I see no good effects - except psychological benefits for those players whose brains are intimidated by 3-digit numbers - and the potential to screw up a lot of stuff in the process.
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I’m not upset about it, but I think it’s stupid.
Because this;
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We don’t need more confirmation that you are unable to form your own opinion. The most basic of individualistic options of searching for WoW Rise of Azhara shows that Polygon just added a new article an hour ago and a ton of other stories on WoW sites, forums, video game forums, and even news sites. Still by all means keep telling us how that is all wrong because streamer said so.
A number of people have said pretty much the same. Nothing works in a vacuum. Levelling and the rewards to your class are only part of the formula.
I did a theoretical squish. Cutting levels in half. IE level 60 would be BFA endgame.
I created a fresh Beastmaster Hunter and converted the abilities, rounding up in case of levels.
Of the 60 levels, 25 of those levels were just there. You gained NOTHING from those levels besides stats and health.
If they want to genuinely make levels feel important, they need to do more than just squish the number of levels. They need to make sure there is something “engaging” that you get at each level. A talent, an upgrade to an existing ability, a new ability. Something every level. That’s how you make levels feel like they matter.
Oh, and I specifically chose Beastmaster as I knew they have a lot of abilities (sure, a bunch of them are passive, but its one of the largest total number of abilities at four and a half pages).
So a level squish in and of itself won’t solve the problem. If the framework of a class is not engaging, fun and dynamic, you could have 5000, 50 levels, or 500 levels and it still won’t be fun.
And then there is the content. If content is boring, it won’t matter if you get something interesting every level. Because engaging in content is how you get the XP you need to level!
TL;DR In short, character levels and rewards is part of a whole. If they want to fix things, they can’t just stop at level squish and call it a day. This has to be the first step of many, to improving the process of going from level 1 to endgame level content.
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I thought we needed a level squish before we passed 100. It felt ludicrous and inflated, and 120 does as well.
I hope they slam the hammer hard the other way.
Vanilla : 1 - 10.
BC / Wotlk : 10 -15
Cata/ MoP: 15 - 20
WoD/ Legion: 20- 25
BfA : 30
And we start next Expac at 30 heading to 35.
Me make number bigger, big number make ugg feel strung! YOU MAKE NUMBER SMULLER?!?!? UGG NO LIKE! UGG MAD RAAAHHH!
That’s the reason essentially people are mad.
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I’m just really worried about how it would affect my ability to farm old content for Transmog. ![:frowning:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")
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people get upset and freak out over everything now days its just what they do
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That’s a valid concern. Especially considering the mess from previous squishes and how well that worked.
I’m more worried about HOW they execute it than whether they’re going to do it or not. They’re going to do it, that’s pretty much written on the wall. The big questions of course are things like …
“how will this affect levelling speed”
“how will this affect older content”
“how will this affect transmog runs”
“how will this affect my characters overall power?”
Questions like that need to answered, and fast, before they end up with players purely negative on the change. Communication on their plans is key to nipping potentially negative PR in the bud.
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No one’s upset except for the same dozen or so forum trolls that are upset about everything. It’s a sad way for them to live, but it’s their choice I guess.
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Yeah, actually. They said that the numbers are a bit ridiculous. Much like their reasoning for the stat squishes in multiple expansions, actually.
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Remember that time playing D&D and right after hitting level 20 your DM said he was going to lower everyone to level 10 instead? He said it was fine though because the amount of XP need to hit level 10 was the same as level 20, and the monster would be the same strength, and the rewards would all be the same. But now this new person joining the group wouldn’t be so daunted about being surrounded by all these level 20 people and could gain a new talent every 2 levels on their mage instead of every 4. Sure it will still take them just as long to level to 10 as it would have been to level to 20 and sure they aren’t actually gaining power faster but at least the number is smaller, right?
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So long as the speed to get to each level is no longer than a single level takes in current borked leveling I don’t care
If it takes twice as long then it means nothing, and in fact just underlines how bad the leveling nerf from legion was / is.
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Yeah, this is precisely how I feel.
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I’d say a lot of players do not trust bliz to not mess it up. A lot of players would rather they spent resources on real new content instead of a level squish and all the dev headaches it brings.
Pretty sure we’ll get some dev shortcut squish and tons of pain from messed up experiences all over the place that will take them a year to fix.
