World of Warcraft: Current Year

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kaid

kaid

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Neranja said:
Because mobs in BfA scale with your own ilvl. You can see this when you target a mob and it has 100k HP, but once you aggro it its HP jumps to 160k. Then a second player comes along and starts whacking once on the mob to tag it, and suddenly its max HP scales to 240k.

So no matter how powerful you get, all the mobs in the old zones also get more powerful, so you feel like you've gained nothing. This kills the sense of progression in most players entirely. Which is one of the biggest carrots in MMOs.

How they could fuck up such a fundamental part of MMO design is beyond me.
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I think they underestimated how bad that would feel at least initially given it basically is the same scaling they were doing from about halfway through legion. The problem though by the time it was introduced in legion people were already really overgeared compared to the mobs so the scaling such as it was never scaled up high enough to really impact game play for most people. On a fresh expansion though this is both WAY more noticable and a lot harsher especially for undergeared fresh 120s. I think it probably would have been fine if there was less of a jump up in difficulty immediately on hitting 120.

Gear still helps overworld stuff now that my characters are geared up I can pull much larger numbers safely so its not a huge deal but every time an alt hits 120 its like getting kicked in the dick until you can manage to gear up past that hump.
 
Neranja

Neranja

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kaid said:
I think they underestimated how bad that would feel at least initially given it basically is the same scaling they were doing from about halfway through legion.
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That was mid-expansion though. That your character regresses as you go from raid-level gear to fresh quest greens and blues in the new expansion, and that secondary stats diminish with your increasing level was somewhat expected, however it was never as bad as this.

At this point I am assuming that the tech they use is based on that rumored "item level you looted" they once mentioned, which means if you got a 325 ring but you are still using that 305 ring (for whatever reasons) the game increases mob scaling factoring in an "optimal" 325 ring you supposedly now wear, not the 305 one you are actually wearing. This may also fuck up multi-role classes like healers (that don't do WQs in healing spec for obvious reasons and have to have an off gear set now), but most importantly may scale badly with the azerite gear slots. The powerup of those slots are just the base stats increase, and tied to you unlocking them further via grinding AP - which you obvisouly don't have as a fresh 120, but the itemlevel increase is instantaneous.

The worst part is that the same stuff seems to be in play everywhere when leveling, so you have a reportedly shitty leveling experience from 60 to up or around 90. In effect characters in full heirlooms seem to get the same play experience as players in quest greens - because mobs scale with your increased power. Not only have they removed twinking, you get punished for trying to have better items.
 
kaid

kaid

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I think the scaling is also interacting oddly with the stat squish making it feel a lot more obvious than it was in legion.
 
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Vimeseh

Vimeseh

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I do agree that the scaling feels wonky as you level and should be looked at, but anyone complaining about being geared and still feeling weak when doing world quests isn't really that geared. I've got a toon in the 370's, one in the 360's and one in the 350's. When I'm questing in tank spec I can pull whole areas without a problem. When I'm running around in dps specs rares die in ten seconds and the normal mobs are easily handled 3-5 at a time without CD usage. You'd have to be in that 300-325 range to actually feel slow doing WQs as a tank or dps.
 
Neranja

Neranja

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Vimeseh said:
I do agree that the scaling feels wonky as you level and should be looked at, but anyone complaining about being geared and still feeling weak when doing world quests isn't really that geared.
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There seems to be a cutoff point where scaling stops, arguably between 340 and 350. However, the Blizzard ilvl calculation seems to be "looted ilevel" and not "worn ilevel", at least for WQ/emissary rewards. Also, scaling only seems to affect mob HP pools and not their dps, so they are not more dangerous, only more annoying.

And yes, this mostly affects fresh 120s most, as these want to do the WQs for gear rewards the most, as the WQ rewards only scales up to 325/330. So a fresh 120 gains 30 ilevels but doesn't "feel" more powerful, and that shapes the initial perception of the expansion and its gearing process: "Whats the point of getting all this gear, I'm not feeling more powerful."

Combine that with perception of the azerite powers ("Fills you with the spirit of the horde" for example), and it just kills the feeling for the expansion, as people think there is no point to gear anymore. Especially the more casual players that only do WQ/heroic/LFR, which goes to the exact scaling cutoff point at 340/350.

tl;dr: Most players don't care that they are objectively more powerful if the don't feel more powerful.
 
LiquidDeath

LiquidDeath

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Let's just be honest. Blizzard fucked up with the level scaling system. It was supposed to help leveling so that they didn't have to separate it by zone, but extending it beyond pure character level into item level was a giant fucking mistake that makes them look like rank amateurs. There is no possible way out of this, either, as they can't convince anyone that they didn't play test the basic leveling experience and the move into dungeons and world quests afterwards. They tested it and decided to run with it. They are simply fucking retarded.
 
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A

a_skeleton_05

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I doubt they have any Q/A at all outside of dungeons & raids. They probably nuked it all around the same time they started automating the majority of the customer service stuff, with the expectations that the PTR would be sufficient. Problem with that is they stopped paying attention to the PTR.
 
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Vimeseh

Vimeseh

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Neranja said:
There seems to be a cutoff point where scaling stops, arguably between 340 and 350. However, the Blizzard ilvl calculation seems to be "looted ilevel" and not "worn ilevel", at least for WQ/emissary rewards. Also, scaling only seems to affect mob HP pools and not their dps, so they are not more dangerous, only more annoying.

And yes, this mostly affects fresh 120s most, as these want to do the WQs for gear rewards the most, as the WQ rewards only scales up to 325/330. So a fresh 120 gains 30 ilevels but doesn't "feel" more powerful, and that shapes the initial perception of the expansion and its gearing process: "Whats the point of getting all this gear, I'm not feeling more powerful."

Combine that with perception of the azerite powers ("Fills you with the spirit of the horde" for example), and it just kills the feeling for the expansion, as people think there is no point to gear anymore. Especially the more casual players that only do WQ/heroic/LFR, which goes to the exact scaling cutoff point at 340/350.

tl;dr: Most players don't care that they are objectively more powerful if the don't feel more powerful.
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I guess I'm pulling the elitist card here and not really caring that you don't feel powerful in a gear range that takes even a casual two to four hours to get past. Buy ilevel 300 blues from the AH (10k gold maybe), hit up Arathi, do a warfront or two if its up and then collect your 330 WQ gear to fill in the gaps. On average you should be 330 if not higher with good arathi drops. I mean, thats one play session on a Saturday afternoon. Now I'm not saying that it isn't an issue. Its just such a minuscule one in comparison to everything else they've fucked up this expansion. Its the exact same as the legion model for the most part but it is even easier to surpass the scaling gate which I think actually drops off after 330 from what it feels like. If you have even moderate playtime and some friends to do it with then you hit up a few low mythic keys and you should be looking at 350+ within the week of hitting cap assuming your luck isn't horrendous.
 
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kaid

kaid

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Dom said:
I doubt they have any Q/A at all outside of dungeons & raids. They probably nuked it all around the same time they started automating the majority of the customer service stuff, with the expectations that the PTR would be sufficient. Problem with that is they stopped paying attention to the PTR.
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Problem with QA on stuff like this is a lot of it is we want you to look at if X is doing Y. In this case in this gear does bosses health scale to y if it does then tests as working and they move on to the next thing on the list. This is really the stuff that alpha/beta can smooth out. I think in this case they saw the issues decided this should only really be an issue for raw 120s that quickly will go away with gear and even more quickly as the expansion progresses they probably figured it was more effort to fix than it was worth for an issue that will "fix" itself as the expansion progresses.
 
Arbitrary

Arbitrary

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Vimeseh said:
I guess I'm pulling the elitist card here and not really caring that you don't feel powerful in a gear range that takes even a casual two to four hours to get past. Buy ilevel 300 blues from the AH (10k gold maybe), hit up Arathi, do a warfront or two if its up and then collect your 330 WQ gear to fill in the gaps. On average you should be 330 if not higher with good arathi drops. I mean, thats one play session on a Saturday afternoon. Now I'm not saying that it isn't an issue. Its just such a minuscule one in comparison to everything else they've fucked up this expansion. Its the exact same as the legion model for the most part but it is even easier to surpass the scaling gate which I think actually drops off after 330 from what it feels like. If you have even moderate playtime and some friends to do it with then you hit up a few low mythic keys and you should be looking at 350+ within the week of hitting cap assuming your luck isn't horrendous.
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Introducing a catch-up mechanism as large as the Arathi warfront as quickly as it was introduced was a problem all by itself. The normal/heroic/mythic dungeon progression combined with the advancement of item level up through world quest rewards until 340 emissary rewards came online was at least a journey. Going through that path at the start of the expansion to then have it all be replaced by one evening of gathering wood didn't feel great at all.

What I need to do is stop caring about the aspects of the game that do not matter. Working my way through Uldir on normal and then heroic has been a good time. Caring at all about item level outside of it being a means to facilitate that specific experience is a mistake. What we are getting in Heroic is going to be on par with the LFR retard tier difficulty of the new tier and that's just how it's always going to be. The same is true, unfortunately, for Mythic+. I had been working at advancing my IO score both to get more Mythic+ experience and to make it easier to get into the difficulties I find challenging all in search of better gear to help on raids. If I had just not played at all until the release of the next raid tier I'd be where I am now in a fraction of the time and effort.

I'm not against catch-up mechanics and I'm not really against LFR. It lets people see and participate in the rest of the story that maybe couldn't otherwise. It's just that as someone who wasn't really paying attention to the game until this expansion I was just not prepared for the speed with Blizzard would raise the item level floor. I'm just some random irrelevant derp and I don't like having my meager progress invalidated so quickly. If I was at the upper end I'd dislike this even more.
 
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Vimeseh

Vimeseh

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Arbitrary said:
Introducing a catch-up mechanism as large as the Arathi warfront as quickly as it was introduced was a problem all by itself. The normal/heroic/mythic dungeon progression combined with the advancement of item level up through world quest rewards until 340 emissary rewards came online was at least a journey. Going through that path at the start of the expansion to then have it all be replaced by one evening of gathering wood didn't feel great at all.

What I need to do is stop caring about the aspects of the game that do not matter. Working my way through Uldir on normal and then heroic has been a good time. Caring at all about item level outside of it being a means to facilitate that specific experience is a mistake. What we are getting in Heroic is going to be on par with the LFR retard tier difficulty of the new tier and that's just how it's always going to be. The same is true, unfortunately, for Mythic+. I had been working at advancing my IO score both to get more Mythic+ experience and to make it easier to get into the difficulties I find challenging all in search of better gear to help on raids. If I had just not played at all until the release of the next raid tier I'd be where I am now in a fraction of the time and effort.

I'm not against catch-up mechanics and I'm not really against LFR. It lets people see and participate in the rest of the story that maybe couldn't otherwise. It's just that as someone who wasn't really paying attention to the game until this expansion I was just not prepared for the speed with Blizzard would raise the item level floor. I'm just some random irrelevant derp and I don't like having my meager progress invalidated so quickly. If I was at the upper end I'd dislike this even more.
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I can understand the sentiment. I just don't think its worth getting worked up over. I'm by no means an elite player in this game anymore. When I can raid I get like half the bosses or a little more on mythic done per raid tier. Right now I'm a mythic+ hero and having some fun doing that. I guess I'm just used to nothing beyond the medium to upper end, read high mythic+ keys and heroic/mythic raiding, matters. So no reason to care that somebody who doesn't even know what a rotation is let alone how to do it effectively is 20 ilevels or whatever behind me because they got some forges. It is hard to increase ilevel consistently once you hit 365+ish, or maybe more likely 370. It is kind of like league of legends where the difference between diamond 5 and diamond 1 is bigger then the skill gap between bronze and plat. The ten ilevel spread between 365 and 375 is bigger then going from fresh 120 to 340.
 
kaid

kaid

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One thing to note one of the whole reasons for the couple month delayed deployment of each LFR level is due to push back about how fast the catchup mechanics kick in. Its basically to give "real" raiders 2-3 weeks to gear up while the LFRs are picking away at their first 3 bosses. Blizzard has been keeping really aggressive gear resets every major raid tier for a while now so its best to just look at your gear and go is this helping me do the current content I have access to better. Generally that answer should be yes you can progress higher in mythic+ and have easier and easier time doing whatever raiding you can do. Once the next tier comes out it starts again if you had heroics/mythic raiding gear you get a leg up going into the next tier of raid but still most of your gear other than lucky titanforges IS going to get replaced fast. The upside is if you take a break for 6 months and decide to fire the game back up again you are maybe a week or less away from having the gear you need to compete at very high levels and do the new content.
 
