Patch 5.4 Developer Interviews, Blue Tweets, Hearthstone Arena, DLC #404

[tusker]

The item squish has absolutely no downsides whatsoever. The entire thing is RELATIVE. I wish people would understand this. As far as things are concerned, it's basically a non-issue because it really doesn't affect the game or its gameplay at all. Everything else about the game and what you will be capable of will remain exactly the same.

[Deleted]

if they keep up the effort WoW could remain the best mmo for another 3-5 years. whenever they release Titan anyways... assuming it turns out well.

I honestly think the mmo era has ended, and that's why the newer mmos are not doing well and wow is bleeding subs, and probably one of the reasons they stopped (or slowed down) the development for Titan.
Mobas and fps are the things right now: F2p, fast skirmishing, fast progression, and poor interaction between players... that's the exact opposite from the mmo standard. I don't think mmos are appealing to young/new players right now.

If GC labels any more class mechanics and secondary stats as "not interesting", we may just be left with 5 abilities, str/agi/int and stamina. Yay.

That's kinda likely. Wow class design is very deep and complex, compared to other mmos: the number of skills is overwhelming for someone not used to it, theorycrafting is something you start to understand very late in the game and it's required to perform well while it shouldn't be.
Don't get me wrong, I love the game as it is and if they really are going to make it simpler I'll get bored soon and probably quit, but I see where this is coming from and this item squish is just one of the steps they made in this direction... If you get to try the newer mmos you'll understand what I'm saying (and that's why I don't like them).

[ZeroWashu]

The item squish has absolutely no downsides whatsoever. The entire thing is RELATIVE. I wish people would understand this. As far as things are concerned, it's basically a non-issue because it really doesn't affect the game or its gameplay at all. Everything else about the game and what you will be capable of will remain exactly the same.

I would love it if the would remap health across all expansions. An item squish and such would get the numbers back to reasonable. Really going forward they need to find a way to divorce health/mana pools from being affected by items and just keep the other stats. That way mobs health would not have to get so silly to compensate for monty hall loot

[Deleted]

Sooo heartstone has its news site hasnt it ?
Can we stop posting hearthstone promo on the front page ?!? Or could we also have the news from Guild Wars and Rift as well ?
You know, because they actually are, mmorpgs.

[Velshin]

Item squish is just silly. Big numbers aren't confusing unless they are presented poorly. someone doing 217,312 dps is a bit silly. but someone doing 217k is not. They should have just gone over entire UI, thrown in some rounding and added a K to numbers and magically we're back to items that give 6 of a stat instead of 6000.

The squish is going to have major consequences. Old content for example. I am terrified of notion of losing power to do my mount runs. I've even purposely put off isle of giants farming because my mentality was it'd be more efficient to just do it next expansion. Now, it may even be HARDER. Unless blizz nerfs EVERYTHING in game which i can't imagine they are going to do, that's so much work. They also mentioned having an ilvl scale up buff for old content so you become more powerful in older zones. How does that even feel? This means every char you level up will go up to almost ilvl 500 at 90 then drop at 91? Do people really think that'll be a fun leveling experience? You magically grow in power as long as you aren't in the new expansion areas? That seems so silly. We'll see how they do it though. IF they just nerf entire game from every mob in elwynn up to siege of org gets nerfed when squish happens, it won't feel as bad. I just can't imagine them doing that, or doing it well if they half ass it and just do a flat formula scale down.

Item squish is not about big numbers confusion it's about not hurting the pc cpu and not causing some lag problems due to big numbers even the best super computers will get tired and take times reading all of the big number data. It's about making it easier and better for the players pc.

[Thyranne]

Item squish is not about big numbers confusion it's about not hurting the pc cpu and not causing some lag problems due to big numbers even the best super computers will get tired and take times reading all of the big number data. It's about making it easier and better for the players pc.

Have you ever seen how a processor works? I know the answer for this question but I wanna hear it from you.

