Itemsquish reminder

[jbombard]

Just because they've made concessions to accommodate this niche gameplay that has emerged due to power creep, doesn't mean raids were ever meant to be solo'd.

Blizzard often bends their game design to accommodate unintended gameplay. Take H Rag for example. The encounter was intended to have people rotate in and out of the frost patches. But due to a slight oversight, people could put their entire raid in it without triggering a Magma Geyser. What did Blizzard do? They removed the Magma Geyser trigger from the encounter so people could just stack up.

They have said on several occasions that while they don't design raids to be soloed, they encourage players to enjoy the game as they see fit and they are aware they some people solo even current raid content but as long as it is not done using exploits they are fine with it and think it is good for the game to have players like that who really push the envelope of what can be done.

Regardless they like that people solo old raids, because they like that people are playing the game and seeing old content, and they likely do not want to break that aspect of gameplay as it ends up with players having less to do.

[benadryl]

For "not being meant to solo them" blizzard sure is doing all kinds of stuff to stop you from doing them solo, amirite?
I mean, correct me if I wrong but doesn't blizzard typically fix something that wasn't intended to be done? At least eventually?
Soloing old raids has been a thing since wrath. They haven't done anything to "fix" it.
They aren't going to because it isn't a problem.

gold change took about 5 seconds with wowtools

the ability to bypass raid restriction is a script people were using in vanilla

both of those were just quick fixes, they brought up the item squish in 5.0 to prepare you for the item squish in 6.0
it's happening and wow needs it

[Athorha]

(That's just base fact, the difference between 11 and 12 is more recognizable than the difference between 11,000 and 12,000)

The fuck are you smoking?

[Ferocity]

Well everyone has different tastes, but BG1, BG2, and Planescape Torment are considered some of the best RPGs of all time by many people. Icewind Dale series lacks the story elements that makes the other games really strong and tends to be more of cult/niche favorite.

(Sorry for off-topic) BG1+BG2+ToB was a great and epic story, P:T had very unusual story and interaction with world too. That's what was making them so popular. But what concerns character development, that was quite meh. And many powerful foes could barely be done without extensive cheating (like off-screening and nuking, which is imo cheating, - Gromnir with his adds especially comes to mind). But story isn't the only part of RPG. MM had both - story and gameplay - done brilliantly (if to ignore MM 8 and 9).

[xskarma]

I never liked the squish idea due to soloing old content, but felt it was probably a good idea regardless. Having consciencely watched the numbers this expansion with the squish in mind, and how I feel about it, I've decided I don;t care about the bigger numbers. The numbers will keep growing anyway, and a new squish is inevitable at some point, so screw it. Just keep the numbers and make them grow. Make me have 5M health in 2 expansions, with gobsmacking DPS to match. Don't care. I want to feel bigger and more powerful as expansions go on, not revert.

[jbombard]

(Sorry for off-topic) BG1+BG2+ToB was a great and epic story, P:T had very unusual story and interaction with world too. That's what was making them so popular. But what concerns character development, that was quite meh. And many powerful foes could barely be done without extensive cheating (like off-screening and nuking, which is imo cheating, - Gromnir with his adds especially comes to mind). But story isn't the only part of RPG. MM had both - story and gameplay - done brilliantly (if to ignore MM 8 and 9).

Well, here it comes down to opinion. IMHO the slow pacing is what made BG1 great, when you got an upgrade or a new level it really felt good, where as games that throw out gear and levels like candy it starts to feel meaningless. For example I have been playing Rift recently which I rather enjoy, the Alternate Advancement system they have however levels up so often I find myself completely ignoring it and it doesn't feel exciting at all.(but it is better than nothing at max level) The class system they use in BG1 is however rather simplistic I probably enjoyed the class system used by Icewind Dale 2(D&D 3.5) the best out of them all, but the sense of progress and growing in power in BG1 was great.

