Item crunch

[theroflcopta]

Before pandaria was coming out there were developer discussions where they debated whether or not to implement an "item crunch". what this was, was the re tuning of stats to make them smaller and more manageable all over all stats would have been reduced where end game cata gear had similar stats for mid to late game BC gear. For me this was a big deal number had gotten to ridiculous amounts and stat changes in your character seemed at least to me almost insignificant. The numbers were so high you would barely notice that you were getting 1000 extra damage on a hit and so on. And of course I'm sure people will bitch and moan about the across the board Nerf but I'm sure people will get used to it as they have to other unsavory changes. And I don't see many more wow expansions coming out "at least from a lore stand point" so this most likely wont become an issue again. Now blizzard stated that they might change this soon but who knows what they decide.

So my question is, how many of you want to see this change? Do you want to go back down to more manageable numbers and smaller stats, or do you want to continue on this path where hits and health could reach into the small millions?

---------- Post added 2012-11-05 at 12:45 AM ----------

and sorry i know this would be better as a poll but i cant make it one for some reason D :

Lowering the stats would make old content unsoloable

its simple math, boss has 10,000 HP and hits for 500 dmg, you have 5000 HP and hit for 1000 dmg you do 10% dmg and can survive 10 hits, lower boss to 1000 HP and hits for 50 dmg, you have 500 HP and hit for 100 dmg, you do 10% dmg each hit and can survive 10 hits, thats how it would scale dont need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out XD and if you don't have faith in blizzard to figure that out you must doubt them A LOT!

it makes progression feel non existent!

Right because the small numbers made the progression of pre cata wow just complete garbage everyone hated the progression because it was so terrible. People dont care about what numbers they are getting as long as they go up but players will get a better sense of progression with lower stats, someone feels better when they go from 1000 dmg a hit to 1250 dmg instead of 456078 to 457932 you just feel more powerful its purely a physiological thing that brings more satisfaction to your eyes, trust me.

Smaller numbers will make people feel less powerful!

right and thats why when blizzard was discussing this, that, that was the only legitimate backlash to the decision but they said they would do their best to make you still able to solo content. This game is based on percentages, not numbers the numbers have no meaning they dont matter it's the percentages behind them that do. and since the numbers dont matter, im saying, i like seeing smaller numbers and they are a better representation of the percentages that are going on behind the scenes. It's easier to figure out the percentage of what 175 dmg takes out of a mob with 1000 HP then it is 456432 takes out of a monster with 345246136 HP.

and lastly ITLL BE A NERF!

If there are people in wow that can;t handle a nerf then they shouldnt be playing wow plain and simple.

[Korrah]

It certainly is needed.
I was dissapointed that they didn't do the squish in MoP, but I expect to see it in the next xpac.
Do not like these megadamage numbers.

[Tovarish24]

Something about hitting someone who has 30k HP for 7k damage just feels way more awesome than hitting someone with 300k HP for 70k damage. Wrath numbers felt SOOOO right in my mind.

[Gnarles Malarkey]

The item crunch will never happen so long as stat-scaling tunes itself down each level or expansion, as it has been doing do ever since the game launched.

So what if you 200k of one stat or the other in any given tier, so long as it shows some semblance of balance at the appropriate gear levels?

[PetersenIII]

So what if you 200k of one stat or the other in any given tier, so long as it shows some semblance of balance at the appropriate gear levels?

"Big numbers scare small minds." ? :shrugs:

[Prokne]

I wish people would just let this idea die. It is the worst possible thing that Blizzard could do to fix a programming problem with the game. It nerfs your character and impacts soloing old content while using scientific notation and modifiers such as K and M will more easily fix the problem while maintaining character progression.

If you dont like big numbers, get an addon the truncates them or learn to ignore all but the first two numbers.

[Tovarish24]

It's not a matter of literal terms, or mathematical ones. It's the psychological and visual aspects of it. Seeing a long, drawn out number is simply less satisfying. If you go from 1500 intellect on an upgrade to 1650, it feels weak. If you go from 50 Intellect to 55 you can say, it looks like more. If it doesn't bother you or you can't see that, then that's fine, and frankly it's nothing that really bothers me beyond saying, I'd rather have the squish if I had the choice. I wouldn't say is a resolvent issue that's at the forefront of people's minds as something that needs fixing, it's just a subconscious part of the game that might make some, if not most, players more happy without them really realizing it.

