Changing the location doesn’t make it any less of a strawman.
“Over a decade” puts us well before cata.
No, because there was a real sense of progression before they homogenized the game with scaling. And will only compound it with removing levels.
You keep talking about “level equivalent” but that’s another part of the problem: you keep projecting scaling backwards where it didn’t exist. Mobs weren’t always the same level and matching you always. Zones weren’t homogenized either.
Except legion, where this concept was introduced, and the story was a hodgepodge mess with no sense of progression, and served as a harbinger of what was to come.
A problem entirely of their own design.
You clearly haven’t read the numerous reports and posts on this issue.
Says this:
Which is immediately contradicted with:
Thanks for making my point for me. Removing levels will only homogenize the world even more.
40 levels for 3 abilities is absurd, especially compared to 1-80.
Also I went and checked. Beast master hunters stop gaining abilities (spell-book) at 85. Technically level 70 if you don’t count passives or ranks ups (Call pet rank 5 at 80, disenage rank 2 at 85). So from 80-120 hunters gain 4 abilities.
Checked warlocks, warlocks gain 3 abilties (2 talents 1 spell) from 80-120.
Checked monks, last ability is at 80.
I am stopping now since the most common pattern (I also checked warrior) seems to be level 80 is when players stop gaining abilities.
There are roughly 40-50ish levels that could be cut. Not every level needs an ability or talent, but you shouldn’t really go more than 5 without something. I actually wish they would add a lot of stupid nich/novelty abilities back. Because even a useless or niche ability feels good to gain. Come on sentry totem and eyes of the beast.
Even if leveling takes the same amount of time. Game development isn’t just about numbers and time. It’s also about the feeling of something. Going 10 levels before your next ability feels bad. Going from 100-110 feels bad since you don’t have artifacts anymore. Going from 110-120 doesn’t feel as bad now but what happens once they remove azerite (the expansion’s power system like they did with artifacts?). It’s going to feel bad since there will be 20 levels before you get to the next expansion power system, then about the expansion after that? 30 levels before you get to the next expansion power system.
With the trend towards expansion base power systems and not person character power gains, leveling is going to feel worse and worse as expansions move on.
All XP locked characters would be screwed AGAIN. Heralds, twinks, RP characters set at a certain level… log in and they’re destroyed.
MC, AQ, BT, SSC, Naxx, ICC, Dragonsoul, firelands… all the same level or are we now raiding rag at level 12?
Gear would destroy people. Not that anything pre-BFA matters, but when 40 levels of gear has a +3 stat difference… there will be even less sense of progress than there is now. Either that or stats will be so out of whack that it’s even more broken than current leveling gearing.
There is no way to balance a level squish… they can’t even get scaling gear and mobs right.
THANKS FOR CHERRY PICKING QUOTING FOR YOUR ARGUMENT INSTEAD OF TAKING THE WHOLE POINT INTO CONTEXT.
LETS LOOK AT IT AGAIN OKAY?
Yes, I could worded it better, but How is it a counteraction? I State it is YOUR OPINION that the stats don’t matter because the homogenized scaling. They don’t matter BECAUSE THEY ARE SO INSIGNIFICANT THAT THEY BARELY EQUAL ANY POWER GAIN DUE TO HOW HIGH STATS FROM GEAR ARE.
gaining 2 strength doesn’t matter when the gear increase of that strength is greater than that that. Going from a 118 to 119, a chest piece has a difference of 30 strength.
Blizzard’s profit motivated (selling boosts) is getting in the way of doing the right thing.
Blizzard should name 3-4 featured classes that get free boosts per season or expansion. Others have to pay or level up the hard way.
Give alts the option to pay gold and skip expansions they already have Pathfinder for. Add Pathfinder to vanilla and expansions prior to WoD.
if they’re playing a new class or race they don’t already have, alts must complete 10 levels before they can start skipping,
Would solve so much. Reason to go back and do content that was never seen. People new to the game can jump in to current content instead of being stuck in a 15 year old world. Maybe not with the exact class they want, but they can get a taste of the game to see if they want to make the effort.
But this or anything like it will never happen as long as blizzard keeps leveling totally miserable in order to profit off boost sales.
Mark my words, like the stat squish towards the end of legion, they’ll ram the level squish through towards the end of BFA so they can have us alpha test it for them on live to “iron out the problems” before the rush of re-subs for 9.0.
And then spend so much time fixing all the level squish problems that class balance will be left to rot again, and will result in another oooo we dont touch classes mid expansion bah bah beh beh.
Where are all the calls for removing levels from well before cata? That basically puts us in wrath and BC era, when the game was at its absolute height of its popularity.
You got those from leveling. They didn’t just fall from the sky.
But you as a character were stonger, because you gained power as your character leveled. Something destroyed by the homogenization of scaling.
Key words bolded.
The problem is the devs messing up the system, like they did with scaling.
Just like this proposed “fix” will.
And you said there was no proof of the squish being messed up. They mess things up every time they go back and pull on the threads.
And I said I started noticing them due to how Cataclysm’s leveling was being done, only 5 instead of 10.
But you don’t get a lot of abilities from leveling anymore. And gear was from what areas your level allowed access too. Stats from levels are irrelevant.
Yes? “I’m higher level and therefore stronger” is exactly the same as it’s always been.
Except they stated from the start of legion that Artifacts were an expansion only system. They didn’t go back and pull on the threads. The threads were designed to be cut from the very start. There was no intention on keeping it past legion.
This ooozes of creepy corporate awfulness it’s not even funny. “If leveling took 120 hours, would you pay 40 dollars to not do it?” So they are basically targeting 40 bucks as a level boost and trying to figure out how long they can make questing to get some people to want to skip it.
Annnnnd for the rest of us who don’t do crazy things like spend real money on leveling a WoW character, that equals a longer journey from 1-XXX because they want to sell more boosts.
Check your account settings and your spam folder. The most recent survey I’ve gotten from blizzard was on may 20 regarding blizzcon (survey now expired).
Great. Which means they should be useable by characters leveling through that expansion.
Once again, this is entirely an issue of their making. They knew what they were doing when they started removing all these systems. “wow, leveling is boring now”
/gasp
“My oh my. Whatever shall we do about it.”
It would be akin to throwing a ball over the fence of someone’s yard you wanted to peek in while you knew they were at work.
“Well, guess SOMEONE has to go get this ball back! Don’t worry, I’LL take care of this!”
Nevermind they threw the ball over the fence in the first place, and it was on the pretext of doing something they wanted to do anyway…
