Not just that, but also once you get to max level, it’s all about HUGE item-level jumps.
Now, it’s 14 item level per tier.
Frick, I remember way back in, I think it was Wrath, where you would expect to go 6-8 item levels when moving up a tier.
Now it’s +14 between tiers, just fricken crazy why they did that.
And then they go “welp we gotta stat squish again” … well maybe if we didn’t go up more than 100 item levels in one expansion’s endgame, we wouldn’t need a stat squish every other expansion.
The first stat squish didn’t happen until WoD, which was the game’s 5th expansion.
Now we need a stat squish every what, 2 expansions? 3?
Dungeons are atrociously bad at giving you gear.
I’ve gone 3-4 dungeons without a single piece of gear before.
Their intention appears to be smoothing out that jump, but the implementation is half baked or bugged.
I logged into a level 56 character today that last week was sitting at 170-ish ilevel with a mix of gear upgrade, heirlooms, and a few Timewalking peices.
Today the gear upgrade items are 240-ish, heirlooms 256 (same as DF pre-patch gear), and last weeks Timewalking peices still at 170-ish.
Checking rewards available I found stuff in SL that would award 170-180 gear, stuff in Legion that was around 250, and WQ in DF at 301 (higher than most anything available in SL even in the last season if I recall correctly).
Actually, it was 13 item levels back then if I recall correctly. It’s been surprisingly consistent with that.
Though WotLK staggered the item level jumps, stuff like the 25-man (which did award better gear at the time) of the previous tier being the same item level as 10-man of the current tier… at least up to Ulduar. Maybe the end-of-raid bosses being 6 ilvls higher. I guess there was the hard modes in Ulduar as well.
Then stuff started getting wonky with the item level with heroic raids for both 10-man and 25-man in TotC in the next tier. Can’t recall exactly when, but the moment they decided the next tier is flat out better stuff than the previous (as in even LFR should give better gear than heroic), it went nutty with 30+ item levels between tiers. I think that was either MoP or WoD. Haven’t really kept track of the current stuff since then, stopped caring.
Regardless, the idea that large power increases to keep players on the treadmill is still allive and well… and still dumb as hell, being a source of frustration for anyone not currently enthralled by it.
Then perhaps they just screwed with the scaling of what those item-levels give you?
Because I remember how it was back in Wrath, you gained what, maybe 10k max health over the entire expansion or somecrap? I don’t remember if I still have screenshots from the time, but I do remember being amazed that a bear tank had 100k health during the event where they went into Undercity to kill that dude there in the Cata Prepatch I think i twas.
And I remember starting Wrath with like 10k health or somecrap, I forget. Might have been 15k.
But now, when they do a stat squish, it seems like we’re jumping up to almost 500k health in the expansion after.
A recraft system where you can recraft your piece as you level up, with materials you gather as you level. Like the current craft level up item but you don’t have to craft the whole thing over at every step.
Yet if I get a green, I can’t sell it, because I undercut them by half, and within seconds, I’m undercut by a penny. This is just one reason the way the AH works is atrocious. It allows bots (or let’s just say people spending 24 hours on the AH, but let’s be honest, we know they’re probably bots) to run the AH to their benefit. I have a green, you want it, and their monopoly means I can’t get it into your hands.
It’s why I gave up on ever selling anything on the AH, yes.
Oh, and some chucklenugglet at Blizzard thought it’d be an oh-so-great idea to make a PHONE APP that can access the AH, so that you can have competition from Sweaties who aren’t even logged in the game.
They can literally be at work, hear a beep beep and whip out their phone and muck with the AH even though they’re not even on the game.
Dumbest thing ever.
And if you did try selling yours at a reasonable price?
They’ll just buy and relist it for 100x the price.
I wonder if this could be solved by a reverse auction house outside the game. Make it an addon. You request something, like mats or greens, through the addon, at lower then the market price, which is still great for someone trying to sell legitimately (not corner the market), and you basically agree to buy this person’s goods if they list it, not go for the undercutting bot. The addon handles everything except clicks and we all just use it and go completely around the merchanters.
Like, I quested my Warrior from 62 to 70 and my hunter from almost 61 to 67.
Not one single green BoE drop.
You can’t out-supply the demand, therefore anything you list will be snatched up by merchanters to relist on the AH and you can’t out-compete them. The only way you can make sure your stuff lands in the hands of people wanting it, is to jack up the price high enough the people relisting wouldn’t find profit in doing so.
But that defeats the purpose of trying to provide reasonably priced goods to people who want to buy it to use.
Now, what Blizz COULD do… and this would be hilarious AF…
Wo P.
Warbound on Pickup.
Once you buy it from the AH, it instantly becomes Warbound.
(EDIT: Seriously, “Wo P” is censored? wuuut? They censor the weirdest things)
I like this idea too, but it doesn’t work well for battle pets. There’s also a way it fails to stop merchanters with monopolies, because they don’t care. They already have 1000 of that item in the bank, so they’ll buy mine and trash it, which doesn’t help the person who actually wants it, get it for close to the reasonable price I want to sell it for.
If everyone used the reverse auction house, filled orders regularly, I think it could work, and it would at least show Blizz that they enable a monopoly system.
If you don’t use heirlooms and you rush leveling you paint yourself into a corner like you reported originally. Your rewards don’t keep up with your character level and you become underpowered.
If heirlooms always scale and are better or even equal to your available rewards then there is no incentive to equip the rewards or loot you get. Most people in full heirlooms leveling historically simply would vendor all their loot drops.
By having them trail rewards slightly the rewards you do get are meaningful but your guaranteed to avoid falling behind too far as you can always slap in an heirloom into those slots you’ve had really bad luck with from random drops.
It sucks given how much we’ve all invested to earn the heirlooms to begin with and then how much we’ve paid to upgrade them but, from a design standpoint ignoring how I feel as a player, it makes sense. You end up with a purpose and value to both.
Question is, is it worth it to me as the player?
The remix upgrade system was a very good study in how the player covets resources and how they are willing or unwilling to use them. Many many people didn’t spend to upgrade their characters and rather complained about their power deficiencies because all they wanted was to spend that same currency on rewards. Here I think you have a similar issue.
Personally I think that given how much the power of heirlooms have been diluted over the years - they probably need to evaluate a system for doing those upgrades on the heirlooms using flight stones and or crests and or consolidate those upgrades in some way.
