The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria

[Holycola]

If they made a small arcanite solo animation after every crit i'd give them money

[retpally]

squish dem numbers!

[Rioo]

I vote for item level squish to save the life of my computer, but I still want to crit for 12 MEGA DAMAGE. Perhaps we should just omit damage and call it MEGA DAMAGE.

Your computer won't die because the game needs to handle a few more digits. It's all handled on server side anyways and just sent to your computer to show up on the screen.

And you know what grows faster then our ilvl? The computer power. We're not gonna reach a point where the servers can't calculate the damage when a warrior hits you. The game would need a lot more expansions before a int, double or whatever variable they use to represent a player's HP isn't enough anymore.

Just adding a k and hiding the 3 last digits is the best and also most simple way IMO.

[Blackout15]

Not sure how they didnt see this coming, it was kind of obvious just from vanilla to BC. I mean really, just compare health pools from expansion to expansion, vanilla was like 3-4k hp. Bc went up to about 10k-ish. Basically doubling the hp pools. Then WotLK came out and health pools exploded, doubling/tripling. And now we get to cata and you basically have to times all the numbers by 10, which was a retarded idea. But seriously, they should have seen this coming after they released wrath and scaled the numbers down. Half a year ago i told a friend, just wait till we get to the millions of hp lvls. And he was like, they'l never let that happen. Well.....here we are....

[zingar]

why does everyone hate "big numbers" so much? are you an idiot that cant count past 10? theyre just numbers, and if they bother you because theyre too long, dont worry, theyll just add a K or M at the end and voila! dont really get the issue here. blizzard mentions computer power but that is one lame excuse because certainly thats not it

[Spammeister]

Seriously, how Blizzard didn't see that this was going to happen is just laughable. I guess just by having a high turnover rate of peeps working on the game (not just GTFO out of Blizzard-Activision, but getting shoved into D3 or SC2), that the finer points of log-scales jsut got looked over.
That, or Bobby Kotick really doesn't have a clue about anything.
It's just easy enough when the next xpac to come out to just scale everything down by a factor of ten. Big numbers are just that, big numbers! Anything over 9000 is just overkill.

[yuca247]

LOL the artwork ist hilarious!! CRIT FOR 12 MEGADAMAGE CRIT FOR 124 MO-MO-MONSTERDAMAGE!!!!

With the Killer Instinct guy yelling it out = win

[Alayea]

The "item squish" would be a better long-term policy, but I'll be darned if I have to like it. It's Blizzard's own fault.

[PriestAlisha]

I'd really hate to lose my ability to solo old content, it's near impossible to find 5-10 people to run ulduar if I'm trying to get something out of there, I can't imagine having to do the same thing for ubrs or BC heroics. Just let the numbers get bigger I say.

[Harith]

squish them numbers i asked for this back in WotLK, i do agree vanilla ilvls where simply to low that is why you got ppl skiping stuff sens there wasn't much of a jump so you could just do higher end bosses without the needed gear. while in TBC you had ppl doing T5 content sens there where a few parts that where BiS from T5 stuff and grabing the T5P2 set bouns could actually upp your dps (arcane mage).

i personaly liked that system you had alot(when i say alot i mean 2-3 pices per person) of pices of gear from earlier tiers you needed to get combined with the lastest tier to get bis witch gave you alot of raiding to do, and better yet killing T5 bosses was still hard even in full T6 gear. i think the diffance in hp of a T5 tanks to a T6 tank was 10% or 2-3k witch was half a hit on a boss.

for ex. the mallet of tides from the lurker below was BiS for fights where you needed hp while the brutalizer was better fights where you needed good threat (remeber those days?) you could live with only having say the brutalizer but it was in your best intrest to have both

while on WotLK the only part where you wanted to do old content was sens of trinkets but then you over geard the fights so much it was a cake walk

and look at cata now you don't even need the old trinkets i think only one is the sinestra trinket is still worth getting and that one got nerfed

