The dangers of MUDflation - gear scaling in WoW

[Tropos]

This is so true.

[Deleted]

I think it's mandatory to give people the feeling of progression and the satisfaction of getting significantly stronger gear by the time.
The only way to do that is MUDflation, the better the gear is the more the people get motivated to get it.

At least that my point of view.

Sure, give everyone better gear, that's not the issue. But does good gear two tiers above the normal tier need to be 50% more effective in order to motivate you?

Do we really need DPS to climb from 10k to 35k just by progressing from dungeons to raids?

Ghostcrawler himself said that while the absolute power of player increases, the relative power always stays roughly the same. So why not curb the rate of inflation?

[sinisterwyvern]

edit: hmm it double posted instead of added to it

[mickybrighteyes]

So people look at the huge leap in stats available on each new tier available and think that someone is asking to trivialize content?

Nice jump from stat allocation on gear to content people.

[Askyl]

1. "Jimmy in blue beats Tom in purples if Tom sucks" - this is true now. Assuming that the iLevel difference is not so great (e.g., 200 vs. 346), then a skilled player can and do stomp the idiot to the ground.

2. Trivializing old content - why shouldn't old content be "trivialized" anyway? This is what progression means - moving from the older, outdated ones to the newer, harder raids / dungeons. If you are feeling nostalgic, nothing would stop you from equipping the inferior gear and having a go at it.

There is no way in hell my paladin in his blue retrigear would beat the crap out of someone in full epic PvP gear. No.. Way..

---------- Post added 2011-07-06 at 10:56 AM ----------

If they had continued with the tiny upgrades, then a person in Tier 2 would've been able to do TK or SSC.

I don't quite see how that is a good thing.

Sure, there are large gaps in-between expansions. Too large, perhaps.

But it's working right now, isn't it?

You know, Illidan was killed in the chinese version just like 3 weeks after release with some T3 gear. The point OP is trying to make is that the gear is getting out of hand. And it's BETTER for both players and the MMO itself if the item stats progression were a bit slower and that the raids were more skill intense.

The thing is.. A regular guild in vanilla WoW couldn't kill Nefarian if they were given only blues, even if the differense between blues and epics weren't THAT big.

[Deleted]

This + Class homogenization is basicly what's ruining or has ruined WoW.

[bcbully]

This + Class homogenization is basicly what's ruining or has ruined WoW.

at its core.

mudflation = not enough relevant content, gear treadmill burn out.
Homogenization = "Super soldiers" that are all do the same thing. Items that are all the same. Just look at Ilvl and equip...

[kojinshugi]

You're calling intentional design a design flaw.

This isn't MUDflation, this is planned obsolescence of gear and content. They don't want you to use Naxx gear in Sunwell, or Sunwell gear in ICC, or ICC gear to kill Deathwing.

[Deleted]

So people look at the huge leap in stats available on each new tier available and think that someone is asking to trivialize content?

Nice jump from stat allocation on gear to content people.

You failed to see the connection then.

The most common complaint in Cataclysm is "lack of content", even though objectively speaking, Cataclysm has about as much content as any previous expansion pack.

Why is that?

Take the final 6 months of BC for example: People were raiding Karazhan in small PuGs and occasionally dipping into Zul'Aman if they felt like it. Larger PuGs were run into Mount Hyjal and sometimes Black Temple as well, all with reasonable success. While gear inflation made all those instances easier and more accessible, they were far from trivial. That's 4 instances that were pugged on a regular basis by a large amount of players, all while the hardcore duked it out in Sunwell.

Everyone was happy. Puggers had plenty of choice, Hardcore had challenging raids and the PvE raids stayed relevant throughout the expansion.

But ever since TotC, Blizzard switched to a "scorched earth" concept that essentially rendered all raid content aside from the current tier (and arguably the previous one) obsolete. Now puggers only really ran a single instance and had little choice and variation to chose from. Not only did this lead to a lack of content (which didn't become apparent until Cata) but it's also a very wasteful consumption of raid-content.

The balance is just off.

Yes, gearing up later in the game should be faster and more seamless, but it shouldn't be rendered completely obsolete.

Ideally this is how things should work:

Current Tier: Drops 2/3 items per boss
Previous Tier: Drops 3/4 items per boss
Pre-Previous Tier: Drops 4/5 items per boss
Pre-Pre-Previous Tier: Drops 5/6 items per boss

You get the gist. So while gearing up is still necessary, you also get a lot more items in the process thus reducing the grind to a matter of a few weeks at most. Now reducing the power creep can help this by deemphasizing gear for the individual. Meaning it would be much easier to carry a few lesser geared players with you if the difference between Normal and Heroic gear wasn't around 20% DPS. It would also make the game a whole lot PuG friendlier.

[Aktavite]

IIRC this has been noted by Blizzard. I think it was at Blizzcon or something.

[mickybrighteyes]

You failed to see the connection then.

The most common complaint in Cataclysm is "lack of content", even though objectively speaking, Cataclysm has about as much content as any previous expansion pack.

I never expressed any notion towards or against the point. I expressed that people seem to confuse the OP's statement as justification of trivializing the current content. Which is comepletely wrong being that content is scaled approprioately to the gear/power lvl of the players.

