Vexing Complexity

[Halvhir]

I'm just nit picking a bit here, but...

This is even before you have to account for mysterious variables like diminishing returns, hard numeric caps, soft numeric caps, and how your stats interact with those of the monsters you're fighting. Does dodge rating apply to incoming spells? Does Parry interact with ranged attacks? What's the difference between block and armor, since both seem to reduce incoming damage? There's nothing in game to answer any of these questions, and so a majority of the players fumble around in the dark.

There are actually tooltips in the character info panel that tell you the majority of this. I'm a protection paladin, so knowing how much incoming damage I'm avoiding is important. If you have Character Information panel open, you can scroll through your various stats and mouse over the ones you're concerned about. For example, I can scroll down to Defenses and hover over Armor, which will tell me how much I have, how much extra is there through spells and enchantments, and that it blocks a certain percentage of incoming physical damage. Going down to block, it tells me how much of a percentage change I have to make one of those, and that it stops a straight 30% of incoming damage.

Obviously it's not exhaustive (you can't dodge spells, and it doesn't spell that out for you), but it's got practically everything you could possibly need if you're not that concerned about high-end raiding. Especially helpful are the to-hit percentages for each level of enemy you could be facing, which has all but eliminated the droves of people asking "how much hit I need" in trade chat.

For leveling, yes, much choice in equipment is pointless. But then, you get a lot more choice out of your talent tree while leveling than you do at cap because the order in which you take them can differ... and you can respec to something more cookie-cutter once you hit 85. Do you want the survival traits now because you like soloing, or the max DPS talents first because you like to do dungeons, or the mobility talents because you run around exploring or crafting more than grinding, etc etc.

 

[StriderShinryu]

LOTRO's cosmetic appearance and wardrobe system says hi.

 

[Fearzone]

The goal in WoW is to get the better gear, and hopefully one day the best gear. It is not a choice and not intended to be a choice. The next piece of gear you are after is usually one that clearly surpasses the last, and attack vs dodge vs resistance aside, usually it is obvious that this new drop is better than what you now have equipped. Now late game I had one set of gear for pvp and daily quests and another for raiding, which involved a little picking and choosing, again straightfoward, and socketing gems involved some choice between susposed equals, yet rarely did I dwell much on gear or feel that I should be. That isn't the point of gearing up. The point is: "OMFG that guys staff is cool I need to Thottbot where he got that from." Talents, though, I spent hours and hours devising optimal builds, which paid off when people told me they looked up my talent spec in the armory. I was an affliction lock with sweet dps.

 

[Furrama]

Thing is, at the raiding level, a lot of these discussions do take place.

I should have made clear: I was talking about the leveling aspect of the game. Yeah, once you're raiding, equipment is EVERYTHING. (So I'm told.) It's just odd that the first 80 levels don't work that way and don't prepare you for it.

"Mathcrafted". Heh. Hadn't heard that one before. I'll have to remember that.

The leveling part of the game is about context, for the world, your character, and learning how to play your class one new ability at a time. End game is about gear choices, as by this point you should know how to play your class/spec if you have been paying attention. If you threw gear into that it would be a lot at once.

Think of it as a super long tutorial. These days you could level to 85 pretty easily, given a couple of weeks, even if you have never played before.

 

[Wicky_42]

It seems like TF2's item selection is what Shamus is after - those guys know how to balance trade-offs against bonuses! Or they did, a couple of years back when I still played...

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Unfortunately, the majority of those choices you mentioned have simple numerical ways of calculating advantage.

To take one: is more damage for less criticals worth it? Weight the average damage of a critical with the frequency of the criticals, add it to the base average damage, and you have a perfect formula to figure out which is a superior weapon. If you make them equivalent (as many games have started to do when providing this choice), you've only given the illusion of choice. Such an illusion is, of course, desirable from a design standpoint as it makes balancing easier, but people who see through it will likely be less satisfied with the choice.

Any simple mathematical manipulation can be reduced to a DPS formula and offers, at best, the illusion of choice between mathematically equivalent options.

TF2's item system should really be the posterboy for how to do things right. You can remain an extremely competetive player using only default items and the other items almost always simply change the way a class is played rather than offering a different numerical spin on the class (which would be horribly unbalancing).

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

you are forgetting a few things Shaemus

Gearscore is paramount for a charachter. Looks < GS, if your armor looks like C'thun's excrement (looking at you heroes' plagueheart set) but if its gearscore is less than what is required at your skill level/actual level you wont be allowed to do what you want. If you are at level 85 in Cataclysm and want to raid, say, The Throne of Four Winds, you will need at least a 5.5-6.0 Gearscore. Thats the MINIMUM for players to even think of taking you along. Gearscore is just adding the levels of items together into a number, its basically a magic tool that just adds numbers for you which any intelligent person can. It has 0 bearing on ANYTHING in the game, and don't say it does its just an aggregate number of the bits of cloth, leather and mail you are wearing, the rings on your fingers, the cloak on your back, the belt on your waist and wherever trinkets are on your body. But players use this as a judge of how good they think you will be, and its as good a reason as any to deny you access to content. Oh you can go to the Throne of Four Winds and go into the instance, but you'll be alone. If you want help, you'll have to meet the arbitrary gearscore price tag no matter how stupid.

