So, item levels are getting spiked for no reason. Again.

[Ishayu]

Ah yes you are right, I was supposed to add 30 to the top tier. Either way, with the same comparison, we're going from a 77 ilvl increase to 125 ilvl in BfA

That, and Wrath was also the first expansion where Blizzard had to go in mid-tier and nerf secondary stats because otherwise they rolled over to >100% armor pen and the formula broke, or players would get >100% crit, etc.

If you're trying to make the argument that gear scaling is too much and this is causing problem, WotLK is an interesting comparison, because it had the exact same problem.

This time it's even worse than in Wrath, which really says everything that needs to be said.

[Alkizon]

Ishayu
That, and Wrath was also the first expansion where Blizzard had to go in mid-tier and nerf secondary stats because otherwise they rolled over to >100% armor pen and the formula broke, or players would get >100% crit, etc.

If you're trying to make the argument that gear scaling is too much and this is causing problem, WotLK is an interesting comparison, because it had the exact same problem.

This time it's even worse than in Wrath, which really says everything that needs to be said.

Its formula needed to look like turned exhibitor "seeking to 100%", it was their mistake from mathematics point of view, and not system organization one. But they also overlook something then: they needed more “stronger”(stats) items (this was demanded by balance - have something better/something worse and this should be especially true for badge items) to place with less “PvE-rating” characteristics (and vice versa), which would require players to use part of low-level gear in order to fulfill conditions of these "rating" characteristics (also professions' stuff), so doesn't require much ilvl growth (items become a little stronger in outcome for this content, but give lesser other useful stuff for other one = ex. tank's survival rate overally increases sufficiently, but health size and threat generation decreases in new "tier"; AA in this sense have it on mind, but they decide to wedged into class design scope for some reason instead of using working characteristics system, which would be more general, and therefore more universal solution, without need for scaling something to something). Also:

Alternative is to make it absolutely insignificant (within 1/2 levels, or without level increasing = without increasing basic stats, but only a slight increase in secondary ones (characteristics), and this should be completely controlled by players (some currency/professions, anything, but not RNG))

It was partially done in vanilla: where stats were too high, characteristics were lower and vice versa (remember defence bonus items? but vanilla/BC also used resistance-base system of characteristics

A lot of interesting and essential things have been written here, but I would like to remind separately what people pathologically forget. This element, among other things (immersion, logic, lore, preparation, etc.), had design sense of progress: it reduced need for increase in inflation of gear's characteristics. This is not just "and also this", this is very significant bonus/addition to entire system, and most importantly, this factor is absolutely universal (not temporary/completely liquidated/depreciated) - relevant and logical for any content/next patch/expansion. Perhaps "pure vanilla" approach was a little dry, but I suppose if manipulate whole system of characteristics in gear at the same time, rather than twitch its different parts separately, everything will turn out much smoother.

Many, especially magic classes, were alarmed by behavior of such element (resistance) in PvP and PvE, but earlier there was characteristic of spell penetration for PvE, and for PvP this characteristic could, if question was correctly posed, be devalued up to 95% by presence of cap of resilience, everything can be easy and simple, you just need to not contradict logic.

Separate spit at those speaking about "very boring stats". These are characteristics, this is their purpose (their purpose is to help with differentiation of roles, their priorities and organization of progress - that's all, no any transcendental far-fetched rubbish) and right to be such (when they became "interesting", system begun to crack at seams, and design was falling apart, this was said before any "interesting systems" appeared and what happened after only proved veracity of such censor), talents are more interesting still not enough to overweight class' distinctive stuff, class mechanics are even more interesting - in that order and only that.

which further expanded their ability to manipulate and control growth of direct characters force - demand for ilvl growth, 2nd Naxx almost didn't have this already). What would require more tricks for players in dressing character, but dungeons and raids design also should be (but wasn't) more demanding of these "rating" characteristics and other stuff like threat/resistance/avoidance for this (for any characters' party role!), but they ended up reducing everything to base stats growth demand (which in current design = ilvl), so in result for ex. most tanks went full stamina back then... but, as for vanilla/BC, I already touched that part a little not so long ago:

(but don't forget that Classic and BC also had symptoms of too protracted "content" cycle in form of content/balance changes released near Naxx and Sunwell;
---
don't read that they were bad, they were surplus for current content, and therefore required significant changes to progressive "finished" part of released content (such game mechanics as threat, stat growth and balance of progress), they could for example be separated by a pair of levels (real char.lvls) both in complexity (performance/characteristics requirements) and progress from current content instead of rebalance and catch-up mechanic (they mostly were rushed), but unsuccessful levels distribution as such is a separate topic
---
but if it was closer to the end of the cycle in previous times, then WotLK have began it even before its middle: inflation and rush, this is something that should have sobered up developers with sufficient critical thinking, but vice versa scared them and they began to cut content on the move).

