Why is blizzard hiding more and more numbers from players

[scorpious1109]

Are you (and the others moaning about it) top-tier min-maxers? Or are you just thinking to yourself that if you see numbers that makes you somehow extra special, or, perhaps makes you feel particularly intelligent, even though nobody actually cares much about them? I mean, really, does it matter if it says 93,506 to 102,307 damage or says "does a lot of damage"? Will it really change things for you?

I want to see number because I want to make sure I'm doing things right. I don't see any reason to vilify people who want Blizzard to provide the option when it's fully within their ability to do so.

[Synbios]

Diablo 3 is this way, and it's extremely frustrating. You get almost no information about your spells, which makes it very difficult to decide on which spells to use and such.

That actually accomplishes the opposite of what's intended. It FORCES you to use third party sites to theorycraft, since you can't actually figure things out just with the client.

[Doomaz]

I want to see number because I want to make sure I'm doing things right. I don't see any reason to vilify people who want Blizzard to provide the option when it's fully within their ability to do so.

ellaborate please, how does seeing numbers makes u sure u are doing things right?

[Aquinan]

I personally like numbers, but usually in situations where it is impossible to see the change and the change is super small. With WoW, it's getting to a point where it just doesn't matter. I've got 6m health. I do anywhere from 200 - 800k (as a tank) depending on situation and if DRW/AoE is up. World of Warcraft just doesn't seem like a game where knowing the exact values matter, especially considering the specific rotations for optimal play that take that kind of logic and thinking out of the hands of the regular player.

The stat squish was sposed to help with this, but they didn't do it how it would have helped ultimately. Other option was to take away the 000's and add "mega" etc to the numbers. Either way knowing the exact numbers dont matter when they start getting big enough that its harder to grasp in a tiny timeframe.

[Omega10]

Diablo 3 is this way, and it's extremely frustrating. You get almost no information about your spells, which makes it very difficult to decide on which spells to use and such.

That actually accomplishes the opposite of what's intended. It FORCES you to use third party sites to theorycraft, since you can't actually figure things out just with the client.

I agree with this a lot. I am working to improve my Diablo toon, or come up with my own builds. There is no way for me to know from the tooltip how much various skills synergize with others. Even when they have numbers (each additional one increases damage by 100%) ... they leave out kind of important details like: multiplicative (1,2,4,8,16) or additive (1,2,3,4,5). So what I have concluded is that the way to success is to just copy the top players posted strategies.

Do I want 7% additional Crit, or 7% additional Haste? It is not always clear in the least which is better. For example, for shadow priests in WOW, if the additional haste makes you go over a dot break point the haste is HUGELY better, and if not the haste is mostly irrelevant. The only way to know what these break points are would be to look it up on third party web sites. Which inevitably leads to: everyone does the cookie cutter builds because it's the only things that seem to work.

[TheSerialSniper]

This expansion's UI changes started with a well known sickening blow: the dumb-ification and reduction of the numbers in the character stats page which was hurting no one except people who are wary of basic math.

It continued on by making more spells say shit like "There is a chance that..." without mentioning percentages.

I now see that in the artifact page top right corner, when purchasing a stat it no longer says "increases this and that by %", but just says "increases this and that".

What the fuck, do they think we need excel spreadsheets to do 0.75% * 10, or * 30 or whatever? What is this shit? Why should we resort to mods for features that existed there before and bothered NOBODY?

Blizzard allows addons that will still show the numbers like deja character stats, they just dont feel it necessary for the average player to see such frivolous things like speed and the small amount you gain on your artifact. People that actually care already know.

[elaina]

Are you (and the others moaning about it) top-tier min-maxers? Or are you just thinking to yourself that if you see numbers that makes you somehow extra special, or, perhaps makes you feel particularly intelligent, even though nobody actually cares much about them? I mean, really, does it matter if it says 93,506 to 102,307 damage or says "does a lot of damage"? Will it really change things for you?

Don't have to be a top tier min maxxer to care about this stuff. It's not so black and white.

A fairly basic probably boring example from me: used to be able to see speed right on the character sheet. It was removed in Legion for God knows why. I ended up getting a mod to track this to figure out what water mount to use (WoD sea turtle is better than kosumoth mount in every functional way... minus style maybe >.>).

