No to Level Squash, How About Alternate “Leveling” System V2

Community General Discussion
1

I have a suggestion, an alternate leveling system that focuses on class progression and expansion/character renown. This is a long one.

First off we have to remove levels as they are presented right now. No creature levels, and no character “levels” after 60. In place of a creature’s level there will be one of 4 icons; skull, two swords clashing(yellow), two swords clashing(green), or one sword(grey).
•Skull: this creature is very deadly.
•Two Swords Clashing(yellow): this creature is an appropriate difficulty for your character.
•Two Swords Clashing(green): this creature is weak.
•One Sword(grey): this creature is trivial, awards no EXP or Renown.
Dragon portrait frames still apply there additional difficulties/rarities.

Starting from the beginning, you will level your character up to 60. At level 5, you choose your specialization. At level 10 and each additional 10 levels you choose a talent.
The last talent row is unlocked via an achievement, described later.

Upon reaching level 60 your character will be given a quest to introduce them to the Renown system. Their EXP bar will be replaced with a Renown bar which has a fixed amount needed to fill it. Once you fill up your Renown bar you get a Renown point and your Renown bar reset back to zero(+ any overflow Renown).

You can obtain Renown by completing quests, dungeons, raids, and killing special creatures(in the open world). PvP content can also reward Renown. Non-repeatable quests will reward more Renown then repeatable/daily/world quests.

When you obtain a Renown point you may spend it in two ways. You may directly increase your character’s Renown or you may increase an Expansion’s Renown. Any Renown point you spend will still increase your character’s Renown.

In order to unlock/activate an expansion’s Renown you must first do the introductory quests before the expansion’s Renown becomes active. At which point you’ll be able to put Renown points into it.

Each Expansion’s Renown has a max rank of 20. However the current NEWEST expansion will have a rank cap at 10. Upon reaching rank 20 in an expansion, a quest will pop up, leading you to talk to a NPC within the expansion. This in NPC will allow you to activate or deactivate Legendary Hero mode.

Veteran Clause
When this system is implemented, all characters on the account will gain a maximum(20) amount of renown within each expansion. According to its level at the time of this system implementation.

What does it help?
Two of the main things that this Renown system will help with are;
It allows new/returning players and alts to level their character and then jump into any expansion they wish to play in, including the newest one.
It also makes every expansion relevant again because they Renown system doesn’t care where you get your Renown(as long as Legendary Hero mode is NOT active).

Renown Perks
•Your last talent row will become active upon gaining 10 character Renown.

•Upon gaining 20 character Renown you may activate Legendary Hero mode for the level 1-60 content.

•When you increase your character’s Renown rank by 2, your character will be awarded a treasure bag. The contents in this treasure bag are random (similar to the WoD salvage crates).

•Every expansion will have “unique” traits that unlock as you increase the expansion’s Renown. These traits will not affect your character’s class.

•Legendary Hero mode will put your character in a different phase of the expansion(similar to War Mode). This transforms all creatures within the expansion to become trivial (grey sword), allowing you to one-shot kill them(maybe 2-3 in Dungeons/Raids). War Mode is deactivated/suspended while Legendary Hero mode is active.
All Renown rewards are also reduced to zero while Legendary Hero mode is active. Progressing or completing a quest in Legendary Hero mode will have its Renown reward reduced to zero even if you switch back(turn L.H.M. off), to turn in the quest.

2

Eh… Maybe you should try the Iron Man Challenge. Especially in BfA content.

3

I’m actually talking about changing how the leveling system currently is. You know how the Devs are trying to decide whether they want to squash leveling.

4

Leveling was ruined when they pruned so much from the classes and made it boring back in WoD. MoP was alright, and gave us options, though not much. But I miss my leveling experience back in TBC/Wrath. Leveling then was so much fun, and felt so much rewarding.

5

I mean, this is just a totally different game at this point. You are talking about replacing too many existing systems, and I don’t think the problem is that extensive.

6

They are not going to just utter rewrite the leveling system this late into a games life cycle. Even with the talk of a leveling squish, it would still be the same leveling concept with just fewer levels (well until they start adding more with the next expansion).

7

I’m not replacing existing systems I’m adding or I should say reusing. You will still level your character up to 60 and then that system will be hidden in the background. Then using a form of artifact system for the Renown system.

8

No more Artifact Systems please.

3 Likes
9

Which doesn’t solve the problem. And the game will just feel even more grindier to get to the new content.

