The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
The lead designers were originally going to talk about this topic at BlizzCon, but it didn’t really match the content of the rest of our “Intro to Pandaria” presentation, and seeing as how we finished our 90-minute slot with 93 seconds remaining, there wouldn’t have been room for it anyway. But several of us did bring up the issue with players and media we talked to, and it even ended up in at least one FAQ, so we figured we’d go ahead and get the information out there. Note that unlike much of what we presented for the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion, this is not an announcement. It’s more of a problem we’d like to address, and a couple of ways we potentially might do so. Feedback is certainly appreciated.

Big Number Syndrome
Hey, our stats are growing exponentially. If you look at everything from the Strength on a weapon to the damage being done by a Fireball crit or the amount of health the Morchok boss has, they look downright absurd compared to the numbers for level 60 characters in the original shipping version of World of Warcraft. It’s not exactly a surprise that we were going to end up here, and we knew where we were going every step of the way, yet regardless, here we are.


Fig. 1. Item level vs. character level. Brown = vanilla. Green = BC. Blue = LK. Red = Cat.

The numbers grew so much primarily because we wanted rewards to be compelling. Upgrading from a chestpiece that has 50 Strength into one that has 51 Strength is undeniably a DPS increase for the appropriate user, but it’s not a very exciting reward. Such negligible increases can drive players to do some weird things, such as skipping over tiers of gear or entire levels of content. This is particularly relevant when we’re talking about a new expansion. We don’t want level-85 players to have a reasonable shot at level-90 dungeons and raids (or PvP opponents) just because that content is balanced for gear that isn’t much better than what the level-85 players have.

So we arrived at this point in a logical fashion, and we don’t really think we should have handled things any differently. However, it’s still a weird place to be, and it’s about to get weirder. These aren’t real items, in that we don’t know for sure what the item levels will be in patch 5.3 and patch 6.3 (if only we planned that far ahead!) but they are reasonable guesses, and you can see just how ridiculous the items look.


Fig. 2. A theoretical item from patch 5.3.


Fig. 3. A theoretical item from patch 6.3.

So what do we do about it? There are two general categories of solutions. The first is to make the numbers appear more manageable and the second is to actually change the numbers.

Mega Damage
The first solution could include changes like adding commas and the like to large numbers. We could also compress all of those 1000s to Ks and all of those 1,000,000s to Ms, much like we do with boss health today. Internally, we have been calling this the “Mega Damage solution” because instead of your Fireball hitting for 6,000,000 damage, it would hit for 6 MEGA DAMAGE (queue the Arcanite Ripper guitar solo).


Fig. 4. Mega Damage. Name/screenshot not to be taken seriously.

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.

Item Level Squish
The second solution actually involves compressing item levels, which is why we call it the “item level squish solution.” If we can lower stats on items, then we can lower every other number in the game as well, such as how much damage a Fireball does or how much health a gronn has. If you look at the item level curves, you can see that most of the growth occurs at the maximum character levels for the various expansions. This is because we keep rewarding more and more powerful gear to make the new raid tier and PvP season in an expansion reward significantly better gear than the previous one. However, those huge item level jumps don’t accomplish a lot once the character level has increased again. Very few players notice or care how much of an upgrade the Black Temple loot is over the Serpentshrine Cavern loot when their characters are level 80.

With that in mind, we could go back and compress the big item level increases that occur at level 60, 70, 80 and 85. The Mists of Pandaria gear would still grow exponentially from patch to patch, but the baselines would be a lot lower. Health could go from 150,000 back down to something like 20,000. The big risk of this approach is that players will log into the new expansion and feel nerfed… even if all the other numbers are compressed as well.

In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller. Logically, this seems like it would work, and it does. But it feels weird. When we tried this internally, everyone agreed that it just felt off throwing a spell for hundreds of damage when you are used to it doing thousands of damage.

I came up with an analogy -- even though I know logically that people drive on the left side of the street in the UK (we drive on the right side of the street in the US) and wouldn’t be surprised to see it, it would still feel really disorienting if I was driving in the UK and had to make a right-hand turn.


Fig. 5. Item level vs. character level before and after ‘squish’. Brown = vanilla. Green = BC. Blue = LK. Red = Cat

So Now What?
As I type this today, we haven’t decided on which if either solution we want to try. Maybe we’ll come up with yet another solution. Maybe it’s the kind of thing we can put off for another expansion so that players don’t have to adjust to the new talent system and a drastic item level compression at the same time. Or maybe it’s better just to pull the Band-Aid off fast and fix everything at once. Time will tell. I did, however, want to outline the problem lest any of you believe we don’t think there is a problem. There is. We’re just not sure of the best solution yet. If your answer is that stat budgets don’t have to grow so much in order for players to still want the gear, our experience says otherwise, and thus these proposed solutions exist. Your thoughts on the matter are valuable.

Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. The last time he used “Fig. 5” in an article, it related fish predation to estuarine hydrocarbon contamination.
This article was originally published in forum thread: The Great Item Squish (or Not) of Pandaria started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 848 Comments
  1. Slyan's Avatar
    While I don't like that if the squish happens it will (and don't kid yourselves, you know it'll feel like it) a nerf, not just a nerf but a massive nerf from the sounds of it, but it does seem like something that needs to be done even with a sadface on my face. I enjoyed seeing my tank health just going waaay up every time. Going to miss the 150k+ tank and frown at the return of the 20k tank but what must be done, must be done.
  1. Dokuza's Avatar
    I think people are turned off by the 'MEGA DAMAGE!!!' caption and not actually reading the article.I would like the "turn the 1000s into Ks" idea. So if you're doing 30k dps, you're doing 30k dps...You hit mob for 30000 physical damage. Translates to:You hit mob for 30k physical damage.If it gets into the millions which it will, then simply will beYou hit mob for 3000000 physical damage.You hit mob for 3M physical damage.Seems like a simple easy fix.
  1. Aeriedk's Avatar
    I prefer the numerical squish. If they item squish and we all go back to lets say 30k hp that means they will have to retune all of the cata instances in order for people to be able to do them. Blizzard fails at balance how will they do 2 expacs at a time.

    All they need to do is stop making it so steep. Why the hell did I go from 33k hp with basically full BiS gear from ICC to 140k hp with full BiS from firelands. 33-45 sure, 33-140 and not even done yet, insane.
  1. Pasture's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by ihyln View Post
    All I read was "blah blah blah I have no idea how to tackle this issue". Clearly Blizzard's lead designer is fishing the community for answers to problems he's paid to solve.

    The guy is a joke.
    Are you serious? They give the community an opportunity to input into the conversation and you whine about it? This sort of thing should be encouraged. Just because it's 'his job' doesn't mean a community of millions of players can't help to put together a more elegant solution.
  1. Slyan's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by SomberAngel View Post
    The problem I see with the item squish is that the devs would basically have to go back and rework all the dungeons, all the raids, all the zones, etc, etc... Which would mean more work, I think and more potentials for bugs... Granted, I do not feel that the two items they posted are great either. I just don't want to have less health then a lvl 50 dungeon boss at 90. It would just make no sense at all. I'm seriously hoping if they decide to item squish us, they don't take away all the fun in soloing past dungeons and raids
    Bliz said the nerf goes across the board. Item Squish will be reducing EVERYTHING. That includes the level 50 dungeon bosses. So you could still end up with higher health, but until it actually happens we wont know for sure.
  1. VXBlade's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Matutin View Post
    Well if someone knows a bit of programming, the problem is that bigger numbers > bigger variables to hold the data. bigger variables > moar resources needed.
    They already have to be using 32 bit variables for the numbers they have in the game... that being said, that wouldn't change until you hit somewhere in 2 billions range for signed, and 4 billion for unsigned... in other words. wouldn't make a difference in programming till that threshold is reached.
  1. mmoc041784c2d8's Avatar
    Guess most of us agree that the squish is better (I do too), however it makes gear less important (potentially good), and classes that scale better with it might be affected in the long run and may end up requiring tweaks.
  1. mmocc3e324ee93's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by VXBlade View Post
    They already have to be using 32 bit variables for the numbers they have in the game... that being said, that wouldn't change until you hit somewhere in 2 billions range for signed, and 4 billion for unsigned... in other words. wouldn't make a difference in programming till that threshold is reached.
    Boss HP is already nearing the 2147mil cap. Deathwing has 838mil.

    But they raised the max gold cap from 2147mil copper to 9999mil, so thre shouldn't be an issue to do the same with stats.
  1. Pekoe's Avatar
    Yes. Squish me plx. Good idea.
  1. mmoc70895a0c51's Avatar
    I have discussed this with a friend of mine a loooooooooooooong time ago. Back then numbers felt too high for me already. Now they are just ridiculous. I dont enjoy running around with 150k health and hitting for 12309710371 dmg. So I am definitly for squishing item levels down for more reasonable numbers.I think in the transition it would feel kinda weird for most ppl. But in the long run, when you upgrade your gear the dmg increase will be more noticeable if you take the dmg numbers of sct alone, bc it is just more clear if the numbers are small. In its current state you could disable them entirely even, since most ppl just watch on the dps count of dmg meters.
  1. maniacshoter's Avatar
    if balanced the right way i think that the squish is better in terms of performance for our computers and the server aswell , and yes it would feel weird at the start but it`s something we get used over the time.
  1. mmoc698802e66a's Avatar
    Implementing large number arithmetic is not as big deal as GC implies, but by all means six-digit numbers are hard to track by human eye.

    1. GC said 'Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today'... Against which level? - if you dare me to ask. I can suppose, the maximum (90) only.
    'Your lvl90 Fireball hit lvl3 Kolbord for 3 damage / 4%' -- no thanks, please.

    Ok. Assume every raid boss got it's HP cut 10 times.
    Ragnaros (MC) goes to 100K, Kil'Jaden about 900K, LK 1.7-10M, Ragnaros (FL) 6.7-42M.
    No good... Dividing an exponential plot by 10 still gives an exponential plot.

