So much for the "squish"... Ilvl 320 What? oO

[Blamblam41]

I figured since they were doing an ilvl and stat squish they'd go down to like TBC levels, since we didn't need one for a a few expansions and many many raid tiers. Wouldn't it be less work for them if they did that?

Consider that if WoD was 'tbc 2.0' and if Legion was basically WotLK with demons, it makes sense that BfA is a half ass version of Cata.

They are even doing the whole city destroying thing, except with useless side cities instead of the main cities this time (SW, Org).

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This.

The stat squish was and never has been intended to stop exponential stat growth. Since it's not intended to stop exponential stat growth, it will always be needed. I am super happy they're planning it every expansion now (that's what I wanted last expansion too).

Some key quotes from the dev water cooler on the original squish:


It's a pretty safe bet that exponential stat growth is never going away. Now you can argue against a squish and that they should use some other method (I disagree) but proposing that they permanently solve the problem by going away from exponential stat growth is just going to fall on deaf ears.

The problem is rewards -aren't- compelling. They can talk so mad shit about players feeling rewarded, but with a world that scales to your ilvl? There is no reward. Progression falls flat on its face because suddenly the rest of the world is progressing to your level despite getting "exponential upgrades."

And this problem goes further. Endlessly scaling mythic dungeons, 4 different raid difficulties. The idea that endless exponential upgrades in conjuction with endless (or near endless in the case of raids) difficulty scaling is rewarding is absolutely bullshit. Just a psychological trick to keep players on the gear treadmill instead of actually releasing story or gameplay content that is worth a flying fuck.

[Cazz17]

Oh wow 1,000 down to 320 isn't a big squish

[SirBeef]

the numbers are big enough that they feel meaningless but not so big that you cant even make them out anymore

I never got this. At most numbers were 7 digits. Easily recognizable.

[Blamblam41]

Oh wow 1,000 down to 320 isn't a big squish

I don't see why we don't just go to ilvl 100,000. Considering those numbers aren't used in combat, I never understood the need to adjust item levels. They are separate to the stats on gear clearly due to the last squish.

To me it seems like Blizzard justifying a coders pet organization project, like 200 labor hours of painstakingly managing every ilvl down. There are probably a 100,000 other more useful things that developer could be doing though, and it's that lack of management that always seems to ruin Blizzard's plans.

[Blamblam41]

I never got this. At most numbers were 7 digits. Easily recognizable.

That's another thing. If you can't off the cuff recognize a number as 7 or 8 or 9 digits long and you're struck with 'that's too big nurr' maybe that's because of you, not the game.

Not to mention fucking commas. Seriously. Fucking commas. I totally can't tell what the value of 45,756,904 is just by fucking looking at it. ./gargantuan S

[Az0na]

squish is stupid makes me feel weak and akward everytime its done. just should make reading of defaul ui more clear to read, like addons do add a M instead of KK behind health and shit like that nonsense and its fine. 2.4m will be read same as 2.4k then.

and stupid to squish every expansion like gonna be the trent because blizzard blowsup numbers in a expansion anyway.

[Thetruth1400]

Getting into a new expansion and not seeing any new gear for weeks would be terrible design no matter for how small of a minority.
If you follow the same logic, then Heroic raiders won't get loot until first raids? Normal raiders not until Mythic dungeons?

Way to entirely destroy the early-game progression, which IMHO is one of the most fun times in an expansion.

Bigger numbers are not a problem, and by slightly reducing the increase you only delay the inevitable, there is nothing "solved" here.

That's how Vanilla into TBC worked and there wasn't much complaint about it. If you had Naxx gear, you didn't see upgrades until the first raid.

Big numbers ARE a problem though or else they wouldn't be doing a crunch. I honestly want to know if the numbers aren't a problem, what you think they're doing a crunch for.

[brt2pp]

who the fuck cares about ilvl or dps numbers, everything is meaningless besides of how much %hp of the mob you can take away from him in a sec. and this is preety much constant throughout all of past 3 expansions

[Dravec]

Tis what happens when you have four raid difficulties. The power creep is insane now.

We were doing around 200-300k at the start of Legion, and now at the end we're doing 10x that in Antorus gear. It's retarded.

Begs the question if LFR is even necessary anymore considering Normal mode is just LFR with slightly higher numbers and better gear.

[Kathranis]

squish is stupid makes me feel weak and akward everytime its done. just should make reading of defaul ui more clear to read, like addons do add a M instead of KK behind health and shit like that nonsense and its fine. 2.4m will be read same as 2.4k then.

Larger numbers do have an impact on performance, though, when you're talking about a game on the scale of WoW where many thousands of players are doing things simultaneously that need to be calculated.

[Nevcairiel]

That's how Vanilla into TBC worked and there wasn't much complaint about it. If you had Naxx gear, you didn't see upgrades until the first raid.

