#272 - March 6, 2012, 9:01 p.m.
I'd like to jump back in here to address a common concern we've been reading, which is that we're trying to oversimplify the stat system in an attempt to appeal to a broader audience.
One of our design philosophies is:
simple to learn, difficult to master.
We don’t believe in obfuscating information just to create a barrier between players who understand the rules and those who don’t. We do like to have lots of depth to our systems however, and we’re totally fine with veteran or knowledgeable players knowing a lot of nuance, exceptions, and tricks to the basic rules. To use an older example, armor penetration wasn’t our most shining moment in item design. At the base level, it was pretty easy to understand (physical attacks do more damage). However, the way a point of armor penetration rating translated into damage was mathematically complex. And to make matters worse, it was such a good stat that it made sense to stack it even if you didn't understand the mathematical basis for why it was a good stat. Armor penetration was difficult to learn (what does it do?) but easy to master (it’s overpowered). You can make similar examples with "capping" block for paladin and warrior tanks.
On the other hand, haste and crit aren’t that hard to understand. Haste is "you can do more." Crit is "you do stuff bigger, but not 100% of the time." The depth comes from deciding if your play style is more about doing lots of stuff, or about occasionally getting bigger heals and hits. If you’re intolerant of randomness, then crit might be unappealing. If you run out of mana a lot as a healer, then spending mana faster through haste might be unappealing. Both stats can impact rotations as well, depending on individual spec mechanics. These are the types of stats we feel add a decent amount of depth to the system in terms of how you want to build your character, yet they're quite easy to understand on a fundamental level.
