Is it time to scrap Character Levels?

[Kokolums]

Getting rid of leveling would not be enough. Other people would demand max level chars that are geared out with epics when you create them. And that would not be enough. Others would want to be able to one-shot the final boss of the expac solo. THAT is where they want to be. At least for 5 minutes. Then they will complain WoW is boring and quit.

Hey, the core of an RPG is using fun skills and spells to kill things. Leveling is a mechanic that provides you a reason to do it. The end. If you hate that, you certainly hate the RPG part of it all.

[ro9ue]

I wanted levels removed in this game since Cata. It just devalues so much work, segregates content, and segregates players. When you are at the point where leveling is so meaningless you are willing to ---sell--- a character boost - it's time to look at why this system exists.

Guild Wars 2, while it's flaws, at least made it more of just a tracking system for progression instead of a hard content gate. I wish they had the balls to just remove it completely.

The problem with leveling, and I've said it on these boards a zillion times, is that it sits in direct contradiction to the primary strengths of an MMO. But people want to keep it because for some reason they believe it's a core system in an "RPG". That's fine for a single player RPG. It's help guides you through content and gives a good power progression. But let's look at the core features of an MMO:

• Open World
• Massively Multiplayer

Levels fuck up both of those things. Your open world isn't so "open" when you look at a massive map of zones, but really there is only about 2% of it that will be relevant to your level at any given time. You can't "openly" go anywhere when you're level X, because level X has to go to Y for their progression content.

Massively Multiplayer is great... except for levels. Your friends are level X, and you start later and are level Y... well you need to be the same level to actually play together. This isn't good at all. So bad that they decided to just sell leveling boosts to let you play with your buds.


IMO - The entire world should always be the same level with 3 ranks of difficulty. Easy mobs, hard mobs, and rare/epic mobs. In WoW terms, maybe regular mobs are the ones without the dragon portrait, silver are rares that are soloable but have some unique skills that might pose a challenge, and gold portrait mobs that are more easily killed in a group. Then you have every zone remain viable with 3 steps of challenge.

What about character progression? I firmly believe that a progression system driven mostly by cosmetics could work. However, I also think you can do something like the WoW talent system where you level an "Alternate Advancement" tree, and instead of unlocking more power... you unlock more options. So imagine this:

WoW's current talent system. It has 3 columns. You start out by choosing one from each column, then by "leveling" your alternate advancement points you can unlock other choices... which would go pretty fast. Then the longer AA grinds would be cosmetics, sort of like Green Fire-like stuff.

[grexly75]

I wanted levels removed in this game since Cata. It just devalues so much work, segregates content, and segregates players. When you are at the point where leveling is so meaningless you are willing to ---sell--- a character boost - it's time to look at why this system exists.

Guild Wars 2, while it's flaws, at least made it more of just a tracking system for progression instead of a hard content gate. I wish they had the balls to just remove it completely.

The problem with leveling, and I've said it on these boards a zillion times, is that it sits in direct contradiction to the primary strengths of an MMO. But people want to keep it because for some reason they believe it's a core system in an "RPG". That's fine for a single player RPG. It's help guides you through content and gives a good power progression. But let's look at the core features of an MMO:

• Open World
• Massively Multiplayer

Levels fuck up both of those things. Your open world isn't so "open" when you look at a massive map of zones, but really there is only about 2% of it that will be relevant to your level at any given time. You can't "openly" go anywhere when you're level X, because level X has to go to Y for their progression content.

Massively Multiplayer is great... except for levels. Your friends are level X, and you start later and are level Y... well you need to be the same level to actually play together. This isn't good at all. So bad that they decided to just sell leveling boosts to let you play with your buds.


IMO - The entire world should always be the same level with 3 ranks of difficulty. Easy mobs, hard mobs, and rare/epic mobs. In WoW terms, maybe regular mobs are the ones without the dragon portrait, silver are rares that are soloable but have some unique skills that might pose a challenge, and gold portrait mobs that are more easily killed in a group. Then you have every zone remain viable with 3 steps of challenge.

What about character progression? I firmly believe that a progression system driven mostly by cosmetics could work. However, I also think you can do something like the WoW talent system where you level an "Alternate Advancement" tree, and instead of unlocking more power... you unlock more options. So imagine this:

WoW's current talent system. It has 3 columns. You start out by choosing one from each column, then by "leveling" your alternate advancement points you can unlock other choices... which would go pretty fast. Then the longer AA grinds would be cosmetics, sort of like Green Fire-like stuff.

