Level Squish Survey, Summer Cup #1, Diablo Sale

[Vargur]

i mean i have every class over 110 (thank god) so i dont mind leveling that mutch but i can understad newer player/bilzz, leveling right now is a pain in the ass and need to be cut in half

You're assuming that the required experience will also be reduced instead of summed up.

[Vorkreist]

Stop catering to stupid people.

That was one of the main issues with Bfa that totally needed to be addressed asap.

[Krille]

Level squish is such a horrible bandaid fix.
It isn't the amount of levels that makes new or returning players leave, it's that leveling is fucking boring. And this is due to snowballed designs.
New players are thrown into a world of hand-holding and zero risks, of course they get deterred. Imagine not being particularly interested in WoW but giving it a try, and this kind of leveling is what you're thrown into for over 100 hours?

Hell, I used to love leveling alts before it became utterly pathetically easy and more like a hack-and-slash instead of the RPG it used to be.
An RPG where you don't care about gear upgrades, where getting new abilities doesn't really make any difference, where consumables and resource-management is almost completely irrelevant.

To make it abundandtly clear: A level squish does not solve leveling's problems.
Levelings problems are:
Too easy, even without heirlooms;
-Creates a leveling experience where gear upgrades doesn't feel impactful.
-Devalues class' abilities that doesn't merely deal damage or increase your speed.
-Reduces the social aspect since you rarely have a reason to group up.
Mob scaling means that you are essentially on the same exact player:mob player ratio throughout the entire thing, with some minor spikes here and there.
New talent system is godawful anywhere but at maxlevel. There are plenty of specs that gain next to NOTHING interesting for 30+ levels if the talents in that range are pointless during leveling.
No reason to do any side-stuff what so ever, next to nothing that is worth some "side-progression" will make a difference at 120 anyway.
Professions being stuck at 5 skill / level, coupled with an insane level/hour, means it's more or less impossible to level professions at a reasonable pace and keeping up with your level.

In short, leveling is a soulless husk devoid of RPG gameplay, it's a hack-and-slash where you are just automatically placed in Blizzards perfect template, as you faceroll your way to maxlevel.
Players aren't deterred by the number 120, they are deterred by the gameplay that is goddamn awful throughout the entire process!

And do you not understand why the gameplay has been terrible throughout the process?
- Each level is meaningless, they can't give a new spell or talent for each level when our max is 120. It would be a nightmare to balance.
- The levelling process has to be made easy, otherwise, nobody would go through the 1-120 ride. Imagine classic levelling but for 60 more levels, yea no, never gonna happen.

By reducing the number of levels required to reach the max level, they can make each level more meaningful without cluttering the game with spells/talents. They can make each level more difficult to attain. They are probably looking at Classic levelling and realize why the journey was good once upon a time and why it can never be like that when you have to go through 120 levels.

Doing a level squish is an attempt to fix just about everything you just complained about. With fewer levels, the pacing can be made much better.

- - - Updated - - -

Level squish is irrelevant. Its just a number. It won't change game in any way.

This opinion is just about one of the more stupid ones I see regarding this. I even understand people that want to hold on to their 120 levels for "reasons". But when you say the number is meaningless I honestly lose faith in humanity, PACING is everything in this game. If you can make the pacing better by reducing the number of levels you have to go through, that's huge.

[Seriousdoom]

I would welcome a lvl squish.
Back to 60 with every new expansion, and 10 lvls to level with the new expansion for a max of 70.

[MiiiMiii]

I don't care if the number lower. Say they change the number from 120 to 12 (I know this won't happen, it's an example) and you get 1 new spell every level.

It still takes the same amount of time to go from 1-12 as it today takes from 1-120. Ok. So the bar moves slower.

The only "issue" is, that today, on a Monk, at lvl 80 you have all your abilities unlocked on all specs. This means from 80-120 you have your whole toolkit except the talents.

If they squish it to 12 lvls, and you get 1 ability per lvl, now you have LESS abilities on lvl 8-11 than you do today.

The classes already feel naked enough during leveling, so this would make the problem worse, not better. All in the name of getting 1 ability per lvl?

[Raakel]

WoW needs a paradigm shift. Right now as a player you are climbing a ledder and every once in a while Blizzard just cuts a section so you won't reach the top. While that might be ok for many there's also the creeping feeling that your efforts are realy worthless in fact. Time gating or rep grinds don't solve that issue. For me I have given up caring about gear and rewards as they mean nothing in a few weeks time. It has to be the gameplay itself and how you can jump right in and have fun. Sadly BoF just has nice visuals and music but doesn't deliver at gamplay. It needs a new formula.