And then these people went into pre-nerfed Cataclysm's dungeons:
- Wha-a-a-a-a!
- Wha-wha-t's going on!?
- My fat @$$ not saving me anymore! That $hit isn't working!
- Me and my party being 1-shoting for not following combat mechanics!
- B-b-li-i-izzard! Y this continue happing to me?
- Make it easier!
...and they did, no more cunning characteristics, no more cunning combat mechanics, but no one did take into account system's demands. Anyone guess with results? *point on topic's title* ⇒ happened demand for various difficulties (for any cb want to see content fo free) ⇒ for bigger jump of stats (= ilvl, for any cb want to participate in progress) ⇒ for stats compressing ⇒ as a result for try to remove them at all, since what else to do. This doesn't mean that players're only ones to blame, no, decisions were made by company and it alone, and much of what became “solution” didn't even lend itself to normal logic, but in average - something like this

[Daffan]

So your saying rpgs use upgrades as a reward to make players feel good like thats a bad thing? lol wut.
+2 sword better than +1 sword was news in 1974, feel like its a part of games as a whole and has been forever.

also people in any game will reach a point of power or skill that its no longer possible to get any stronger the gear/skill hardcap. the better the player the faster they will reach this point. Please tell me a good game that has a point in infinite progression?

best example i can think of is diablo 3's paragon system...and thats super fun..../s please grind more rat runs ugh.

If you read with context, you'll understand that giving people items for free is a bad idea. There's a difference between working and being rewarded for an action, contrast to just receiving something.

+2 sword means nothing when the player knows that +3 is both free and right around the corner.

Your second argument make no sense because it's not arguing against anything I said. I never said there was a problem with increasing max ilvl, just how you get there is the problem. Said power spike is just making content these people never even did obsolete.

Heck even before that they had some of this in place in Vanilla too (Old argent dawn turn ins with the Nax patch, BG's adding some easy rep loot, Addition of the Tir 0.5 set, ect)

None of this was catchup like it is today. It's just what they used to call ALTERNATIVE PROGRESSION. You weren't actually catching up to anything, you were just getting rewarded for your actions appropriately.

Tier 0.5 took so much effort that Tier 1 was easier. BG's required a huge time and effort investment -- the rep loot was only a few unique pieces. Both rep and rank requirements were again, huge :effort:

[Qnubi]

And that is what ruined the game. Blizzard tried to make everyone happy, which you can't in basically any aspect of life, and by doing that they made everyone unhappy. It's better to focus on the core audience and just make a good game. People will join and want to play more than just casually. When you make a game where casual players reach the end of the game with way less effort than "hardcore" players, it makes no sense to be "hardcore".

They shot themselves in the foot by trying to do that. Now they think they can't reverse that because they would lose to many subs. They are right, they can't fix that by "soft fixing" it. The game has to change drastically and have "unpopular" changes likes removing automated group finding, getting rid of at least 2 difficulties, slowing the games progression pace and sooo much more.

Will they do that? No, they just won't take that big of a risk.

Oh trust me, I am far away from "casual", I no-life WoW when patches and new expansions come out and the time I put in gets me rewards worth my time. I am just not interested in raiding anymore, I did that for way too long with 90+ percentage logs. M+ is just way more rewarding because my input is (feels) more valuable, both in DPS and tanking. I also have way more control over who's in my group and can surround me with people that are similar skilled and not have to constantly put up with people that I think should not be part of the group like it is the case when you go raiding (more people, higher chance). Overall I still like the gameplay and the challenges of WoW combat on higher end and the ilvl progression but just am fed up with big group content, might be burnout on raiding as well.

I think many people realize with the introduction of M+ that it can replace raiding in terms of difficulty just fine and you can play with less, potential, fail people.

[MiiiMiii]

Yes it's horrible with these kinds of catch up mechanics. And unfortunately for everyone, it has been like this for a long time. So because it has been horrible for a long time, it's ok appearently, and people will flame you for trying to speak up about the issue.

