Wait a second, when did we ever ask for leveling to be long? Just hard, not long!

[rhorle]

Challenge != Length

It does though. Because for something to be challenging it will inherently take longer. If you have to stop and consider a pack of mobs it takes longer. If you have to plan your route to a quest objective it takes longer.

Tougher mobs to kill does not teach new players how to use their character. The way you play while leveling is different then how you play end game. Yes you learn the basics but a competent enough person can learn that at level cap, or through the current expansion leveling process. Guides and videos make it even easier. Challenging leveling is only exciting if you like a challenge. After you've done it for X amount of times it is no longer exciting.

Leveling shouldn't be challenging. Having to wait for a group to do X quest wasn't challenging or exciting back in the day. It just meant that you skipped that content or got frustrated when you couldn't group up. Having to ride your mount or take some way off course route because an elite was randomly mixed in the quest area wasn't challenging.

There are plenty of ways to improve the leveling experience but making mobs take longer to kill isn't exactly challenging. And new players can't be challenged to much. Existing players will never find normal leveling a challenge since they are used to end game (and are likely using heirlooms to deflate the already low difficulty).

For example making leveling more scenario like and co-op or small group friendly would drastically improve leveling. You can offer different types of challenges and encounters while still making it quick process. No one should have to be challenged through 100 levels in order to face the content that is designed to challenge you.

Besides its not like this change has anything to do with what you want from leveling. It is changed to keep a sensible progression through the zones story. The concept of zone stories you progress through while leveling is outdated. Scaling helps but you still need to increase mob difficulty to keep the flow.

[A dot Ham]

Why would any one in their right mind spend so much time leveling for the billionth time? We wanted leveling to be HARDER, not longer! This would allow people to level multiple toons in different regions so that it doesn't bore us to death and make people quit. Remember, what made it worth while in Vanilla was that Vanilla was the end game, we weren't thinking of the many more expansions to come...How many more levels do we need? why not stop at 120 and introduce other kinds of leveling?? This is just stupid.

What is this WE business?

Leveling in vanilla was NOT difficult, it was merely a time sink. So trying to recapture that "magic" would equate to making leveling longer (not harder). Take off your rose colored glasses and look at any leveling guide for the 1-60 experience. It was about maximizing your xp/hr taking the fastest, easiest, and soloable content and getting you to 60 ASAP. Why? Because without it you were probably taking an eternity to grind out a few levels, or difficulty finding a group for that group quest, dungeon/subsequent quests etc. Leveling WAS. NOT. HARD. End of story. If you want to have the delusional type of discussion head to the Classic Forums additionally, you can have just that experience you miss so much.

Please don't try and lump the rest of us in with your "we" bullshit. Because WE do not agree.

The purpose of scaling old content in live is to make any zone relevant, with or without heirloom gear.

Theoretically this shouldn't effect leveling time/length at all, in fact in some cases it may actually shorten the experience. This does however make things subjectively "harder" at least harder than it was previously because you will never really out level content. However, with scaling rewards, you should be wearing more relevant gear, so it ends up being a wash.

This addresses a long standing concern that even WITHOUT heirloom gear, a person could/would out level a zone before completing all of its respective quests/content. Meaning many people (unless you are/were a completionist) would leave zones unfinished in favor of a zone with relevant rewards/gear/(most importantly xp). This is now no longer an issue. The gear, the xp rewards... all the pacing issues should now be addressed with these new scaling zones, and should greatly improve the leveling experience, the length/difficulty are NOT the issue, and as such the success of these changes is not determined by your opinion of the difficulty or the length of time you spend leveling.

[Nurvus]

It does though. Because for something to be challenging it will inherently take longer.

No, it doesn't.

The context is leveling speed.

You can make mobs much harder to kill, without touching leveling speed.
Killing the mob may take longer, but leveling isn't affected unless Blizzard forgets to adjust XP rates.

Besides its not like this change has anything to do with what you want from leveling. It is changed to keep a sensible progression through the zones story. The concept of zone stories you progress through while leveling is outdated. Scaling helps but you still need to increase mob difficulty to keep the flow.

