Sigh...Item Squish and Old Content

[Banders]

Just been reading through another thread on the item squish debate and several topics are being talked about which can often be a pain as people will just pick and choose which part of the discussion they want to address and leave out others

I'm specifically interested in how the item squish affects soloing old content - why? Who cares? Having the challenge of seeing what my toon can do solo is one of the things I enjoy to do in the game just like others do things that I find weird i.e. extreme roleplaying, playing the AH, naming all your pets after Transformers (actually...that would be pretty cool....)

Having read the forums for a long time as well as the tweets and correspondence from Blizz there are a few things that stand out

- The item squish will* happen (*when I say "will" I have no clue if it will or will not...just that that seems likely....and I'm wondering if people will focus on that part of the discussion and not read anything else )

- Blizzard must want us to be able to solo old content (or at the least approve of the practice) as they've got transmogs going well and pets available now from old raid bosses

- Blizzard realises that a straight squish will affect soloing - they have said that it will not affect it, but that would only be because they will do something to the old content to make it soloable (what that is we don't know yet...altho GC has given a few off the cuff remarks on it - see https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/sta...53330179534850)

- The proposed item squish that Blizzard has given us is from this watercooler - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3885585
Now...this is almost 2 years old now so I'm sure they've been tossing other ideas around but for now this is really all we've got to go on (unless someone can point me to something more recent)

The proposed "squish" reduces everything from an exponential growth across expansions to a more linear one (if you don't know what those terms mean either look them up or flick me a personal message as it's a pretty important part of the debate)

Many people have the mindset quoted from the dev watercooler that - "In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller." and they use this rationale to say soloing old content wouldn't be affected - this is clearly wrong as that quote has to only be related to mobs around the same level as your toon

The reason why I can solo old content at the moment is because I outgear the encounter by a massive amount. If the proposed item squish happens according to the graph shown in the article then we'd only be say three times more powerful than the mob rather than the current 50-100 times more powerful


I don't really want to chat about the pro's and con's of the item squish...For one, I'm absolutely fine with it...I'm really just wanting people to see the flawed arguement that soloing won't be affected because all they're thinking of is percantages and not understanding the exponential growth of gear which we currently have vs. a proposed more linear growth
For soloing not to be affected "something" will have to be done to old raid content specifically to make them soloable and I'm intrigued what they're going to do to sort this out


TLDR - Item squish as previously proposed would affect soloing - Blizz knows this - Therefore they'd have to do something for old raids to make them soloable
Straight % based arguements which are generally touted are incorrect


p.s. Please excuse my english - it's my first language but I just suck at it ;-)

[Deleted]

from what I understood everthing gets squished. That is, boss health as well as player stats. Therefore Soloing old content should not be effected.

[Guyviroth]

You'd think you'd read today's blue posts before posting this...

Everything, EVERYTHING, will be scaled down at an equal rate. Yes, this means if gear past Vanilla is getting squished, that means the associated raids will also be tuned down by the same percentage. I.E. Burning Crusade gear gets squished, then Tempest Keep, Black Temple, etc, gets squished alongside it.

[Banders]

You'd think you'd read today's blue posts before posting this...

Everything, EVERYTHING, will be scaled down at an equal rate. Yes, this means if gear past Vanilla is getting squished, that means the associated raids will also be tuned down by the same percentage. I.E. Burning Crusade gear gets squished, then Tempest Keep, Black Temple, etc, gets squished alongside it.

Sigh....you think you'd read what I wrote before posting this

I'm talking about soloing old content not how things are with current content

[Deleted]

WHAT IS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Nothing will change apart from the SIZE OF THE NUMBERS!
Its not like a boss with 10 000 health will die in 3 sec, as we will do a lot less damage.
Or a tank with 20k health wont get oneshott because bosses will hit a lot less hard.
Everything will be exactly the same as it is now, apart from the math will be easier to do.

The item squish will not change the game.

Old content will also be scaled the same way.
Nothing.will.change.


Are people realy so dumb they cant understand this?
God!

[ComputerNerd]

You are dismissing the percentage arguments simply because you can, because you made your mind up at the start.

You give no reason other than that being what you think, but are so convinced of that you state it as fact.
Why bother quoting blizzard as "evidence" when in fact it contradicts what you are saying, and still claiming that offers proof of your theory.

[Banders]

from what I understood everthing gets squished. That is, boss health as well as player stats. Therefore Soloing old content should not be effected.

It will be squished....but if it is done in the proposed manner then it will affect soloing of old raids

[SL1200]

If soloing old content is the only thing that concerns you about the squish, don't worry about it. They say they're going to make sure they don't hurt the soloing experience with a squish.

[Banders]

You are dismissing the percentage arguments simply because you can, because you made your mind up at the start.

You give no reason other than that being what you think, but are so convinced of that you state it as fact.
Why bother quoting blizzard as "evidence" when in fact it contradicts what you are saying, and still claiming that offers proof of your theory.

I'm genuinely surprised at this response....I felt that I provided enough evidence to support what I thought that it wasn't a subjective thing anymore

Please can you quote me and the parts you feel I'm getting wrong so I can see if I need to clarify something or not

- - - Updated - - -

If soloing old content is the only thing that concerns you about the squish, don't worry about it. They say they're going to make sure they don't hurt the soloing experience with a squish.