No, thats not true. Even then you replaced Raid Gear during leveling, in max level dungeons the latest. Naxxramas Gear was ilvl 90, Hellfire Ramparts, the first Dungeon in TBC, already dropped 85, and it only went up from there. Max Level dungeon at the time dropped 115.

Big numbers ARE a problem though or else they wouldn't be doing a crunch. I honestly want to know if the numbers aren't a problem, what you think they're doing a crunch for.

The point is that saving 30 ilvl per expansion by skipping the early-expansion gearing for many players doesn't really change anything major on the ilvl front (ie. it only increases the numbers slightly moreso), but destroys a key element at the start of an expansion. Numbers do get out of hand eventually, but it took us 6 expansions to get to ilvl 1000, so it'll be fine for a while again.

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Larger numbers do have an impact on performance, though, when you're talking about a game on the scale of WoW where many thousands of players are doing things simultaneously that need to be calculated.

Can we drop this misconception? A CPU in your computer or in a WoW Server does not care how "big" a number is. It all calculates the same speed, no matter if its adding 1+1 or 1000000+1000000.

[ONCHEhap]

Max ilvl per expansion:

Classic: 80
TBC: 164. Increase: 84.
Wrath: 284. Increase: 124
Cata: 416. Increase: 132
MOP: 616 Increase: 200
WOD: 795 Increase: 180
Legion: 1000 Increase: 205

The speed of the scaling steadily increased until MoP. It's far too fast now, especially between raids. Squishes allow them to keep going.

starting ilvl in Legion was 750;which makes it a 250 increase;but your point stands

[Blamblam41]

Larger numbers do have an impact on performance, though, when you're talking about a game on the scale of WoW where many thousands of players are doing things simultaneously that need to be calculated.

I think it's dubious or downright misrepresentative to say the numbers have anything to do with performance, especially with the processing power we have today in the average goddamn smartphone.

Like... Are we suddenly forgetting the korean mmos that have no fucking problem going to 2 billion by level 10, and scaling up to quintillions worth of damage by end game? Or like those clicker games that exponentially scale numbers because guess what moving a decimal point is the exact same as moving a comma *eyeroll*.

Point being: Show me there is at all an impact on performance and I'll actually believe it. Until then, I'll keep doing 15 trillion damage per second in warframe.

Edit: Flaming aside, Blizzard probably views 'squishing' as an easier way to handle the game than actually doing something about the real problem: Their engine.

[demonyaa]

The size of the numbers don't impact performance. A processor doesn't care. Diablo usually suffers from performance because there is too many numbers at once, not too high numbers. The higher in keystone you go, the slower you kill - which means you usually collect more mobs, hence more numbers to calculate at once.

You are SO wrong. Processors work with binary. Zeros and Ones, the larger a number the more operations perform calculations on them.

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Can we drop this misconception? A CPU in your computer or in a WoW Server does not care how "big" a number is. It all calculates the same speed, no matter if its adding 1+1 or 1000000+1000000.[/QUOTE]

So you think its the same thing for a CPU to calculate 2 * 2 than 2343534645624563453562980745*345346473568567834654645?

Sorry to bust your bubble but you are the one spreading misconceptions.


EDIT:
https://www.quora.com/For-a-computer...larger-numbers

“Even for a CPU designed to deal with 64-bit integers, if you are trying to perform arbitrary-precision arithmetic with extremely large numbers you will have to have some higher-level algorithm to break up the numbers into chunks that the CPU's instruction set and registers can handle, and then reassemble them in some mathematically-accurate way. This will take several times longer than dealing with smaller numbers, because the arithmetic operator that took only one line of assembly code for small numbers could now take dozens of instructions.

Addition, subtraction, and multiplication have been pretty streamlined for close to 30 years of CPU development, but division remains an algorithmically harder challenge. You can see this in the PDF I linked in my first paragraph, looking at the original Pentium architecture on page 101, for example: the DIV instruction for 8-bit values takes 17 clock cycles, for 16-bit values takes 25 cycles, and for 32-bit values takes 41 cycles. More recent architectures get quite a bit more complicated with pipelining, but a very similar trend holds.”

[Emerald Archer]

Well, you showing 2 logs is basically anecdotal evidence, on a very short boss fight which can allow for some lucky RNG. I know what I saw in Heroic and I know what I see now.

And I told you it was an 89th percentile at the time, which means it wasn't the peak. You can always look for yourself, rather than being lazy and just calling rng.

I know what you saw in heroic, and i'm saying heroic is completely irrelevant to this, because players playing their spec wrong doesn't = how much damage that spec does.

You probably did see 200k, but those players probably were playing terribly. Also, a 5minute fight isn't really short lol.

Here's another https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done 3rd week, 21st percentile, his first kill (Somehow he managed that low a percentile without dying)

It's not anecdotal evidence, go look at it, it's all the same. And percentiles prove where it stands in the grand scheme of things. Percentile shows that it wasn't an outlier.

