Ion Hazzikostas on leveling and pristine servers

[Vaelorian]

Am I the only one around here that thinks the leveling is just another hurdle towards your goal? Isn't the game played at max level or what?
They are talking about making the leveling longer, but it's just another artificial prolonging of content, where content is actually non-existent for the first 100 levels.
They want to make leveling longer and harder, then they should also balance low level pvp too. That has been unbalanced for far too long.

Don't think you know what they mean with longer and harder. "it is just another artificial prolonging of content". Really? I mean I thought we were all already level 100. So.... what kind of prolonging of content does it mean to us? Exactly nothing. But to the new player, the new alt - that is content for them to enjoy in a more meaningful way.

So you are a new player... you've heard your dad for example tell legendary stories at the dinner table about how he killed a bunch of defias dudes for the 100th time. Your mom rolls her eyes ofcourse and looks at you. You try to shrug it off but you are kind of interested. So you start a level 1 on your dads old account. Log in and go level. Defias what? Oh you mean those beggerlike things... Yeah... I dunno they were kind of a pushover... And Deadmines... well yeah deadmines... good title - what a dull place. We rushed through it and I had no clue what buttons I was pushing. Meanwhile levels were flying all over the place. Oh and were those character I was with actual players? Because no one said a single word. I thought they were NPC's until at the last boss someone chatted "bye". I guess we didn't need to talk because we were bashing buttons instead of taking the time to talk and to figure out how to pull the next pack. So dad.... what was so difficult about that? I guess my dad is a noob.

[MasterHamster]

Am I the only one around here that thinks the leveling is just another hurdle towards your goal? Isn't the game played at max level or what?
They are talking about making the leveling longer, but it's just another artificial prolonging of content, where content is actually non-existent for the first 100 levels.
They want to make leveling longer and harder, then they should also balance low level pvp too. That has been unbalanced for far too long.

Understand pacing in game design. Satisfaction of reaching goals after putting in effort and seeing the reward from that effort.

In leveling that has been long, long lost. Not just because players has "done it before".

I can't stand the argument of "artificial prolonging of content". Every single moment you spend not getting more powerful or seeing something entirely new could be called "artificial prolonging of content" but it is everywhere and is a fundamental part of the design of a persistent online game where reward is a product of effort, not merely "I want this NOW". Because if you get everything NOW you won't appreciate it nearly as much.

The list of "artificial prolonging of content" in WoW, or ANY RPG for that matter, could be miles long, and we can thank these for making the game last longer than a singleplayer campaign game.

There's no doubt that overall enjoyment while leveling would go up if Blizzard managed to hit the mark with low-level balance in Legion. When you stop feeling like it's absolutely nothing but a dull rush to max because you could get a lobotomy and still hit 100 within a week.

But yes I agree, right now leveling is nothing but a hurdle, because max level is the only part of the game currently when you have to think at all. So what if we make leveling great again™?
Or at least, part of the game again.

[Deleted]

I don't mind leveling being fast. Current speed is okay, it still takes about 40 hours with full heirlooms which is quite a large chunk of time that needs to be spent there. In fact 60-80 drags on for too long for my taste. We don't want to go back to 3-5 months until max level (15 days /played), that's far too excessive especially in a max-level centric game.

What needs to be fixed is the complete lack of challenge. As devs pointed out, you just one shot things 90% of the time. That's not fun nor engaging.
Scaling tech will help to solve the issue of outleveling content before you even delve halfway into it.

So yeah, making leveling just slower won't solve the issue, it might even make it even worse. Leveling needs to mean something, the content has to engage you. Having to do 1000 fetch quests and 50 dungeons where nothing poses any threat is mind-numbingly boring.

[Erolian]

A massive issue with questing in WoW has always (I've played since TBC so I'm not so sure about vanilla) been that it isn't just easy. Its boring. The story is ass. There are no mechanics. Sure you used to have those elite zones or quests but was that really hard? No. You'd just grab a few guys with the right roles and proceed to mindlessly kill things like always. It was punishing at times for being too trigger happy but that's just a poor mans difficulty curve. You proceeded to more or less do the same few quests over and over again. Still do. Its just even faster now. They made these changes and players kept asking for them because questing had most of these issues from the beginning. If you could finish an expansion in 8 hours by running the same quests over and over or you could do a bit of a multiplayer scenario that would last for the same amount of time and give the same amount of XP many people would opt for that scenario. Just because it would allow a better story and challenging and more rewarding encounters in the same time frame with less collect 25 of these random objects for the millionth time. It would just be fun.

