"It's hard to support legacy content."

[OreoLover]

We'd get to the point that blizzard would have to give quest mobs phases

Haha, how exciting!

Kill 10 bears >>> each bear is Garrosh.

[Checkt]

LOL

Buddy. This thing you are talking about is entry-level. I have been programming for so long, I forgot which year you learn it when you start programming, my guess is the first, but I might be wrong.

You solve the issue by moving to higher-bit storage. They did so already three or so years ago and are storing all combat values as 64-bit floats. That's 53 bits of mantissa, more than enough for anything. Short values stopped being the reason for squishes after the very first one.

LOL buddy, I'm talking about something so fundamental from the words of blizzard devs themselves that it's hilarious you'd try to argue it.

You CAN make systems process higher numbers, but Blizzard has stated that doing this would require a vast rewritting of their core system, not just their bit storage..one that isn't worth it compared to just performing the stat squish.

I know...I know...there's just NO WAY that someone other than you could be right, and I know, I know any idea you have about the game is the one that should be taken and any other is a horrible, gamebreaking choice that will 'finally' cause blizzard to realize the error of their ways when the game bleeds to just the handful of 'blizzard apologists' on the forums who are DEFINITELY the minority (because as stated, how could anyone not agree with you) but really, try to hear out the people who actually develop and write code for the game.

[DeicideUH]

I have very VERY rarely seen class changes and stat reworks make old content more difficult / tedious to complete as these changes typically work to make the game more user friendly (why change what isn't broken).

We don't need old content to feel exactly as difficult as the day it released. When old content becomes easier, it isn't that big of a deal because it's OLD. Not relevant to progression, it is merely a stepping stone to much larger goals and when players pay for time on a monthly basis it is a net benefit to the vast majority of the player-base if old content moves faster. Nobody cares that lvl 60 raids can be run in an hour by lvl 60s, especially when someone can run them on a max level character in a half hour or less. Nobody cares that the 1-60 experience for old leveling content took 1 day to complete because people pay money to play this game for the most current content, not old leveling content.

People start caring when the legacy leveling experience starts taking weeks extra because mobs take forever to kill and player damage is laughable after a stat squish. Or when legacy raids are no longer solo-able resulting in players having to spend time forming groups for less chances at their desired transmog sets. In a game where time is money, to make the player start bleeding time on things that previously weren't tedious is predatory, especially when it comes to content like leveling where we have PAID LEVEL BOOSTS.

The source of the issue is stat squishes and stat squishes ONLY. Get it right or don't do it, even if that means dedicating a lot of QA resources.

Just no squishes. Nearly no encounters in old content depend on class abilities and those that do, they have to make independent of them anyway. No encounters depend on stats, the only effects were on mana and they were negative, not positive (removing mana was making you able to do encounter, while you previously were unable to). It is very easy to make encounters in old content such that nearly no future changes affect it. This does not even require any immediate effort, they can just leave things as they are and react to reports of breakage, they are going to be very rare anyway.

It's just about the squishes.

(Now, as I said, maintaining legacy things is difficult, but it manifests in different things and it is about different things. It's like this: if they want to change how charge and similar skills work, this is hard to do because there are assumptions about the old way scattered through many places. This is the baggage of legacy. The example with Ragnaros and Onyxia is there just to say something that an ordinary person would be able to understand quickly.)

My reply was to OP, who suggested to keep old content "relevant", which is why I brought class and stat changes to the table.

About the squish, it'll only be a problem in early expansion. Blizzard does constantly make small changes to help people solo old content. Also, by level 120, most old content will be easily farmed anyway. It's just the first few weeks that are full of major problems.

----------------------------

Personally, I'd love to see old raids have a "scenario" mode for 3-5 people to experience them with some challenge, just to relive the content (have some mechanics you need to pay attention to, but not too hard) just so people can see the lore there without one-shotting everything. But I know we will never have something like that, because even that requires a lot of resources to do.

[Nihilan]

Fuck right off with any suggestion for adding more scaling. Blizzard clearly cannot do it well.

[Schizoide]

LOL buddy, I'm talking about something so fundamental from the words of blizzard devs themselves that it's hilarious you'd try to argue it.

You CAN make systems process higher numbers, but Blizzard has stated that doing this would require a vast rewritting of their core system, not just their bit storage..one that isn't worth it compared to just performing the stat squish.