The thing is that pretty much every game be it RPG, MMO, FPS or whatever have some form of leveling system.. Every MMO that I know of has a leveling system for without leveling the journey to the endgame becomes meaningless or in reality there would be no journey to the endgame as it would not even exist..

And as such there would really be no need for a game world but just a series of instanced areas for dungeons and raids and nothing else.. Since there is no leveling there would be no need for the game world to be there..

[Deleted]

The thing is that pretty much every game be it RPG, MMO, FPS or whatever have some form of leveling system.. Every MMO that I know of has a leveling system for without leveling the journey to the endgame becomes meaningless or in reality there would be no journey to the endgame as it would not even exist..

And as such there would really be no need for a game world but just a series of instanced areas for dungeons and raids and nothing else.. Since there is no leveling there would be no need for the game world to be there..

So the gearing between raid tiers is meaningless?
Just keep that, put in a bit of time-gating fluff content to keep the desired speed of consumption und you evaded the need for leveling all together... Easy isn't it? For the RPG learning of Things: Get the Trainers back und jack up the prices. So now Money is the "power" progression instead of level.

You get a whole world full of content that's not instantly irrelevant, but grows old depending on the iLevel increases of Raids.

[panzaghor]

I like it the way it is

[Morbownz]

In the current version of the game character levels before level 90 actually don't seem to serve any real purpose, you're not encouraged to learn anything from 1-90 and the story is completely irrelevant. In WoD I believe new players would have been fine starting at level 90, unlike older versions of the game.

[ro9ue]

The thing is that pretty much every game be it RPG, MMO, FPS or whatever have some form of leveling system.. Every MMO that I know of has a leveling system for without leveling the journey to the endgame becomes meaningless or in reality there would be no journey to the endgame as it would not even exist..

And as such there would really be no need for a game world but just a series of instanced areas for dungeons and raids and nothing else.. Since there is no leveling there would be no need for the game world to be there..

So you're saying the end-all-be-all to the gameplay is filling the bar? Sorry I have to disagree with that.

If you read my whole post, you'll see there are other forms of progression that have worked in other games pretty well, it just hasn't been tested for MMOs yet. Look at the leveling in CoD or a game like Overwatch. It's to unlock cosmetics, and sometimes... for nothing other than to fill the bar. What about Heroes of the Storm or other MOBAs with a leveling system? Skins, cosmetics and to get game currency or unlock more -options- like talents. There's only horizontal progression in those games, whereas every MMO has went with vertical progression.

[Marakesh]

You would think Blizzard would put some effort into the first few hours new players will experience in WoW. Having gone back to those old starter areas, I realized how old and out of date the whole thing is. Leveling itself doesn't fit the zones, they weren't made for this kind of leveling, and it is clunky and dull to play through it now. Blizz ought to create a 20 hour or so starter area so they could introduce new players to WoW. Then have a leveless game where gold, new abilities, a few high value achievements are worthy goals, and cosmetics are the rewards for going out into the entire world of Warcraft.

I had some more ideas along this line last year - http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-back-into-WoW

[Cæli]

It's nice to ask this kind of questions but I don't get why some players want to change the essence of the game. If you change it you change the game into another. What's the point. You never liked the game once in the past ? The game should expand around the essence/core of what WoW is, not change that said essence.

[Blackmist]

I think they've outstayed their welcome. It doesn't really teach you to play. You can't really do that until you get all your abilities. It just teaches you bad habits and gives you far too long to get used to them.

But what do you replace them with? How do you prevent players collecting raid gear and blasting through the quests as if they were nothing? Why would people even do quests? I feel the game isn't strong enough to support a world at this point.

[Deleted]

I think they've outstayed their welcome. It doesn't really teach you to play. You can't really do that until you get all your abilities. It just teaches you bad habits and gives you far too long to get used to them.

But what do you replace them with? How do you prevent players collecting raid gear and blasting through the quests as if they were nothing? Why would people even do quests? I feel the game isn't strong enough to support a world at this point.

Because all the time spend on leveling content could be used to make the quests hard/engaging enough for players with high iLevel? To support a world, they would need to change the game which removing leveling or at least increasing the level further would demand.