[nyc81991]

No, I don't want to see an item crunch.

The whole point of leveling and gearing up is to progress and get stronger. That means bigger numbers as time goes on. There is no reason to lower them.

[Flaks]

The item crunch will never happen so long as stat-scaling tunes itself down each level or expansion, as it has been doing do ever since the game launched.

So what if you 200k of one stat or the other in any given tier, so long as it shows some semblance of balance at the appropriate gear levels?

Stat-scaling has failed at tuning itself worse and worse every single expansion. ilvl to stat relations are exponential which is why you end up seeing massive differences between fresh and even mildly geared level 90s ON RELEASE.

We're well on our way to an expansion where people with a normal mode weapon will be doing half of the damage of someone in heroic mode gear of the same tier.

[Evil Inside]

It's not a matter of literal terms, or mathematical ones. It's the psychological and visual aspects of it. Seeing a long, drawn out number is simply less satisfying. If you go from 1500 intellect on an upgrade to 1650, it feels weak. If you go from 50 Intellect to 55 you can say, it looks like more. If it doesn't bother you or you can't see that, then that's fine, and frankly it's nothing that really bothers me beyond saying, I'd rather have the squish if I had the choice. I wouldn't say is a resolvent issue that's at the forefront of people's minds as something that needs fixing, it's just a subconscious part of the game that might make some, if not most, players more happy without them really realizing it.

I have no problem looking at big numbers, infact I like it when I crit for 123895, if you dont like the numbers there are addons that change it to xxxK or xxxM instead of the full number. I like seeing big numbers, it makes my character feel powerful, after going through all the adventures. Fighting the legion in outlands and scourge in northrend, killing Illidan and LK, turning deathwing into fireworks and so on.

[Gnarles Malarkey]

Stat-scaling has failed at tuning itself worse and worse every single expansion. ilvl to stat relations are exponential which is why you end up seeing massive differences between fresh and even mildly geared level 90s ON RELEASE.

We're well on our way to an expansion where people with a normal mode weapon will be doing half of the damage of someone in heroic mode gear of the same tier.

So freshly-dinged players should be competitive with geared raiders?

How is a crunch going to help this? There are already avenues to make content accessible, if that's what you're getting at, seeing as the crunch would only scale down item levels relative to expired content, based on GC's chart a few months back.

[Tovarish24]

I wish people would just let this idea die. It is the worst possible thing that Blizzard could do to fix a programming problem with the game. It nerfs your character and impacts soloing old content while using scientific notation and modifiers such as K and M will more easily fix the problem while maintaining character progression.

If you dont like big numbers, get an addon the truncates them or learn to ignore all but the first two numbers.

It's not a nerf, and it's across the board, even with old content. Literally NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING about the game would change, except for the size of the numbers within it. Everything would be scaled back the exact same percentage. Let me just ask this: Did you feel like numbers felt better in TBC in Wrath compared to Cata and MoP? If yes, the well the squish is a no brainer. If no, then it really shouldn't bother you either way, because it doesn't actually harm you at all. And the argument of using K or M is awful. Let's say 2 or 3 expacs from now we're hitting for anywhere between 2 and 6 million damage on average.

How would you feel if on a boss fight, whatever addon or standard UI you use to see the amount of damage you're doing, it would be very static. You would hit for 2M, 2M, 3M, 4.5M, 2M, instead of numbers that you can actually compare like 5643/7689/15,790/9,865. Do you feel me? The game would get very boring if 30 of every 50 hits you had on a boss or player all read: 2M. That's just fucking lame.

[Seezer]

"Big numbers scare small minds." ? :shrugs:

Insecure people need big numbers to compensate. They should have just done it. Having a boss with 1 billion HP is just lame. The item squish can't happen though. Because there will be floods of QQ "WTF BLIZZ! THIS DOESN'T FEEL LIKE CHARACTER PROGRESSION!!! I QUIT!!! AND SO DID MY FRIENDS LIST OF 250 PPL!!!!"