    2. So flat nerf is not the solution. The higher level (of player or boss) the larger nerfbat...

    Let's do some home-spanned simulations. All numbers are only my speculations, but they grow roughly linear (as GC intends? 'see fig. 5').
    Rag 1M, KJ 1.5M, LK 2M, Rag(FL) 2.5M??
    In this case Firelands would't be so cosmically harder compared to MC. Or maybe MC wouldn 't be so dramatically easier compared to FL?

    3. Redesigning stats for lvl 60-85 means, that they need to take a look at damage table of every mob, thrash and boss added in BC, WotLK and Cata.
    Than adjust every item which can drop from mob / boss, reputation items, gems, enchants and... quest rewards.
    Tuning last 3 expansions is a lot of work and optimization, much more than adding big integers into game engine.
    Could this mean 'Hey, in next expansion we continue redesigning levelling zones, this time 61-85'?

    4a. Conclusion 2:
    - Why did you stand in fire?!
    - Err... It does only 2k per tic, so the healer should heal it through...

    4b. Conclusion 1:
    - Why did you stand in fire?!
    - Err... I didn't see it under all those digits in my damage meter...


    Personally I'd opt for squishing.
  1. Callace's Avatar
    I'm down for Mega Damage. I didn't level nearly a hundred times to hit for less than hundreds of thousands.
  1. tohyatvc's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Slyan View Post
    Bliz said the nerf goes across the board. Item Squish will be reducing EVERYTHING. That includes the level 50 dungeon bosses. So you could still end up with higher health, but until it actually happens we wont know for sure.
    There's no reason it should affect level 50 anything. The changes shouldn't happen until TBC and beyond. Even the graph clearly shows that. The uptick at the end of vanilla to ilvl 90 items is T3 which disappeared anyway...
  1. Tyresias's Avatar
    For all those that think soloing old instances and the like is over just one word. RELAX. The squish has to be across the board and the readon is simple. How exactly would you be able to lvl if your stats have be squished to hell and the low level zones have not. It this huge number nerf(wich let's face it it's a bit needed even if we won't like it) is going to happen it has to be done across all the content unless they plan letting you lvl from 1-90 in pandaria and then just stay there because a cockroach in a vanilla zone can one-shot you(exagerating ofc).
  1. llubtoille's Avatar
    I'd prefer the 2nd option, where each expansion the ilev of the precious expansion gets significantly reduced. my only concern would be that the graph presented seems to indicate end-game lev85 would be on par / superior to lev90 dungeon / intro raid gear. which would indicate, that anyone who raids deathwing will likely not replace their gear while leveling to 90. but that's an easy thing to fix, simply nudge the red bar up slightly and drop it down again when the expansion's at an end. There would be other bonuses (or negatives, depends on your PoV) you wouldn't be able to deck yourself out in outlands gear and crush all those in vanilla gear quite so easily (you'd still have the gem advantage tho) the jump from vanilla -> tbc and tbc-> warth etc wouldn't render all your previous loot severely inadequate. With all that said, if they did go option 2, I'd just hope they didn't miss anything, If even a few pieces get missed and remain at ilev 300+, while everything else gets knocked down to ~100, well, imagine the pvp XD On the same note, imagine some random eel with 40k hp hitting you for half your health, it would kill that area for leveling. TLR - I'd vote option 2 if they did it 'right'.
  1. Shadowstrike's Avatar
    Personally, i agree with the item squish. Apart from losing your "omigosh 150k shadow bolt crit i are bested lock!" feeling i believe it will provide smoother transition for future expacs/patches. If they CAN and if they do it PROPERLY it will be the best solution possible imho. As others said, the probability for bugs exists, but i still dont think it will be that much of an issue. PS: I hate how 113k looks in my HP bar. I want to feel like a player, not like a dungeon boss. The same applies for 6-digit floating texts.. The only place where i want to see those is when i do Throne of the Tides..
  1. tohyatvc's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Tyresias View Post
    For all those that think soloing old instances and the like is over just one word. RELAX. The squish has to be across the board and the readon is simple. How exactly would you be able to lvl if your stats have be squished to hell and the low level zones have not. It this huge number nerf(wich let's face it it's a bit needed even if we won't like it) is going to happen it has to be done across all the content unless they plan letting you lvl from 1-90 in pandaria and then just stay there because a cockroach in a vanilla zone can one-shot you(exagerating ofc).
    You're just completely wrong. Oh dear.
  1. Holyniwa's Avatar
    I dont particularly look at the exact numbers when fighting, i just look at how much % will my heal/dmg affect my target- so im down with the compress theory.
  1. mmoc46acbcd7f9's Avatar
    i reckon blizzard will go with the "squish item level approach".. as far as the graphs go, we would be near sunwell "item level" at the end of MoP.So it seems that we would go all the way back to where we were at the end of vanilla, starting off with 8-10k hp as a tank

Site Navigation