Stat squish?

[Avrantia]

I haven't been following the MOP development very actively, but I remember that in the end of last year, a lot of fuss has been made about stat inflation and that there should be a so-called stat squish. But now I'm looking around and don't seem to find any information about it. In addition, all the footage I see from beta features stats along the lines of current exponential development.

So has the stat squish been cancelled or has it not been implemented yet?

[MasterHamster]

No one on beta is experiencing any epileptic seizures due to numbers increasing
As always once we're there, the percieved problem diminishes.

Yup, we'll be pushing over 100k dps in MoP.. so..

The stat squish is unnecessary, for now.

[huth]

You haven't been following that actively. The stat squish was not just planned, but they already had it fully implemented and then completely reverted it again because they didn't like how it felt.

[Temp name]

ohh no, the numbers are higher.. big deal, it's just numbers in a game.

[Avrantia]

You haven't been following that actively. The stat squish was not just planned, but they already had it fully implemented and then completely reverted it again because they didn't like how it felt.

Yes, that's exactly what I wrote - I haven't been following the development very actively.

So are there plans to bring it back again or did they remove it altogether because they "didn't like how it felt"?

[huth]

They said they might have to do it in a future expansion due to stats running beyond the boundaries of their variables (i.e. mobs starting to go beyond 2^31 health and such), although there are other(but more computation intensive) ways of dealing with that.
It's not completely of the table, but it's unlikely to happen due to "player demand".

It will probably depend at least partially on how the computer of the average WoW player develops in the next year or two.

[pimpeddakota]

Means my DK will be able to clear those old raids even faster! I support this

[Deleted]

and don't forgot, the longer they wait with the squish, the more efficient it will be

[Khime]

It was announced back during the Mists of Pandaria Press Tour, in the Greg Street interview.

We are not going to item squish for Mists of Pandaria. We tried it, we had it all working in the game and we sat down (and these are designers that knew exactly why we did the change and what we were trying to accomplish). We sat down and we did it and like “All right! Mortal strike hits for 200 now and Shadow Bolt hits for 150!” and we were like, this feels really weird, and we knew this was already going to. You know that we’re already changing the way talents work, which is super controversial, and we thought if we change talents and mortal strike is hitting for 150 damage, players are going to be freaked out. We knew the item squish was controversial to begin with. One of the reasons we did the blog was to test the waters a little bit and we decided now is not the time. What would be a better situation for us is if in like 6.0 or 7.0 if players are demanding the item squish and then we can do it and it will be “Celebration they finally listened”, rather than right now where some players get it and want it and others don’t.

And as of the beta as it is now, the developers appear to have opted to go with the concept of Mega Damage, replacing a bunch of spare 0s with a K or an M where appropriate. 3,000 damage is still 3,000 damage, but 30,000 damage shows up as 30K.

[PHOENIXZERO]

I for one am glad they didn't with MoP. I'm sure it's still coming but when it does it probably won't be nearly as jarring as doing it now would be. If they can somehow tie it into lore instead of it just being one of those changes that just happen then even better.

All in all it's Blizzard's fault though, especially starting with Wrath and the introduction of Heroic/Hard modes that they didn't plan for from the start inflating scaling/ilvls, compressing 10 levels of leveling into 5 (still feels/looks weird to me that I have more HP at 85 naked than I did at 80 in ICC gear and the 30% buff as a DPS) and really, did we need level 78 Cataclysm greens to have an item level rivaling heroic ICC 25 items? At least the latter seems to be straightened out a bit in MoP.

[CrowShammy]

and really, did we need Cataclysm greens to have an item level rivaling heroic ICC 25 items?

yes, starting greens of the new xpac should always rival the best gear of the last xpac. they didn't do this with the tbc > wrath expansions, allowing those in sunwell gear to skip running 5mans and/or not completing quest chains for that rare quest reward and start raiding naxx right after they hit level cap.

there should always be a leveling of the playing field, so to speak, in terms of item level at the start of an expansion

[Deleted]

and really, did we need Cataclysm greens to have an item level rivaling heroic ICC 25 items?

I liked having to replace my items fairly quickly. Infact, I was pissed that I didn't replace my trinket until like lvl 83.

I didn't get all that loot to keep it when the next expansion hit.

[Lukmas]

I would give a kidney for the stat squish. I just dont understand why the lowered the numbers so much. Yeah, MS doing 200 dmg is weird (rather low than weird imo), 2000 dmg would've been okay.

[PHOENIXZERO]

EDIT: Okay I had to go back and update a few things. >_>

I liked having to replace my items fairly quickly. Infact, I was pissed that I didn't replace my trinket until like lvl 83.

