Monday, February 10, 2014

110% Guarantee Soloing Some Old Raid Bosses Might Be Harder Post Squish

Reading a post over at WoW-Insider titled 110% guarantee soloing old raids will not be harder post squish made me happy as someone that likes to solo old content.  Check it out here.  Then I started to think, which is often what I do and it gets me into trouble, and it made me think that the Celestalon just misspoke in his tweet.

For the records this is what he said:

The item squish *will not* make soloing older raids harder.  We promise, and 110% guarantee it.

This is what I believe he really meant to say.

Our intention is so that the item squish *will not* make soloing older raids harder.  We promise, and 110% guarantee that we will make every effort to ensure that.

But what happened was twitter only allows so many letters and he had to lose some and what was basically a truthful (my version) post became something that will end up being an incorrect statement (his post).

I do believe that blizzard will do everything in the power to make sure that we can still enjoy the same small successes and minor victories over stuff we solo super easy already.  But those things on the cusp, the ones we are close to soloing or one the ones we can barely solo, they are bound to take some hits in one direction or another.  Either becoming so much easier or becoming completely impossible.  No matter what, it *will not* be the same, not at all.

It will not be because blizzard is not trying, not at all.  I do believe they have absolutely every intention to not take anything away from us.  If we can solo LK 25 heroic now at 90 if the squish happened right this very second they would want us to still be able to do it. That I believe to be 110% true.

They want us to do the things we like to do and if what we like to do is go kill old raid bosses solo in an effort to get some trasnmog gear, or a chance at a rare mount, or for some gold, or just for shits and giggles, they want us to keep doing that.  It would not be good business practice for them to take that away from us.  You can not take something like that away without substantial back lash.

The issues is not with their intentions, it is with their design.  Not even saying their design is a bad thing, quite the opposite, it is because it is such a good thing that I can say with absolutely certainty that we will not be able to solo old raids we might have become used to soloing.  They will of course patch some things as they are bought up, or I hope they would, but there is no way that they can do this complete and total item squish and not break one hundred and one things in the process.

Just think if all the simple little things they added to the game over the years.  I remember when they added the three new five mans in wrath at the end and I was on an alt questing in netherstorm and got an error saying "this item can only be used in the forge of souls."  Excuse me, how is a level 67 supposed to go to a level 80 dungeon to complete a quest that was made before wrath even came out?

The game is so expansive that whenever they add something they break something else.  It is because the game is just so freaking huge that mistakes like that happen. 

For the people that know nothing about coding I will put it in simple terms.  They had to give a label to the item being used in that BC quest, lets say they called it fos010.  Using that short cut allowed the system to use that item.  Well, when forge of souls came out they probably added some label in there for something to be used there as fos010 because no one noticed that it was already used somewhere else in the code.  Then when I went to do that quest it called up that fos010 item and noticed it was something from forge of souls and noticed I was not in forge of souls and gave me an error in using it.  Some coder probably went in later and relabeled it fos010a or something and tada it worked again.  But that just goes to show you that anything can happen when you start playing with things in the background.  Who would have thought that adding a 5 man dungeon in wrath would break a quest from BC?  Surely not many of those in their player base, but it happened.

I am sure if you think about it you have experienced something like that, every single person that has ever played this game has run across something that was old and did not work or at least did not work as intended, and it is probably because of something they added after it.

That is why sometimes when they make one change to one ability from one class they need to go and change a while slew of other classes abilities.  It is because of how those abilities interact with the one they changed.  It is not so clear cut and easy as some people think it is.  Changing one small thing could cause a chain effect that leads you down the road to changing 600 other things just to get that one thing you changed to work as you intended it to.  Yes, it really is that complex, I am not playing parlor tricks on you and trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

The item squish all seems simple in theory.  Just reduce everything to 10% of what it does now and everything should work just the same, just with a few less zeros at the end.  Basically doing everything on a smaller scale.  Absolutely, that works, in theory.

With the thousands of mobs, the hundreds of bosses, the thousands of boss abilities, the hundreds of thousands of possible outcomes from abilities reacting to each other in combination, the over 30 specs, the over 200 different talent set ups those specs can have, the thousands of abilities they have and the hundreds of thousands of different ways those abilities can work in combination of each other there are bound to be some errors, possibly many errors that were not intended and they can not all be tested for and adjusted for on the fly because each time you adjust one thing you need to adjust dozens of others that interact with that one.

