The dangers of MUDflation - gear scaling in WoW

[Rankin]

Up to the very last day before Burning Crusade launched, people were still running Stratholme and Scholomance and Upper Blackrock Spire (for those of you who didn't play WoW, they're non-raid instances [except BRS, which was small raid]) for blue (not epic) gear. The stat bumps weren't so significant that they completely illegitimized earlier gear, and as a result, players who weren't at the cutting edge of gear were still able to hold their own.

The problem with this assumption is why people were running those 5 mans, and it wasn't because of the gear being viable. It was because there was pretty much nothing else to do to get gear if you weren't into raiding or hardcore PVP.

[Amry]

You don't need to have huge gaps between one tier or another from start to end to have progression. It creates its own problems if you do it that way.

I haven't even clapped my eyes on T12 yet - so how big is this gap?

More to the point, OP is making a comparison between gear obtained every 10 levels - and with this being the case, why shouldn't gear at level 60 be much better than at level 50? Mobs are harder, other people's HP pool are bigger, etc.

[Deleted]

Everything is determined by ilvl now, apparently blizzard decided that everything needs to rise with 13 ilvls each time, don't know why.

[Herrenos]

The only point I may agree with on this poster's analysis is that older content in the current expansion is too easily rendered unimportant. (t11 is easily outstripped by t12 in a massive way). I'm not sure how I feel about this one way or the other

I completely disagree, not with his facts, but with his analysis of them that the "ideal" from expansion to expansion is a marginal, linear progression of gear. What this "MUDflation" (though that in itself is a fairly gross misuse of the original term) really represents is the game designer's attempt to provide continuity of character without forcing players to go back to old content.

Your old exploits still mean something, but if every tier had marginally better gear that was NOT easily bypassed by the current tier, then you would in fact be forced to go back to Molten core and grind your way from tiers 1 to 12 just to experience current content. Even allowing for the idea that you could obtain high-powered gear at the current tier and it would only be marginally better than gear from previous expansions, you would still create a logistical nightmare of balance.

No one really cares that death knight mechanics trivialize some BC bosses. If the Warglaives of Azzinoth were still legitimate DPS items, and black temple still took some real effort to accomplish, blizzard would be forced to rebalance this content.

Instead I view the modern expansion system as actual disparate games; sequels if you will, albeit with the option to revisit your previous games for some entertainment. And I think it improves the game.

[Iosif]

This is a debate i have been pointing out that "Gear Resets" are just bad...

in EQ they never really had hard gear resets.. this meant that many raid guilds consumed much of the old content because it was still viable even after an expansion came out. Sure at some point normal quest gear was better then old raid gear but to get in to raiding ment you had to put in your dues and raid some older content to get in to current content... This would be the Kin to having go to UBRS then to MC to BWL to AQ to NAX... In a well designed MMO the liner growth of gear would allow for people to jump in to say BWL level gear from quests in BC while thoes who had AQ/NAX level grear would be able to continue to use their current gear sets to continue raiding

Gear reset were a piss poor attempt to make raiding more accessible to casuals that has really created more problems then it fixed.

[xile]

... except that this means their performance will not be as high as intended to tackle the more powerful bosses of the new raid.

Do you read?

The OPs entire point of all of this was simple. Vanilla used a gear model where until you were fully decked out in the last tier of gear, it was still advantageous to go back and run it because you could get gear that was only a tid bit worse than the current tier. Which in turn allows for people to actually have a general want and motivation to go back and raid old content, but today, because of the ridiculously high variance in dps/hps/survivability between tiers, the difference in dps between a t11 and t12 piece (a single piece) can be several "k" dps. Which is nuts. So say there are two worlds, world A. and world B.

In world A:
There are three raids
The highest gear in the first tier is 100
The second is 108
In the third the gear is 115

In world B:
There are still three raids
The first is a ilvl of 100
The second is 120
The third is 145


Because the way it works, in world B going back and doin the first raid/tier, is not only a complete easy ass walkthrough because your gear is so much better, theres virtually no reason to do it.