I didn't get all that loot to keep it when the next expansion hit.

It's leveling, gear always matters less while leveling. Now if you were RAIDING with those items that complaint would be valid.

yes, starting greens of the new xpac should always rival the best gear of the last xpac. they didn't do this with the tbc > wrath expansions, allowing those in sunwell gear to skip running 5mans and/or not completing quest chains for that rare quest reward and start raiding naxx right after they hit level cap.

there should always be a leveling of the playing field, so to speak, in terms of item level at the start of an expansion

I forgot to add "level 78" before greens. And no, level 78 greens didn't need to rival heroic ICC 25 items. Yes, I remember certain guilds running Naxx in T6 but that was more hardcore guilds, especially with the small percentage that actually got through Sunwell. New max level raids should obviously be much higher than a previous expansion raid. That smallish item level/stat difference between Sunwell gear and Wrath heroics along with Naxx's easiness were to blame for certain guilds being able to do this. They were an exception, not the rule or however you want to put it. I doubt any sane guild tried to run BWD or BoT in ICC gear.

Either way, they've apparently toned it down with MoP and there's not much wrong with gear lasting a good ways in as long as it's not still good to raid (or even do heroics) with by max level.

[Avrantia]

It was announced back during the Mists of Pandaria Press Tour, in the Greg Street interview. And as of the beta as it is now, the developers appear to have opted to go with the concept of Mega Damage, replacing a bunch of spare 0s with a K or an M where appropriate. 3,000 damage is still 3,000 damage, but 30,000 damage shows up as 30K.

Thanks for source and quote

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Honestly, once you're ingame 16,000 damage or 160 damage it will all feel the same.

Unless you're Blizzard, who did the squish and then said it didn't "feel right."

[Kharli]

It was announced back during the Mists of Pandaria Press Tour, in the Greg Street interview. And as of the beta as it is now, the developers appear to have opted to go with the concept of Mega Damage, replacing a bunch of spare 0s with a K or an M where appropriate. 3,000 damage is still 3,000 damage, but 30,000 damage shows up as 30K.

nope wrong
3,000 is correctly still the same.
30,000 however is not 30k it's 30,000 i crit-hitted a dungeon boss at level 87 with a 50k hit showed up as 50,000, so it's not implemented yet or it bugged out for you/me.

Honestly, once you're ingame 16,000 damage or 160 damage it will all feel the same.

Unless you're Blizzard, who did the squish and then said it didn't "feel right."

Yeh, just look on Runescape since release up untill last year I belive, they had 1-60 or something(people had 99 HP and that was the end of it) now they have all from 10 to 1000 or something like that, don't know since i'm not level 99 at the moment in any skill and I rareley ever play RS anymore, but I still miss the 1-99 hits rather than like 10 and then up

[DrFeelGood]

Just fyi - if you dont like seeing big numbers on your screen (damage\healing) you can ALWAYS disable floating combat text in the interface menu. lol

[Vook]

ohh no, the numbers are higher.. big deal, it's just numbers in a game.

It is a big deal. I think it's rather ridiculous that it's getting to the point of tanks having 1mil+ HP and doing 100k+ DPS and such. One of the reasons I love Rift is because it's back to small numbers again. Players with 5k hp and tanks with 15-20k. And 2k dps being great and such.

It also has to do with the fact that extremely large numbers don't register in our minds as well as smaller numbers do. The difference between 2000 and 2500 is really clear to us, the difference between 20000000 and 25000000 doesn't have the same clarity. Once numbers hit a certain level, we stop thinking of the number, and start thinking of a word or expression to attach to the number. When you read "26523451", you don't think "twenty six million five hundred twenty three thousand four hundred and fifty one", you think..."a fuckton", something to that degree. Whereas if you read "8275", you'd be more inclined to think "eight thousand two hundred and seventy five" instead. (Yes, I shamelessly stole this from Penn Jilette)

So yes, whether we hit for 500000 or 5000 won't make any difference gameplay-wise, but smaller numbers will register with our brains a lot better.

And besides that, higher numbers are more taxing on CPU's, so as numbers go higher, they're going to put more stress on the CPU to calculate them.

Not even that though; the stat increases seem to be exponential, as that chart pointed out. By patch 6.3, we'll be seeing items with upwards of 50,000 base-stat on them. Pretty ridiculous, I must say.

[Deleted]

Players couldn't cope with the new talents and a stats squish. The forums will be full of "WTF Blizz nerf x again". They would probably bring it in 1/2 way through or maybe the next expansion.