You complain about my anecdotal evidence, but your "evidence" is what you personally saw over a year ago? That's insane confirmation bias.

[shaunika123]

I never got this. At most numbers were 7 digits. Easily recognizable.

It's more boss health than anything for me

I could never make out how much health a boss had without actually thinking about it.

[Thetruth1400]

starting ilvl in Legion was 750;which makes it a 250 increase;but your point stands

Starting gear in Legion is 640 for class trials and boosts, and 685 for the starting zone experience rewards. Source: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Item_level

The point is that saving 30 ilvl per expansion by skipping the early-expansion gearing for many players doesn't really change anything major on the ilvl front (ie. it only increases the numbers slightly moreso), but destroys a key element at the start of an expansion. Numbers do get out of hand eventually, but it took us 6 expansions to get to ilvl 1000, so it'll be fine for a while again.

While I agree with the removal of a key element of leveling is gearing, there needs to be some give on the front end or give in the ilvl inflation that exists between the 4 levels of raids.

In case you forget,
Vanilla went from 1 - 88; an 88 point increase.
TBC went from 81 - 159; a 78 point increase.
WotLK went from 130 - 277; a 147 point increase.
Cata went from 272 - 410; a 128 point increase.
MoP went from 364 - 582; a 218 increase
WoD went from 483 - 730; a 247 increase. This was also the time of the first stat squish.
Legion went from 640 - 940 (1000 if you count legendaries); a 300 point increase.

Now a few points:
- Once they added in a second level of raiding (WotLK) the ilvl increase per expansion doubled. LFR was introduced in 4.3, ready for MoP. What do we see there? An even further increase in ilvls, almost doubling again.
- Even with the stat squish prior to WoD starting, numbers still got way out of hand. The reason; way too many ilvls per expansion.
- The further they push the problem, the further the ilvl increase is needed each expansion which get out of control fast.

So sure, I'll concede that maybe the best way to go about it isn't to cut gear ungrades off from the beginning, but I also know that it's highly unlikely Blizzard will be cutting it off from the raids. If they don't cut down o the ilvl inflation each expansion, we're only in for the same thing every two expansions; hyper inflation followed by massive crunches.

[Nomads]

Last I checked, blizz hasn't balanced the older raids, so at 120, MoP raids are impossible to do, and Cata is a pain in the ass. Granted, last I checked was more towards the start of alpha, but still.

Also, people, do you REALLY want 2 lvl 40s to be killing your lvl 100 alt? Because a BC lvl of squish, you'd basically gain almost no power from 40-100, which would allow for PvP of that level.

But this makes no sense.... wouldnt that mean Legion gear would be much better than BfA gear?

[Nevcairiel]

You are SO wrong. Processors work with binary. Zeros and Ones, the larger a number the more operations perform calculations on them.

EDIT:
https://www.quora.com/For-a-computer...larger-numbers

“Even for a CPU designed to deal with 64-bit integers, if you are trying to perform arbitrary-precision arithmetic with extremely large numbers you will have to have some higher-level algorithm to break up the numbers into chunks that the CPU's instruction set and registers can handle, and then reassemble them in some mathematically-accurate way. This will take several times longer than dealing with smaller numbers, because the arithmetic operator that took only one line of assembly code for small numbers could now take dozens of instructions.

Addition, subtraction, and multiplication have been pretty streamlined for close to 30 years of CPU development, but division remains an algorithmically harder challenge. You can see this in the PDF I linked in my first paragraph, looking at the original Pentium architecture on page 101, for example: the DIV instruction for 8-bit values takes 17 clock cycles, for 16-bit values takes 25 cycles, and for 32-bit values takes 41 cycles. More recent architectures get quite a bit more complicated with pipelining, but a very similar trend holds.”

Thats nice, but something like WoW would never use arbitrary-precision arithmetic (because its generally inefficient, even on smaller numbers). It would use fixed-precision arithmetic or floating-point arithmetic, depending on use-case, and those execute with defined performance independent of the size of the number in them. Thats why we had various limits ingame, like during MoP Garrosh had to reset his health a couple times because he reached the 32-bit Integer limit. Since then, the combat engine was transitionined to using double-precision floats, which accurately represents numbers up to 2^53 and in-accurately any numbers until 2^1023

You should read further down on the link you provided, it even explains how modern hardware has constant-time processing on any numbers that fit into its registers, which on a modern CPU is either 64-bit fixed-point or double-precision floating-point. Arbitrary-precision arithmetic is barely ever used because its super slow. The only application I know of that uses it is for encryption, because you need to handle truely staggeringly large numbers accurately.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Since then, the combat engine was transitionined to using double-precision floats, which accurately represents numbers up to 2^53 and in-accurately any numbers until 2^1023

Fascinating, I would have guessed that they use integers, since the 18 quintillion would have easily lasted them and have avoided the hassle of floating point precision fuckery.