Whereas in world A there could still be "some" challenge when going back to first raids, and furthermore until you get every piece from tier 1 or tier 2, it would still be advantageous to go back and get items because they aren't a worthless piece of junk anymore.

We are currently on a model to where youre going to see sargeras having 1500000000000 health, and people are going to be doing 150k dps or more. Wotlk showed this to a point. At the beginning of WOTLK tanks had what at most 30k health buffed going into nax, MOST people didn't pull 4k. By the time of ICC you had people pulling 3 times that (without the icc buff in full heroic gear) and youre average player had over 30k health. Meaning a ret pally could (assuming he could hold agro) walk into Nax 10 with 1 healer and 8 other dps, and kill patchwerk in 15 seconds (not joking), or things like OS could get destroyed. I remember pushing over 30K+ dps as arcane on os 3d when the arcane buff hit for burn phases.

[Fojos]

A tier now is always 13 ilevels. The percentage increase is still the same.

The increase from t7-t8 is pretty much the same in % as t11-t12. The only actual jumps are when an expansion occurs, not during it.

1000 to 1130 is the same as 10000 to 11300.

[Azgraal]

What to risk to face if this continues is:

Trinket ilvl 53689

requires lvl 95

+int 1359318195638432

use: this trinket gives the user 61383151613813838138138953635635253485 spellpower for 20 seconds. (cooldown: 2min)




and yeah.... it will start to look ridiculous, and even harder to balance things...

[Cows For Life]

The problem with this assumption is why people were running those 5 mans, and it wasn't because of the gear being viable. It was because there was pretty much nothing else to do to get gear if you weren't into raiding or hardcore PVP.

But you can't deny that the blues from those dungeons weren't that far off from gear up to BWL.

The blues were iLevel 63, MC epics were mid-60s, and most of BWL (being low to mid 70s). At most you'd be slightly more than 1 (13 level) tier worse after two raid tiers.

That you can get gear easily nowadays is irrelevant. There are still problems even if you can farm heroics for a few weeks to catch up.

[Amry]

Which in turn allows for people to actually have a general want and motivation to go back and raid old content,

Sorry, what I am reading is, "tone down the new tier, so that people are motivated to raid old content". But surely, the point of an expansion / patch is to go raid the new one.

If you want to have a go at the old one, no one's stopping you; but the point of making the new gear powerful is to entice them towards the new content. At the end of the day, why do people raid? To get new, more powerful gear. And if the old content's gear is nearly just as good, then what is the point of raiding the new place?

Even if we want to tone down the power of the newer stuff, surely this does not apply to really old content; I'd be quite puzzled if loot from Karazhan would be nearly as good as something off To4W.

[Fojos]

What to risk to face if this continues is:

Trinket ilvl 53689

requires lvl 95

+int 1359318195638432

use: this trinket gives the user 61383151613813838138138953635635253485 spellpower for 20 seconds. (cooldown: 2min)




and yeah.... it will start to look ridiculous, and even harder to balance things...

You're just using ridiculous example. Besides, the numbers have always been very long, they'll just round them up, like they do already. For example, if something now says it gives 400 int, it might actually give 399,879873987389739 int.

[xile]

Sorry, what I am reading is, "tone down the new tier, so that people are motivated to raid old content". But surely, the point of an expansion / patch is to go raid the new one.

If you want to have a go at the old one, no one's stopping you; but the point of making the new gear powerful is to entice them towards the new content. At the end of the day, why do people raid? To get new, more powerful gear. And if the old content's gear is nearly just as good, then what is the point of raiding the new place?

Even if we want to tone down the power of the newer stuff, surely this does not apply to really old content; I'd be quite puzzled if loot from Karazhan would be nearly as good as something off To4W.