Blizzard's goal was to let you finish Zones without overleveling them, and make things less trivial.
They could have added Zone scaling, made mobs tougher to kill, and increase XP rates accordingly.
The result would be less trivial leveling, and because of higher xp per mob/quest you'd require less Zones to reach max level, which would also mean more variety!

So why slower for the sake of slower? It accomplishes nothing.

For example making leveling more scenario like and co-op or small group friendly would drastically improve leveling. You can offer different types of challenges and encounters while still making it quick process. No one should have to be challenged through 100 levels in order to face the content that is designed to challenge you.

I think Blizzard making WoW "better at storytelling" has been making it worse as an MMO.
There is an ever decreasing feeling of open world and more of instanced world.

The real solution encompasses a lot of things, including changes to crafting, abilities, loot, etc.
But as far as mobs go, here is what Blizzard can do:
Give mobs a more complete set of abilities as level increases!

• Each mob should have both
  
  • shared abilities - Mana Worms explode on death, Turtles use Shell Shield
  • individual abilities - different Turtles would have different ability combinations
• The mob has access to more of its abilities the higher its level.
  
  • While a level 10 turtle might have Turtle Shell and Bite. A level 100 Turtle would have more nasty combinations of abilities.
• The combination of abilities should start basic and get gradually more technical, teasing boss mechanics:
  
  • Mob A pops shield that Absorbs X damage and/or protects against Interrupt/Silence and/or CC and/or is Undispellable, and begins casting/channeling a massive spell.
  • Mob B enters a frenzy when it reaches 50% HP, granting him bonus damage & leech, but also reducing movement speed. Later it might snare you as well and/or become periodically immune to CC and/or use bursts of movement speed.
  • Mob C deals lots of damage all the time, but runs out of mana quickly and enters an Evocation phase to restore Mana where it takes increased damage.

Legion mobs were for the most part plain boring.
They may have the right amount of Health, allowing a proper rotation, but they don't challenge you. They simply check your gear.

[rhorle]

No, it doesn't. The context is leveling speed. You can make mobs much harder to kill, without touching leveling speed. Killing the mob may take longer, but leveling isn't affected unless Blizzard forgets to adjust XP rates.

If killing the mob takes longer, then the leveling process takes longer. If Blizzard adjusts the XP rates to compensate for longer kill time then nothing is being changed. You are just killing one mob instead of two. None of that impacts the challenge level though. Just because you give a mob more Hitpoints so it takes longer to kill does not mean it is any more of a challenge then before.

If you actually want to make it challenging it is going to take longer even if you compensate the XP gains.

[Nurvus]

If Blizzard adjusts the XP rates to compensate for longer kill time then nothing is being changed. You are just killing one mob instead of two. None of that impacts the challenge level though. Just because you give a mob more Hitpoints so it takes longer to kill does not mean it is any more of a challenge then before.

I agree increasing mob HP does not make it more challenging on its own, but I disagree that nothing is being changed.

On one hand, Level scaling ensures a Zone relevant long enough for you to complete it at the intended level range.
It does so by keeping mobs at your level, which on its own already makes them take longer to kill on average, but being higher level also award more XP.
So at this point we already have longer kill time with untouched leveling speed.
The result is that if you have 100 Zones available while leveling, and you need to complete 15 instead of 20 to reach max level, you have more variety at your disposal.

On the other hand, leveling becomes more fair across Direct Damage and DoT specs - what use is a 12~24 sec DoT if mobs die in 2 seconds to any DD spec?

If you actually want to make it challenging it is going to take longer even if you compensate the XP gains.

But you just acknowledged that making it take longer to kill a mob doesn't make it more challenging...

Just because you give a mob more Hitpoints so it takes longer to kill does not mean it is any more of a challenge then before.

Increasing mob HP can only affect challenge if the mob already deals enough damage to become a threat that you would otherwise ignore by bursting it down before it does anything.