- - - Updated - - -

gold change took about 5 seconds with wowtools

the ability to bypass raid restriction is a script people were using in vanilla

both of those were just quick fixes, they brought up the item squish in 5.0 to prepare you for the item squish in 6.0
it's happening and wow needs it

lol if you say so. The squish doesn't actually fix anything because the issue is fundamental to the game's design. It simply postpones the issue. They have not release specific information on how exactly it will be squished, nor information on what exactly they tested. If they squish, there will be issues, with anything that complex there always are. So Blizzard could waste their time screwing around with something people neither want nor need, or they could spend their time creating content people want to play.

[Aquamonkey]

lol if you say so. The squish doesn't actually fix anything because the issue is fundamental to the game's design. It simply postpones the issue. They have not release specific information on how exactly it will be squished, nor information on what exactly they tested. If they squish, there will be issues, with anything that complex there always are. So Blizzard could waste their time screwing around with something people neither want nor need, or they could spend their time creating content people want to play.

The squish system is already finished, all that is left is plugging it in and tuning/balancing. You are under the mistaken impression that the people making tuning/balance changes are the same people that actually make the content. Tuning/balancing don't affect content development. Things like dungeons, new player models, redoing zones, etc. are what would cut into content because they require new assets to be created.

[Vynestra]

Cannot wait til monks touch of death in a few xpacs can go into icc and 1 shot everything xD...

[jbombard]

The squish system is already finished, all that is left is plugging it in and tuning/balancing. You are under the mistaken impression that the people making tuning/balance changes are the same people that actually make the content. Tuning/balancing don't affect content development. Things like dungeons, new player models, redoing zones, etc. are what would cut into content because they require new assets to be created.

First of all you have no idea how far along the development is. Having a working prototype of a couple subsystems in the game is not remotely the same thing as having something running in game without any issues. You have no idea how far along or not far along the development is because they have given no specific details. Regardless once it is in the hands of players it will have issues that need fixing.

Also, content development is not just models and skins, scripts and programming are very much a part of it. When things don't work who do you think fixes it? Developers fix it. Developers fixing stuff that they shouldn't have broken in the first place are developers not working on new content. Also those developers roles aren't interchangeable so when you bottleneck one group it can impact how fast new content can be released.

[Aquamonkey]

First of all you have no idea how far along the development is. Having a working prototype of a couple subsystems in the game is not remotely the same thing as having something running in game without any issues. You have no idea how far along or not far along the development is because they have given no specific details. Regardless once it is in the hands of players it will have issues that need fixing.

"All working." "We squished everything." "Whole thing implemented."

So we had this all in and working. We squished everything, and it was working. We had the whole thing implemented, and we sat down and tried it out, and, you know, Mortal Strike hit for 200, and Fireball hit for 150, and we were like, “This feels wrong.” We knew exactly how it would feel like, and we knew that our damage as a percentage didn’t go down, but it felt terrible. And we were like, “Okay, this is now super risky”, because we’re going to change talent trees on players, and even though we think it’s a great design, and we think players will love it, it’s a hard sell. And to do that, and have them hit really wimpy, I think even if players understood why we did it, deep down they wouldn’t like it.

So we decided to back off of that. 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)

Also, content development is not just models and skins, scripts and programming are very much a part of it. When things don't work who do you think fixes it? Developers fix it. Developers fixing stuff that they shouldn't have broken in the first place are developers not working on new content. Also those developers roles aren't interchangeable so when you bottleneck one group it can impact how fast new content can be released.

How is changing the numerical values of dmg/hp going to break encounter mechanics? I don't recall number tweaking hotfixes breaking raid encounters. Also, the biggest drain on development time goes into the art and architecture.

What new content would you be willing to give up so that artists could focus on Silvermoon? (Source)

A patch used to include dungeons and raids, not a patch is just balance and dailies.
Dragon Soul came with few new boss models and virtually no new architecture because of the 3 dungeons included in that patch. (Source)

This makes me believe that dungeons take a lot more effort than many peeps realize. oO Loved the Eternity one.
The architecture (the physical dungeon) takes a very long time. The encounters take time too, but usually less. You can mitigate that by doing outdoor dungeons, but it's easy to overdo those. (Source)

Why can't the scenario team work on dungeons instead? Can't stand scenarios as healer; even in guild as disc.
Good dungeons require a lot of art. (Source)

Why does it take so much more time to design a dungeon than a scenario?
Art is the big one, but the boss mechanics are also more complex and we have to make sure the loot and lock outs work correctly. (Source)

So while the artists are doing their thing, devs can balance encounters.

