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

[EirolOcarrol]

One of the biggest things I was excited about for the new expansion was now being so overpowered in unsynced content, that I could go back and do solo runs of Stormblood dungeons.

Now I'm afraid that won't be the case. I understand why the development team has to do this. And it's understandable. But it's definitely disappointing. One of the only disappointing things from this Showcase.

YoshiP said we're not getting weaker. But as someone who oft equates my strength with how much I've grown and gotten stronger in comparison to older "content". Like older dungeons. It definitely feels like I'm getting weaker.

[Colt47]

Honestly, I want the ability to retro-run the old savage content so that we can get access to the dyable gear without issue. It still annoys me there isn't a way to upgrade the current eden promise armor to 520 just like the crafted gear and have that be dyable, but I guess they are scared of removing that incentive... even though it seems most people who run savage are about the numbers and owning trophies over glam.

[Puremallace]

Echo is the most obvious solution to fix the issue. If they do not fix it this will screw the casual community pretty hard.

[Melphina_Dragonfyre]

Is there going to be any impact whatsoever on using to the duty finder to queue up normal dungeon runs, or is this purely affecting unsynced? Like, if I queue a heavenward dungeon, or run crystal tower through the duty finder and wait for it to match me with an alliance will the old content be any more difficult or will it be exactly as it is now? Gear creep is already strong enough that we just skip entire phases on the crystal tower bosses because they die before they get to do them (Glasya Labolas platforming phase for example), and that's only one example in one dungeon. There are countless others. And this is with the imposed level cap. I'm assuming that things won't change unless you're entering unsynced. Is that correct?

[Rongway]

Is there going to be any impact whatsoever on using to the duty finder to queue up normal dungeon runs, or is this purely affecting unsynced? Like, if I queue a heavenward dungeon, or run crystal tower through the duty finder and wait for it to match me with an alliance will the old content be any more difficult or will it be exactly as it is now?

Doing content at the intended iLv will feel the same. Doing content at higher (syncked) iLv will be harder the greater the difference between intended iLv and the gear sync. However, the increase in difficulty when syncking will not be as large as the increase in difficulty for outright unsyncked runs.

[Seraphor]

Doing content at the intended iLv will feel the same. Doing content at higher (syncked) iLv will be harder the greater the difference between intended iLv and the gear sync. However, the increase in difficulty when syncking will not be as large as the increase in difficulty for outright unsyncked runs.

Pretty much this.

The gap between minimum ilvl (so your first time clears) and your maximum ilvl sync is going to be smaller, so fights synced via Duty Finder won't necessarily get as easy over the course of a patch as people gear up for it. But that's not really an issue as it only applies to pre-81 content. You're not actively seeing people gear up for it, but all of that content will feel a little closer to min ilvl then it currently is.

Unsyncing things will get harder than they currently are, so doing a level 50 trial at level 80 will feel like you're doing it at level 60. But that's still easier than doing it synced.

I made a little graph to help illustrate the issue and what it might look like in EW:



Basically we have these sharp increases at level 50, 60 and 70. EW will bring them back in line with the level 1-50 curve.
There will still be a sharper incline at level 81-90, so being level 90 will still make unsyncing things pretty easy, but probably not to the extent that level 71-80 currently does.
It basically takes us back to the state of things at the start of HW, giving us a few extra expansions to power up before it comes an issue again.

[Nayout]

It surprises me that we have to do these things with even such small numbers, it is not that we reach the million damage currently to do this and in the end it makes it clear that the game code is garbage.

[Seraphor]

It surprises me that we have to do these things with even such small numbers, it is not that we reach the million damage currently to do this and in the end it makes it clear that the game code is garbage.

You have multiple people dealing damage on a per second basis. So those 5000 dmg hits add up quickly to ridiculous numbers when you need a fight to last 10+ minutes.
This is why enemies have HP as high at 440 million.
It's simply not practical to code for values much higher than that when you need to relay them over an online connection, along with all the other data that get's sent back and forth as you're playing the game, in real time. It could cause issues that exacerbate people's lag with low ping, fail to apply damage within a certain window, etc.
It's something all MMO's deal with. WoW just had their own stat squish, and took everyone back down to level 50.

[Nayout]

You have multiple people dealing damage on a per second basis. So those 5000 dmg hits add up quickly to ridiculous numbers when you need a fight to last 10+ minutes.
This is why enemies have HP as high at 440 million.
It's simply not practical to code for values much higher than that when you need to relay them over an online connection, along with all the other data that get's sent back and forth as you're playing the game, in real time. It could cause issues that exacerbate people's lag with low ping, fail to apply damage within a certain window, etc.
It's something all MMO's deal with. WoW just had their own stat squish, and took everyone back down to level 50.

That is why it surprises me, Wow I did this when the numbers began to not be visible correctly on the screens because they were absurdly high amounts with much larger player content (25 man)

[Seraphor]

That is why it surprises me, Wow I did this when the numbers began to not be visible correctly on the screens because they were absurdly high amounts with much larger player content (25 man)

They're simply getting ahead of it before it gets that bad. They still have more expansions planned after Endwalker.