Lookit

I don't think anyone will say they wouldn't like more information straight from Blizzard. And it wouldn't hurt to add the cooldown to the WF tooltip.

But what rankles me about this thread is the sense of entitlement on display, and the quickness with which people are calling Blizzard liars, lazy, and dishonest. Just because a sentiment is spelled correctly and has proper capitalization doesn't mean it's not pure WoW General-grade shit.

The ironic part about everyone harping on the windfury issue is that if you go to the Official World of Warcraft Shaman, there is an officially stickied thread called "BC Shaman FAQ". The very first paragraphs detail extensively the information about the 3 second cooldown, the 2.1 change to stacking, and everything else a player could want to know.

WoW Forums -> TBC Shaman FAQ

What more do you fuckers want?

 

Malan

Come on now.

Again, the forums are not visited by a majority of players. The information should be correct in-game first and foremost because in-game is where the majority of players get their information.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Cromfel

Thanks for the post. Good examples of the possible scenarios where it could help. They could be engineering made and easily customized to reflect certain types of boss stats (Low armor, high armor, high ersist etc) or they could just add similiar shooting ranges to all major citys like Theramore has. Just so there would be a lot of options where to go test (Hence avoid crowded 10 guilds trying to test on 1 dummy). Even better if they added both options.

Simple setup could be...

Green Dummy
Small - lvl 60, low armor and low resistance
Medium - lvl 60, medium armor and medium resistance
Big - lvl 60, high armor and high resistance

Orange Dummy
Small - lvl 70, low armor and low resistance
Medium - lvl 70, medium armor and medium resistance
Big - lvl 70, high armor and high resistance

Red Dummy
Small - lvl 73, low armor and low resistance
Medium - lvl 73, medium armor and medium resistance
Big - lvl 73, high armor and high resistance

Unlimited health and debuffs etc could be reseted by "talking" to it. That would only require 9 different new craftable items. Or if they want to be lazy, just add those models to said shooting ranges. Duration of crafted dummys could be 10 minutes (Average bossfight?)

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

 

Grogzor

Such as an encyclopedia on the Control Window that Everyone has to go through to log off. Would it take time from Blizzard? Yes, it would but the benefit to the player's would more then make up for it.

Its the theory behind a Universal Education System. Some kids actively resist learning but for the large majority of students, they sit in class and pay attention. Some are smarter then others, but the same information is given to everyone and that is what is graded upon.

If everyone had access to the Fundamental Mechanics of this game, the general populace of WoW would be better at what they do.

Ask the average warrior in the middle of Ironforge or Orgrimmar what the difference between Parry and Dodge is and I guarantee, at least 80% won't know. But if they had access to the information, the number of players that know would go up.

 

• Disquette

Blizzard has chosen to keep the in-game tooltip on windfury in an incorrect state, even though they have acknowledged it's incorrect. So, your pick - is it because they are:

1) liars
2) lazy
3) dishonest (really though, this seems like a repeat of part 1)

If you have a different way of describing them other than one of those things in light of the facts, please feel free to explain your position.

Yes, the *players* created that knowledge base. Not blizzard. A Blizzard CM stickied it, but as CM's will readily tell you, they don't know about many of the finer aspects of the game. It'd be a bit different if a blue poster said "the information in this sticky post is 100% accurate, and we stand by it". Until they do so, however, how does a reader know if it's correct? I've certainly found incorrect information in sticky'd posts before.

That is absolutely true. I can think of at least one recent post that embodies this.

 

Krollin

It is not Blizzard's fault that people don't use the Forums. People don't visit them because they are not motivated enough to look in the first place.

As far as game mechanics are concerned the players don't get the majority of information in game from the game itself, they get it from other players.

This extends to where players get their information when they are not in game, from the gaming community. In other words there is already an effective and accessible pool of information available to everyone who wants to read it.

