Stat squish confirmed: How will unsynced old content be handled?

[Hycinthus]

The problem is pretty much the exact same as WoW had at the end of Mists of Pandaria. Blizzard had to design around the problem in Siege of Orgrimmar, the final raid. The second-to-last boss, Paragons of the Klaxxi, was actually multiple bosses daisy-chained together, and the final boss, Garrosh Hellscream, self-healed twice over the course of the fight (Three times if playing on the highest difficulty level). Garrosh's effective total HP across all phases was about 3.77 billion (37.7億) on 25 player heroic difficulty.

Okay, so it does seem similar to WoW's problems, and Yoshi has been known of taking solutions from WoW before.

So from whatever has happened in WoW already, what should FFXIV expect? What should we be prepared for, is it all bad news? Is there anything to learn?

[Liale]

I think that's the reason why everyone and their pet moogle want to be done with it as quickly. There is no engagement. It should require a modicum of effort. Would still be pretty easy, but, y'know, engaging. At least force us to do mechanics again. lol

Ummmm no, most people want to be done with it quickly because if you have been playing since 2.0 you have done it a million times already and no matter how much you are engaged it's still old content you can do with your eyes closed in your sleep.

[ForteNightshade]

Ummmm no, most people want to be done with it quickly because if you have been playing since 2.0 you have done it a million times already and no matter how much you are engaged it's still old content you can do with your eyes closed in your sleep.

To be fair, making it so absurdly easy only exacerbates that feeling. I'll be more willing to run Weeping City for the 100th time if it remains engaging. Meanwhile, I've actively avoided Alliance Roulette for nearly a full year because I absolutely detest getting LotA and Syrcus for the bazillion time when a light breeze knocks over all the bosses.

[Bacent]

One version of stat shrink I know they have in the game already is with Paladin's blocking. The highest block chance Paladin always gets is near the end of the expansion, with the next one getting shrunk back down otherwise Paladin would be able to block too much damage.

[Fawkes]

Ultimately I don't think it will be a problem, because he said they'd still have the current style powerup from 80 to 90, so level 90 will still be OP unsynced. So you can just level up to the max before you do stuff. BLU might be the only real victim but they already have OP abilities at every level.

[Shougun]

What is so much fun about it? I personally loathe DF for that reason. Especially as a healer. Just wondering. ^^

Fair question, just to clarify since the last part about DF makes me not entirely sure we were talking about the same thing. You're asking why I like to solo unsync content right? Or why I suggested Echo?

To add clarity then I think echo if you unsync should be from the get go, no need to die to get some. because obviously if they nerf the creep you wont be as strong so it would be safe to assume you have to die a bunch to grow echo if you wanted to solo stuff, that seems like a painful and silly step (so.. dont have that be part of it, just auto start with some echo).

Why is it fun? Well the content is still interesting, seeing the neat boss fights and mechanics, and it is obviously a lot less stress in multiple ways. Don't need to memorize much, or really watch a guide in advance, don't have to worry that your group is going to be awful. I don't want to bag on DF much since it is my preference to content but savage content in DF is just a massive "oh my god.. Thal save me now". Until there is a huge echo boost and even then you're like, JOHN STOP STANDING IN THE RED.. SERIOUSLY lol.

So I am confident in my own ability to pick up what I need to do but not others and at the same time I don't want to wait around in PF to get groups or deal with the different culture that PF has, I have absolute first world PTSD with forming groups. First world as in, it's clearly a joke I could do it.. I just no longer ever want to do it lol. FFXI killed my desire on that, and then in FFXIV 1.0 it took me LITERALLY 3 days of shouting in Ul'dah to get 3 freaking people to join me to do a quest where they killed it before my cutscene was over and those 3 people joined out of pity (they told me they felt bad). NO, PF can die in a fire lol. But to be clear I don't want others to lose that ability, I know there are people who like that.