EDIT1: and honestly it isn't that much work sens everything is based on an ilvl even enemies and if you just slash down everything evenly it won't be an issue. also it is only TBC, WotLK and cata content that would be nefed not the redone 1-60 and an other bouns is that you won't have those horrible jumps in gear when you get into an exp pack

[Powerpuffed]

This post was the reason why I made an MMO account to be able to reply on it, yet I was just checking the news Read through few first pages and found out that most of peeps think the way I do also but to gather that all up:guys, really, I'm no an RP player, but I like that blizz puts some shotr movie scens and dialogs that give some lore info even to non-rp player, but honestly, how many of you think that it is correct that some1 can solo Lich King for example, the most powerful dude on TFT, or Illidan, or C'Thun. Really? Any more peeps from Vanilla that have spent MOUTHES with 40 people, and every pull you got him for 4% or 5% more than previous pull gave you feeling that you're closer and closer, and recently, some dude SOLOED that with EVEN ANOTHER BOSS??? C'mon, I feel that is TOTALY WRONG, and I belive most players do.Players keep playing WoW even tho it becomes less and less fun with every expansion because there's no good alternative (really), or because they feel they've spent too many time on it to quit, but item squish will bring back that epic feeling imo!This game brought most joy for me when my mind flay did 316 dmg ticks

[Coldrak]

i have a solution... blow up this pandas and launch world of warcraft 2 ... with a fresh start

[Karnige]

do it. most people don't solo that stuff anyways

[Deleted]

I'm all in for small numbers, but what about soloing old content?This isn't going to be a game breaker for me.. but I do enjoy it sometimes.

[Kyyrr]

Squish the whole thing. I know transmoggers will cry but its the best thing to do. I don't like soloing neferian nowadays. Its not the way it should be. Not even for a lvl 95.

They aren't going to nerf just the items and leave the bosses and npcs where they're at, that would be preposterous. They will nerf EVERYTHING, you will still be able to solo Nef.

[Ohforfsake]

@ "soloing old content crowd" ----- convert the old bosses into regular level mobs, rather than skull mobs, problem solved. Easy as *bleep*.. Really. C'thun lvl63 mob, Illidan lvl 73, Lich King, lvl83.. That way you'd still have the required upper hand to solo or small scale group the old content. I myself think they should just let the numbers go into "ludicruos" for at least MoP.. While a lot of you here agree it's just numbers, there are a LOT, and i mean, *ton of people that play this game and arent quite as reasonable. And even those that are reasonable would feel frustration when seeing the low numbers. The cold mind and logic would tell them it's all good but the heart would tell otherwise, it wont be as much fun anymore. And "fun" has never been driven by cold logic. In the next xpack after MoP they could introduce new stats, like 1000 strength = 1 (insert whatever word resembles super strength or is just a synonim of it)

[Kathranis]

People complaining about "not being able to solo" obviously didn't read the article, or have no common sense. If they scale back the items, they scale back EVERYTHING. Enemy health and damage included. You can solo level 40 mobs at level 60, right? This is no different than that change. And level 90 gear is still going to be exponentially better than level 85 gear. It's just level 61-85 that gets squished down.

[WrathDksCataFrostPandaFtl]

They aren't going to nerf just the items and leave the bosses and npcs where they're at, that would be preposterous. They will nerf EVERYTHING, you will still be able to solo Nef.

What have they done with Cataclysm and now Pandarium that isn't preposterous, per say?

1. Instanced/linear quest zones that hold your hand the entire way

2. Inflated HP with same burst as Wotlk- the exact same thing they said they were fixing.

3. Made up story, over one drunken night at the local Irvine pub.

4. Instead of previous expansions, choose a race that was a joke (worgen aside, obviously they are more part of lore than pandas are).

5. Preventing PvP'ers from getting their weapons for weeks after the announced date because of "not being happy with PvE progression", so that "PvEers are not forced to PvP"; while PvPers were FORCED to participate in PvE just to stay competitive.

"We don't like large gear inflation" (which they also said after Ulduar and during TOTC FYI) and yet they still went through with it for Cata.
This isn't a case of "we made a problem and we want to fix it" it's a case of "we don't want to do our jobs consistently, so we'd rather ask you for
a suggestion, even though we'll just do what we had planned in the first place".

