Item Squish; is it really coming?

[Ifeanychukwu]

Why not just make an addOn to fix it?
Or an option in the interface menu to toggle it on/off, so people can do what they want to.

If someone wants smaller numbers, just hit that button and all your numbers gets divided by 10. So when you hit 100,000 you'll only see a number of 10,000. For instance.
Or have an addon that simply put "K", "M" and "B" behind; 100,000 = 100k, 1,000,000 = 1M, 1,000,000,000 = 1B.
And all problems are solved.

The game client still has to deal with all the original numbers. I think that's part of the reason Blizzard would want to do an item squish.

[Deleted]

I don't understand why people think when they squish stats and hp it is ONLY going to be the characters. My understanding was when they squish, they squish EVERYTHING. They're not going to make it impossible to solo old vanilla raids, come on now. Use your heads people.

This is what I thought too. They'll squish everything according to the new system. Really guys, it's logical.

[Noxina]

The game client still has to deal with all the original numbers. I think that's part of the reason Blizzard would want to do an item squish.

Yeah true, what if someone makes and addon that adds a couple of 0s, so people that dont like item squish gets happy aswell then x]

I honestly dont see the problem with this, it's just numbers anyways. I never even have scrolling combat text enabled, as I find it messy. I see what percentage the targets HP is, and that my attacks makes it go lower - good enough for me. The fact that I'm close to/at 400k hp is just redicilous(spelling?), and not needed. I remember a time when reaching 20k hp was insane!

[asharia]

It will come in the next expansion, i have little doubt.

The only problem i have with it, is that it's becoming harder to distinguish between larger numbers when they pop up.

People will be upset at first, just like when they changed the format of secondary stats on gear, but they will quickly get used to it.

Why not just make an addOn to fix it?
Or an option in the interface menu to toggle it on/off, so people can do what they want to.

If someone wants smaller numbers, just hit that button and all your numbers gets divided by 10. So when you hit 100,000 you'll only see a number of 10,000. For instance.
Or have an addon that simply put "K", "M" and "B" behind; 100,000 = 100k, 1,000,000 = 1M, 1,000,000,000 = 1B.
And all problems are solved.

That was one of the solutions they proposed. I think they called it 'mega damage' or something like that.

[Kaleredar]

Beyond just actual number technicalities... Huge numbers are annoying. And they eventually start to lose their meaning.

Oh, I just hit that boss for 11 BILLION DAMAGE! Yeah, out of his... 30 Trillion health pool? It all becomes meaningless.

I recall a fighting video game I once watched... I don't recall its name, but when you struck your enemy, you'd rack up some HUGE number like "800 BILLION DAMAGE," while only inflicting.... 1/7th... of their health bar in damage. It just becomes arbitrary. Annoying, even.

I'm all in favor of reigning in the numbers just to keep them from exploding to exasperating digit counts.

[heltvild]

I dont know, when I was a kid I played some of the korean mmorps where you runned around as level 200 casting "Ultimate firebomb of d00m" for 500,000,000 and I hated it. I dont know if I would like it in WoW either.

[Ishayu]

You can do some stat squishing with addons.

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6533843929

I'd like to see official support though. The default numbers are truly ferociously large.

[Cernunnos]

Vanilla = Brown
TBC = Green
Wrath = Blue
Cata = Red

Current Item Levels (MOP excluded)


Proposed Item Levels After Squish (MOP excluded)


As you can see, vanilla content barely gets changed at all, probably a 1-2% change in stats if that.
But look at what happens to wrath and cata item levels. They get drastically lowered. And not at all by the same amount that vanilla and TBC get nerfed by.
It is because wrath and cata (and now MOP) have such inflated stats on the gear that we are able to do things like soloing old raids.

If the squish goes ahead as proposed, your ability to blow through old stuff gets drastically reduced, many players low being able to solo old raids/instances for numerous reasons, mounts, pets, transmog, the challenge (things like LK HM 10/25).

If the squish goes ahead they will have to revise how they solo stuff, they now might have to use tank gear to outlive the boss whereas before they would just use their DPS gear, or worse for some people, bring additional players to make up for the loss in power.


Sure you don't lose any power in current content, but its realative to the old stuff that you lose out in.


My 406k HP and 70 odd k or whatever DPS i have due to being level 90 with a 486ish item level is what allow me to blow through TBC level content with easy. If TBC content is nerfed by 45%, yet MOP content is nerfed by 4 times what it was(from the above graph cata appears to be nerfed by 3 times what it was), then my ability to to that same TBC content is now altered. I might still be able to solo it, but not to the same capacity I do now. After the squish I might find I now only do 25k DPS, and the 4,249,300 HP TBC boss now has 1912185 HP.

4,249,300/700000 = 60.7 seconds
1912185/25000 = 76.4 seconds

Before the squish it took 1 minute to kill the boss. after the squish it now takes a just over 1 and 1/4 minutes, assuming my now 145k HP is enough to live long enough to do so.

If everything was reduced by the same amount, power levels across the board would remain the same, how powerful your toon is realative to level 60 Ragnaros (Molten Core), or level 85 Ragnaros (Firelands) remains unchanged from what it is now.

With the changes as proposed your power level in regards to level 85 ragnaros (FL) changes a little, yet realative to level 60 Ragnaros (MC) changes by a huge margin.


EDIT...
I changed my values, been a while since i've really used math, not sure if 300% and 400% where correct for what I was trying to convey.

