ildon

An interesting thing to note, is that despite ct profiles being technically superior because it allows players to show multiple gear sets, after the armory was released (and due to ct profiles being very slow to be updated for the expansion) the site basically died completely. Right now, wowhead, thottbot, etc. probably only still exist because they add value to the item database with comments and walkthroughs for quests and bosses. Not to mention the number of UI mods that have been completely supplanted by updates to the official Blizzard UI.

Whenever a first party tool becomes available, the third party tools almost always die, even if they are technically superior for some reason. There has to be a LOT of added value for users to not just go with the first party item by default.

Pretty off topic, but there is a lot to be said with leaving things open for the community to do on their own. I think it makes players really feel they "own" the game more, making them more loyal, when they have to do these things for themselves, rather than having it handed to them on a platter. (I'm not trying to say Blizzard shouldn't improve their UI or provide useful sites like Armory, just making a general observation.)

 

Emily

WoW is a multiplayer game. Many in this thread have mentioned how they had to explain to guildies how certain mechanics works. THAT's the way that complicated mechanics get passed around, via player to player communication (either in-game, or through community forums such as this one). The community disseminates the information , breaking it down, analysing it

Blizzard generally only start referring to aspects of mechanics that the player base themselves have uncovered; it is rare for a blue post to throw out new and unexpected information. As a community-driven online game, WoW relies on the community to form the basis of spreading and analysing information about the game.

 

Tascar

I agree with Malan and I think what he is getting at is something a bit less simple than what alot of people here are proposing or claiming exists.

What I feel Blizzard is missing is a straightforward weekly or biweekly or monthly (or on any timely basis) update where they make a general description of what is going on and what they have in store for the near future. Not something complicated or overly long: just a brief summary to lead people to go to other sources of information to find more specific details.

As I type this now, I went to the main World of Warcraft website and I only just now saw something like what I am describing here: WoW -> Info -> Under Development

This was updated today according to the WoW site.

The problem is that I have been to that site for a long time and I simply do not see the stuff listed for 2.2 there until now when outside sites have been reporting it for months and that stuns me.

In fact, I am looking at the main page again and aside from the Skyguard rep page and the new recently updated "under development" section, I don't see a single item on this page that actually pertains to what's going on right now in the game.

Even back when Blizzcon was out, the only information you ever saw from Blizzcon was pictures, advertising material for Wrath of the Lich King, and other nonsense. Nowhere was post any of the information revealed about where the game was going.

I'm not quite sure what exactly Blizzard hopes to get out of keeping players in the dark about everything because I think it would be alot more productive to at least have some sort of regularly updated statement giving an idea of where the game is right now and where it is headed.

People should not have to dig deep into a forum that is badly archived to find a blue post that points to another forum or site for information on the game. Likewise there is something wrong about the only actually-relevant and semi-intelligent comment from Tigole being posted on this forum and not the official one.

I'm not saying that Blizzard needs to give us a huge detailed report about everything for the masses. But I do think they need to at least give something to point people in a general direction as opposed to just throwing them to dig in the main forum or another site.

 

Akka

As many have said, the problem isn't about teaching people how to play, and Blizzard giving advices and classes.
The problem is that the "official" information, the one that should be the "reference", is often lacking, inaccurate or even plainly misleading/wrong.

Efficiency (as a player) is making the best use of what you have available. The problem is, when information is lacking/false, you simply can't really knows what you actually have available.
Sure, there is a thriving community, with statistics-fans dissecting the game and making countless tests to understand and discovers the hidden mechanics. Someone who really wish to get the information, can.

Nobody is asking for Blizzard to be a mother to players.
But Blizzard should, at least, make the information available true. I mean that the tooltips should be accurate and hold the relevant informations, without necessarily trying to hint the player about what he should do with it (which is up to the player to discover).
When I read in-game the informations about something, I should get all the base knowledge necessary to make the adequate decisions.

Example : the infamous WF. If the tooltip read that I have a 20 % chance to get two extra attacks, I may be a smart min-maxer wishing more regularity, and deciding to equip very fast weapons to reduce the spike damage while maintaining the same DPS.
Nowhere in the game I can know about the hidden CD short of making a statistical log analysis through third-party mods, and by taking an adequate decision in the context, I actually gimped myself. That is a problem.


