It really seems counter-intuitive to bring down the upgrade finder so early. I still need to figure out what items in the vault are better upgrades for my toons but have no option for that at this point and is one of the bigger reasons I pay for this sub.
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For the past couple of expansions we have done this because the pre-patch puts everything into a really weird state: the dragonflight optimization model doesnāt really work anymore because many of the mechanics and talents have been completely changed. The war within optimization model doesnāt quite work because it is all balanced around level 80 characters with hero talents and higher ilvl gearā¦
Also, Blizzard is still making a lot of changes, so any optimizations or gear rankings you do right now might be invalid in a week with the next round of changes that they publish.
The pre-patch is too short to actually create an optimization model specifically for it. We are focusing all of our effort into being ready for the expansion launch on August 26th. It is a LOT of work to update for a new expansion.
We recognize that this pre-patch is unusually long (they are usually a couple weeks shorter than this one), which is a bit of a pain, and we apologize for the inconvenience. But for the reasons stated above, itās just not feasible to create a pre-patch upgrade finder that would give meaningful results.
One thing we like to point out that helps soften the blow a little: you typically donāt need to worry too much about gear upgrades during a pre-patchā¦ in a couple weeks youāre going to replace all of your gear after a few hours of leveling, and nobody really knows e.g. whether that item with haste or this item with crit that are otherwise of similar quality will help you perform slightly better for a couple weeks. Nobody really does the math for pre-patches because they are too short.
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This all makes sense thank you.
For me i like at this time to have all my gears maxed with patience ā¦
Thatās OK and it sounds fair now that it is explained, but to also be fair with all of us, we should all be getting a month of credit on our sub to compensate for a tool that is down.
Again, in all fairness!
This is a paid service after all.
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Following that logic you should take down your entire site untill war within hits, what would be the āsmarterā option imho is putting in a notice or a link to the now āin your viewā useless upgrade finder, be aware this information might be funky or whatever the reason to take away ONLY the upgrade finder is, and then let people decide on their own if they want to use it or not.
The way you do it now is telling people āyou are too stupid to make your own decision so let us do it for youā
This annoys the hell out of me being a paid customer
Thatās not what weāre telling people at allā¦ weāre telling people: there is not enough time to make an upgrade finder for the pre-patch transition between expansions that will rank the items well enough to be useful.
There is a LOT of code to rank the thousands of special item effects in an expansion, thus we only maintain and update one expansion at a time. The live website is running the new code for The War Within, which does not have code for all the Dragonflight and earlier special effects. We do not go through and update previous-expansion effects for the new expansionā¦ it would take forever and once the new expansion hits, it would become completely wasted effort.
Honestly I donāt like the way Blizzard handles pre-patchesā¦ and this one is particularly bad. Usually they are a couple weeks shorter, and usually they are more in sync with the beta that leads up to it. They rushed this one and put it up in a pretty janky stateā¦ many specs have a sort of mish-mash of the old stuff and new stuff that is not even consistent with the latest beta builds (see the few posts about talents not quite matching as an example of this).
And that asideā¦ the game is in a really weird state during these pre-patches as described aboveā¦ it really does not lend itself well to gear optimization.
We leave up a subset of features during pre-patches to preserve some of the convenience features like Best in Bags, Worst in Bags, and Best in Slot as a way to preview new stuff (we have an update coming soon-ish that should make it function a lot better for that purposeā¦ that said, TWW beta is still in a pretty rough state regarding items and gear, there is a LOT of broken and plain wonky stuff).
Bottom line: we do our best to provide a high quality optimizer for people, but we are at the mercy of the game itself. When the game puts itself into a wacky state like this, we can only do so much. Sometimes the only viable course of action is to put up a stop-gap and wait for the real expansion to release.
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Iām a long time paid subscriber to Mr. Robot eh. Iām going to give you a pass on the one-two months of Upgrade finder not being available as its a month-or-two in terms of a decade for me.
Question: has this been the case in the past>? because I do not recall the same situation in the past decade.
Again, I appreciate the Mr. Robot tool.
Give us a sign, statement, you are committed to your tool and are not just milking revenue.
Maybe a toggle setting between the old and new with a statement your setting s are for old vs new>???
Appreciate you yellowfive !!! For real.
In the past, there has always been some weirdness during the pre-patch period. I believe we did disable the upgrade finder between shadowlands and dragonflight as well for the pre-patch. We have usually had a big disclaimer in the forums or on the site that tells people that things are going to be pretty rough until the new expansion comes out. That being said, we have had the site fully updated for every expansion on day one - we are committed to that always being the case.
And we can assure you that we arenāt just milking the site for revenue. There are 39 specs that we have to update the mathematical models for. Even if we only spend one day on eachā¦ well, you do the math! We are only two people! We have to untangle all of blizzardās insane data for the spell, enchants, gems, crafted items, etc. Then we have to update the optimizer to handle all those items. And then we need to set up the upgrade finder in a sane way based on how currencies and drops work. We did not have alpha access, so we couldnāt get going in earnest until the beta came out. Weāve been burning the midnight oil trying to get this release ready - itās always like that around new expansions.
