Patch 8.0: Extreme Number Squish

[styil]

Oh curses for that sheet being imbedded in the link! At least now I can critique this flow.
I do believe this is fast to a ludicrous degree when considering new players, and damages the possibilities of leveling how you want, like how world scaling can offer.
Consider the barrens. A player that feels like leveling in the barrens is suddenly invited to go to outland or northrend, where the experience effectively ends at level 30.
Then they go to southern barrens? What sort of story experience are we trying to tell? Is it secondary? Or is it impossible to express well under this paradigm? The context of the player's journey from 1-max is almost entirely missing. I have an idea for this but I told myself I'd make a damn video about the wins/losses of garrisons.

I'll move this idea up on my to do list and present a different approach to the level experience that aims to be clean for new players, manageable for design, but nonetheless terribly flawed for yours and mmo-c's mauling =) Stay tuned.

Looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Keep in mind that the EXP required to level would also be increased with this proposal. So going from 1-60 in Azeroth would take almost twice as long than it currently does on live (to offset the fact that there are only 60 levels rather than 110). So players would be staying in each zone much longer than they currently do. I think "grey quests/mobs" would be highly improbable. In fact, I'm more worried about the opposite (not enough quests in some zones).

And as for 'disjointed leveling', I think ultimately it just comes down to the responsibility of Blizzard to make it clear that Eastern Kindgoms/Kalimdor 1-60 is one "story block", and BC --> Legion is another. Imagine something like this in the Adventure Journal when a player hits 15, but 10x prettier:
http://i.imgur.com/z15EbnB.png

That makes it clearer to the player that Eastern Kindgoms/Kalimdor is one "story block", and that BC --> Legion is another "story block", and that starting the "Progresive Story" means not continuing with the "Classic Story".

If new players do decide to go to Outland or Northrend at 15, I think that the game should highly encourage them to go to Cata/MoP at 30. They've effectively "chosen" that "levelling path" and the game should make it clear that they'd have the best leveling experience going to one of those zones next. Something like "Continue your story here [Cata/MoP]. "But if they want to return to Azeroth, that's their prerogative.

What do you think about that?

[breadisfunny]

Seems like a lot of effort to go to for no actual reason.

this is exactly how i feel in regards to the idea itself. a number squish is only needed because the developers refuse to move on to 64 bit engines which will be a requirement anyways 10-15 years down the road when microsoft will most likely stop supporting 32bit system completely.

[Deleted]

Did you even play in MoP? Bosses started at roughly the same amount of HP as legion bosses does and by the end of the expansion we were doing multiple health reset phases on garrosh because he had too much health.

MOP bosses started way higher. Sha of Fear had 1.6 billion hit points on 25 heroic and it was an end-boss of the first tier (it was an extraordinarily long fight tho). Earlier in MSV, Elegon 25HC was the first boss to ever break 1G HP barrier.

Legion is starting even higher tho. If you look at raid testing now, the bosses are easily exceeding 1G hit points on heroic mode. It's the first tier and not even mythic difficulty and the bosses are already in the second half of 32-bit signed integer cap. If Legion will have 3 raid tiers and similar power growth to current rates, then we will run into a big trouble in last tier. Basically, every raid fight will be designed with massive add spawns, no-boss phases, healing-up, damage reduction on boss etc etc.

Or they will cut away on batshit overpowered crap that makes your DPS explode into oblivion like it currently does. Arcane mage stack speedkills are silly in HFC. People are downing mythic bosses in 15-30 seconds, not even full BL duration. But that's propably how it's going to be in Legion as well... instead of raid-wide overpowered ring we'll get equally overpowered spec-specific legendaries. They aren't going to be stupidly rare - Blizzard wants you to obtain them. Else they wouldn't give you a class hall perk allowing you to wear more than one. Maybe you won't get them by AFK-ing in LFR, but you can expect to get them in a resonable timeframe. It's not going to be 0.00001% bullshit, believe me on this one.

[Viggers]

It's nice to see someone putting real thought into it. In my opinion, the biggest problem is how quick levelling is. heirlooms are obviously a large part of this problem, but there is something so wrong about doing 10-15 quests per zone then moving on. I have a decent number of alts and yet there are zones that I have NEVER set foot in.

I honestly think that if they just halved the xp gain from everything across the board then levelling would become more enjoyable. As it is, I actually dont even really know what the story of WoW is, and that may be a huge problem for a lot of new players.

[styil]

As far as the OP goes. I think I would just prefer level scaling across the entire game. That way if I want to 1-100 in all of Western Kingdoms, I could theoretically do that. It might also make the older areas feel more alive in terms of players going out to do things there.

Level scaling and my proposal are not mutally exclusive ideas. You could still completely incorporate level scaling with my proposal. But level scaling alone won't reduce the Legion HP pools of millions and 8.0's HP pools of probably 10's of millions. There needs to be some sort of other numbers squish to solve that.

this is exactly how i feel in regards to the idea itself. a number squish is only needed because the developers refuse to move on to 64 bit engines which will be a requirement anyways 10-15 years down the road when microsoft will most likely stop supporting 32bit system completely.