I know...I know...there's just NO WAY that someone other than you could be right, and I know, I know any idea you have about the game is the one that should be taken and any other is a horrible, gamebreaking choice that will 'finally' cause blizzard to realize the error of their ways when the game bleeds to just the handful of 'blizzard apologists' on the forums who are DEFINITELY the minority (because as stated, how could anyone not agree with you) but really, try to hear out the people who actually develop and write code for the game.

Ahh, MMO forums. Such conviction in your post! Such righteous assurance! Such arrogance, and condescension! Calling people "buddy"! And yet, not a shred of truth. You literally made the entire thing up.

WoW fixed the 32bit integer limit several years ago. Likely in patch 6.0.

Blue posts:
https://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/...illion-health/
https://twitter.com/Zorbrix/status/732785256642707456

[Khahirr]

The game works fine. Some aspects don't work, and by 8.1 will probably all be fixed. There is no greater software test than people using the software, and if you truly do work in a computer field you know that - so complaining that something that blizzard has stated several times was REQUIRED due to their systems could've been done a different way, based upon the grounds of your understanding of how programming and computer crunching work doesn't make it any more valid of a point. We'd get to the point that blizzard would have to give quest mobs phases just for their health pool to keep up with our dps and that shit would annoy EVERYONE.

Please understand, my complaint is not the decision to do the stat squish, my complaint is that they chose to do things in that manner, and yet every single time there have been glaring issues because they don't test things properly for such sweeping changes. Then they rely on the player-base that pays money monthly to them to find the flaws and give excuses as to why things happened. This would be much more acceptable for an indie developer, but Blizzard couldn't be considered that for close to 20 years at this point. This isn't normal. Things are working now, but this is a really annoying precedent for the consumer that continues to be capitalized on.

[Checkt]

Please understand, my complaint is not the decision to do the stat squish, my complaint is that they chose to do things in that manner, and yet every single time there have been glaring issues because they don't test things properly for such sweeping changes. Then they rely on the player-base that pays money monthly to them to find the flaws and give excuses as to why things happened. This would be much more acceptable for an indie developer, but Blizzard couldn't be considered that for close to 20 years at this point. This isn't normal. Things are working now, but this is a really annoying precedent for the consumer that continues to be capitalized on.

I understand your complain, I just don't have much sympathy for 'things were broken for like 4 days and I'm M . A . D.'

- - - Updated - - -

Ahh, MMO forums. Such conviction in your post! Such righteous assurance! Such arrogance, and condescension! Calling people "buddy"! And yet, not a shred of truth. You literally made the entire thing up.

WoW fixed the 32bit integer limit several years ago. Likely in patch 6.0.

Blue posts:
https://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/...illion-health/
https://twitter.com/Zorbrix/status/732785256642707456

Ahh forums! Such arrogance. Such a tendency to ignore when I was using someone elses speaking pattern to mock them. Literally ignoring me addressing your 'point' in the quoted text.

Yes, they updated the bit storage, but since you're so keen on finding blue posts you should go find the one about the stat squish in BFA and how it's 'to fix issues with their system' and make 'internal parsing' easier.

thank you for jumping into the conversation with what had already been talked about and thinking you're making a point, though!

[Lodreh]

...What is your stance? This hinges all on whether it's less work for Blizzard and if it also makes things more fun for the player base. I'm not saying it should be done, but depending on responses, it's something for Blizzard to consider if it really would be simpler to scale rather than constant tuning.

NO, oh hell no. Legacy content is only there for solo/fun runs to fill in transmog sets... Bosses dying in 1-2 globals should be the norm. It should feel like you actually have increased in power over the course of leveling. Scaling kills enough progression. Let transmog farmers have their fun too.

[Deleted]

Fuck right off with any suggestion for adding more scaling. Blizzard clearly cannot do it well.

So long as scaling is done in addition to new content and not instead of it. It just adds slightly more over all content to do regardless of comparative quality. Plus alot of people might not have done vanilla content etc

[Schizoide]

Yes, they updated the bit storage, but since you're so keen on finding blue posts you should go find the one about the stat squish in BFA and how it's 'to fix issues with their system' and make 'internal parsing' easier.

No, I'm not doing your work for you. Find the quote and post it.

[Protean]

Tbh the quote is actually a really poor excuse for fucking up older content with data changes (specifically, the stat squishes is what I believe this is in reference to). Blizzard is a AAA multi-million dollar gaming company. There is 0 excuse for not having a competent test plan when changes are implemented that might have sweeping effects across the game.

