It solves the problem that there doesn’t need to be 120 or next xpac 130 levels.
I’m not against it but I’m not really for it. I can say that 125-130 levels feels excessive though.
Sorry, I’ve seen quite a few people bringing up paragon/champion levels as if it would solve everything.
You mean the completely made up problem? Call me when we start getting close to level 1000. Which will take a few centuries to happen. The level squish is unnecessary and any actual problems with leveling can be solved without a squish.
I personally think there is more work to this than just level squishing. Just look at a couple of subsystems which are riding and transmog. When are you going to be able to ride, level 3? Epic riding at 6? Flight at 15.
Then there is transmog, which if I know Blizzard will totally get screwed up. Then there are profession items and so on.
This could cost the loss of a Raid Tier.
I think there’s room for a discussion about it, but I hesitate to say it would be a fix because, as I said before, it wasn’t exactly a fix for ESO in the end.
As you pointed out, they can’t just be like regular levels but with a different name, so they become stat weights and passive bonuses – but then if you keep adding on more and more and more of those weights, you get to the point ESO is at, where people start parsing 80k+ dps, the answer to every mechanic becomes simply “moar DPS” and the balancing is a nightmare.
There’s room for improvement on the system I guess, and some clever dev might be able to make it great, but I don’t have ideas for that so I’ll stick to saying “nah probably not” as far as implementing them in WoW goes.
Exactly but people are getting tunnel vision thinking that this will fix the problem. In reality it will break more than it will fix.
What they need to do is just bring back the old talent tree system and add exp to it. Create a separate system they can break that way they can easily isolate any problems they might encounter. If you remove 60 levels from the game you’re going to break the core mechanics of the game. There is no way around it. Level squish is an example of working harder not smarter.
^ this is the real issue. Yeah you’re gonna get new abilities at smaller numbers, but you’re still gonna be missing it through all the same content through the same amount of time, so it’s gonna do nothing.
“But big numbers scare me and I don’t want to soil myself out of fear when I log in and see that 120 level cap.”
I’d rather them squish the levels and see what they can do rather than just keep adding levels with larger spaces between learning a new ability. Hopefully they can redo to a better system. Could be worse but it’s not going to get better.
Just don’t want a new talent gear system they have been trying to implement.
Maybe Blizz needs to build the game around vets first and then find a way to help new players catch up IMO.
Not saying this in a rude way, but this game has evolved way past the levelling journey being “meaningful”. On my main and alts, I ran every quest, raid and dungeon in BC at least 20 times. Same for Wrath, Cata, while Pandaria and Wod only have about 10 full run throughs each.
I have done classic while it was new, and done the rework after cata on so many alts that I have lost count. You like repeating things you have done that much? Cool. You do you. I dont and neither do the vast majority of people. That would be why 10 out of every 12 people who played this game at its height are gone. Level squishing would feel like blizzard nullified work I did to entice the virtually nonexistent brand new player base.
That would drive me away and I doubt very much I would be alone in that.
The way Blizzard handled new expansions and levelling was all wrong to begin with. Increasing the level gap with each expansion not only increased time between account creation and endgame, but it also made the talent trees more cumbersome, which led to blizzard changing them in both Cataclysm and Pandaria.
Imo, they should’ve never raised the level cap. Instead, they could’ve made the new zones fit into already existing level brackets. Capped players would have to do the lowbie content anyways just to get their reputations up with new factions, but new players could actually perform a part of their levelling in the news zones, meaning they can skip old, irrelevant content, while still progressing in the current expansion l. Quests in the new zones would give gear with an appropriate curve in their ilvl to ensure that new toons have powerful enough gear by 60, and the new max level zones would be scaled assuming that you either raided in the previous expansion, or had done the new quests.
This would both make grinding old content irrelevant, and have allowed us to keep the old talent trees.
Well said, both of you!
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Maybe Blizz needs to build the game around vets first and then find a way to help new players catch up IMO.
But technically new players CAN catch up. When you buy the Battle Chest, you get a free level 110 level boost. New players who are taken by the number of levels to reach level cap can use the boost while other players who are fine with standard leveling can approach it that way. That seems reasonable to me
I didnt think we were allowed to use the word “reasonable” here. Cool!
It is worthless because you never get stronger vs. mobs until you hit max level and gear up. That amount of levels had zero impact on that.
Alternatively, new players can also use that free boost that comes with the Battle Chest to get a character to 110, level that character to 120, then purchase the heirloom gear (plus the upgrades) if they want to level an alt faster through the old content.
The options are certainly there for folks who want to use them. And while I understand that new players might not know about heirlooms right off the bat, that’s one of the reason we’re here in the forums, to help newcomers when they have questions and to aid them on their journey
So what is the point of the squish? Just to make devs time easier while they prune something more away from players?
Possible solution is to raise the starting level. Start new characters at level 60. Move all abilities/talents into the 60-120 levels so you get something every level. In 9.0 move the starting level to 70. You play from 70-130.
I’d be fine with the level squish but a lot of people want to keep their 120 level marker. So just move the bottom up instead of the top down.
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So what is the point of the squish? Just to make devs time easier while they prune something more away from players?
Exactly. There’s no point in a level squish if folks already have the tools to reach level cap quicker if they want to do so