I find it remarkable that despite reasoned arguments pointing out the real problem, that the problem lies with the players and not with Blizzard, that some people in this Thread keep on insisting that Blizzard need to do more to get people to go to the WoW web site.

Things simply do not work like that, people don't work like that.
Experience over the years has shown that expending effort as you suggest Bliizard should be doing is wasted time and affects their bottom line.

In the meantime the Gaming Community has already done the job and more effectively than Blizzard have said they are prepared to do.

Along with "You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink", another adage comes to mind, "If your head hurts stop beating it against a brick wall".

Yes tooltips should be accurate, I don't think anyone disagrees on that point. But having training dummies ?
Waste of time I would rather have Blizzard sinking into getting the important things right instead.

 

Akka

Not being required to go on web-searching to get informations from other players about how a talent actually works, because its in-game description isn't accurate ?

Some subtleties aren't needed, because they can be logically deduced, or readily observed (that the WF proc takes the off-hand damage penalty, for example).
But some, like the CD on WF proc, are neither logical nor obvious. As such, it should be spelled correctly in the description.

Same for the -10 % in bonus spell damage for the Improved Fireball/Frostbolt, the +40 % speed for auto-attack after a parry (honestly, how someone managed to get this one is beyond me) and the like.
And probably many more subtle details that we aren't aware of, because they are game mechanics not visible enough to be noticed, but still affects many decisions we take, and would perhaps have made us make a different choice if we had known...

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

 

◊ Kaubel

No, people don't go there because it's a cesspool of crap.

 

Krollin

That is the reason people don't go back there

The Forums were never the best place to go for any kind of useful information anyway, they never will be and my contention is that Blizzard never intended them to be either.

 

Cromfel

Waste of time? How you expect player to find out what speed weapons are best for him with DW? How you expect them to figure out what trinket is best for them? What would be better than giving players proper tools to check those things out, ingame. What would be better way for them to figure out shot rotations? What would be better way to let them figure out rotations with cooldowns, potions and such?

I would see it as potential new fun aspect for the game. And it would allow players to educate themself.

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

 

Vernichter

Equally relevant is the fact that adding target dummies would not take a great deal of development time or effort on Blizzard's part. There are a number of NPC shooting ranges and training sites in the various cities around the world, so the enviroment is mostly arranged already. They should be able to add an interactable NPC in these locations who will spawn targets for players when prompted.

I would propose that at each site players could request dummies that would have low, medium, or high hit points based on level and would be either the level of the player or skull level. They could even put in a quest associated with the spawns that kept track of how much time it took the player(s) to kill the target. That would mean that even the casual gamer could get a sense of how much damage they are capable of dealing in a given amount of time without needing to use a third-party application or dive into the combat log.

 

Charsi

Just to toss this out there but... overwhelmed? They probably have a change list longer than my arm, and everything has a priority. I wouldn't be surprised to see a tooltip change - no matter how informative - constantly getting bumped in favour of fixing other, more critical things that we don't even know about.

For all that Blizzard manages to do, sometimes I still feel like their dev team is a couple of overworked guys in a basement somewhere eating pizza and sleeping in shifts. Even though it's probably anything but.

 

Grogzor

If Blizzard wasn't able to release content at what they consider a reasonable pace and fix display errors like this at a reasonable pace I would assume, like any other business they would hire some more workers until they got where they wanted.

The fact that don't though means one of two things, they consider fixing these things not worth their time or they don't have room for the extra programmers.

 

atua

They could even make it an in-game metagame, by keeping a list of "high-scores" and names for the best time/dps on killing the dummy. This could then be accessed by talking to the NPC.

 

• Disquette

I don't think it's overwhelmed as much as it is a matter of scope and organization within the company. Say annoying random wow player finds out some hidden mechanic that was introduced after the start of the game. Player publicizes it, eventually from the uproar, a blizzard CM goes to the development team and confirms that it works the way the player deduced, and posts on the forum saying "ok, you're right - they put that in there without a patch note/etc".

