Should ALL the numbers be squished?

[Exilian]

As the title asks, should all the numbers in WoW be squished down? This refers to health / resource bars, damage, healing, and even gold / vendor prices.

Instead of having 1,000,000 HP we would have 1,000. Instead of having 1,000,000 gold we would have 1,000. Etc.

On the one hand, I know this ultimately has no bearing on the actual game as our percentage hp/dmg/item worth would be the same as it is today with such high numbers. But on the other, high numbers have always been reminiscent of sci-fi IMO, not epic fantasy. I imagine a warrior hitting for 200dmg while I imagine a deathstar hitting a planet for 1,000,000dmg. Not to mention that smaller numbers are easier to process and easier to calculate with on the spot.

So what do you guys think? Would smaller numbers contribute to WoW's fantasy feel and practicality, or does it really not matter even if we go into billions and trillions?

[Sting]

What combat numbers would you even need to calculate on the spot?

[TheWorkingTitle]

Squish it down to Classic, and make it linear growth rather than exponential.

[RedGamer030]

Yes. Having over a million health is ridiculous.

[breadisfunny]

someone doesn't understand how scaling works. unless you enjoy seeing decimal points on mobs and health bars.

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Yes. Having over a million health is ridiculous.

not a valid reason to destroy the scaling system.

[Deleted]

I don't really see the point at the moment, yes smaller numbers are easier to sight read but w/e. The main reason the squish happened was because the game was hitting the 32bit signed maximum value which I believe has been increased to 64bit signed.

Old max: 2,147,483,647
New max: Over 9 Quadrillion

Science!

link

[Echo of Soul]

I don't care what they do as long as we have damage numbers that our brains can actually register and process in a combat situation, like below 10k.

[Deleted]

There's no real point, if you keep squishing the numbers the previous expansions are going to be hit hard by those squishes until you enevitably get to the point where you have 1hp at lvl 1 and the mob has 1hp its then just a case of who hits who first

Naa thats not gona hapen because squish hapens in later moment
For example WoD squish hapen around 70+ level there was some numbers tweaking below but big hits was from 70-85 levels
I voted No.Because i`m HERO of Azeroth not some Peasant.Sargeras will look sily if raid of peasants blow him by doing 3k dps

[Pharming]

Squish it down to Classic, and make it linear growth rather than exponential.

¨

This. I'm actually shocked to see most people prefer it the way it is now. What on earth is the point? And when analyzing combat logs it's just *bleh*.

The game would be the same, but you would see less numbers taking up space on your screen.

[thilicen]

It's jut not that fun keeping track of how your numbers are getting bigger when you're going from hitting for 293832 to 298573. I remember a time when breaching that 5000 mark or 10000 mark was effing awesome. Now I basically don't really pay attention to it anymore due to there being just way to many numbers. It's all about % and dps-score for me now.

[huth]

Squish it down to Classic, and make it linear growth rather than exponential.

Do you even realise what that would mean? We'd see next to no power growth in Legion. You could finish all raids with WoD gear.

Yes. Having over a million health is ridiculous.

No. Numbers over a million health are perfectly reasonable.

Has about the same weight as your "argument". Still, it would be sufficient to keep the current course instead of changing for the simple reason that doing nothing is less work.

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It's jut not that fun keeping track of how your numbers are getting bigger when you're going from hitting for 293832 to 298573. I remember a time when breaching that 5000 mark or 10000 mark was effing awesome. Now I basically don't really pay attention to it anymore due to there being just way to many numbers. It's all about % and dps-score for me now.

Why would you care about such a miniscule difference anyway? That's barely a 2% difference. Most classes have a larger variance in their damage than that.

[Vynny]

It seems that a lot of people think the number's squish was due to the numbers being too high. It wasn't, it was purely a technical issue of boss health levels starting to exceed the max integer value that is built into the game. Remember how Garrosh healed for a certain percentage of his health after each transition phase? That was a work around for his total health pool being higher than the max integer allowed by the games programming, so assuming they fixed that issue, there's no need to go through all the hassle of a number squish since there'd be no reason for it aside from the purely superficial "big numbers don't feel realistic" reason. Newsflash, people with swords are destroying tanks, what's realistic about that?

[Pharming]

There's no real point, if you keep squishing the numbers the previous expansions are going to be hit hard by those squishes until you enevitably get to the point where you have 1hp at lvl 1 and the mob has 1hp its then just a case of who hits who first

The problem is how it scales. I think you start of with around 200-250hp at lvl 1, and at level 58-60 you can now have like 15.000hp as a tank, same numbers you had in wotlk when you first hit 80.

Clearly there is a better way of doing, but I guess it doesn't really impact the game in that bad a way, so it's not really a priority at the moment.

[huth]

Clearly there is a better way of doing, but I guess it doesn't really impact the game in that bad a way, so it's not really a priority at the moment.

It's really not so clear. There are other ways of doing it, but they aren't strictly better, and each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Linear growth definitely wouldn't work, as we're long past the point where the gains would be pretty much unnoticeable. Do you want to go through an entire expansion sharding/vendoring everything you loot because it's not worth switching with what you already have?

[Deleted]

Most of all WOW needs a level and item lvl squish IMO (like Classic = 1-25, BC/WOTLK where you can choose where you want to quest = 25-35, Cata/Mop = 35-40, WOD/Legion = 40-50, new addon = 50-60)

[Deleted]

If they ever managed to implement zone scaling across the world, they can just cut down time to level instead, no need to squish levels.

Well there is a good reason why leveling - especially in low level zones - right now "has" to be very fast, that reason is the long way from lvl 1-100 (soon 1-110) if gaining a level would be slower, if they would squish addons there and therefore levels they way to max lvl wouldn't be that long and the level zones that are going to be picked could have a good lenght - so basically would take as long as it takes to complete all the quests + a few dungeons and with all the decisions (between zones and even between addons) leveling would have a good variety between the different characters (so one picks BC, the other one picks WOTLK etc.)

[Paula Deen]

I don't really see the point at the moment, yes smaller numbers are easier to sight read but w/e. The main reason the squish happened was because the game was hitting the 32bit signed maximum value which I believe has been increased to 64bit signed.


link

They are still gonna need to squish or change the way numbers work with addons. Recount/Skada/Details is gonna be hilarious by 7.2.

[huth]

They are still gonna need to squish or change the way numbers work with addons. Recount/Skada/Details is gonna be hilarious by 7.2.

That's something the addon authors have to solve, though, not Blizzard.

[Deleted]

I voted yes just because it would stop these threads cropping up every week.

[Paula Deen]

That's something the addon authors have to solve, though, not Blizzard.

Not really, Blizzard doesn't have the proper tools in place for them to shrink numbers.

I should clarify, by hilarious, I mean the way they work will outright bring even the best of the best PCs to a crawl during Openers, possibly the entire encounter, depending on the amount of damage people will be doing.

If Blizzard were to start adding in functions to allow addon authors to shrink damage numbers ingame, it would be up to the mod authors, but as it stands it is literally impossible to do that.