Vexing Complexity
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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Zamn is correct. The article refers to a choice between damage and survivability, but this really doesn't exist at the moment. The dpsers' job is to damage the boss as quickly as possible, and as such they will always take talents and gear that maximise damage. If you want to create a situation where this choice has actual meaning, you need to create boss fights where the dps takes an extreme amount of damage that is unavoidable either by skill or defensive cooldowns, to the point where healers are no longer able to keep them alive. In fairness, cataclysm has moved things in this direction somewhat already, but not to those extremes.Zamn said:
The main problem is much more simple though. People are lazy and don't want to work out things for themselves. Does your parry rating interact with ranged attacks? Have someone attack you and see. You could reduce the game down to two stats-attack and defense-but you'd still have people asking which combination of the two is best.
Just to note, WoW makes people start over every time an expansion is launched. All that gear you spent months grinding for? It's now the new starting point, plus or minus a small amount. No, they don't knock you back to level 1, but the entire purpose of the leveling mechanic is to get you to invest time in the game and keep pushing those bars to full and those numbers higher. When you see that your formerly max level character with his formerly best gear is now behind the curve, you're even more encouraged to rectify such a predicament.
The choice really isn't all that evident in the talent trees, as long as you're making the assumption that a player wants his toon to be the most effective at his role. Other than a few very minor areas, the One True Path is pretty clear based not just on opinion and playstyle, but the simple fact of the numbers. The recent change in the talent trees to remove a lot of talents and reduce the overall number of points shows that simply providing more ineffectual options to obfuscate the best powers isn't real choice, so they made the talent trees less about choosing _what_ powers you're going to have than _when_ you're going to have them, and outright preventing you from dabbling in the other trees until you're finished with the one you chose.
Gear is more an issue of shoring up your character's particular weaknesses at a given stage, so that you'll want a piece of gear most that helps, for example, your hit if you're not hit capped, or if you're hit capped, you'll want whatever piece of gear contains the next most opportune stat for your class. They've even streamlined this process by penalizing you for not wearing all of your classes' specified armor type by providing a substantial bonus if you're wearing that in every slot. That begs the question as to why Paladins are even allowed to wear cloth or mail, for example, and also why Rogues are given that same armor specialization benefit. Hybrid casters often wore lower armor value types of armor to compensate for useful stats (after all, a Paladin that was healing didn't need to worry about getting hit, he wasn't being hit anyway) but I can't think of the last time I saw a Rogue wear cloth.
As far as I can tell, the only meaningful game mechanics choice you make in WoW is at the start of the game when you pick your class/race combo, which informs your ability to pick a role or roles, and from then on out it's a matter of unlocking powers and benefits as you move from point to point, first in the quests and then in the dungeons and raids. However, you can make plenty of metagame choices as to how you want to spend the time in the game, and how much time and effort you're willing to dedicate to what segment of the game. Not everyone is a raider, not everyone belongs to a guild and not everyone has a desire to do so.
The choice really isn't all that evident in the talent trees, as long as you're making the assumption that a player wants his toon to be the most effective at his role. Other than a few very minor areas, the One True Path is pretty clear based not just on opinion and playstyle, but the simple fact of the numbers. The recent change in the talent trees to remove a lot of talents and reduce the overall number of points shows that simply providing more ineffectual options to obfuscate the best powers isn't real choice, so they made the talent trees less about choosing _what_ powers you're going to have than _when_ you're going to have them, and outright preventing you from dabbling in the other trees until you're finished with the one you chose.
Gear is more an issue of shoring up your character's particular weaknesses at a given stage, so that you'll want a piece of gear most that helps, for example, your hit if you're not hit capped, or if you're hit capped, you'll want whatever piece of gear contains the next most opportune stat for your class. They've even streamlined this process by penalizing you for not wearing all of your classes' specified armor type by providing a substantial bonus if you're wearing that in every slot. That begs the question as to why Paladins are even allowed to wear cloth or mail, for example, and also why Rogues are given that same armor specialization benefit. Hybrid casters often wore lower armor value types of armor to compensate for useful stats (after all, a Paladin that was healing didn't need to worry about getting hit, he wasn't being hit anyway) but I can't think of the last time I saw a Rogue wear cloth.
As far as I can tell, the only meaningful game mechanics choice you make in WoW is at the start of the game when you pick your class/race combo, which informs your ability to pick a role or roles, and from then on out it's a matter of unlocking powers and benefits as you move from point to point, first in the quests and then in the dungeons and raids. However, you can make plenty of metagame choices as to how you want to spend the time in the game, and how much time and effort you're willing to dedicate to what segment of the game. Not everyone is a raider, not everyone belongs to a guild and not everyone has a desire to do so.