[ItachiZaku]

The item squish has absolutely no downsides whatsoever. The entire thing is RELATIVE. I wish people would understand this. As far as things are concerned, it's basically a non-issue because it really doesn't affect the game or its gameplay at all. Everything else about the game and what you will be capable of will remain exactly the same.

Then there is no point in wasting dev time on it.

I came to WoW with a strong impression of how a Hunter should be (either UO Archer or UO Tamer) and it turned into a combination! YES! Wait...

Learning things like "The Rake" got nerfed etc was the main reason I really don't play a hunter. I loved camping spawns for weeks taming/loring/releasing to get the perfect Hellhound pack or that perfect stats White Wyrm. WoW needs to develop something like that, where every cat isn't the same and you can train them through experience.

[Deleted]

Learning things like "The Rake" got nerfed etc was the main reason I really don't play a hunter. I loved camping spawns for weeks taming/loring/releasing to get the perfect Hellhound pack or that perfect stats White Wyrm. WoW needs to develop something like that, where every cat isn't the same and you can train them through experience.

That's exactly the kind of mindset a game dev shouldn't have. That worked for YOU, 10+ years ago, at the beginning of the online gaming era... players need to feel that the game is renewing and their gaming experience refreshing to come to a new game.
Complex and old fashioned stuff like that is not going to bring fresh blood to the game at all. The lack of newcomers is the real issue here, not the people unsubbing which is normal for every game.

[Madruga]

" new content patch every month, a new raid tier every three to five months, and an annual expansion."

...Isn't this a bit too much? I think Pandaria is already a bit too fast with the pace of content... We are going to feel overwhelmed if they go even faster.

[Utinil]

Have you ever seen how a processor works? I know the answer for this question but I wanna hear it from you.

The issue is with how many bits are being used to address these large numbers. If you use 32 it takes the same processing power to calculate 1 as it does to calculate 4,294,967,295 (assuming you don't allow negatives, in which case you get half that). If you use 64 bits it will take roughly twice the power to calculate the same numbers, but it will take the same amount of power regardless of calculating 1 or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615. The problem is bosses already have 1.8 billion health and tanks already able to cap out the threat. With stats over tripling each expansion 32 bits will no longer be sufficient next expansion. This leaves Blizzard with 2 options from a technical standpoint. Either squish numbers or completely reprogram the combat engine to use 64 bits instead of 32, which would also greatly hurt performance.

[quras]

" new content patch every month, a new raid tier every three to five months, and an annual expansion."

...Isn't this a bit too much? I think Pandaria is already a bit too fast with the pace of content... We are going to feel overwhelmed if they go even faster.

You're right but don't worry.

blizzard at their best of times couldn't pull that off.

You got nothing to worry about. It's just a selling, hype point.

Kinda like Path of the Titans when it was released at blizzcon. Just hype that wont happen.

[Therec]

You're right but don't worry.

blizzard at their best of times couldn't pull that off.

You got nothing to worry about. It's just a selling, hype point.

Kinda like Path of the Titans when it was released at blizzcon. Just hype that wont happen.

Even if they did pull it off, they wouldnt be patches/raids like now. It'd be a new 7-8 boss raid max and maybe one new scenario/dungeon.

If they did a new 14 boss raid every 3 months theyd bleed more subs due to people not being able to finish content.

[scvd]

I need to know how Blizzard employees mind's process.

"Re:Polygon Interview You really believe mists is for casual players? Cata and wrath were far more casual friendly"
" - We lost more casual players in those expansions. If they didn't have organized raids, they quickly ran out of stuff to do."



Yes, ok.

[Marooned]

I need to know how Blizzard employees mind's process.

"Re:Polygon Interview You really believe mists is for casual players? Cata and wrath were far more casual friendly"
" - We lost more casual players in those expansions. If they didn't have organized raids, they quickly ran out of stuff to do."

Yes, ok.

They have correct internal numbers of each region, they know what exactly is going on, china was in TBC until late 2010 and they stopped reporting US and EU sub numbers a few months after TBC...

