Item squish = Metric System

[DeusX]

Guess it's hard for people to process more then 6 digits in their dps?
Squish is bullshit.

Squish also helps coping with the numbers. The upper limit Blizz is trying to avoid is the 32 bits unsigned integer upper limit (4 billion and something). Next xpac, if nothing is done, will have to go above that limit and, on 32 bits systems, calculations like divisions on 64 bits, will make systems take performance hits.

Plus number inflation is not good in general. Why waste time and power handling those?

[huth]

Plus number inflation is not good in general. Why waste time and power handling those?

Because otherwise there would be no gear upgrades. At all.

[Cyrops]

Squish also helps coping with the numbers. The upper limit Blizz is trying to avoid is the 32 bits unsigned integer upper limit (4 billion and something). Next xpac, if nothing is done, will have to go above that limit and, on 32 bits systems, calculations like divisions on 64 bits, will make systems take performance hits.

Plus number inflation is not good in general. Why waste time and power handling those?

To note, in WoW the integer is 32 bits, but the limit is not 4 billion since it is signed. The upper limit is 2bil specifically for WoW (its 4 billion total, yes, but starts at -2billion).

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Not if your not mentally challenged o.o

Sure when you have 10 minutes to read, you feel like a genius.

[Ryve]

The squish needs to happen. The numbers are getting out of hand.

The number of people crapping on about numbers being "too big" is getting out of hand. You should all stop.

Like resetting numbers is of any significance. With 535 gear most classes will burst any level 60 raid boss in between 1 and 3 seconds. All that's going to happen is it will further devalue lower level content played at level. And for it to work you'd need far more complicated and likely confusing equations for the players. "So if I'm level 60 and I enter a level 60 raid my damage is multipled by 5, however at 70 in a level 60 raid my damage is multiplied by by 17X. Oh, now to enter a level 70 raid where I do 13.5x my base damage - shit I just levelled up in raid, now my damage is based around the ideal stats for a level 71 player but my gear is still suitable only for a level 70".

Might as well just make players deal damage in percentages of the enemy mob's health and give every mob hp on a scale of 100%. It's stupid, but less stupid.

[Peacemoon]

I think a system like the one mentioned in the OP will only confuse the vast majority of players. Also remember WoW caters to a wide audience, including young folk and people who would struggle understanding such a system.

[Cyrops]

I think a system like the one mentioned in the OP will only confuse the vast majority of players. Also remember WoW caters to a wide audience, including young folk and people who would struggle understanding such a system.

You mean non metric systems? I feel your pain.

[Dyminator]

It's hard to go "woa look at the damage" when you see:
423219238
412319389
482482823
401210439
482301243

It would probably not be too hard for blizzard to put in a few delimiters. (or using an AddOn)
Making it look like;
423,219,238
412,319,389
482,482,823
401,210,439
482,301,243
Which is BY FAR easier to comprehend.

[Hyde]

Are you ABSOLUTELY sure about that?

typo; look at the previous equation which is correct compared to the later one.

[Lbgr]

Converting to metric is not an item squish, it's just a conversion. Not the same thing, and really does not do what is intended.

[huth]

typo; look at the previous equation which is correct compared to the later one.

That still leaves your first equation, which is just as wrong. Not to mention that you're explaining mega-damage, not squishing.

[velde046]

Dont think this is the way it's implemented. Just making the numbers appear differently is not a squish...
What is actually needed is a different gradual scale along which the numbers are done....
It will be something in the spirit of this, where you would use level 1 dps as the base to start from:

Let's say that current state is:
Level 1 = 10 DPS
Level 10 = 20 DPS
Level 20= 40 DPS
Level 30 = 80 DPS
Level 40 = 160 DPS
Level 50 = 320 DPS
Level 60 = 640 DPS
Level 70 = 1280 DPS
Level 80 = 2560 DPS
Level 90 = 5120 DPS
As you can see we created a scale that is exploding way too fast.... comparing level 1 to 90. So the next step is looking for an end level value that is acceptable and leaves room for growth so you won't run into the same issues in the next expansion.
In the above table, every 10 levels DPS gets doubled... but you could make the scale multiplier 1.5 instead of 2 and get this (did some arbitrary rounding in there):
Level 1 = 10 dps
Level 10 = 15 DPS
Level 20 = 22.5 DPS
Level 30 = 33 DPS
Level 40 = 49.5 DPS
Level 50 = 75 DPS
Level 60 = 110 DPS
Level 70 = 165 DPS
Level 80 = 250 DPS
Level 90 = 375 DPS
Level 10 = 525 DPS

As you may notice, towards the end of the scale the DPS is growing rapidly too, but still you could go ahead quite a few tiers before you even reach the values of the table before it. After calculating the values all mobs and bosses should be corrected to compensate
This is a simplified model and Blizzard will probably use a gliding scale that may differ but in general this is how a number squish would look.

[imabanana]

The exponential growth is their own selfmade problem. They just added another raiding tier and on top of that the retarded warforged crap all over again. Add to that the random increase of 50+ iLvl at the beginning of an expansion and you know why it get's out of hand. They even showed this themself that their original progression was way more linear and only recently changed to an exponential function.