WoW is popular for its simplicity. That's pretty much it. It's a trade-off in itself. Simple gameplay means anyone can play it. More variation means greater depth, but it also means few people will understand it fully and the developers have to do much more work and then there's the question of balance.
I'm a little confused.
The same complexity that exists in gear in the end game is present while leveling. You can have interesting choices in gear pretty early in the game. However, this isn't important while leveling because leveling is easy. Gaining a theoretical 5% dps or survivability or whatever increase isn't generally going to be the difference between life or death.
For choosing gear at a low level to be important it seems like leveling would have to actually be difficult. If no matter what gear you choose, you're always going to succeed, then, the way Shamus describes it, it seems like choosing gear is irrelevant.
So then the argument seems to be that leveling should be difficult? Am I missing something?
Maybe Shamus is actually trying to argue that gear is irrelevant because it doesn't reflect how the user chooses to play? But, if he's arguing that, he seems to be incorrect as well, because the combination of gear and spec together reflects how the user chooses to play. This is true even while leveling on easy content.
The same complexity that exists in gear in the end game is present while leveling. You can have interesting choices in gear pretty early in the game. However, this isn't important while leveling because leveling is easy. Gaining a theoretical 5% dps or survivability or whatever increase isn't generally going to be the difference between life or death.
For choosing gear at a low level to be important it seems like leveling would have to actually be difficult. If no matter what gear you choose, you're always going to succeed, then, the way Shamus describes it, it seems like choosing gear is irrelevant.
So then the argument seems to be that leveling should be difficult? Am I missing something?
Maybe Shamus is actually trying to argue that gear is irrelevant because it doesn't reflect how the user chooses to play? But, if he's arguing that, he seems to be incorrect as well, because the combination of gear and spec together reflects how the user chooses to play. This is true even while leveling on easy content.
It is kind of sad, that despite the mayrid of options, there is only one concrete real choice. Each class/Talent tree combo often has an optimal build and equipment set, and sometimes, its spread just for the entire class. Endgame, everybody looks the same, functions the same, ect... Well, thats if you want to get anywhere. I kind of agree with your statements. Seeing the return of something like "The Unstoppable Force" with its passive chance to knock back the enemy would be interesting. Heck, even if it wasnt the most optimal weapon in terms of raw numbers, the interesting proc would be fun to use.
I think for the "casual" player the choice is hard but it only takes a little bit of research to figure out the way to go.
Tank gear used to be very complex but blizz nuked that aspect of the game by adding uncritability into defensive stances.
They are right that during leveling gear doesn't matter with one exception. Your weapon matters a lot for melee/ranged classes but that is easy to judge. Is the DPS higher than the last one? If so then you use it. For casters gear doesn't matter at all, and you can probably level naked without problems.
Tank gear used to be very complex but blizz nuked that aspect of the game by adding uncritability into defensive stances.
They are right that during leveling gear doesn't matter with one exception. Your weapon matters a lot for melee/ranged classes but that is easy to judge. Is the DPS higher than the last one? If so then you use it. For casters gear doesn't matter at all, and you can probably level naked without problems.
I don't quite agree with your suggestions at the end, but I do agree with the rest of the article. I spent way to much time agonizing over gear stats in WoW when really, the difference in the end was so marginal it was almost negligible.
Well, kind of. It's true that you make a statement about how you want to play when you create your character, and then when you spec for one role or another, but I think what he's trying to get at is that within those specs you should still have a variety of choices to make to which there are no clear "right answers." For example, at least for the DPS, every spec has a clear stat value table, all feeding into their DPS. You hear things like "one AGI is worth 0.2 STR" or things of that nature - if everything can be valued and measured as a good or bad decision then it's not really a choice you're facing, it's just hard numbers: this item is better than that item, because my overall DPS is better with it. What he's proposing, I believe, is having more than one important number for everyone. DPS need to somehow be made to worry about their survivability or their utility in crowd control, etc... in addition to how much raw damage they do.Silvanend said:
And yes, many specs already must consider these things, but when they do it's primarily expressed in their talent trees, not in their gear. So, for one, what they could do (as has already been mentioned here) is to fundamentally change endgame content to throw more varied, gear-related situations at the players, situations in which DPS may, for example, actually have to take damage without a clear way to avoid it. That forces them to consider their survivability somewhat - now they need to think about how well their stats protect them, and not equate "surviving" with simply "not standing in the fire," or following whatever other rules that particular fight may have for them in terms of positioning, etc... Likewise, and this is something they really AREN'T doing, they could make some pieces of gear clearly enhance certain utility abilities of DPS specs instead of just making them hit harder, forcing the DPS to choose between those two routes. Of course, they need to make utility abilities actually work in most of the boss fights to make that choice matter, but from what I've heard this is something they've improved on already in Cataclysm.
