The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

[strafefaster]

Item squish sounds amazing as long as the pulled it off right. That'd be a lot of stuff they'd have to scale down.

[Racerover]

Squish it!

[Solidito]

If they squished it so we had the health etc we have now and do a bit more damage then it's fine, but going down to 20k or so like they said and hitting for hardly anything would be very annoying and quite depressing in a way to a lot of other people.

[tohyatvc]

I realise it's only a mockup of a potential solution, but Fig 5 certainly implies that T3 epics of lv60 will be ~= ilvl to Lv75 items, and an epic from the end of Burning Crusade should take you through to level 85 - anyone else find that a little odd? Feels like running a couple of raids while levelling will just remove the gear progression for a couple of expansions... :S Meh.

It's a tiny mock up of the scaling. Don't take that exact image 100% seriously, but it is, in my opinion, a step in the right direction.

[Deleted]

They would squish everything in the game. from your itemlevel to the hp of a boss. it would be totaly the same as it is right now in all aspects. only the numbers would be lower.

I know Blizzard, and you too: in our hearts we know that this is what we are expecting, but the reality will be a lot different. Blizzard will be unable to retune all contents in that, perfectly way: everything will gone messy, soloing old content will be impossible.

Blizzard had lost his mind from Wrath. I seriously don't trust Blizzard anymore when he talks about "changes" like those. If they will go for the "squishy" solution, I really think that this game will be gone, for good.

[Isadora985]

My feelings are pretty much the same as Hoggs. It's much easer to number crunch when the number is smaller than larger as long as you are doing the same % of damage, who cares how much damage you are actually doing? Remember when doing 200 dps was badass? I do and I always thought the HUGE jump in numbers was absurd. Bring on the squish!

[lix]

Squish them. I think you get a lot of additional benefits from 'normalizing' the growth, as more people can be competitive along the journey in pvp, world pvp, etc. Normalization closes the gaps and thus creates a larger pool of players to interact in all situations.Nice to put the options out here for discussion. The numbers are already feeling absurd and comical. I really hope they squish them.

[think309]

If the squish did happen, they would lose a *lot* more subscribers. The vast, vast majority of players do not read any sort of gaming forum. They would just see a nerf and say "Screw this game."

[Prothall]

This has the potential to make old content much less soloable, and therein lies the potential to loose my monopoly on gear that might drop in having to depend on people. While at higher levels it might make sense, in other aspects of the game such as this, I have a foreboding. Do not want? Potentially.

But you'd still be doing the same amount of damage - the article says that. It would only be the numbers you're seeing that have changed. If I'm reading it right.

This part here:

In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller. Logically, this seems like it would work, and it does. But it feels weird. When we tried this internally, everyone agreed that it just felt off throwing a spell for hundreds of damage when you are used to it doing thousands of damage.

[Deleted]

It's a completely relative concept. It could be measured on a banana scale, or in cubic feet. As long as the item you have is of sufficient 'weighting' for the content you face then it really doesn't matter. The best solution is to equip everyone at lvl 1 with full heirloom items, and allow them to grow up to cap with a modifier +n on each stat, never change look, design or sets. Very very boring.

[StayTuned]

I did get it. I understand everything is relative.

But without huge, gigantic ilevel jumps between expansions, Old Content will become more difficult, they even mentioned this in their own FAQ

I don't think you're right. They're talking about leveling and that the difference between level 49 and 50 will be less significant than it was before.

If you jump from itelevel 400 to 410 today, it will be the same relative increase as 500 to 501 because the boss HP won't increase at the old rate, but at the new rate. Only the numbers are going to be lower.

[Deleted]

Indeed I'm with the majority and would love the squish.

[Kassina]

I support the item level squish. Its needed.

This, that with Mega Damage and that sounds weird ;8

[Morvandus]

Boubouille, pollyfy this thing. I'm really interested in the results. I fully support the item squish. It's just weird critting for like 1 million, isn't it?

[Skutch]

It's the same e-peen folks, they just changed how they measure it, move along.

[Voxxel]

My vote is on 2nd solution. Cata players may be feel nerfed but it'll just a while they get familiar. Vanilla or BC players will agree sofast because most of us not just only know but we live the ilvl/stats problem. Needless to say fresh players are unconcerned at all in this issue.

[WyrdUp]

SQUISH! Honestly though, and then Blizz could just make stat values actually be the stats on the piece... You know, like: Expertise 9656 ...and then make 9656 Expertise ACTUALLY WORTH 9656 Expertise... /gasp! No math to just figure out what stats give in their respective stats? Sooner the better, IMO...

[Ivirus]

I don't support this item squish. But Blizzard will do what Blizzard wants to do.....I'm going to miss my big numbers

[SleepySlug]

One thing they could do i just not scale gear so drastically every expansion, i get you have to make gear enough of and upgrade that people will actually use it but do you really have to go as far as making stats on greens at the beginning of an expansion twices as much as the end game gear from the previous one? I saw just keep the stats on a consistant increase without any MAJOR jumps like they do every expansion.

They HAVE to do that though or else the first tier(s) of raid content are complete jokes to anyone who completed the final tier of the previous expansion.

Example: Heroic LK dropped 271 gear. First tier of Cata raiding dropped 359. That's 88 ilvl difference. Now, imagine you just cut that difference in half. That would mean that the first tier of raiding would be 44 ilvls above that of the final tier of the expansion before. You'd end up with ilvl 315 gear being dropped in this hypothetical first tier raid. Now, let's look at what that equates to in-game. That's about 2nd tier dungeons (Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle). Now, I don't know how many of you had Heroic ICC gear, but you didn't replace that very quickly AT ALL. Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle were jokes for most if you had that much gear. To make this gap between expansions smaller than it already is would severely drop the difficulty and satisfaction of raiding at the beginning of an expansion, an issue that was ALREADY a problem in Cataclysm.

[coltsown]

I am having a lot of trouble understanding why people think old content would be harder. They needed to squish number pre-Cata. No surprise they are having this issue, I am just surprised they didn't talk about it when the players did(or make a plan.) I remember having conversations about this when BC first came out.