[Ifeanychukwu]

Same percentages, yes, however it will for a majority of people feel like a nerf regardless of what percentage they're hitting for. Like I said before going from hitting say 40k to 500 will feel like a massive nerf.

That's a little extreme isn't it? I'm pretty sure they wouldn't bring us down to vanilla numbers >.> personally I feel like the numbers in Wrath were perfect. I would be very happy going back to that.

[Libertarian]

Numbers are numbers; 1 million is no more ridiculous than 1.

You obviously have never taken a higher level math class and/or programming class. Numbers are numbers until you reach a limit in computers.

[Synstir]

It's not surprising so see so many people not understand math (the people against the item squish).

---------- Post added 2013-02-27 at 02:23 AM ----------




Actually the technical computer stuff is the reason the squish is inevitable someday.

Do you know by chance what the limitations are for computers regarding numbers? And how fast they can calculate with the their highest numbers?

---------- Post added 2013-02-27 at 09:02 AM ----------

You obviously have never taken a higher level math class and/or programming class. Numbers are numbers until you reach a limit in computers.

Care to name those limits?
Going by what computer-specs are today and maybe what they will in 2 years?

[Libertarian]

Do you know by chance what the limitations are for computers regarding numbers? And how fast they can calculate with the their highest numbers?

---------- Post added 2013-02-27 at 09:02 AM ----------



Care to name those limits?
Going by what computer-specs are today and maybe what they will in 2 years?

Do you understand the differences between signed and unsigned integers, 32bit / 64bit, and floating point numbers?

[Deleted]

if you want to feel powerful...kill the games hardest content. The numbers right now are ridiculous.

Agreed. Getting tired of this ''hurr durr i want to feel powerful by soloing illidan at lv90 if they squish i cant do that'' attitude

1st: if the squish is done right you can still kill illidan at lv90, 95, 100 w/e and get your ''imma so puwerfull!'' kicks out of it

2nd: if you really want challenge do the current max level difficult content

[Nalfeinn]

Or this (made up numbers just to show the point)
xpac#1, max item lvl 200...all encounters tuned to this
xpac#2 hits, all of the gear from xpac 1 drops in ilvl, as do the encounters from said xpac, best gear remains at ilvl 200

repeat

constant control over numbers, old gear still soloable
and off the top of my head add a passive after each xpac, e.g "survived the cataclysm", all stats increased by x% in cataclysm content...just to keep to solo peeps happy(me being one of them). It doesnt matter if i hit for 200k or 200 as long as I kill things in the same amount of time, yea it will feel really strange and underpowered at first, then you clear some current content, gear up and feel that character progression again as said content gets easier

[MasterHamster]

Wonder when people will realize our relative power to older content would be reduced in a squish. Hence I don't want it.

If you simply want to reduce numbers, go find an addon to do it.

[Divine Path]

Blizzard made a big mistake not introducing an item squish for MoP. The longer they take, the harder it will be to implement and the more ridiculous the numbers will become.

[potis]

The problem with the gear started at WoTLK and Cataclysm finished it off.

What Blizzard did right in TBC was that during questing the gear wasnt really an upgrade for the end-game raider, yes there werent many of us but thats not the point.

The item levels didnt instantly start + 10 above the previous LAST TIER.

They started barely better than the FIRST TIER, after 5-7 levels they hit the same as T3 with all the equip bonuses etc, and at level 68-70 you simply had to replace your gear, some set bonuses were still OP so people used them in Karazhan, but raw stats even the simply blue gear was better at 70.

But thats the point, T3 items became obsolete because of the equip/set bonuses at level 69 and some bonuses useful until you got your 2 set bonus from Karazhan, they didnt become obsolete 3 hours into the expansion.

Thats where Blizzard failed with item levels, especially in cataclysm/mop.

Since i used Scroll of Resurrection back at August to get a free level 80 because i knew i would play at some point, and i did this last week i saw the item scaling horribly.

SoR free level starts with 232 item level, first quest reward in Cataclysm is 272 when the last tier of Wrath was 277..

Questing in TBC didnt reach the last tier of gear 8-10 levels in, not in the first 2 quests of the expansion (Of course because of gems and proper equip stats like crit and haste the 277 is better, but you get the scaling point i hope!).

Its okay to feel stronger, but the scaling should start a bit lower than it did, 20 levels above the previous T3, not 60 and 70 like Cata/MoP.

[Sylwaria]

You do know that 4 bit integer variables doesnt exist, right?

Well... you could potentially use bitfields

[Berri]

I also don't understand what the big deal is with these large numbers - isn't it going to be weird looking at a death log and seeing X hit Y for 30 damage -> Y died?

I just don't see the benefit of such a system, how can people complain about something so arbitrary?

[Hurwyn]

I think it has to do with the combat log being an absolute mess, bosses health being into the crazy number range "He has 10 million billion health!" (exaggerating) and the numbers flashing across your screen with 1000000, 2880000, 3000000! When that starts to be your white hits and so frequent, it just gets to be a bit much.

I don't get this... Don't look at them if it's such a bother?

When I'm in raid combat (or any combat really), I don't see the numbers at all. When I'm done with the fight I look at my recount and see what went on, but as for fighting I'm totally in tune with what's going on, not staring at the numbers...

Maybe this is what's going on in these heroics where the people are pulling 12k dps, they're not actually playing they're just watching numbers...