Meh, would be fine with a level squish.
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World scaling was poorly implemented, and was too little too late. We already had multiple squishes before world scaling. Squishes are imo the bigger issue. And the cause of squishes is the insane stat inflation we keep getting.
World scaling needs to be comprehensive, not divisive. Which ours is divisive.
A level 120 needs to be able to go to Elwynn forest and take a few hits to kill a wolf, just like a raptor from Zuldazar. Thatâs world scaling. Iâm not saying thatâs necessarily what would be good for wow, Iâm just saying thatâs what world scaling should look like. What we have right now is just a tease to make low levels have more choice.
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World scaling makes the entire leveling process feel useless.
This - though not for the reasons you state.
There is no reason for an super easy, easy, medium, hard modes. LFR and normal should merge together somehow. Thatâs a bare minimum (imo).
I mean thatâs not even taking into consideration how broken things are with WQ/Warfronts making lfr, normal, and heroic (to a lesser extent) useless.
How will it do that?
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Itâs all about player choice.
I feel that level squishing makes the time i have already spent completely useless. Then again, this seems to be how the game is designed. New patch or expansion comes out that makes all the time i spent getting high lvl gear wasted. Does it even matter? With pvp scaling like it is, what is the point in getting better gear? At all? Its like this whole game is designed to make your efforts worthless.
Then why do you care? This is a non-issue. Did you spend your time leveling alts constantly and going back to old world mobs to one-shot them with Ice Lance for fun?
At worst this wonât affect max level at all, and at best we can see a revamp in talents with many mandatory talents becoming baseline abilities with fewer talent rows. Regardless, progression will feel much better. You actually will feel stronger from level to level instead of every 30 levels.
Something needs to be done as BfA just hasnât been satisfying and level squish looks too much like a temporary band aid at best. Instead of every expansion adding 5-10 new levels that we just grind through to get to the end game and makes older zones obsolete, Iâd like to see something that focuses more on the journey than the end game.
Make levels more relevant than just a time sink, the fact that we got no new skills or talents from 111-120 made those levels feel empty, especially with the scaling. Make professions fun and useful. Stop making old zones pointless (barring alts and mog runs anyway). Part of the reason people want classic is they want the journey to feel fun and significant the whole time, not just race to cap and grind all the time.
Bingo. We reset our progress each patch with gearing. Itâs not about your efforts feeling worthless (thatâs what achievements are for), itâs about the journey it takes to achieve your efforts. The reward is just icing on the cake, and youâll never be able to eat the same exact cake forever.
That used to be where I actually did spend most of my time prior to 7.3.5. However, I must have been playing a different game than most of you because I never one shot anything in any class I played.
I care because I would like to have that part of the game back and I want them to recognize what the problem is - zone scaling. Zone scaling is what is making people feel the leveling process is unrewarding not no new abilities, not the gear, and certainly now the number of levels.
This is a huge assumption this will do that. Zone scaling means you never feel stronger in relation to the mobs.
I donât really care tbh. I donât mind world scaling because it means I can avoid WotLK like the plague. I do mind iLvL scaling though.
Do you know how happy I would be if I could level 60-110 in MoP OP? Extremely.
Whether there is 120 levels or 60, it will still take you the same time to level to max level. New players will figure it out fast that they have a long haul ahead of them or pay for a boost.
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No, the reason why people hated the 7.3.5 changes was because leveling was slowed down by a noticeable amount because blizzard cut XP gains. Even before zone scaling you didnât feel stronger from level to level, you only felt the reduced XP on mobs because you outleveled them so fast.
Killing a wolf 5 levels below you took the same amount of Arcane Blast casts but you received much less XP. It needed to change.
I felt stronger from lvl to lvl because I stayed in the zones to finish the quests so I noticed a big difference. It is really odd you claim to have been able to one shot things and I stayed in the areas and still could not.
I used lvls to adjust the game to how I want to play constantly. In MoP I hated doing dread wastes on some classes because it took too long to kill the mobs, so instead I would just stay in the Valley and mob grind at ilvl 87 instead of moving on.
Tell a lie long enough and get enough people repeating it it will become the truth.
At least the stat squish was more logical, otherwise our damage and healing numbers would be astronomical now.
I think my biggest reservation with a level squish is how likely it will be botched. I hate to say it, but I have zero faith in Blizzard to do it correctly. Scaling is still a mess. Adding more on top of it is a recipe for disaster.
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Outleveling something by 2-3 levels isnât the same as outleveling it by 4 though. When a mobâs level turns green it becomes a lot easier to kill, but your XP gained takes a nose dive.
If this was really how you enjoyed leveling, then Iâm sorry that this was taken away from you.
In a perfect world, I wish that we could have the choice to scale our levels down when we wanted to for rewards that were relevant to our current level. In FFXIV you can scale down your level for low level dungeons and Fates (Invasions) losing your high-level abilities in the process, but being able to receive the XP
and rewards relevant to your max level character.
Blizzard seems to be catering to the news players.
