Value downscaling
Value downscaling, popularly referred to as a stat squish, was an action performed by Square Enix upon the release of Patch 6.0. Since the launch of A Realm Reborn in 2013, the nature of MMO progression and power creep had caused many numerical values to inflate to levels that created issues with the game's programming, battle design, and content presentation.
Issues cited by Naoki Yoshida during the Endwalker reveal were:
- Calculations causing overflow errors
- Enmity caps being reached.
- Flying text indicating damage taken and received becoming lengthy.
- Enemy HP becoming extremely high (one cited example had unspecified bosses in Patch 5.5 with 440,000,000 HP)[1]
Values were downscaled starting at level 51, although the downscaling was not linear. At level 80 (the cap at the time), values were downscaled to approximately 20% of their original values. The values affected by downscaling included:
- Character attributes
- Equipment attributes
- Damage dealt and received
- Crafting recipe progress and quality
- Required and earned EXP for a variety of systems
- This also had the effect of resetting all EXP gained since earning a level to zero. This was due to practical issues relating to calculating the correct progress for each character relative to the new system.
- Zodiac, Eureka, and Resistance Weapons secondary attributes.
- Holders of Anima Weapons were granted an opportunity to reallocate their secondary attributes.
Game balance was not appreciably affected by the value downscaling, although Patch 6.3 addressed an issue where Odin's Steel Reign FATE unintentionally increased in difficulty. The 
Epic Echo buff allows players in an Unrestricted Party to experience duties using values as they were prior to the downscaling.
Trivia
- As of patch 7.2, current item level (740+) gear provides stats that surpass the previous maximum values (IL 530 gear + Echo in
Eden's Promise (Savage)) pre-downscaling. A future downscaling in values has not been announced.