It is standard practice to have QA run planned regression cycles to accommodate large data changes that could potentially bring an application to its knees. Yet despite this being standard, there seems to be no visible QA process at Blizzard in recent years other than throwing things onto the PTR / Alpha / Beta and letting players test. There might be a small amount of testing done internally so that things don't completely fall apart with new content, but the testing is never thorough enough for things that specifically require a large amount of regression like stat squishes. This is NOT the first stat squish, and this is NOT the first time scaling issues have occurred. I don't care if Blizzard feels like it doesn't have the amount of employees to test things like this, that isn't the consumer's problem. Blizzard certainly has enough money to hire workers and throw them at the testing process.

It is hilarious to me how easy it is to get away with shit practices like this for game developers (Blizzard are NOT the only ones that do this nonsense). Any other company that implements software solutions in other industries knows they would be crucified if things went into the shitter like they consistently do whenever there is a broad data change in WoW that makes it to live.

TLDR;
Making everything scale to max level isn't the solution, it's competent internal test plans from Blizzard for large data changes

What part of it seems like an excuse? They're just talking about how it's labor intensive and people forget the work going into an expansion even after it's over.


Very few companies in the world handles something as beastly as World of Warcraft. A 13+ year old game.

[Checkt]

No, I'm not doing your work for you. Find the quote and post it.

here's the thing though; I don't care to show you why they did it. I know what they said. I read it. 'my work' is not alleviating your ignorance, it's informing you of it - which I just did.

[Adamas102]

Maybe they should just release a Classic version of WoW that is frozen in time and contains all the older raid content. That would allow them to just remove old raid content from the current game and save a lot of time devoted to rebalancing?

Fuck that shit. Being able to revisit old content once it has been trivialized is one of the reasons some people still play this game.

[Schizoide]

here's the thing though; I don't care to show you why they did it. I know what they said. I read it. 'my work' is not alleviating your ignorance, it's informing you of it - which I just did.

You didn't, because it never happened. You made that up too.

[Smoe]

They're actually doing that with time-walking raids. They're just keeping time-walking separate from the original instance because they know people like to solo those for mog/mounts and other groups like to attempt at-level clears of the raids with the newer talent systems.

[LedZeppelin]

You missed the point of that post completely. Its not game design statement, its a programming statement.

[Checkt]

You didn't, because it never happened. You made that up too.

ok. /10char

[rda]

Ahh forums! Such arrogance. Such a tendency to ignore when I was using someone elses speaking pattern to mock them. Literally ignoring me addressing your 'point' in the quoted text.

Yes, they updated the bit storage, but since you're so keen on finding blue posts you should go find the one about the stat squish in BFA and how it's 'to fix issues with their system' and make 'internal parsing' easier.

thank you for jumping into the conversation with what had already been talked about and thinking you're making a point, though!

Before the first squish they used 32-bit integer math for parts of combat. That's where the blue you are talking about is from.

After the first squish they switched to 64-bit floating-point math for all combat. That's where the tweet is from.

Now apologize for being dense and having little clue yet accusing others of not knowing enough and take a break talking about software. You are quite evidently a youngster who just learned a couple of things about it and wants the world to know. Some of us have been at it for decades.

PS: And no, there was no blue about BFA talking about short values. You are misremembering. And anything about "parsing" is from somewhere else.

[Checkt]

Before the first squish they used 32-bit integer math for parts of combat. That's where the blue you are talking about is from.

After the first squish they switched to 64-bit floating-point math for all combat. That's where the tweet is from.

Now apologize for being dense and having little clue yet accusing others of not knowing enough and take a break talking about software. You are quite evidently a youngster who just learned a couple of things about it and wants the world to know. Some of us have been at it for decades.

PS: And no, there was no blue about BFA talking about short values. You are misremembering.

No, actually the blue I'm talking about is during a BFA launch, and as I've stated multiple times they weren't talking about simply health pools and the 32 v. 64 bit client upgrade.

Now admit that you apparently have trouble reading or fuck off.

[rda]

No, actually the blue I'm talking about is during a BFA launch, and as I've stated multiple times they weren't talking about simply health pools and the 32 v. 64 bit client upgrade.

Now admit that you apparently have trouble reading or fuck off.

Link it or stop talking.

The client upgrade is irrelevant. Shows once again that you have no clue. 32-bit vs 64-bit as related to the squish is not about that.