Why in the actual hell was there an item squish??

[Vargur]

I seem to remember them saying they'd have to squish again but that it wouldn't be this expac.

They did, indeed. Although I don't trust tweets. Nor blue posts. Nor blogs.. not even official announcements by personal letter signed by their CEO.

[Dhrizzle]

Use the metric system, just like they proposed in the blog. They made a joke out of it with their silly mega damage cartoon, but it was the better option. Or do what they're going to do which to me is much dumber. Level up, get squished, level up get squished, and never progress beyond where you were in mop.

If human beings can use the metric system to deal with huge numbers. So can computers. That's what it's designed for.

By "use the metric system" do you mean prefixes like kilo, mega, giga etc? If so that's only a standard for notation and it doesn't change the actual number the computer would need to remember.

Say your spells are doing 250,000-260,000. That could be written as 250k-260k but the actual number for when it hits will be something like 254,389. The computer can't just remember 254k because it will lose the 389.

[Thontor]

no seriously, why? If this was meant long term to stop health and damage from being stupidly high numbers, the why in the actual fuck are stats almost just as high as they were last expansion. Next expansion were gonna easily have tanks with millions of health again. So for real, why did they even bother? And they're gonna piss off a lot more people if they have to do this every expansion than finding an actual solution that works.

do you forget that after they squished the stats, they doubled player health? that's why our health pools so high

our damage numbers, boss health numbers.. are orders of magnitude lower

[Deleted]

I never understood why mana pools are in hundreds of thousands though. Right now when they are strictly tied to character level and spec, they can be easily made into small numbers like other resources (energy, focus, rage). I liked mana in Cata when you could actually go for it via talents, gems and enchants.

[tankbug]

The item squish wasn't hard enough, so they need to do it again, perhaps next xpack.
Other than that, it worked out great. Who the hell cares about the size of numbers, when you're plowing your way through hordes of enemies?

[Sxq]

do you forget that after they squished the stats, they doubled player health? that's why our health pools so high

our damage numbers, boss health numbers.. are orders of magnitude lower

Agreed, it's not even close. 1 million dps with 1 million health (last xpac) is a far cry away from 70k dps and 500k health or whatever we have now!

[Always]

Lol "it worked".
They'll be doing the squish every expansion now. In an mmo it doesnt make sense and is probably one of the causes of sub drop for long time players. "Why do I get weaker every year and a half or so?". It really just doesnt make sense, they just threw in a program that does most of the work for them and pretends to fix mistakes after it runs, instead of actually fixing the problem.

Get weaker? What did the squish do other than change a few numbers? You still kill things just as fast. You can run old stuff with a buff that allows you to do MILLIONS of DPS to the Lich King and makes some things able to be solo'd by players who couldn't before. And you get weaker for a short time every expansion anyway, because that is the way it works. So I don't think you actually know how the games works.

WoD is a disgusting cluster of stupid mistakes, but the numbers crunch was not one of them. I can't wait for this expansion to be over. And if the next one is anything like it I will leave because they add another garrison, shipyard, or don't breadcrumb dailies properly. Or they offer a patch they say they have been working on since EARLY 2014 that has the same 5-6 daily quests EVERY SINGLE DAY.

If you are leaving over a numbers crunch then good riddance honestly.

[SL1200]

The metric system or plain big numers isn´t the problem. The problem is using int64 instead of int32. They researched that possibility and took another road that solved another problem atleast in the short run. Which is number so big they are not easily digested. They will have to do another squish which is not fantastic but isn´t bad either. Using some 64 int logic on 32bit operating systems causes quite some overhead and add to that the added network overhead which may seem small on your end but is hammering the server you are on all condensed.

I can understand people not liking the decissions from blizzard. But I am quite sure they chose the path that is best for the game as a whole from their perspective. And that entails mony, work hours, usability and what not.