This is why I say even if it is their intention to 110% guarantee that we will be able to solo the same things we do now post squish it is not going to happen.  There will be issues, that is not an opinion, that is a fact.  I am sure if you were to ask celestalon if there could be issues even he would agree there could be.  Sure it would mean his 110% guarantee was a lie basically, but like I said, I do not believe he had the intention to lie, he just did not have enough space to post it the way he really wanted to thanks to a limited character count allowed in a tweet.

Then there is the little fact of numbers men vs action men.  No matter how well someone plays with numbers they can never actually see or feel how things work in action.  They can balance a boss to absolute perfection, numbers wise, and be extremely confident that anyone that could have soloed it before will be able to solo it now.  By the numbers the numbers man sees that.  But the action man, the one that actually does the soloing knows that there are some things he can solo only because those huge stats have unexpected results some times and when you squish the numbers the effects change and thus your ability to solo will change with it.  An action man will notice this because he sees how the fights are soloed because he is doing the soloing.  That is something the numbers man will never understand.  And that is reason too why I can say with certainty that you will not be able to solo (some) old raid bosses as easy post squish.  Some bosses will get broken.  That will happen, no doubt, because men of numbers are not men of action, and mistakes will be made.

So I will repeat, for those that might have forgotten already, this is what celestalon actually meant to say.

 Our intention is so that the item squish *will not* make soloing older raids harder.  We promise, and 110% guarantee that we will make every effort to ensure that.

And while something might get broken in the process, do not give blizzard crap over it (as long as they fix it in a timely manner) because you do not know how much is going into this and all the working parts there are to contend with.  Things will get broken and some bosses will be easier than before and some bosses will be harder than before.  It is just the way it is and if you wanted to put a positive spin on it if you are not capable of soloing that old boss you used to be able to solo think of this.  It is only because the game is so expansive, so successful, so information rich on the data end, that something of this magnitude could actually break something.  It just goes to show you, they offer us so much.  If they didn't offer us so much it would be nice and smooth because there would be nothing to screw up on.  This is the one case where screwing up is a good thing.  Well, as long as they fix it after is is reported that is, right?

29 comments:

  1. Since they are going to be smoothing out the stat progression, I'm sure that some of the more recent stuff won't be solo-able anymore. Hopefully, they'll fix it, but they've never been quick to do that; even for the bosses where they added pet drops.

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    1. The only ones I care about are the ones that drop mounts and pets myself. I am sure some things will get screwed up, but also believe that it is their intention to let us solo them but they might just let it slide and say by the end of the expansion we will be able to again.

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  2. You are right in that the 110% guarantee is for "we will absolutely try", not for "it will absolutely work".

    Reducing everything to 10%, btw, is NOT what they are doing, that's an important part of it. (They aren't doing reducing to 10% because of edge issues. Trivial example: suppose a low-level mob hits for 4, he will have to hit for 1, because there are no fractions. But a low-level char who now has 40 hp will have 4 hp. That means that the low-level mob got significantly more dangerous for the low-level char who was supposed to be killing him. And in reality, it's much worse, because the squish applies to *stats*, which have much lower values than hp or damage.)

    What they are doing is turning logarithmic growth of stats after 1-60 into linear growth. An ilvl 522 item loses more than ilvl 496, and much more than ilvl 200. Same for bosses in terms of their hp and abilities. It's like instead of having ilvl 260 in WoTLK and ilvl 560 in MoP, we'd be just lvl 80 and lvl 90 - note that the *relative* difference between 80 and 90 is much smaller than that between 260 and 560. Without some form of compensation, a level 90 char will very likely NOT be able to kill a level 80 raid boss like, say, Sartharion, any more, because the char will lose much more than the boss. There are ways to compensate for that, some have been suggested to the dev team, but every single way has various issues (eg, if they just turn off the squish for everything in pre-100 raids and instances, that leaves world bosses) and every single way requires extensive testing.