The items they show, aren't even properly linear, nor is the chart. It's meant to be misleading, just like many of the things this d**3 says.

Although if they do go through with a stat reduction change in Pandarium, I won't be mad. Bobby Kotick will be, with his stock going down even more after the extra few thousand subs they'll lose.

If they end up doing this, it's going to feel really weird. I also feel it will be EXTREMELY buggy because they'll have to rework the health of pretty much everything.

If they actually do that, which I doubt, like level 1-60 revamp, it will just be another one of their excuses for the lack of "real" content. They already have two rehashed dungeons planned, it's become clear that their modus is "less work, more play". And by that, I mean they play, and we have to work harder and harder to actually enjoy this game.

Let's see, what's actual new content. New class which will be either OP or UP for months, while they complain "but we only made it this year, it will take years to balance this class like the others". Two rehashed dungeons. Rehashed stats, probably not rehashed BC/Vanilla/Wotlk content. Maybe Cata. Lots more pets/mounts/etc. By the end of the next expansion, this game is going to be very close to being F2P, as they won't be able to keep as many people as the one's who are leaving.

Blizzard knows this, internally, they just won't say it publicly, for obvious reasons.

I have an idea. How about they think longer than 10 minutes on ideas? Seeing that worked so well for cata.

Item squish is going to confuse the shit out of players just like wotlk to cata difficulty level. They clearly have lost touch. Everything they have done to make the game easier to develop has been to their detriment. Homogeneity of classes, raid lockout, loot, etc

This is so true. If only they thought like you, we'd have a much better game in our hands.

Homogenizing was clearly for their benefit- less spells to balance encounters around (lazy).

Raid lockout (forcing people to play longer to get gear- wow it was fun in Wotlk, but doing 4 raids a week just isn't possible anymore)

Same loot, was just a terrible idea. 25 mans were always harder, and almost prestigious. Now everything is just a joke.

Also, look at BC heroics, to Wotlk and Cata. Not only is icon (and ARTWORK reusing rampant) I remember like 3 different versions of plate leveling up in Wotlk, and in Cata almost all the pre raid shields look exactly the same, healing or tanking. The breadth of their lazyness is astounding, and incredibly apparent.

[ihyln]

Consumer studies to improve your product make the guy a joke?

Hi, next exit for Reality 1 mile. Your Low Fuel light is blinking. It's advised you take the next exit.

I have an idea. How about they think longer than 10 minutes on ideas? Seeing that worked so well for cata.

Item squish is going to confuse the shit out of players just like wotlk to cata difficulty level. They clearly have lost touch. Everything they have done to make the game easier to develop has been to their detriment. Homogeneity of classes, raid lockout, loot, etc

[palladiamors]

Eh, this seemed very manipulative to me. On the one hand, they tossed out the idea of changing damaging numbers to just stand for roughly the damage you did, 12k in the example. Then for some reason they gave it a silly name, mega damage, and proceeded to make it sound like a sub-optimal solution. Nevermind that you wouldn't be able to tell how much you actually did under that sytem, since most of your numbers will just be a letter or a symbol. Then they give the other solution, and proceed to more or less say how it's the superior choice, without saying it in those words. "BUT! This would solve this, and this, and that." Then tossed in that they weren't sure of it. They more or less said "Which of these two sounds better?" after throwing out a biased argument. And anyone who has been around Blizzard for any length of times knows that they are NOT going to actually listen to suggestions for something THAT major.Personally? Squish it. Stats have been going insane lately, and the advent of MoP would have just made that situation even worse. Yes, I understand that I will be doing 1/4th or 1/10th of the damage I was doing before, but things are still going to be dying at the same speed. Not that I don't go "WOW!" when I hit big numbers, it's just that you'll still be hitting those numbers. They'll just be smaller. Doesn't make them any less impressive in context, unless you are just insistent on hitting for 1,000,000 damage and seeing all the zeros fly.