this.
I like to use murder of crows here. Its a level 60 talent choice. Squish by half…level 30.
If it takes a player 20 hours to reach 60. It will take 20 hours to reach 30. Unless they change XP stuff. Its not coming faster. They wanted murder of crows to be a level 60 skill for use in WoTK/outland and beyond.
they did not want you to run murder of crows at level 40 (lets squished to 20) in say stranglethorn and supposed to be there (ie. not over leveled).
Thanks for your thought out explanation as well. I’m happy to see that other’s aren’t see past this level squish as a solution to anything.
Not every level has to be an increase in player power. They also talked about adding cosmetic rewards like mounts and stuff.
And even if you don’t like the cosmetic rewards, they can get quite a few new talents and abilities by taking ideas from pruned abilities, old glyphs, tier set bonuses, WoD perks, Legion artifact traits, and Legion legendaries.
There is so much room for growth that the level squish is beyond pointless.
Yeah, but you haven’t really advanced. Character scaling means that you’ve gotten weaker without any new abilities or talents, while world scaling means the world has stayed the same power relative to you.
You’re no longer an 82 fighting 82 mobs. You’re an 83 fighting 83 mobs.
But at least you can acknowledge that the only real benefit of the current system is that you get that “ding” dopamine rush more frequently, even if the 30 HP and 4 intellect you’ve gained in baseline stats isn’t noticeable.
I don’t expect them too. I expect a system pretty much in line with the Cata Talents.
Not quite as filler as Vanilla talents, but I don’t expect 60 talents as powerful or impactful as the 7 or whatever we currently have.
And what do you exactly think the issue is that leveling squish is a bandaid fix to? I don’t believe you’ve addressed it (or I might have missed it).
And they’d have to increase class complexity well beyond Cata/MoP levels to actually fit enough of these abilities in that would fix the deadzone while leveling.
Why would they do that when they can level squish to reduce/remove the deadzone and keep an increase in class complexity within the expectations of the playerbase? (Considering they’ve already said they’re looking to reduce pruning and increase class complexity in 9.0).
Why do they have to “increase class complexity”? And why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing? There are a lot of passive benefits out there that could change how you play as you level up without adding new buttons all the time.
Not to mention, they already aren’t going to give you a new talent or ability with every level up even if they do a squish. They talked about putting in mounts as rewards as well. So you could have mounts, pets, toys, transmog, a bunch of different things that make the level up more exciting than just an increase in stats, and without “increasing class complexity”.
You’re looking at things too narrowly here.
If a level squish would fix all the leveling issues – I would be for it, but after seeing how Blizzard handled 2 stats squishes and the zone scaling. It would, more than likely, take too much resources and cause too much issues. Just not worth it when there are other options that could be taken that could be more effective.
And from what you say about “feeling weaker”, yes, but that’s not the increase in levels. That’s part of the issue with the zone scaling and the gear. That was never an issue until we our weapons (legion) and our HOA gear (BFA), and the zone scaling.
Your entire argument is based on wishful thinking. We have no evidence that this will be true.
In fact, even if it takes no longer to level up, it will feel less rewarding because each level will take much longer than levels used to take.
They will use this as an opportunity to remove inconvenient old content that they no longer wish to support. And they’ll botch a bunch of stuff and never bother to go back and fix it, just like with level scaling.
because they wont be able to farm xmogs and mounts obviously.a level squish would change that.
If there’s a level squish there should be a gold squish. Make those silver and copper mean something again!!!
Because your suggestion of introducing pruned abilities/passives/tier set bonuses to fill up the deadzone would do exactly that? If you introduced a bonus that every 10 Steady Shots increased your Crit by 20% for 5 seconds, you’d have to learn to play around that. If you introduced half a bonus that every third Arcane Shot made your next Aimed Shot instant, you’d also have to play around that.
Add half a dozen of these bonuses, ontop of new abilities and passives and yeah, pretty quickly your class would become extremely complex to play well.
And I’m not saying it’s an inherently bad thing. I personally think MoP and Cata were the peak of most classes design. But considering the complexity of classes was what specifically lead to the pruning in every future expansion afterwards, I doubt Blizzard are going to go beyond that level.
And they certainly wouldn’t give enough of these to get rid of the deadzone without a squish. Their entire point is that they can spitball enough rewards to make 1-60 feel good, but not enough for 1-130.