    That's why people keep asking Blizzard what exactly are they going to do about soloing old raids and instances. Unfortunately, they keep silent, including in this case where they for the umpteenth time said nothing except "everything is going to be fine". Their keeping silent about what it is they are going to do, is, quite frankly, worrying. I can't help but think that they simply don't know what they are going to do yet. And that's terrible, because, again, there are many ways to do it, but every single way has issues and these issues have to be ironed out.

    My prediction: some or all specs will NOT be able to solo some of the old encounters on release. Whether or not they will fix that and how soon is an open question - it's totally possible that they won't fix some of the corner issues at all.

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    1. BTW, there will be several other changes which will affect soloing significantly. For example, there is a change to vengeance, and vengeance is *the* reason current tanks can solo a lot of Cata raid encounters. There's going to be no compensation for *that*, and it is entirely possible that the jump in power from 90 to 100 - at least with the first raid tier in WoD - will NOT be enough to make these encounters soloable again.

      So, there. It would help greatly if Blizzard said something about what they are going to do already so that we could at least point out where the thing will break. But they don't.

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    2. I used reducing to 10% as an example, I know that is not what they are doing. It is just a simplified way of explaining it.

      The vengeance thing is what my example of men of action means. People that do solo will know how much that matters whereas people that just do numbers will see it as it will be okay. There are a lot of things that work because of huge numbers and would not with lower numbers, that is one of them.

      I do not think they want to go into details, not because, like you say, they are not sure what they are doing, but because they are not sure it will work perfectly. I believe they do have everything working in theory but you know what they say about the best laid plans.

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  3. I saw this on WI and read some of the comments. The question "why are people still asking this? they've said it'll be ok lots of times" was repeated a fair bit. I didn't comment as I have no wish to be eaten alive but my response is "because not everyone has absolute faith/trust in blizz".

    I certainly don't trust them, not anymore. I think that Stockton will regret saying something that sounds so definite later. With all the class changes, the changes to vengeance and a whole host of other expansion fiddling things would be different regardless of the squish. However, people will blame the squish for it anyway.

    I also don't believe that blizz will place it at a very high priority. The endgame is where their attention has always been and I doubt that will change. Once content becomes old then they cease to care about it. They move on to the next shiny thing.

    I think it's possible that people's concern for soloing is more than they expected. So I do think it's possible that they will try but I won't believe it till I can try it for myself on the ptr. Till then I remain sceptical.

    I did laugh at one of the WI comments. Hang on I'll find it. It was in response to "How many times does this need to be posted?"

    "Until beta, when it turns out that soloing old content is like, 110% harder. Then excuses, followed by, "Just join a group, it's multiplayer, we want you out in the world playing with other people. Make some friends, join a guild -- that's what they're for."

    As I can just imagine blizz saying that. After all they've done it before.

    I certainly won't rant and rave at blizz if soloing is harder or impossible for things I can do now. To be honest I expect them to fail, so I'm not going to be disappointed and instead I have the potential to be pleasantly surprised.

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    1. Well, lets be honest, why would anyone have faith in blizzard? They don't exactly have a great track record. I have faith they try to do the right thing, I do not have faith in the fact they will do the right thing. There is a huge gap there between trying to do it and actually doing it.

      I expect them to fail too because that is what they do when they try to mess with older stuff. Old world redesign? Failure as it removed content from what ended up being a dead expansion over all.

      Item squish will end up being looked back on in the same way. Time wasted that could have been used creating instead of fixing problems they should have never let become problems to begin with.

      However I do believe the item squish is needed. No doubt about that. Smaller numbers are just easier for people to understand. But the combination of a lot of things breaking because of it, possibility of people not being able to do things they are used to doing, and seeing the extremely decreased out put, will be a huge disappointment to a great many players and I can very well see this change resulting in another 2 million in sub losses just like they lost 2 million when they made cata heroics harder. You can not screw up that badly and not expect the people to revolt.

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    2. By the way, and sorry in advance for being too grumpy these days (I will stop now, I promise), this reminds me:

      You are comparing item squish with Cata's effort on revamping 1-60 - the effort that is now largely deemed a waste of resources (and I guess it was a waste of resources in the end, although I personally liked many of the questlines). Well, there is an even bigger and more glaring analogy to that particular waste of resources in WoD - character models. Seriously, they keep talking how much time they are spending on character models, and why they are spending all that time on them instead of building, I don't know, assets for new raids and new zones and new buildings / bonfires / whatever and new mobs and new items) but in the end, all due respect to Blizzard and their devs, but these new models will likely end up where Cata's revamp ended - a diversion of huge amount of resources from the real deal, from the game.

