wow Changes to the Item Level Scaling System

[Starym 3,779]

After the not great reception of the new system, there's three major changes coming today or already live.

 

After yesterday's detailed explanation on the new itemlevel scaling system and the not-so-great-to-put-it-mildly response from the community, today we're getting specifics on what will change compared to how it was when secretly implemented with 7.2's launch. Two of the three major changes (no scaling to creature damage and much smaller creature HP scaling) are already live, while the third (not getting any benefit from un-equipping an item) will go live later today. Whether there will actually be any noticeable changes to how outdoor mob combat feel at all after these changes remains to be seen, but it's looking more and more like the new scaling system will be mostly negligible.

Lore (source)

Thanks for the feedback on this issue. It’s clear that we need to make some changes here, so here are our current plans:

• We’re removing the increase to damage dealt by creatures in the world. Our overall goal with this change is to keep the amount of time it takes to kill a creature from getting ridiculously short, and increasing the damage they deal is unnecessary for that goal. Instead, this was making you feel like they were becoming more dangerous, which was not our intent.
• We’re significantly reducing the rate at which creature health scales with your item level. Again, all we’re trying to do here is prevent cases where monsters die too quickly for players to react to their presence, particularly around World Quests. Our initial tuning was far more aggressive than it needed to be, which could make it feel like your upgrades weren't actually helping. This change will make it very clear that you are still becoming noticeably stronger than your enemies as your gear improves.
• Those two changes are already live, and you should be seeing them in-game now.
• Later today, we’ll be correcting a separate issue that’s causing unequipping an item to drastically alter the power of enemies you’re facing. The above changes make it so that’s never the right thing to do anyway, but this is still a strange/buggy interaction that needs to be fixed.

It should also be noted that this change was on the Patch 7.2 PTR (and has been since January). We didn’t communicate anything about it initially because we wanted to get testers’ raw and honest feedback about it when they encountered it themselves, rather than attempting to pre-empt or otherwise influence their opinions ahead of time. When that feedback never came, we assumed that meant it was an acceptable change – i.e., those who hadn’t noticed it weren’t bothered by it, and those who had noticed it thought it was fine. Clearly that was a false assumption, and we should have drawn attention to it later in the PTR cycle, so that we could have caught these issues before Patch 7.2 went live.

[elmurufdd 45]

not sure who is shadier the us govt or blizzard

 

[Adamant 8]

I really hope this doesn't assume we can equip 4 legendaries like the average ilvl display seems to.

[Calysia 220]

2 hours ago, elmurufdd said:

not sure who is shadier the us govt or blizzard

 

At least they owned up to it...

[Starym 3,779]

51 minutes ago, Calysia said:

At least they owned up to it...

Also it really isn't like they thought "they'd get away with it", ofc everyone was gonna notice the ilev scaling immediately on day 1. So I myself believe them when they say they just didn't want people ti judge the system based off a text announcement before the patch. Having said that, maybe it should have been tested on the PTR first and then they wouldn't have to panic change these things, but I can also see the logic in not wanting to use "only" the PTR crowd to judge the new system.

All in all, considering how A LOT of people just judged the system as terrible without having played it or read anything about it and just went crazy when they saw the words "ilevel scaling", I'd say Blizzard wasn't exactly wrong in doing what they did. Seriously like 99% of the people talking shit about the system over on our facebook page didn't even read the explanation of the system (and I'm guessung haven't played 7.2 yet either).

[hDszzT 103]

7 hours ago, nrotter2468 said:

I really hope this doesn't assume we can equip 4 legendaries like the average ilvl display seems to.

Which it doesn't even do anymore since 7.2... Have you played the patch yet?

[Sharknad0 67]

10 hours ago, nrotter2468 said:

I really hope this doesn't assume we can equip 4 legendaries like the average ilvl display seems to.

Ammako seems to like being snarky instead of simply enlightening people, making the assumption that you should already know theese things, so lemme help.

With 7.2, the unequipped ilvl only counts 2 legendaries now anyway, so you wont need to worry about that. This brought my ilvl from 905 to 896.

[hDszzT 103]

9 hours ago, Starym said:

Also it really isn't like they thought "they'd get away with it", ofc everyone was gonna notice the ilev scaling immediately on day 1. So I myself believe them when they say they just didn't want people ti judge the system based off a text announcement before the patch. Having said that, maybe it should have been tested on the PTR first and then they wouldn't have to panic change these things, but I can also see the logic in not wanting to use "only" the PTR crowd to judge the new system.

All in all, considering how A LOT of people just judged the system as terrible without having played it or read anything about it and just went crazy when they saw the words "ilevel scaling", I'd say Blizzard wasn't exactly wrong in doing what they did. Seriously like 99% of the people talking shit about the system over on our facebook page didn't even read the explanation of the system (and I'm guessung haven't played 7.2 yet either).

Blizzard offers very sensible reasoning for why they've done it the way they did which I can't disagree with, but of course the playerbase is entitled to everything.

No matter what Blizzard does, no matter how right they are, forums always gets in an uproar about it anyway.

10 minutes ago, Sharknad0 said:

Ammako seems to like being snarky instead of simply enlightening people, making the assumption that you should already know theese things, so lemme help.

With 7.2, the unequipped ilvl only counts 2 legendaries now anyway, so you wont need to worry about that. This brought my ilvl from 905 to 896.

They wouldn't need to worry about that until actually logging in and playing 7.2, at which point they'd notice it no longer does that.

Being in a thread which closely relates to "players going up in arms about a change they haven't even played yet", I found the irony to be amusing at best.

(Not that you haven't completely skipped over the fact that I've already told them in my post that it no longer counts unequipped legendaries above 2. Your post just shows a "holier than thou" attitude without actually bringing anything new to the table.)

Edited March 30, 2017 by Ammako

[ChaosDecides 30]

When doing the questline to unlock the new artifact traits, where you are at Hellfire Peninsula, those mobs were doing a surprising amount of damage, given I'm an 875 ilvl Fury Warrior.