Feedback: Numbers are too big in RETAIL

Community General Discussion
21

I agree, so I did something about it.

As well as I could, anyway:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/frad6i4mf5z1rcw/!SquishMe.zip?dl=1

This is an addon written by yours truly. It intercepts a few calls from the API (which it can due thanks to having the ! in front of its name)

Behold:

-- Save original functions. We need them, even if no other addon will.
local _UnitLevel = UnitLevel
local _UnitHealth = UnitHealth
local _UnitHealthMax = UnitHealthMax
local _UnitPower = UnitPower
local _UnitPowerMax = UnitPowerMax
local _UnitPowerType = UnitPowerType
local _GetManaRegen = GetManaRegen
local _UnitMana = UnitMana
local _UnitManaMax = UnitManaMax
local _GetBattlefieldScore = GetBattlefieldScore
local _UnitDamage = UnitDamage
local _UnitRangedDamage = UnitRangedDamage
local _UnitHPPerStamina = UnitHPPerStamina
local _GetAttackPowerForStat = GetAttackPowerForStat
local _GetSpellPowerCost = GetSpellPowerCost
local _DeathRecap_GetEvents = DeathRecap_GetEvents
local _UnitAttackPower = UnitAttackPower
local _UnitRangedAttackPower = UnitRangedAttackPower
local _GetSpellBonusDamage = GetSpellBonusDamage
local _GetSpellBonusHealing = GetSpellBonusHealing
local _CombatLogGetCurrentEventInfo = CombatLogGetCurrentEventInfo
--local _UnitPowerDisplayMod = UnitPowerDisplayMod
local _UnitStat = UnitStat

--Absorb and incoming heals
local _UnitGetTotalAbsorbs = UnitGetTotalAbsorbs
local _UnitGetIncomingHeals = UnitGetIncomingHeals

-- Make local copies of some functions where we need consistency
local GetFramesRegisteredForEvent = GetFramesRegisteredForEvent

In order for this to not throw LUA errors in your face, you need to stop using a bunch of built in functionality and replace it with addons so that it isn’t protected.

Any unit frame addon will do except the default. Get any combat text addon and disable the default (I recommend ClassicFCT)

Right now it reduces all mana, health, healing, and damage done by 100x. This can be changed by modifying the variables in the LUA file.

local smdb = {
  sqma = {
    0.354839, 0.445962, 0.536817, 0.559240, 0.387426, 0.313564, 0.343165, 0.290889, 0.313364, 0.277651,
    0.295755, 0.265168, 0.273794, 0.255545, 0.267813, 0.249051, 0.258005, 0.242659, 0.235786, 0.223793,
    0.223389, 0.213637, 0.213707, 0.205825, 0.192205, 0.187213, 0.194622, 0.189786, 0.175670, 0.172734,
    0.178807, 0.171845, 0.169743, 0.164253, 0.162822, 0.161503, 0.163504, 0.162366, 0.153350, 0.150329,
    0.154959, 0.152224, 0.149835, 0.147649, 0.145833, 0.144160, 0.142701, 0.141434, 0.140339, 0.139318,
    0.138520, 0.136337, 0.138631, 0.135353, 0.137593, 0.136004, 0.135753, 0.134452, 0.133240, 0.133317,
    0.120000, 0.110000, 0.100000, 0.700000, 0.350000, 0.200000, 0.150000, 0.100000, 0.070000, 0.01
  },
  sqhp = {
    0.354839, 0.445962, 0.536817, 0.559240, 0.387426, 0.313564, 0.343165, 0.290889, 0.313364, 0.277651,
    0.295755, 0.265168, 0.273794, 0.255545, 0.267813, 0.249051, 0.258005, 0.242659, 0.235786, 0.223793,
    0.223389, 0.213637, 0.213707, 0.205825, 0.192205, 0.187213, 0.194622, 0.189786, 0.175670, 0.172734,
    0.178807, 0.171845, 0.169743, 0.164253, 0.162822, 0.161503, 0.163504, 0.162366, 0.153350, 0.150329,
    0.154959, 0.152224, 0.149835, 0.147649, 0.145833, 0.144160, 0.142701, 0.141434, 0.140339, 0.139318,
    0.138520, 0.136337, 0.138631, 0.135353, 0.137593, 0.136004, 0.135753, 0.134452, 0.133240, 0.133317,
    0.120000, 0.110000, 0.100000, 0.700000, 0.350000, 0.200000, 0.150000, 0.100000, 0.070000, 0.01
  },
  outdoor = true,
  raid = true,
  dungeon = true,
  scenario = true,
  arena = true,
  battleground = true,
  timewalk = false,
  squishpansion = 1
}

I would like to do tooltips as well, but I don’t understand the new API and I just sortta couldn’t be bothered.

2 Likes
22

This example still doesn’t work. You’re comparing a 30% increase with a 50% increase this time. What you’re talking about is purely subjective and your examples make no sense, and if your examples don’t add up it doesn’t feel like you’ve throught this through have you?

Why 20-30k? Why not 2-3k? Anyone with any basic knowledge of this game knows that numbers increase over time and eventually they condense the numbers down again, but with each condensation they further muddy the waters of the old game (aka levelling experience) until that too needs an entire overhaul.

All that said, your examples are pure nonsense because you’re comparing a 30% increase with a 50% or 100% increase.

3 Likes
23

I don’t think the numbers are too big, but then again, i just ignore the last 3 digits, which makes everything a lot easier to fathom.

