Official Blizzard Quote:
In an upcoming beta update you’re likely to see that we’ve been working to simplify skill tooltips. This has been in the planning for a long time and we’re finally making passes at all skills. We’re doing this now, for one thing, to try to be more consistent with how we’re presenting skill tooltips and their effects, but also to make them easier to understand.
We know that this is going to cause many of you, our hardcore gamer and statistics analysts, to freak out. Please take a few moments to freak out…
Ok, now that it’s out of your system, let’s go into the what we’re planning to do for you, and also potential features for the future.
We need to make sure that the game at its most basic level is easy to understand, quick to pick up and play, and has a strong immediate focus on the gameplay, and not mathy number-crunching and novella-sized skill descriptions. These are the pillars that we believe a game like Diablo firmly rests for the vast majority of players. It is first and foremost an Action RPG, and we put a lot of weight into the first word. For you, the people here every day or week picking apart skill math and statistics, we realize you crave something deeper, and we’re absolutely intent on providing you all of the information you’d ever need.
Take a look at the skill information on the Diablo II Arreat Summit for barbarian combat skills: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/barbarian-combatskills.shtml We think that is a great amount of insight into the mechanics of the skills, and it’s a great example of what we want to make available for you here on the Diablo III website. We all have to agree though that it’s a ridiculous amount of information to try to display in-game, especially through a tooltip. Let's be clear though that our intent isn’t to force anyone to alt-tab to get game information. The tooltip information we’ll be providing, as well as very basic concepts of players getting and equipping more powerful items, will be plenty to get all players through the game, at least on Normal.
Some of you have been discussing tooltip complexity and more than a few times the World of Warcraft solution of having two different sets of tooltips (simplified and normal) has of course not escaped us. It’s a solution we’d like to explore, but if we did it’s extremely likely that our “normal” tooltips would be the toned-down versions we’re working toward now, and the “simplified” would be even more basic, giving game intent advice in place of any numbers. It’s something we’d like to explore but it’s still something we’ve yet to design, and could very well be something we don’t end up getting into the game.
In closing we wanted to give everyone a heads up because we know there are going to be some conclusions about our intents, and we wanted to share some ideas of having something similar to what Diablo II players could find on the Arreat Summit back in the day.
Edit: Oh, also, SUPER PSYCHED about having an online reference for the really complex math stuff. Super psyched.
As for the tooltip debate, it's a tooltip. It should be simple and basic. If the mathletes want to crunch numbers, they can do it on a notepad, their second monitor, or alt-tab. Totally agree with Bliz on this one.
They said it may not get it into the game. There is no "feature coding" left that will hold back the game (they can change their minds of course but that's how it is as of now). They are simply using the time they have to polish and bug squash to also do some other things that can maybe be finished by release.
This is backed up by what Jay always says about the Rune System. Yeah they are playing around with it a lot but it's not why the game isn't out yet. If they still haven't created a perfect Rune System by release they will go with the original idea.
They didn't really say that. They don't want us to have to alt tab. The post seemed contradicting to me. I don't see why they can't have a 3rd tooltip option though to keep the tooltips the way they are now (Extreme?), then a Normal, then a Simplified.
Without any math or "number crunching" it's just numbers getting bigger. At that point it becomes pointless to look at them or even have them. You need a certain amount of theorycrafting built into the game, even if you don't think of yourself as a theorycrafter, you use it all the time. Without it, the RPG element completely disappears or at least becomes hollow and pointless when all there is to do is simply watch the numbers get bigger without ways to think about how to make them bigger.
But even if they info isn't in the game, as long as it comes from Blizzard themselves I personally won't mind alt tabbing to look at a Blizzard endorsed and created "wiki" type page with tons of math and precise info on my skills.
And where is this general feeling coming from? Certainly not the players who are wanting the current amount of info to remain as an option.
A large portion of 12 year old's will create sales and spending money on RMAH, you need to tailor to your entire audience when they are paying your salary.
Everything about the post I agreed with for the general audience...but this line above is where I say they are failing. Only touch the simplified tooltips. They aren't supposed to be making this game for only casual gamers and little children (which technically...aren't supported by Blizzard due to the rating). It's supposed to be for everyone. You have the two options, you "nerf" the info on simplified, you LEAVE NORMAL ALONE.
They're QA is off the scale.
I'm a software developer and you just wouldn't believe how hard it is to get 3 guys in a room full of people to even understand what's going on - much less agreeing on something! Their ability to produce quality gaming software is ridonculous. Over and over, across all titles and expacs.
I personally didn't like the Cata design of having hard 2-3 hour 5 mans when leveling pre-raid - so I stopped doing 5 mans. And a lot of the 'what to do in the game' effort seemed to be directed at reworking the 1-60 leveliing experience ie. levelling alts - but I hate questing/levelling, so I didn't do that. Ret was no good in arena, so I didn't do that. So I never left Org and just logged on for raids - which I thought were awesome! As good as any xpac imo. But it meant I never interacted with the community...
A year later - and guess what - they heard the feedback. LFR is a game changer! Total watershed - awesome fun - best 5 man ever The new 5 mans are a joy. Great fun and easy paced. The raids are fantastic. Dark Moon Faire. BG's reward some Conquest Points, so not being able to perform in arena doesn't irk me so much. Tons to do!
I mean seriously. That's quality man...
Well, let's take this moment to rejoice that at least Diablo 3 isn't a console port...
... yet.
I agree with you and many of the other posters here but lately I'm just in the whatever mode, Blizz has been releasing some weird ass shit lately that makes no sense considering how far they are into development of this game. Lately my impression for D3 has dropped as they seem to be catering to popular fan base over original fans, I may have been stating the obvious but its what they are doing...
I say just leave it, add an in-game guide to the skills maybe through the mystic artisan or a book thing and get it done already.