Show me a single game where “getting stronger” means that playing the game gets easier.
“Getting stronger”, in a game, means you can do HARDER content.
Games start easy, and get harder. How hard the game is is a measure of how far you’ve gotten into it. World scaling doesn’t affect progression in the slightest. If you think it does, do you also play a game of Tetris where every level the blocks move more slowly?
This isn’t true. Look at what people complain about when they make levelling complaint threads. Nearly all that I’ve seen have been something like “Levelling from 1-60 was a breeze and fun, but now I’m at 70/80/90 and I just want to shoot myself. Why does levelling suddenly suck?”
The problem with levelling is that expansion content SUCKS for levelling. Especially when the game itself keeps changing the rules because of how each different expansion was designed. The popularity of Classic is proof that “levelling time” is not what people care about.
It generally takes 4 to 5 zones to level through vanilla content.
There are ~40 expansion zones from BC to Legion.
That’s a huge, huge imbalance. One that will get worse and worse and worse as the cap keeps rising.
Levelling time WILL NOT be the same after a squish. Why would you ever assume Blizz would follow such an arbitrary rule. Levelling time will take whatever amount of time FEELS best to Blizzard when you only need to go through 5 or 6 zones to hit cap.
THAT is what will make levelling better: doing a few zones fully to completion. Especially if they give better rewards for finishing them. Like, when you finally kill the big bad of the zone and hand in the last quest you get an heirloom. Head, Back, Chest, Legs, Weapon, and Jewellery (neck, trinkets, rings). That’s 6 categories of heirlooms. Imagine if you get one for each zone you complete while levelling. Level up a clothie, now you have a full set of cloth heirlooms!
60 levels in only 5 or 6 zones that you get to FINISH and then you start on end-game content. THAT is how you fix levelling. Time is largely irrelevant. # of levels is only slightly relevant, for pacing and conditioned response reasons.
I like certain aspects of the world scaling. I love almost never out leveling a zone. I love the increased number of areas to level in at any given time. I love that mobs take more of a full rotation to kill. I don’t love that getting gear only serves to keep me on par with a standard power level. I don’t love that abilities and talents are spaced out so few and far between. And I believe that I will have split feelings on the level squish as well.
Geez, do you really need this explained to you, or are you intentionally being obtuse to refuse to acknowledge the other side?
Here goes:
"Show me a single game where “getting stronger” means that playing the game gets easier."
That would be every stinking RPG I’ve ever played. What you are intentionally avoiding is this - in Phantasy Star for example, the mosquitos I kill at beginning levels do no get more difficult as I level up, they become easier to kill to the point of being trivial.
Who the heck wants a game where those same entry level monsters are as tough for you at end game as they are at level 1? It is idiotic to the extreme for an RPG to do this.
You see, RPG’s are about power progression. Always have been. Yes, you do level up in order to take on harder new content. The old content is made easier by your power progression. Scaling in WoW loses the plot on what an RPG is fundamentally about.
Really? So Heroic bosses are easier to kill than Normal bosses, which are even easier to kill than LFR?
No. The more you play, the harder the game gets. That’s THE POINT, to face more difficult challenges.
And news flash, but world mobs DO get easier as you level. You get more spells & abilities, better potions, food, & buffs, and better gear. My Fury Warrior, for example, doesn’t even care about world mobs that don’t have golden borders. I can’t farm up enough regular mobs to make things hard for me because of dropping aggro if I go that far.
WoW is the easiest of the easy rpgs. Quests that say “suggested players: [3]” I take on solo, no matter my level. “Suggest players: [5]” means “You’ll need to pop a CD or two”. For some specs, like Prot Paladins, you can solo an elite 15 levels above you. World mobs in WoW are ALREADY trivial.
Yes. PROGRESSION. As in moving forward. Not power REGRESSION. It’s not, nor has it ever been about being able to 1-shot mobs you fought earlier on. It’s always about being able to fight things you COULDN’T before.
Zelda: OoT is possibly one of the best RPGs of all time. Know what? Those mobs you fought at the beginning of the game are just as hard to kill at the end of the game. But because of tools, weapons, and skills have improved, by the end of the game you can defeat mobs you couldn’t even hurt at the beginning.
“Old content becoming trivial” is not what RPGs are about. “New content becoming possible” is what progression means. If you need to become a God of Death to mobs you faced early in the game to feel like you’ve progressed, then the problem is between you and your therapist, not with the game.
Sadly, even with scaling it’s more efficient to skip to the next tier of zones before finishing one. Do the main hub and move on. EPL for example, Enter at minimum level, do fionas caravan, and you’re ready for TBC/Wrath. Wrath I did the main hub and hit the next zone… My herald 1-80 was hitting a level, on average, every 20 minutes and I wasn’t pushing her. With the way XP scales, staying in a zone until the end of it’s bracket slows you down, move to a zone in the next bracket ASAP and you can burn faster than ever.
