Discussion: Leveling is a dead concept, how should it be replaced?

[Evaddon]

This isn't saying remove the quest, or new zones, this is saying remove the level next to your name, with the thing that provides it,experience points, make quest matter by rewarding player power (Example:Artifact Power) that will always matter through out expansions along with skills/abilities and gear, even reputations to reward you for adventures/quest. This would feel more like character progression because after each expansion you will always end with more power then what you started with by completing the questing experience

...Not just speaking about WoW, but in generally every MMO.
Its a needless climb of "the real game starts at level cap" and hinters the progression of the player until they finally reach that cap making everything before so essentially pointless because lets face it...no mmo's starting experience is a giant tutorial, often just bland unoriginal kill/gather/group quest while some zones might tell an interesting story, or you might find a interesting chain quest...but guess what, you'll out level it before you finish the zone or that chain! Because wouldn't you know it...every mmo seems to come with experience boosting gear nowadays which makes questing even more so unnecessarily fast, even when before hand it..was unnecessarily fast.

But you'll say"But its is necessary to get to the real game faster" but then you have games offering max level boost you can buy, or a previous expansion level boost even rewarding max characters with a purchase of a new expansion. Many games even strip leveling after a time to go for an item level sort of approach. So why not replace it altogether?

And further more, its just going to get ridiculous. Hell look at WoW, we are already 110 what's next 125, 140??

Its to late for WoW's early game to take this approach but next expansion, not gracing us with a veil 10 more levels to grind out? Possible. They already have the scaling technology in place.

So the question is, how do we make the questing experience rewarding and impactful to the end game experience as well making it a essential stepping stone in player progression without rewarding experience,levels for gratification?

P.S. Not saying remove the questing experience, just remove...experience points to get to level 2 and so on and so fourth. Reward player power, and abilities, and gear by questing instead of the traditional experience and new number to point to your shirt for the next 30 minutes until the new shiny number gets pinned

[Grimnakh]

It shouldnt be replaced. Leveling is fun and if anything should take longer so youre forced to do the old content. Removing level boosting would be nice.

[Super Kami Dende]

Dead to who? Leveling in a core part of RPGS.

[ComputerNerd]

When people suggest scaling to replace leveling, they forget something very important.
Number tweaking will not provide any consistent experience.
Early zones vary in a lot more ways than simply smaller numbers, but providing an experience catering to those there for the first time.
Simpler mechanics in particular.
Scaling up Dun Morogh to the same amount will not make it compete with Highmountain.

[Evaddon]

Dead to who? Leveling in a core part of RPGS.

By the developers of MMO's who've been systematically making leveling a skim job, seriously you can hit level cap in a couple hours or a day of play

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leveling should be like it was in vanilla.

Slow,tedious and grindy? No that's not the right direction either I'm afraid.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Lol, it's not a dead concept, and doesn't need replacing.

Revamping the leveling experience on the other hand, applying scaling tech and Broken Isles-style story delivery and questing. THAT is needed.

Other than that, the leveling experience is specifically tailored to entirely new players, with Blizzard's years of feedback and data collected. Veteran players will have their leveling experiences in current content, and it works perfectly especially with the Legion systems.

[Evaddon]

It shouldnt be replaced. Leveling is fun and if anything should take longer so youre forced to do the old content. Removing level boosting would be nice.

Yeah I'm saying remove it for something like gaining abilities by questing, power points (artifact power for example), skill points. Just remove level 1, level 2, level 50, level 62, level 70 and the need for experiencd

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Lol, it's not a dead concept, and doesn't need replacing.

Revamping the leveling experience on the other hand, applying scaling tech and Broken Isles-style story delivery and questing. THAT is needed.

Other than that, the leveling experience is specifically tailored to entirely new players, with Blizzard's years of feedback and data collected. Veteran players will have their leveling experiences in current content, and it works perfectly especially with the Legion systems.

