Item Squish Yay Nay?

[MoanaLisa]

I now have to find 24 other people to do BT/DS/BWL/ICC and follow mechanics just for pets and mog gear? no ty!
I have said several times that item squish would not affect the ability to solo old content. That's not the intent. (Source)

In case of an item squish, will relative power of players stay the same in terms of soloing old content?
Yes. We don't want players to reject the squish for fear of losing the ability to solo old content. (Source)

But can you nerf every player without in anyway effecting soloing low level content? Keep everything the same but the numbers?
"If player enters old instance, then buff all their stats." (Source)

Excuse my language but it's really fucking annoying that this thread created today has anyone at all ignoring the tweets above and continuing to talk about the item squish as if it will make old raids so they can't be soloed. The tweets are right at the top of the front page at the moment. It might be a good time to consider the fact that what they said a year ago about this may no longer have any validity given the feedback about soloing raids they've received. Jesus.

The point of soloing is to do something difficult, something that took a lot of people to complete when it was current (a full raid). If you make it so that it becomes easier at low level then you lose the accomplishment of doing something that required 25 people to do. If they just do a squish without adjusting old raids then it will not be possible to solo newer content. So basically you will have a choice between impossible soloing and nerfed soloing with less satisfaction if you are able to kill a boss.

I would question whether or not this is true for all players. Especially players who have been farming old raids for transmog gear.

[Sole-Warrior]

I now have to find 24 other people to do BT/DS/BWL/ICC and follow mechanics just for pets and mog gear? no ty!
I have said several times that item squish would not affect the ability to solo old content. That's not the intent. (Source)

In case of an item squish, will relative power of players stay the same in terms of soloing old content?
Yes. We don't want players to reject the squish for fear of losing the ability to solo old content. (Source)

But can you nerf every player without in anyway effecting soloing low level content? Keep everything the same but the numbers?
"If player enters old instance, then buff all their stats." (Source)

Excuse my language but it's really fucking annoying that this thread created today has anyone at all ignoring the tweets above and continuing to talk about the item squish as if it will make old raids so they can't be soloed. The tweets are right at the top of the front page at the moment. It might be a good time to consider the fact that what they said a year ago about this may no longer have any validity given the feedback about soloing raids they've received. Jesus.



I would question whether or not this is true for all players. Especially players who have been farming old raids for transmog gear.

Because people didn't check out the tweets I just updated the thread on the front page to include it.

[Darmalus]

Nay. Even if they do it for instanced content, the problem remains for world content. MoP saw an explosion in significant world content. Pandaria will be dead and empty next expansion, so being able to solo the world bosses is important to me since there will be no one else around.

Edit: This even applies to quest rewards. If they do the squish like on the graph, a level 60 quest will be as difficult for a squished level 90 as a level 89 quest is now, but still give a level 60 reward. Arbitrarily increasing difficulty without an equivalent increase in reward is stupid.

[Sole-Warrior]

Nay. Even if they do it for instanced content, the problem remains for world content. MoP saw an explosion in significant world content. Pandaria will be dead and empty next expansion, so being able to solo the world bosses is important to me since there will be no one else around.

Thanks for bringing this up, I have an idea: if for example current 95 were to be scaled down by 75% and level 60 content by 50%, level 60 content ralitive to a 95 will be twice as hard as it would have been pre squish, so a possible solution is if that 95 were to attack a level 60 world boss, he/she would do twice as much damage per hit than if he/she were attacking a 95 mob. Damage taken reduction could also work the same way. (not sure if it already has though).

[Tojara]

Don't really care.

If it's effecting performance because of larger numbers being processed for some people, then by all means change something.

I will say that personally it does feel odd that I will probably have one million HP at the end of SoO without even possibly gemming stamina. Other oddities include looking at bosses health pools and realizing that it's not uncommon for a 25H raid boss to have over a billion HP. It seems silly but I really don't mind it.

I personally don't care if it even effects my solo capability, but I do know that's a legit concern for a lot of people. Especially considering it's expected that we can solo old content to some degree and they even encouraged it by removing raid groups for old content and sprinkling pets throughout the dungeons. That and of course transmog. Would it really hurt the game to require people to group to achieve these things? Not really if it had always stayed this way, but they have set a precedent with all of the changes moving towards older raids being more 'solo' friendly.

It's really not as simple as reducing health universally by 75% or something like that. The math won't work that well because of exponential growth between expansions and you're going to end up with weird numbers.

They did mention that they could easily put buffs in dungeons/raids to compensate. If it ended up being mostly the same I can't see how anybody could realistically complain. If everything is scaled to a reasonable level you aren't going to suddenly feel less powerful because you see lower numbers. I mean big numbers are fun and occasionally I notice them when scouring through logs, but rarely is it in the moment. I found myself caring about them or being excited more with TBC level numbers, after that I stopped caring.