[jbombard]

"All working." "We squished everything." "Whole thing implemented."

So we had this all in and working. We squished everything, and it was working. We had the whole thing implemented, and we sat down and tried it out, and, you know, Mortal Strike hit for 200, and Fireball hit for 150, and we were like, “This feels wrong.” We knew exactly how it would feel like, and we knew that our damage as a percentage didn’t go down, but it felt terrible. And we were like, “Okay, this is now super risky”, because we’re going to change talent trees on players, and even though we think it’s a great design, and we think players will love it, it’s a hard sell. And to do that, and have them hit really wimpy, I think even if players understood why we did it, deep down they wouldn’t like it.

So we decided to back off of that. 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)

How is changing the numerical values of dmg/hp going to break encounter mechanics?

Subjective, out of context, and taken from a short quote with no details. "We tried it out" shows no indication of what was tested or how much testing was performed, testing and bug fixing before something is released is a significant part of the development process that you seem happy to gloss over to try and make a point. Seems like your grasping for straws.

And your last statement is almost funny it is so out of touch with reality. If they change the numbers and something doesn't work do you think they are going to change the numbers again and hope something doesn't break somewhere else that would require doing the same thing over and over again endlessly, or to fix the specific encounter mechanics to work with the new numbers.

[Razorice]

I don't mind the item squish, but first I want to reach 1M HP :P

[threads]

My problem is not the size of numbers these days, it's the stupid scaling that's happening. I don't care if our dps and hp is even higher next xpac, but I don't like how just 10 ilvls is such a huge jump in dps. It's nearly impossible to keep up with equal or even lesser skilled players if you're behind in gear right now.

[melodramocracy]

For "not being meant to solo them" blizzard sure is doing all kinds of stuff to stop you from doing them solo, amirite?
I mean, correct me if I wrong but doesn't blizzard typically fix something that wasn't intended to be done? At least eventually?
Soloing old raids has been a thing since wrath. They haven't done anything to "fix" it.
They aren't going to because it isn't a problem.

They generally don't consider it worth the effort to fix, though they certainly nerfed the gold drop from old raids.

From a game designers perspective, you gain nothing by having content become obsolete / irrelevant, as it effectively shrinks the world for your playerbase. As a player, you becoming stronger, via gear, is designed to allow you participate in newer, and harder, content. That's the core of the treadmill that keeps players going, constantly getting to that next level to defeat that next opponent.

You becoming so powerful that older content is trivial is a side effect of gearing up that I'm sure they'd love to implement a fix for. Why not put sought after, current drops or craftable materials on older bosses, for example? It would add a very high level of variety to the game.

[Abysal]

Also, the squish smooths out the leveling process between old expansions. It gets rid of the massive power jumps at those transitions so when you go to Hyjal/Vash'jir for the first time, you aren't faced with mobs 50+ ilvls higher than you are.

The flip side to that is that it makes leveling, especially the transitions between expansions far more boring. You feel yourself get noticeably more powerful the first few levels in Outlands, Northrend, Hyjal/Vash, and Pandaria. With the item squish, leveling becomes even more dull and tedious than everyone already complains that it is.

[Aquamonkey]

Subjective, out of context, and taken from a short quote with no details. "We tried it out" shows no indication of what was tested or how much testing was performed, testing and bug fixing before something is released is a significant part of the development process that you seem happy to gloss over to try and make a point. Seems like your grasping for straws.

And your last statement is almost funny it is so out of touch with reality. If they change the numbers and something doesn't work do you think they are going to change the numbers again and hope something doesn't break somewhere else that would require doing the same thing over and over again endlessly, or to fix the specific encounter mechanics to work with the new numbers.

The squish will only come with a new expansion. All the bug-fixing and balancing will have to be done on that new content anyway. The squish will have no affect on it.