Totally...I know it's not going to affect it since they said it's one oftheir goals...I'm just tired of seeing people use the flawed arguement as to why it won't be affected

It's not going to be because everything is scaled down evenly...Blizzard is going to have to do something different

[Deleted]

I'm really curious how they'll do it, considering they were planning a 'curved' squish last we knew, while that would affect soloing old content, as far as I see it, only simply dividing by a certain amount would be possible if they planned for us to be able to solo as effectively. Which would make the first levels as ridiculous as high levels are now (npcs with 0,05 health? :P)

[Kalcheus]

WHAT IS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Nothing will change apart from the SIZE OF THE NUMBERS!
Its not like a boss with 10 000 health will die in 3 sec, as we will do a lot less damage.
Or a tank with 20k health wont get oneshott because bosses will hit a lot less hard.
Everything will be exactly the same as it is now, apart from the math will be easier to do.

The item squish will not change the game.

Old content will also be scaled the same way.
Nothing.will.change.


Are people realy so dumb they cant understand this?
God!

Actually, that's not what they're planning to do at all. There isn't going to be an X% reduction, they're going to level out the steep curves that occurred at endgame in Classic, TBC, Wrath, Cata, and MoP so that ilvl increase up to the next xpac will be linear. You've basically got it 100% wrong.

[Sole-Warrior]

"fix boss levels at absolute values (instead of the +3 now), then add a new mechanic that increases/decreases your damage dealt based upon relative levels. Applying this change will mean the level 63 MC boss vs your level 95 character will effectively last the same time." An idea from another player. If they really do ensure that squishing won't make any old raids harder for max level, I don't see any reason to be adamantly against squishing.

[Marema]

sigh....people's fascination with a squish is beyond ridiculous. Soloable content now will be solable after a squish. Why is something so easy as that so hard for some people to understand?

There is also another thread (okay, 1000 of them) about item squish. Mods please close this one and point the OP to one of the many that have already been created. Some of us are tired of these forums constantly having the same whining topics.

[Ausr]

Something tells me, rather than look at how item squishing works, you chose to deny that and just made another thread about it without any understanding whatsoever.

[Kazi]

I'm genuinely surprised at this response....I felt that I provided enough evidence to support what I thought that it wasn't a subjective thing anymore

Please can you quote me and the parts you feel I'm getting wrong so I can see if I need to clarify something or not

"In other words, your Fireball will still do the same percentage damage to a player or a creature that it does today, but the number would be smaller." and they use this rationale to say soloing old content wouldn't be affected - this is clearly wrong as that quote has to only be related to mobs around the same level as your toon""

- - - Updated - - -

If you go into an old raid and currently your fireball hits a raid boss for 50% of his health, after this squish your fireball will still hit him for 50% of his health. Get it?

They have also tossed the idea around of a switch you can toggle in old raids. As in, toggle on an ICC style buff that buffs all your stats while in that raid by 500% or whatever the case may be. There are plenty of ways to make old stuff still soloable.


I honestly do not understand why this is even still a concern.

[Dazzy]

The intention is to scale it evenly so you will notice no changes.

If it happens that the "curve" squish doesn't accomplish this, those areas will be adjusted after.


Settle down, you'll still be able to go back 8 tiers later and get all your achievements.

[Banders]

sigh....people's fascination with a squish is beyond ridiculous. Soloable content now will be solable after a squish. Why is something so easy as that so hard for some people to understand?

There is also another thread (okay, 1000 of them) about item squish. Mods please close this one and point the OP to one of the many that have already been created. Some of us are tired of these forums constantly having the same whining topics.

As I've said...I know soloing will be possible after the item squish but it will not be becasue everything has been reduced at the same rate - which is generally the arguement put forward by people that don't solo

For the item squish to happen and old content to still be soloable there has to be something different put in place

I'm all for the item squish happening and am interested to see how'll they'll solve the problem of old content, whether it's by us being buffed in old raids or what

[shadowboy]

Most of the replies in this thread completely missed the OP's point.

Item squish in the dev watercooler blog will make item levels linear. They are currently exponential. While the relative values they mentioned would be the same but that's only for a creature at your level.

Think of it this way

linear: y = 2x
exponential y = 2^x

linear: if you set a new value of x, say x1 to x/2, that means the new value of y, call it y1 = y/2.
exponential: if you set a new valve of x, say x1 to x/2, new value of y, call it y1 = square root of y.

more generally, with a linear relationship, if you multiply x by k, you also multiply y by k. In an exponential relation ship, if you multiply x by k, you raise y to the kth power.

Last I checked, y/2 does not equal sqrt(y), (unless, of course, y happens to be 4). This means RELATIVE POWER HAS CHANGED.

[Guyviroth]

Sigh....you think you'd read what I wrote before posting this

I'm talking about soloing old content not how things are with current content

Think about what I just said for a minute. Now read on if you still don't get it.

If old content drops at the same rate as we do (for example, by 30%) then everything evens out; We do 30% less damage, the bosses have 30% less health, they do 30% less damage, etc. Difficulty and speed does not change. The only difference is that the numbers will be 30% lower than they were prior to the squish.

[Marema]

As I've said...I know soloing will be possible after the item squish but it will not be becasue everything has been reduced at the same rate - which is generally the arguement put forward by people that don't solo

For the item squish to happen and old content to still be soloable there has to be something different put in place

I'm all for the item squish happening and am interested to see how'll they'll solve the problem of old content, whether it's by us being buffed in old raids or what

Even if everything is reduced at the exact same rate that means that everything will stay exactly the same as it is now! That's what exact means. The same. Reduce every single thing in the game by 50% and guess what? IF you can 2 shot a boss now, you'll be able to 2 shot a boss after a squish. Some people just like to make things way more complicated then they need to be. Bottom line is no matter how they go about doing a squish, people will still be able to solo stuff. IF they can solo stuff then yes, it is indeed the same as it is now; soloable. Doesn't matter if they squish all of the numbers or add an "I Win" button at the beginning of every old instance. At the end of the day old raids will be soloable and all of these threads about a squish are old and useless.