[varstjasol]

They have correct internal numbers of each region, they know what exactly is going on, china was in TBC until late 2010 and they stopped reporting US and EU sub numbers a few months after TBC...

They also have the data of "Why are you leaving?" and the incoming numbers.

[Azrile]

Do they even know their own game? Sub numbers were the highest they've ever been during Wrath while Cata had higher subs than MoP.

Read the question again. They are talking specifically about casual players. The players lost during MOP were mostly from China. The players that were lost during Cata (early Cata) were casual players who did a ton of heroics in WOTLK, but could not longer do them in Cata. In Cata, if you did not raid, you had very little content available to progress your character. Cata heroics the first month were difficult for PUGs.. and non-raiders had very few alternatives.

- - - Updated - - -

Item squish is just silly. Big numbers aren't confusing unless they are presented poorly. someone doing 217,312 dps is a bit silly. but someone doing 217k is not. They should have just gone over entire UI, thrown in some rounding and added a K to numbers and magically we're back to items that give 6 of a stat instead of 6000.

The squish is going to have major consequences. Old content for example. I am terrified of notion of losing power to do my mount runs. I've even purposely put off isle of giants farming because my mentality was it'd be more efficient to just do it next expansion. Now, it may even be HARDER. Unless blizz nerfs EVERYTHING in game which i can't imagine they are going to do, that's so much work. They also mentioned having an ilvl scale up buff for old content so you become more powerful in older zones. How does that even feel? This means every char you level up will go up to almost ilvl 500 at 90 then drop at 91? Do people really think that'll be a fun leveling experience? You magically grow in power as long as you aren't in the new expansion areas? That seems so silly. We'll see how they do it though. IF they just nerf entire game from every mob in elwynn up to siege of org gets nerfed when squish happens, it won't feel as bad. I just can't imagine them doing that, or doing it well if they half ass it and just do a flat formula scale down.

Blizzard has already stated that item squish will not make your character less powerful, at 90, nor for soloing old content. They are very aware that players like to solo old content, which is why when they added pet drops to old bosses, they also made sure the mechanisms allowed those bosses to be solod

We really have to wait and see how they do it, but my feeling is that they will simply remove tier raid progression in older content. In other words. LK would be only very slightly harder than Naxx. Gear inflation had to happen in WOW.. it is the way it is set up that once you are in the last expansion, each raid tier needs to have meaningful ilvl increases. However, once that expansion is finished, the tier progression can be removed. Nobody out there is raiding TOC trying to get ´geared up´ to be able to kill LK. There would be no meaningful change to the game if LK had the same ilvl gear drops as Naxx.

- - - Updated - - -

Item squish is useless? No, the terrible inflation of stats is useless.

The inflation of iLvl is absolutely atrocious. Whilst it's perfectly manageable it's also pointless. Go back and look at how much damage and health people had in Cataclysm, it was at least 5x less than what we do now. And for what purpose? What exactly does having 400k crits provide us? It's just a number. The more dps the do the more health they add so, at end-game, it's all relative anyway.

For the purposes of soloing there is none. You were supposed to get your friends to do the old raids, and still have to in some cases. Why should that change? Soloing was not an original design intention, it was a meta-activity invented by players to challenge themselves.

iLevel inflation has to happen in WOW. The game is entirely built upon it. The game is about getting gear. Like it or not, that is what it is based on. Blizzard can not suddenly change that. Once you accept the fact that WOW is about getting better gear, and gear is a huge part of your character´s strength. Then comes the next steps

1. Expansions must make old gear obsolete. You simply cannot have an expansion where you use your old gear much past leveling. Why? because your character will never get more powerful, which means the content has to be as powerful as the previous expansion... which is boring.

2. Raid tiers must have meaningful upgrades - This is where real gear inflation happens, but it is a necessity. If a new raid opens up, and the gear it drops is the same ilvl as the previous raid... um.. yeah.. people are going to hate it. New raids must have new gear that is noticeably more powerful.

