Can’t we just remove the cap and let players level as far as they like?
It’s just a number anyway - no bonuses, no power creep…
If a 4-digit number would start to exceed the space available on various locations where the level is displayed, switch the text color to red instead and start counting again at 0. And when you reach 1000 again, change to pink and restart at 0 once more. Then blue, green, teal, whatever…
I second this notion, and honestly see no reason why not to have it.
Although admittedly, I’d definitely be facepalming if I see an A9000 playing terribly. Then again, these levels are more about (and have always been about) a show of dedication to what you enjoy than skill.
I would like to see it go beyond level 1000, but the only thing is that its annoying how there’s gonna be people out there running Sc2 on two computers with macros going to automate the leveling for them and within a couple months they will be level 5000 and in doing so diminish and soil the value of what it means to be such high level
I’m honestly indifferent. I’m sure I’ll get there one day, and would be nice to have official tracking of where I’m at beyond 1K. Hell, we’d probably see some folks at 5K, or even 10K!!
OTOH, I may not get there, or I’ll fire up the game for fun anyways (so I’ll truly be “way past” XP)
Well if they do that, they are perfectly eligible to have their battle net account banned. And that for something that has nothing other than cosmetic value. So… good luck i guess.
Will they? Blizzard allows multiboxers in wow, PiG plays a 2v2 stream in essentially 1v2, and… does blizzard do any moderation of SC2 gameplay?
I think the better question is how will ‘that’ impact the game. And I personally don’t believe it will really change anything.
Even if there’s the 0.001% (likely even less) of players that will “cheat” through higher Ascension Levels. That’s assuming there’s such a high demand black-market value for such a valueless system. That just means out of thousands of games, you’ll match up with potentially someone doing this.
The more likely scenario is that the ‘cheaters’ will multi-HUB it for faster algorithmic runs (to maximize efficiency). And more than likely it won’t change anything for the player experience, but perhaps skew a bit on “how much coop is being truly played by players”.
I think I saw my first level 1000 player within only 2-3 months after the ascension update first released
Long post below:
Yeah but that’s pretty normal for a dedicated player. So that doesn’t mean people were “cheating”.
You can use sc2coop’s exp calculator, input that you’re m90 (presumably period to ascension), then aim for A1000. Back then stimpack was a thing for 30days with CO purchase, so you can add that in.
So for full brutal missions with bonus, it takes just over 2750 games while without bonus it takes just under 3050 games. These are assumed at 20min per game on average. So it is quite doable and standard for the average player (and not dedicated pros).
So what does that look like? 3050game x 20min/game / 60min/hr = 1016.7hr… or 127 days for 8hrs per day. That is very reasonable and not cheat-acquired. Just about 4months for not accounting for daily bonus and weekly mutation bounties.
On the other hand, a semi-cheese-cheat like the tomato farming method on CoD, netting you something like over 1mil in under 1 hour. So that’s 5 ascension levels per hour using this method. At 910 ascension levels that’s 910 / 5 = 182hr or 23 days of 8 hours per day.
Cheating is still by far faster for sure but I think a lot of people mistake seeing A1000 after 1month to 3months as “people must have cheated”. I mean I don’t know for sure if they didn’t but the math for really reasonable (again dedicated) player playing coop is just that.
Similarly, I believe even if this is the case for post A1000 cap removal, it’s not a big deal.
Ive been friends and have talked with quite a few people that have told me they’ve cheated their way to 1000 enough people to almost make me feel like everyone that got to lvl 1000 within the first year probably cheated.
Im not saying they shouldnt remove that cap, Im just saying that if they did remove the cap it wouldnt mean anything because if you saw a level 2000-5000 you would have to assume they cheated.
That’s just how you feel about (I guess) anyone who’s high level.
I mean I too facepalm when I see an A1000 that plays like a noob. I also don’t assume everyone is cheating cuz they are A1000. And I am also aware that even among the supposedly good players, there’s still a large difference between the best of best versus a good player that’s high level.
I took a look at when I got mine, out of curiosity for myself. It looks like in Jan 2019. Ascension was released at end Aug of 2017 in patch 3.17 (as far as I know). So that timeline makes sense to me personally. That’s about 1.5 years total and back then I do remember only able to put in a couple hours, maybe 3 a day tops.
I just think people have different things going on. For some, doing an 8hr day is perfectly normal (as younger people without as many things going on in life). Meanwhile, someone like myself, it’s hard to get even the 2-3 between work, kids, and others. So I see that as a normal standard deviation of players, and not “these people must have cheated cuz I can’t put in 8hr/day”.
I think what diminishes the post A1000 cap removal is the kind of attitude that would deem anyone who may be less skilled despite a high level to have cheated their way to it. After all, the number doesn’t equal skill and only dedication.
Sure - but why worry about those dudes? If they have nothing better to do than risk their Bnet account for something completely cosmetic, i guess i can tolerate them around for a while until they get bored of being worse than others that have 1/10 of their apparent game experience.
That being said, i am not sure how you would cheat your games… maybe if you have a friend who likes to solo games and lets you stay in the game afk. You would need A LOT of solo games like that to get you anywhere near 1000 let alone higher. If there is a more direct way to get there, i guess Blizz should amp up their dev team a little bit more and fix it.
In the end, you will always have people trying to cheat the games they play. No matter what the level cap is.