At this point, we only have one mistake - they haven't put it in the patch notes. However, they then add another mistake to the situation by not having a method of formally opening a ticket to change the tooltip. This could involve the UI team, testing team, translation team, and developer teams. It's probably a lack of such a formalized process (wherein a hidden mechanic is found) for getting the tooltips updated.

It can be classified as sinister on the one side, or overwhelmed but good natured on the other. The result is that we have a product being produced either without care or without the ability to be accurate. It's still a great product, but that's what makes these tooltip fallacies so maddening.

 

Malan

I actually went on the 2.1 PTR and reported every incorrect tooltip I could find for shaman. Nothing got changed.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Foxery

You're getting off track. It isn't Blizzard's responsibility to spoon-feed you how to be "the best." Quite the opposite, in fact; the game is designed to be easy to get into. Raiders push themselves to understand more, but it is not a mandatory part of the game to understand math.

If Blizzard ever adds an ingame knowledge base, it would be fairly thin - to the point that EJers would laugh at it. It can't appear daunting to newcomers or they risk scaring away new customers.

 

Lookit

I would tend to describe Blizzard as "an innovative and creative company that produces games of the highest quality that are beloved by millions all over the world." But if you want to describe them as "a bunch of lazy liars" then feel free. This would be a matter of perspective.

There are some things that Blizzard wants to be community driven. No, they are not going to explicity spell out every single mechanic in the game. They want players to need to interact to discover all of the nooks and crannies. No player should be a master of their class without ever having done any outside research or consulting with other players.

Claiming that ALL information should be available in-game goes against the very nature of an MMO. This is not a console RPG. It is not a self-contained unit. In the same way that the mod community has exploded, and the raiding community has exploded, so too has the theorycrafting community.

Blizzard has provided a link to the official site on the WoW login screen. Though the signal-to-noise ratio is high on the forums, it cannot be denied that there is a wealth of information both on the main site and the forums themselves. I would contend that ALL the information Blizzard considers "necessary" is either in-game or on the main site/forums, and that all additional information is intended to be discovered by the community.

 

Vernichter

Foxery, your response does not make sense. Cromfel was making the point that target dummies would not be a waste of time to implement because they would allow the player to have a controlled test enviroment for evaluating prinicples for themselves. That suggestion fits completely with the belief that the community should be responsible for optimizing characters. He was not referencing an ingame knowledge base as a tool for being the best, and neither has anyone else.

The suggestions for a knowledge base have been to provide a tool with basic but accurate information about game mechanics so that uninformed players can have a broader, more accessible framework for understanding how the game works. No one has suggested that it apply to the category of player who attends to the theorycraft of these forums. Rather, it was suggested as a means for making obtuse mechanics (like mob parry) more transparent for those who want to play well, but do not need to optimize.

The third suggestion from the thread - for Blizzard to make tool-tips generally accurate - seems like a no brainer. Why shouldn't procs with hidden cooldown indicate their actual proc percentage and the cooldown? There is already a precident with some procs, so why not include all of them that meet that criterion? Why shouldn't the windfury tooltip mention the 3 second cooldown? I see no reason to allow blatantly incorrect information to persist, particularly when the actual workings are often relatively straightforward.

 

Malan

Oh it does? Perhaps you could point us to the official wiki entry that spells out the nature of an MMO where this is laid out as law?

Some of you guys are being really dense here. Nobody, not one single person, has said in this thread that Blizzard should tell people how to "play their class" or what the "best XYZ" is. All that has been asked is that information exposing game mechanics be provided. "This event cannot occur more than once in a few seconds" is a good example of how to expose a mechanic. Not saying a damn thing about it and expecting us to just suffer through it, or "discover it" for ourselves is silly. The devs do not have meetings where they discuss hiding mechanics like Easter Eggs so that inventive players have "fun" finding them.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Arcos

I have to second Malan here; there is a big difference between Blizzard posting a "These are the maximum DPS/Healing/Tanking/PvP Builds" resource, which tells people how to play, and what Malan and others are asking for; a knowledge base so that people who want to can get mechanics answers.