But anyway, that's the main problem for DPS: they're JUST DPS. They're rarely called on to do anything besides hit stuff, so naturally that's all they focus on getting good at. [EDIT: Understand, when I say that, I mean from a gear perspective.] Fights need to demand more from them if decisions about gear are ever going to matter. Likewise, they do need to offer some gear with more choices. Some of the things mentioned in the article could actually be made to work - consider the "range vs. damage" one. True, with the game as it's been all this time, everyone would just take the damage, but if all the sudden there's a boss that lets out a steady AoE pulse that deals frequent damage to those within a certain distance, now that extra range serves a specific purpose. It's no longer about players just standing in the right spot - this is a choice that is innately tied to the gear that character is wearing. Can he stand outside the range of the AoE or not? But again, there can't be just one "right" answer if we want to maintain the choice - so it still needs to be feasible to survive that AoE, just at the expense of more of the healers' mana pools, so there's still a trade-off taking place. Or perhaps that DPS has a minor self-healing ability that suddenly becomes actually useful for a change, because he's not being one-shotted, just taking enough damage that, without that ability, he might have had to interrupt his attacks to go hug a healer for a bit.
Another thing they really should consider is ditching hard enrage timers. If a fight is on a strict time limit then DPS really has no other choice but to maximize how hard they're hitting. There's no room for them to do anything else because if they try to get creative the boss will get tired of playing with them and just one shot the raid. Seriously, I think the timers play a bigger role than many realize in this - or at least, the attitude that inspired them does. There's a right way and a wrong way to fight this boss - fast is right, slow is wrong, and just like that they eliminate several possible strategies and all the impact they may have had on gear selection.
Anyway, I've gone on long enough
Several issues:hitheremynameisbob said:
'valuing gear' is something that's been brought up a lot in this thread. In general, gear is valued a particular way because a PERFECT player, attacking an UNMOVING boss, for some standard amount of time, can very clearly have an easily maximized set of gear. However, the vast majority of people aren't perfect, and I can't think of many fights that are as simple as stand and deliver. What this means is that in different situations, with different players with different reaction times, gear desires can be different than the supposed 'ideal.' Just because in one very particular situation one set of gear is ideal doesn't mean that all other gear is crap, or that gear choices are irrelevant. A good example of is was the value of haste to an Enhancement shaman near the end of Wrath. If you were perfect, and attacking a boss that was standing still, haste was easily the best. If you were less than perfect, and attacking a moving boss, crit became more desirable.
Another example of differences in gear would be shaman healing in Ulduar during wrath. During this time, I actually had two healing sets. One focused on crit for single target and spot healing fights/assignments, and one for haste for group healing fights. This wasn't particularly rare, and it seems to me to be a pretty good example of gear playing a role in how you act.
As for another of your points, the number of fights where a perfect dps can avoid a lot of damage are pretty rare. dps are actually taking a lot of damage, a lot of the time. But all this means is that dps need to have just enough health to keep from being a splat on the floor, and the rest to damaging the boss. It doesn't add any interesting complexity.
Similarly, dps, do have self-healing abilities, and they do use them in many, many cases. However, gearing specifically for something that isn't your role is something that I don't think most people would see as an 'interesting choice.' If they had to do it (to survive) they would, and if they didn't, they wouldn't. People don't like gearing for gimmicks. And there are a few cases I can think of where people have had to do so.... generally they don't like it. In one case, priests of all colors had to carry a +hit set around with them so they could MC adds to tank a boss in one fight. In others, people have to have a special set of resistance armor so that they could survive a fight. People generally don't like this, and it's not really a choice. If you survive, you do more damage than if you die. That's not even very complicated math.
As far as enrage timers are concerned, that's hardly the main reason that dps tend to want to do a lot of damage very very fast. Enrage timers have been around for a long time, it's true, but for most the vanilla and BC they were very rarely the reason it was desirable to have high dps. (The 'soft enrage' of the healers running out of mana was much more likely to happen. In Wrath, where healers had nigh infinite mana, hard enrage timers can into play in a big way, but now in cata it's gone back to healer mana being the issue.) In general, dps want high damage because lots of big numbers are fun. Why else would people continue to gear themselves after they have cleared all the content? Additionally, if you were free to just futz around for most of the fight, doing whatever you pleased, then the boss fight wasn't very difficult in the first place, and gear is once again irrelevant, since it has no bearing on your behavior or the outcome.