Just giving mobs more hp or making leveling take longer will do almost nothing to fix what is wrong with questing in WoW. The whole thing is just recycling the same boring quests over and over. Leveling dungeons have basically been the same thing all of this time as well. Everything that makes WoW endgame interesting for anyone that actually participates in it is totally MIA during all of the leveling experience. Its a pretty big disservice to the game.

[rda]

If they make leveling slower, they should increase leveling speed increases on heirlooms to compensate.

I don't mind leveling slow, but only when I want it, not when someone else decides that it must be good for me (that's kind of similar to removing flying).

[Soeroah]

Personally, I think they should increase the SP yield of Heirlooms while simultaneously making leveling slower, so if you still want to level fast as you can now, you can, but if you want to level slower, you can.

Ideally they'd also introduce scaling to old zones so you can stay until you finish all the quests, with or without heirlooms, without over-leveling them.

[Zantos]

isn't that why they're giving out lvl 100 boosts to new players?

The chances of a Brand new player successfully rolling a class / spec (mostly on a hybrid) that they will stick with is slim to non. They will end up leveling another toon that they may find more entertaining. So while for a veteran its a very fast process, its not all that fast and kind of daunting for a new player who is just starting out and is clueless to every aspect of the game.

[MoanaLisa]

The thing I have a problem with comments like these is that imo (yes my opinion) they lack sufficient other variables as to why current leveling is in a bad place.
Gehco: In all honesty what will happen if they just made it slow(er)? Yes, quite right! It will be slow(er)!! So that solves everything right? If they just cut experience everywhere, the leveling content as it is now (heirlooms with insane stats, oneshotting mobs, lack of mobs, lack of elites, lack of elite packs, lack of runners/screamers, lack of mobs that hit harder then the current wet noodle trend etc) will remain the same.

So from what you posted, you only want it to be slow right? Nothing more changed? No danger etc? Just slow?

Part of the discussion was to make it more difficult as well and eliminate the one-shotting that goes on at lower levels. As Watcher said, if they plan around a 15-second combat for end game, they could do something for low levels where it's now not even two or three seconds. It doesn't have to be the same as end game but there's a happy medium for a combat cycle with a mob. I think that's exactly right.

If you don't like slower, use a boost.

[manypillars]

Taken from threads on this forum:

"Levelling is too fast, it is a joke"
"Levelling sucks, I hate it, I want to be max level immediately"
"I like levelling, but it should be fun"
...and everything inbetween.

Personally I like the idea of: "You should not outlevel a zone so quickly, that you cannot complete the story" but it adresses none of the above issues. It is like if you try any computerise between the "no flying" and "yes flying" parties and end up pissing them off and everyone inbetween.

...and at the end of the day...define "fun" in "it should be fun". Some people find pvp fun...I don't.

A one size fits all approach would probably be a bad idea. If they could provide a number of ways for people to control their leveling pace they might be able to create a better situation by allowing people to tailor their leveling to their preferences without one side feeling like it's way too fast and meaningless and the other feeling like Blizzard is holding level cap hostage for $60.

One thing they might be able to do quickly without too much issue would be adding the experience off toggle to the UI setting menu and remove or lower the gold cost. It would need a warning on log in and before allowing people to queue for battlegrounds to remind them that they left it toggled on and the experience can't be recovered and they'll be put in with the twinks. It would allow people to prevent themselves from outleveling a zone indefinitely or even to keep themselves below level if they wanted. It's not really subtle or elegant, but it would offer players a great deal of control.

Adding a toggle option to either make character scale down to the zone or to scale the world up would also be excellent and have the benefit of allowing high level characters to go back to missed low level content and not blow through it. If possible, even having a couple options for the scaling would be nice, with one of them making the world 4-5 levels higher than the player for people who crave that sort of play. Scaling might cause some issues in group play though. It would likely be best if scaling was only available in dungeons with pre-formed groups, but people will of course complain that the hard mode scaling isn't default for LFD because reasons du jour. Dungeons might need a blanket retune anyway though.

With both systems control and the ability to opt out would be important to allow players to focus on what they enjoy. 'Green' quality heirlooms that provide less stats than the current set might be desirable as well.

[Snarky86]

Personally, I like being able to level as fast as I can. However, when I am playing with someone else, it is irritating that we do less than 10 quests in a zone and have to go to the next continent or whatever. Dungeons are even crazier.