We have not raised the price of the subscription since we started the website in 2010. Our philosophy is to keep it very cheap so anyone playing wow who is interested in our product wonāt be deterred by the cost. That also means we have to run a lean company and make some tough choices about how we spend out time - like not doing cata classic and accepting some downtime on one of our features during the pre-patch. In this case, I think it would be physically impossible for us to work any more than we are leading up to TWW.
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I think people are blowing this out of proportion. Given a yearly subscription for me is only about $16-18 AUD, and even less if you are in the US, its like less than $2 worth that you are not getting the full functionality of the site. Your daily coffee probably costs twice as much as that.
Plus it is basically run by a team of 2 developers, they can only do so much, and as they have said, they are doing their best, but they are at the whim of what Blizzard does. New expansions only come around about every 2 years, so in my opinion, itās not a big deal. Iād much prefer they focus on getting the site and optimisation engine ready for the start of the expansion.
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Would you accept electricity 11 out of 12 months? would you accept to be able to use your car 11 out of 12 months? this is ridiculous. This terrible business.
I understand why there is an overlap period between 2 expansions, but no service at all it ridiculous. Hoping to get away with it in 2024 is terrible business too. I prefer to use an outdated model like the one of the previous expansions than none at all. I prefer to be able to use my car at least in the morning than non at all for 30 days. Give us at least credit or restore the old system for a month, but not nothing all and hopping to get away with it is ridiculous and entitled.
iād prefer something to NOTHING
I think your analogies are pretty terrible, you are blowing this way out of proportion, and you need to get some perspective.
Firstly, you are mistaken that you are not being provided anything at all for your subscription money, you still have access to the other tools provided by AMR, like best-in-bags, etc.
Secondly, having electricity is a vital service in our modern world, and being able to use your car is important to most people, especially if they have to drive to work to make money to live. Not having access to one part of this tool does not affect your life in a serious way, and doesnāt prevent you from playing WoW either.
Also, depending on where you are from, electricity will cost you several dollars per day. You may even spend more on electricity in a day or two, than you spend on AMR for a yearly subscription. Similarly, the cost to purchase a car and keep it running (fuel/insurance/registration, etc) is also magnitudes larger than the cost of the AMR subscription.
I donāt know where you are from, so maybe the cost of the AMR subscription is a significant amount for you. However, given the cost of a WoW subscription for a month is more than the yearly AMR subscription, Iād question whether you can afford to play WoW at all, if that is the case. I admit that I am in a privileged position that the AMR subscription amount doesnāt really have an impact on my budget, but I suspect that is probably the case for most AMR users, and WoW players in general. Playing WoW is a luxury, not a need that you require to survive.
Finally, based on my experience from previous expansions, any upgrades you get now in the next couple of weeks, will most likely be replaced by quest rewards within hours of levelling up in the next expansion, and definitely replaced by normal dungeon loot once you get to the new max level. During this transition period, donāt focus on figuring out what loot you might get in the next couple of weeks, just enjoy the game content, or maybe take a break from the game so you are refreshed for the new expansion.
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Askmrrobot.com is a business. You keep forgetting that.
You want us to treat it like a charity or what??
Yes, Iām well aware that they are a business, and Iām not treating them like a charity.
As I mentioned before, they have not taken down AMR for the month of the pre-patch, they are still providing the other tools for use by all subscribers. It costs money to run the servers that compute the results for these tools.
Also, itās not like the TWO developers that work on AMR are taking a break during this prepatch period, they are incredibly busy working on getting the optimisation models and tools ready for the new expansion, where the upgrade finder and the other tools actually matter. Given their limited resources, I think they are making the correct choice.
If they had spent time getting the tools ready for prepatch, which was not really possible, given itās not the same as what is on the beta, this would take time away from getting the tools ready for the expansion. This would mean they wouldnāt be able to make the tools ready for use on day one, and possibly not even ready by the time the mythic+ and raids start, where the optimisation tools really matter. Then they would risk getting a whole lot of complaints from all of their users, and rightly so.
I have been using AMR for many years, and they have provided amazing value for money during that time. The subscription is incredibly cheap for the work that needs to go into providing tools like what AMR provides. As a programmer myself, Iām surprised by how well their site runs, how easy it is to use and the speed at which they can provide results that are really good, for the amount of money they would get from subscriptions, and the fact that they are a very small team of TWO developers.
Yes, they are a business, and if you are unhappy with their service, you can always vote with your wallet and cancel your subscription.
The correct choice was to let minimum something rather than nothing. Nothing is just a service denial. This may be acceptable in some countries, in some other countries no service becomes a legal issue, escalable to the business bureau even and you may lose the right to sell that service in some countries
Clients pay you a service but you give them nothing at all because of reasons depending actually on your choice.
We understand that it is inconvenient for a feature to not be available during the pre-patch and we apologize for that inconvenience, but as we and others have described above, there is only so much that we can do for these awkward transitions in the game.
We might investigate a different strategy for the next pre-patch to see if we can make it a little smoother, but no promisesā¦ weāre really at Blizzardās mercy on these things.
Our efforts are focused entirely on preparing for TWW and making some long-coming improvements to the site as a whole, which I think everyone will be a lot happier about than a āsomewhat more just OK pre-patch optimizer for a couple weeksā.
I think that everyone has said their piece on this topic, so Iām going to close the discussion.