"-Ranged weapons with better distance but less damage.
-Melee weapons that deliver better damage per second but cause fewer (or less severe) critical.
-Armor that reduces incoming damage but slows your own attack speed.
-Items that will boost your magic potency but reduce your mana pool."
I find it hilarious that all of these suggestions trade DPS for survivability. With the possible exception of the magic ones that trades DPS for endurance. It goes to show how hard it is to create depth.
-Melee weapons that deliver better damage per second but cause fewer (or less severe) critical.
-Armor that reduces incoming damage but slows your own attack speed.
-Items that will boost your magic potency but reduce your mana pool."
I find it hilarious that all of these suggestions trade DPS for survivability. With the possible exception of the magic ones that trades DPS for endurance. It goes to show how hard it is to create depth.
A friend and I were talking about ElitistJerks and how most people just use that as a one stop source for talent build, stat weight [gear] and such. I postulated that as an April Fools ElitistJerks could post some bogus information like a 'best pvp spec for rogues' and even if it wasn't correct so few people know the actual formulae that the following week you'd find 50% of the pvp rogues out there with the given build.
And it kills me every time I think of the time and effort people spend on the gear when a person with a privatized version of the game could just enter a few lines of code and have the exact same armor. We work so hard for our pixels!
And it kills me every time I think of the time and effort people spend on the gear when a person with a privatized version of the game could just enter a few lines of code and have the exact same armor. We work so hard for our pixels!
It's been said a few times, but the real problem seems to be the joy thieves in the game who immediately break out excel every time there's a minor patch, reduce every piece of fun in the game down to a row of numbers, and then make arbitary rules saying 'you must spec/use/wear/wield/enchant/gem this way or you can't play with us' When most of the time it's maybe 1% of effect in real terms, and it just crushes originality, player choice and in the end, fun.
It turns the game into 'You're a warrior tank, you need to go to Dungeon A over and over til Boss 2 drops the boots, and Boss 5 drops the ring...then move onto Dungeon B and gain the belt and helm from Bosses 3 and 7, then you can move on, once you've gained all you need from Dungeon G, you can try out for your first raid, where you'll do that over and over until you get one specific drop from bosses 4,8, and 11, and gain the rep to buy items A,C and H.
In the end, a few points in a stat don't really matter, the people matter, and if you're living your life by a spreadsheet, you're not living, go PLAY WoW, don't work in it's accounting dept with a spreadsheet and a loot table.
I'll often take lesser geared and skilled players over better ones because I know them, they're fun to have in group,chatty, and don't go apeshit over wipes etc. I'd rather wipe a few times and not be stressed than wipe once and have to deal with some asshat losing his socks over it.
It turns the game into 'You're a warrior tank, you need to go to Dungeon A over and over til Boss 2 drops the boots, and Boss 5 drops the ring...then move onto Dungeon B and gain the belt and helm from Bosses 3 and 7, then you can move on, once you've gained all you need from Dungeon G, you can try out for your first raid, where you'll do that over and over until you get one specific drop from bosses 4,8, and 11, and gain the rep to buy items A,C and H.
In the end, a few points in a stat don't really matter, the people matter, and if you're living your life by a spreadsheet, you're not living, go PLAY WoW, don't work in it's accounting dept with a spreadsheet and a loot table.
I'll often take lesser geared and skilled players over better ones because I know them, they're fun to have in group,chatty, and don't go apeshit over wipes etc. I'd rather wipe a few times and not be stressed than wipe once and have to deal with some asshat losing his socks over it.
Haha, funny how you crammed your opinion on the armor in it on the last sentence. I adore world of warcraft but I'm not sure if I'm going to do it yes or no, I don't know if my laptop can handle it, plus I don't know if I can afford it (since I don't know what it costs).
I'm talking strictly PvE, and what choises your tradeoffs would actually give:
Ranged weapons with better distance but less damage:
Depending on the fight veterans would calculate it what would be better for each individual fight.
Melee weapons that deliver better damage per second but cause fewer (or less severe) critical:
no, not a good tradeoff, In WoW, everything gets number crunched - and this could be easily calculated on which is better then the other, you usually go for long-term damage as a dpser in WoW, as boss fights last 5 minutes+.
Armor that reduces incoming damage but slows your own attack speed:
this can be crunched down in numbers aswell, depending on the fight. (Do you need aggro or survivability). but aggro were actually only a problem that occured in vanilla and not so much more - stealing aggro from the tank is almost impossible in WOTLK (never played cata), so if this was introduced, people would go for alot of armor.
