The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

[Stillen88]

when i raid, i dont look at the amount my attacks hit for, I look to see if my dps bar on recount is at the top, and the percentage of the boss health, numbers are just numbers, i blizzard can change it without effecting it percentage wise, i have no issue with it....we kill bosses, and look to see how our little coloured bar did against everyone else. thats how most of us work.

[Gratze]

"some people will feel nerfed.. even if its the same" Well actually no its not the same. I like to log on and see my level 85 has 192k health. It sounds impressive. Then log on to a lower character with almost 1k of health.. Shows me how weak he is. Take that same situation and squish it... My lvl 90 has 20,000 health.. My lvl 70 has 10,000 health.. /yawn mode I cant really even believe this issue is being talked about ITS NOT BROKE DO NOT FIX IT. Just let it be. That item is something I would expect to see an entire expansion away anyhow. The numbers are SUPPOSED to be big, its a BIGGER expansion. I think this falls in the realm over micro analyzation. Just leave it alone. Would have mentioned this at blizzcon I think you would have seen an entire audience fall into a coma cryo-sleep style, its boring and unneccesary.

[Deleted]

Just shorten the numbers and add "k", "m" suffix. If one is interested in details he/she can check combatlog. I have my recount on "short" format for a while now and it works for me. 3M damage is 3M damage. Who cares about the 1-2k more or less? Don't alter the gear. If your server can't handle the numbers get a better server. Probably cheaper than rewriting the entire combat system and/or loot.

[Phillytwo]

I wish they would go with the option where we go back to Vanilla, tanks at 8 k HP. Would be fun!

[Harthmut]

I prefer the squishing. Sure it will be weird at the beginning, but we'll get used to this like a new pair of undies.

[Natron]

They should have done the item squish from the get go; this is about ensuring the longevity of the game, not making sure players don't have 560k health in full pvp gear and Chaos Bolt/ Conflag for 350l dmg. I normally don't do this but.. I shake my head at you GC, I shake.. my .. head.

[Cold_Shadow]

I'm fervently waiting for an explanation as to why we can't just have the "k" or "m" suffix on everything instead of what seems to be perhaps a Pandora's box..
Like a poster said earlier, I think they threw that "MEGA DAMAGE" suffix out there to make the option look stupid. I am definitely not in favor of their second option. I don't care about what damned numbers I hit for, but I really don't trust them with readjusting all the bosses and gear they have created thus far.

[fablezim]

Something else to consider (kind of along these lines) is also a method of regulating the value of gold. Most crafted items in Wotlk would go for 500-600g, and now theyre 5-6k because gold is so easy to get. Most players probably have an average of 250-300k on their bank alts without trying too hard. I just think it'll be silly to see a belt buckle on the AH in MoP for 6k, and daily dungeons rewarding 500g.

[Cold_Shadow]

Something else to consider (kind of along these lines) is also a method of regulating the value of gold. Most crafted items in Wotlk would go for 500-600g, and now theyre 5-6k because gold is so easy to get. Most players probably have an average of 250-300k on their bank alts without trying too hard. I just think it'll be silly to see a belt buckle on the AH in MoP for 6k, and daily dungeons rewarding 500g.

I've always had the idea that 1k gold should = 1 Platinum.. but I think that might ruin the aesthetic feel of gold..

But to compare what's going on.. would you be in favor of reworking the money system completely or enacting the solution I mentioned? What sounds more feasible, simple, and straightforward?

[Deleted]

Thank god, it was going to be crazy to have people critting for 500k or 1 million on certain fights on next xpac.

I already crit for 500-600k on Alysrazor hatchlings.

[Deleted]

What you guys think of.. squishing.. + .. everytime a new expansion comes out.. the previous end game tier is squished down.. so the new tier of items don't have to be made as a huge upgrade in ilvl stats n stuff.. so the end numbers change only a bit.. but the previous endgame gear doesn't produce those numbers anymore.. they are squished down instead.. Well just a thought.. something in those lines.. Also.. about that .. feeling weird thing ... well.. everytime a new expansion comes out.. the numbers increase by a lot... it is also very weird then... it was very weird when cata came out.. all the huge numbers... was very weird..

