Why *not* have everyone scale equally?

#0 - Nov. 19, 2008, 4:41 p.m.

To quote Ghostcrawler, regarding Paladins and TPS/DPS scaling:

Q u o t e:
Seriously though, it was the latter. The TPS may be an issue or it may not be. Players sometimes get worried about scaling (which is a totally valid thing to think about), but forget that some relationships won't show up in the current expansion. To use an extreme example, if one class outstrips another class when both have 20,000 attack power, then it's not something we're really worried about.

This is an often-made argument: that a scaling disparity won't lead to a problem until a certain point. It's commonly used to say that "Problem X" is not a priority for Blizzard or should not be, while "Problem Y" should be a priority and should be fixed first.

But this is also an ignorant argument. Scaling disparities do not magically start posing a problem only at a certain gear level. They are always shifting the balance between classes, subtly altering which classes and specs are desirable for a given situation (whether it's for PvP or PvE).

So, I must ask the question: why not have everyone scale equally? Why do we have a scaling hodgepodge where some abilities, specs, or classes scale better than others, with the blind hope that discrepancies in base damage, healing, or threat make up the difference and keep everyone roughly in line at some average gear level--a gear level that only a small fraction of the playerbase will have and that people will actively try to get away from by progressing through content or brackets?

Equal scaling is the bare minimum that must be ensured before classes and specs can even hope to be balanced. Until then, such efforts are fruitless.

Ghostcrawler

#27 - Nov. 19, 2008, 8:17 p.m.

This is a very interesting thread.

Our general philosophy is that we don't want relationships to be too predictable. Much of the fun of improving your character is seeing the effects that different kinds of gear have on different rotations. To use an extreme case, if every piece of armor just said "improves stats by 1%" getting loot would be a lot less fun.

Similarly, we don't want classes to be too similar. It's interesting and fun when you switch classes from say a warrior to a rogue and see how different stats affect you differently.

Scaling is very important to us in the sense that we don't want certain classes or specs to completely fall down at certain gear levels. This has happened in the past. But what those levels are is very important. If mages dramatically overtake warlocks when everyone has 20,000 spellpower, then I just couldn't care less except possibly as an item of trivia. If and when WoW ever reaches numbers of that level, the class mechanics will have changed so much in those years that its just not worth worrying about at this time.