      The only way new character models can pay for themselves (opportunity cost) is if WoW suddenly starts getting lots of new players because of them. And there's a heck of a lot of other things that have to happen for this to occur.

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    3. Grumpy is fine, I live my life that way. You would do if you were an elf and had these damn eyebrows to deal with all the time.

      I agree the character models are a waste of resources as well. I've said it before. But for a great deal of players it means something and as much as I believe it is a waste for a new player better looking models might be something that helps drag them into the game.

      Do you know how often I see people that do not play say things like "but that looks lame". So some updates could help the health of the game. Even if you me I believe character models are a waste, I can see a reason for them being done.

      The cata quests being redone not only screwed over the time line but to a new player it made absolutely no difference. Old quests, new quests, they see no difference, a quest is a quest. It added nothing to the game. That is why the cata redesign was a waste and the character models are not. In my opinion. The quests being redone will not get people that never played to play while the character models might.

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    4. In Rift I only got to level 46, because quests are boring and it takes forever to level. Leveling experience needs to be moderately fast and exciting. But I played Rift that long because my char is pretty.

      So... both quests and char looks are quite important when you try out a new game. You have no idea how much it bothers me that my orc female has blocky square legs.

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    5. You fit exactly what I mentioned, some people looks matter to. To me it makes no difference but even at that, I still tend to prefer night elf males because even if I do not roll them for their looks (oh god no) I do like their size and their motion based on the environment. I feel more comfortable playing them. Perhaps, in some way, you can say that means the art does matter to me too even if the "looks" don't.

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    6. well to represent the other side - the only reason why I play WOW is because how things look. I love the artwork whether a bldg, a tree or the actual toons themselves.

      IF it is changed too much and it loses the warcraft artwork, I am afraid, I will seriously have to think about continueing to play.

      I do not care for the art work of say GW/GW2, Rift, or any other games that try to make their artwork look like a painting.

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    7. I agree, I hate the look of rift, that is why I stopped playing. It just did not flow natural or feel right. Warcraft, even if cartoonish, feels right, flows well, and looks natural as if this is how it is supposed to look. Nothing is forced and even if cartoonish I still say warcraft has the best art of any game of this genre even before the updates.

      I am with you roo, if warcraft ever went the way of rift with graphics, unless they can make it really a thousand times better, I too would quit, just like I quit rift because of its horrible artwork.

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  4. So, I was under the impression that the exponential growth between 60 and 81 was what's going to change (to a linear growth). And that the exponential (or log scale as someone put it above) growth was going to stay in place for cata on up. If we can easily solo firelands or BoT, and we're not changing relative to Cata, then we should be good to go, right?. If you can't solo Cata raids, and maybe you can just barely solo ICC, then that's where you'd get into trouble. Am I missing something? For those of us working on DS, we should have nothing to worry about, right?

    ~delirium

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    1. They have not actually given us complete details so all we can do is guess.

      What I believe them to have meant was that every old (as in mists and prior) will be squished and the new expansion will continue with "meaningful" upgrades.

      This means that a piece of 71 wrath green gear and ICC 25 heroic gear will be extremely close in stats as an example. Squishing it that way.

      So with adjustments like that if that is true there are bound to be problems here and there. Even if some other way is how they are doing it, there are bound to be problems. That is just the way it goes with programming.

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    2. I don't know where I got this idea exactly, but I could have sworn that during blizzcon they said they would make linear progression through wrath, and then have exponential progression from Cata on. Then everyone complained that we would just need another squish the next xpac... Maybe that was all in my head though... I'll have to go search through wowhead or mmochamp.

      ~Delirium

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    3. We might have heard the same thing but just interpreted it differently. We will have to wait until we see more about it. But if you can recall the images they showed that had some of the squished 553 items you will notice that the stats on them are more in line with the stats we would have had in the first tier of BC. Like the pair of leather wrists in one of the images with a 553 item level had 46 agility and 69 stamina. (yes, I looked it up) and a tier 5 piece was around those numbers.