[Deleted]

SOLUTION!!!


DEVIDE EVERYTHING By 10 ...

OR (BEST SOLUTION)

Hit rating should be changed and needs an extra dimension, "gear functioning in X%". Lets say you have 100 hit rating. It will increase your chance to hit by 10% on a boss and uses 10% of the your total stats.. So lets say you have 1000hitrating, now you are able to use 100% of your total stats on a boss. Lets say you wanna fight a boss, Magtheridon.. he requires 500 hit rating to have 100% functionality of your gear on him. Illidan on the other side needs 1000 hit rating to have 100% functionality on him.

That way, you can squish all items. but yet make them very usefull even tho the gap is small... because only the best gear will give you 100% functionality of your total stats..

Example 2:

Tier 2 : 20 % functionality on NPC/PC's
Tier 3: 30 % '' '
Tier 4: 40%
"
"
"
"
Tier 10: 100% functionality on NPC/PC's

That way, only the best TIER grands you Maximum functionality of your total stats!

Tier 2 has +20 strenght and tier 10 has +100 strenght.. the thing is, the difference is 80 strengt but ALSO 80% less functionality of the gear against certain players npc's. Making it basicly useless on higher levels!

Tier 2 will have maximum output on lvl 60 's.. but once you wear it against lvl 85s that require alot more hit(functionality) it will be almost useless.
hope u guys understand what i mean..

[Proudfoot]

Something else to consider (kind of along these lines) is also a method of regulating the value of gold. Most crafted items in Wotlk would go for 500-600g, and now theyre 5-6k because gold is so easy to get. Most players probably have an average of 250-300k on their bank alts without trying too hard. I just think it'll be silly to see a belt buckle on the AH in MoP for 6k, and daily dungeons rewarding 500g.

Ummm no, the most money I've ever had in the 6+ years I've been playing was around 30k gold. My highest gold toon now is less than 10k.

I love the item level squish idea, in fact when BC came out I thought it was really stupid to artificially inflate the item levels so greens were better than epics. They've done it with every expansion sadly.

[Keile]

I'm so glad they could finally admit this is a problem. I support the item squish personally and want them to do it for 5.0.

I, too, support the squish. I really think we need to go back down to more manageable numbers. It felt like the number inflation (starting with tBC) just soared as you approached max level. Whereas with Vanilla it was a nice, slow curve and every upgrade you got felt......goooooood.

---------- Post added 2011-11-05 at 03:34 PM ----------

Don't squish the items. Nobody wants to feel like they're moving backwards. I was pulling 30k in Cataclysm now I'm pulling 5k in Pandaria. Not to mention you're going to have to rework all the numbers in the game instead of just moving forward. Seems like more work than its worth.

Who cares how much dps you pull so long as things still die in the same period of time. EVERYTHING will be scaled with you, so they would have less relative health to compensate. Big numbers don't matter so long as things die in "x" amount of time.

Take away DPS meters, visible HP #'s (just show %s), and damage text in combat. Now compare a boss at End Game Cata to one during something like Ulduar (During this time the average awesome DPS did around 5K which is what you used in your example). Bet you wouldn't be able to tell a difference in how long it would take a group back then to beat a boss compared to now. Your average boss fight THEN was 5-10 minutes, as is the average boss fight now.

All that has changed are these CRAZY HEALTH POOLS.

[Deleted]

I personally thought about cata that it scaled too much already- big stats and numbers,milions of health - lal WTF and crossed my mind how would that look like in future. Its easy to see upgrade when u have to choose from 100 stats or rating, think it would be too much to calculate in thousands, we are used to smaller numbers, would be ridiculous to ditch 800 stamina and 600 haste rating to gain 1100 crit and 650 strength in one item- itemisation hits the sky and that would feel as nerf again to me at least- rather would Like to squish the stats to make it reasonable again and havin to choose again ur upgrades in between of 30 stats again. Doin 12 milion with aimed shot and a boss with 10 000 bilion hp would feel Like god mode cheat on private server i guess

[kerghan]

There are 38 pages here, I did not read them all. If this has been said before, I'm sorry.

first off - ilvl Squish, PLEASElooking at the graph, this essentially makes a continuous thru-leveling progression of gear up to the end of the most recent expansion, and then allows the exponential gear system* to return to normal for the current xpac. This eliminates the "new continent greens" scenario and makes leveling 1-max a smooth, natural progression. IF they can make the Lore smooth too (hah!) then it'd be completely ideal. The story progresses, you progress. boom.