Items that will boost your magic potency but reduce your mana pool:
Again, depending on the fight, but also the raid setup, people would have different itemsets to what would work best.
makes alot more number crunching, and very little choices.
//veteran WoW-raider
Ranged weapons with better distance but less damage:
Depending on the fight veterans would calculate it what would be better for each individual fight.
Melee weapons that deliver better damage per second but cause fewer (or less severe) critical:
no, not a good tradeoff, In WoW, everything gets number crunched - and this could be easily calculated on which is better then the other, you usually go for long-term damage as a dpser in WoW, as boss fights last 5 minutes+.
Armor that reduces incoming damage but slows your own attack speed:
this can be crunched down in numbers aswell, depending on the fight. (Do you need aggro or survivability). but aggro were actually only a problem that occured in vanilla and not so much more - stealing aggro from the tank is almost impossible in WOTLK (never played cata), so if this was introduced, people would go for alot of armor.
Items that will boost your magic potency but reduce your mana pool:
Again, depending on the fight, but also the raid setup, people would have different itemsets to what would work best.
makes alot more number crunching, and very little choices.
//veteran WoW-raider
Exactly my thoughts. For a Raider, it would be an obvious choice to choose a weapon that does more dps (which I understand to be over time) but has smaller crits. While for a Pvper it MIGHT be the other way around. As long as the game is not dynamic: IE raiding the choices will fall on good and bad, not interesting this way/interesting that way. (in most cases, obviously there could be exemptions from the rule).Tarkand said:
You either choose the RIGHT choice, or you choose the bad choice.
Yeah, a simple appearance lock, I find, would be nice, especially considering a lot of the armor tends to make you look like you're wearing a clown suit. A clown suit with a 26% crit rating, but that's beside the point.
Interestingly enough, as an arcane mage, I find the reduced mana pool proportioned to heightened damage to be an interesting tradeoff.
Our mastery allows us higher damage output for every point of mana we've unspent. So, instead of the hast stacking done in WoTLK, a proper rotation and buff stack reset is in order. I'd certainly go for the tradeoff as I am quite capable of keeping my mana above 75% but someone with lesser ability in the spec would have his mana drop at an obscene rate.
There are naturally occuring tradeoffs the raider will make, in regards to personal statistics, in WoW and, while there certainly is a definitive path for every tree, gear modification seems to be varied.
For example, I allowed my hit rating to go relatively uncapped to allow for a higher haste percentage. While I may have missed the Lich King or the Ice Orbs he sent out, on occasion, the state of mock bloodlust I was in(Combined with the berserking racial) made up for it. Haste, though, is on its way out, for arcange mages. Mastery seems to be where the greatest output will come from.
Considering the addition of haste, I suppose WoW appreciates the pet attribute of the current expansion.
Though, that's not to say there isn't even some choice in talents at the later levels. For example, one is confronted with the eventual choice of heightened blink movement or a stun placed on a broken sheep. Both provide minor utility and is completely up to the player. You'll probably never see someone being bashed for not speccing in improved Polymorph like you might see, oh, say, someone not specced into Nether Vortex or Torment The Weak.
Also, as a healer, I love Blood Tanks who stack mastery. You guys rock.
Our mastery allows us higher damage output for every point of mana we've unspent. So, instead of the hast stacking done in WoTLK, a proper rotation and buff stack reset is in order. I'd certainly go for the tradeoff as I am quite capable of keeping my mana above 75% but someone with lesser ability in the spec would have his mana drop at an obscene rate.
There are naturally occuring tradeoffs the raider will make, in regards to personal statistics, in WoW and, while there certainly is a definitive path for every tree, gear modification seems to be varied.
For example, I allowed my hit rating to go relatively uncapped to allow for a higher haste percentage. While I may have missed the Lich King or the Ice Orbs he sent out, on occasion, the state of mock bloodlust I was in(Combined with the berserking racial) made up for it. Haste, though, is on its way out, for arcange mages. Mastery seems to be where the greatest output will come from.
Considering the addition of haste, I suppose WoW appreciates the pet attribute of the current expansion.
Though, that's not to say there isn't even some choice in talents at the later levels. For example, one is confronted with the eventual choice of heightened blink movement or a stun placed on a broken sheep. Both provide minor utility and is completely up to the player. You'll probably never see someone being bashed for not speccing in improved Polymorph like you might see, oh, say, someone not specced into Nether Vortex or Torment The Weak.
Also, as a healer, I love Blood Tanks who stack mastery. You guys rock.