The questing experience will still be there, I'm saying remove the big shiny level numbers and the experience points is all

[Teri]

Leveling is key part of an RPG.

I dunno what else.

We already have an extra XP bar called Artifacts or Honor.

And Item levels are already a thing, just limited by level, and extreme scaling due to the stat squish, heirlooms jump a couple 100 itemlevel once ygo over an expansions cap.

1-100 health/damage curve is a huge mess tho.

[LongTimeCreeper]

It shouldnt be replaced. Leveling is fun and if anything should take longer so youre forced to do the old content. Removing level boosting would be nice.

Fuck that. I'm glad you are not a developer.

Why do you care if someone else uses a level boost? It does not effect you in any way. If you don't like it, don't use it.

[Osmeric]

No leveling?! The ghost of Gary Gygax is rolling (3d6) in his grave.

[Deleted]

It's more like mmorpg developers have totally failed with the leveling experience. I'm not sure if increasing the level cap each expansion is such a good idea, rewarding new zones with interesting content in it doesn't need leveling just my opinion though. I think they did quite well with Suramar in that regard.

[Evaddon]

Fuck that. I'm glad you are not a developer.

Why do you care if someone else uses a level boost? It does not effect you in any way. If you don't like it, don't use it.

Literally not even the point of this post, please read it before you comment.

[satimy]

Even though WoD was extremely bad for a lot of reasons it had a very good leveling system. The first couple playthroughs you could pick your zones a bit and the story and lore was deep in most zones. Legion seemed fake important, outside of Valsharrah I didnt really care about anything story wise.

[Evaddon]

No leveling?! The ghost of Gary Gygax is rolling (3d6) in his grave.

Just not the traditional experience point leveling bullshit to get a new number by your name. I'm saying quest give player power, abilities, gear, instead of experience points

[Quincey]

If anything the leveling experience should be extended not replaced. I wouldn't sniff at leveling taking 5x longer than it does across the board. Make us go everywhere chasing down quests of our level to find enough xp points.

Trying to streamline everything is the 'dead concept' here, imo.

[Evaddon]

It's more like mmorpg developers have totally failed with the leveling experience. I'm not sure if increasing the level cap each expansion is such a good idea, rewarding new zones with interesting content in it doesn't need leveling just my opinion though. I think they did quite well with Suramar in that regard.

Exactly, a cool experience. Rewarded alot of artifact power (player power) which is exactly what I'm referring to, honestly didn't even think of Suramar for the example. Just that but a little bigger, more rewards with meaning

[Lime]

I wouldn't call it a dead concept nor does it need to be replaced, but I'm definitely down with them improving it somehow to make it more engaging. You know, stuff beyond their usual "Dungeon bosses now have X% more HP and hit Y% harder".

[LongTimeCreeper]

Literally not even the point of this post, please read it before you comment.

WTF are you on about? I responded to somebody else, not you. I read your post. Not every response needs to be directed to the original post.

[Evaddon]

If anything the leveling experience should be extended not replaced. I wouldn't sniff at leveling taking 5x longer than it does across the board. Make us go everywhere chasing down quests of our level to find enough xp points.

Trying to streamline everything is the 'dead concept' here, imo.

I'd be down for that as well, I think Blizzard will do a excellent job with scaling in their future expansions rather then extending the level cap though

[Teri]

Leveling needs more freedom on where to go, many zones are useless now due to overleveling, scaling to a certain point could add some freedom. But I wouldn't want to see 110 or 120 mobs Everywhere.

Also the same expansion 1-2 start zone repeating over and over and over gets really really boring.

Especially Jade forest and Frostfire ridge in my book.

And please don't say "if you don't like the zone, go dungeon or pet battle" that does not fix it. I would love to level in twilight highlands or dread wastes or something , but by the time you reach those zones by earlier ways, you usually are capped already by following the proper order. Capping an expansion cuts xp by like 75%. I did level a char from 80-90 Cata-only in Legion however but it was tedious and not very rewarding.