As you said yourself, the reason is mainly because they feel its off. In the age of 64bit integers even in another 5 expansions we won't see any technical problems. That is if they don't make their exp(arg) to exp(exp(arg)).

Anyway the metric debate is not what is going to happen anyway. And even a prehistoric UI like mine already display stuff in an appropriate format when the numbers get too big. So neither will a level 1 char see 0.000001 Mdmg nor will a level 100 char see 1.402.789 dmg.

Main reason for which I say technical part isn't really a problem isn't even int64, there's no real need for this in fact. Most optimized way would most likely be that from a certain threshold, values would be simplified on server side, instead of calculating things on int64, they can easily calculate the (approximate) same thing with the values / 1000 (or 1m), then send to client on int32 with a "multiplier" parameter (for MEGA-DAMAGE o.o).

The technical argument in BS, there are many easy ways to work around it. I really don't get why Blizzard tried to explain squish with it, while simply talking about exponential growth makes it easy to understand to why it is really needed.

Another big problem with this growth is that previous content gets overgeared more and more quickly, as power difference between 2 consecutive tiers stuff gets higher with each new tier.

Guess it's hard for people to process more then 6 digits in their dps?
Squish is bullshit.

Real problem is long term. 6 digits now (well, already 7 quite often), 15 in a few years with current exponential growth.

[Deleted]

The only thing that should be squished are the heads of those who want this ridiculous item squish.

[purefury]

you can always get all dmg/healing formulas and hitpoints ^(1/2)
then inflation will be much slower, and less important visually.

[markdall]

The only thing that should be squished are the heads of those who want this ridiculous item squish.

Agreed. The most interesting part about the squish will be the scaling - how will a level 1 do vs. a level 2? Level 10 vs. level 12? Level 10 vs. level 20? Level 85 vs. level 90? Level 90 vs. level 91? How will it scale? Will levels matter as much?

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Real problem is long term. 6 digits now (well, already 7 quite often), 15 in a few years with current exponential growth.

And that's the million dollar question: will they learn from this, or will they use it as a simple reset to give them another nine years, figuring that by then they'll have moved on to a different game?

[smartazjb0y]

Agreed. The most interesting part about the squish will be the scaling - how will a level 1 do vs. a level 2? Level 10 vs. level 12? Level 10 vs. level 20? Level 85 vs. level 90? Level 90 vs. level 91? How will it scale? Will levels matter as much?

The relative scaling is what they're trying to solve. They don't want a level 90 to be 1500 times stronger than a level 60, but like 50 times stronger. The whole point is to reduce the difference between the levels.

And that's the million dollar question: will they learn from this, or will they use it as a simple reset to give them another nine years, figuring that by then they'll have moved on to a different game?

It's to buy them time. They want to keep endgame power exponential, so they're resetting the curve and after 3-4 expansions they'll do it again

[melodramocracy]

Is this the daily 'but mah numberz' thread?

Sleep well, you'll still be able to kill stuff, chicken littles.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but aren't you describing Mega Damage? Not the squish?

Item Squish = 1000 Damage (Meters in this example) Becomes 100 Damage (Meters)

Mega Damage = 1000 Damage (Meters) = 1 Mega Damage *guitar solo* (Kilometers)

[Cernunnos]

Mega Damage is the Metric system. 1000m = 1Km Which similar to what the text on player and boss Health pools do now.
Item Squish is reducing stuff by an inverse exponential curve. Vanilla content barely gets reduced, yet level 90 stuff gets gutted beyond belief.

Here you can see the before and after effects of the squish.
Brown = Vanilla Content
Green = TBC Content
Blue = Wrath Content
Red = Cata Content


Look closely at the brown line. after the squish it has barely changed at all compared to the red line. Now look at the red line, it no longer follow the same curve, that is the say the same increase in item level (and thus HP and damage) if it was squashed in a linear fashion, like it would under the metric system or the Mega Damage route, it would keep the same curve, as it is the same amount, it's just written in a condensed form. 1,000,000 is the same as 1M.

But this is not what the squish is proposing. It proposes to squash lower level content by a small amount and higher level content by a lot.

[Axelond]

I don't see the big problem with just adding some prefixes to the numbers that don't have them already. Most people already have boss health displayed in M(mega) and personal health in K(Kilo) Most damage meters have a option that at least I always use to shorten the numbers. The total damage done during a raid night you should say in billions.

With MoP they added in the commas to help you read out the numbers better 10000000000000 is way harder to read then 10,000,000,000,000 but I guess 10T or 10 trillion is even easy to read. Something I don't understand with the item squish is, If they do the item squish will they be remove all the precision on stats we have on items now? If they keep the precision on items the same in future expansion after the squish they did the hole item squish just to change 2,613 to 2.613

however I guess one big problem is when you start going higher you run into a few localisation problems basically in most of Europe (Not GB) use the long scale and US/GB use the short scale. In the long scale billion is 10^12 and in the short scale (USA/GB) one billion is 10^9. If you keep it to billions translating it to the long scale from short scale is not very hard but when you start going higher it becomes way harder, try and translate one sextillion from the short scale to the long scale.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales