So I guess the level squish is official now

In short: the current lead and dev team STILL don’t grasp the concept if diminish returns.

They keep throwing one bad idea after another in the desperate hope that something, ANYTHING will stick.

This would have been like if Coca Cola had decided that, instead of going back to “coke classic” and apologizing to their customers, they just kept coming up with new iterations of “New-er Coke” because that’s what their “vision” dictated.

At least we can be thankful someone like watcher wasn’t in charge then. Because they would have run the company into the ground with their persistence with a failed “vision.” Just like what is currently being done with wow…

Coming from a long streak of “worst ideas” from this dev team and lead. I wonder if actiblizz has some kind of contest for them or something.

When it seems like that’s the only consistent answer that seems to make the most sense any more…you wonder why anyone would intentionally take their previous flagship product that made them literal mountains of money and intentionally destroy it.

Unless you’re the joker…it makes zero sense.

The other thing that makes sense: they hate being shown up be people who actually cared about the game and could make decent content rather than metric padding time sinks.

Well, the rest of your post pretty much disproves that. You clearly describe a progression journey (gaining in power as you progressed through levels), and they had already done a squish at that point so in part that’s why things seemed a bit off.

The level “squish,” really just a harbinger of removing levels altogether is just another step towards a completely boring and homogenized game.

We’ll eventually just be grinding resources to upgrade our homogenized level-less “units” like we do in warfronts.

How exciting!

/sarcasm

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I like the idea of a level switch personally. The changes last year allowing you to skip some expac’s while leveling was an improvement and i hope a level squish further improves on this. The way WoW is structured currently storywise is horrible and other games do it much better. The game needs vast improvements and this is just 1 of them.

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Ah, so you are not interested in the story so you aren’t going to be making any comments regarding it…

…oops, nevermind.

Care to elaborate on why you are trashing something you started off by saying you basically admitted to skipping “expac’s” (PLURAL) of?

Its because of how its pieced together timewise and since the only reason to ever go most places is leveling, you never play thru most of it because you outlevel it. 1-60 is cata, then back im time for bc-wrath, then jump forward to cata again, them mop, then back in time again for wod, then fast forward to legion before finally hitting bfa. You never experience the stories because you level thru them so fast that after a couple zones, if even that much, you move on to a different expac or even timeline. There’s no cohesive route to take while leveling that makes narrative sense. Perhaps a level squish could help in that regard. Whats the alternative? Add more levels and keep doing more of the same? No thanks.

Yes, it’s meant to be played in order. Sort of how you wouldn’t read the last book before reading the first, or watch the last movie before watching the first one. Funny how that works.

There’s mog, achievements, pets, pvp, a whole plethora of content that based on your score…you barely scratched the surface on.

Funny how that’s only a problem for some. Many have played through for years without that issue. Have you actually tried, you know, finishing a zone just to finish it? For the content.

…you leave the zone before completing them. That’s a self control issue.

There is, you just skip through it. The cata jump makes it a little rough, but not so bad as people make it out to be. The bc-wrath goes just fine, then to cata and beyond. Which people would notice if they actually stuck around long enough to play through.

No, you can’t fix people. We’ve been politely trying to get the devs to change for years…no dice. Now we can only hope the higher ups clean house before they tank the game completely. Especially with nonsense like level squish and elimination (the end goal).

A better lead, and devs with a real work ethic who will put out quality content once again, like we had before wod.

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8 levels would be the best! 1 level for every expansion is all anyone really needs.

I’ve been waiting years for the right time to give the devs their line back to them. Now that the worst possible change to the game is on the horizon, it’s now:

“You think you want it, but you don’t.”

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From what Ion said during that last Q & A or one of them anyways, it sounded like it was likely going to happen at some point. I have a feeling next expansion it might. I personally don’t like it as I think it is better without because playing in an mmo people like seeing progression. Seeing you level up each time in a quick manor is a lot better than putting in that same time only to have it take longer to level due to the squish. It of course is the same time but mentally, people prefer seeing progress faster.

I know that GD exists to complain about things, but I still haven’t seen an articulation of why this would actually be bad for anyone.