Reread my previous post i updated it. I believe new tier gear should be better than old tier gear, but i don't see the point in the ridiculous scaling we're doing. Bosses don't have to gain 15015010510 million more health every tier if we don't scale gear 930248023 times. You can increase gear stats by smaller amounts and still make them upgrades, i don't see an issue with only increasing your dps by 3k instead of 6k.

[Azgraal]

You're just using ridiculous example. Besides, the numbers have always been very long, they'll just round them up, like they do already.

that was the idea, showing that the numbers are getting ridiculously big. While not directly gamebreaking, it is the result of the MUDflation and we'll soon see these kind of items.

[Fojos]

that was the idea, showing that the numbers are getting ridiculously big. While not directly gamebreaking, it is the result of the MUDflation and we'll soon see these kind of items.

Ridiculously big for whom?

[mistuhbull]

that was the idea, showing that the numbers are getting ridiculously big. While not directly gamebreaking, it is the result of the MUDflation and we'll soon see these kind of items.

maybe Blizzard soon, but not normal people soon.

[Deleted]

... except that this means their performance will not be as high as intended to tackle the more powerful bosses of the new raid.

Bosspower is completely arbitrary and can easily be scaled to accommodate any item-level.

Your statement isn't an argument.

[Deleted]

there is not a problem as it stands, you have to look at each expac individually. blizz stated that people clearing the first raids of a new xpac in gear from the previous expansion is something they did not want

throughout an expansion, big upgrades is what the players want, i should not have to calculate what is better between a 315 item compared to a 320, upgrades need to be clear and obvious

[MikeBogina]

I've always thought about this since TBC came out.
Vanilla, up until TBC, ppl were still doing every raid, accept that of Naxx which was ridiculously hard at the time.
TBC ppl still did Kara up until Sunwell.
Wotlk, ppl were only doing ICC and rarely did ToC, for their alts to get some gear real quick.
Now, 4.2.....omg the new gear is ridiculously so much better. I replaced my ZA back with Ahune's, couple days later, I replace that with the Thrall questline one, the other day I get friendly with Avengers and replace the back yet again.

oh and btw, you can now get 371 pvp gear with HONOR as of today 384 with conquest. they took the 365 gear and got rid of it cause they buffed the honor gear past it.... >.<

[Deleted]

I'm gonna try and do a little math, bear with me now, I suck at it. I know it's hard to compare items between different expansions but it'll give a raw overlook.'

Vanilla best epic staff: http://www.wowhead.com/item=22799 (ilvl 89)
TBC best epic staff: http://www.wowhead.com/item=34337 (ilvl164)
WotLK best epic staff: http://www.wowhead.com/item=50731 (ilvl 284)
Cataclysm best epic staff, so far: http://www.wowhead.com/item=71797 (ilvl 397)

So, this is the 2nd tier of cataclysm, which means 2-3 more will probably come. Item level wise we see an increase of ~200% from vanilla to TBC, an increase of ~175% from TBC to WotLK, and if numbers continue to rise they way they are in cataclysm, an increase from 284 to 454 (my half-assed prediction of the latest ilvl tier in cata) is an increase of ~150%

So basically, if my shit math is right, the increase, percentage wise, is actually decreasing, and not increasing.

EDIT: Please do correct me if I am wrong, it's 6 am and I suck at math, as I said

[Belloc]

Of the 4 major endgame raid instances (Nax Redux, Ulda, TOC and Icecrown), the only two instances that progressed servers run are Icecrown and TOC hardmode (and the latter is becoming increasingly rare).

Why?

Because the earlier instances had been done to death. Why would someone who was playing tier 7 content at the start of the expansion want to go back and do it again when they have tier 10 content? The lifespan of a raid should be no more than the next tier. In other words, when tier 13 comes out, tier 11 should become completely irrelevant.

Two content cycles is more than enough time for any decent raider to become sick of a raid. I was sick of MC before I even finished it, why should I be expected to go back during Naxx?