The idea that players should simply "discover it for themselves" is, as Malan notes, untenable in a game this complex, one where many essential game mechanics are opaque. For example, according to WoWhead, Drain Life has a 71% coefficient. According to a stickied guide on the Warlock forums, it has a 100% coefficient. Both resources are player made, so how can an unsophisticated user determine which is correct, short of going out and testing everything?

Damage/healing on gear is pretty much the dominant mode of caster gear improvement, yet what in the game itself would allow a player to actually understand what is going on? For that matter, where are the official resources a player could look to when he just wants to know what spell gets what coefficient? How do they find out that instant cast spells have a certain coefficient if they are direct damage, but use a different mechanic if they are HoTs/DoTs? these aren't esoteric issues, but ideas fundamental to playing well at higher levels.

Giving us a resource for these questions doesn't even need to be obtrusive; if they can have an answer for "Why are my orc's shoulder pads so small?" in the in-game knowledge base, adding a Mechanics section would scarcely break the 4th wall.

 

Lookit

In your original post you claim Blizzard fails to deliver information to the players. I find this highly untrue. In the WoW forums post you linked to, you say "The poster above me didn't even know that the Sunwell will have a 5-man component." That is not at all "need to know" information. That is recently leaked info intended only for those who follow the game very closely. When Sunwell goes live, you can bet that there will be a huge link on the launcher with fancy graphics announcing the shiny new instances.

As I said before, sure it would be a great idea to add the cooldown to the WF tooltip. Is that all this thread is about though? One tooltip that you think should have one additional sentence? How many tens of thousands of tooltips are there in the game? You're suprised you can find fault with one? And now you're mad that they won't change it. Maybe they want to give players a reason to seek out their class forum. Maybe they want to encourage players to experiment to maximize their dps.

 

Malan

No, the windfury tooltip just happens to be the one that most people are familiar with (hey, I play a shaman, think its a coincidence that its flaws are the ones I'm most familiar with?). Several others have been provided as examples by others in this thread (Disquette provided 3 others I believe) and I'm sure I can find a whole host of them if you really want me to. As I noted above, during the 2.1 PTR testing I submitted probably 10 different bug reports on tooltips that did not accurately report the in-game reality. And my OP and the thread have diverged a bit, as all threads tend to, so referring back to it now is a bit weak.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Harwin

Or Steady Shot, or so many other examples.

I'm ok with Blizzard providing less information in some cases, but wrong information should be right out.

If WF said: "Provides a chance that when you make an attack with a weapon you'll get an extra attack with your weapon with additional AP" I'd at least know I didn't know what it did. I'd be curious what the chance was (and would naturally discover the cooldown through testing, or I'd look it up)

But they provide a very specific # - "20%", and 445 AP, and so it *sounds* like a complete tooltip. Whenever I see a tooltip that says "chance on hit to do X" I go to WowHead and look up the chance(and find out about hidden cooldowns etc) When I see a tooltip that says "XX% chance on hit to do X" I usually don't look it up, because I believe I have the information.

 

Lookit

What real difference does it make whether you know the coefficient or not? The higher your spell damage, the more damage the spell does. That's all you need to know. Sure, knowing one spell has an extra low coefficient may make you decide to not use it or to focus more on other stats since you're getting relatively little benefit from +dmg, but that is only at the very highest level of play, a point at which it is expected for a player to be able to determine the coefficient on their own by testing, and furthermore when a player is expected to adapt to encounters in a very dynamic fashion concerning what gear to wear.

You say the idea of players discovering the more advanced mechanics on their own is untenable, yet Blizzard would seem to disagree. They give you all the information you need to play, but to squeeze the absolute maximum performance out of your character requires further research. Why do you find that unacceptable?