Many tooltips are samely simply not true, or incomplete. Simply putting the adequate informations would avoid countless "false mistakes" (in that the decision itself is sound, it's only bad because of hidden factors that shouldn't be hidden).
Some examples of what tooltips should be :

"Parry : Allows you to parry enemy attacks. Parrying an attack gives you rage and hasten your next white attack by 40 %."

"Improved Fireball : Reduces the casting time of your fireball by 0,1 sec, but reduces the bonus spell damage effect by 2 %."

"Spell damage : Increase damages done by spell by up to X. Spell being cast faster get only a part of this bonus. The part of the bonus added to the spell damages is unaffected by effects or talents altering the casting time."

I may have made myself some errors typing these, but they are nonetheless much more relevant and accurate than the tooltips we get in the game. Decisions made about the informations the player has from the game would likely be much better than they are now, simply because obvious mistakes could be avoided by knowing all the factors.
And again, it's only about changing some tooltips. I don't even think that a detailed in-your-face pop-up in the game is necessary. Simply a note "several changes to class-X talents" or "skill Y has been altered this way :" and an update of the relevant tooltips each patch would be necessary.
Hardly a difficult work, but something quite important, and something I feel is up to, and even a duty from, Blizzard.

If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !

 

Inkm

I've allways found it absurd that the paperdoll's tooltip doesn't take hit, crit and all that into account. Why?

Simply because as a new player you might think the information about MH and OH dps (or dps for 2h'ers) is actually correct and as such, gear up in some absurd way, i.e. only using gear with AP on it.

I'm not saying the paperdoll should say "with your gear, use 1s/5p(e) cycle" but there should be some way for new players to somewhat accurately gogue their potential dps and how an upgrade may or may not benefit them.

It makes me wonder how many casters are running about with too much or far too little hit gear while still wondering why they get resists or wondering why their dps is so low.

Why doesnt +hit on a casters paperdoll say "Reduces chance of your spells being resisted by X%" ?

All of this became very apparent to me when a good friend started playing wow a month or two back. Luckily, the guy has played enough MMOs to know what sort of sites he needs to look out for, understands cycles and all the important stuff, but it's amazing how much stuff is just established as true for the long term players but actually has no root in official information.

The whole change to ratings vs fixed percentages didn't make this any easier on new players either.

 

◊ Cadfael

It actually does this, sort of. Since spell resist on a mob is depending on the level difference (3 vs Raidboss) you can't just flat out tell what you wrote, except against same level mobs, which is precisely what it does. See any armory profile and switch to "Spell", hover over Hit Rating.

 

Cromfel

Why not give players proper tools to measure their performance, if the information itself would be considered "telling them what to do". DrBoom and Blasted Lands mobs are there already, why not give us target dummys?

That would fit in with the idology of finding it out yourself.

.:. Retribution Paladin Hideout .:. http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/

 

Vaccine

I don't know about brining the information to the player.

But that said, a decent playguide for each class on their main site would be a decent idea. Maybe split into leveling, pvp at 70 and raiding at 70. Written by top levellers/raiders/pvpers for each part who can string a few words together and not too simple.

Then if the (to use Gurgs example) enh shaman using 1.8 mh and dropping GoA was interested enough in why his damage was low or he wasnt getting into a raiding guild he could go to the site and read up on enh play in raids anmd then gear/spec accordingly.

But again, the information is out there. But people have to be interested enough in their characters outside of the game to go and do that. You're average Joe isn't interested enough (and that applies to all spheres of the game, not singling out any one player base).

Hell we got a DPSer in our guild who regularly fails to kill his inner demon and gets doubled by the others in his class on WWS, but hes not interested enough to read about dps/dot rotations, tactics, wws parses and general good habits outside of playing the game. He just wants to turn up after work, raid for a few hours to relax and occasionaly grab a few epics. These players generally are the sheep or 'rank and file' of the guild. This is obviously talking about mid-progression guilds, those on the cutting edge tend to have a requirement for reading outside of the game.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink as the old saying goes.

 

Eulogy

I see your point Malan, but what your proposing is only ideal. Since the stoneage humans are used to get their information from multiple sources. Even if they find what they look for in 1 place, they will usually also check in a second place, just to be sure that the first source is right.

 

Akka

You're talking about guides and teaching players how to be efficient. That is not the job of Blizzard, that is up to the individual players (and somehow his companions, who perhaps need him to be a little more efficient).

But the problem here is not about people learning how to play efficiently. It's about the informations they can get from the first-party sources, which is wholefully insufficient.