[Count Zero]

All this Artifact stuff seems to be basically a rebirth of some of the scrapped elements of Path of the Titans. I feel like this could be an alpha/beta test for eventually having an alternate power progression not at all tied to level. Like maybe we'd max at 150 and it would be all (Path of the Titans or whatever) from there.

[Molis]

No. Absolutely not.

It is one of the few things myself and my friends that are still playing look forward to.

[Deleted]

I would like to see levels removed in favour of a more fluid progression system - progressing through abilities, equipment and player skill, with zones and bosses having tiers of difficulty. Realistically though that would result in a different (and imo better) game, so it would probably be too drastic a change for wow.

[rhorle]

I think that levels should be scrapped and rather than "leveling" through numbers, your character could focus on finding new spells and abilities. You would start with a basic toolkit for your main spec and then find everything else along the way. In the same register, 5-mans would be revamped along difficulty levels and drop increasingly good loot. Throw in world quests for all of Azeroth and not just Legion zones and you're on a good way to bring back the "World" into "World of Warcraft".

So you remove the word level, but still have levels? A rose by any other name is still a rose. What determines when a character learns X ability? What do you call a character that had earned two more abilities then another character? Every idea that says levels are bad and need to be scrapped still contain levels. They just rename the system and say its better when it is just levels.

- - - Updated - - -

So why not just scrap the entire ordeal and possibly replace it with something more optimal designed for today's game?

So replace levels with <modern name for levels>. It is still levels and you still need a way to show a difference between characters, content, etc. While Legion introduces scaling while leveling it still has an end point for end game and still has enemies that are harder. Without levels how do you tell that? How is a character that is currently level 10 shown to be different then level 30? Level 110?

Levels still mean something if you want them to. Most times in the past people only cared about the milestone levels because you gained the most from those. Like unlocking mounts or currently unlocking talents, dungeons etc when low levels.

[Cien]

What ho,

So with regards to character levels, I think they've outplayed their purpose.

Back when we had 60 levels they used to mean something. But like with any number once it goes too high, it loses its oomph. It's the same with everything, from gold to stat points and raw damage output. Low numbers mean more to us, because they're easier to grasp and each incremental increase means more. (E.g., going from level 9 to 10 is arguably more impactful today than going from level 69 to 70. Just like turning 10 means more to us in real life than turning 70. Somebody making little money appreciates pay day more than somebody making millions.)

To make things worse, the high number of levels we have today has obviously become a steep barrier of entry for players, whether new or returning, as evidenced by the fact that Blizzard is now offering everything from Heirlooms to Character Boosts.

So why not just scrap the entire ordeal and possibly replace it with something more optimal designed for today's game?

Edit: A previous version of this post also contained a suggested feature, but I've since removed it and would instead like to endorse the idea from Tomana in post #11. Scrapping levels and instead having characters discover additional abilities through play sounds wonderful, and like a great incentive to actually try out different forms of gameplay. Catch them all, build the character, and all that.

if its not broken don't fix it

[endersblade]

To be honest, ilevel could easily replace levels. You do quests, run dungeons, get better gear, move up in scale, eventually raid, basically just like how it is now, but without the FULL level grind we have now.

However, I would say that items would need a complete overhaul...we'd have to have a significant drop in the amount of BoEs, otherwise new players would be able to easily and instantly be 'top level' from the start. We can get rid of leveling, but we still need that grind to help people get used to their class and abilities.

In other words, the amount of restructure necessary to pull something like this off would likely require a new game. Doing something like this with an expansion would be too jarring.

[rhorle]

So now Money is the "power" progression instead of level.

What do you call a person that bought X ability versus someone who has bought one less? You still have levels but you just don't want to call them levels for physiological reasons. If its all in your head then there is no reason to change the game. Change your mind.

[Ringthane]

Leveling for me is kinda boring, i like to just login and raid. Would be happy if the leveling step was just removed. It also puts allot of new players off the game who just want to join the game and raid/pvp with friends.. (instead they have to spend like 10hs leveling up first if they boost weeks for some players if they buy base game)

You have the whole "i killed the greatest threat, now i'm told to collect meat" thing also.

And lots of new players (and current players) love leveling. They love the stories that are told, and the zones and environments they travel through. Don't rip out half of the game just because you personally can't sit through a few hours of questing.

[Deleted]

leveing is the core of a rp, so sure lets kill the core off....