Item Level Squish, Kor'kron Dark Shaman, 5.4 RPPM Mechanics Change, Blue Posts, Art

[Cassidin]

actually cassidin its gone way past that. its not 500,000. its going to be more like 125850357 over and over in various combinations. saying 125m is a stop gap measure, a band aid.

The thing is I DO believe it will feel bad.... Even GC agreed with that back in 2012 when he said (source):

We had the whole thing implemented, and we sat down and tried it out, and, you know, Mortal Strike hit for 200, and Fireball hit for 150, and we were like, “This feels wrong.” We knew exactly how it would feel like, and we knew that our damage as a percentage didn’t go down, but it felt terrible.

I don't believe this has changed. I believe it will feel very odd to be suddenly doing smaller numbers.

Ultimately, if it happens it happens and only time will REALLY tell how the community reacts to it. It MAY disappoint me if it happens, but it's not going to stop me playing.

[Shudder]

warcraft is just one big set of complex calculations involving numbers. You saying that is tantamount to saying who gives a shit about DNA in biology or physics in flying aircraft.

having 5 digits worth of stats on gear is ludicrous. things may be fine now but by the next expansion we'll really be hitting ridiculous numbers



Actually its the vocal minority thats opposing this. Blizz, bereft of people who want it, have wished to do an item squish because of what they're seeing when designing dps and stats. the feedback from calculations and the appearance of gear.

This isnt a nerf. The Ratio's are the goddamn same. instead of saying we're gonna travel 328,084 feet, we're gonna say we're traveling 100km. instead of 97630 yen, we're saying we have 1000 dollars. Its worth the damn same.

It's gonna be cumbersome as hell comparing blue items with stats that have 5 frikkin digits each. the numbers we throw out will just be meaningless 7 digit long bunches.

It's not a problem in MoP, but if the next expac follows the same jump like the previous expacs, it will reach a point where the numbers are burying us or unintuitive at a glance.

you hit a mob for 1million damage and take out 10% of its health. after the squish you hit a mob for 6000 and take away 10% of its health.

Massive numbers inflation is never a good thing to develop and base judgements on for any sort of system.

Nope sorry, you are NOT the majority. You can pretend in make believe land all you want. The majority do not post on these forums. The majority do not post on the bnet forums or read dev tweets. The majority are casual players. The kind that when they log in and find all the talent trees gone, replaced with 5 stupid choices freak the fuck out and quit. The majority will not like the item squish, mark my words. I'll even pm you this very post when they implement it and you see the rage that happens afterword. Reminding you, that yes you are the minority. The majority of the playerbase despises change. Even blizzard has admitted the biggest reason people give when quitting is, "too many changes".

[Geodew]

Who cares how the item squish FEELS. More importantly, it'll be easier on everyone's CPU to calculate arithmetic with lower numbers, making running add-ons like Recount and Skada much less taxing on your computer, probably significantly improving the performance of mid-grade machines in LFRs and 25mans, and ESPECIALLY world bosses. Anyone else remember freezing, 0 fps for a couple seconds, on your first couple Sha of Anger or Galleon pulls ever? Happened to lots of guildies of mine, and with my high-end machine I even got a couple freezes. People had to disable Recount until they optimized their code better.

[Shudder]

Who cares how the item squish FEELS. More importantly, it'll be easier on everyone's CPU to calculate arithmetic with lower numbers, making running add-ons like Recount and Skada much less taxing on your computer, probably significantly improving the performance of mid-grade machines in LFRs and 25mans, and ESPECIALLY world bosses. Anyone else remember freezing, 0 fps for a couple seconds, on your first couple Sha of Anger or Galleon pulls ever? Happened to lots of guildies of mine, and with my high-end machine I even got a couple freezes. People had to disable Recount until they optimized their code better.

Um, dps numbers isn't the reason that is happening. It's server load.

[Unholyground]

The item squish will be sweet I think, the speed of killing shit wont change ever. I don't know what people could possibly worry about. I remember when the biggest crit you could do was like 3800 lmao.

[tyrindor]

Who cares how the item squish FEELS. More importantly, it'll be easier on everyone's CPU to calculate arithmetic with lower numbers, making running add-ons like Recount and Skada much less taxing on your computer, probably significantly improving the performance of mid-grade machines in LFRs and 25mans, and ESPECIALLY world bosses. Anyone else remember freezing, 0 fps for a couple seconds, on your first couple Sha of Anger or Galleon pulls ever? Happened to lots of guildies of mine, and with my high-end machine I even got a couple freezes. People had to disable Recount until they optimized their code better.