3. LFR, heroic modes - These things have a huge place in WOW. They make the game better, they allow more things to do for many different types of players. But they each have the small negative thing of inflating ilvls.

iLevel inflation is a problem, but each cause of that inflation has a valid reason that makes the game better.

- - - Updated - - -

Then there is no point in wasting dev time on it.

I came to WoW with a strong impression of how a Hunter should be (either UO Archer or UO Tamer) and it turned into a combination! YES! Wait...

Learning things like "The Rake" got nerfed etc was the main reason I really don't play a hunter. I loved camping spawns for weeks taming/loring/releasing to get the perfect Hellhound pack or that perfect stats White Wyrm. WoW needs to develop something like that, where every cat isn't the same and you can train them through experience.

But this isn´t UO in the early days. There are now 1000 fansites about WOW. And as soon as someone figures out that ´best´ pet to have, then every hunter will be required to have it. It already happened in Vanilla. Rake wasn´t special, everyone had him... the only people who didn´t use him were gimping themselves (especially in pvp). In a way, it was similar to the old talent trees. Yes, you had more options back then.. but only one of them was good, and if you wanted to be ´different´ it meant you did something that gimped yourself.

The game is boring if every tamer has The Rake.

[Deleted]

"The cosmetic helms that were added to the store sold well, but more cosmetic items may not be added in the future."
Beautiful Lies
Shame on you, Blizzard! I will never forgive this, and my forum ban what I wouldn't deserve it...

[Deleted]

I'm looking forward to the monthly patches. Here's to hoping that will be in effect by expansion 5. Hopefully the patch cycle will go: Expansion, Lore patch, standalone story, Raid patch. This will be a good opportunity to cover some of the smaller stories that don't necessarily fit into the larger expansions. Looks like we could be facing 10 patch expansions in the future, with very small gaps between xpacs.

[Urza29]

at this point, blizzard has kinda shot themselves in the foot anyways, because they should have adressed this and or thought about future scaling from the beginnig. There is no way they could of predicted the game's sucess and insane amount of subscribers over the years, causing them to release content and expansions to please everyone. However, even looking at the transition from vanilla to BC there was a huge increase of stats and health over vanilla's numbers.

to put it in perspective, i ran UBRS other day, there was a tank (tauren) in heirlooms/decent gear and he had almost 9k health..at level 55....55...in vanilla level 55 to 60 was an uphill battle, getting to 60 was really challenging/time consuming, but even at 60...in EPIC gear most characters dreamed of having 5-6k health, tanks with full raid buffs and every possible cool down push 10k (again at 60)

So for a basic character with a few gear items to have 9k health almost, at 55? It blew my mind to realize how far things have gotten out of hand and how scary everything is scaling these days. I have screenshots of my druid in Molten Core in a few epics and i think he has 2-3k health, doing 1k crit prior to naxx era in vanilla was really badass and amazing...1k crit...1000 damage and you felt invincible...auto-attacks on my hunter with ilvl 510 hit for 20-30k crit, and its expected, but to look at the beginning of the game and see how far we really have come expansion after expansion, is nuts.

not that they can go back in time but they should have foreseen this and been a LOT more restrictive and made the numbers tiny increases not leaps and bounds bigger with no brakes.

I think it would be awesome to have vanilla/bc numbers again, and bosses have ~500k health at top end, when cutting through 100k health was a good 5 min dps fight, mobs having 20k health again and considered 'elite'. thats part of what made BC so epic was the numbers, everything went up, in a good way and your hits and gearnig up made you feel aucutally powerful and you were progessing, just 1 piece of gear could change your damage by so much, and your health by so much, where as these days your overall sense of power is almost nill, have to get 4-5 pieces to even feel you are doing good on dps in comparison.

healing is the same way, be sweet to be tossing heals for 6-10k again, filling players health bars in 1 spell

my 2cents

[Deleted]

Still waiting for Hearthstone beta in EU...