This would be an independent change and could just as easily be done without squishing levels.
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I’m definitely against a level squish personally. If the major issue is not feeling rewarded with abilities and such for leveling then the solution should be to add more spells. Frankly I find it completely ridiculous that Blizzard thinks that removing levels is a more viable and doable solution than adding more spells.
I know they’re super worried about “ability bloat” and while I disagree I can at least see where they’re coming from. An easy middle ground would be to add earnable spell cosmetics or something like that. Something similar to glyphs that let you change your spell appearance if you want. That way you’re earning something without blizz having to worry about new effects, interactions, or balance. FFXIV for example, has some of their spells upgrade to cooler looking more powerful versions. You feel stronger but your rotation in many cases is unchanged because of the spell “upgrade”. Something similar to this would work great IMO.
Another issue is how the level squish is implemented. Is it the same amount of xp needed but less levels? In this case leveling will feel slower overall and not actually fix anything. Are they going to reduce the amount of xp to hit max as well as lowering the level? If that’s the case the level squish seems redundant (IMO) and they could nerf just the actual xp needed.
We’ve had a few stat squishes already now and each time it brings balancing issues and problems with old content not being scaled correctly I can only imagine a level squish will cause even more issues as they are an even more foundational feature to the game than stats.
My next issue is the question of sustainability. What happens when we get back to the 100+ level range again? Do they do another level squish? That’s what happens with stats every couple xpacs now. Imagine vanilla content being squished to say 40. 40 levels for vanilla content doesnt seem too off. What about the 2nd level squish though? 25 or 30 levels for vanilla? imagine awkward that would feel, especially for long time players. What about the level for the xpacs? most are already 10 levels for the xpac and would likely be reduced to 5 in the first go. If there was a 2nd squish you’d have 2 or 3 levels for the entire xpac. MoP and Cata would be a level a piece unless they only squished specific xpacs.
To wrap my up my rather long post, I feel that Blizzard favoring a level squish highlights a major flaw in their design philosophy. That philosophy being their “enrichment through reduction” approach. For the past few xpacs Blizzard has taken the stance that they can fix issues in the game by taking stuff out and removing content. We saw this most recently with the portals issue. They wanted to make the world feel bigger so they took out portals. We’ve seen this with spell pruning, removing vendors, flying, and others.
This approach, even if they’re right and it fixes whatever issue they were trying to fix, has constant and serious consequence. No one likes it when you take their stuff. Even if someone doesn’t care about something, if someone else takes it then they’ll get angry. No matter how effective or well-intended a change (removal) maybe, at least some players will feel punished. Blizz took something that they had and it feels bad.
Blizzard (imo) should instead be adding Incentives to play differently if that’s what they want. Add a speed or xp boost if you’ve gone X amount of time without flying or X amount of time without using a portal. Add randomly spawning treasures in more locations with better rewards to reward exploration. Obviously some removal of content is unavoidable but it shouldn’t be the go-to fix for the majority of problems. This will apply to the level squish. If they take away players levels, levels that they’ve had for years and years, then people are going to get angry about it.
/endrant
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leveling speed is fine right now. If you use heirloom gear and the 10% exp potion you can hit 110 pretty quickly with dungeons and battlegrounds if you have a good win rate. after you unlock MoP content questing is pretty quick too, at 100 you can collect treasures and do the bonus objectives for good exp.
Your whole outlook on this issue, and all the others against a change like this, is something this game can no longer afford.
“Leveling doesn’t matter” is an attitude WoW could get away with when a ridiculous amount of people were playing it. Now? Nope. This game needs new players.
OP: like it or not a change like this needs to happen. No, it’s not for people with 10 level 120’s. Your opinion on this doesn’t matter. This is for new players who need an engaging leveling experience to hook them.
Currently this game has a terrible, mind-numbing leveling experience, and the time to cap isn’t even half the problem. A squish opens up content options and will create a rewarding drip feed of ability and talent gains.
Again, for the hard-headed people: stop making this about time to cap. That is NOT the issue.
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Problem with your entire post: A squish doesn’t impact leveling speed or make it a better experience, an alteration to XP values does.
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That is probably a suggestion I like the most. This gives new players enough abilities starting at level 60 where they can gauge how classes in general play at level cap.
Good suggestion. +1
You mean like scaling, CRZs, pathfinder, pvp vendor removal, pruning abilities to death, rng replacing real loot, etc etc and so on.
This level squish is gonna happen no matter what the players think.
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I’m not so sure, but even if that comes to pass no matter what we say, giving up will remove all doubt.
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I still have mine. I had to force myself to use the 90 and 100 boost. I just look at the 110 boost. I bought two race changes during the sale and for some reason refuse to use the boost. Go figure. Not that I am actually currently playing or subbed I just bought the changes for future use.
They need to just add in a couple more talent tiers to be honest, the amount of skills in the entire talent tiers is abysmal
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You are assuming the problem is leveling speed, and abilities? I think the goal with the level squish is a bit bigger. Some, including myself, would love to have a more classic RPG experience. That will always start with level 1. With a feeling of progress for each level.
So if we have a 130 cap next expansion. And assuming they fix leveling speed. How would you fix the leveling experience for each level starting at 1? Got to have good stat progress, that means reasons to upgrade gear often ( besides heirloom of course). New spell and or talents every level or close to it. Professions need to matter all the way through.
I will be shocked if you can come up with solutions for all that and keep the high levels. What ya got?
There is no feeling of progress with scaling. Sorry, it’s just a bland, mind numbing experience feeling like you have the same power from 1 to 110.