Wowâs pretty much the least player-choice oriented MMO available rn.
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How so, you gain new abilities, utility, ect and do start killing enemies faster as your character grows. How does it make leveling feel useless?
No, leveling feels bad because Blizzard has stripped tons of abilities away, taken away talent trees that gave choice every level, and spread classes thin over 120 levels. There is no constant source of character progression but thatâs not an issue of World Scaling, thatâs an issue of character design thatâs been a problem well before world scaling was ever conceived.
I am not saying that a character shouldnât ever get stronger, what I am saying though is there are ways to depict character growth better than just âLook, now my hits have an extra digit behind them and I one shot older stuff!â
I truly and honestly believe that everyone is constantly trying to put the blame of the current state of the game squarely on 1 or 2 game features when really its a lot more complex and built up from multiples of different systems.
World Scaling, however, I truly believe is not the problem. Meaningful character progression on leveling is the problem.
I honestly feel that is not enough to dent the system at all, that bare minimum wonât dent things in the slightest.
Currently gear is king and is basically all that defines âcharacter progressionâ in modern WoW (Which is a huge problem in its own right). The problem with that is that gear is thrown at players excessively to the point that its diluted and exhausting.
On top of that we have far too many difficulties in all content. Starting with dungeons and ending with raids for this season, season 2 just to date it. A fresh 120, using average questing as the method to level, starts 120 at roughly 280 ilvl. From that point you are just thrown copious amounts of ilvl so rapid fire.
Normal Dungeon (340) â Heroic Dungeons â (355) â Mythic Dungeon/LFR (370-380) â Normal Raids (385-395) â Heroic Raids (400-410) â M10+ (410iirc?) â Mythic Raids (415-425)
Just from Normal Dungeons to Mythic Raids that is a staggering 85 item level gain for a single season between all difficulties of content. Heck, season 1 end game vs season 2 end game is 30-40 ilvl difference alone. Thats absolutely nuts! People are already back up to the low 400âs again after just having a squish where people were at 900.
On top of all of that, everything has separate lockouts! You can do every single raid from LFR to Mythic on its own lockout and everything from the lower levels of raids can WF/TF up!
iLvL creep is so out of control because of how many different tiers of difficulty and thatâs before throwing in War/Titan Forging, World Quests, World Bosses, Warfront Quest Loot, ect which a lot of invalidated most of the equipment.
For goodness sake, in 8.2 you will be able to earn equipment on par with Heroic Raid gear though that new system they are introducing. On top of that gear drops in far more vast quantities than ever before AND you have re-roll tokens on top of that so players are absolutely flooded with loot.
Everything exists in such an extreme over abundance ranging from just how much loot players get to just how vastly the iLvL of said loot fluctuates. The power gain is so absolutely absurd that Blizzard had to implement iLvL scaling in Legion because people were legitimately one shotting current content enemies all because of just how out of hand the gearing and raid system has gotten out of hand.
To put it visually, does anyone remember this slide from Blizzcon?
The problem they showed off, the problem they wanted to fix, still exists and I would argue its gotten even more out of hand because now they have the mentality of âWell, we can just squish it!â
Then, in Legion, they quickly realized âOh crud, the gear power difference is so massive that people, only a few patches in, are one shotting current contentâ
So that put Blizzard in a spot where, to them, they had two choices. iLvL scaling or making the different difficulties less different in terms of power gain, ie maybe 2-3 ilvl difference between each group.
Obviously they went with Scaling so it numerically looked like you were gaining more power.
This all goes back to the problem of each season having 7 different levels of primary content with a handful of alternate equipment payouts such as WQâs, Emissaries, Warfront Quests, World Bosses, and the new system in 8.2 just to list a few and on top of that it can all randomly spike up in ilvl based purely on RNG up to high end levels of gear.
Merging LFR and Normal isnât going to dent the current gear progression system in WoW at the slightest.
Honestly, the way it should be is (using placeholder numbers)âŚ
Normal Dungeons/LFD (300) â Heroic Dungeons/LFR(310) â Mega Dungeons/Raids(315) â Hardmode Raid Bosses(320)(Unique non-hardmode loot drops)
With a âseason/tierâ differential of 10-15 ilvl difference taking an expansion from being 200+ ilvl from gearing content from start to finish down to 50-65 ilvl increase from start to finish and probably eliminating the need for ilvl scaling at max level completely.
and on top of that, things such as reroll tokens should be abolished outside of maybe LFR if not all together, item drop chances reduced greatly, War/Titan Forging taken out back and put down, and for goodness sake bring back master loot for organized groups.
Gear canât just be passed out as openly and freely as it is in Modern WoW. You gear out a character so quickly and the ilvl difference is so staggering and massive that it feels meaningless, overwhelming, and exhausting.
Er, I guess to TL:DR my point.
We have too many difficulties, too many ilvls, and so much loot being thrown at a player that the typical Modern WoW player will handle more epics in a single raid season than old school WoW playerâs handled in their life.