As long as perceived power feels the same whatever. Like I said it doesn't matter to me but it's a legit concern for a lot of people.

If asking would I rather see MEGA damage or a squish back to smaller numbers. Smaller numbers for sure. Mega damage popping up would just look retarded.

[Darmalus]

Thanks for bringing this up, I have an idea: if for example current 95 were to be scaled down by 75% and level 60 content by 50%, level 60 content ralitive to a 95 will be twice as hard as it would have been pre squish, so a possible solution is if that 95 were to attack a level 60 world boss, he/she would do twice as much damage per hit than if he/she were attacking a 95 mob. Damage taken reduction could also work the same way. (not sure if it already has though).

It ultimately comes down to a question of Realative Power. I think the solution would be to make our damage target dependent, rather than absolute.

(Random example numbers ahead)
I throw a 100,000 spell power fireball at a level 90 Duck. A duck has a power divisor of 100 because it's level 90. BOOM! I do 1,000 damage and take 25% of the Duck's life off. I keep fighting because I need to kill the 7 ducks attacking the farm hands, and the challenge is appropriate to my level.

I throw a 100,000 spell power fireball at a level 65 Crow. A Crow has a power divisor of 10, because it's only level 65. BOOM! I do 10,000 damage, massive overkill! I easily kill the remaining Crows and turn in my grey quest for a reward equal to the difficulty for my level (insignificant).

This method "bakes in" a top-level stat squish. This would make the need to control stat inflation moot, since you would always do reasonable amounts of damage against things you should be fighting with that gear, while being able to destroy old content. I feel that old content should be easily overwhelmed because difficulty should match reward. Old rewards, other than timeless things like mounts and pets, are generally of almost no value other than their appearance.

[Citykid]

Yay for squish.
Imagine this: adjustable difficulty for older raids - lowest is as difficult as now, higher difficulties give you more loot/chance for mount and more money.
I actually like a bit of a challenge when soloing, testing out what new raid bosses I can take on, new tactics, etc. The money was taken out of old raids because they became too easy. Imagine if you could go in with MP10, have a challenge, and get awarded with double loot, and decent money... Perhaps make them scale with your level for a bit of future proofing...

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Your x axis is non-linear. The issue is not really the iLvL, the issue is that player power scales exponentially. It is done so that every tier feels much more powerful than the one before. If it were to scale linearly, there would be hardly any difference in the later tiers of gear. The exponential growth within the "live" expansion would still be happening, but it would be reduced to a linear scale for the "old" expansions.

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I hope they start the beta squished, so we can have time to sort out the kinks...

No its not linear because I wanted to show the real increase in ilvl, if I had made it linear it would just have been even more of a straight line (I should have done it that way, wasn't thinking straight , but what I wanted to show is that u can´t make it linear and show the increase in Ilvls because one xpansion has 60 lvls and another have 5, what u need to show is actual time, if u say one xpansion is 1 year then it shouldn't have said Lvls it should have been years in the X-axis, that way the graph would be way more accurate to reality. But I agree that the problem isn't the ilvls its the scaling with Ilvls and that isn't really only over the course of 6 years but also From tier to tier, compare a ilvl 520 character to a ilvl 550 and u se the difference in for example DPS is close to 200%

[Rizendragon]

I hope they start the beta squished, so we can have time to sort out the kinks...

As do I. I'd like some time to play with it and provide feedback. I'm all for this change, but it needs to be done right. It'll be the first beta I will extensively test if they do it straight away.

[Splenda]

I don't mind- the 500k health seems a bit silly to me, but I dont want to feel like my character is "weaker" per se- so I'd want EVERYTHING scaled down, including old raids and instances.

[Deleted]

Honestly... I don't really care if they do the item squish, i just have one thing in mind that may ruin it for me.

Upgrades

If i find a new upgrade in a raid that gives me +12 intellect....... i'll be like.. no.

[Rucati]

I don't solo old raids, so I couldn't care less about that. I'm all for the item squish no matter what gets changed, numbers are just too ridiculously huge now.

[LocNess]

I can accept it if one comes, however I am ultimately against it. I enjoy the big numbers and will just feel a lot weaker if I go from 300k crits to 10k crits.

