Item squish = Metric System

[huth]

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?

There's nothing for them to learn. They know what's going to happen, they just decided that it's better than the alternative.

[Darkhallows]

Honestly don't see the point of an item squish and never will. So the numbers get bigger. Why is that a problem? Why is 1 billion (which bosses like H25 Thok have) such a huge number? Why would it be any different if it had 1000 HP and it was the same approximate value that took the same amount to kill?

Bigger numbers show the game is growing, and really that's all they are. I'm more concerned a squish might be incredibly confusing, and hope they won't do it.

[Daffan]

It isn't just players though, Blizzard has admitted that the game is nearing the physical limitations when processing the numbers, and that without a squish we'll start to experience major issues within the game.

Also, anyone with a small amount of common sense and psychology would tell you that our minds are not well adapted for recognising and interpreting large numbers. Numbers such as 2,756 are much nicer on the eye and mind then 3,721,726. The latter number might seem nicer, as often bigger numbers are sweet, but not always.

The squish therefor, is not bullshit.

I agree

They are not going to simply change the UI Interface as OP suggests. Miks scrolling battle text already makes 30000 appear as 30K if wanted, they are doing a full number squish ( or wish too, as GC also wishes )

I mean how dumb can you be, they are going to change what appears on your screen only? Addons do that already, and so does their comma system.

[lunchbox2042]

They could reduce lower levels damage as well. Go look at how much you did at 1 in vanilla and now look at what you do in Mists. It's higher.

[Hyde]

They could reduce lower levels damage as well. Go look at how much you did at 1 in vanilla and now look at what you do in Mists. It's higher.

The number squish would only be for post-mop gears and levels. I can see Mega prefix to represent the value of 1000. So a hunter with 200 Mega Damage would actually cause 200 000 damage.

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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)

Yup, precisely. Mega damage is one of the aspect of squishing.

You must be either from Europe or Asia.

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They could reduce lower levels damage as well. Go look at how much you did at 1 in vanilla and now look at what you do in Mists. It's higher.

Why would they need to squish numbers anything prior to the next expansion?

[Aleksej89]

I have no idea why are people so keen to have "BIG NUMBAWZ!" displayed on their screen...

Personally i like knowing that i am doing my role properly, regardless of is it "100 dps" or 100.000.000" dps.

And at the moment the numbers on all the gear are so large that it has gotten really silly to even look at...

[Travio]

Honestly don't see the point of an item squish and never will. So the numbers get bigger. Why is that a problem? Why is 1 billion (which bosses like H25 Thok have) such a huge number? Why would it be any different if it had 1000 HP and it was the same approximate value that took the same amount to kill?

Bigger numbers show the game is growing, and really that's all they are. I'm more concerned a squish might be incredibly confusing, and hope they won't do it.

The real problem is that, without a squish, they're going to be hitting a programming issue in the next expansion. Yes, the size of the numbers is the problem here.

WoW is written using 32 bit signed integers. That allows a range of approximately -2 billion to approximately 2 billion. At the current rate of growth, without the item squish to bring the entire system more into line, bosses are going to be topping the upper limit of that the variables can handle very early in the next expansion - which is going to cause all sorts of wonderful problems. It's far easier to do an ilvl squish and bring the entire game's power level down than it is to rewrite an untold number of code sections to handle 64 bit integers, and even then, in most cases, they cannot be properly handled by the users still using 32 bit computers (which, as might come to a surprise to a number of people, is still a large portion of the game population).

Long story short - the squish has to happen in the next expansion.

[ohshift]

[markdall]

There's nothing for them to learn. They know what's going to happen, they just decided that it's better than the alternative.

I strongly disagree.

Supposedly we "need" this stupid item squish because the numbers are out of hand. Ok, my question stands: In another nine years will the numbers be out of hand again or will they have stayed with their squished policy and only increased our numbers by a little each time?

To put it another way - Blizzard seems to be convinced that this needs to happen. If it needs to happen, then the current state of things must (to them) be a mistake. Will they repeat that mistake again after painfully fixing it, or will they just use the fact that it's fixed once to be good enough and ramp our DPS way up over the next several years until it is a "problem" for them again?

