[Survey] Level squish IS coming per Blizzard

[Revamp Man]

YOu only think it is meaningless because you are scared of big numbers. Blizzard once again caving to whiners that cry about big numbers.

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then offer more rewards or talents. Don't squish levels because they are too lazy to think up new talents or rewards.

Ther is no need to squish because they don't need to be wasting time fixing what isn't broken. And, no, people whining because the numbers are too big does not = broken.

What is the difference gameplay wise between the current cap being 120 and it being 95?

If you are going to bitch about "blizzard caving" save it for something meaningful

Heck just by looking at the DPS and ilvl numbers you could argue for the cap to be around 95

Now I am wondering if this is what ion meant by making each level meaningful because overall I think that even if you did add a new ability or passive every level (like in WoD) it wouldn't really fix the underlying issue of the perception that the leveling journey is empty and meaningless.

Can you give me a single positive about not squishing the levels?

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Cut everything in half,

Mob danger level: +3-4 for Red, +2 Orange, +1 and -1 Yellow, -2 - -3 for green, and -4 for gray.
All zone level requirements: Cut them in half (Elwin is 1-5 now not 1-10)
All Dungeons: cut them in half, with odd numbers rounded down, (Deadmines is now 7+ instead of 15)
Mob levels and Item requirements: Cut them in half rounding odd numbers up (a green level 11 required item is now 6, a 54 ghost in winterspring is 27, a level one pig is still level 1)
Moving past the old world: You can go to any expansion at 29
Level up stats: you now get 2 stats worth of levels every time you ding.



Make old WoW raids level 30, change nothing else.
As for Abilities we Vary rarely get 2 at the same time anyways, in addition we have many MANY levels of nothing new, so if need be just move things around a little bit
so we don't have 3-6 levels of nothing new.
Same with talents, this is the biggest change to balance I would propose, I would honestly say they should give us a point to spend every 5 levels, make the level 5/15/25/ect. talents more minor things like the movement speed boosts, or stuns we get now, and make the 10/20/30/ect. talents more combat rotation things.



Why not? as long as we are squishing something why not do it for everything? As I said before even during the 1-60 grind we have many levels that mean nothing now, you don't get anything, why not push it down to 30 but give us something EVERY level. Now from level 1-30 you learn a spell, a passive, a talent, a PvP talent, or a mount speed at every ding.

Not only that but It would make much more sense level bracket wise to balance everything out, other wise it's 1-60 for just old wow then 60-70 or 80 for ALL of the expansions.

Honestly the only "downside" I can see is for the people who highly value the number 120 for some reason, I won't pretend to speak for everyone, but at least for myself my actual level stopped meaning anything to me back when we got stuck at 85 for 2 years... after that 100 and 120 where kind of novel but not really proud moments. Also as someone who has truckloads of alts the thought of having to fill that bar 119 times when ever I want another one starts to become more and more of a deterrent (even if I know it will be about the same time wise in the end).

I just think keeping 1-60 the same kinda makes sense because I see the base game as a big world with dozens of zones and even if you add all the zones from previous expansions together the difference is kinda noticable

"BFA comes with 6 new zones"
So like the 1-28 experience...neat

[Whitedragon]

I just think keeping 1-60 the same kinda makes sense because I see the base game as a big world with dozens of zones and even if you add all the zones from previous expansions together the difference is kinda noticable

"BFA comes with 6 new zones"
So like the 1-28 experience...neat

To an extent I would agree with you, but do consider a good chunk of the zones we do have from Vanilla are the first 2 zones for each race (half of which you will never get to use depending on your faction, and you will only ever use 1 of the first zones per character considering they only go up to 10), after a cretin point your path of travel dose narrow down a good amount. Also of note the expansion zones tend to be a bit longer with more story beats to them.

Honestly I would be okay if they made it so that Vanilla went all the way to 60 and all the expansions opened up at 30 so you could choose to do them instead of vanilla, at that point all the raids would be at level 60.

[cuafpr]

sucks but expected the entire leveling experince is broken ... good luck to them cause there is no way they do this without making people upset.

[Fight4Fun]

Who cares, Blizzard do not know how to do proper squiish...

Remember ilvl and hp nubers squiish? Well now we have 420+ ilvl and 230k+ hp dudes again..

Instead of proper hard squish and take it slow, they just confuse all players one more time

[korijenkins]

They wouldn't have ever needed to do this if they just stopped adding levels after 100 and implemented a mastery system that rewarded weapon traits on the artifact weapons for completing each leveling zone, and did the same thing the following expansion.

[ChairmanKaga]

Good. Glad they are looking to squish levels and hopefully that also involves tweaking leveling.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

If it's just a number squish then this is a joke. Leveling speed needs to get 50% faster (or, put another way, time to cap get 25% shorter) for this to matter.

[Revamp Man]

To an extent I would agree with you, but do consider a good chunk of the zones we do have from Vanilla are the first 2 zones for each race (half of which you will never get to use depending on your faction, and you will only ever use 1 of the first zones per character considering they only go up to 10), after a cretin point your path of travel dose narrow down a good amount. Also of note the expansion zones tend to be a bit longer with more story beats to them.

Honestly I would be okay if they made it so that Vanilla went all the way to 60 and all the expansions opened up at 30 so you could choose to do them instead of vanilla, at that point all the raids would be at level 60.

Interesting idea

I would kill to have more tw raids or just scaling raids
GIVE ME MoP!!!!

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Who cares, Blizzard do not know how to do proper squiish...

Remember ilvl and hp nubers squiish? Well now we have 420+ ilvl and 230k+ hp dudes again..