• If a mob can 2-shot you with his 5 second cast spell, but dies in 3 seconds, it's trivial.
  If it has enough HP to finish 2 casts, then it is challenging, because you have to interrupt/cc/heal/use defensive cooldowns.
• If a mob can kill you in 2 hits, but you can just spam damage at it and it dies before reaching you, it's trivial.
  But if the mob suddenly has enough HP to survive the damage spam long enough to force you to use Snares, CC or other tools in order to survive, then it poses a challenge.

Compensating XP gains has no interaction with challenge.

Blizzard made mobs in Legion have a good amount of HP and decent damage.
In terms of kill time, it felt right. They posed a threat to some specs, but not exactly a challenge. They were boring.

Some specs (Fire) felt mediocre while leveling while others (Windwalker, Havoc, Survival) just bursted mobs in seconds.
Does that mean that Fire leveling felt good and challenging? No. It felt annoying and unfair.

Forcing downtime on players by increasing mob damage and health to the point where you must use all your cooldowns on every mob isn't making the game more challenging, either. It's just making it obnoxious.

There is such a thing as too little and too much.

So health and damage adjustments to mobs aren't the main tool to make leveling challenging, fun or exciting.
Only by changing the abilities used by mobs will we get the challenging leveling we want.

[Deleted]

Why would any one in their right mind spend so much time leveling for the billionth time? We wanted leveling to be HARDER, not longer! This would allow people to level multiple toons in different regions so that it doesn't bore us to death and make people quit. Remember, what made it worth while in Vanilla was that Vanilla was the end game, we weren't thinking of the many more expansions to come...How many more levels do we need? why not stop at 120 and introduce other kinds of leveling?? This is just stupid.

So I don't get it, you have already leveled a billion characters and you still level more? Why? How many f*****g characters do you need at max level and why the f**k are you constantly starting over?

It really blows my mind how people claim to have leveled tens of characters to max level yet somehow they are constantly leveling and complaining that is boring and whatnot. Simply does not add up. Are you rerolling on different servers without transferring every few months or what?

Also .. harder not longer, even if they made it harder it will take longer anyway

[Deleted]

Vanilla babies can't clear current content so they want leveling to be like it was back in the day because in their twisted minds this is true difficulty lol.

and people who started on 100 would cry foul by trying to complete the pre-reqs for something like Molten Core.

[Deleted]

and people who started on 100 would cry foul by trying to complete the pre-reqs for something like Molten Core.

Why would they?
Vanilla is a grinding game, the skillcap is very very low.
The only retail players who would stuggle with Vanilla are the ones who don't have a lot of time to play.
Vanilla only rewarded grinding, not skill, be it in PVP or PVE.
When Classic comes out and naxx gets cleared easily by everyone and their mothers you'll see what I'm talking about.

The average player in today's game is a billion times better than in 2006.

[Dug]

Vanilla leveling was long, not hard. Welcome to WoW

[Deleted]

That is tipically how blizz does things. They tend not to give what people want. Be it leveling, flying or high elves. They always do that. /shrug

[Schizoide]

Pretty much, yeah.

If I didn't already have 12 max-level characters I would be pretty annoyed by this change. Since I do, it's just another thing where I shake my head, say "that's stupid", and then go about my day.

[Pickynerd]

I can't believe they added level scaling and not at least some new races, wasted opportunity if ya' ask me. I am not going to level another character just because scaling is a thing, but I would do a new race, to whittle the time away until 8.0.

[Schizoide]

The new races are in the game now, just not activated yet. I expect they'll be a BFA preorder promotion for exactly that reason, to give people something to do for the next year.

[rhorle]

But you just acknowledged that making it take longer to kill a mob doesn't make it more challenging...

Yes. Making it take longer doesn't inherently make something more challenging. But making something more challenging will make it take longer because of the challenge. If you can kill something easy and something hard in the same time frame then there is no real challenge.

If person A can kill npc B in 3 seconds on "easy mode" and 3 seconds on "challenging mode" where is the challenge? To make something challenging you have to increase the length of the encounter. Abilities to manage, environment to manage, resources to manage. Can you have short challenging encounters? Certainly. But when discussing "easy" vs "more challenging" you will have to have a longer "more challenging" encounter otherwise it is the same as the "easy" encounter.