      So if those numbers they showed at blizzcon mean anything the current normal mode gear is going to be squished to the starting item stats of BC.

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    4. (pretty sure it is exponential, math was a long time ago for me but as I recall, logarithmic increases get smaller over time, not larger... so, right or wrong, I'm going with exponential... although at the point where they want to keep some exponential growth they may use a logarithmic squish... brain hurts...)

      They have said they were doing that but last we heard they weren't sure how high they were going to scale linearly... there was talk of 80 but even a possibility of 85 or 90... and yes, they did mention that they'd like extend the linear scale in the future which would require another squish. Not sure why that's an issue any more than the current squish is (and it shouldn't be, nothing will actually change except the actual size of numbers, relative strength will stay constant).

      I've also struggled with figuring out how they can guarantee that all older content will be the same or easier when you have a mix of linear and exponential stat growth involved, I don't think there's actually a way for them to do that based on how old raids are currently set up.

      So, time for a new paradigm. Haven't seen this theorized anywhere else so I'm totally taking credit until I hear otherwise. ;)

      Put simply, older content won't be fixed in terms of scale. One hidden benefit of scaling is... well, the ability to scale, I think most folks are looking at squish as a one-time, permanent thing... which I think is an incorrect assumption. Going into a raid at 80, or 85, or 90, you'll be in that raid with different scaling in each case. Mobs will scale to YOUR level when the instance is created, or even on the fly.

      For example, totally made-up numbers for reference:

      TODAY

      Made-Up L70 Boss: 500K health, hits for 1K damage every 2 seconds

      Fake you at L80: 25K health, hit for 5K damage every second... boss dies in 100 seconds, you die in 50 seconds, you're unable to solo

      Fake you at L85: 100K health, hit for 25K damage every second... boss dies in 20 seconds, you die in 100 seconds, you get the kill at 80% health

      Fake you at 90: 500K health, hit for 100K damage every second... boss dies in 5 seconds, boss tickles you, you get the kill.

      POST-SQUISH (assuming linear to 85, exponential but squished at 90)

      Fake you at L80 (linear-ish squish): 5K health, hit for 1K damage every second

      Fake you at L85 (linear-ish squish): 10K health, hit for 2K damage every second...

      Fake you at 90 (logarithmic squish?): 50K health, hit for 20K damage every second...

      Made-Up L70 Boss Facing L80 you: 100K health, hits for 200 damage every 2 seconds... boss dies in 100 seconds, you die in 50 seconds, you’re unable to solo

      Made-up L70 Boss Facing L85 you: 40K health (yes, less), hits for 100 damage every 2 seconds… boss dies in 20 seconds, you die in 100 seconds, you get the kill at 80% health

      Made-up L70 Boss Facing L90 you: 50K health, hits for 100 damage every 2 seconds… boss dies in 5 seconds, you get the kill at 99.5% health

      Scaling... the instance itself actually scales based on your level. It'll be curious to see what they do if you aren't in there by yourself, especially if there are a mix of levels included, but since that's how Flex works right now (at least in terms of numbers), they obviously have the ability to handle that.

      I'm not going to say that this is actually going to happen... but it's the only thing that makes sense and I think it would actually work and the technology already exists to do it.

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    5. Actually the idea you posted there I posted something quite similar a few years ago. Not just for raids but all mobs out in the world. Also for PvP, as in if you hit a level 20 at level 90 it would do damage to them equivalent to as if you were a 20 that hit them and if they hit you they would do damage equivalent to if they were level 90.

      As I posted in my last reply in this list, we know exactly what the stats will look like at 90 being we saw them at blizzcon, fully squished and in action on the floor. The level 90 stats will look like t5 stats, maybe t6 stats. Sure, they can change their mind and might have, but until I hear otherwise being that is the last "in action" version of the squish I saw that is what I am going to take as what they are doing with it.

      But what you said did give me an interesting idea. They do not really need to scale old raids at all. Just give us our "old" stats as what they would have been when we enter them.

      The entire idea of scaling things is nothing original to me or you mentioning it. Anyone with half a brain that does not work for blizzard has been saying this since wrath when we first notice that stats were becoming a bit of an issue thanks to multiple different item levels each tier. It is just amazing how long it is taking blizzard to catch on to the concept that us armchair quarterbacks have been saying for the better part of 5 or so years.