There are some instances where DPS isn't good. The tank, who has the maximum ammount of defensive power, shouldn't need to deal damage. He simply has to keep enemies attacking him, and that means he needs to generate threat however he can. A healer does not need DPS, they instead need items which increase spell critical chance and healing power. If a healing spell critical, it heals for double the amount it was going to heal. This is useful, especially if you want to save mana and just cast one critical spell all the time.


The biggest thing though, is understanding your class. Dosen't matter if your gear or your stats are in the right. If you can't play your class, no matter which one it is, you will fail. I have a Warlock, Death Knight, Mage, Paladin and Hunter and though they aren't all Alliance or all Horde they are skilled enough at what they do. I took the time to learn from other skilled players, and I take time to teach other players how to play their classes. Now, I spend more time on my Horde characters than Alliance but I still take my role as mentor seriously. All five have needed professions, and when mixed together they can gear up a newly level 80 person in under 6 hours with gems, enchantments and armor. However, it takes months for my apprentices to graduate and become real good players. My charachters are on the RP server Moon Guard and, though off and on, are respected. Yes, my Warlock has the Blood-bathed Frostbrood mount and he's got the acheivment to prove it but he never earned that. My guild wouldn't take the time to teach me, and just had me as another source of damage to pump into the fray. When I went solo and learned for myself of how classes are played, it all made sense.

So, to tl;dr

Gearscore is important too I guess, DPS isn't everything to everyone and play your class properly

 

[AngryFrenchCanadian]

Even though I love Eve Online, I do agree that it is one of the worst offenders in this matter. A newbie will rarely know the end result if he fits his ship in a certain way. It took me some time to know that the different races had different offensive and defencive affiliations (the Gallente like drones and armour tanks but their enemies the Caldari rely on missiles and shield tanks, for example).

 

[zenoaugustus]

Experienced Points: Vexing Complexity

Choosing equipment in World of Warcraft is ultimately meaningless.

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Thing is, at the raiding level, a lot of these discussions do take place.

I'm a holy paladin.

Point for point, Int is the best stat I can use. It gives my spells greater potency, crit chance, increases my mana pool, and gives me Mana regen.

But spr is my base stat for mana regen. do I take the gear with 100 Int and no spirit, or the one with 65 int and 65 spirit? Am I running OOM on fights? Are my heals low?

Haste is my best secondary stat for throughput - it enhances my mana regen, and lets me cast faster, but that faster cast speed also means I blow through mana faster, and Haste comes at the cost of a gear's potential to contain spirit. Haste is going to eat my mana harder.

Maybe crit would be a good choice? Crit intercats with some talents to trigger temporary effects that grant me haste or spirit buffs. It also makes my average heal hit bigger - but it comes at the risk of not getting a big heal when I need it. Leaving my healing efficiency at the mercy of the RNG.

Mastery grants damage absorption to my targets - so they take less damage, mitigating both my need for bigger heals, and my mana usage - but it comes at the cost of mana generation, heal size and cast speed.

These are all considerations to be made when selecting gear - and they happen for every class. A tank can't build threat without enough hit rating, but can't survive big boss abilities if they've not got the damage mitigation via dodge, parry, block, or armour (or some combination) to make themselves essentially unable to be the target of a critical strike. Gear matters, and for many classes, (like paladins) gear and stat priority builds around playstyle. I push INT and Haste, because I like to have the ability to respond quickly, but another paladin could play approximately equally well pushing up INT and crit. There are, of course, points where numbers take over, and there becomes and obvious "this is mathematically better than that", but there is a wide period (basically from hitting 85 to endgame raiding) where gear considerations present choices and tradeoffs to the player - and considering many long-term players spend most of their time filling that gap, I'm not sure I buy the premise of this column.

-m

That said, paladin Tier 11 gear looks absurd.

Bring back the Tier 2 styling, please.

Matt, I have to say, your point reminds me of my former WoW experience. I was a BC raiding druid tank. And there were not many choices for how to gear, but when I had choice, here is more or less what it came down to. Stamina trumps all, agility is a close second.

I could go into detail as to why, but I'm sure most WoW experts know why.

The complexity is sometimes overcome by one's own knowledge of their personal needs (this develops after playing a certain class for a while).

However, the article was on point for new players. And have you guys ever seen the Warlock tier set (I want to say 6, but it might be 5) in which the helm occasionally produced a pair of demonic looking wings. That was the be-all, end-all omniscient WoW set for me.

 

[mindlesspuppet]

Back when I played WoW (pre any expansion) I mained a Shaman. However, instead of using the Shaman set for level 60s, I used the Hunter set. I got harassed to no end for this, especially by my own guild. At the time 90%+ of the Shaman were restore spec'ed, and while I was to some degree (enough to sustain myself) I was spec'ed mainly to deal massive amounts of burst damage.