The squish takes care of balancing on it's own since everything will be scaled such that same-level stuff will be just as strong as before the squish. The only old content complex enough to potentially have mechanics broken by the squish are raids and that's highly unlikely. I can't remember a time when number tweaking hotfix broke a raid. Even if the balance becomes offset a little, who the fuck cares? It's obsolete content, there is quite a margin of error for it to remain solo'able. Unless something becomes gamebreaking, there's no reason to manually rebalance old content.

Blizzard is going to prioritize fixing balance problems with the new expansion content over fixing the balance problems of solo'ing old content.

[jbombard]

The squish will only come with a new expansion. All the bug-fixing and balancing will have to be done on that new content anyway. The squish will have no affect on it.

The squish takes care of balancing on it's own since everything will be scaled such that same-level stuff will be just as strong as before the squish. The only old content complex enough to potentially have mechanics broken by the squish are raids and that's highly unlikely. I can't remember a time when number tweaking broke a raid during a hotfix. Even if the balance becomes offset a little, who the fuck cares? It's obsolete content, there is quite a margin of error for balancing. Unless something becomes gamebreaking, there's no reason to manually rebalance old content.

Blizzard is going to prioritize fixing balance problems with the new expansion content over fixing the balance problems of solo'ing old content.

They wouldn't be wasting time on testing and fixing old content with the release of a new expansion if they didn't do a squish. If they do a squish they have to go back and make sure all the old content still works and that is a whole lot of encounters and scripts that need to be looked it. All that time could be spent on developing new content if they don't waste their time with a squish.

[Aquamonkey]

They generally don't consider it worth the effort to fix, though they certainly nerfed the gold drop from old raids.

From a game designers perspective, you gain nothing by having content become obsolete / irrelevant, as it effectively shrinks the world for your playerbase. As a player, you becoming stronger, via gear, is designed to allow you participate in newer, and harder, content. That's the core of the treadmill that keeps players going, constantly getting to that next level to defeat that next opponent.

You becoming so powerful that older content is trivial is a side effect of gearing up that I'm sure they'd love to implement a fix for. Why not put sought after, current drops or craftable materials on older bosses, for example? It would add a very high level of variety to the game.

Blizzard is not above breaking solo'ing either. Anyone remember when they replaced the Vanilla versions of Naxx and Ony in WotLK? Or the Vanilla world dragons? Or ZA? Or ZG?

[Pascal]

Awhile ago, I was talking to my friend about heroic jin'rohk numbers. I kept saying I was doing 16k-18k, or stuff like that. He told me I needed to go back to wrath with those numbers, and I was confused because I thought I was doing okay for my gear. Then I realized I was saying 16,000 and not 160,000. The extra zeros just became unimportant information to me.

Point is, the numbers lose their meaning when they're so big. I don't care about upgrading something based on stat points to a T like I used to. If it has x-secondary stat I probably want it, if the ilvl is higher it has more int and I'll want that. It doesn't matter what number it says I'm doing as long as the bar with my name on it is bigger than other people's bar. As the numbers just got ridiculously large, and larger, and more and more large, they lost meaning to me. I used to care about exactly what my biggest crits were to certain abilities and the very last digit of my highest possible DPS. Now it's just a blob of too many numbers squished together. My biggest crit might be tens of thousands of digits higher than my last biggest crit and I just can't be bothered to care about it.

Mathmatically, the boss will die just as fast if we're doing 8k versus 800k because it will be balanced to be so. But saying "there is no difference" is completely wrong. There is a difference. The difference between 8k and 800k is the difference.

Also, the biggest reason for the item squish was that, from a programming standpoint, they can't feasibly just keep raising the numbers like this forever as they will run into technical difficulties. That's why it's an inevitability.

[Abysal]

Even if the balance becomes offset a little, who the fuck cares? It's obsolete content, there is quite a margin of error for it to remain solo'able.

Apparently Blizzard does since, as you've quoted many times, GC said their goal is that it wouldn't hurt anyone's ability to solo old content.