10

I see, I just think you are replacing leveling XP with Renown and then having more flexibility with it. It will function largely the same way with icons on mobs playing the role that numbers (or skulls) do right now.

11

You definitely went into great detail.

I’ve thought about something similar where essentially you cap on lvl at a certain point - but when a new expansion comes out, you get an additional “xp bar” that fills and makes you more powerful for the current content. You’ve outlined one way of doing this with “Renown”.

Sure I guess - but I would have the “legendary mode” make all previous expansion content trivial for farming purposes; not the current expansion content. ilvl makes the current expansions content more and more trivial as new tiers and gear is released.

On a side note regarding leveling up to max - it would be nice to have different options.

In particular a “story mode” would be nice. Where you get funneled through the main parts of each expansions story. Going back now and leveling when there was a huge gap between vanilla/TBC and Legion where I took a break is ok and interesting to see kind of what happened with each expansion - but leveling happens so fast, I never get to see the full thing.

If there was a way to just streamline that so I could see the story and then be max level at the end of it - it would be cool for returning players.

Mix this with a quest-mode option and a dungeon-mode option where you can plow through levels by blowing things up in different ways; kind of how it is now, but maybe with more structure to it.

Also - even allowing or having varying “challenge modes” and “mage towers” that promote learning and playing your character efficiently in order to level, so that you’re more competent with a character by the time you get to max level. Right now you can just smash buttons and be a horrible player and still get to max level.

12

But you are replacing it, just because you basically shifting the leveling process into an entirely new direction after level 60. This would not only require all the classes to be reworked and rebalanced, it would require the entire game to be rebalanced around this system as well.

It’s just not going to happen this late into WoW’s life. If anything we are on the backside of it’s life span now. Now if there was an WoW II being discussed, I would be all in favor of leveling system changes but it is too late for WoW.

13

I think a huge problem with the “give different options to level” thing is that for one, people will choose the fastest one and do it that way and that way alone and then everyone else will ask for it to be nerfed of their own preferred way to be buffed. That is already happening in every conceivable way. Secondly, there kind of already is that choice. You can level in many different ways. Story-based in questing. Dungeon-based in dungeons, etc.

Again, just calling something a different name and changing the resource isn’t going to fool anyone.

14

The Legendary Hero mode does work for all expansions. You just need to unlock it.

15

“kind of” is very accurate. But when you level right now - you only get slices of the story from each expansion. You never get the full picture. It would be nice to have the option of being able to go through the full story (including cinematics) efficiently and come out max level in the end.

While this may not be the most time efficient way - for players that appreciate the story and want to level an alt, it would be a great way to break the monotony of just killing stuff and right clicking a NPC while letting a questing add-on do the rest for you.

Of course if you enjoy that kind of thing or you really just prefer the fastest way, that’s a great option to have.

16

My system allows players to jump into new expansion sooner and provides a continuous progression system. Instead of having to level your character to 110 to 120 to 130 to 140, you just need to level them to 60 and then jump into the expansion you want to play. With the current leveling system your actual level doesn’t mean anything given how scaling works, it is just gating mechanic blocking you from content.

17

I understand that but the point is we are too late into the current game to suddenly completely rip out the leveling process it has used for 15 years and replace it with something radically different. It’s not like adding a new class or race into the game. You are not only taking about changing one of the fundamental systems of the game but it would require a complete rebalance of the entire system at the same time.

18

You can already do that. Finish the zone. Done. Move to the next one. And on and on. If you outlevel it, finish the zone anyway. You can get the full story, do quests when they are grey, and obviously with this method you have no regard to getting to max level in anywhere under 5 months considering there are somewhere over 25,000 (!) quests in the game.

You’re asking for every zone in the game to go in a linear fashion where everything you do is an equal portion of your quest to max level? I mean Sure, if you scale the entire world and make every zone give current XP, that can happen.

But picture this: You’re in Redridge Mountains and you do a quest that gives you 457xp. Boom you hit level 19. You’re in Dragonblight and you hit level 78 on a quest that gives you…457xp. You might like that but most people would find it a little silly. Am I misunderstanding?

19

They’ve already rebalanced the system when they introduced scaling. Additionally when it comes to classes and when they get their abilities, that’s no different then every time they add or replace an ability with each expansion.

20

Correct - but to clarify, It would jjust be nice to have the option do level this way. Not make it so that everyone has to take this path.

Also - I don’t really care what number in terms of xp gets me a level. I would just like to gain decent xp while spending the time enjoying the full story of a given expansion.

If the quests are all grey - no one is going to bother.