Instead of proper hard squish and take it slow, they just confuse all players one more time

Yeah by the end of the expansion we will be maybe around t16 numbers possibly t17

That's just because blizzard can't handle the power creep caused by their need to constantly give players huge number buffs each tier

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sucks but expected the entire leveling experince is broken ... good luck to them cause there is no way they do this without making people upset.

They could give players a magic hat that gives them their perfect gaming experience and ppl would still complain about the color of the hat

[Th3Scourge]

The biggest problem with the current level cap, levelling system, talent system, zones, expansions, zone level brackets etc is that it is TERRIBLE for new players. Imagine being a new player and having to go through all this. Completely overwhelming and a shambles. It's an absolute mess. WoW will never grow its player base from new players under the current format. Even returning players would find this shit stupid. Imagine creating a new account after deciding to check out what WoW is about then finding out that the next 119 levels are a waste of time. You'd probably breeze through the first 20 levels then let your sub run out.

If retail WoW is to build a bigger player base, it needs a fundamental shake-up of pre-max level content and levelling, which may also include the level squish. Classic will be there, which is a far easier experience to get involved with and may serve as a "gateway drug" from Classic to retail (same subscription) as Classic can be viewed as "easy to lean, difficult to master"

[LionSinMaikeru]

As long as they don't fuck up the leveling, I don't really care if it happens. I enjoy making new alts and leveling them to max, but it isn't very nice if it sucks due to something like this.

Have you not seen the two stat squishes and a host of other changes they've done over the years?

Blizzard will 100% mess it up.

[ultima ratio]

the lvl squish is PR, an alibi to distract from the actual issue - leveling itself. what was epic back in vanilla is out of date now. the whole concept of leveling, esp. the discreprancy of zone vs. general plotting has to be solved via a redesign of quests and (individual) story pacing.

my guess is there wont be a lvl squish, cuz it would reverse, almost destroy a lot of player investment, even though some of the vocal minority r open to this reductive idea. we all worked hard for our loremasters, or at least for those actual 120 lvls, they r earned, deserved and represent as core element of RPG the base of player progression.
those levels rnt just simple numbers, but achieved. they tell a story, and 130 is more story (quantitatively) than 120.

[Tinytalon]

I enjoy leveling too but I hate getting to 60-80. I’d be fine if they made old world scale to 80

Only painful part imo is 60-70 when you don't have epic flying and everything just feels very slow. Epic flying makes 70-80 quite a lot faster than the 10 levels before.

Have you not seen the two stat squishes and a host of other changes they've done over the years?

Blizzard will 100% mess it up.

I have. How would you reckon they do it so that they wouldn't mess it up, then?

[Laqweeta]

They could always go the Korean grind MMO route... take Flyff for example.

Back before they added INSANE exp boosts (1k% additional exp from EXP R scrolls via cash shop) you’d level to 120 (and it was slow... 20% exp per week...) then delevel to 60 but be a “master” and get 50% exp reduction. At 120 again you’d level to 121 Hero.

[rhorle]

the lvl squish is PR, an alibi to distract from the actual issue - leveling itself.

You can't claim that leveling is the problem while stating that levels are this blood sweat and tears representation that can never go away. It is just a number. There have been resets every expansion. Our level may have gone up but character power was reset every expansion. And losing levels is very much a part of classical RPG's as anything else.

It is a number. That is all it is. Yes there are a lot of people that can't see past that number.

[Vynestra]

I wonder if theyre going to do a talent overhaul or something to give you something every level - It's unlikely, but I wonder if they'll re-do the system to be a combo of the old boring passives and the new more interesting talents, to give you something -every- level.

I'm doubtful, but I also wonder how low they'd go.

60?

40?

120 is 50 and next xpac is 60?

[Flutterguy]

If they're committed to doing it why are they bothering to ask how I feel about it?

[Byleth]

I dont know the OP so i cant vouch for him

But i absolutely trust the user @The Dark One and his post (first post of this page)

So i can assume is true? Unless ofcourse is someone pretending to be Blizzard...sending the mails?

Heya @Togabito /Shadowpunkz - Appreciate the trust

I'm happy to share my survey link with anyone that PM's me if you want to verify it's authenticity - For what it's worth, I 100% believe the survey was a genuine Blizz thing.

[Gadzooks]

yup.
them "talking about it very seriously internally" is ion speak for "its happening next xpac, but before committing completely lets go ahead and get community feelers out"

I see it more as Ion needing to build a case to get the dev budget to get this amount of work done. This is the kind of change that could suck up most of an expansion budget.

[lordjust]

Some people are not happy about the idea.
Dont know why, i actually like it.

Because the level squish wouldn't solve the real problem and would introduce new problems. If they cut the amount of levels in half, the time needed to gain a level is doubled and abilities and talents will still be gained at higher levels, so that each level feels more rewarding. So you spend more time with a character that has a bad kit.

Just cutting the amount of levels isn't enough. The underlying problem of leveling is that it takes a lot of time (if you start from level 1 oder even from level 20) and you get close to no reward apart from the heritage armor for allied races or acces to the new expansion content. The big number isn't that big of a problem but either reduce the time needed for leveling as in buff heirlooms back to the way they were or make them even stronger, or add new stuff to the old content like unlock a transmog or pet for questing through a zone or gain an account wide experience buff for that zone so that it takes even less time to get through that zone.

[Gadzooks]

Fake.

These surveys doesn't come "once in a while". In fact, since I started to play in early TBC they have come a grand total of ZERO time.

I've done at least 3 Blizzard surveys, lol. I guess you're not on the list. The most interesting one to me was the one where I got to choose bands from a VERY long list of bands, for who'd I'd be interested in seeing at Blizzcon.