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

[Nayout]

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

The problem is that we can still see the numbers without problems, in Wow they made the changes after making a modification in the previous ones to the numbers to display on the screen in a more orderly way.

It is also that I see the belts and it gives me the feeling that either the servers we have are shit or the game code is.

[Seraphor]

The code isn't great, but I don't think that has anything to do with the belts other than the limited inventory slots.
They could have left the belts as they are. It's a long overdue decision to remove belts and free up those inventory slots for other things.
In fact they probably took the stat squish as the opportunity to remove belts, seeing as it would require recalculating stats.

[SavishSalacious]

They had said it will be harder to do unsynced content. Do you people not listen? But they will work to make it so that you can still do it, its just gonna be harder at first.

[VirusChris]

Yeah... when they said that "unsync'd content would be harder" is what got me actually concerned. I like doing old content unsync'd for the maximize damage I can do for fun and makes it easier to do certain WT tasks. I thought the reason they added the "Level Sync" and "Minimum iLevel" option in Duty Finder was so we can fight those old content anyway we want and if we wish to revert back to the lowest for the challenge, then fine.

The option is there.

Now it feels like they're taking away the option on how to play old content the way you want. I honestly love streamrolling everyone, I love feeling OP for old content, so I don't want that to be taken away. It makes doing the Primal EX fights easier as I can afford more mistakes without causing too much trouble for my party.

I'm not even sure if hitting level 90 will change much. I'm excited for Endwalkers, but don't like this "Stat Squishing" bit they mentioned.

[Shougun]

I think, besides the programing aspect, that they might be stat squishing for healers.

What I tried to describe before having play from launch of ShB where they brought healer attack options down, which I felt was in response to some of the community asking for healers to focus on healing, was in the begining healers had to heal quite a bit and then a bit.. and then everyone was geared and basically healers only healed sometimes but had to attack a lot.

The stat squish, I'm guessing, is also to help with their balance in part to help make healers better. As a healer the stronger everyone gets the less important your job (as healer) is. Of course you can still do damage, but if they wanted a healer to focus on healing then they need to make sure people don't grow so fast. Even then healers will still have a slight problem at the maximal differences... so probably should ensure at least a healer or two have some engaging combat loops (one can remain simple for those who prefer that style).

But to reiterate I really hope they ensure, via some means, that unsync remains equally if not more powerful. That could be starting with echo unsync, new consumable item that buffs you unsync, or perhaps some continued support of blue mage when solo (like I suggested perhaps blue mage obtains primal instinct which gives them all three mimic forms at once, and add a few more abilities that only work in solo situations or at least have modified reactions- like Angel Whisper solo can be auto-raise like it's been in most of the series).

I'm okay if they improve the experience for the normal DF curve, but I hope they take mindful steps to ensure they just didn't kill the unsync experience. Like I hope they go out of their way to make sure, not "meh, maybe we did, maybe we didn't- you find out" lol.

[Deceptus]

They had said it will be harder to do unsynced content. Do you people not listen? But they will work to make it so that you can still do it, its just gonna be harder at first.

Seriously. Why is this even debatable?

Moreso, what's the point of making OLD, OUTDATED CONTENT HARDER? That's literally what ilvl sync is for.

[Hasrat]

Wonder what the impact will be on the hunt community. If unsynced content may be thrown off a bit, surely that will also mean old S ranks and the like will be slightly more of a challenge as well....

[Rongway]

The problem is that we can still see the numbers without problems, in Wow they made the changes after making a modification in the previous ones to the numbers to display on the screen in a more orderly way.

The bounds of a 32-bit integer, which is still the standard for a plain "int" in languages like C++ are ±2.1 billion. You can specify that you want to use 64-bit integers or even arbitrarily large integers if you import a custom data type that does so, but you would have to go through the entire code base and change every relevant instance of the word "int" to "long long". Worse, you would have to make sure you were only changing the ints that actually needed to be changed, and not the ints that are fine with the smaller value range, because just doing a replace-all to make everything a long long will make many numbers take up twice as much space as they need. Bad, unexpected things happen when you start changing data types in a code base. It would be safer just to change the stat formulas so that the numbers stay within the bounds of the data types already in use. There are other technical considerations, but these are big ones.

Given the upper bound of 2.1 billion and the next patch's biggest mob's maxHP of 440 million, we could already run into a problem against that boss. Unlikely though it be, I can think of one surefire way to cause unexpected behavior in that boss by forcing a calculation past the 2.1 billion limit. I won't discuss the exact situation here because, strictly speaking, explaining how to cause unexpected behavior in the game is against Terms, but the situation exists, and changing the stat scaling now to prevent this in the future is 100% a decision I support as a computer scientist.

[linayar]

Seriously. Why is this even debatable?

Moreso, what's the point of making OLD, OUTDATED CONTENT HARDER? That's literally what ilvl sync is for.

Making old content harder is not the point, it's a side effect, but only if you're unsyncing, and probably only difficult if you're trying to do it solo or with less players than intended for the content.

People are already saying contents in FFXIV are easier just from item level increase, not even level increase. So unsyncing would still be easy when you have level increase, just not as easy as now, at least at 80. And at 90, we're getting the same stat increase as now, so that would make it easier as well.

[Absurdity]

People are already saying contents in FFXIV are easier just from item level increase, not even level increase.

People are complaining that current content, on current itemlevel for said content, is too easy, not old content that you only run for glamour anyway. And of course ilvl increase is going to make content easier, that's the whole point of it, to acquire higher stat numbers which you couldn't before.