[andrewjoy]

Yehhh lets exponentially increase everyone's stats by insane amounts every xpac.... nothing can go wrong with that!

I am sorry if you don't see a problem you don't understand how numbers work.

The problem stems form simply too many levels of content and Titanforge. People need "rewards" for harder settings so have to have higher iLVL (or so say blizzards "developers"), and aparently we need random chance for the iLVL to be even higher to " keep people playing".

There are many ways they could fix this. They could reduce the number of levels of content, they could make the higher settings reward more optimised stats or set bonuses or proc etc. They could have smaller gaps between the iLVLs of each setting. They could make the ilvl boots not exponential each tier.

But all that would take effort and skill rather than just giving us more numbers.

[Alphatorg]

Yehhh lets exponentially increase everyone's stats by insane amounts every xpac.... nothing can go wrong with that!

I am sorry if you don't see a problem you don't understand how numbers work.

The problem stems form simply too many levels of content and Titanforge. People need "rewards" for harder settings so have to have higher iLVL (or so say blizzards "developers"), and aparently we need random chance for the iLVL to be even higher to " keep people playing".

There are many ways they could fix this. They could reduce the number of levels of content, they could make the higher settings reward more optimised stats or set bonuses or proc etc. They could have smaller gaps between the iLVLs of each setting. They could make the ilvl boots not exponential each tier.

But all that would take effort and skill rather than just giving us more numbers.

Well what does go wrong? Sure they have to stat squish from time to time, but who cares about that?

[Mayia]

Very slowly becoming world of casual craft.

crawling item level casual craft lol.

Yeah its because they want to allow more people get all the ranges of item levels, its kind of like they misunderstood the everyone should see the raids, and it became "everyone should be able to do the raid and get all the loot no matter what!"
I see no reason why LFR/Normal shouldn't be something Mythic raiders even bother with, by making it the previous tiers mythic level.. it would be fine.

[HCLM]

Don't worry bruh vanilla is coming soon and then you can spam the forums about it being too hard for you.

Too grind and unbalanced*. Vanilla was never hard, requirements to play it were just bad. Like, get full bis gear from previous raid before you can even step into newest raid.

[kubaje]

Well what does go wrong? Sure they have to stat squish from time to time, but who cares about that?

I wouldn't underestimate the psychological effect of stat squishes. They can't do that indefinitely. Basically resetting everything about your characters too often will feel like you didn't progress at all.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer doing 5k dps over 5mil dps, but going back and forth too quickly too often just feels terrible and gets old.

[Alphatorg]

I wouldn't underestimate the psychological effect of stat squishes. They can't do that indefinitely. Basically resetting everything about your characters too often will feel like you didn't progress at all.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer doing 5k dps over 5mil dps, but going back and forth too quickly too often just feels terrible and gets old.

My guess would be that Blizzard believes the upside of having a strong numbers progression within one expansion to outweigh the downside of the resulting stat squishes between expansions. After all they hit reset with every new expansion anyway.

[Qnubi]

I wouldn't underestimate the psychological effect of stat squishes. They can't do that indefinitely. Basically resetting everything about your characters too often will feel like you didn't progress at all.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer doing 5k dps over 5mil dps, but going back and forth too quickly too often just feels terrible and gets old.

Well it surely has no effect on me. It doesn't matter to me what numbers I do, I still do the % of damage to a mob/boss that I did prior to the squish so if the squish is done right you don't lose any effective dps at all. Let's assume you did 20% of damage on a boss with 1 million dps, and after the squish you did 20% with 1k dps. You still do the same amount of % damage.

[Echocho]

too much math...not enough soul is the TLDR for that

That's a very good way of putting it. You can see it clearly with gear. Items aren't made for them to be fun, interesting, customizable and exciting. It's a zero sum balance game with 4 different stats that are mostly just +power. It's incredibly bland and almost depressing to look at.

If in the past an item had str, sta, defense, parry, hit and 3 colored gem slots with the possibility to customize it further through diverse enchants it was an interesting item. Note that only one of those stats were +power (str), hit kinda works the opposite way and makes sure you don't get -power.

These are things that make the game feel like a RPG. It shouldn't be linear and streamlined.