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I’d LOVE to see upgrade spells! Shadow Chaos Bolt FTW! ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Leveling speed, number of levels, etc. are not the problem. They have attempted leveling squishes before, remember? Cataclysm and MoP were both 5 level gains instead of 10.
The problem is that all gains of class abilities stops at level 100 with the final talent row. Then everything new suffers from two problems:
- It is dependent on an expansion-specific system (artifact weapons, Heart of Azeroth, etc.)
- Said systems are temporary creating a void when the expansion ends. Abilities get shuffled in, yes, but some other ones are shuffled out as a result. No net gain.
What needs to happen is that they need to add a new row of talents each time the cap goes up. They also need to make better decisions about what abilities from these temporary systems become baseline at the next x.0 level.
Anything a good chunk of players considers something “signature” to a spec needs to stay. For example a lot of BM hunters consider having two pets out at once like we had our Pet + Hati in Legion to be signature. So that should have been made baseline instead of an optional talent.
Ability pruning should only happen if:
- The ability was extremely rare in use (it was highly specific situational, too weak, etc.)
- The ability is problematic (bugs, weird interactions, socially unacceptable (i.e. Barrage), etc.)
- They cannot adjust the ability to fix the previous problems.
We do not need the system to simplify the game for us. This is another instance where Blizzard has kind of stepped on one of the community aspects of the game. I got good at my class/spec by asking for help, finding out which guides to follow, etc. Heck, I once even reached out to one of the top players in the world and asked why he was using a certain piece of gear (and yes, he answered and was very helpful).
And, dovetailing nicely with a common theme Ion mentions a lot, meaningful choice of abilities does not come when you offer us 1-2 good ones with a bunch of crap. Give me lots of good abilities to choose from and I will make my meaningful choices.
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Yep.
Where many get the game is about end game mindset.
Because, well, it is. My goal on AR’s leveling is 120. What happens here?
We break out of the always passable mold of 1-120 leveling.
You go from okay at level 59 to okay at level 60 in Outland/Northrend. Okay at 79…Okay at 80 for Pandaria. And so on. Always will you be okay basically.
Seen on the alt-aholics. We do our runs on our 120’s at 380+ and go yep…feels good. We broke even BFA’s scale. Its nice.
Now its back to the leveling alts. Some classes do better here. I have no major whines about say BM hunter. Its the easy leveling mode it always been. S. Priest…was my ego check. Not overly difficult but never felt god like. I still have nightmares about 110-120. I thought I knew what pain and misery was. this taught me that I knew not what they were lol…
How to fix this? Maybe a few final levels scales go away. Say at 50-55 in vanilla you just become the hero you are supposed to be. say 75-80…same thing. Up the expac scale we’d go.
A brief spot of real easy times before next area and reality settles in.
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Those are the major problems with the current system.
That’s quite the assumption.
Let me answer your question with another question: How would a squish do that? Secondly, the zone scaling was actually a great way to address this. It’s just a shame the XP nerf came with it. If you want the leveling experience to feel better, give the players better stuff earlier, or a better talent system. Making numbers smaller doesn’t address this at all.
You really don’t. Frankly, that’s not a factor in any MMO past launch. The scaling from leveling often makes this irrelevant. It mattered more in Classic just because of the linear scaling, but this isn’t going to matter in modern WoW. Why implement this system if level cap is going to be the polar opposite?
If they didn’t prune a bunch of good abilities in WoD and Legion, this could still be very doable without a squish.
They barely matter now, it is a separate issue entirely that doesn’t really relate to a level squish at all. I do agree, though.
That’s “what I got”.
Classic seems like your cup of tea, though. I’d give it a whirl in the summer if I were you.
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Na, not really interested in classic. The goal here remember is to make leveling a better experience, not make it easier to race through.
The stat squish has taken most of the leveling experience away. No stat progress as you level witch directly effect professions and the need to buy and sell as you level. So yes professions are an important part of the RPG experience that is at the heart of the issue.
Talents and spells do need to be reworked regardless of level cap. That is a definite for the leveling experience.
So to answer your question how would a level squish fix leveling. For starters the stat squish would go away. Making each level count a bit more as stats increase in greater numbers. The need for things from professions will increase as replacing gear will be more common. Enchanting for more power, etc. And of course spells and talents could more easily be distributed with less levels between them. And I’m sure more things I haven’t thought of yet.
No, the change in design philosophy is what caused that. They want you to hit the end as soon as possible so you can experience endgame. Problem is, leveling sucks. It’s too slow and your class is typically dull until the end, since they pruned 50% of the stuff we unlock.
Yes, they do. They don’t start scaling poorly until you’re near the end.
Which doesn’t require a squish to solve. A squish doesn’t even affect this in the slightest.
Sure. No argument there.
That’s an assumption that oversimplifies how these interactions work under the hood.
Again, you’re assuming a lot here. For all we know, it would be the same thing we have right now.
Doesn’t require a squish.
Got anything else, because it sounds like your problem is the irrelevance of professions. Again, squishing the numbers does nothing to address your points.
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Classic is waiting for you. They do this and people leveling would go from being down 50% to down 90% (yes made up figures but the point is very few people would level).
are you sure? i would be willing to bet the other way around. they can skip making it take longer but making it far more engaging would be fun instead of just a grind to get to the end.
i’ve yet to recall any game i enjoyed that had zero challenge to it. that’s the current situation for leveling. the only challenge out there is turning war mode on, and that’s a once a day gank scenario leveling. give or take but that’s about how often i’ve been ganked leveling on average.