Who cares how the game feels? Let's just add a difficulty setting in the corner of your game where you can toggle a difficulty out in the world. Lets have it even affect PVP and people on easy will have a handicap in BGs/Arenas. I mean who cares if it doesn't feel right?

Seriously, my point is... how a game FEELS is everything. The item squish makes it feel like we're going back to classic. I raided in classic, I don't want to feel like that again i've already been there done that. Your average casual gamer is going to log in the game, see the squished numbers and quit the game. It's too big of a change, and it feels too weird. At one point last year, GC even admitted their own employees did not like the number squish and that's why it didn't happen for MoP! Even if they do the item squish correctly, and all content is still perfectly scaled, it will still feel like a huge nerf and be awkward.

As for the calculations, your exaggerating. Most of your FPS issues or lockups are due to other things, the number calculations are a tiny part of why your FPS is lower. If your getting complete lockups, it's your computer. My computer has never experienced this, and even on Ultra my FPS is fine during world bosses and 25mans. Turn your settings down, or stop playing on a potato expecting to max the game out. Your FPS and lockups are most likely due to your settings being too high, not the numbers being too big.

Nope sorry, you are NOT the majority. You can pretend in make believe land all you want. The majority do not post on these forums. The majority do not post on the bnet forums or read dev tweets. The majority are casual players. The kind that when they log in and find all the talent trees gone, replaced with 5 stupid choices freak the fuck out and quit. The majority will not like the item squish, mark my words. I'll even pm you this very post when they implement it and you see the rage that happens afterword. Reminding you, that yes you are the minority. The majority of the playerbase despises change. Even blizzard has admitted the biggest reason people give when quitting is, "too many changes".

Exactly, agree 100%. This change will cause a massive drop in subs even if it is correctly implemented. Judging by GC's recent tweets, they will not even be correctly implementing it either. They will take the lazy way and just add buffs to characters in old raids so they can still solo. It all feels so fake, we'll end up doing 1M DPS in Molten Core.. then go outside and do 5K DPS. I would wager that this would be the single biggest mistake Blizzard is debating on doing. It completely changes the feel of the game, for the worse.

If people wanted all these dynamic stat changes and scaling, they'd be playing a game like GW2. The main reason I stopped playing GW2 was because I felt like nothing mattered. No matter what you are scaled and stat capped, it all felt so fake to me.

[grandevil]

Why do people cry over the "squish" all they are talking about changing is arbitrary numbers. Everything will still function the same. Any change will be across the board.

[Deleted]

Why do people cry over the "squish" all they are talking about changing is arbitrary numbers. Everything will still function the same. Any change will be across the board.

Because those people understand math. After item squish level appropriate content will be just the same like it is currently. Overleveling group content will be different. Why? Let me explain.

The reason we need the item squish is because exponential stat increase which causes us to have huge power surges between expansions. The reason we can solo old raid content is because we have these exponential power surges. The item squish will remove them so that instead of exponential we will have linear increase.

What this means is that 40 lvl 60 players against ragnaros after the squish will be the same as 40 lvl 60 players against ragnaros now. This is because numbers from the both sides are squashed. As the exponential growth is removed 1 lvl 90 after the squish it will be far more worse than what it is now. Blizzard knows this and that's why GC suggested a buff for high lvl players inside old raids. That is very artificial and problematic way to work it since the buff would have to be different for people with different levels or otherwise you would get weird results.

Also outdoor pvp issues are something I haven't seen them talk about at all. Currently 2 lvl 85 players would get their asses handed to them by a single lvl 90. After the squish it could go the other way. It's all about relative power. People are thinking that item squish will keep the ratios but it won't. Ratios will only be the same when you are doing appropriate content for your level.

[Windytusks]

Why don't all the people who advocate for the item squish just go play Rift if they want to go back to having 55,000 HP and dealing craptastic damage? /confused

[Unholyground]

Because those people understand math. After item squish level appropriate content will be just the same like it is currently. Overleveling group content will be different. Why? Let me explain.

The reason we need the item squish is because exponential stat increase which causes us to have huge power surges between expansions. The reason we can solo old raid content is because we have these exponential power surges. The item squish will remove them so that instead of exponential we will have linear increase.