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  5. Man, I hate it when you do these interpretation posts...

    Totally knee-capping the majority of the discussion but nowhere has Blizzard EVER claimed that the relative difficulty of old raids will be THE SAME, nor did they here. They said it will not be MORE DIFFICULT. It's entirely possible, and probably likely, that they'll be easier just to avoid legitimate negative commentary.

    What they're going to do is post-squish, they'll verify which instances haven't scaled down enough and they'll scale them down further. In some/most/all cases this will make older raids easier than they are now, and that's fine, old raids have never been intended to be any sort of appropriate challenge at any higher level, especially in a soloing capacity.

    The difficulty may change, it won't be harder, that's what they're guaranteeing and I believe that'll be the case... I also guarantee that someone will find an edge case where perhaps you could argue it got slightly more difficult, and many will THINK that's happening even when it isn't. I sometimes wonder why Blizzard even tries upgrading the game considering how everyone seems so damned happy with how things are right this very moment despite all the bitching and whining going on.

    "Gah, WoW sucks, it's dead, I have nothing/too much to do but GOD DAMNIT BLIZZARD DON'T F'N TOUCH ANYTHING!!!"

    And yeah, there might be a situation or two where there's a legitimate beef... and Blizzard will fix it. The guarantee is that they'll make it right, not that it'll be perfect out of the gate, that's how a store can claim to have the lowest prices on everything, it's due to their price match policy, not due to having the lowest sticker prices. The 110% guarantee probably means that if something is harder, they'll actually make it 10% easier to solo than it used to be. Guaranteed.

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    1. Did this post go over your head or did you start reading it half way through?

      No where did they say it would be the same you say? Ah, try reading the post again, from the beginning this time. Now try reading the quote form the blizzard employee.

      "The item squish *will not* make soloing older raids harder. We promise, and 110% guarantee it."

      Now tell me if anything about your statement makes any sense? Yes, in this very post it was quoted exactly where they said that old raids would not be harder, which means they would be at least the same.

      "And yeah, there might be a situation or two where there's a legitimate beef... and Blizzard will fix it"

      Do we play the same game? That quest I mentioned in the post that was broken in netherstorm when forge of souls came out was still broken when I last tried to complete it less than 2 years ago. It still said I needed to be in forge of souls to do it. I think I can check it the next time I am on that character, don't think I was ever able to finish that quest. Want to make a bet it is still broken 2 expansions later? Nah, I will not bet, not even blizzard is that bad that they can not fix one quest after 2 entire expansions. Are they?

      Blizzard makes almost no effort to fix old content, if something is broken it is likely to remain broken forever unless enough people complain about it or it is something they might consider game breaking.

      You are making the same mistake they are making in your terminology. "The guarantee is that they'll make it right" You forgot the worlds I added, so let me correct you now just the same way I corrected them, "The guarantee is that they'll *try to* make it right"

      All I am doing is defending blizzard saying this is a big task and people should be understanding that they will try their best. Their might be some issues and with a job this big some issues are to be expected. It is extremely rare that I am in the role of defending blizzard and you are telling me I am wrong.

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    2. Nope, read the whole thing, "not make harder" is absolutely NOT the same thing as "the same".

      Say that I make no more than you at my job... and you make $100K. That doesn't mean that I make $100K, I could make $100K, I could make $20K. Not greater than is not the same thing as the same as.

      As for whether they'll let them sit if any aren't tuned properly? They never 110% guaranteed that your Forge of Souls issue would be fixed, did they?

      My post above with the scaling scaling (scaling^2) is basically a foolproof way for them to make sure that things are scaled correctly and if they want to be absolutely sure they can just scale them down 20% across the board from that point. I get that Blizzard hasn't hit every single mark they've set in the past but I don't see any reason to assume failure when we don't even know how it'll be implemented.

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    3. Ah, yes, it is the same thing as the same. Not make harder means if you can do it now you can do it later. Which end results in a dead boss which is the same result. Your analogy does not equal the same results.

      They should not have needed to guarantee that they will fix a bug in the game. It is their job, it is what they charge 15 a month for. It should have been fixed within weeks, if not months being it was old content. It should not have stayed broken for years. No guarantee needed for them to do the bare minimum they should be doing, having a fully functional game.