This lead to a conflict with my guild during an UBRS(iirc) run; they said they were tired of healing me and I need to respec for healing. I told them I have one of the highest DPSes in guild, that I can out damage rogues in most cases, and that I don't need to be healed as I could take care of myself. Needless to say they stopped healing me.

Because of the arguing and whatnot our group wiped on one of the bosses. I reincarnated, left my teammates dead, finished the boss off single handedly and stole all the loot. Obviously I got booted out of the guild for this.

Being angry at me, whenever I encountered a former guildmate they challenged me to a dual, and found out what my build was made for. Shortly after the honor system was implemented (but before battlegrounds) I started ganking even more than I previously had (which was a lot) and it was a blast. Then battlegrounds was implemented, world PVP died, and Shaman were pretty much forced to be half-assed healers in PVP amidst the chaos. It wasn't long before I gave up on WoW.

A similar thing happened during my 2moons run. I was the highest level Segnale(healer) on the server (for quite some time), but unlike every single other Segnale on the server which were entirely health spec'ed and equiped with lvl 6 weapons, I was pure damage spec'ed wielding the most powerful weapon for my level.

By all means I was a glass cannon, but very few could survive long enough to attack me. I was one of the most notorious PVPers, griefers, and guild leaders on the server. I hunted down mods/GMs, despite their level advantage, just because I could. Regardless, I came under constant fire for not being spec'ed for party grinding.

Kind of went on a tangent, but the point I'm making is there is a small degree of flexibility with builds in these sort of games: many of which are only effective if they are done to extremes, making huge sacrifices in various areas of gameplay. The people who do chose to go these routes, constantly get shit for not following a cookie cutter build. So not only does the game itself vastly limit your options, but the community treats you like a leper if you do anything other than the norm -- regardless of the success you have with your build.

This is one of the reasons I can't do MMOs anymore. Moreover I can't stand the fact that every MMO allows respec'ing; it makes your choices meaningless and encourages this sort of bullying into playing a defined role.

Fingers Diablo III will not allow respec. (yes I know its not an MMO)

 

[Ghengis John]

I sympathize with this article as somebody who played wow for 5 years, but to tell the truth, everything in wow is meaningless. Some people make friends in real life or even find their spouses, but these things happen beyond wow. With their exception if you accept them as a part of the game, nothing in that game has a point or meaning. 100 years from now nobody will care who was the first 85 in the world. They won't build a real statue to the first people who killed The Litch King. Aliens will not abduct the first man to max level a Worgan death knight so that he may train their army of werewolf soldiers.

In short, while you're unlikely to attain any measure of lasting glory in the world, it's impossible to do so in the world of warcraft. I know which one I'd rather live in.

 

[gmfaux]

Experienced Points: Vexing Complexity

Choosing equipment in World of Warcraft is ultimately meaningless.

Read Full Article
" (Fixing it would mean starting over, and there's no way players would stand for that. The time required to acquire the highest levels of gear in the game is phenomenal, and it would be horrifying to rob those players of their accomplishments with a reset.)"

Players do this every expansion. In every expansion that has come out, that gear that you spent hours and hours earning, is meaningless within moments of entering the new zones. It's not that hard to move on. If they really wanted to redo the entire item system, all they would have to do is wait until the next expansion pack since players are already trained to give up their hard-won gear upon entering an expansion.

 

[Lorechaser]

Worse, as far as I can tell in Cataclysm, they removed the actual numbers from almost every thing. I looked at all my new hunter shots, and they just say "This does a lot of damage." "Use this if you want to make people jump." "This is used after dancing."

I'd like to see, you know, numbers n' stuff....

And further - in vanilla WoW, and I think BC, weapon speeds made a *huge* difference - there were huge debates about using slow ranged weapons versus fast, and presumably also about melee. Fast weapons proc'ed more, and interacted better with certain abilities, whereas slow weapons did far more damage per shot, and made better shot rotations. You still basically picked one or the other, but at least when you got a new weapon, you had a few extra things to consider....

 

[shadowform]

The funny part about your suggestion about interesting new types of items is that the last three suggestions would still boil down to the same basic problem you're railing against int he article. In order - it's whether the flat damage increase offsets the damage loss from critical strikes (efficiency), whether you're still able to tank with the reduced attack speed (efficiency), or whether the reduced mana pool is enough to significantly effect your damage output (again, efficiency).

 

[Zakarath]

I game I'd like to bring up is Guild Wars, where all gear has the same maximum base stats, and then a few slots of customization which allowed you to craft your gear to your play style without piles of complexity; You can choose to boost your defensive or offensive capabilities in various ways, and often with tradeoffs that made it interesting; but the choices (while some may for some circumstances be downright better than others) were kept plain; when you got something, you knew what you were getting and how it would affect you.

Also: EVE is a big offender in confusing choices; but not so much an offender in the way of non-choices; there are lots and lots of ways to play the game, and many of them are equally valid. There is no absolute best fit, which is rather different (or so I understand) from WoW.