What this means is that 40 lvl 60 players against ragnaros after the squish will be the same as 40 lvl 60 players against ragnaros now. This is because numbers from the both sides are squashed. As the exponential growth is removed 1 lvl 90 after the squish it will be far more worse than what it is now. Blizzard knows this and that's why GC suggested a buff for high lvl players inside old raids. That is very artificial and problematic way to work it since the buff would have to be different for people with different levels or otherwise you would get weird results.

Also outdoor pvp issues are something I haven't seen them talk about at all. Currently 2 lvl 85 players would get their asses handed to them by a single lvl 90. After the squish it could go the other way. It's all about relative power. People are thinking that item squish will keep the ratios but it won't. Ratios will only be the same when you are doing appropriate content for your level.

No everything can be scaled easily, your not thinking big picture. All the ratios can be brought closer together with the same exponential grow. They just have to stop using full percentages with their scaling.

[MrKnubbles]

I really hope this item squish goes though. I'm sick of seeing such insanely high stats on gear.

[Windytusks]

I really hope this item squish goes though. I'm sick of seeing such insanely high stats on gear.

Serious question: Why does this bother you? Specifically, why are you sick of ... numbers?

[Unholyground]

"We're not nerfing it because it was fun, we're nerfing it because it was breaking the game."

The thing that is breaking this game is piss poor development that is allowing this to happen.

You have to realize they are working with a 12 year old game engine that they cannot rebuild because it would alienate a lot of the player base that still use low end pc's, so the item crunch is the only way.

[Deleted]

Because those people understand math. After item squish level appropriate content will be just the same like it is currently. Overleveling group content will be different. Why? Let me explain.

The reason we need the item squish is because exponential stat increase which causes us to have huge power surges between expansions. The reason we can solo old raid content is because we have these exponential power surges. The item squish will remove them so that instead of exponential we will have linear increase.

Looks like YOU don't understand maths. Scaling down, with a multiplier, can't transform an exponential function into a linear one.

[Adalace]

Changes to the RPPM mechanics are TERRIBLE.

I disagree, I think they are great.

[tyrindor]

No everything can be scaled easily, your not thinking big picture. All the ratios can be brought closer together with the same exponential grow. They just have to stop using full percentages with their scaling.

Yes, this is true but it would require a lot of man hours and lot of tweaking to get it right. It's not as simple as running a % based number reduction across the game like many people seem to think. If you read the tweets by GC, he already said how they plan on doing it. They are just going to give buffs to higher level people in old raids, which is a rather terrible concept in my eyes. https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...53330179534850

They keep making the game feel faker and faker, there's no surprise they keep losing subs. I don't want my character to be stronger in some areas, than weaker in others. This change will be the biggest sub loss for them, I am certain. They just can't seem to grasp that their main player base, casuals, do not want major changes.

You have to realize they are working with a 12 year old game engine that they cannot rebuild because it would alienate a lot of the player base that still use low end pc's, so the item crunch is the only way.

What about the players that have been playing since launch, and keep playing for bigger numbers and the sense of getting stronger. A large chunk of the player base thinks this way and plays for personal character development. Now they go from doing big numbers to tiny numbers, and feel weaker. You cannot tell me that if they did something like this in Diablo 3 that the entire player base wouldn't freak out. Lots of players use numbers as a sense of strength, by lower these you piss off a lot of the fanbase.

There is nothing stopping people from upgrading their low end PCs. It's in the terms that the games requirements will raise overtime and it is up to the user to upgrade their computer. Big numbers play a very small part in the overall performance of the game, and would only make a large difference on people with very cheap and very old computers. Computers that should of been upgraded years ago. Why should the entire playerbase have to deal with a number squish because John wants to play on his $150 e-machine that he bought 8 years ago?

The argument goes both ways, by doing the number squish you will piss off a lot of people that have the "bigger numbers" mentality. This is a LARGE chunk of the player base. By not doing the number squish, you piss off the people who refuse to upgrade their incredibly out dated systems, or want to play on higher settings than they should be. The people who have the argument "I'm tired of seeing giant numbers" can be resolved with addons or a future patch that condenses numbers into better formatting, such as 100K, 100M, 100B, etc.

[MrKnubbles]

Serious question: Why does this bother you? Specifically, why are you sick of ... numbers?

Transitioning between expansions isn't smooth at all. As you level through one expansion, you keep getting slight upgrades. As soon as you hit a new expansion, the numbers increase dramatically. You get such a huge increase in power for no reason. We have gear with 2000 Stamina on it now. There is no reason why it can't be scaled back to say, 200. Yes, you would see your damage decrease but the amount of time it takes to kill enemies wouldn't be any greater because the enemies would be scaled back as well. I just think it would really help bring the game in line regarding gear scaling in the future.