[Flaks]

So freshly-dinged players should be competitive with geared raiders?

How is a crunch going to help this? There are already avenues to make content accessible, if that's what you're getting at, seeing as the crunch would only scale down item levels relative to expired content, based on GC's chart a few months back.

Not raiders. People with dungeon gear against someone with nothing but quest blues (ilvl 442 against ilvl 450) see a massive difference in performance due entirely to gear.

A better comparison is between malevolent gladiator weapons and LFR weapons. There's a difference of exactly 6 ilvl there which is the smallest found between any two things in this expansion. The difference between the dps on the weapons is about 200 dps which translates to a massive difference of over 3k difference on the character sheet.

Now compare it between LFR and normal mode raids. 476 vs. 489 leads to a weapon dps difference of about 450 which translates to an even bigger difference on the character sheet. The difference is a percent larger than what the difference is between say an ilvl 450 and ilvl 463 weapon. And the difference was quite a bit smaller between an ilvl 128 and ilvl 141 weapon back in tBC.

[Seezer]

Stat-scaling has failed at tuning itself worse and worse every single expansion. ilvl to stat relations are exponential which is why you end up seeing massive differences between fresh and even mildly geared level 90s ON RELEASE.

We're well on our way to an expansion where people with a normal mode weapon will be doing half of the damage of someone in heroic mode gear of the same tier.

What? It doesn't work like that man. You may want to look at the stats again. A heroic blue may be 75% of what a entry normal raid item is. And they'll keep the same proportion. It isn't hard for them to do no matter how big the numbers get. that's not the issue. They aren' going to keep spreading the gap.

[Deleted]

impacts soloing old content

No it dont.

For example. Boss got 100k HP, you hit for 10k, 10% of its HP
They change the numbers, boss got 10k, you hit for 1k, still 10% of its HP.

This would not impact the soloing, as EVERYTHING gets squished, not just numbers on your gear

OT; Imo, they need to work further to get a better solution the whole "squish" idea just makes you feel like you're getting nerfed super hard.

[theroflcopta]

Well it isnt a nerf balance wise. You are still doing the same amount of damage percentage wise, and for me smaller numbers just feel better if you get a new item and go to 7500 dmg from 7000 dmg you can really notice the difference instead of 700000 dmg to 705000 dmg. If anything it makes gear progression more exciting because it makes it far more noticable when you have a change. And again people who say this wont let you solo old content didnt pass first grade math, it lowers ALL stats even bosses every number across the board is lowered meaning you can still farm kara for the mount just as easily as you do now.

[Gnarles Malarkey]

Not raiders. People with dungeon gear against someone with nothing but quest blues (ilvl 442 against ilvl 450) see a massive difference in performance due entirely to gear.

A better comparison is between malevolent gladiator weapons and LFR weapons. There's a difference of exactly 6 ilvl there which is the smallest found between any two things in this expansion. The difference between the dps on the weapons is about 200 dps which translates to a massive difference of over 3k difference on the character sheet.

Now compare it between LFR and normal mode raids. 476 vs. 489 leads to a weapon dps difference of about 450 which translates to an even bigger difference on the character sheet. The difference is a percent larger than what the difference is between say an ilvl 450 and ilvl 463 weapon. And the difference was quite a bit smaller between an ilvl 128 and ilvl 141 weapon back in tBC.

You're right. It is larger. That's the point of upgrading your gear in new content, so that you scale better in said avenues.

And, like I said, so long as you're scaling up in the appropriate tier, what's the problem?

show logs of massive disparity or gtfo

[theroflcopta]

OT; Imo, they need to work further to get a better solution the whole "squish" idea just makes you feel like you're getting nerfed super hard.

Yeah it'll seem like a nerf at first but i think people in this game are used to dealing with changes they dont like at first. If there is anything this community does is bitch and moan about every change but then after a week or two say "yeah that actually wasnt a bad idea." I think the same would apply to this.

[Evil Inside]

Blizzard's own example graph shows how they would do it, notice the difference between level 60 content when at level 85? yeah..