I’m going to catch seven kinds of hell for saying this, but I think it needs to be said. Proc Coefficients are a way to hide information from the player, and it needs to be addressed. Please, before you skip to the flamewar button, read on and hear me out.
When I first got the game, I noted that I had to specifically search the game options in order to be told what my skills actually do. All of the necessary information to make an intelligent choice was hidden by default. Read that sentence twice: The game’s default setting is to deny the player necessary information. With that realization, we already know Blizzard is willing to let us waste time on ineffective skills.
I don’t mean to say that Proc Coefficients should be removed. They’ve been at the core of the game since the beginning, and there’s no getting rid of that mechanic now. All I want is to be told, IN-GAME, what my “chance-to” will actually do, not what the tooltip says it will do. When I see “20% chance to”, I think “1 in 5”, not “1 in 500”. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to be told when an ICD is in effect. We’re told this information for DeathCheat passives, aren’t we? Why aren’t we given this information for…say…Kekegi’s Unbreakable Spirit? Why hide that information?
The system is versatile and robust enough to create elemental damage bursts at specific intervals, and base their damage off of a kill counter. It’s versatile and robust enough to alter crit chance on a timer. It’s versatile and robust enough to keep track of attack stacks and apply a percentage boost to damage per player who has stacks. You’re not going to convince me that it’s impossible to read what skills a player has slotted and display an updated % Chance To based on those skills.
Again…Proc Coefficients…you probably realize by now that I’m not a fan. I understand that they are necessary for balance. I do not argue for their adjustment or removal. I just want full disclosure, and I want that without having to look up a datamined spreadsheet.
HS card text vs YGO card text. That’s how I simply take this issue as. In HS, they prefer to simplify the text so you don’t have to read a lengthy written words explanation. This cause it to have some ‘secret’ mechanics, like you would say, behind some cards. YGO is more the opposite. It has lengthy explanation written on a card. But even then, players get confused and need a how-to translate, what it means with YGO cards.
Maybe it’s because I played HS before, and more experienced in it, but I wouldn’t necessarily want the long explanation text in front of my face. Just my preference. I’m sure argument can easily go the other way.
I can understand that argument, and I won’t try to refute it. Some players will prefer to keep it simple. I, myself, have declined to go into APS breakpoint spreadsheets and all that associated madness, just to grind out a 0.01sec advantage here and there.
But we’re talking about minor and major advantages and disadvantages. If it were simply an issue of explanation, I wouldn’t be so up-in-arms about it. It goes beyond detail…it goes directly into intentionally hiding the actual effect of a given skill, and that hiding is clearly by design. That’s a red flag for me. It’s dishonest.
…kind of funny for the dev team to rely on dishonesty when they threaten bans for any player who does the same.
I don’t understand how you would want it to be listed. Like, on the skill, you want “it has a proc coefficient of 0.5” ? It sounds like 95% of the player base would be confused as to what it means, no ?
Honestly, I understand that the proc coeffiecents are missing and I would like to see them in some form, but I cannot imagine a method of doing this easily (I suppose we could have a dedicated lore page for each skill and the exact mechanics behind it…) yet I am grateful for the amount of information D3 gives it’s players and the simplicity of how the different elements combine (they’re all multiplicative).
They don’t specify because they are lazy and don’t want players to have accurate data. We shouldn’t need people to strip down, and count the number of procs of an ability in slow motion to get this kind of data.
And I agree… it should be simple. If an ability says “on hit”, it should do that every time you hit something. If it says 50% chance on hit, then it should hit 50% of the time. There shouldn’t be proc rates that push the chance down into the sub 1% area.
It seems like they are worried about players feeling too powerful in their monster killing game, for some reason. If you want huge numbers, and the ability to kill entire screens of trash, let players do that… if you want to attack quickly and proc many different abilities, let players do that…
I think if they were to abandon this dumb idea that the player is too powerful, they might open up interesting and unique skill combos, instead of the pretty much copy and paste game we have now.
I would want it as an option. Like subtitles on or off for those who need it. I rarely need the exact numbers and equations, I just play the game and go by hearsay from known reputable players on why one piece of gear will work and another one won’t.
I see it as like subjects in school. I hated math and was not good at all with it, in return I never absorbed the info given to me for math and I never researched it to better my knowledge of it…history however…I loved history and still do. So I absorbed the info and have always watched and read information on history subjects.
