Let’s riot if they ever attempt something so dumb. Seriously, like WoD Flying level riot.
Let’s assume they make a GOOD game, in terms of levelling, and quit having expansions increase level cap, which ruins that game over time.
Only an idiot would cut the number of levels in half, double the xp, and call it a day. While Blizz has done some pretty dumb things, I’m not cynical enough to believe they’d do that. Not when there’s dozens of other lateral progression systems in other rpgs (both online and off) they could essentially copy paste.
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No, it does nothing. What isn’t true is people that think it actually does something. Leveling is time /played, not numbers. That’s what you FEEL. You feel the time you play. That’s the underlying problem, not what number your level is that coincides to the time you’ve played.
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They have not said anything about an xp reduction.
Even so, the XP reduction is all they need. A level squish does nothing. A level squish with XP reduction has the same exact effect as no level squish and an XP reduction.
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I don’t think it’s fooling stupid people. I don’t think that people who measure their distance to level cap in levels vs hours played, which I think is the average player, as stupid. I don’t think people who want to try out WoW, see 120 levels, and feel like, “Yeah, not making that slog,” without any greater context are stupid.
I think more people feel this way, but likely don’t say anything because they feel that by admitting that they aren’t 100% rational, that they don’t really like the concept of going through 120 levels appealing, that they’ll be branded as stupid/casual/newbies for what are generally pretty understandable human responses.
No, it’s not a result of logic, but people don’t run on logic. Not because we’re stupid. Because we’re human beings and not computers and how we “feel” about an imaginary game and our imaginary accomplishments in it do matter.
I think there’s value in taking into account how people perceive something and expressing what is really the minimal amount of effort possible in addressing it. Seriously, the number of people needed to test, implement, and bug fix cutting levels in half is supposed to be anywhere near as big as one that would go about overhauling and creating an entirely new and more dynamic content/talent system over 120+ levels?
Nobody has ever, in all my time playing WoW, asked me, “So what’s your character hours?” When people log in and see their level 40 character, are they saying to themselves, “I have X hours until level cap,” or are they saying, “I have X levels until level cap?”
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You couldn’t be more wrong. Learn what a Skinner box is. Learn why it stops working if tuned poorly. Try to figure out why playing through 60+ levels of old expansions with disjointed storylines, mechanics, and feels, while never even getting halfway through the story of ANY of them makes people stop caring about the experience.
Seriously, “That’s what you FEEL. You feel the time you play.”!? That’s absurd on the surface. Go play an hour of “looking at my toes” and an hour of “having drinks with friends”. Tell me if you “FEEL” the same thing both times.
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Except that is sort of required. If you go to tackle new content, you need some way for your current gear to be outdated. You also need some kind of impetus for players to want to do quests. Experience Points, which grant levels, is the simplest way to drive players forward.
Levels are used for a variety of purposes. Keeping your Secondary Stat ratings balanced (without levels scaling back your secondary stats, they’ll keep climbing), limiting access to quests, limiting access to dungeons, limiting access to gear. There are many good reasons to add new levels for each expansion.
And since the survey is saying substantially fewer levels, we can look at anywhere from 60 to 90 being the new max level (using BfA as the example).
Which still translates into time. Again, levels aren’t a response. Your response is the actions in your game which translates into the time you spend playing the game (or the number of quests/mobs killed). Just because no one asks you how much time you’ve played doesn’t mean that’s not what effects your behavior.
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Do you even hear yourself? How does spending 120 hours to get from level 1-12 and 120 hours to get from level 1-6 even comparable to “looking at your toes” and “having a drink with friends”
Your comparison is spending 120 hours playing a crappy game or 120 hours playing a good game. Changing your level cap from 120 to 60 does not change the quality of this game. But go on with your false comparisons.
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Not everyone thinks it’s a bad idea, some of us agree that it is a necessary change. IMO they should put the work in to making it a repeatable process and do a squish every expansion.
Pick a number to be the permanent level cap, and at the start of every new expansion squish, us all down and let us reclaim our levels back to cap.
I think 100 is a good number for a permanent cap and capped toons should get squished back to 80, uncapped toon squished back to a proportional number. a level 80 would go to 64, a level 50 would go to 40. Maybe set a floor and no one over 20 gets pushed back below 20.
I would be happy with a system like that.
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But how you contextualize, and visualize and generally feel about it matters too.
I’m not upset persay, but I’m wary of it.
The way it was presented in the survey seemed to focus predominantly on pricing models for level boosts, asking questions with variable numbers that can be summarized as “Would you pay X dollars if it would save Y time?” with each survey getting a different combination.
Likewise, with a level squish there is a lot that can go wrong. Just look at the number squishes we’ve had. Its inevitable that something goes wrong. Likewise, unless the level squish is accompanied by other changes (such as to the talent system) then there will be very little that actually changes. If it takes 40 hours to reach 120 and 40 hours to hit the level squish max, the only thing that’s changed is numbers.
Honestly, I just leveled a character purely from questing from 1-110 this past week and leveling has a ton of issues that aren’t numbers. The overwhelming majority of quest rewards don’t give secondary stats, only main stats, crafting professions are completely useless, and honestly, while leveling, I found myself wanting to use First Aid quite a bit (leveled an Arcane Mage) but the tailoring bandages barely heal anything at all. I kid you not, the Legion bandages and the WoD bandages, have a healing difference of less than 300 HP!
A level squish isn’t going to help much unless these are all addressed. In fact, a level squish, aside from changing numbers, won’t change anything without other fundamental changes.
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And I’m telling you that it’ll feel worse for most people.
You have no evidence that it’ll make it feel better. Behavioral science dictates that it’ll feel worse (for most people… individualization will of course alter everything). So even if it does make things feel better for some people, it’ll make things feel worse for others. In which case, what’s the point? Back to breaking the game for no reason.
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Good feedback. Professions are terribad at low levels
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Except that would require they do work Every Single Expansion to balance the levels. And being told “oh, you were level 100? great. Guess what you little poser, you’re now 80 again. You get to grind your way up again.”
Watch how fast the playerbase would plummet if you were that foolish.
The smart thing is try and create a system which is future proof, where you don’t need to constantly go back and mess with things. your idea would require they do the work Every Single Expansion.
That’s just a foolish idea from a PR standpoint, and its a foolish idea from a monetary standpoint. Because that would be Extra Work they’d have to do. Every Expansion.
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Because taking away levels in a supposed RPG is a very stupid thing to do.
What, we are supposed to go back to being level 60 again?
This game is being led by morons who should be fired for ruining a successful franchise.
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Hence Blizzard generally asking people how they feel. I’m not telling people how they should feel. I’m explaining how I feel. Blizzard didn’t just come up with the idea of a squish out of thin air, and if they really didn’t care how people felt, I don’t think they’d bother asking- just like they generally don’t ask before making big changes to the system.
So yeah, it’s being looked at in a more nuanced way.
You say this as if you assume that’s all they’re going to do. They could theoretically also implement a system like guild wars/ESO/whatever with xp giving you points to spend after max level. Perhaps dust of ye olde “Path of the Titans” name from the thing they had planned for Cata and basically start throwing old set bonus and artifact passives in it.
But, hey, if everyone wants to freak out over a partial bit of info without even thinking of what else may be involved, be my guest. ![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
I wouldn’t quit, I would jump in and start reclaiming my levels.