So I do DF for content that I know everyone can finish, even if it's me carrying the whole group (which is why I like to be PLD, RDM, or SMN or jobs like that where you can support where you need). Then I do the other content (like savage) solo- that I don't have the time to do in DF because people are going to die 10 times in a row and it makes farming the content kind of a waste of time (and it wasn't uncommon to see people abandon the content or run the timer out because someone just can't learn an important mechanic), and I don't have to PF as I don't want to start my short period of game time (~30 min here and there) waiting in a group that may or may not form because it's not hot content anymore (like blue in PF is honestly fine when it's hot but really really dies when it's not, which is why I hope they keep up the basic instinct train of thought so you can still progress later).

Unsync provides me the ability to enjoy a much larger portion of the game and it's still fun for me to see, experience, and earn stuff for. It's also nice to think about when I log in for 30 mins (or less) that I could just maybe knock out an old content or two. Also if I need getting 1 more person like a friend or FC member to unsync is pretty easy, if you need but getting a whole group when you're not maintaining close friends or a very willing FC to just do whatever you want to do when you want to do it (unrealistic and a bit unfair to their time)... so again unsync at a great power is actually, for me, a nice feature. Which is why I hope they either go out of their way to ensure unsync stays STRONG or they continue empowering blue mage with ideas like basic instinct (such that blue mage fills in the unsync gap equal or even better than previously other max cap jobs did- which with basic instinct the job is quickly becoming that).

Unsync (or a further empowered blue mage, which it's getting pretty close to now) = ability for me to peaceful complete content on my own time and schedule and enjoy a greater portion of the game with relatively minimal stress. I get to play most of the game, just at a delay lol.

Unysnc, or a concept like it = enjoyable concept to me. :3

[linayar]

A stat squish. A concept WoW has attempted multiple times and gotten wrong EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. Something always goes wrong.

If this is true and well developed:

Damage reduction example: 530 BLM using Fire 4 with no crit/direct hit deals about 50k damage, this will become about 10k damage. Ratio of damage to enemy health will stay the same

Then this should NOT occur.

Undersized parties might be more difficult

Ratio of damage to enemy health staying the same only works when fighting similar-leveled enemies. The point of undersized parties is to overpower lower-leveled enemies, and since the stat gained per level increase is reduced between levels 51 and 80, it means you won't gain as much stat within that level range to use with undersized party against lower leveled enemies. But you still would be tuned relatively the same against enemies at your level.

[Deceptus]

Okay, so it does seem similar to WoW's problems, and Yoshi has been known of taking solutions from WoW before.

You mean like the Glamour Dresser? Look how well that turned out.

So from whatever has happened in WoW already, what should FFXIV expect? What should we be prepared for, is it all bad news? Is there anything to learn?

WoW has tried it twice now and both times have gone really bad and they had to spend months re-doing it. They have never got it right yet.

[MsQi]

No, but they're likely approaching the 32-bit integer limit which with their current scaling, enemy HP would 100% hit that overflow point in 6.0.
And no, simply re-assigning certain values to higher datatypes isn't as simple as it looks. Since packets would have to encapsulate that data, any change in the variable size for certain values would increase packet size. Which magnified by -x- amount of players doing the boss across -y- amount of instances (which at the beginning of new raid patches, can be thousands of instances) can increase server I/O load substantially.

Given that increasing our inventory by even 1 slot seems to be a big task that they have to meticulously plan out due to the increase in packet size it brings, it's no surprise they'd rather stat squish than re-program many of the int values in the game into higher encapsulating datatypes.

The simple truth is they didn't plan ahead and are stuck with the WoW mentality of stat growth. One of the first things you learn is how to prevent overflows and rollovers. If you know you have limits (which you should) plan on NOT hitting them. If you want the game to have longevity design it around 20, 40, 100 years down the line as if there will be no technological improvements with maximums short of the technical maximum. Ask what kind of numbers do we want to be hitting and how they work in THIS system? Test with these numbers and adjust.

A linear progression is fine, gaining 1 stat point per level or every couple levels, including potential gear options. But you need to develop more engaging types of character growth: Choices about what you learn and increase. Gear can serve other purposes besides a steady stat increase.

[AnotherPerson]

On the plus side, with stat squishes, buffs can be more common right? After all, I figure a large portion of buffs stacked together increased damage so significantly that they had to take some away as well besides for balance issues, but if all stats get squished, the actual effect to buffs is a lot smaller than before.