"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
I guess I just can't understand this logic. For me personally I barely even look at the numbers in my character sheet. I only care if an upgrade gives me more stats than what I'm currently wearing and if I'm at the caps. And those particular numbers are only in the thousands. But my health or the tanks health doesn't mean anything to me because it's all represented by a bar.
I'm not disputing this. A few pages back you'll see where I posted facts as we know them and number 1 was that a squish had to happen. I'm not a programmer (I was but I hated it) but apparently some people are putting forth the idea of updating the engine to 64 bit instead of 32 bit. Now I don't know what will be easier or harder but what I do know is the people suggesting 64bit are saying it'll hold us over for years and years while the item squish, Blizz themselves have said will need to be done every few expansions. That just seems like a silly thing to do.
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I AM a programmer, and I'm quite prepared to believe that updating the datatypes in the server, client, database, and auxiliary software, from 32 to 64 bits, could be expensive and fraught with risk. And I'm prepared to believe Blizzard when they decide it wasn't the right thing to do.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
But do you really think doing the item squish every other tier is a better alternative? If I implemented a fix I'd want it to be one and done not do this every few months/year, especially if it is likely they will screw it up. Think of it like maintenance on Tues. First it started as a full day and is now generally down to 15 minutes. Sure after a while they'll get better at the squish but do you want to suffer through them learning it?
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Yes I do. In fact, I think it would be a good thing for the game even if there were no technical reason to require it, although in that case it might not be worth the cost. Still, getting rid of the silly ilvl jumps at past expansion "scars" would have a number of good effects on gameplay.
I will add that I think your hysterical attitude about changes to the game doesn't help your position at all. It's almost rabbit-like in its paralysis.
Last edited by Osmeric; 2013-10-17 at 08:42 PM.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
Not going to vote because the poll doesn't make any sense. Strength is relative. They have said many times that the squish won't affect your ability to do whatever you are doing. You don't get "weaker" because the mobs will squish down with you. If you have half the HP, guess what? the mobs will hit half as hard. That's not getting "weaker," unless you are just talking about literally the numbers getting larger or smaller. Here's how you should have worded it:
Do you like the item squish idea?
Yes?
No?
Indifferent?
That's how you do a poll. Yours is like saying "Do you want to shoot yourself in the knee, or shoot someone else in the knee?" Of course you want to get more powerful, but if I do 100 DPS at level 10 and the level 10 mob has 100 health, I will kill him in 1 second. If I do 200 dps at level 10 and the level 10 mob has 200 health, I kill him in one second. So explain to me how the first is less powerful than the second. I'm curious how this is playing out in your head, because it's bonkers to me.
You want to see bigger numbers, great, but you have to understand that in the next expac, if we go up 10 levels, you are looking at millions of HP on every player and probably million DPS. Personally, that sounds stupid to me. I think we should go back down to vanilla or TBC days TBH. Level 100 you have 10k HP, do ~1k DPS. The numbers just don't mean anything and it's superficial to suggest otherwise. It's all relative strength, not raw strength.
I don't actually care about the numbers I see on screen a whole lot, it's just a matter of dropping a few zeroes. What's stupid to me is you get a legendary cloak with 1700 in one stat, 2600 in another stat and 900 in 3 more stats. It's getting outrageous. Compare that to a high end level 60 cloak. They had 22 stamina and 15 intellect. You're talking about the gear going up almost 200 fold in 30 levels. That's adding up the stats and getting a ratio. Should a level 90 be 200 times stronger than a level 60? I don't know the answer, but it's mind boggling at this point with the stats.
Let's look at weapons:
level 60 2h sword: 63 DPS
level 90 2h sword: 7600 DPS
Doesn't that kind of blow your mind a little bit?
Last edited by Varabently; 2013-10-17 at 08:48 PM.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
...WTF do you get that they will squish every few months, every other tier?
The game is barely about to hit 9 years old and is on its 4th expansion. 3 expansions from 6.0 when they're hoping to do the squish is over 50% of its current age...Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
Over here being conversational on the original topic: I look forward to a stat squish because numbers are hard for me. 4 digit numbers are easy to compare until I start having to go "okay so this one has 132 more Stat A, but this one has 73 less Stat B. I'd give up these 1567 points to Stat C, but get 1642 to Stat D instead. and I'd gain about 40 Armor. ...I have no idea which one of these is better." .. ... Yes, go ahead and laugh at me, but I'd rather have to deal with "this one has 3 more Stat A, but this one has 2 less Stat B. I'd give up these 57 points to Stat C, but get 64 to Stat D instead. and I'd gain about 4 Armor" -- those numbers are for more "real" to me.
As long as the difference is basically in how it's displayed to me and not in the relative power level of my character, I'm happy.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
As long as it doesn't affect my ability to solo older content with ease I'm not overly bothered either way.
Fundamentally I disagree with Blizzards philosophy that everything should scale immensely with expansions (I believe the blue post I'm thinking of was something like 'we want players to feel hugely more powerful with the new expansions'). There's other ways to do that, and also I don't see whats wrong with having the same progression throughout the game, picking up where the last one left off basically.
Also, this is the worst poll I've ever seen. But I do find it hilarious that the OP tried to word it extremely negatively for those in favor of the squish but it's still the leading voted for option.
It wouldn't bother me so much, i think large numbers are inherently harder to ascertain and it does get lost in a blur, i don't know if they should go right back to what it was like in classic, but they could definitely scale the ilevel back throughout so that the increases are on par with what it was like back then, if you look at the upgrades during lvl 60 they were quite minor compared to now, where each tier is about 30 to 40 ilvls higher than the last, compared with going from t1 to t3 which was about a 20 ilvl difference.
as for abilities, all i can say is good luck with that one blizzard, i'm glad i'm not the guy who has to rebalance the entire game and every single ability on all classes. that will make pvp interesting all over again, and by interesting i mean create lots of whine.
i think the main problem with whatever they do is, eventually if they keep pushing out expansions its only going to end up like this again.