But until then, this is still an issue that needs to be addressed. A simple WoD-style numbers squish won't work this time; everything pre-WoD is already squished. There's hardly anything left to squish with the WoD-style squishing. There needs to be a squish on a much bigger scale.

It's nice to see someone putting real thought into it. In my opinion, the biggest problem is how quick levelling is. heirlooms are obviously a large part of this problem, but there is something so wrong about doing 10-15 quests per zone then moving on. I have a decent number of alts and yet there are zones that I have NEVER set foot in.

I honestly think that if they just halved the xp gain from everything across the board then levelling would become more enjoyable. As it is, I actually dont even really know what the story of WoW is, and that may be a huge problem for a lot of new players.

I think that flat out doubling the EXP required to level would, on its own, be seen as a punishment to many people at this stage and may even lower leveling participation.

[SoulSoBreezy]

Looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Keep in mind that the EXP required to level would also be increased with this proposal. So going from 1-60 in Azeroth would take almost twice as long than it currently does on live (to offset the fact that there are only 60 levels rather than 110). So players would be staying in each zone much longer than they currently do. I think "grey quests/mobs" would be highly improbable. In fact, I'm more worried about the opposite (not enough quests in some zones).

And as for 'disjointed leveling', I think ultimately it just comes down to the responsibility of Blizzard to make it clear that Eastern Kindgoms/Kalimdor 1-60 is one "story block", and BC --> Legion is another. Imagine something like this in the Adventure Journal when a player hits 15, but 10x prettier:
http://i.imgur.com/z15EbnB.png

That makes it clearer to the player that Eastern Kindgoms/Kalimdor is one "story block", and that BC --> Legion is another "story block", and that starting the "Progresive Story" means not continuing with the "Classic Story".

If new players do decide to go to Outland or Northrend at 15, I think that the game should highly encourage them to go to Cata/MoP at 30. They've effectively "chosen" that "levelling path" and the game should make it clear that they'd have the best leveling experience going to one of those zones next. Something like "Continue your story here [Cata/MoP]. "But if they want to return to Azeroth, that's their prerogative.

What do you think about that?

I think that with work, a solution can in fact be found. The reason why I resist an idea like this is because I have to ask myself, what's the ROI? Is XYZ easy enough to implement, considering the design, engineering, development and testing?
It sounds like you're pushing for a more linear experience, but still ultimately allow the player to "disconnect" from the experience as they wish. I think if a player is given the proper cues if they want to go off course, cool beans. I think something should be set in to put them back on the path as well.

[Transmigration]

Amazing work man. Please find a way to have this presented to Blizzard. I'm on board 100%.

Your brain is wonderful.

[Daedius]

Well thought out, just wish Blizz did this. :|

[Deleted]

Will require too much work for them, this method would result in adding another 6 months to the end tier.

The only thing they need to do is making sure that every tier at most is a 10% increase in power.

Followed by a mini squish of say 10-15% at the end of every expansion.

- - - Updated - - -

It's nice to see someone putting real thought into it. In my opinion, the biggest problem is how quick levelling is. heirlooms are obviously a large part of this problem, but there is something so wrong about doing 10-15 quests per zone then moving on. I have a decent number of alts and yet there are zones that I have NEVER set foot in.

I honestly think that if they just halved the xp gain from everything across the board then levelling would become more enjoyable. As it is, I actually dont even really know what the story of WoW is, and that may be a huge problem for a lot of new players.

If you like to level the long way, then don't play with heirlooms.

There's far more people that hate leveling than those that love it, and that's why heirlooms are available.

[Deleted]

Large proposal but nowhere is it ever mentioned WHY these changes would be required. This looks like a desperately bored person's idea to me.

[Tabbycat]

OP, please do us all a favor and go submit your job application and resume/cover letter to Blizzard.

[Deleted]

Nice propositions, just like hundreds of people did over past few years...

Sadly blizzard just dont care, with biggest dev team ever this work is mostly for small group of developers for 3-4 months.

[Deleted]

Hm.

Damage output at level 10: 1 per mob.
Damage output at level 20: 2 per mob.

Damage output at level 100: 10 per mob.

[ShiyoKozuki]

I wanted this done in 7.0, honestly.

[PrairieChicken]

I support this idea too (multiple zones per level range), this should be do-able in Expansion after legion where another squish is inevitable

[corebit]

The way damage and health are already inflating to huge numbers again in Legion, Blizzard may have to do the squish very very soon. So kudos to the OP for making a very detailed solution to this problem.

[threads]

i dont think they squished near enough in WoD but I really doubt they will ever halve people's level.

[Sylvaeres]

This is probably the best idea I've ever heard as far as relating to this subject. I'd actually be excited to level a few toons all over again, just to see the new world that I play in