Now, going back to why I say âWorld Scalingâ which I would separate from end game âiLvL Scalingâ is not a problem is because I truly, and honestly, believe that Character Progression in its current stage is a problem as well as how World Scaling is currently implemented.
First off, players are front loaded all their main rotational abilities at about level 20 with only utility, cooldowns, ect past that point and even then its strung across such a vast range of levels AND after a certain point it just kinda stops.
WoW use to have meaningful Character progression outside of gearing at every level. Even if you didnât get a new spell you got a Talent Point AND new ranks for your spells. Weapon Skill Caps increased as well meaning that your character was getting better and better with the more they did. Your character always had some new way to progress in some mannerism.
Modern WoW has NONE of that, Character Progression is such a stale non-thing and on top of that gear is progression while leveling has also become a non-thing thanks to heirlooms. So, as a non-fresh player you find yourself basically getting NOTHING in terms of Character Progression as you level outside of an occasional ability here and there with several of them being âPassiveâ bonuses to abilities you already have.
I am not saying the Passive thing is bad, but the way its delivered is.
Long gone are the days of doing quest chains, running dungeons, training, ect to get stronger. Everything has been so streamlines, cut down, simplified, ect to the point that you have no legitimate character progression.
Riddle me this. Why is World Scaling so bad but in a non-scaling world the fact that you can go from killing regular boars in Dun Morogh to killing the same Boars but âstrongerâ in Loch Modan and its any different.
Hold on, I can hear the furious typing of the counter argument, give me just a second here to expand. A Wolf is a Wolf is a Wolf. Lets make a real life example.
Say you have a Knight in training in Real Life who goes to deal with a pack of Wolves terrorizing the countryside. He does not have the best equipment, his skills are not all that honed, he is pretty wet behind the ears but he manages to slay those Wolves.
A few seasonâs pass, he is more experienced, he has better gear and equipment, and he learns that the next county over has a Wolf Problem now. Said Knight goes and deals with it and, thanks to experience and better tools, its a bit easier but it still takes effort. Said Wolves were not abruptly stronger or weaker, they were still Wolves.
A few more seasons pass, same situation arises back in the first county, and what do you know the Wolves have not gotten any weaker and are still, you guessed it, wolves.
While the Knight grew in skill, got better equipment, all of that, in the end a Wolf is still a Wolf. While that experience, new techniques, and better equipment make the job easier it still takes effort. That could be applied to anything in life as well and any professions. Skill/Technique, Equipment, and General experience help but whatever you do still takes effort.
I would honestly argue that NOT scaling things makes the world far more jarring. How is it, without scaling, you can go from killing adult dragons effortlessly to getting your butt handed to you by a whelpling? People make the argument that âIt doesnât make sense that things around me get strongerâ and yet it does not bother them that you can kill the Lich King with one blow and then turn around and die to a random Kobold?
World Scaling is not inherently bad, WoW can do a far better job of implementing it though. What makes a Human Bandit in Elwynn so much worse than a Human Bandit in say KulâTiras? Experience, Technique/Skill, and Equipment but they are still Human Bandits at the end of the day.
Yes, you should be noticeably better than an âElwynn Banditâ vs a âKulâTirian Banditâ but I truly say that at no point should you be quite literally an Unkillable, Untouchable, God to one Bandit and then have to put up a serious fight to another.
I think that a good way to conquer this is to put a ~5 level buffer from content you out level. So previous expansions content is always roughly 5 levels lower than you. So, if you are 120 then at best older world content will scale up to 115. You are more experienced and more geared than previous content margins, you should have a clear advantage, but that clear advantage can be expressed better than simple one shotting.
Another issue, and why I say that WoW implemented World Scaling poorly as well as why I think that the âreasoningâ behind the Portal Change was as controversial as it was is the fact that there is nothing in the old world to incentivize going back to it and I think Blizzard is missing a lot of opportunity to take advantage of systems like World Quests and âEventsâ.
What if, after finishing zones, if randomly new/reoccurring issues could pop up. Say you have finished Westfall, the Storyline is complete, but there are still Bandits out there. Perhaps there are random quests that have to track down some remaining bandits, perhaps randomly Sentinel Hill gets attacked, perhaps the Farmers Harvest Golems act up again.
World Quests and Zone Events should honestly be utilized far more than they are across the whole world and open for all levels that that no-matter what, the world feels alive and active.
TL:DR for this â Character Progression is beyond being in shambles, there is hypocrisy in the âAnti-World scalingâ idea when even without world scaling, the issues of âX Human is abruptly stronger now that I am strongerâ still exists, there is nothing to facilitate World Scaling to make it feel like a living, breathing, world.
World Scaling is seemingly taking the full blame for what is honestly a plethora of various problems plaguing the game. People seem to be under the impression that âIf Scaling went away entirely, the game would be fixed!â
Its a lot more complicated than that, its a multitude of small things that have built up or been stripped away over 15 years that has caused problem. World Scaling, however, is not one of them.
Also, yeah, I know I just wrote a novella practically XD Sorry about that. At least its broken down into paragraphs and not a wall of text.
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