The Downside: If you're level 80, BT will still be a bitch. Or rather, it will take a full roster of people, but be less bitchy than content. Ish.
The Counterpoint: Since max levels still have the exponential system*, once you hit raid-gear you should break out of the "leveling scale" fairly quickly, and then old content will be rofl-fun just like it is now. Ish.

This all makes sense 100% by the numbers and if you just close your eyes and open them in a parallel universe where this was always the case, then there's no problem. But that's just it. It requires you to reset your mental WoW world to "post patch" standards each time a new xpac comes out. Arguably we do this all the time when talent / spell changes come out, since they dont only change for max level. A new warlock today, will never understand the term 'shard farming'.

Having said all this, it makes sense. They nerfbat xp requirements to thru-level. They offer less-than-previous-max profession recipes so you dont have to farm drop patterns to skill up. Level 58 / 68 / 80 zones exist in new xpacs and are watered down compared to mid-leveling zones to allow progression. Players in raid-purps always sped through the first zone and never got any gear-ups anyway. What they CANNOT do is allow MoP to exponential* and then stack another set of raid tiers on top of it for 6.0 without equivalently nerfbatting the 5.0 stuff. Welcome to the new "adjustment" of the pre-xpac adjustment phase / world event. Getting used to the ilvl reset.-- As a sub argument of this, let's also consider this a good thing. DPS will be normalized. Bosses tuned for spells that dont behave how they should anymore and dps numbers that dont exist anymore create odd discrepancies. People pulled teens-k dps in ICC all the time. Then 4.0 came, and it took a while to get back up to that double-digit K again. Not... a long time... but some.

*The Exponential: As it stands, ilvl is an actual scale by which gear stats are determined. It has NOTHING to do with gear color. Think of it like Heirloom gear -- as the lvl goes up, so goe the stats. It's on a fixed scale. That's how they can predict the ilvl600 item in the blue post. They just moved the slider up. The reason we got huge health pools in Cata isn't because they sat down and said "Hey, let's break WoW completely!" (well, they may have said this, but not purely in an ilvl context) it's because that's just what happens when stam scales that high.

[Krysler]

Being a vanilla player and having breaks here and there, I've been aware of this issue since wotlk datamining. Seeing (tank) health pools raise from the 25kish to 60+ was something i was worried about. How much stats could you end up with from a single item? -annotated in the figs.The easiest way and the probable way it will change would be the number changes. Players already talk in "k" when hitting or the dps theyre doing. Even on players hp, theyre not too bothered about the extra 100hp beyond the 100k mark at lvl85, unless it totals an extra 1k on their avatar hp.I knew it would have to be adressed, even in MOP we're gonna be geeting closer to the 1k stats on items. Having them with a 2.4k str for instance with more detail on hover could help, but we shall inevitably see.

[Nraktja]

I like big crits and I cannot lie..

[Cold_Shadow]

I personally thought about cata that it scaled too much already- big stats and numbers,milions of health - lal WTF and crossed my mind how would that look like in future. Its easy to see upgrade when u have to choose from 100 stats or rating, think it would be too much to calculate in thousands, we are used to smaller numbers, would be ridiculous to ditch 800 stamina and 600 haste rating to gain 1100 crit and 650 strength in one item- itemisation hits the sky and that would feel as nerf again to me at least- rather would Like to squish the stats to make it reasonable again and havin to choose again ur upgrades in between of 30 stats again. Doin 12 milion with aimed shot and a boss with 10 000 bilion hp would feel Like god mode cheat on private server i guess

or you could be doing 12M damage to something with 10T health. it's really not that bad... just move the decimal.

[Deleted]

Guys stop dreaming and suggest solutions for big numbers - if u dont see how bad that would be for teh game in teh future sit Down plx and try hard to think about it !