Linear leveling is outdated.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Aren't you tired of always having to follow a patch until you hit max level?

Honestly, it's go from A to Z - sometime having choice between C1, C2 or C3, but ultimately it's always the same. Follow the path, or you're wasting your time!

This is old. It's time to wipe the notion that leveling requires you to follow a given path.

After Ion interview, I genuinely hope that they'll revamp old zones with the scaling system. Make all dungeons and zones accessible at any level - ultimately your level should only serve as personal progression. As a player, what I want is to explore a World of fantasy, danger, challenges and storytelling. Yes, not everyone is interested in leveling, but with all the free boosts you get - or even the paid ones - you can skip the leveling altogether. So what's the point to keep leveling so streamlined?

But even there, we should have the choice at how we want to build our characters. Talent tiers are not that useful - we should be able to choose a tier when we want, instead of being fed linearly. So at level 15, I should have the option to unlock a talent row of my choice. At 30, same thing.

Same goes for spells. I should have the choice to choose the spells I want when I want them. If I unlock 3 spells at 15, well I should get the choice of which spell I get. When spell ranks were there, we could choose what abilities were relevant to buy and which were not. I should get the choice at what spell I feel is relevant versus which is not when I'm leveling.

And of course, leveling should be harder. Mobs shouldn't get two-shot with green gear. Pulling massive groups should be dangerous.

World of Warcraft has a lot of potential ahead of itself. They just need to grab the opportunity and start fixing things if they ever want to hope being relevant for the next five years.

On a side note, I'm still hyped for Legion.

[Wries]

Personally I believe this scaling easily can become the newest cancer introduced to the game. Inhibiting the feeling that a level actually made you stronger. Already the developers have at least noted this and tried some counter measurements.

As for zones, I also believe there should be zones that simply require an experienced traveler/hero. The game has lost so many carrots already, so "choose your zone" will just let you go to what you perceive to be the cool one first and feel less motivated to go on afterwards.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

Personally I believe this scaling easily can become the newest cancer introduced to the game. Inhibiting the feeling that a level actually made you stronger. Already the developers have at least noted this and tried some counter measurements.

As for zones, I also believe there should be zones that simply require an experienced traveler/hero. The game has lost so many carrots already, so "choose your zone" will just let you go to what you perceive to be the cool one first and feel less motivated to go on afterwards.

Yes, I can definitely back this up, too. The goal is not to remove the feeling of progression - rather, it's to give back the freedom we used to have about character progression, which wasn't linear before. Not everything should be scaled: heroic/mythic dungeons, raids, but also the newest expansion content. Most of the issues you've brought up are already problematic with the character boost, sadly.

[CaptainV]

I honestly think levelings problem is that having 110 levels might sound cool in theory, but in reality, unless those levels actually mean something, its just a number.

The problem is leveling has no "relevence" anymore, once you hit a certain point you can just LFD boost yourself to 60 in no time and from there its smoothe sailing into TBC/WOTLK/Cata onwards.

Now im not the kinda person that wants LFD removed, frankly I think its the best addition to the game, LFR on the other hand can go die in a fire.

But what I do think is that we do need more freedom, the non linear method of progression in this day and age where technology is truly advanced enough to support such a thing is entirley fair game. I feel that it should be possible to walk from Elwynn to Searing Gorge and still level in that same zone at the "same" level your currently at.

This would benefit the game more than hurt it because it would promote:

1. Actual Enjoyment in playing alts, it lets you hold back playing certain zones because you actually want to go to them at a later time, or play another character to experience them instead.

2. It actually gives later level players a reason to go to other zones and help lower level players since everyone benefits at the same rate. It makes the world feel more relevent in the long term and adds a strong element of sandbox.

3. It would let blizzard make every zone's story relevent rather than making them a linear progression from one place to the next. One of the big differences between a singleplayer RPG, and an MMO, is that MMO's should not feel like a linear road everyone has to travel through at the same pace. Freedom of personal choice is part of the thing that makes every individual unique in an MMO experience.

4. It could allow them to potentially remove/change phasing technology to support working with lower players and helping people mutually progress as it would elimiante the need to use level differences to alter things.


However....

I think this isnt enough, I think there needs to be something else too.

A Level Squish.

Before you say: No, thats dumb, dont even go there, I have a strong counter argument to you:

When was the last time you felt the world was relevent?

When did you actually 'care' about the levels you experienced?

When was the last time getting a new piece of content was actually valueable?

Theres alot of things that currently, leveling only makes unnecessarily long, tedious, boring, and outdated.

By removing that obsticle entirley, you can focus on actually making content relevent again.

So I say... reduce 110 levels, to just 40, 40 levels is a perfectly fine number.

Why? Because it lets them set a cap on specific content in later maps such as Outland, Northrend, Cataclysm and Mists, and Warlords/Legion/Future Expansion content rather than giving it unnecessary value.

It gives people the freedom to choose the adventure "they" want to experience.

It also means that smaller level progressions make the actual levels themselves more worthwhile, unlocking content would feel relevent again as getting your first mount at level 10 would feel like an accomplishment, getting your first epic mount at level 20, your first flying mount at 30, first epic flying mount at 40.

It would bring back actual "value" to the progression, rather than making it empty and hollow as a garrison quest table.

You could tie pvp to level 5, LFD to level 15, you could make raiding at level 40, and heroic dungeons as early as level 35.