[Trassk]

Vanilla babies can't clear current content so they want leveling to be like it was back in the day because in their twisted minds this is true difficulty lol.

was gonna say, this comes from players who want everything hard, even the most mundane, boring, repetitive tasks, like leveling in the same old boring content over and over.

This doesn't make me want to level again, it makes me want to not bother, also ruins soloing old content.

[Lucavian]

Yes. Making it take longer doesn't inherently make something more challenging. But making something more challenging will make it take longer because of the challenge. If you can kill something easy and something hard in the same time frame then there is no real challenge.

If person A can kill npc B in 3 seconds on "easy mode" and 3 seconds on "challenging mode" where is the challenge? To make something challenging you have to increase the length of the encounter. Abilities to manage, environment to manage, resources to manage. Can you have short challenging encounters? Certainly. But when discussing "easy" vs "more challenging" you will have to have a longer "more challenging" encounter otherwise it is the same as the "easy" encounter.

Call of duty and other FPS shooters would have a word with you. Things go sideways in under 3 seconds, so your logic is flawed. Basically, all the arguments I've seen for this patch has been "I like it better". A good compromise would be to increase the % bonus exp heirlooms gave. Don't want to use them? Don't. Don't like the current speed of leveling? Use heirlooms. You could even adjust the level that way, maybe only half a set of heirlooms would be the speed you prefer. Etc.

[Nurvus]

Yes. Making it take longer doesn't inherently make something more challenging. But making something more challenging will make it take longer because of the challenge.

This is what you said:

If you actually want to make it challenging it is going to take longer even if you compensate the XP gains.

You couldn't be more wrong.

If you make all mobs more challenging in a way that makes them take twice as long to kill, but also double XP gains, you will simultaneously have a more challenging leveling experience and the same leveling speed.

If person A can kill npc B in 3 seconds on "easy mode" and 3 seconds on "challenging mode" where is the challenge? To make something challenging you have to increase the length of the encounter. Abilities to manage, environment to manage, resources to manage. Can you have short challenging encounters? Certainly. But when discussing "easy" vs "more challenging" you will have to have a longer "more challenging" encounter otherwise it is the same as the "easy" encounter.

So if you have a boss that takes 10 minutes to kill in both Normal and Mythic, there's no extra challenge in Mythic?
Because you can't have more mechanics to handle in the same amount of time, right?

Imagine Blizzard halves the HP of a mob, but gives it a powerful heal/shield/Stun.
A player that fights them half afk might end up taking twice as long as it used to, or get himself killed.
A player that knows what he's doing might interrupt/CC the mob and end up killing him even faster than he used to.
All the while the mob is more challenging. Period.

[cpukiller]

Actually making it harder means making it takes longer time at the same time...

[Nurvus]

Actually making it harder means making it takes longer time at the same time...

Mob A and B have the same HP.
Mob A has ranged auto-attacks.
Mob B deals 3x as much damage, but uses spells and can be interrupted.

This means that Mob B is more challenging than Mob A, although you can kill both of them in the same amount of time.
If you interrupt one of the casts from Mob B, you will also likely nullify its extra DPS, therefore not incurring any extra downtime due to low health.

[Doomchicken]

This is what you said:

You couldn't be more wrong.

If you make all mobs more challenging in a way that makes them take twice as long to kill, but also double XP gains, you will simultaneously have a more challenging leveling experience and the same leveling speed.



So if you have a boss that takes 10 minutes to kill in both Normal and Mythic, there's no extra challenge in Mythic?
Because you can't have more mechanics to handle in the same amount of time, right?

He's not wrong though because in order for it to actually be a real challenge the damage of the mobs needs to go up as well as the hp which means because of the increased difficulty will lead to less chain pulls which leads to more overall time used in leveling.

Also your comparison using raiding is amazingly bad. There is a grand total of ZERO fights in this entire expansion that would take the same time to complete on mythic and normal using the same group while its current content. All mythic fights hit harder, have more hp and /or different mechanics which automatically make the fight take longer to complete. Even eonar on mythic is longer.