When you read the tooltips of your abilities, and they lack half the information or are flatly false, you simply can't take accurate decisions ; you can only take smart but inaccurate decisions.
Information "in-game" should be accurate, true and complete. For now, it's only often true, but neither one of the two others.

You can not force a horse to drink, true. But at least, you can bring him to the water and not make him take a wrong turn and ends up into a dry flatland.

If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !

 

Inkm

Guess it's been a while since I played any of my caster toons . Thanks for correcting that .

Anyway, adding "More is needed for a bossfight" or something similiar could be useful. *We* know that bosses are considered beeing +3 levels, but I somehow doubt that most people do. Another thing here is that *we* know about the hitcaps; this should also be shown in the paperdoll. Anything over hitcap is a waste and this is info that should be available to everyone.

 

Cromfel

We just had little conversation on VT how wow doesnt force players to think what they are doing. Sure, its good to have the game easy to start play with. But is int necesary to keep babysitting you trough everything up to lvl 70? Yes there are challenges, but they arent necesary in any way. What if there was class specific quests that introduce you to certain skills?

Recently I have seen many armory links to people who for example put all lvl 70 talents in 1 tree. As they havent ever thought that being Shadowpriest doesnt mean all talents must be put in shadow. Is this due player plain stupidity? Maybe. But I would say part on this plays the fact that you dont really have to study your class.

What I really like in Arenas, is that it forces players to think what they are doing. The game setting is so small, that you will eventually come to conclusion that you are doing something wrong. I have seen huge amount of increase in individual player relative skill in handling their class purely due arenas. Something that BGs pre TBC never gave to players, there was always someone else to blame.

How to make players understand their class without actually telling them how to play? How to do it without creating bottlenecks, yet forcing them to do even small basic dry trainings? What if during leveling, when you get to learn some class defining utility, you had to learn what its there for.

.:. Retribution Paladin Hideout .:. http://cromfel.battlefield.fi/

 

Malan

That's all well and good, but it doesn't preclude Blizzard from being *the* definitive source. Its their game after all. Throw the players a bone and tell us what the f*ing weapon skill really does, and put it in an encyclopedia that can be accessed in-game.

And yah, most people are thinking that I'm asking for information to be shoved in people's faces about *how* to play. Not at all. I just want all the hidden information to be made available, there's no reason why it shouldn't be.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Warleona

Are we asking Blizzard how to use the product to make the best use? No.
Are we asking for a set of correct data for underlying game mechanics or stats? Yes.

Have they failed and/or given false information? Yes.
Are there still 'mystery zones' despite heavy testing by players (namely the affect of -armor and weapon skill)? For sure.

Am I happy about it? No.
Will Blizzard change this? No idea.
Useless post? Maybe.

 

gunsmithx

In order for target dummys to work well for the normal player I really thinkg blizzard would need to introduce some sort of dmg meters or WWS style log tracking(in game instead of online though) otherswise you'd have go out and find a 3rd party system to make an ingame system like that work (unless you really like to read back through your log) I do think it would be a good idea though

 

◊ Vectivus

I would contend that the Shaman does.

That makes sense. That's reasonable.

I understand Blizzard doesn't want to "help" people through the game - and that's not their role, nor is anyone trying to force them to assume it.

It's just bizarre to me how much simple information isn't out there.

I saw a Shaman using an Emerald Ripper the other night, and cried a little - but that's not the kind of information that Blizzard needs to provide. How many raid-level tanks still think they need 25% Block (Block Rating) to push crushing blows off the attack table with Shield Block? That kind of nonsense still floats around, sometimes even in forgotten locations on many of the 'reputable' third-party sources.

 

Karamoon

I don't think that ct profiles WAS technically superior; it allowed showing gear sets but the data collection was massively inferior. When I tried ctprofiles, I discovered that the mod simply didn't record some items, a lot of gems, and several enchants, so I ended up having to windowize WOW and tab back and forth to get my gear showing properly. Now, maybe that's included in the 'slow to be updated for the expansion', but every item, enchant, and gem it failed to record was in the website's database since I could just drop-list pick them. What's worse, since I was applying to a guild I realized that if I hadn't gone over my profiles, I would have looked like some lamer with lots of unenchanted/ungemmed gear.