      If you expect failure then you will be happy with what you get, if you expect success no matter how good something is you will feel let down.

      Does that explain why we should expect failure?

      I think you idea is quality, mine was too when I wrote it, and I am sure there have been 100s of other players with and without an outlet to share their ideas that have come up with similar ideas. The issue is that none of us work at blizzard, so they will do it their way.

      I would love to see your idea put to you and my idea (with concerns to the PvP angle at least) put to use. Neither you nor I will ever see what we want. We will be dealt the cards from their marked deck and have to deal with what we get.

      The game is huge, beyond huge even from a coding standpoint. Things will break, I just say let them do what they have to do because in the end it will be better for us all even if I might now have problems soloing something I have been soloing since wrath. What I lose by not being able to solo it can never equal what I gain by the item squish.

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    4. Following up my original comment with a new Blizzard one:

      Me: "...if they want to be absolutely sure they can just scale them down 20% across the board from that point."

      Blizz: "In fact, to provide some additional peace of mind, we're implementing further scaling of your power against lower-level targets so that earlier content will be even more accessible than it is now."

      So, yeah. They're doing everything they can to make sure it's at least as easy as before, if not easier.

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    5. That is excellent news. I would love to be proved wrong and everything be nice and smooth. Still won't believe it until I see it, but I would be very happy to be wrong in this case.

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    6. Yep, and I'm hoping there are minimal "WTF, I was struggling on that fight but was close to getting it and now I walk in and one-shot the thing WTF BLIZZ!!!!!"

      Fingers crossed. :)

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    7. I would rather old things get easier, not harder. Won't get any WTF from be cause something got easier.

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  6. It's all a matter of how much work will go into re-tuning all of the older raid encounters, which - they have already indicated - won't be a lot.

    Ever since the WoD item squish rumors started, all I can think of is a similar situation that came up in EQ1 around 5 years ago.

    Warriors were the undisputed raid tank due to one line of abilities. The "Defensive discipline" line of abilities, culminating with a 3 minute buff/10 minute cooldown that cuts all melee damage taken in half, had been in the game since the first expansion (1999-2000).

    One of the developers (Elidroth iirc) announced (sometime around WotLK) that they wanted to move tanking more toward the WoW model, with short duration defensive abilities. The main focus in this restructuring was to remove the Defensive line, or change it from 3 minute duration to ~12-18 seconds, in order to allow the other "knight" classes (paladin, shadow knight) equal footing for raid tanking. To give an idea of how large of an impact this would make, every other ability at that point had a 15-30 minute cooldown with 6-18 second duration, giving about 1 minute of coverage in a 30 minute period.

    Another thing to note is just how brutal raid boss melee attacks were. Unlike WoW, players and enemies were able to attack multiple times each "swing," with the top end being a FLURRY from a raid boss equating 2 swings (4x2) in one attack period. A single attack on a ~50k hp warrior (fully geared for the content) would do 5-15k damage. A tank could take up to 8 of those hits each second if none were mitigated (avoided via dodge, parry, riposte, block). Getting 1 rounded was not only possible, outside of Defensive it was virtually inevitable against many bosses, until you significantly outgeared them.

    This removal was brought up sometime in the 15-17th expansion (~2009-10), while the stance in question had been used to tune every raid encounter (and many group encounters) from the 2nd expansion onward. It took weeks of "fiery" commentary from the warrior community before the dev in question fully understood the massive undertaking that re-tuning every bit of older content would require and abandoned the project.

    I agree that item statistics have been growing out of control over the last 2-3 expansions, but doing a large scale reworking like the announced item squish requires a very delicate touch to get things just right. A very delicate touch that will be most likely be missing when Blizzard implements the squish. I'm eagerly awaiting the first report of MC trash one shotting a 90+ with a spell that slipped through the cracks.

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    1. And that spell or effect that slips through the cracks, or works in a way not intended, or something we can do that makes it insanely easier than it is intended to be is what I am talking about. I am sure there will be a lot of it on both ends, making it harder and making it easier.

      It is a huge task for a game this size and while I look forward to it I do not expect it to really go over well right out of the box, even after extensive testing. Things will be misses, it happens, there is no way to argue that one.

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