[Deleted]

Understand pacing in game design. Satisfaction of reaching goals after putting in effort and seeing the reward from that effort.

In leveling that has been long, long lost. Not just because players has "done it before".

I can't stand the argument of "artificial prolonging of content". Every single moment you spend not getting more powerful or seeing something entirely new could be called "artificial prolonging of content" but it is everywhere and is a fundamental part of the design of a persistent online game where reward is a product of effort, not merely "I want this NOW". Because if you get everything NOW you won't appreciate it nearly as much.

Wow, from the start, has been designed to get rid of the tedious chores which were inhabiting the concurrents MMORPG (like lineage 2, FFXI) back in 2004. By making leveling through outdated content (due to the evolution in class skills over the expansion) longer it will only make the leveling tedious and boring.

What matter is gameplay quality, not the amount of time involved in reaching 100 (or 110) and especially not the "rewards". The reward, playing a video game, is having fun while playing engaging content, which is something which has long been forgotten by MMORPG players. This "reward" stuff is an invention made by bad game designer who can't design fun video games and who want to try to make players stick to their games with a carrot on a stick. It is especially true in a game like FFXIV, where the so called "rewards" are everything there is to the game. In live letters, the game designers spend more time making a presentation of the items and mounts coming in the next patch than showing actual gameplay.

Getting to max level isn't a reward, it's the natural course when you play through a content. And playing through the content cannot be a chore. Therefore the duration length of the leveling experience must be related to the amount of content available. Also, there is little point in making players who already completed the content once with one class complete it again as slowly with another class, when the only point of leveling a new character is to play at max level.

The current leveling experience till the current expansion in wow isn't bad because it is fast, it is bad because all the pre expansion content has been made irrelevant (on a gameplay standpoint) due to the character skills adjustement which come with each expansion. By modifying only the player's skill, balance on old content is lost and the gameplay experience is very poor. And that's what Ion was explaining.

In order to make the pre expansion content more interesting, blizzard would have to revamp and adjust most of the monsters of old expansions. Also, if the leveling is made slower, then meaningful group content must be implemented back into the game at lower levels.

[Illuminance]

But that's exactly what should happen, and is already in place if you think about it from the angle of realm transfers. Paid boosts should be the alternative for the immediate gratification crowd, and a better leveling experience should be what's left for players who want to pursue it.

I'm not sure why anyone would have faith that they're actually going to correct things though. You'll see a half measure or 2, and that's about it.

Color me cynical, but I expect Blizzard's motivation to slow down leveling is just to incentivize paid boosts. There are a great number of players who would rather just blow through the levels with heirlooms and not fork over money to Blizzard (this is why heirlooms were instated in the first place). Slowing down leveling will just irritate them, and some will end up spending cash they otherwise wouldn't have wanted to spend out of frustration. I think if they want to improve the leveling experience, they should look into zone scaling like Legion/GW2 does.

[Eon Drache]

Not sure if this pertains to you or not but you can still finish the zone even if the quests are greyed out. If the intention of someone leveling is to enjoy the story then out leveling a zone should not matter since you would finish the story or chain regardless of getting experience or not.

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That are totally optional and no one is required to use.

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Why do you have to leave the zone before you complete the story?

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I think that will happen if it is well received in Legion.

See the /s?

[McNeil]

Leveling has always been the most fun for me, kinda suprised to see so many disliking it and just want to reach max level asap. But with the game being out for so long I can somewhat get behind it, its just that I get bored way to fast with end game by running the same raids over and over again. Its also why I still love playing vanilla, for its awesome questing.

Good to see its being looked at atleast. The pacing of WoD's leveling is just ridiculously fast, I shouldn't reach max level within a week as a very casual player.

[Deleted]

I dont believe its a problem if leveling wasnt just oneshotting mobs.. which it currently is.

I hope that they dont put the pendulum on the other side, tho.. as blizzard usually does that.

[Deleted]

i'm not sure how this is a good idea when nothing is different at max level

[Gilgameshh]

Leveling at this point in the game should be fast until the newest expansion's content. At that point, the leveling should be a slow grind like it used to be.

If leveling was slow in the latest expansion it would give reasons to implement more group quests and elite zones. Having to actually group with people in WoW should be encouraged like it used to be, because why not? You never needed to group in vanilla to hit 60, but it was definitely the most efficient way of doing it. Catering to one group of people (the solo players in an MMO...) is just nonsensical.