[Asmekiel]

I now have to find 24 other people to do BT/DS/BWL/ICC and follow mechanics just for pets and mog gear? no ty!
I have said several times that item squish would not affect the ability to solo old content. That's not the intent. (Source)

In case of an item squish, will relative power of players stay the same in terms of soloing old content?
Yes. We don't want players to reject the squish for fear of losing the ability to solo old content. (Source)

But can you nerf every player without in anyway effecting soloing low level content? Keep everything the same but the numbers?
"If player enters old instance, then buff all their stats." (Source)

Excuse my language but it's really fucking annoying that this thread created today has anyone at all ignoring the tweets above and continuing to talk about the item squish as if it will make old raids so they can't be soloed. The tweets are right at the top of the front page at the moment. It might be a good time to consider the fact that what they said a year ago about this may no longer have any validity given the feedback about soloing raids they've received. Jesus.

But it's so weird. First he says it will not affect the ability to solo old content. Then he says players will get a buff to all their stats when they enter old content.
So ye, it affects soloing old content, but they just give a buff to negate the squish. Why even do the squish when you plan on doing such things?

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I can accept it if one comes, however I am ultimately against it. I enjoy the big numbers and will just feel a lot weaker if I go from 300k crits to 10k crits.

Apparently you shouldn't care about numbers, as long as relatively nothing changes. Guess we should all play with percentages, instead of 100k and 110k popping up on the screen you would see 0.2% and 0.22% all the time

[LocNess]

But it's so weird. First he says it will not affect the ability to solo old content. Then he says players will get a buff to all their stats when they enter old content.
So ye, it affects soloing old content, but they just give a buff to negate the squish. Why even do the squish when you plan on doing such things?

It admittedly sounds over complicated. If they are going to squish, just have players group up to do old content. We had to in BC and WotLK, I am sure people wouldn't mind too much after the first month or so.

[Darmalus]

But it's so weird. First he says it will not affect the ability to solo old content. Then he says players will get a buff to all their stats when they enter old content.
So ye, it affects soloing old content, but they just give a buff to negate the squish. Why even do the squish when you plan on doing such things?

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Apparently you shouldn't care about numbers, as long as relatively nothing changes. Guess we should all play with percentages, instead of 100k and 110k popping up on the screen you would see 0.2% and 0.22% all the time

Unless GC comes out and states that there is an actual, technical problem with big numbers, I stand by my position that this is a lot of work for no gain. A lot of people in this thread say numbers are ridiculous, but I fail to how 5 or 5 million are any different if they are just 20% of a monster's health.

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It admittedly sounds over complicated. If they are going to squish, just have players group up to do old content. We had to in BC and WotLK, I am sure people wouldn't mind too much after the first month or so.

If you arbitrarily jack up the difficulty without increasing the reward, I think you will find that people won't bother running them at all. Cata Heroics should have shown people that. High Difficulty + Poor Rewards = people leave. We can see it right now with the cratered Normal Mode raiding participation.

[Wafffles]

Unless GC comes out and states that there is an actual, technical problem with big numbers, I stand by my position that this is a lot of work for no gain. A lot of people in this thread say numbers are ridiculous, but I fail to how 5 or 5 million are any different if they are just 20% of a monster's health.

The work's been done. They are ready to do the squish, it's not like the team is going to manually go through every item, every mob, every raid in the game and adjust the stats; the technology is ready, they just have to decide what sorts of numbers they're aiming for. That's not trivial, but again, it's far less work than people imagine compared to manual corrections.

I don't mean to be disrespectful to those who keep saying this is a non-issue or there is no gain (though a number of you are being pretty disrespectful to those of us who disagree with you), but there is a clear majority of people who don't like the big numbers we're seeing. It becomes unfathomable to think "cool, a staff with +2900 int!" It seems so bloated to say "awesome, I just crit for 19876972" and artificial to say that you feel an emotional difference between 1987606 and 19876069 or between 500K and 500M floating across your screen the way you used to for, say, critting over 1000 for the first time after innumerable three-digit crits. I totally understand that some of you don't feel that way, that it's just a number, and that's fine, but the majority do find it detrimental to the game, and do think it's broken and needs to be fixed. And honestly, with the guarantee that they won't break soloing with this change, I don't see why anyone would care that much one way or the other, so we might as well just go with popular opinion. Yes, I know, popular opinion isn't always right, yes, I know, if "it's just a number" is my argument than it can be your argument too, but in this case, my point is that it's just a number, so let's all just let this happen and move along to something that we'll all actually care about for more than 10 seconds after it is implemented.

[Aquamonkey]

Unless GC comes out and states that there is an actual, technical problem with big numbers, I stand by my position that this is a lot of work for no gain. A lot of people in this thread say numbers are ridiculous, but I fail to how 5 or 5 million are any different if they are just 20% of a monster's health.

You mean like when they first announced it? "If we can make numbers such as floating combat text and boss health and item stats a little easier to read at a glance, then maybe we can endure numbers increasing exponentially for many digits to come. 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."