Returning to the level squish and thread in general: How many patches will it take to fix everything they break? Just like the item level squish, it’s just a temporary “fix” to a non-issue. Squish to 60, then we’re 70, 80, 90… and back where we started. Rag at 12, SSC at 20, and so on will break immersion more than anything I’ve ever seen, and I guarantee soloability of old content will go out the window for at least a patch cycle.
So for an expac we can do 1-60 (vanilla to BFA) then we get X levels and one xpac of content added. What will that do to a new player? I can do all this stuff from 1-60, then I only get [current content] from 60-70?
We also know that time to level will not change, you’ll spend just as much time getting to 60 as you did to 120… this is another change for them and they don’t care how many of us they lose in the process.
120 is nothing. Try a game with no level cap as a new player and see how long you last knowing you’ll NEVER catch up.
This will be a disaster and they don’t have nearly enough lifeboats.
Well there wasn’t really a reward for leveling 1-60, if you mention skills/abilities for your class as far as character progression that’s a different issue.
Its been a issue for a long time and how they’ve tried to balance everything over the past expansions. Nothing to do with the large level number cap - they could of added more abilities but they’re under the impression that “less is more”.
In BfA there are more existential rewards in WoW then there has ever been.
Why does every level have to have a reward behind it when the end game content is what the majority of the people play the game for?
They’ve built systems to help the leveling curve and to just throw it away seems like such a waste because of some naysayers.
WoW isn’t meant to be like other MMO’s - they made mention countless times that they want it different to other MMOs, from its art style - to the systems within the core of the game.
I agree in part with this, however nothing in life is easy - Blizzard have the man power and ability to make the game better, adding things that the majority of the community can agree on is one of them.
Classic has given them good insight but i dont see the need to regress to levels from years ago - put the effort in, don’t rush it - listen to feed back from verities sides of the community.
Power progression and ramp up has been a mess for the last few expansions for sure.
Correct - they should have left the leveling scale alone in the open world.
I doubt we’ll have new levels post squish. You get your last spells around level 80 (which are pretty much all passive bonuses to existing spells or mastery) and your last talent at level 100.
That makes 2 entire expansions where everything your character gains is effects tied to an external gimmick and item level increases on gear.
Squishing to 60 or 70 would allow a better distribution of spells and talents. Leaving the cap static from that point would be just like Legion and BFA except without the cosmetic only number increases.
Why does anyone think for more than a second that it will be a linear compression. Why does anyone think that continuing to level through every expansion ever made is a GOOD idea?
“Other games are worse, so WoW should continue to provide a terrible experience to new players.”
Because they haven’t been paying attention to current changes, and likely haven’t been in the old content any time recently. Everything scales in brackets now. Squishing character levels shouldn’t require massive changes to algorithms and individually adjusting every NPC in the game because the mobs scale to your character level, regardless of what that level happens to be at the time.
Because its a form of progression? Because sinking thousands of hours into a game to regress to a level we reached 14 years ago feels good?
New players have the choice to take the boost when they sign up, the leveling progression has been a mess since they scaled the world imo.
WoWs always been about end game content - maybe 10% of the player base enjoys the leveling experience for what it was/is.
I think mega scope is trolling.
And the character boost was always in poor entry to the game. Sure new player can buy one but they don’t get to know their class, learn their class. And then they have the audacity to complain
I was here when this went live and I don’t remember anyone asking for it. Except maybe the usual handful of Blizzard employees posting on their private accounts.
Instead of pouring money into content for the game, they’re going to spend half their budget trying to make this work without crashing the game entirely.
Then the same people who couldn’t wait for a level squish are going to be complaining about “content droughts” and wondering why everyone on their friends list hasn’t logged in for 17 months.
Squishing the numbers will magically make leveling content feel better, don’tcha know? Nevermind that we absolutely destroyed professions and class design, like maybe, just maybe that has some part in it.
Well if you’ve never played the game before then you have to do the Class intro, learn the basics before you get sent out into the world.
Then you have the current content to get through till you hit level cap, sure thats only 10 levels but it should be enough time for someone to learn some skills of the game.
However they try to implement it, they’ll likely mess it up and it will have a negative impact of current players i think.
TLDR - They’ll lose more then they gain.
Or you know, they could have just increased experience gains, but that would make too much sense considering they have obliterated every method of leveling faster, including heirlooms.
If people think levels being squished means the amount of experience needed from 1-new cap is going to be different than it is now, they are sorely mistaken.
Makes logical sense
Bump
10/chars
Testing…