As a mage, deciding how to balance between +dmg, crit and haste is fun as it depends on your spec, play style and personal preference. Like seeing those big numbers and procs? Spec for crit/fire. Like topping the damage meters? Spec arcane/haste etc.
Hit however is a pure fun tax, in that all players have to gear for it at the expense of those other stats just to prevent misses, which is zero fun compared to increasing your crit probability, boosting your spell damage or topping the damage meters of a long fight.
EVE Online recently got rid of a similar fun tax, namely Learning Skills which enabled you to learn skills faster, and which every new player was more or less forced to train for a month so they could maximize their potential down the road. The removal of Learning Skills was universally acclaimed by the player base, a fairly hardcore group of minmaxers and spreadsheet jockeys.
Get rid of hit, let players focus on maximizing fun stats instead.
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12/19/2010 1:25 PMPosted by ZergallBalancing stats is fun, and part of any RPG. I think this post is right on the money. I understand that hitting big numbers is fun, and gathering stats that contribute to hitting big numbers is also fun. On the other hand, without the need to make some kind of choice, gearing quickly becomes a mindless exercise, and I believe that's when the fun leaks out of it. Fun is pretty subjective. For me (and I have a feeling many others too) a large part of the fun is tinkering, tuning and optimizing my characters for maximum effectiveness for whatever role they might occupy, be it tanking, healing or dps. The choices involved in this process are part of what makes the path to power compelling for me. The reward I reap from my research, effort and time spent pursuing the right pieces of gear is heightened effectiveness in my in-game endeavors. I like talking about these choices and game theory with my friends and figuring out the best approach to yield the maximum gains. That's fun for me too, and those discussions wouldn't happen if there weren't choices to make. In the case of hit, I think because it has an identifiable 'cap', it's easy to mis-perceive it as a chore to acquire. In reality, it might be easier to think of hit as the skeleton upon which your dps is based. With a strong skeleton, your "muscle" lets you hit harder. How you achieve that strong base, before you move on to optimizing and balancing the stats you might find more fun, involves choices of its own. |
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The concepts are not irreconcilable. Hit can be important while still allowing for choices to be made in pursuit of optimization. Nor was my post intended to be an answer, but rather, simply a personal perspective on gearing and what's fun in World of Warcraft.
I can't help but think that when 'grind' is applied to looting upgrades in an MMORPG, that the term has lost its meaning: Getting gifts on my birthday? A grind. Devouring delicious cupcakes... man, such a grind.
I get the impression that you don't like thinking about stats and as an aside, the character sheet was actually changed to help simplify that whole process. I also got the idea from your post that pursuing gear might not appeal to you either. I have to ask then, what it is that you enjoy about playing World of Warcraft? Solely facing the content? If so, then are you not facing content on the path to acquiring items? I don't think I fully understand your perspective in this case, and I'd like to. |
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I'm sorry, but that's an awful criticism of my metaphor. See how that works? =P |
