The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

Well yeah, the theorycrafters would immidately figure out that that extra +4 strength is an 8% DPS increase and tell everyone it's the new BIS.

But a lot of the people who don't read MMO or EJ may still be like "man, that piece of gear only has +4 more strength than my old one, that's not very much."

whats the difference in getting 4 crit rating, 40 or 4000, when all grant you 1% crit?
that inflation in stat numbers is what they should get rid off...

[Shmazard]

how about you just re-release vanilla WoW.... because this item level compression thing is dumb.

[z01z]

in general i just don't like the idea because it seems like we're being nerfed for no reason other than blizzard's short-sightedness. and from a lore standpoint, it just doesn't make sense that we would have less health and do less damage at level 90 than at level 85. part of the fun of expansions has always been seeing the jump in numbers. it's funny when you go and do some quest in the first zone, and end up getting a quest reward that is better than raid gear.

[Acquiesce of Telara]

That's a bit incorrect. The "squish" would happen to mobs as well. Using your given example above the player's health is reduced rougly 7.5x (150 K to 20K) which mens Ragnaros would go from 1 million health to roughly 133.3K health (1 million/7.5).

Blizzard would have to keep everything relative.

Oh, I understand the squish would effect mobs as well as the players, but the specific example I gave was in regards to level 60 raid bosses, which should hardly be affected by the squish, as they were still part of the linear growth model and required 40 players to kill. In essence, at level 60, you would need to be 25x more powerful to solo that boss (supposing 15 of the 40 players were healers and/or tanks). Linearizing the power/stat growth means a level 70 player wouldn't be soloing level 60 raid content, and even at 80, it's still debatable.

[ToxTheWrecker]

"Now there are some very real computational limitations. PCs just can’t quickly perform math on very large numbers, so we’d have to solve all of those problems as well. Even today, tanks can hit the ten digit threat cap on some encounters."
I remember telling this to people in my guild and a fellow Warrior said; "Dude, you have the lamest argument for scaling."
Wait.. was I right this whole time? Yes, I was. Its a valid point that will be addressed.

I vote for squishing. But that would mean all the mobs/trash etc to get squished as well.. more dev time used = No updated models.

[Sylreick]

I'm for the squish. I don't solo old content nowadays, so honestly it wouldn't affect me. But to help with the people who love to solo old stuff, if they paired this stat squish with a new type of PvE content for the endgamers (think solo-instances, old raids remade for soloing purposes) I think that would be awesome. The solo raids could be built such that anyone can get into them, but have perhaps many difficulties for varying rewards. In any case I think numbers need to be lowered a bit.

[Isayno]

I would love for my fireball to crit for 12 MEGA DAMAGE! lol

[VanishO2]

Loved reading they saying that they planned everything, then later said that they actually didn't planned lol.

They changed the game so much because it was "complex", huge math here and there, etc. no reason to not start looking at this number problems.

The one mistake they did was really inflating everything when a new xpac hits. There no decent solution to this problem other than a "re-boot" of the entire game (making 85 the new 60, etc.), but they really fast foward it by pumping up the numbers for quest greens each new xpac.

Had they choose to instead give older raid tiers ilvl gear as quest rewards instead of the best of the best, things would be way lower now.

Example, using recent gear/ilvl, instead of handling ilvl 272+ for lvl 78-80 (or just 80? Don't remember if we could start questing in Hyjal/Vashir at 78) quests in Cata, just give normal 200-213-226 gear (ppl breeze trough it anyway and the way they do it, we all finished the expansion at ilvl 264+ anyways) and slowly increase from there, so in the end, when you get back to heroic 5man and raiding, you would get a significant increase where ppl actually care about anyway: end-game. Of course, taking into account that all the rest would be worked out around it (ppl not hitting certain caps at 85 yet, only with raid gear, etc). Instead of moving around in 378-391 right now, we would be lower than that, maybe hitting 346 now.

If that was applied since TBC, nobody would be worried to about mega damage and battleplate of ludicrous numerical superiority right now. WoW would probably end before that happens.