Devs just want to keep taking away what we’ve already earned, to make their life easier. When do we get more value? When do we get more content instead of more grinds on the same content? When do we get a dev design focused on ‘fun’ rather than tolerance and retention levels?
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I don’t see a problem with it. Leveling should not be the focus of any RPG. It should be am afterthought to the experience.
This is a fundamental problem with WoW as a whole since they never really catered to the MMORPG crowd, but more the weekend power players crowd since day 1.
It had elements familiar to an MMORPG, but there’s not one single one I didn’t play before WoW that didn’t do it much better when it came to being in a living world with crafting to team play.
It was just that at the time (and I remember it like yesterday) the tropes that they typically put in MMO’s when it came to dying and experience gain were tired out and annoying.
Along came WoW in typical Blizzard fashion “We’ll take the popular stuff and make it better.”
So you would die and no corpse would drop loot, no experience would be lost, no debt to repay on experience before you could gain leveling experience, etc.
How could you not eat that up?
I did stay because people played it more, and people loved to play WoW, I made friends and family used to play together. I always knew WoW was not as in depth as the MMO’s before it, but it had brand power as well as the OG Blizzard polish. It just lacked the depth…then for some reason, they gutted it even more, I’ll never understand to this day.
Anyway, I digress, back to the level squish. I am for it, I can put myself into the shoes of a new player and just to see 120 levels sounds disgustingly long (which it technically isn’t), but it’s a mindset. That would turn me off immediately. Then the experience of leveling, now a days, irritating. There’s long periods where all you are doing is filling a bar, that’s it.
There’s no reward for moving your character forward other than a level number, which is very little motivation.
OG WoW had a lot to keep you occupied:
- level up
- talent point
- level up
- new skill
- train skill
- no gold to train
- farm gold/do a dungeon or three
- level up more while doing this
- finally train when you have gold
- see you have more skills to train now and not enough money again
- farm more gold
- get some blues/greens
- level up again
- another talent point
- and on and on
the experience playing would be the same in a level squish, you make take longer to get to level 5, but now you get something at 10 again, or something at 12, etc.
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The real issue I think most would agree with me on, is that the current model of “Go to a new continent while the old one remains completely ignored for the rest of time” is just not smart game-design, but is “cost effective”.
This philosophy worked when the game was young, but Cataclysm should of had a patch that updated Northrend and Outland. The amount of neglect in years since has made it that much worse, but it’s a revamp worth doing to make the game “World” of Warcraft, rather than “Zone” of Warcraft.
I mean we’re in the middle (supposedly) of the BIGGEST War between the Alliance and Horde and the best Sylvanas can do is to send incursions into Kul’Tiras while ignoring the whole of East Kingdoms? The best Anduin can do is to send incursions into Zandalar while ignoring the whole of Kalimdor?
Seriously?
I mean come freaking on man. If your going to bill something as X, then at least do it right.
8 Likes
Actually that’s false. This comes from a guy who cut his teeth on RPGs from when he was a teenager. Dice, pencil, paper, hanging out in the bedroom, the GMs screen.
Characters progress in power so they can face greater threats. Levels is one of the simplest and most straight forward ways to represent a characters power.
Yes, the story mattered, but you need a direct means for characters to grow and become more powerful. Levels is an excellent source of that.
The thing is, as has been said, a level squish is only part of the solution. If they think a level squish will solve the levelling blues, they’re sadly mistaken. It’s more than just the lack of rewards for levelling. It’s the content not being interesting, its the classes being less engaging, its a lot of varied things that has overall had a negative impact on the levelling experience as a whole.
Levels and rewards from levels is only one part of the formula.
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If they decrease the time needed to level by a significant amount then I’d better be compensated for all of my time invested across ~50 alts.
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We need far less ilvl increase than that, imo.
Raid 1- LFR- 100ilvl
Normal- 105ilvl
Heroic- 110ilvl
Mythic- 115ilvl
Raid 2- LFR- 110ilvl
Normal- 115ilvl
Heroic- 120ilvl
Mythic- 125ilvl
This way, normal doesn’t trump previous mythic, keeping older raid content useful, but giving the option to move on to the next raid, and still gain useful gear, or continue to try to progress through mythic. It also keeps the ilvl from beginning the of the expansion to end much closer, eliminating the need for a stat squish every 2 years.