It didn't solve any problem at all. Using the metric system does solve it. Do it the same way humans use it to do math in our heads. We're going to have to have a squish every other expansion at the rate we're going, might wait 3 expansions to squish if we're lucky. If you're in the game for the long haul, like I am, you shouldn't want to level just to be squished just to level, and get squished again and again and again. Fix the actual problem or move to the metric system. Just like we do for everything else.

[Osmeric]

In C++ the hardware tell the size of types, some guarantees apply like long will be @ least 32bits. You can always push to 64 bits integers, but in the end, the computer @ the end of the client will tell the word size.

IMHO long long could be a better approach, but i don't know the source code situation, if they have used macros or hard coded the type.

Squishing is not the problem, the shit job they did is.

No competent C/C++ programmer will use "bare" integer types whose size depends on the hardware architecture. Instead, they will use defined types like uint64_t (or some such) that are defined for the architecture in header files.

If you use such types, you can get a program to run identically on 32 or 64 bit hardware. There isn't even that much of a performance penalty from 64 bit arithmetic on a 32 bit machine. I am quite confident that arithmetic on health, damage, and stats takes up a negligible fraction of the CPU on both server and client.

[Dhrizzle]

It didn't solve any problem at all. Using the metric system does solve it. Do it the same way humans use it to do math in our heads. We're going to have to have a squish every other expansion at the rate we're going, might wait 3 expansions to squish if we're lucky. If you're in the game for the long haul, like I am, you shouldn't want to level just to be squished just to level, and get squished again and again and again. Fix the actual problem or move to the metric system. Just like we do for everything else.

By "use the metric system" do you mean prefixes like kilo, mega, giga etc? If so that's only a standard for notation and it doesn't change the actual number the computer would need to remember.

Say your spells are doing 250,000-260,000. That could be written as 250k-260k but the actual number for when it hits will be something like 254,389. The computer can't just remember 254k because it will lose the 389.

[kenn9530]

It didn't solve any problem at all. Using the metric system does solve it. Do it the same way humans use it to do math in our heads. We're going to have to have a squish every other expansion at the rate we're going, might wait 3 expansions to squish if we're lucky. If you're in the game for the long haul, like I am, you shouldn't want to level just to be squished just to level, and get squished again and again and again. Fix the actual problem or move to the metric system. Just like we do for everything else.

the metric system has fuck all to do with how the game works with a 32 bit integer, the main way to solve the problem is to move to a 64 bit integer but that requires a ton of work done to the game engine.

You need to get it into your head the numbers for the game are only there as a basic function, they mean nothing in terms of player power.

Also Mega damage number don't solve anything either, infact it would make things even worse as boss hp is still limited to 2.147 billion and nothing apart from switching to 64 bit can change that.

it seems to me you have no basic understanding on how the game actually works with a 32 bit integer.

[Lotus Victoria]

I'd rather have WOTLK Numbers.
But that's just me, I guess.

[SL1200]

the metric system has fuck all to do with how the game works with a 32 bit integer, the main way to solve the problem is to move to a 64 bit integer but that requires a ton of work done to the game engine.

You need to get it into your head the numbers for the game are only there as a basic function, they mean nothing in terms of player power.

Also Mega damage number don't solve anything either, infact it would make things even worse as boss hp is still limited to 2.147 billion and nothing apart from switching to 64 bit can change that.

it seems to me you have no basic understanding on how the game actually works with a 32 bit integer.

The game doesn't have to count numbers the way you say it does. They can make some changes in the code to make it work.

Ghostcrawler in the very beginning of this blog is describing what I want to use.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/388...aria-11-4-2011

If you want to keep saying it's impossible, fine, but i'm going to go with GC in any matter concerning wow.

[kenn9530]

The game doesn't have to count numbers the way you say it does. They can make some changes in the code to make it work.

Ghostcrawler in the very beginning of this blog is describing what I want to use.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/388...aria-11-4-2011

If you want to keep saying it's impossible, fine, but i'm going to go with GC in any matter concerning wow.