Example: After the Y2K problem, most computer industry companies didn't go back to 2 digit years, they use four digits or more, so that the problem doesn't happen again for a really long time. A bad company would have just released a patch setting the year to 00 only to have it fail in another 100 years. Which will Blizzard do?

Finally: I'm not looking forward to doing really low DPS even if everything else is squished at the same time.

[Travio]

The biggest thing with doing this now as a squish, instead of a full fix, is it will give them more time to weed out the players who're using 32 bit systems still. Most 32 bit systems are on the way out; by the time this becomes an issue again (most likely before), they'll be able to, most likely, actually fix the problem in the source code without affecting a large portion of their player base.

[markdall]

The real problem is that, without a squish, they're going to be hitting a programming issue in the next expansion. Yes, the size of the numbers is the problem here.

WoW is written using 32 bit signed integers. That allows a range of approximately -2 billion to approximately 2 billion. At the current rate of growth, without the item squish to bring the entire system more into line, bosses are going to be topping the upper limit of that the variables can handle very early in the next expansion - which is going to cause all sorts of wonderful problems. It's far easier to do an ilvl squish and bring the entire game's power level down than it is to rewrite an untold number of code sections to handle 64 bit integers, and even then, in most cases, they cannot be properly handled by the users still using 32 bit computers (which, as might come to a surprise to a number of people, is still a large portion of the game population).

Long story short - the squish has to happen in the next expansion.

Really? They can't use longs or doubles or whatever instead? Seems like something people at a software company should be able to handle, you know?

[Travio]

Really? They can't use longs or doubles or whatever instead? Seems like something people at a software company should be able to handle, you know?

At the time they wrote WoW, I doubt they considered it an issue. In fact, it wouldn't be an issue for several more expansions to come if Cataclysm hadn't had a massive explosion in ilvl compared to the previous expansions (and Mists was even worse).

The issue with swapping to other types that aren't integers is, once again, having to rewrite massive sections of code. In fact, it'd be easier to do the swap from 32 bit integers to 64 bit integers than it would be to swap to longs, doubles, etc. They have a different type of behaviour within code, and would require double checking everything from the ground up to ensure it still functioned with the new types. Again, this would be buying them time to fix it, either way. With a program the size of WoW, I'd think rewriting pretty much the entire program would take a lot more development time than figuring out an ilvl rebalance and then writing a program to run through the database and alter all the numbers to fit the new formula.

[Stevegasm]

Really? They can't use longs or doubles or whatever instead? Seems like something people at a software company should be able to handle, you know?

It's really easy to use a different type of variable. Well, maybe not easy, as this game has a lot of code to convert, which is a separate issue that could end up causing many many bugs. But going with a different data type makes the game take more memory to run. Longs and doubles IIRC, use twice as much memory than short (I haven't programmed in 10 years). While going from like 4bytes to 8bytes doesn't seem like much with one data type, when you're talking an MMO, it can really add up, not only on the users machines, but for the servers to handle.

[nyxtyr]

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.

perfect post man ^^ exactly what this guy said. a few years back i was making a game for shits and to kill time with a program called rpg maker and it had a option for scaling xp and other stats needed per level at some point it STOPPED and you could NOT go any higher with the program which is what happening with warcraft (ra den health loop bug cause his health was so high and the system couldn't work it out or some shit)

making random stuff like the op said isn't the problem at all or any type of fix numbers already have word names (Million, Billion, Trillion, Quadrillion, Quintillion, Sextillion) and so on and most addons and wow in general are already using them "Health 120M" = Health 120,000,000. this is only cosmetic both are the same. Fact of the matter is in next expansion bosses will be well over 1 billion or 1b or 1000m or 1,000,000,000 hp and dps will be well over 1m or 1000k or 1,000,000 which is again doubled but then with blizzards route it'll be tripled if not higher!