[Video Games]

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.

For an arcane mage, the difference between full bis t11 and full bis t12 is about 9k dps. So uh, yeah.

[nextormento]

Sure, give everyone better gear, that's not the issue. But does good gear two tiers above the normal tier need to be 50% more effective in order to motivate you?

Do we really need DPS to climb from 10k to 35k just by progressing from dungeons to raids?

Ghostcrawler himself said that while the absolute power of player increases, the relative power always stays roughly the same. So why not curb the rate of inflation?

Yes, absolutely: you need to scale exponentialy to preserve the sense of acomplishment.

Simple case scenario: You have a game in which each level gives you a certain amount of one stat, in our case 'power'; you start with 10 power at level 1
-Linear stats (no scaling): each level you gain 1 power. First time you gear up is all nice, you gained a 10% of your initial power, from 10 to 11. Second time you go from 11 power to 12 (a 9.09% increase). By the time you reach level 4 you only increase your power by 8.33% (from 12 to 13). So each time you gear up you gain less power: that's poor designing.
-Percentual stats (linear scaling): each level you gain 10% of your power. When you ding level 2 you get 11 power. When you ding level 3 you get 12.1 power and so on. Sounds better, except that this model is boring: you don't really have any interest on leveling up, as you will be just as strong in relative terms.
-Increasing percentual stats, (exponential scaling): each level you gain (10*level)% power. At level 2 you get (10*1)=10% increase, so from 10 to 11, just like always. At level 2 you get (10*2)=20% increase, from 11 to (12+2.2)=14.2 and so on. You want to gear up just because the treat for doing so is to be ever more powerful.

That's the very nature of a game where the goal is to upgrade, in which wow fits perfectly. This is not only good but necesary to keep the playerbase entertained. Blaming on this very fact the lack of need to run old dungeons is simply out of line.
GC comment was more in line with the relative power against your foes: every time you jump from tier to tier, bosses are stronger. But it's necesary that older content becomes easier in an exponential way or you would not feel like you achieved anything. Besides, there is a curb down in place: combat ratings that tone down the gain you get from gear every time you level up.

[Deleted]

Ok, you're right about needing exponential scaling. But WoW goes further than that.

Let's assume we start with 100 HP at level 1 and the basic idea is to double HP and all stats every 10 levels (that was roughly the original concept irrc):
Level 1: 100 HP
Level 10: 200 HP
Level 20: 400 HP
Level 30: 800 HP
Level 40: 1600 HP
Level 50: 3200 HP
Level 60: 6400 HP
Level 70: 12800 HP
Level 80: 25600 HP
Level 90: 51200 HP

But as you can see, Blizzard doesn't scale exponentially either. It scales hyper-exponentially or simply...at random. If Blizz had followed the basic exponential scaling formula, we'd be fine but they didn't for various reasons.

The main reason why Blizzard was forced to scale HP ab absurdum was because of how offensive stats ibteract with one another. WoW has too many offensive stats that increase your damage output, but hardly any stats that reduce your damage intake. So getting 15% more Spellpower, Crit, Haste and Mastery each Tier in fact turns out to be more of a 25% increase because all those stats scale off each other as well.

Why Blizz decided 15% stat increase each tier was a good idea is beyond me. It might have made sense when there were only 3 tiers of content, but now with hardmodes there are way way more. However instead of reducing the gear-steps, they just decided to pile it up on top.

[rabbimojo]

Sure, give everyone better gear, that's not the issue. But does good gear two tiers above the normal tier need to be 50% more effective in order to motivate you?

Do we really need DPS to climb from 10k to 35k just by progressing from dungeons to raids?

Ghostcrawler himself said that while the absolute power of player increases, the relative power always stays roughly the same. So why not curb the rate of inflation?

I don't know if you're playing the same game as me or not, but that doesn't sound accurate at all. Players who are capable of doing 35k in heroic FL gear are not going to be doing only 10k in 346 with raid buffs.

Last night I was bear tanking for a friend's warrior alt whose ilvl averages 352, due to some quest rewards, bit of ZA/ZG gear. He was doing 18k regularly in a group with no other physical DPS. He's fury, so his raid buffs don't really even stack with my bear buffs. Priest healer. Keep in mind this is an alt. If he were to play it regularly, even with no upgrades at all I expect he'd be breaking 20k. (Since it's important: Both weapons are 346.)

Throw in the rest of the raid buffs, flasks, set bonuses? You start to see why top-geared players are simmed to do significantly more damage. Inflation plays a part in it, but I think you're overestimating.

[Edit: Realized the following was already stated. 's what I get for skimming.]
Anyways, to answer your question here: The rate of inflation exists to provide players with a sense of progression. If you're only 2% stronger after 6 months of raiding, the gear incentive has evaporated. What your quote in the first post describes as a negative is something Blizzard has specifically supported as a positive. It creates value for a lot of players in a relatively joyless activity.

[nnelson54]

MUDflation is as old as the games it is named for, MUDs. Which means it's been around for 20+ years. It is not a problem with WoW. Every game runs into it at some point.

[tacoloco]

Funny topic. I was just in deadmines and did 77k+ using a cannon. I had the thought at that time, that it won't be long until 77k is the new 15k per person.