[Craaazyyy]

I wouldn't underestimate the psychological effect of stat squishes. They can't do that indefinitely. Basically resetting everything about your characters too often will feel like you didn't progress at all.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer doing 5k dps over 5mil dps, but going back and forth too quickly too often just feels terrible and gets old.

yeah, but if not for lvl inflation and passive stamina buff per level most likely we would only now have started to approach millions..

it makes no sense how in vanilla we had 5-6k hp with good gear(ofc different classes had different stats, but more or less those were the numbers), then in bc we had ~10-11k hp, then in wrath it was 25-30k.. and then in cata for some reason it was 150-160k hp.. instead of just 60k for example.. and then in mop it was already 500-600k instead of just 100-120k.. then in WoD they did a stat squish and the HP remained the same it was in MoP, but we could've had like 300k hp or something then 500-600 in legion and now would be approaching 1m or something or even less

[Alphatorg]

That's a very good way of putting it. You can see it clearly with gear. Items aren't made for them to be fun, interesting, customizable and exciting. It's a zero sum balance game with 4 different stats that are mostly just +power. It's incredibly bland and almost depressing to look at.

If in the past an item had str, sta, defense, parry, hit and 3 colored gem slots with the possibility to customize it further through diverse enchants it was an interesting item. Note that only one of those stats were +power (str), hit kinda works the opposite way and makes sure you don't get -power.

These are things that make the game feel like a RPG. It shouldn't be linear and streamlined.

They tried to be more ambitious with secondary stats, it didn't work because casual plebs got confused. So they scrapped some of the ratings, scrapped reforging and adopted the ilvl trumps all approach. They also did "fun, customizable and exciting" items with legendaries, set bonuses and artifact weapons.

[kamuimac]

My guess would be that Blizzard believes the upside of having a strong numbers progression within one expansion to outweigh the downside of the resulting stat squishes between expansions. After all they hit reset with every new expansion anyway.

ofc they see it - the squish this time had so many bugs because they were developiing algorytms for future - thx to this they can now rescale it with a "flip of a switch "

[kubaje]

Well it surely has no effect on me. It doesn't matter to me what numbers I do, I still do the % of damage to a mob/boss that I did prior to the squish so if the squish is done right you don't lose any effective dps at all. Let's assume you did 20% of damage on a boss with 1 million dps, and after the squish you did 20% with 1k dps. You still do the same amount of % damage.

You don't have to explain to me how the squish works. I'm not one of those people who think they lose power with a squish.

I just don't think the "rollercoaster" system is fun or exciting. They make you hit like a wet noodle in the beginning of the expansion/squish cycle just to give you the feeling of being some kind of "mega god" at the end of the cycle with numbers on the screen you can barely read in combat, only to make you then hit like a wet noodle again.

I much prefer the way it worked from Vanilla to mid Wrath. It started to get worse with TotC and got ridiculous in ICC, especially with the Cata pre patch.

[RoKPaNda]

They have content to run though. There was always content to progress on in bc all the way until the mega nerf patch unless you were one of the few guilds doing sunwell.

Now there is basically no content to run outside what is newest.

Again, you're ignoring important things, like raiding was a niche activity. For the vast vast majority of people, raiding was something that they didn't do. Those people had heroic dungeons which weren't valuable for very long. Or Karazhan, that was pretty accessible, but again not valuable for very long. Content didn't last nearly as long as some people remember. So far this is the best way they've found to make content last longer. If you can do better though I hear they're hiring.

[andrewjoy]

Well what does go wrong? Sure they have to stat squish from time to time, but who cares about that?

There scaling is broken, different people hitting the same mob seeing different numbers of HP and DPS and Healing , thats just stupid. It should just lower your stats / level to that of the instance you are in, much simpler on the maths and less confusing for players. THe FF14 way is much cleaner, sure it sucks to lose abilities when you sync but at least you sometimes get to play with the old rotations from previous xpacs :P.

And you cannot just squish stats forever , one day level 60 weapons will have 1.0 DPS on them, thats just silly.

[Xath]

Again, you're ignoring important things, like raiding was a niche activity. For the vast vast majority of people, raiding was something that they didn't do. Those people had heroic dungeons which weren't valuable for very long. Or Karazhan, that was pretty accessible, but again not valuable for very long. Content didn't last nearly as long as some people remember. So far this is the best way they've found to make content last longer. If you can do better though I hear they're hiring.

It wasn't though. The numbers they cite are for the final raid if everyone is getting to the final raid there is nothing to reach for.