[ganush]

I don't really mind the idea of the squish. The only issue I see with it is taking away the ability roll through old content. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't really have a problem with that personally, but the idea that in order to go back and get some transmog gear from sunwell would require 20+ people just isn't such a great one at this point in time. The solutions I see to this would be some sort of damage/damage taken modifier based on level differential between you and what you are fighting. It would likely have to be exponential to account for the exponential growth of gear to date, but I think something like that could keep the old content where its at and reset the curve.

[jayremy]

The heavy amount of gear and stat barriers are pretty ridiculous anyways assuming you are trying to do something moderately challenging and not something you can yawn through with minimal reward. I would like heavily toned down stats, it makes scaling easier and simpler to calculate it keeps levels more balanced for leveling up PvP and end game as well. Big numbers are the smaller part of the issue, the difference of going from 40 damage to 40k crits are pretty awkward, but still just numbers. The real effects of it are the problem it would be more reasonable for content retain a good chunk of its challenge while not being something you can just purely overgear or overlevel to step on it, giving the game some longevity and allowing Blizzard to gauge what can be deemed challenging vs what isn't. I for one am not a baby to this feeling of being nerfed though I am not, if I am not, then I am not. Its a plain and simple thing 20k hp, though seems a bit low(I would assume 30k) I am cool with by all means. I would welcome this change.

This game has gotten too much about numbers I would like to see a change like this draw away from that.

[meadatron]

I'm sure this has been proposed, however for the sake of my vote, they forgot an option that they are kinda already building into the game, namely the challenge category for a dungeon. Look it doesn't take a mind reader to figure out that what makes this game enjoyable is not the OMG EPICS, but something that feels powerful, and the whole ability to Transmogrify an item it's the way gear looks that makes it exciting, look the whole point is we pretty much understand that there is a power curve built into gear and that power curve makes gear interesting, we acknowledge that generally speaking heroic gear has more power than normal gear. Aside from interesting procs there really isn't that much to gear that feels, unique. The other problem is that aside from tier sets whenever you get healing plate you pretty much know that only paladins use it, yet you understand intuitively that while disenchanting benefits from such wasted items, and they are if it had some sort of power on it instead perhaps the war/DK might be able to use it otherwise.

So here's my idea.
level cap items, that is if it's an item from level 60 or some such it has percentage penalty associated with it based on your level, this means that even greens from the next expac content will always be better. Think of it this way
level 60 wearing 2.5tier gear has a stat modifier of say 175% they level to 61, this now has an inverse multiplier applied to it, so they have stat mod of 175% modified by a 0.9 shackling, so instead of being 175% its now 157.5%, at level 62, its a .8 shackling or some such scaling, hell it doesn't even have to be as drastic as .9 for level growth. Meanwhile, level 61 dork in tbc greens has a power level average of 102%, and the game is based off such scaling, the point is that you aquire power levels in the gear and then the dungeons you go to scale up that power level, so that if a level 90 walks into AQ it's actually an inverse scaling meaning your power level increases from your normal 150% power in MoP to a 750% power level in AQ or something along those lines, the point is your gear aside from procs doesn't have stat inflation, oh and this also allows them to bring back static percentages again, because if you tried to use a 2% hit trinket from vanilla, in MoP, it has like a .01 modifier attached to it.

[StateBMartin]

Hopefully they squish. Then we might be able to see dps barely reaching over 1k again!

[Queen of Hamsters]

How long will it actually take to get used to lower crit numbers? Ok for autistic ppl it will take long. And for ppl with a theatrical personality disorder it will be major drama. But c'mon for normal and high intelligent ppl squeaking down the numbers won't be dramatical at all. And I think it will be the better solution in the end. You can have numbers lowered every expansion again.

Idiot....

I'm a person with Aspergers Syndrome, which is within the autism spectrum and my IQ is on the high end of the scale. Your way of writing, your idiotic prejudice and your wrongful assumptions just to prove your point here shows that you're not as intelligent as you'd like to think.

Some people will have a harder time adjusting to their characters getting nerfed, others won't care as long as it's well balanced with everything else in-game, so that we do not suddenly have to struggle to take on level 70 mobs again. Doesn't make one half "autistic" and the other "intelligent"...

[Prothall]

Have fun sharing all that loot. I meanwhile will solo everything I can before this change so that when it comes, I won't have to depend on others ("others" having a notorious habit of being incompetent, ninjaing imbeciles) to get what I want.