I just dread what will go wrong this time, when Blizz does the next number crunch, i remember Blood elf players being unable to level because level 1 mobs in their starting area one-shotted them, big sweeping changes are always a cause for trouble


24

and they might be right.

I personally don’t like the constant gearing treadmill. I’m sticking with my 463 gear til pre patch, I did my weekly chores for all those and I’m not doing that again.

My main fear here is they’ll do another borked squish. Last time they did this we couldn’t clear dungeons from the previous expansion. In SL I remember trying to do a Freehold run and got smashed by the first pack of trash despite being 10 levels higher with (granted quest) gear from SL.

25

they are afraid people wont do newer content because the differences wont be big enought


And what are they wrong about?

I consider that the numbers are too high, and here im talking about the damage dealt, the hp numbers and all other stuff that refers to numbers.

In Legion it was even higher, and it was one of the best expansion in the game. If they cut it again, it’s will be another frustration.

26

The numbers in isolation are effectively meaningless and, other than as a visual cue to show you hit something (particularly tagging AoE), they’re pretty useless UI clutter.

27

One of the ideas was to reset characters at the beginning of each expansion.
Version 1 is to always flip people back to 50.
Version 2 is to forgo leveling and flip back old gear to uncommon (green).

Version 3 is to forgo gear inflation but I agree that a lot want this carrot.
One way of putting it, GW2 is that way, but it could be nice to play WoW like that.

Option 4 is to simply offer normalizing numbers in the client. So that a standard enemy is 1000 health. Truth of the matter is, scaling or not, it’s how the game works. There is an ideal health / dps ratio (meaning, seconds per kill) that applies all the way from 10 to max.

I agree. It was meaningful in classic, because you had few hits per seconds.
You would understand your main hits, and the dot, the effect (seal), the fire totem, the pet

I think it first got real silly with WLK and paladin, with area damage everywhere, and in case of the pally, retri aura, consecration, seal of three hits, hammer of four hits triggering that seal, on-block damage

And then we got the proc of the proc of the effect of the proc system in retail.
To be fair, the only info I get from it (including wlk pally) is oh fancy.

28

Is this type of addon allowed? Feels like it’s changing game code which is definitely not allowd

29

Of course it’s allowed. It’s written entirely in LUA, being executed by Blizzard’s own UI engine. There is no DLL injection or changes to the WoW executable at all.

This is why, like any other addon, you just drop it into the AddOns folder.

30

Okay fair. I didn’t know addons could do what your suggesting that’s all

31

They can do a lot of crazy things :slight_smile:

All I’m essentially doing is, because LUA has global variables, I’m taking the function that the game provides for getting a unit’s health for example, and then I save it into a local variable, and then I make a new one which calls the old one, but I make it global.

This results in all other addons, including the base UI because mine loads before them due to having the ! in the name, seeing my function instead of WoW’s function. This means I can do whatever I want with it. I could take the inverse of the health, I could make the health bar show mana, I could make the amount of gold you appear to have (not actually have) equal to your health pool, I can multiply it by 100000 and fill your entire screen with gargantuan numbers.

Or this!

The only issue is that Blizzard don’t want you to overwrite some functions, like action bars for example, so any function they made is “protected”. If protected code tries to call unprotected code, which this new function I’ve made is, then it will result in a LUA error instead.

This is why you need addons to use this. The default UI will error out instead of showing the squished numbers, but the addons are all unprotected and thus won’t.

32

They need to stop this levelling up thing really.

Although, not sure if WoW shouid go the ESO route with that. Or if players would want to see another skill tree that only offered 0.01% increase per point but you ahd to do everything in game to max out the new talent tree.

Then I thought, don’t think WoW has that much content as they removed a lot over the years. So suppose we’ll see another stat squish at some point again.

Blizzard, we can’t keep on doing this over and over. Same for level squish. Time to come up with something permanent to fix these two issues and remove such high numbers coming back.

1 Like
33

We are going through one expansion’s worth of gear level increase in one season now. Yes it is dumb but doubtful they will reverse the course

1 Like
34

What is wrong with big numbers? Big numbers >> small numbers. You dont have rounding errors and are easier to see.

Also, its inevitable for this to happen. It does not matter how fast the ilvl increases per patch, the fact is that it increases always. Therefore, you just delay the inevitable.

So given the inevitability of reaching big numbers, might as well embrace that fact.

1 Like
35

This would be horrible.
I’d rather remove leveling altogether than be reset so often. I didn’t really like it the last time, felt bad.

I could live without leveling assuming there was a good enough Legacy Buff.
I enjoy farming old dungeons and raids although my progress seems to have halted at Legion for raids and BFA for duneons. They aren’t so soloable (for Glory Achievements, a lot of non soloable ones) as well as tough boss fight like Kil Jaeden (not tried recently though, maybe it can be zerged with gear).

36

Tbh i like big numbers, legion was great fun.

37

I feel that you only want to argue instead of looking at the problem i was pointing out. I am talking about numbers, they are too big, got it now? Plain and simple :*

1 Like
38

Well tbf we will probably go into the billions next expansion at this rate and at one point you land an AA and the number won’t fit on your screen, but doing millions one day and going back to thousands the next one never feels good. Even so I stand by what I said, this doesn’t really matter.

1 Like
39

I think i explained pretty well what is wrong with big numbers. But i will explain it again.
1)Cant enjoy the combat since you cant see anything on the screen because of those high numbers
2)Cant really appreciate the damage/heal since all numbers are super super high
3)The stats are so high they look ridiculous and are really hard to keep track of

1 Like
40

Weird I don’t seem to have these problems. You sure this is not a you problem?