[MasterHamster]

And do you not understand why the gameplay has been terrible throughout the process?
- Each level is meaningless, they can't give a new spell or talent for each level when our max is 120. It would be a nightmare to balance.
- The levelling process has to be made easy, otherwise, nobody would go through the 1-120 ride. Imagine classic levelling but for 60 more levels, yea no, never gonna happen.

Levels have become meaningless yes, with mob scaling, removal of spell ranks etc. I understand very well that it's very hard to grant something meaningful every level (impossible), but we've hit the point where people have almost their entire core arsenal at level 60 then just keep facerolling to 120

Tt wouldn't work if 61-120 was an extension of old leveling speeds. I do naturally understand that they had to speed things up eventually, but they took out the gameplay along the way. We've long since passed the point where our characters are so powerful by default that it devolves the gameplay into mindless buttonmashing, because you are never under threat from dying.

By reducing the number of levels required to reach the max level, they can make each level more meaningful without cluttering the game with spells/talents. They can make each level more difficult to attain. They are probably looking at Classic levelling and realize why the journey was good once upon a time and why it can never be like that when you have to go through 120 levels.

Doing a level squish is an attempt to fix just about everything you just complained about. With fewer levels, the pacing can be made much better.

That is the one thing leveling squish can accomplish really, halving level total would make each level possibly feel more satisfying to attain, and hopefully they can space things out better so that you are more likely to gain something substantial "more often".
They'd have to use this opportunity to maybe make the "last 25%" of levels to have more significant stuff too. Now, players are essentially "complete" at level 80, or 66% to 120. Maybe after the squish, you can get to this point at around 85-90% instead, ie at level 51-54 or so, instead of level 40.

But if the core gameplay issues are still there, then it won't make a big difference in the end. If we're still facerolling mobs that pose no danger, then it'll be the same but with dings being farther inbetween.

They have to rebalance player:mob power ratios in order to reinvigorate leveling.
But that probably also requires them removing mob scaling too. I really hope they do, I would much rather see a bigger range of +/- levels of mobs/quests that grant experience, than to always have mobs be at my exact level. It makes leveling up feel so much less like a progression when mobs are literally glued to my level.

[krl]

MMOs are time-based empowering.

Leveling should be an empowering experience through richer gameplay, more skills and let's face it, limited mob scaling per zones so you can feel a difference between entering a zone and finishing it. Currently, leveling is atrocious for most specs because of the lack of a talents tree and absolute mob scaling. There is no empowering feeling at all.

Endgame should be an empowering experience. Nowadays it is mostly a cosmetics collecting game, as the power difference relative to invested time is marginal.

[Toxuvox]

A level squish is fine:

-Anything that isn't current, set the level cap at, for example 60.
-Allow players to choose their own levelling route through all non-current content once they've exited their starting zones (where relevant).
-Once you're at 60, you enter current content. You then level using a "paragon" system, so instead of 61, 62, 63 etc, you go 60*, 60**, 60** (or something more elegant) to whatever the new expansion cap is.
-When the next expansion comes along, level cap remains the same, previous expansion becomes old content and is subject to old content rules, new content is progressed using the paragon system.

Obviously there'll need to be a feeling of powering up as you progress through levelling, should that be 1-60, or whatever method is used to measure current content progression, but thas another discussion entirely.

[MasterHamster]

Indeed. However this is unrelated to level squish - rebalance will have same effect if max level is 120 or 60.

Yes and no, I wouldn't say it's unrelated per se. The reason I bring it up is because the leveling squish is part of Blizzards (attempted) fixing of the leveling experience, if they "only" focus on halving total amount of levels to get, but leave the gameplay issues as they are, then the squish won't really accomplish much in order to make leveling feel better. Or in short, they shouldn't to A without also doing B, because both are desperately needed and should happen at the same time.

I really, really hope they'll reevaluate the mob scaling system. I do enjoy being able to finish zones, but the tradeoff is too much. Outleveling mobs and zones that used to be dangerous was one of very few tangible "progressions" that were left in leveling at the time when they added it.