No one individual thing is going to fix all the issues, but the squish would allow them to introduce new systems that would help alleviate those issues.
That’s true. But they’re also not going to change that, with level scaling being a feature that they’re very happy with, since it increases the options available to the player in terms of where and what they can do to level without sacrificing efficiency.
The loss in power is just a symptom of the fact that power gains while leveling are so spread out
It didn’t increase options available to players. It added one option but removed more than it added.
Now players can hardly travel at all if they find it expedient to stay put and go nowhere. Why did it start being a virtue to never travel? Because they want to reduce the emphasis on “world” in “world of warcraft”.
It’s all about efficiency of design. If they wanted efficiency of leveling, they’d have given players options to level faster, not slower. Slow is inherently less efficient.
The loss in power is not a symptom of the fact that power gains while leveling are spread out. The loss of power was deliberately designed into the game by devs. They didn’t have to. They chose to do this.
Players feel zero increase in power while leveling until reaching BfA. Prior to that there is no sensation of getting stronger whatever. And then you get weaker.
No-- Gaining levels is a part of the reward, not just getting new talents. Squishing down to 60 then forcing me to re-level back to X level isn’t rewarding-- It negates all of the effort and time placed into leveling the first time.
It removes my sense of accomplishment.
Possibly, but they have yet to introduce anything alongside the squish that they would be adding. So at this point it’s just the squish. I don’t want them messing around and breaking a ton of stuff for a half baked idea that they may or may not finish with a ton of aspects they have to cut to meet deadlines. If they give a good layout of their plan and goals, and say, “Hey this is going to take us 3-5 years, and we’re going to take the time we need to do this right.” That’s one thing, but coming out and saying “Numbers too high. Scares new players. Must squish!” That’s not inspiring at all and doesn’t instill faith in them doing this at all. Sadly Blizzard has fallen, and have lost a lot of faith players once had in them.
They don’t need to get rid of scaling. They need to fix scaling. They also need to not give us these items that are our source of power/character grow for the expansion. Prior to Legion, end game gear you earned the xpack before, would carry you 2, 3, maybe 4 levels into the new xpack. You would then swap it out for gear that was equal or a bit better and continue leveling without the feeling of taking 2 steps back. Going into BFA for several levels following you out leveling your Legion gear it’s painful. It shouldn’t hurt losing gear from the xpack before that far into leveling the newer xpack.
That design philosophy won’t be changed by a level squish, though. Rental systems like artifacts are an extremely simple solution to the problem of “what do we reward players with”, since they allow the exact same rewards to be handed out over and over, with only the framework changing.
I think that if you believe a level squish will return us to the days when our characters learned permanent talents, you’re mistaken.
I mean… level 60 will take as much as 120 so which “time placed” do you mean right now?.))
They’re not going to throw all of this at you at once. And again, they also talked about cosmetic rewards. Not every level has to be a power increase.
If they can’t figure out 130 levels, then what makes you think they’ll have any luck coming up with more stuff in the expansion after the squish? We’ll have the level squish again and again because it’s a band-aid in place of actually fixing the problem with leveling. Just like we keep getting stat squishes and how we’re getting close to another item level squish.
You’re assuming I’m talking about a new character-- Which I’m not. This wouldn’t ultimately affect any new character created after the fact as I would only be leveling it for the first time and only to 60.
However-- I have more than 20 characters currently sitting above 100. This effects the time invested on those characters.
And that is the problem with a level squish-- it will affect already established characters that are far above the new end game Lvl. Most Likely level 70 going into a new expansion.
This is pretty much the main reason
Just put it down to level 100 and keep it there. I don’t see any reason to make it 60 other than that being the level cap in Classic.
No. They would not be “more rewarding”. They would just be fewer levels. Blizzard could give all kinds of rewards for every level. Some levels might have a loot box with useful consumables. Some might give gold. Some might give gear or other rewards. Of course, many should give new powers, skills, talents, etc. There are plenty of those that have been pruned over the years.
Removing levels is lazy game design and doesn’t make leveling “more” rewarding.
I would rather get 20 things for 20 levels than one thing for one level that takes as long as 20.
I do not “fear” a level squish. I think it’s a vile, stupid, insipid, lazy, and unrewarding way to deal with having lots of levels. Also, I want to be level 200 one day.