Do you want a "number squish" to happen?

[Nehezbegar]

Eventually they will have to do sth about it, bigger numbers, more stress for CPU

[Dezminion]

No.
I like the fact that charter is getting stronger xpac to xpac, but the other reason is, that then they would need to go trough all the items in the game, all the mobs, nearly every npc etc, it they would do such work, how would that effect the content of the xpac they would implement it?

[Xerra]

Seems like numbers are just getting silly. WTB plus 5000 int bracer enchant

[Thelxi]

I imagine if blizzard was to go through with a number squish, they would find a way to make it affect everything globally. Otherwise a lot of content wouldn't be possible to do. Either way, I dont care if they do or not. we would still be doing the same percentiles of damage.

No, when Blizzard first posted stuff about the squish stuff they posted their own graph that clearly showed to anyone with a brain and basic math skills that soloing old content will be affected.

[Seriss]

I don't care either way. I don't have numbers display enabled when I heal, a hp bar is half-empty regardless of whether I have 400k hp or 100k hp max.

When I dps, I see stuff critting for large numbers but if you remove the last 2 digits, for example, and got it into your head that you don't need to crit for 200k for it to be noteworthy but that 2k is the new BIG number... well... all is well.

It's the relations between the different numbers that are important. Not the numbers themselves.

[tyrindor]

Eventually they will have to do sth about it, bigger numbers, more stress for CPU

This will never be a factor. There's thousands of lines of codes going through your processor, much more than you can imagine, having numbers like "3958" or "9345936929254" is not going to have any impact on any modern (even low end) processor.

[Dontrike]

I think this needs to be done by either the next expansion or the one after that. If it did happen, soloing wouldn't be harder as everything would be affected by it and everything would be the same, but with smaller numbers.

[Tomana]

It would mess up too many things if not done properly. And would take too much dev time if done properly. So please, no.

[Nehezbegar]

This will never be a factor. There's thousands of lines of codes going through your processor, much more than you can imagine, having numbers like "3958" or "9345936929254" is not going to have any impact on any modern (even low end) processor.

This is a quote from http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3885585

Now there are some very real computational limitations. PCs just can’t quickly perform math on very large numbers, so we’d have to solve all of those problems as well. Even today, tanks can hit the ten digit threat cap on some encounters.

So it has some impact, i think this guy knows what he wrote

[Dyra]

It would have to be a squish across the whole game to allow for soloing older content. It would be hilarious in early game though. Doing 1-2 damage per hit on a creature with 6 hp.

[Deleted]

It would have to be a squish across the whole game to allow for soloing older content. It would be hilarious in early game though. Doing 1-2 damage per hit on a creature with 6 hp.

If they do squish, they remove the gaps between expansions. At least that was the initial idea. Without those gaps, soloing is dead (if no other mechanic is involved).

before (shaded) and after (bold):

[tyrindor]

I think this needs to be done by either the next expansion or the one after that. If it did happen, soloing wouldn't be harder as everything would be affected by it and everything would be the same, but with smaller numbers.

No.. Soloing would be affected even with a flat decrease. The gaps will be much smaller. Even though everything is relatively the same strength you would not be able to solo stuff as well because the gear upgrade from each tier would be a lot less.

Relative strength with higher numbers will always make older content easier. 100 agility vs 200 agility is a massive difference, while 10 agility to 20 agility is not, both are 100% increases. One nets you 100, the other 10. The higher the numbers go, the more %s impact your stats.

Blizzard themselves explained it here better than I can: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3885585

This is a quote from http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3885585
So it has some impact, i think this guy knows what he wrote

I'm guessing he's talking about those 10 year old laptops that I see many people at LANs playing WoW on. Any modern PC it's not going to matter. WoW's requirements go up every expansion, so I don't see the problem unless they are being sloppy on their coding.

[Nehezbegar]

Keep in mind that WoW engine is very old, maybe it will eventually has some problems with performing math on big numbers

[Deleted]

Yes. I think it's ridiculous players can have hitpoints in the hundreds of thousands.

[sarow]

NO. Will hate the day this happens...

[Synstir]

I rather have the numbers just grow bigger and bigger; hate to see a squish coming; hope they never do it.

[Allyrion]

When it goes over a billion, I might agree.
Admittedly, that's not far away but if they simply do the mega damage approach and just start abbreviating in millions then it wouldn't bother me.

In MoP, it's been easy to think of things with a base of a thousand. Doing a 100 or 100k damage isn't that different in my head when everything is relative. Not a huge fan of ginormous numbers but that "k" makes it feel more meaningful. Yet that's all the difference. You know there's another three digits behind there but what they are isn't that important.

It might start getting too hard to read anything in the millions, because it'll just be a long string of numbers that'll make the UI messy. It hasn't bothered me yet, but i'm sure it would in the 10's of millions, unless they standardize using 'k' for a thousand in the combat logs.

If it would slow down the computing, I'd understand (but it seems unlikely with modern computers). Otherwise, I don't see why people think it's ridiculous. What is "damage" or "health" anyway? These things are arbitrary concepts to begin with. Having small numbers makes it more relatable? Having 100 points of health that need to be taken down by a 100 points of damage doesn't seem any less far removed than having a million health needing a million damage.

[ZeroEdgeir]

Won't care at all when it comes. Why? Our damage output will still be relatively the same, from a % viewpoint. The absolute numbers just change. That is fine by me.

Blizzard already stated issues reaching towards an actual hard-coded limitation of the game engine for health pools coming close, hence why I can see it being needed.

As long as I can still do the same relative amount of damage (and take the same relative amount of damage), whether it is 80k DPS on something with 250mil health, 8k DPS on something 25mil health, or 800 DPS on something with 2.5mil health, it's all the same percentage of damage done.

[Black Rider]

Yes reduced numbers would be great!

[jonny888]

No.. Soloing would be affected even with a flat decrease. The gaps will be much smaller. Even though everything is relatively the same strength you would not be able to solo stuff as well because the gear upgrade from each tier would be a lot less.

Relative strength with higher numbers will always make older content easier. 100 agility vs 200 agility is a massive difference, while 10 agility to 20 agility is not, both are 100% increases. One nets you 100, the other 10. The higher the numbers go, the more %s impact your stats.

Blizzard themselves explained it here better than I can: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3885585



I'm guessing he's talking about those 10 year old laptops that I see many people at LANs playing WoW on. Any modern PC it's not going to matter. WoW's requirements go up every expansion, so I don't see the problem unless they are being sloppy on their coding.

You're making a big assumption that it would be impossible for them to implement a system which would allow easy solo-ing of old content (having already seen that it's incredibly easy for them to scale your numbers up and down based on which environment you're in e.g. PvP healing reduction in BG's, ILvl increases in PTR raids, boss mechanics behaving differently when solo-ing old raids).

And yes, big numbers are a computational problem. The larger the numbers, the more memory they take to store, and the longer it takes to process them. The fact that WoW is already a primarily CPU-bound game in terms of performance, the last thing they need to do is compound that problem by forever increasing the number sizes until the point where they grind the game to a halt (not to mention all the extra server load they'd be producing on their end)