[GreenJesus]

I think wanting more information is a viable complaint. Blizzard dumbing it down/removing information actually makes it more difficult for regular players to actually understand the real effect without consulting outside sources. There is nothing wrong with having specific numbers. If people can't handle having to read a couple numbers they should go to a senior home and have nurses change their diapers.

[MonsieuRoberts]

People who care about specifics are no longer the target audience. It's been going this way since MoP.

Accept that you're becoming part of the minority as they change the game to be most enjoyable by the blissfully ignorant, and I don't mean that as an insult. The less you care, the more fun you will have in WoW. The less hung up you get on grinds, on difficulty ranges, on RNG gating your gear, the more fun you will have with the content they've added and the highs of their RNG systems. The less often you play, the more interesting World Quests, dungeons and weekly events become. The more invested you get in the little marks of progress, vs. playing until you've seen everything and then continuing to play, not getting involved in any new experiences, only watching your AP and iLvl slowly creep up, as if that's the only facet of gameplay there is.

The game is shifting away from the hardcore, plain and simple. Now more than ever, it feels as if you're punished for playing a lot with the most incremental of rewards.

Imagine playing for an hour a day this expansion, you would probably STILL be seeing new stuff and improving your character. Must be nice to be casual and have a near-endless amount of interesting, unseen things to do and goals to earn.

[nekobaka]

The more relevant info should be upfront to view and the option should be there to see more. Having the ability to view more does not take away from "accessibility" like some claim. In general a more streamlined UI is not casualization and taking away the ability to see stats does not either. It is just making things easier to see and find what more people are interested without having to scroll around.

For so much hate that is talked about with newbies and "casuals" having to hit the internet in order to learn these things it is counteractive to support making people be so reliant on the few who do the math and share the info.

[RadmaKanow]

Simplifying tooltips to be more vague makes it easier to intuitively understand what's going on.

"Slightly increases stamina" is more understandable to the average player than "Increases stamina by 0.5%".

Well, I feel this is exactly opposite. WTF means slightly? 0.5%, 5%, 15%? Yesterday got an item that "provided significant XP gain". Turned out it was mere 30k when whole level requires over a million. For me "significant" means 20-35% of ENTIRE level, not a small fraction compared to XP gained from one or two quests. So vague values bring confusion as my understanding of "medium" is quite different than what Blizz thinks it means.

So... why won't we simplify it even more. Just get rid of ALL stats and replace it with "this is better", "this is worse". Then you will intuitively understand how to gear up. :/

[Cerunnir]

Honestly, the game would be so much better if they could get rid of numbers and parsing. And they keep trying.

Im the opposite, a huge part of WoW for me is optimizing and finding the best possible setup. Only people who cant parse well, want to get rid of parsing

[scorpious1109]

ellaborate please, how does seeing numbers makes u sure u are doing things right?

What is there to elaborate exactly?

[llubtoille]

Would be fairly interesting if they entirely hid damage values from the player, so even mods couldn't tell what you or others dps was.

[Deleted]

This expansion's UI changes started with a well known sickening blow: the dumb-ification and reduction of the numbers in the character stats page which was hurting no one except people who are wary of basic math.

It continued on by making more spells say shit like "There is a chance that..." without mentioning percentages.

I now see that in the artifact page top right corner, when purchasing a stat it no longer says "increases this and that by %", but just says "increases this and that".

What the fuck, do they think we need excel spreadsheets to do 0.75% * 10, or * 30 or whatever? What is this shit? Why should we resort to mods for features that existed there before and bothered NOBODY?

You man are one of the most toxic players i can recognize by name on this forum. You whine on everything possible.

You are true example what is wrong about WoW comunity

[Sencha]

Fully agree with OP. Game is definitely for casuals only now. No surprise people are leaving.

Hope this game dies soon.

[Volitar]

The thing that pissed me off the most was removing all the 'advanced interface options' from the menu and allowing players to only access them with scrips or addons. Holy fucking carebare, Blizzard.

[Deleted]

Yes. Why do you even pay attention to the numbers? The game has to have values, they're quite unimportant to the average player hide more of them, bring back more of the RPG.

Hiding numbers and making classes more complicated due to varying secondary stat importance, so you have to look to 3rd party websites to learn to play your character properly is one of the reasons why so many people play their characters bad.

And RPGs are all about numbers. It does not have to be as excessive as in GURPS or Rolemaster, but even the moderate Dungeons & Dragons has many numbers. Hell, even in a game like the indie RPG "InSpectres" you have stats, because you roll against a defined number and/or with a defined number of specific dice to determine success or failure of your actions and measure the degree of this success or failure.

People don't need to read all this if they are not interested - but I bet that many players out there who would be interested, don't even get a chance in figuring things out, because of hidden figures and such.

- - - Updated - - -

The more relevant info should be upfront to view and the option should be there to see more. Having the ability to view more does not take away from "accessibility" like some claim. In general a more streamlined UI is not casualization and taking away the ability to see stats does not either. It is just making things easier to see and find what more people are interested without having to scroll around.

For so much hate that is talked about with newbies and "casuals" having to hit the internet in order to learn these things it is counteractive to support making people be so reliant on the few who do the math and share the info.

Just like he said.

[Vaelorian]

Guys seriously...

I don't understand the level of acceptance we seem to have regarding the "vast majority" concerning the stupidity of our fellow WoW-players. We get more and more ready to understand and accept that the vast majority consists of fucking morons. Unable to understand anything that is not logical at the level of an ape. And accept apparantly that this is why the game should be more and more simplified. And why is this? Because Blizzard tells us this?

I for one am ashamed for you guys. Why would you think that this is the level of an average WoW player? While this site might not have "the socalled" average WoW players, I have yet to encounter anyone who does (for example) not understand what armor does for your character.

If you as a new player select a mage for your characterclass, you will most likely understand that this mage is far more vulnerable to melee attacks then a plate using class. And if you don't know right away, you will be sure that you notice this quickly enough. Most people who select a fantasy game have inherent knowledge of some basic things. Even if they only watched LOTR, they know this stuff. And lets say that some new guy thinks that armor should be the highest stat on him, he will be SHOEHORNED into another thoughtprocess later on while leveling. Why? Well there aren't many if any stuff for mages outthere after a certain point that give you high armor is there. So he will be smoothed into seeing that ultimately his DPS is far more important. He will learn that if he gets hit, he is more likely to die. So he has to think about what spells to use instead of just fireball or frostbolt, to avoid being damaged.

Coming back to the math that might not be visible anymore on items or spells: this is bad. Why? Because you cannot know for sure if that item is an upgrade or not. Atleast for us "more committed" people it is annoying. And people who might want to be "more committed" and are more interested into the math side will have difficulty. They just have the itemlevel to go by.

I mean the other day I came across a trinket. It had (example) 1200 str and 950 haste on it. Itemlevel 845 right? My current trinket is 1100 haste with some stupid ability that I just don't really like. Itemlevel 885. Now tell me what item is better? To me the 845 itemlevel item is far superior. But the new guy will go on the itemlevel and select the 885 trinket.

Are there no "fucking morons" outthere? Yeah ofcourse there are people who cannot play this game to the fullest if their lives depended on it. But we should not cater to them. You cater to the mediocre or slightly less then mediocre people outthere. Anything lower and you start to piss off a lot of people that actually CAN play the game properly and have fun with it as it is/was. And I refuse to believe that we as a society or the human race, have DEvolved so hard that common sense is hard to come by now.

Players I have played with over the years from day one to where we are now, are by a vast majority people who have a degree from a university. Most of those people also played other games. I have pugged the life out of me aswell and on rare occasion seen a player that "Blizzard" or rather people on mmo champion discribe as the core focus group (fucking morons).

I mean I am not describing people who do less dps or hps or cannot tank etc. I am talking about people who simply do not and never will understand what game it is they are playing. Because that is basically what we are talking about here people.

[Seneca]

The more relevant info should be upfront to view and the option should be there to see more. Having the ability to view more does not take away from "accessibility" like some claim. In general a more streamlined UI is not casualization and taking away the ability to see stats does not either. It is just making things easier to see and find what more people are interested without having to scroll around.

For so much hate that is talked about with newbies and "casuals" having to hit the internet in order to learn these things it is counteractive to support making people be so reliant on the few who do the math and share the info.

Go figure why it is so hard to grasp and why so many players are reacting so defensively 0o...thinking...

I swear there are a few players who automatically harshly react to anyone or anything that criticize the game and would like to change something about the game in a positive way for some or in a neutral way for many, at worst.