Yes, because being able to get your hands on loot from not two tiers, but two (soon to be three) expansions ago is why we play this game, right?

[rayden54]

You do not understand what is happening.


Vanilla raids were designed for lv. 60 players.
Level 70 players are roughly three times stronger than level 60 players.
Level 80 players are roughly three times stronger than level 70 players.
Level 85 players are roughly three times stronger than level 85 players.

You can solo Molten Core, because you equal about thirty level 60 players all by yourself.

Basically, don't expect to solo anything you couldn't solo one expansion earlier.

They said they would still allow the exponential increase for Mists of Pandaria gear. Which means that geared max level characters will still be 3 times stronger than level 85 characters, and assuming their Figure 5 shows an already squished Cataclysm, even an 85 would be about 1.5 times stronger than a level 80.

To me, it looks like you won't soloing Cataclysm content, but if you can solo level 70 content now, you probably won't be any worse off.

[BrerBear]

Maybe someone could help me understand this. I see many people sayng lower tier content would be more challenging with the "squish" but Ghostcrawler stated:

"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."

It would have been more accurate if Ghostcrawler's statement was:

"In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature at your tier that it does today, but the number would be smaller."

However, the differences between the tiers would be compressed, so the jump between expansions would be narrowed. The values of the last tier/expansion would be much closer to the current one, meaning older content would be much closer in health and damage to your level.

I was afraid of this when the expansion got announced. Soloing old content is my favorite activity in game, and this is going to be a major blow to it.

[Vlinx]

I think that instead of having 650,000 arcane blast we have the option to have the numbers say 650.0K or something like that.By mass scale down those who are level one will get something like hitting 0.5, it would go into the dicimals and that would be a more strange feeling them simply adding the metric system. I support the option of one.If however you were to just scale everything down except for the low levels, the level 1s will still be hitting 20sish while the 90 will be at 10k dammage for example, that may make it significantly harder to solo old contant without additional scale down for the raids. Soloing raids is a huge part of what makes the game fun for people like me. Keep in mind that these are just numbers, whats wrong with big numbers as long as they don't croud your screen. a 650,701 Arcane blast could be replaced with a 650.7K arcane blast. In the Far future a 6,501,500 Mind Blast could be replaced with a 6501k It would take up as much space on the screen as 65010 hit which is pretty common now a days.\So as a personal opinion and behalf of many whom I've talked to in-guild about this issue of number exponential growth, we would prefer to add in some kind of metric system for the numbers. Replacing the 650,000 blast with a 650K. As for Item Level squishing, I have no opposition to such an idea, but I am not for it either, im Ok with whatever happens to the I level.But then again thats just mines and some of my guildies opinion. Thanks.

[gums]

I don't really mind the idea of the squish. The only issue I see with it is taking away the ability roll through old content. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't really have a problem with that personally, but the idea that in order to go back and get some transmog gear from sunwell would require 20+ people just isn't such a great one at this point in time. The solutions I see to this would be some sort of damage/damage taken modifier based on level differential between you and what you are fighting. It would likely have to be exponential to account for the exponential growth of gear to date, but I think something like that could keep the old content where its at and reset the curve.

If they do this correctly, you will still be able to burn through old content.

In order to do it though, you will have to be max level and have the item 'inflation' in your favor.


So 1-85 would be streamlined, but 86-90 will be the exponential item growth that we are seeing. When you are 90, you should be able to blow through old raids as all the 60, 70, 80 numbers will be tuned way down. But your new lvl 90 gear will be grossly inflated.

[jayremy]

Well, item squish sounds like it must be done. This game is NOT Disgaea, manageable numbers are better than crazy numbers that begin using scientific notation in an MMORPG.

I'd wish they'd do/done this for many of their features that may have been on the fence changes to begin with anyways. I feel when they are trying to make this game good for attracting so many as a primary goal I feel they do too much changes, just the way they feel like seeing it done, making us be test subjects to their experiments because even in PTRs or Betas its normally to go back on large features.

[Sand Person]

Squish! Squish! Squish! Squish! Squiiiiiisssssshhhhhh!