And this isn't just bad because it suddenly gimps every piece of gear that you got out of the preceeding instance. No, it's bad because raid dungeons are incredibly complicated and expensive to design, and thus -- if MUDflation reduces their usefulness from the length of an expansion to the length of a patch -- the money and effort involved in their creation is debased as a result. In a nutshell, in-game inflation causes real-life deflation.

So, a piece of gear becomes gimped because new, better gear is introduced? Have you forgotten that, in order to get that new gear, you have to be able to kill the new bosses? And that old, "gimped" gear is what you are wearing while killing those new bosses.

No, this whole point was false. The period of usefulness for a piece of gear is not a patch -- it's two patches. Tier 11 gear helps you farm bosses that you're already killing and then it helps you kill new bosses so that you can gain tier 12 gear. You are using the same piece of gear during two patches. And why would you ever want a piece of gear to remain useful longer than that?



Gear inflation isn't a bad thing. It keeps players interested in the game. If tier 7 gear was only slightly better than tier 6 gear, there would be less incentive to purchase WotLK and gain tier 7 gear. There would be less incentive to farm tier 7 content in preparation for tier 8.


The OP's quoted post makes some decent points, but none of them actually apply to WoW (or perhaps to MMO's in general).

Instance progression between expansions is irrelevant because Blizzard doesn't want you to play their old content -- they want you to play the new content. Players, in general, feel the same way. When tier 8 came out, who actually wanted to go back to tier 7 content? When Cataclysm released, who wanted to go back to ICC? Very few people. And those that did want to go back only wanted to do so to gain achievements, mounts, or other vanity items -- not to see the content.

Gear progression is the other point that falls flat. If gear doesn't inflate, we don't progress in health and damage. If we don't progress, bosses can't progress. Do you really want every tier to have a 5% health/damage increase and be done with it? I certainly don't. I want to feel like I'm getting more powerful and that the bosses I'm fighting are getting more powerful. If I've just saved the world from the Lich King, do I really want to fight a Deathwing that's only got 20% more health? Only hits 20% harder? This guy just shattered the world, but with a linear gear progression, he wouldn't be much more powerful than the Lich King that we killed 4 tiers before. Does that make any sense?


WoW is supposed to be a fun game. If the points mentioned above were "fixed," would the game be better for it? I don't think so. The author that the OP quoted seems like an intelligent enough person, but he's clearly not drawing his experience and inspiration from actual, modern game design. Hell, he's throwing around a term without even describing its origins (MUDflation).


I'll finish with this:

In essense, WoW now has 1/4th of the content it might have had during this expansion, while simultaneously destroying the usefulness of entry-level gear

1/4th of the content? Just because there's no gear-progression reason to run it? Sorry, but no. I don't want to force my new alts to have to run MC, BWL, AQ40, Karazhan, SSC/TK, Hyjal/BT, Sunwell, Naxx, Ulduar, ToC, ICC, and BoT/BWD just to get to the Firelands. Furthermore, the vast majority of players would not be skilled enough to do so. What happens when a lesser-skilled player hits AQ40? Bam, they're done. Ok, let's remove AQ40 from the equation. What happens when they hit Sunwell? Bam, they're done.

Content has an expiration date. That expiration date is when you can reasonably expect a large amount of raiders to be tired with that content or to have no progression-related reason to step into that content. I stopped raiding tier 7 after clearing tier 8. I stopped raiding tier 8 after clearing tier 9. And so on. Should those remain a part of progression just because new players haven't experienced them yet? No, not at all. My level 20 priest has never stepped foot in MC, BWL, ZG, AQ, Kara, Gruul... etc... and should never have to. If I had to progress through all of those instances, I would not play the game at all.

Entry-level raid gear has a time and a place. That time is... during entry-level raids and while progressing through the next tier. The wonderful thing about current raiding is that every patch from here on out will add a new "entry-level" raid. Right now tier 11 is entry-level. When tier 13 is released, tier 12 will be entry-level. And it'll go on and on.

Sorry, Shrike, but you were way off the mark.