Just want to input my opinion here so that maybe the product managers see it.
I personally think that lower power scaling over an expansion is preferable. I think that invalidating the last patch’s gear by having LFR raid gear be significantly better than higher difficulty-to-acquire gear of the last patch only alienates people that took a break from the game. It seems that it would also introduce in extra complexity for balancing. No one has ever come back to the game, seen people with 2x or even 3x as much health as they do and has felt good about that. Also… Getting gear that has a 40 ilvl increase does not ‘feel better’ than getting something with a 3 ilvl increase if both are the standard for a ‘significant upgrade’. IMO the increase in power over an expansion should be marginal. It allows people to take breaks and come back to the game. It also makes the lower brackets of ranked pvp not just people with low ilvl gear. Tangentially, I even think that PvP should be mostly if not completely scaled. One can still manage stat prioritization on their gear but ‘rated’ is a funny word to use when there’s things outside of the arena that affect win probability. Sorry for the disorganized rant. Just want to put my thoughts out into the world and see what people have to say.
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Devs don’t seem to feel this is a drawback. The current design is to reward players who played like 2 jobs since day 1 with unimaginable power. They seem to think you will find this inspirational, too.
There will be changes in the next expansion, but we don’t know enough of the details to have a good idea how it will work out.
Agreed OP.
Ive heard, not only Ion Hazzicosta, but other Blizzard employees state that they did “studies” and found that an increase of power equal to roughly 20% is what makes players feel rewarded.
I’ve always felt that as an odd statement.
Its always felt super bizarre how quickly gear loses its relevancy in Wow.
I understand needing power reward increments but it they should definitely consider using more subtlety with that type of stuff.
Maybe tone down their “20% per tier” to like 3-5%?
I don’t pretend to have the answers but it currently feels really strange replacing things like The Heart of Azzeroth or even just bis weapons with leveling greens.
Or worse, in between seasonal patches just replacing an item with the exact same thing but only 25-30 ivls higher.
I would personally love to see a less a more gradual power progression from patch to patch and expansion to expansion.
2 Likes
The “holy !@#$ that guy is geared” feeling, or comparatively “holy !@#$ I’m geared, I feel good about what I’ve accomplished” does not change much based on the actual numbers given they are consistent increases for a long period in either case. Humans adapt to what is ‘normal’… What does change with the numbers even if they’re consistent is the game’s dynamic. There is a sweet spot, most likely, so people don’t feel their time spent is not worthwhile, while also not making the game feel like Naruto Shippuden or dragon ball-z where the explosions just keep getting crazier to the point where everyone’s desensitized to the power scaling. I would even argue that high scaling desensitizes me to the numbers and makes it LESS rewarding. I like min-maxing for my extra 3-5% damage in games. Where everything is built so lean that I really have to think and work hard to get any advantage over others.
Thanks for the replies! @Murdercarpet & @Brujha
PS: same account, changed my character in the profile pic.
In terms of actual damage scaling, this is one of the lower scaling expansions in recent memory. Over the course of the expansion, our damage has gone up (on geared characters), from about 5-6k in S1 to 12-15k in S3 on a single target fight.
Compare that to BFA, where 12-15k in S1 was good, and we were doing ~200k in S4.
Or legion, where about 300k was the DPS check on mythic Ursoc, and by the end of antorus players were doing almost 3M ST.
Gearing up is one of the funniest parts of the game once you get fully maxed out you lose a bit of spark