Yeah, a 3rd party app can't 'cheat' and directly read the databases like the Armory can, but it could be something quite reasonable like 'install this add-on, tell it which set is which in-game, upload data, done'. Having to double-check that it recorded your data and go back in and manually pick stuff from drop boxes is just a big hassle, to the point that I've never bothered going back. I think the site being a royal pain to get accurate information into was what caused people to lose interest. Sites like thottbot and wowhead don't have that problem, while they need some people running collection tools I, as a user, just have to hop to the site and search for the thing, or make an account and post comments. They're actually easier to use than Blizz's item database in my experience.

 

snape

In regards to CTProfiles, I flat out mourn its loss. As a ranged DPS recruiter for my guild, we get applications asking for the applicant's gear, and they link Armory 99.9% of the time. Well, what if they PvPed before they logged last night? Or what if they were just having fun in IF with an Orb of Deception? What if they were RPing with their E-girl and were almost completely naked, OR wearing a Pirate costume? (These are all things that have happened in the past few weeks).

When BC hit, CTProfiles did fall far behind the curve because of the lax item reporting and because they were missing not only several of the gems, but also the interface for socketing. I remember the happy day when someone in guild chat proclaimed that they fixed socketing on CTProfiles and went to fill mine out - and it was functional (though still not perfect). And I guess it was about a month or two ago when they finally called it quits because of the time commitment issue for CT.

That's just a history lesson and not pertinent, but for recruitment purposes, Armory is lacking. If I could customize my own Armory and put multiple sets up (trash, boss, pvp, etc.), WoW would be far better off, as well as guild recruiters and applicants alike.

 

Aware

I support Cromfel's target dummy idea. That way players can choose the conditions and test certain changes in long, reliable sessions without guesswork. I'm going to go hit the WoW suggestion boards.

WoW Forums -> Target Dummies For Testing if you would like to join in.

 

Reverie

Personally, I think the issue with this is that, as people have stated, there's a fine line when providing information. The line separates providing enough information to allow player exploration (ie. the example of providing information on mechanics) from providing so much information that it overwhelms the player and/or begins to dictate how to play the game (ie. the example of having Blizzard outline hunter shot rotations, or optimal cast cycles for mages, etc.).

It is of my personal belief that if there is a line, it should be walked. This allows the provision of what could be considered "just enough" information. Anything behind the line is "too little", anything across it is "too much." If Blizzard were to provide the information, it would still be in the players' hands to go to their site/forum, find the page/sticky, look at it, read it, understand it. Putting it in an official area, however, would make it MORE accessable. There are plenty of players in my guild that would consider themselves "all about the numbers". They constantly try to run tests themselves, only to have one of the few of us that lurk/frequent this forum, among others, stop them half way and just tell them "it's like this" after they complain about how much work it is to get one simple answer. Examples like this have ranged from simple things like explaining how rupture is a better finisher than eviscerate, in most cases, to trying to explain the effects of hidden cooldowns, or the stackable effect of Spellsurge when you have 4~5 casters using it in a group.

I'm a fan of "enough is good, more is better". Unfortunately for Blizzard, they've already set the precedent of high customer-company interaction in the past, even though lately due to the "QQing" on the official forums by your generic trolls, most blue posters have refrained from posting much of anything in the class forums, aside Nethaera who makes an occassional cameo. If Blizzard wants to continue having any semblance of quality interaction with their playerbase, I've always been quick to suggest a monthly or bi-monthy "Player-Developer Panel" done in an IRC format. It would be similar to the Panels at Blizzcon, only ... more often. At the halfway mark between these panels (2 weeks, 1 month depending), there would be a stickied post on each of the relevant forums asking the players to submit questions they'd like to be answered by the devs. The top 5 or so questions would be picked and given 2 mins on each. 10 minutes per class, 15 minutes to generic raiding/instancing, 15 minutes to professions/tradeskills and an optional 15-30 minute (moderated) FFA to the devs at the end.

One 2~2.5hr session every one to two months shouldn't be hard to accomplish. A transcript (and records of previous transcripts) would be posted on the site with a link in the sidebar. This would allow for dissemination of information players WANT TO KNOW about, rather than what Blizzard thinks players want to know. Also having the questions chosen by CMs/Devs beforehand would eliminate the "we can't answer that at this time" line of answers and increase the potential to provide relevant, accurate information. It'd also raise customer confidence in the company, at least in my opinion.

Somewhat long winded, but I'm always thinking there's just some mechanics and updates that players should know and questions that should be answered, regardless of if they're casual or writing a program to reverse engineer the entire game and siphon all the formulas out, printing them out nice and neat for all the world to see.