They've already done stuff to make the numbers easier to read and it helps, but it doesn't solve the technical issues.

We’re trying the solution with commas, and K’s, and M’s, and to be honest, it helps a lot, and our hope is, by 6.0 or 7.0, players are demanding the item squish, and by then it’s not controversial at all. It’s like a celebration when we finally do it. (Source)

I don't think Mists was hurt much from its absence, but it's still on the table for the future. (Source)

We think the item level inflation has worked fine in MoP. We haven't given up on the idea of a squish, though TBH we were hoping to see even more demand for from players. (Source)

[El_Diabl0]

Nay. Even if they do it for instanced content, the problem remains for world content. MoP saw an explosion in significant world content. Pandaria will be dead and empty next expansion, so being able to solo the world bosses is important to me since there will be no one else around.

Edit: This even applies to quest rewards. If they do the squish like on the graph, a level 60 quest will be as difficult for a squished level 90 as a level 89 quest is now, but still give a level 60 reward. Arbitrarily increasing difficulty without an equivalent increase in reward is stupid.

I don't really understand why people feel like they should be able to solo every boss. The Dragons of Nightmare were pretty much impossible to solo, even at level 80, and I don't remember seeing anyone upset or complaining about it. And they were not the only ones. Not to mention the classes that have a hard time soloing raid bosses. So, why is it so bad that some bosses are harder or just not possible to solo?

I should say that I did spend a lot of time farming old raids(MC, BWL, AQ, Karazhan, BT, TK, MH, etc) in Wrath and Cataclysm. I did them solo, dualboxing, with a friend/friends, with guildies, and with people I didn't even know. I also did level 60 raids in TBC. They required a bigger group but were pretty easy to pug.

[Darmalus]

I don't mean to be disrespectful to those who keep saying this is a non-issue or there is no gain (though a number of you are being pretty disrespectful to those of us who disagree with you), but there is a clear majority of people who don't like the big numbers we're seeing. It becomes unfathomable to think "cool, a staff with +2900 int!" It seems so bloated to say "awesome, I just crit for 19876972" and artificial to say that you feel an emotional difference between 1987606 and 19876069 or between 500K and 500M floating across your screen the way you used to for, say, critting over 1000 for the first time after innumerable three-digit crits. I totally understand that some of you don't feel that way, that it's just a number, and that's fine, but the majority do find it detrimental to the game, and do think it's broken and needs to be fixed. And honestly, with the guarantee that they won't break soloing with this change, I don't see why anyone would care that much one way or the other, so we might as well just go with popular opinion. Yes, I know, popular opinion isn't always right, yes, I know, if "it's just a number" is my argument than it can be your argument too, but in this case, my point is that it's just a number, so let's all just let this happen and move along to something that we'll all actually care about for more than 10 seconds after it is implemented.

I don't respect your position because I have never cared about how much Int was on my staff, or how big my crits were. Stats were a binary "Is it better than current equipment?" yes/no decision to me since vanilla. The numbers popping up just tell me I'm hitting my target. If they are small than normal, then there is probably some sort of shield or defense I need to react to.

You know what makes me think "Cool!"? Good artwork. Awesome looking weapons, armor and spell effects. A spell is cool because it looks or is mechanically cool, I don't care if it does 1 damage or a billion damage, I probably won't even notice. The numbers that pop up mean nothing more to me than the change I count out to buy a snack.

What does matter is a making old content (world and instanced content) more difficult because "Those number are ridiculous!" I don't have any feelings about you, Waffles (except they are delicious), but I don't respect you position because I find it foolish.

[Aquamonkey]

Nay. Even if they do it for instanced content, the problem remains for world content. MoP saw an explosion in significant world content. Pandaria will be dead and empty next expansion, so being able to solo the world bosses is important to me since there will be no one else around.

Edit: This even applies to quest rewards. If they do the squish like on the graph, a level 60 quest will be as difficult for a squished level 90 as a level 89 quest is now, but still give a level 60 reward. Arbitrarily increasing difficulty without an equivalent increase in reward is stupid.

Mathematically, the squish would make level 90 stuff EASIER to solo at level 95. Based on the graph they gave as an example, lets compare relative power between lvl 85 and lvl 80:


Before the squish, lvl 85 caps out at ilvl410 and lvl 80 caps out at ilvl 275. Lvl 85 is 1.5x as powerful as the hardest lvl 80 stuff.
After the squish, lvl 85 caps out at ilvl175 and lvl 80 caps out at ilvl 100. Lvl 85 is now 1.75x as powerful as the hardest lvl 80 stuff.

Even without the "solo old raids" buff, you are more powerful vs the previous expansion with the squish than without.