here is a picture i made just to kinda give everyone a better visual of whats happening in the first picture you see warcraft as it is today with random item level jumps, health pool jumps, damage jumps and so on where eventually as this guy i'm quoting is pointing out rather than doubling or in some current cases having it tripled if not more (10k hp made you a boss in one expansion and 60k was the norm in the next) have it scale more gradually and at a smaller pace



Classic 200 DPS
BC 2000 DPS
Wrath 20,000 DPS
Cata 80,000 DPS
MoP: 500,000 DPS
XP5: 5,000,000
XP6: 54,000,000,000

^^ see how that just took off there? when it could be Classic 100 and MoP 100,000 which is still even a huge gap. What's happening here is the amount of work to change all those values through every single mob and skill and whatever the hell else is again a huge ass amount of work and they seem to only be looking for a quick fix that'll take no time and no man power

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lol love this

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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.

snap another good post here ^

[Travio]

It's really easy to use a different type of variable. Well, maybe not easy, as this game has a lot of code to convert, which is a separate issue that could end up causing many many bugs. But going with a different data type makes the game take more memory to run. Longs and doubles IIRC, use twice as much memory than short (I haven't programmed in 10 years). While going from like 4bytes to 8bytes doesn't seem like much with one data type, when you're talking an MMO, it can really add up, not only on the users machines, but for the servers to handle.

Related to this and how changing them isn't a non-issue:

I was hired for a fourty-five day government contract a few years back. An old program needed updated because the original developers had never seen the need to use anything more than 32 bit integers; when it was originally written, the developers never saw a time when they'd need anything more. The time came, however, and I was the one they hired to fix it up. It turned into a six month contract that required rewriting massive parts of the program because they were never written to accommodate anything more than the 32 bit integer, and swapping caused massive issues in performance. So I had to rewrite almost 75% of it.

World of Warcraft is almost ten years old. At the time they were writing it, I doubt they thought it would last so long or that 32 bit integers would be a capstone after even ten years (there was, as mentioned, a bug on Ra Den that caused his health to loop). Add on to that the code tacked on over the years and how much it's expanded, and you have a lot of work on your hands rewriting it. What seems like a simple job could turn into a massive undertaking. They could have a group working on it already, figured it's too big of an issue to tackle in time for the next expansion (when it's needed), and decided to implement the squish to buy that time.

[Psilo]

They called this "Mega Damage". It is an option they have said they don't like as much, but this well over a year ago. We shall see.

[SL1200]

Remember the cartoon of the lock doing MEGA damage? It appears that blizzard didn't like that solution because they went out of their way to make it look ridiculous. Mega damage is the metric system applied to wow damage. I prefer the mega damage solution.

[Psilo]

What seems like a simple job could turn into a massive undertaking. They could have a group working on it already, figured it's too big of an issue to tackle in time for the next expansion (when it's needed), and decided to implement the squish to buy that time.

MoP is the expansion where they've been working on it. It was announced as needing to happen pre-MoP. Next expansion we will be hitting the million mark on player health and DPS, so whatever they are planning is not going to come at 7.0.

[Aquamonkey]

Really? They can't use longs or doubles or whatever instead? Seems like something people at a software company should be able to handle, you know?

TC: "If we don't do the item squish it's going to require a lot of re-engineering of our combat code to actually support bigger numbers. We're getting really close to the point where the code can't..."
CS: "Yeah, the code can't compile the numbers"
TC: "Yeah it can't compile the numbers, so we are testing the item squish internally with the expansion, and I think a good time to launch it would be right before the next expansion so people are already used to it by the time the expansion launches. So, that's the current plan, but we'll see how it works out. I hope we can." (Source)

[Travio]

MoP is the expansion where they've been working on it. It was announced as needing to happen pre-MoP. Next expansion we will be hitting the million mark on player health and DPS, so whatever they are planning is not going to come at 7.0.

They've pretty much said, out right, that next expansion is an item level squish. Which means the problem has been too big to tackle before the next expansion and, as I said, they need to buy themselves time. 6.0 is going to be the squish. The major overhaul of the combat system will most likely be 7.0, if they ever do it; the item level squish and the age of the game might be enough for them to never have to make the change.