Even if it were possible whats the difference in 6 m being on the screen rather than 60000, boss health is calculated with a 32 bit integer and it has a limit of 2.147 billion, unless they move to a 64 bit integer regarding boss HP then nothing can change that, so if players are doing 6 million damage hits on a boss with only 2.147 billion hp then its going to be a short encounter unless you introduce the garrosh mechanic for every single boss fight.

Numbers in terms of player power mean nothing, lets say WoW could be real life your not going to see 1 million dmg hits in the middle of the air, the numbers are only there to make the game work, nothing more nothing less.

As long as a mob takes the same time to die it doesn't matter in the slightest if your doing 1k or 1million dps does it. Your character is not any weaker than before.

Blizzard also need to think about performance issues also, a large portion of the player base play with computers less powerful than a toaster, the item squish improves game performance by limiting the amount of calculations the cpu needs to do, if your dealing with millions of dps and billions of hp then computer performance will suffer for low end machines, where people already stuggle with fps issues.

The question is are you any weaker? Answer is no, then why the hell are you even bothered if your not seeing massive damage numbers when it makes no difference.

[Deleted]

Even if it were possible whats the difference in 6 m being on the screen rather than 60000, boss health is calculated with a 32 bit integer and it has a limit of 2.147 billion, unless they move to a 64 bit integer regarding boss HP then nothing can change that, so if players are doing 6 million damage hits on a boss with only 2.147 billion hp then its going to be a short encounter unless you introduce the garrosh mechanic for every single boss fight.

Numbers in terms of player power mean nothing, lets say WoW could be real life your not going to see 1 million dmg hits in the middle of the air, the numbers are only there to make the game work, nothing more nothing less.

As long as a mob takes the same time to die it doesn't matter in the slightest if your doing 1k or 1million dps does it. Your character is not any weaker than before.

That's what I've been saying since they anounced the squish. People need to get over their precious 6digit hits (7for destrolocks) and just see how it feels.
When you obliterate a group of dangerous enemies w/o breaking a sweat then I feel powerful, no matter what numbers pop up (though I DO admit that I always like to see my critical hits popping up over the enemy)

[alduron]

That's what I've been saying since they anounced the squish. People need to get over their precious 6digit hits (7for destrolocks) and just see how it feels.
When you obliterate a group of dangerous enemies w/o breaking a sweat then I feel powerful, no matter what numbers pop up (though I DO admit that I always like to see my critical hits popping up over the enemy)

Pretty much this. I don't gauge my characters power by the numbers that pop up on the screen, but by how much devastation I can readily leave in my wake.

[r1dik]

So raiders can feel more special each raid tier. They need their specialness meter higher and higher, or else they don't feel like they gained any power.

[kenn9530]

So raiders can feel more special each raid tier. They need their specialness meter higher and higher, or else they don't feel like they gained any power.

you do know proper raiders don't care in the slightest about how big the numbers are as long as they are maximizing their char, anyone with any sense at all shouldn't care at all how big all small numbers are on the screen because it doesn't matter.

[Kaleredar]

you do know proper raiders don't care in the slightest about how big the numbers are as long as they are maximizing their char, anyone with any sense at all shouldn't care at all how big all small numbers are on the screen because it doesn't matter.

Gear differences between tiers and difficulties need to be large enough so that previous tier gear can't possibly be the most optimal piece.


Like, if there was just a +2 or +5 main stat difference between between raid tiers and difficulties, then pieces with better allocated secondary stats from previous tiers would still shine, or old trinkets might still be considered better because they had better active effects, or so on and so forth.

[alduron]

Gear differences between tiers and difficulties need to be large enough so that previous tier gear can't possibly be the most optimal piece.


Like, if there was just a +2 or +5 main stat difference between between raid tiers and difficulties, then pieces with better allocated secondary stats from previous tiers would still shine, or old trinkets might still be considered better because they had better active effects, or so on and so forth.

Hell just look at items like the spellstrike crafted set from BC and how long people used them.