The great item compression (or not) of Mists of Pandaria

Quote from: Blizzard (Source)

 

At first the lead designers planned to discuss this topic at BlizzCon, but in fact it did not fit with the rest of the content of our presentation: “Introduction to Pandaria”, and since there were only 93 seconds left of the 90 minutes of which we had, there would not have been time to talk about it either. Even so, many of us discussed the situation with some players and media with whom we had the opportunity to speak, and it has even appeared in at least one list of frequently asked questions, so we decided to bring the information to light. Please note that, unlike the information we present about the future Mists of Pandaria expansion, this is not an official announcement. It is rather a problem that we want to solve and we present a couple of possible solutions. We will certainly appreciate your comments.

The syndrome of the big numbers
You are seeing it, our statistics are growing exponentially. If we pay attention to all the elements, from the strength of a weapon to the damage inflicted by a critical hit from Fireball, or the amount of health of the Morchok boss, we see that these values ​​are completely absurd when we compare them with the figures that featured level 60 characters in the original commercial version of World of Warcraft. We are not taken by surprise to have reached this situation, we were very aware of where we were going with each step we took, but still, here we are.

Fig. 1. Object level with respect to character level. Brown = original game. Green = The Burning Crusade. Blue = Wrath of the Lich King. Red = Cataclysm.

The main reason the numbers grew so high was that we wanted the rewards to be attractive. It is true that for a suitable user the improvement of a chest of 50 p. strength to a 51 p. This is an increase in DPS, but it is not a very exciting reward. These insignificant increases can lead players to act strangely, such as skipping equipment level sets or entire levels of content. This is especially important when a new expansion appears. We don't want level 85 players to find it easy to complete dungeons or raids (or beat opponents in PvP) at level 90, simply because such content is balanced for an equipment level that is not much better than that level 85 players already own.

We have reached this point by a logical path and we do not believe that we should have acted otherwise. However, it is still a strange situation, and it is about to be even more so. What I present below are not real items, because we are not sure yet what item levels will appear in patches 5.3 and 6.3 (it would be nice to be able to plan with that much margin!), But they are reasonable estimates and they show you how absurd they are. the statistics turn out.

Fig. 2. A theoretical object of patch 5.3.

Fig. 3. A theoretical object of patch 6.3.

What do we do in this regard? We can think of two types of general solution. The first is to make the numbers look easier to handle, and the second is to really change them.

Megayear
The first solution could involve changes like adding commas or something similar to the large figures. We could also transform all the thousands (1000) into K and all the millions (1 000 000) into M, in the same way that we already do with the health of the bosses. Internally, we have dubbed this solution "the mega-year solution" because instead of inflicting 6 p. damage on hit, your Fireball would deal 000 megayears (followed by a brutal guitar solo from the Arcanite Ripper).

Fig. 4. Megayear. Don't take the name or the screenshot seriously.

If we can make it a little easier to read at a glance the numbers that appear in the floating combat texts, the health of the bosses or the statistics of the objects; maybe we can bear the numbers growing exponentially for a little longer. Right now there are several real technical limitations. PCs are not capable of mathematical calculations with very large figures, so we would have to solve all those problems as well. Even today, tanks can reach ten digits in some encounters.

Object level compression
The second solution involves reducing the object levels, which is why we call it "the object level compression solution." If we can reduce the statistics of the objects, we can also reduce the other numbers in the game, such as the damage dealt by Fireball or the health of a gronn. If you look at the item level curves, you will see that most of the growth takes place at the maximum character levels of each expansion. This is because we reward players with increasingly powerful gear, so that each new raid and PvP season provides rewards of a clearly higher quality than the previous one. However, these huge item level jumps are not of much benefit once the character levels up again. There are very few players who, at level 80, perceive or consider the magnitude of the improvement between the loot of the Black Temple and that of the Serpent Shrine Cavern.

With this in mind, we could go back and reduce the substantial item level increases that occur at levels 60, 70, 80, and 85. Mists of Pandaria's gear would maintain its exponential growth from patch to patch, but would start from a much lower base. Health could be reduced from 150 p. to a figure in the range of 000 p. The main risk of this approach is that players will feel that they have suffered a decline when entering the new expansion ... even if the rest of the numbers have been reduced as well.

In other words, our Fireball would still deal the same percentage of damage to a player or a creature, but the absolute number would be less. From a logical point of view it should work, and it does. However, he would not stop making us strange. When we tested internally, we all agreed that casting a spell with hundreds of points of damage was bad when we were used to it dealing thousands.

An analogy occurred to me: although I know that in the UK you drive on the left side of the road (in the US we drive on the right) and therefore I wouldn't be surprised to see it; but even so, I would not help feeling somewhat disoriented when it comes to making a right turn in the UK.

Fig. 5. Item level versus character level before and after "compression". Brown = original game. Green = The Burning Crusade. Blue = Wrath of the Lich King. Red = Cataclysm

So what?
To this day we have not yet decided which of the solutions we will try, or if we will opt for one of these two. We might even come up with a new one. Maybe it's the kind of issue we can ignore until the next expansion so players don't have to simultaneously adjust to the new talent system and drastic item level compression. Or it may be better to snap off the band-aid and fix everything at once. Time will tell. But I wanted to pose the problem so that no one thinks that we are not aware of its existence. Is there. But we are still not sure what the best solution will be. It may seem to you that it is not necessary for the level of statistics to grow to such an extent for players to find it attractive to get the new equipment, however our experience has shown us otherwise, and from there these proposals have arisen. We appreciate all your opinions.

Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. It is currently #occupied.