The major complaint with dead levels is that there’s no reward for leveling. The level squish will reduce the number of dead levels
There will be fewer (and depending on the extent of the level squish possibly far fewer) pointless level ups. If there are a higher percentage of level ups that actually reward you with meaningful character progression then it increases the worth.
Heh, A Realm Reborn quests were horrible. Really really horrible. People always say you need to get past level 50 and that beforehand it’s a grind … which it is. It’s terrible with time spent in the game artificially bloated by sending you walking everywhere. They pretty much rebuilt the entire game in a couple of years for ARR and it shows 0.0
Okay different example. Classic has a long time between level ups. Possibly a day or more leveling from 16 to 17 and a lot of people don’t care.
Basically what spending a long time between levels does is makes that ding rarer and therefore more valuable. Leveling in Classic feels really satisfying.
Well the last few expansions they’ve wasted a lot of time pruning talents till all our abilities fit on a bar and a half. Complexity in rotations in an Esport can’t happen apparently, FPS games don’t have complex rotations etc etc. So I much prefer them doing this then butchering our classes any more than they already have.
But it won’t do anything about the time between gaining new skills and talents so the complaints will remain.
I’d rather have more “pointless” level ups than spend longer staring at each xp bubble filling up.
You’re confusing tedium with valuable. If I run two miles one day, and then run the same amount of miles the next day but instead call it a mile, I didn’t make the end of the run more “valuable”. This is a load of cargo cult nonsense where people are hoping that reducing the number of levels will somehow bring back the nostalgia of vanilla.
And I’d rather they try and fix things instead of essentially doing nothing. And if you’re so pessimistic about them, then you should also be against the level squish because of how much it will break.
You’re continuing to confuse the two. The complaint is that there are dead levels which this fixes, the time it takes to gain that level has nothing to do with fixing the dead levels.
Why?
The nostalgia of vanilla? A lot of people like vanilla because it’s more of an RPG experience compared with retail. Part of this is being able to assign talent points at every single level up.
What will level squishing break that can’t be fixed in the first couple of weeks?
I’m not confusing the two at all. I’m simply looking at the whole picture while you’ve restricted yourself to small pieces of it so you can ignore the flaws of the level squish.
Because then it feels more like I’m doing something to progress my character instead of staring at the xp bubble barely moving.
And they can take their nostalgia and go play Classic.
Remember 7.3.5 and world scaling? Things are still out of whack from that. And if you’re so pessimistic about their ability to balance classes or redo talents, then what makes you think they would be suddenly competent enough to fix all these level squish problems so quickly? You can’t have them be both incompetent and competent at the same time.
You still haven’t explained the flaw here. Some people like longer time between levels.
You’re always doing something to progress your character. Earning XP toward the next level is progressing your character. What you want is constant validation with levels which is a preference. Others prefer those times to be a bit longer.
Leveling shouldn’t be something that is rushed through. If you want to rush through levels why even have them in the first place?
You’re intentionally misunderstanding the appeal.
World scaling is a problem in general with Blizzard, the way they’ve done it is fairly horrible and I don’t actually understand the design principles behind what they’ve done. It feels like they want to scale things to make things more open, but at the same time they don’t, which results in a horrible mishmash of conflicting philosophies.
Balancing gameplay is one thing that Blizzard seem very eager to do … even when they shouldn’t be. They’ve ‘balanced’ classes until they’ve sucked half the life out of them. I’m very confident they’ll leap on any balance problems like a starving lion leaping on an old, hobbled zebra.
What I’m talking about is the time between gaining new abilities and talents. That’s the chief complaint people have and that won’t be fixed by the squish.
At least gaining a new level will give a shiny sparkle effect and some increased stats. That’s way better than finally filling a bubble on the XP bar after turning in a dozen quests.
And they can take their appeal to Classic. They don’t have to ruin Retail with their nostalgia.
Which is why they shouldn’t mess around with levels. It will break a bunch of stuff that will take a long while to fix.
You keep acting like they’re incompetent enough to do anything beyond a level squish, but just competent enough to fix any possible problems caused by a level squish. You can’t have it both ways.
Exactly. Even if they squish level from 120 to 60 in 9.0, unless each level feels rewarding, it won’t matter one bit.
We need to feel rewarded for gaining a level. If its not rewarding, it feels like we’re just doing a checklist as we progress through the game. That’s not how I want to be playing Any game!
No, the chief complaint people have is you have a couple of talents and abilities distributed in the last 40 levels.
Which is something the level squish will fix.
Stats automatically generated … which is partially negated by scaling. It’s much more satisfying to have things accompanying that ideally allocated by the player which gives the player agency in how they build their character. Or in the absence of that, talents and abilities. Unfortunately there are not enough talents and abilities to be distributed between 120 levels which is why some people, who don’t care much about the sparkling effects on level up or the stat increase in a scaled world, don’t mind the level squish to increase talent density around levels.
You mean RPG players who played WoW because it was an RPG before Esports ruined it can find another game because you don’t want RPG qualities in your esport?
Yeah … no.
Can’t break what’s already broken.
Of course you can. I can be incompetent at piano and be competent at maths. Nuance is a thing
But it won’t actually fix the problem because it will take the same amount of time to go through that stretch of nothing. You keep trying to focus the argument on the number of levels when that’s completely flawed. You know that if you looked at the whole picture, which means taking into account time played, that your argument would fall apart.
But the density wouldn’t actually be changing because, again, the amount of time would be the same as it is now. The level squish is an inherently flawed solution that can not make things better.
The number of levels has no bearing on WoW being an e-sport or not. Remember they first tried making WoW into an e-sport back in TBC, when the level cap was 70. So I’m not even sure what kind of point you’re trying to make here because it doesn’t have anything to do with the level squish at all.