[tyrindor]

Transitioning between expansions isn't smooth at all. As you level through one expansion, you keep getting slight upgrades. As soon as you hit a new expansion, the numbers increase dramatically. You get such a huge increase in power for no reason. We have gear with 2000 Stamina on it now. There is no reason why it can't be scaled back to say, 200. Yes, you would see your damage decrease but the amount of time it takes to kill enemies wouldn't be any greater because the enemies would be scaled back as well. I just think it would really help bring the game in line regarding gear scaling in the future.

You didn't really answer his question though, why exactly does this bother you? It makes the game feel rewarding. If people are raiding 8-16 hours/week, or even more, they want to feel rewarded. That's why we see large gear upgrades in raids over the course of an expansion, and also why new characters going into a new expansion see massive upgrades. I *love* getting to a new expansion on alts and seeing these massive upgrades, it makes leveling more fun and rewarding.

Why would people want to spend 8-16 hours a week raiding for minor stat upgrades that don't really make all that big of a difference? The gear gaps are there because they are a large part of the game being fun, at the current ilvl, if we were only getting +10 main stat upgrades per piece of gear, it wouldn't even be noticeable with a full set of new tier gear. There would be no real reason to put tons of effort into raiding for most people, and many people would quit because their basically "gear capped" already. There are other MMOs out there, like GW2, that allow you to spend hours and hours doing dungeons and raids for virtually no stat difference in gear. The #1 complaint I see on GW2's forums is the fact there is nothing to do because there's no gear worth getting.

[Aurabolt]

Or here's a better tip Chaud (RE: Item Level Squish):

DON'T post that kind of info. You only just posted the translation the other day and people were quick to run to GC with it like it was fact. No it wasn't your fault they interpreted that way but I can't help but wonder if Blizz might take the opportunity to discredit MMO-C because it datamines the game (which they've openly said for years they don't like). Yeah they've accepted people will do it weather they tell them not to or not but since MMO-C is such a reputable site...you see where I'm going with this?

You warned the squish wasn't fact. You even said the translation might not be precise. Even so, clearly not everyone listened and now GC's in damage control. I would advise against posting info like that again unless you're sure it's reliable.

[Unholyground]

Yes, this is true but it would require a lot of man hours and lot of tweaking to get it right. It's not as simple as running a % based number reduction across the game like many people seem to think. If you read the tweets by GC, he already said how they plan on doing it. They are just going to give buffs to higher level people in old raids, which is a rather terrible concept in my eyes. https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...53330179534850

They keep making the game feel faker and faker, there's no surprise they keep losing subs. I don't want my character to be stronger in some areas, than weaker in others. This change will be the biggest sub loss for them, I am certain. They just can't seem to grasp that their main player base, casuals, do not want major changes.



What about the players that have been playing since launch, and keep playing for bigger numbers and the sense of getting stronger. A large chunk of the player base thinks this way and plays for personal character development. Now they go from doing big numbers to tiny numbers, and feel weaker. You cannot tell me that if they did something like this in Diablo 3 that the entire player base wouldn't freak out. Lots of players use numbers as a sense of strength, by lower these you piss off a lot of the fanbase.

There is nothing stopping people from upgrading their low end PCs. It's in the terms that the games requirements will raise overtime and it is up to the user to upgrade their computer. Big numbers play a very small part in the overall performance of the game, and would only make a large difference on people with very cheap and very old computers. Computers that should of been upgraded years ago. Why should the entire playerbase have to deal with a number squish because John wants to play on his $150 e-machine that he bought 8 years ago?

The argument goes both ways, by doing the number squish you will piss off a lot of people that have the "bigger numbers" mentality. This is a LARGE chunk of the player base. By not doing the number squish, you piss off the people who refuse to upgrade their incredibly out dated systems, or want to play on higher settings than they should be. The people who have the argument "I'm tired of seeing giant numbers" can be resolved with addons or a future patch that condenses numbers into better formatting, such as 100K, 100M, 100B, etc.

That is true, if they use smarter math in the back end the front end can easily display it with little to no change in computing power. I personally am indifferent. I don't care what they do in the end, because my character is still going to be the same character I love and enjoy. I just hope they get the damn new Race models done and in the game before I die lol.