Difficulty of Dungeons

[Vyrerus]

The stat squish is so that numbers don't get so big they literally break the program's ability to handle them.

Did they say how big that is, because that's not any of the reasons I heard them give about it. It also doesn't make sense within the context of modern computing either. There's also the fact that they've been letting us do hundreds of thousands of damage since Eureka in Stormblood, and now with Blue Mage and Basic Instinct.

Either way, it's for their benefit, not ours.

[Iscah]

Did they say how big that is, because that's not any of the reasons I heard them give about it. It also doesn't make sense within the context of modern computing either. There's also the fact that they've been letting us do hundreds of thousands of damage since Eureka in Stormblood, and now with Blue Mage and Basic Instinct.

It doesn't matter whether the limit is hundreds of thousands or just hundreds, at some point there is a limit and they're in danger of hitting it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_overflow

Simply put, as a concept, if the maximum it can handle is 999,999,999 and you make it do something that adds to 1,000,000,005 it has nowhere to put that additional 1 and it does not compute. Your damage is now 5.

I'm pretty sure they talked about something that would line up with this issue when they were first announcing their plans for the stat squish.

[Vyrerus]

It doesn't matter whether the limit is hundreds of thousands or just hundreds, at some point there is a limit and they're in danger of hitting it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integer_overflow

Simply put, as a concept, if the maximum it can handle is 999,999,999 and you make it do something that adds to 1,000,000,005 it has nowhere to put that additional 1 and it does not compute. Your damage is now 5.

I'm pretty sure they talked about something that would line up with this issue when they were first announcing their plans for the stat squish.

I know what an overflow error is, thanks. They're really common in old games, and in breaking old games to do funny things. A relevant FF example is using multiple buffs with Hero's Drinks and things in FFVII to create an ATP overflow error, which has the damage of an attack display in the broken integer in text rather than numeral, causing things like one shotting the Emerald Weapon.

All I remember them saying when they announced the stat squish was that damage numbers were getting ridiculous, and that they didn't want to start truncating the damage values to make the screen look nicer. You know, dropping every number after a certain point and putting thinks like, 1.2m damage or 1200k damage and stuff. They want to have an orderly looking game, rather than inflated values.

Look at the concept, "Saturation Arithmetic" in your own link. That's what the game currently does to handle maximum or minimum damage values. In Eureka when you use the Limit Break against a minimum level monster when you are maximum level for a zone, the LB2 will deal 999,999 damage. Mathematically given the damage calculations going on in there, it should be able to go higher, but it can't.

The reason they want to implement the stat squish is so that this limit becomes less apparent. Currently at i510+ our melee limit break 3s in normal content are doing upwards of 770,000 or so damage. Realistically in the 90 cap era this means the LB3s would shoot up to that maximum of 999,999 damage. Even the ranged or caster ones may, meaning that limit would become readily apparent, and melee LB would lose its advantage. They then also have to contend with individual DPS being so high that the DPS LBs might lose their advantage altogether. The squish pushes us away from that limit, allowing them to leave their calculations and things largely unaltered, reusing them.

This also means they don't even have to double check every ability that does damage in the game, and then ensure that it has the cap criteria on it.

They also talked about boss HP values being overly ridiculous. If there's any concern for an overflow error, it would be the type caused by boss HP, but we don't have the means to overflow boss HP, since we aren't allowed to heal bosses. So that too is just something they're worried for, for their end, not ours.