That’s one way to tempt fate.
There’s nothing to “nuance” here. These are game developers working on a game. Either working on the squish or working on new talents, they’re still working on the game. And I’d rather they focus on actually fixing the game instead of a pointless waste of time like the level squish.
If you squish 120 levels into 60, with the same number of abilities and what you’ll still have is a number of dead levels. There will just be Fewer dead levels than before.
The squish, by itself, won’t really fix anything. Like Rhielle and Rankin have both stated, its the lack of feeling rewarded for each level gained.
There just aren’t enough abilities to spread out among 60 levels. Which is why you need more than Just a level squish. You need more talents, more abilities, a better talent system, you need more than JUST squishing levels to fix the problem.
It isn’t. The level squish is designed to fix the problem around the number of levels. You’re introducing alternate issues into the equation the level squish is primarily not there to fix.
You’re not looking at the whole picture, you’re just looking at alternate segment. If you were looking at the whole picture you would know the level squish introduces a net positive.
Fixing the problem around too many dead levels upon level up, not touching the amount of time it takes between each talent, results in a net positive because it still fixes the number of dead levels upon level up.
Incorrect. Talent density around levels is increasing the talents distributed with respect to levels, not time.
They won’t fix the talent system imo. If I were to guess it would be because they don’t want to have this type of complexity in an esport.
Which will improve the situation because there’s fewer dead levels than before.
In an Esport, which tends to shun mechanical complexity, I doubt this will happen.
It’s the core complaint of the issue with leveling.
But the number of levels isn’t a problem. The problem is with how the leveling experience feels. And the level squish won’t help with that at all.
I am looking at the whole picture. You’re actively avoiding any parts of the picture that you don’t like.
But it has absolutely no impact whatsoever, not even a teensy little bit, on the time it takes going through those dead levels. You are literally just prettying things up and hoping it fixes everything else. The level squish is not a magic bullet. It will not help with anything. It is an inherently flawed “solution” desperately looking for a problem to solve.
Talent density around time played, which is the only metric that actually matters, will not change.
Why do you keep talking about e-sports? The number of levels will not have any impact on that.
I just checked my Frost Mage (as an example) there are (excluding Talents) a grand total of 28 abilities.
Almost every class, barring talents, gets nothing from 78 to 120. So if you did an even smooth squish, that’s still 20 levels of nothing. You have to look at the entire levelling curve when you do the squish. You can’t disregard any part of it or you run into an issue of chunks of levelling becoming problematic to get through.
28 into 60 (squish) vs 28 into 80 (current).
This is excluding talents of course. And I only look at 80 because 80 to 120 is still dead space outside of talents or expansion specific upgrades.
There’s still going to be a lot of dead space even with 60 levels. UNLESS there are changes on top of the squish being made.
Dead space, and the lack of reward from gaining a level IS at the core of the issue here.
It isn’t the core issue with leveling up, which the leveling squish is aimed at improving.
The problem the level squish is designed to fix is the experience of leveling up, not the experience of leveling.
You’re redefining the problem the level squish is aimed to address to promote an agenda.
No, you’re looking at an unrelated aspect.
The level squish will reduce the amount of dead levels experienced though.
Talent density around time played is a separate matter the level squish wasn’t aimed at addressing. Talent density around levels is the problem the level squish is addressing and it improves matters.
Because WoW is an Esport now and its designed around it.
Except I’m not playing an esport. I’m playing an mmorpg. IF I was playing an esport I would be graded constantly for everything I do and don’t do. I would be thrown off teams for not competing at their level.
Also, the esport side has pretty much always been stuff at max level. So it has almost no bearing on the levelling system.
Both Diablo and WoW have been reducing its RPG qualities for some time now, which has become really noticeable since it seems like Diablo devs have moved over to WoW.
Diablo used to have stat allocation. Diablo used to have talent trees. Diablo 3 had none of these, it’s barely even an RPG.
All the more reason to get you there quickly and devalue leveling, which has been what’s happened over the past many years.
Objectively speaking there will be much less dead levels if you keep the same number of talents and halve the number of levels.
One huge stinking flaw with your thought pattern here.
They are NOT going to make it FASTER to reach max level. If they do a squish, they’ll make sure that the levelling time takes about the same as it does now. If they made it faster to reach max level people would consume content faster, complain faster, or possibly unsub faster.
That’s not what Blizzard wants.
They want you to stay subscribed and making them money. If they make reaching max level FASTER than it is now, they will create an issue where players burn through content in less time.
It absolutely is the core issue. The level squish does nothing to address it. Doesn’t even begin to address it. Which is why the level squish is so flawed.
The level squish definitely won’t do a single thing to help with leveling up.
You claim it to be unrelated so you can ignore it. Just like you ignore anything else that threatens your precious level squish. That should be a gigantic hint about how pathetic the level squish actually is.
But it won’t do anything to shorten the length of time of those dead levels and that is the only thing that matters.
Talent density around time played is the only metric that matters and you know it. That’s why you keep trying to restrict the argument to the number of levels. Because you know if you ever had to look at the whole picture, that you would have to admit that the level squish will not improve anything.
And? That still has nothing to do with the level squish.
That’s almost adorable coming from someone who adamantly refuses to look at the whole picture.
The level squish was designed around the problem of dead level ups, not time between talents.
It decreases the number of pointless level ups therefore reducing bloat (also addresses power creep).
It is unrelated because it is not what the level squish was designed to do. The level squish was never designed to affect the time between talents so to claim it doesn’t affect time and is therefore flawed is disingenuous.
Of course it doesn’t affect it, it was never meant to.
That is incorrect. Time between talents was never the problem the level squish was addressing and therefore isn’t the only thing that matters.
Talent density around time is worthless in the context of this discussion.