You could also call this entire thing the optimistic dreams of a deluded player, but frankly I dont think its that insane to believe that less is more.

[jellmoo]

The big issues is that the technical hurdle to accomplish this is not small. When the player base constantly wants more and better new content, spending those kinds of resources on outdated content is a tough pill to swallow.

I agree with the principle in theory: Giving players more freedom in how they approach the leveling process is a good thing.

I'm just not convinced that WoW is the place to do. I think it needs to be baked into the game from the start, rather than tacked on more than 10 years later.

[sethman75]

Because it worked so well for (insert every other open world mmo)

[coprax]

Having every zone scaled down to your level completely removes any sense of danger in the world.
Skull-level mobs that kick your ass any show you, that you don't belong here (yet) are an integral part of an mmo experience.

[Tomana]

Having every zone scaled down to your level completely removes any sense of danger in the world.
Skull-level mobs that kick your ass any show you, that you don't belong here (yet) are an integral part of an mmo experience.

That's a small "advantage" to lose compared to the gains you get from being able to use all the open world as a playground.

[Kokolums]

I made a post months ago about how I'd revamp the leveling system. I'd make it its own progression path. You can read it here:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...eveling-System

Or see the link in my signature.

[coprax]

That's a small "advantage" to lose compared to the gains you get from being able to use all the open world as a playground.

then do it like guild wars 2 for example: only scale characters down, not up. That way you can finish each zone without outleveling it but still have to follow a loose progression path and cannot jump into high level zones from the beginning.

having every zone available to you from the start makes storytelling even worse, because the devs have to make each zone a separate story without tie-ins and so on.

[deniter]

Linear questing is the cancer for any game, not only MMOs but for single player games as well.

It's easy and straight forward to design, however, so if there are enough people who still pay full price for such content, why would you do anything else.

I've stopped buying Bioware games long time ago for this reason only, and 90% of modern MMOs belong to this list as well. In growing market you can make your £$€ without even trying, or that's what they seem to think.

[Tomana]

then do it like guild wars 2 for example: only scale characters down, not up. That way you can finish each zone without outleveling it but still have to follow a loose progression path and cannot jump into high level zones from the beginning.

That could certainly be a solution worth exploring. The problem with GW2 solution is, however, the lack of "power progression" feeling.

[Tomana]

This is old. It's time to wipe the notion that leveling requires you to follow a given path.

That would require too much thinking in order to come up with original ideas.

[Rafoel]

Oh sure, it "seems" like you're getting stronger, but only if you hang out in non-relevant content areas just to get your kicks. But yeah, the design of RPGs has always worked this way, and it's funny to me that when it's made "more obvious" people panic.

More like "people stop having fun while playing the game". But if that's the same for you, enjoy the lost $$.

[Echo of Soul]

Well if you are telling a story you need some linearity, at least within each zone. But yeah if each zone is self contained I think you should be able to pick which ones you want to do, at least if there's more of them than you need to reach max lvl.

[Deleted]

IMO scaling zones for level is a terrible idea.

[XDurionX]

Scaling works in single player games, but in an mmo it´s a terrbile idea. What´s the point of levels if i can´t move on and the enemies get as much stronger as i do? No.

Four times Loremaster here.

[Deleted]

If they do that, boosts become absurd, so there'll be a cut in income, that means theyll never do that. and imo, its the structure of a MMO, change it and its no longer a MMO.


you should try LoL or DoTA2, those are your games

[Deleted]

I'm a bit against complete game-wide scaling, aka allowing anyLVL to quest anywhere.

But the scaling could be implemented in a limited way, so you could at least complete zones and don't care about outleveling them.

Right now the zones have extremely rigid level ranges, which is really shitty. For example I cannot go to Uldum at level 80, I have to wait until level 83. Which is mind-bogglingly dumb nowadays because you level 80-85 in a single zone with ease.

I would do the following:

Vanilla still 1 - 60
Make the zones scaleable by questlevel +10 (max 62). Aka you can continue and quest in Redridge past lv 20 if you like, it will remain fully effective until lv30. This will allow you to complete zones without having to abandon them halfway or even quarter-way

All the exapnsions: TBC, WLK, CATA, MOP, WOD

The whole continent scales in their respective level ranges.

So in TBC, ALL zones would be marked as 60 - 70
In WLK, ALL zones would be marked as 70 - 80

etcetera

This way you just pick a zone and quest in it, end of fucking story. You don't need to pay attention to greening out & greying out quests, this is just out of picture.
Legion questing is SO GOOD because of this... you just don't care about levels and game telling you to leave anymore, you JUST QUEST AS YOU LIKE!!!

Doing leveling that way also gives alts replayability, because you do NOT have to complete 80-85 in Hyjal 11 times anymore, you can pick ANY cata zone at level 80 and that's it!

[ComputerNerd]

Difficulty of content is not defined purely by how big the numbers behind the abilities are.
There is also the variety of mechanics.
Low level content is outright simpler, so matching the high zone numbers is not going to replicate the same experience.
It will still be simpler outright.
In addition to the opposite, high level zones scaled down are still more difficult due to the increased variety and complexity of abilities used.

Players who aren't experienced should have that progression in difficulty that doesn't come from just numbers, that comes from the mechanics they have to deal with.
Therefore there is no good way to scale every zone to every level of player.

There is room for some scaling, but at a much smaller range, with upper and lower limits.