[GrumpyNPC]

I don't think this will fix the game, cause there are just too many things that need fixing, but i'm hoping it helps so i'm ok with them trying. These are the things that I hope it accomplishes:

- Make leveling less intimidating to new players, so that more of them level their class instead of boosting to end game.
- Make gear progression more interesting. All of the previous item level squishes have made it so that you sometimes get gear while leveling that has the same stats as gear you got 5 levels ago.
- Allow for more content choice, like maybe you can reach max level doing only vanilla + current expansion, or you can split your leveling across expansions.

Ultimately this wont have too much of an impact on me as all my toons are already max level so i'll just see a lower number when i log in, but i supposed it might encourage me to level some allied races.

[Monster Hunter]

Just remove levels. It's such an old hangover from the limited table top rpg's.there are much better ways to drip feed skills and do char progression than exp bars and ever increasing level numbers.

[Sosua]

More proof of the catering to casuals and kids

[Krille]

You seem to lack basic understanding of math.

If you think level number changes pacing, you are in for surprise. It changes absolutely nothing. It is still same amount of XP, just twice more XP per level. It is still same content, same difficulty, same handholding, same mechanics.

Today you'll gain 2 levels, after squish you'll gain 1 level. Effort required is the same, effort required to get to end content is the same.

Level squish doesn't make any difference. Leveling is still irrelevant in retail, level numbers are meaningless - you are either leveling or you are at max level. Retail has destroyed any sense of progression because world offers no danger, classes are tuned to be gods, mobs scale to your level and questing is dumb linear, like watching a B movie.

How can you say that it will be the same, if they push 120 levels of XP into 60 levels, each level will require way more work to (similar to Classic). The issue here is that you're only looking at it from a math perspective. Perception is very important, the feeling you get when starting at 1 looking at going to 120 is way more daunting than 1-60. Also, believe it or not, even if the XP required is the same it will feel less tedious to "only" gain 60 levels and the horrible quest pacing we have atm (you gain levels so quickly you have to change zones every hour).

If they can also give you something each level, the levelling process is suddenly rewarding. At the moment, you reach level 100 and you're basically done with the game in terms of character progression (until you get azerite armor). And even before lvl 100 you barely notice that you're actually progressing. Now think of a scenario where you gain a new spell (or even spell rank as Ion was hinting at in the video) every single level, that's character progression.

I agree that the game has other major issues, but just ignoring the fact that 120 levels is a bad thing is not helping anyone.
- Remove mob scaling
- Make mobs more difficult overall
- Remove heirlooms
- Make elite quests elite again
- Use Classics layering instead of the shitshow we have today
- Reduce spell taxation on the server so the game doesn't lag out whenever you're more than 40 ppl in the same zone

These are all problems I have with the current game, but so is 120. I've wanted a level squish for years now together with a revamped talent system.

[HuxNeva]

A lvl squish would be logical, since the current gradient has little meaning after all the stat squishes we have had.

[Krille]

Yes, I do hope they'll fix things, but I doubt it.

They already tried when they did item level squishes, when they did scaling. Every time they did half arsed job.

If anything the item level squishes have been the band-aid fixes to a constantly growing problem. Doing a level squish has been needed since lvl 100.

[Terracresta]

A levelup should feel rewarding but also shouldn't be dragged out. Level squish will be useless without reduced leveling time.
The problem of leveling in WoW being boring is a different problem though. It also depends on if you are leveling your 30th character or if you are new to the game. I wonder how many people will actually try to enjoy Classic's leveling instead of racing to max level.

Btw, "'First Level x" archivements are BS, because there are already enough incentives to reach max level quickly. It's like Blizzard wants people to race though leveling content, so why not simply set chars to max level right away and make the game all about gearlevel?

[meheez]

Level squish is stupid. Doesnt fit wow.

[Sykol]

Lol why even have levels at that point? Just start every character at their most powerful with the best gear and all their skills on the action bar in the order you should use them. That should stop deterring new awful players from giving Blizzard money.

[GKLeatherCraft]

The problem I see with this level squish is currently you have to wait ages to get anything once you reach later levels, There's hardly any new abilities etc, Only thing that increases is your HP/Mana, So if they do this but keep it so you have to still get the same amount of total EXP then you're just going to have longer to wait for anything, I understand from an outside player PoV seeing 120 levels could be daunting, but if they lower level numbers and still require you to get millions of EXP it'll put people off because of the slow grind, But, Let's see what they come up with I guess!