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Read through the thread again. You clearly missed a lot of posts.

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Lets just assume the last number squish took what 3-4 months to fully address and we still have some tuning that is incorrect. If we did a massive squish from 120 down to 60 something that would touch almost every single aspect of the game, do you think it would be done flawlessly.

AND THEN how long do you suppose it will take a company that refuses to make class changes past alpha to fix said tuning. We could be talking an entire expansion or even more. That alone is enough to make me say no, and thats without contemplating things like level speed, older content (solo ability).

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What you see as a self control, or player issue, i see as a design issue. Thats your opinion, i have mine. Im at work so not gonna argue all your points. If ypu see questing thru the old zones as mog and mount farming, thats your perspective. Im just glad they dont use general discussion as their go to place for game design.

First, that’s not what I said. I said:

Perhaps you should actually try it before saying it needs to be “fixed.”

Well, this is a wow forum. I think arguing metaphysics, psychology, or the human condition would take us way off topic.

In the end, I would just say that’s a lot of smokescreen to point out you were intentionally skipping the story rather than playing it.

Nothing wrong with the design there. Either in humans (that’s free will) or the game (that the choice every player can make).

You can’t fault the devs because you and other players chose to skip the story and now want to claim “it makes no sense!” here.

If I read the last book (or read bits and pieces from each one at random) in the “wheel of time” series (a 13+ book series I believe) and complained the story was a mess that made no sense…that’s not Robert Jordan’s fault. That’s mine. Because I picked up the last book instead of starting from the beginning.

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I think any issues would be quickly resolved as they have been in the past and due to the fact that Blizzard already has all the groundwork tech implemented in the game.

Class changes and tuning are entirely different things. When players are talking about fixing classes, it’s not numbers buff or nerfs but mechanical changes to rotations, gameplay, and utility. The latter is something they only do for expansions.

Because it’s a bunch of hyperbolic whining from people that don’t even realize that most of the work is done already. All of Vanilla scales. BC and Wrath are interchangeable. So are Cata and MoP. WoD and Legion probably will be in 9.0 regardless of a squish or no squish.

I’ve got 142K health and a HFC boss has 445K health. Cut those both in half and there is zero difference.

I feel this is stretched just a bit to far.

I agree they are different things, but number tuning has been far and in between. When speaking of rotational/spell changes we have classes that shouldn’t have made it past alpha that are the same way they entered BFA.

If you are assuming that technology they put into the game recently to tune things down are going to work as a switch and

Then you are mistakenly incorrect as you have an insane amount of data tables that have to be adjusted accordingly.
120-60
110-50
100-40
90-30
80-20
70-10
60-1
So what level can i go solo level 60 content at?

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First off, a level squish doesnt effect the part of the game your referring to. Achievements, mog/mount/pet collecting and so fourth arent removed by level squishing. It also doesnt effect your ability to go back and complete those stories after hitting level cap or even while leveling if thats what you choose to do.

All of your arguments have nothing to do with the actual focus here, leveling. Thats the primary basis of a level squish, nothing more. As of today, the way you progess your character while leveling is trash. Every progression system you keep conflating exists independently from leveling progression.

I will say that it technically can in the sense of how difficult it is do solo that content. Although in most senses it should not touch those features.

Then why do it and risk screwing up the entire leveling system?

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Don’t count on it.

It’s like converting from imperial measurements to metric. A bunch of fuss, mess, retooling, relearning, and for what? Is it better to say I weigh 90kg instead of 200lbs? Or that I’m 1.9 meters tall instead of 6’3"?

Messing with numbers doesn’t fix anything that WE care about. It’s just a gimmicky gambit to hide some big known problems behind new problems.

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Except less, because it’s now

  1. Vanilla
  2. bc=wrath
  3. cata=mop
  4. WoD
  5. Legion
  6. Bfa

And after BFA they’ll parallelize wod and legion, making BFA 5 and patch 9 the new level 6…

And it still doesn’t address the real issue: it’s too much legacy content for people who don’t like the pay2win level boost option.