Slowing the grind from 100-110 in Legion (as a current example) would also have the potential to encourage people to stick to 1-3 characters. This would obviously need to be in conjunction with more character progression and end-game content, which the game sorely lacks. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. Blizzard is happy catering to those who enjoy playing a bunch of alts in multiple difficulties because it's simply the easiest way to create "content." That's not actually real content, but there's a subset of players that enjoy this play style and Blizzard is pushing it with all their power. It's not working, but I guess they have extremely limited resources and can't do better?

Slowing the grind in the latest expansion, along with making groups a bigger part of the experience, would allow people to learn their spec a lot better before they hit end-game. Currently, the leveling is so easy that new players who hit end-game can't even beat silver Proving Grounds. It's not going to make an insanely big difference, but those who played in vanilla should remember how much easier it was to play their spec effectively once they hit 60. It doesn't help rotations and spec building for end-game necessarily, but it certainly helps fluidity and ability orientation. It's just common sense. I feel like many who argue the point never played in vanilla/TBC.

As much as I hate time gating, I don't mind it as it pertains to the leveling experience. Part of the reward for leveling is unlocking new abilities and talents, so it's not as if leveling is devoid of character progression. I understand the argument that increasing the difficulty of leveling from 1-1xx is kinda pointless (and I tend to agree), but current expansion leveling would certainly benefit from a longer grind.

According to Ion, the team really wants to allow new/returning players to jump right into end-game. I'm not sure why this is such a big deal, unless the game is so terrible that any amount of time spent playing will turn someone off. New/returning players should have to learn the ropes because it's only going to benefit them once they hit end-game. If a new/returning player really wants to play end-game with their friends, their friends always have the option to power level them through the content. It's not like you should have to do everything alone in an MMO-RPG. Power leveling has been around since vanilla, anyway.

In a game where most people are already max leveling waiting on an expansion, a slower grind to get to the current expansion's leveling content makes very little sense. What kind of an epic journey are you going to have when there are barely any people leveling alongside you? I would say it's yet another push into the solo direction if it wasn't for the fact that it's likely a ploy for people to pay for more character boosts.

[Triggered Fridgekin]

It should be an 'experience' when you do it the first time through but then any additional play after that aside from doing so on an alternate faction is tedious and should come with an alt XP bonus of sorts.

I can't be bothered to level a new character from scratch as it stands right now with heirlooms out the ass and XP potions so if they ever dialed that XP back in content which is no longer relevant then I'd simply stop. The boost still wouldn't even be an option because it's a bullshit moneygrab.

[Morbownz]

I'd rather they just scaled Outland and Northrend, I'd be worried that the old world (our home) would lose some of it's connection or value if you couldn't associate zones with danger level. What I mean is, if I am level 14 I wouldn't attempt to run through Arathi Highlands without being killed, therefore there's a some sense of progression.
Obviously I might be completely wrong.

[Krom2040]

As far as I'm concerned, Ion nailed what was wrong with leveling right now and he very strongly alluded to what would be my ideal fix. Here's the breakdown of what I believe he's suggesting they'll do:

* Deploy the scaling tech to all of the leveling regions (i.e. all Vanilla mobs/quests scale from 1-60, all BC mobs/quests scale from 58-70, etc.)
* Tune mobs so that they take 10-15 seconds to kill instead of being instagibbed
* Bring heirlooms more in line with drops so that heirlooms are consistently maybe 20% better rather than the 200% better that they currently are at low levels (up past 60 or 70 the difference stops being so large)

As far as I'm concerned this completely covers it. This gives them the flexibility to tune experience gain so that the game can be more challenging without also taking additional time, and more importantly, gives them the room they'll need in the future to further speed up the experience curve without breaking anything. I would absolutely love to be able to do 1-20 in Elwynn Forest, 20-40 in Red Ridge, and 40-60 in Eastern Plaguelands, or any other progression like that. I would love to be able to do things like start (and probably) end my Pandaria experience in the Dread Wastes; how often does anybody touch that zone anymore? Right now you out-level all of Pandaria before you've even finished the Jade Forest.

I get the impression that they know EXACTLY how to fix this problem, which is great to hear. I've basically leveled all of my recent alts by spamming tank/healing dungeon queues, because questing is just such a pain in the ass.

As for you guys saying stuff like "leveling is so archaic, they should just get rid of it", I don't know what to tell you. Your idea of what the game should be is just totally disconnected from reality, like those guys who think dungeon trash should be removed because "it's just filler" or whatever.