Khane

Khane

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Your progress is not being invalidated. The higher you push your ilvl now the easier it will be to acquire upgrades in the future. Whether there is a catch up mechanic is irrelevant outside of getting back up to speed if you stop playing for any extended period of time (or never played at all before). The treadmill to the next tier exists regardless of catch-up mechanics.
 
Arbitrary

Arbitrary

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Vimeseh said:
I can understand the sentiment. I just don't think its worth getting worked up over.
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I agree completely.

Khane said:
Whether there is a catch up mechanic is irrelevant outside of getting back up to speed if you stop playing for any extended period of time (or never played at all before). The treadmill to the next tier exists regardless of catch-up mechanics.
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It's not the mechanism that I have a problem with but the pacing. For me it's just too fast. My own temperaments aside I don't entirely understand why Blizzard is so quick to invalidate their own content. Relegating Uldir to something you maybe do once on LFR to finish the story quest when it is only a couple of months is strange to me.
 
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BoozeCube

BoozeCube

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Level scaling just doesn't belong in an MMORPG. If I wanted scaling bullshit I would play a Bethesda game. I can roll out some Skyrim bullshit if I never want to out level anything. Then the item scaling on top is just the cherry on top of a shit Sunday.

The thing is Blizzard has such smug cocksuckers they couldn't care less what the playerbase wants. Hell they tried to push this ilvl scaling in Legion and people lost their shit so they removed it only to add it back in later because they feel they know best even though it has left everyone here with the same impression. The game feels like a bag of soggy dicks.

Hell dailies are no better. Games need some ending and repeatable bullshit chore content is not fun. In MoP it was so bad you saw a huge exodus of players when it released. Then in Legion they reskinned dailies and called them World Quest and the moronic mother fuckers rejoiced even though that system sucked just as much dicks if you could get past the pretty basket the put it in.

Same with the facebook level games mission tables, the pokemon battles and all the other tarded shit. I played MMORPG's because I want to run dungeons kill shit and raid. I want it to be a mini D&D experience where I am in a world and don't need a DM just a few people and a place to adventure.

Gathering carrots from a fucking farm (Fuck you MoP)
Sending garbage out to battle missions (Fuck you WoD)
Grinding endless bullshit chore quests and AP ( Fuck you Legion)
To now doing all of the above for even less reward ( Fuck you BFA)

As someone mentioned before some beancounter piece of shit is looking at a spreadsheet thinking people have a hard on for WQ's, LFR, Island Expeditions, Table Missions. They see a high participation rate so obviously it must be amazing and people love it. They never stop to realize people fucking hate that shit with a passion and only do it because it's the most efficient time spent towards to goal. The over reward these fucking things, yet in their never ending question to piss away your fucking time they managed to make everything so sterile and futile that people are starting to realize what's the fucking point.
 
Kaige

Kaige

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Hallow's End event is live, and it has a 10% exp/rep buff that lasts for 2 hours.

Headless Horseman event also gives experience, which is cool.

There's also a new pet called Naxxy, that's a miniature Naxxramas...oh em gee. Plus a new toy you can buy with the treats that gives you another hearthstone.
 
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BoozeCube

BoozeCube

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Also it's interesting to see that Blizzard is sponsoring people to play BFA on Twitch right now. I saw that on MMO-Champ. As far as I am aware they haven't done that in the past, which makes you wonder why they would feel the need to start now. Maybe the subs are dipping more than they let on. I can only hope the smug cunts Ion and Lore are on their way out.
 
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