I go off of relying on others who are into mathematics and the mechanics of this game to hopefully help me out if I have a question regarding a build. They seem more interested in learning it than I and they have, so I can pick their brain to help me.
I wouldn’t necessarily want a more baffling or mind numbing description on each of my skills. If it were too bad, I would lose interest if I was a new player trying to figure out what skills I want to use.
The information could be listed under the actual skill description itself. For example, let’s say you’ve got something like Rimeheart (20% chance to deal extra damage if an enemy is frozen). That chance is not 20% for anything without a 100% proc coefficient. Going under the actual skill description could list the real chance for each item currently equipped with a “chance to” trigger some effect. We can already scroll down to see the full description on some skills which have lengthy descriptions…it wouldn’t be that hard to add more there. As for warning the player, it should simply be reworded to say “20% base chance to” instead of flat-out “20% chance to”. One is a blatant lie, the other informs the player that there are other factors operating on that chance.
As far as ICD…that’s simply being covered up on some items. Just missing.
For example, the game does not tell you, that spell such as Corpse Explosion does half fire, half physical dmg. It also doen’t tell you, that a skill like Amplify Damage removes Immune to Physical from monsters.
Affix such as “Damage Reduction” actually meant physical dmg reduction.
However, none of that means, that things need to stay like that. Hell, one of the goals D3 developers were setting for themselves was for the player to be able to learn the game without constantly alt+tab and reading from a third party site.
In some regards they achieved that, in others – not so much.
So yes, OP asking for proper percentages when it comes to procs on legendary powers, or proper proc coefficients when it comes to skills to be displayed, that request is completely justified.
I am one of the biggest fans of D2, but even I am willing to admit, that this game also had terrible interface and what we have in D3 is a massive improvement.
A lot of what was broken back then was either due to technical limitations or oversights.
That does not mean, that D3 should have had D2’s terribad interface, or that in D3 and D4 it’s OK for the game to lie to you.
There should have been an option for advanced tooltips, that include the proper information.
I meant to say that compared to D2 the D3 interface is absolutely amazing to the extent that just missing something such as proc coefficients is minor in comparison.
I fully agree that they should be acknowledged in game and believe that more information about the game that can be found in game the better.
I suppose under each skill they could have put an “Effect Chance Modifier” in terms of percent, but considering it’s an 8 year old game I doubt they will alter the UI that much. That being said no reason it can not be in D4.
POE has an option for “Advanced Tool tips”. That would work just fine in this situation. You hold ALT while hovering over the item and it would define the proc coefficient.
What is ironic is they did this with some modifiers, for example the +% experience gained has in parenthesis the adjusted real % based on your character level. It is the same principle I don’t know why it didn’t carry over for proc coefficients.
Also, hidden internal CD’s is as big of an issue. Items such as “Broken Promises” that grant 100% CC chance for 3 seconds after 5 non crit hits has a 3 second internal CD. I made a 0 Crit Chance build (well technically it was 5% CC as apparently you have a base CC of 5%) and pushed my Attacks per second up to 4.7. Theoretically I should have had 100% CC approx ~90% of the time but to my disgust after days of testing I could only manage 100% CC like 63% of the time. Lo and behold I discovered the 3 second internal CD on that effect of the ring.
As far as comparing the two games, I don’t think it’s logical or fair to do so. On the subject of “This game did it too” or “This game was worse”, there is a misstep in logic there. If two people are convicted of the same crime, but Person A’s crime was of a higher degree or severity, should Person B go unpunished?
The presence or absence of a worse or equal offense is wholly irrelevant to whether a given offense is wrong or not. Whether other games had faulty tooltips, for example, does not play a role in whether this game should or should not have accurate tooltips. I see that argument used in practically every debate and it just doesn’t hold up. The “Less Wrong Than” Fallacy, I call it.
I think, before I accept that, you need to prove it’s true. I think the problem is proc coefficients in there first place. What would the game look like if they were all just set to 1? a 20% chance would mean exactly that. Items like Frostburn, Rimeheart, and Winter Fluffy might be usable.
I’d be totally OK with a hydra with three heads having a .33 proc coefficient, for example, but in most cases I’d suggest every rune of something like Ray of Frost or Arcane Torrent have the same proc coefficient.
Which is exactly what they’re afraid of. If they start letting items work, they run the risk of players being able to complete their objectives. What a world that would be. I’m so happy we have these hidden formulae to save us from success.
