[Survey] Level squish IS coming per Blizzard

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

If only there were some way to allow new players to jump right in to the current content, like a level 110 boost perhaps ? That way BLizzard wouldn't need to bother with a level squish and all the work it would entail.

The excuse of "who cares let's just boost instead" went out the window the moment Blizz built an entire expansion feature around going back and leveling 20-110 by hand.

[chaoticcrono]

They are not adding stuff because if they keep adding something every other level we would have 100 abilities.

umm they had the stuff that was removed and we didnt have 100 abilities...

they removed pretty much anything worth a damn from the game, its so bare bones now that its boring to play

[Krille]

umm they had the stuff that was removed and we didnt have 100 abilities...

they removed pretty much anything worth a damn from the game, its so bare bones now that its boring to play

Oookay dude. I can't take you serious anymore, sorry.

[Onikaroshi]

Oookay dude. I can't take you serious anymore, sorry.

He's not wrong... and they don't need to add abilities every level, or even every other level. They had a good thing the started with WoD with the traits that they ditched immediately that could have helped then a lot with leveling feeling more rewarding.

Like when you get Avenger's shield it only hits 3 targets and then you get a trait that lets it hit 5. Things like that could spice up leveling a LOT.

[seleri]

What rewards are you talking about exactly in a game where we have heirlooms for almost every single slot? In vanilla you didn't get gear rewards fairly frequently? To be honest I hate to compare the modern (modern: even from BC) game to vanilla, because in vanilla, you didn't even have enough quests to reach max level, (so let alone quest rewards) some zones were completely empty. If we compare things, let's compare to BC. And in BC you did get rewards fairly frequently. Things you got in Zangarmarsh were just enough better than things you got in Hellfire Peninsula.

One thing that is very annoying since the stat squish is that we have a bloat in ilevels. An item from a 5 man dungeon in wrath (War Mace of Unrequited Love) has almost the same ilevel as the item from ICC 25 hc (Royal Scepter of Terenas II). This is what ilevel bloat causes. And ilevel bloat is in correlation with player levels, because player levels are in correlation with stats.
They should have squished the levels with the stat squish.

I'm talking about a reward structure that doesn't exist yet. Power rewards will always either have to be pruned (in the case of abilities) or squished (in the case of gear, since people don't like numbers in the millions and billions).

Like I said in my first post that you quoted, cosmetic rewards are the only long term solution. A system like honor levels but with normal levels would be best, but simply putting in class specific cosmetic rewards in the gaps between power rewards would be an acceptable bandaid in the mean time. Cosmetic rewards never need to be pruned, once you have them you've got them forever.

Also I'm not sure why you brought up the second point about Wrath ilevels. If anything, a level squish would make things even weirder. We'd probably have MC gear the same ilevel as ICC gear.

[vertigo12]

The reason you dont get anything is because they removed pretty much everything you used to gain... removing levels doesnt fix the problem...

you dont fix the problem of too much having been removed by removing more...

As what we used to say in DotaPortal.com, DoTA-allstars.com remake and suggestions community: Do not fix what is not broken.

[Sondrelk]

He's not wrong... and they don't need to add abilities every level, or even every other level. They had a good thing the started with WoD with the traits that they ditched immediately that could have helped then a lot with leveling feeling more rewarding.

Like when you get Avenger's shield it only hits 3 targets and then you get a trait that lets it hit 5. Things like that could spice up leveling a LOT.

I am completely sure this is still a thing. At least it was when i levelled my KT druid.

[Lei]

I'm talking about a reward structure that doesn't exist yet. Power rewards will always either have to be pruned (in the case of abilities) or squished (in the case of gear, since people don't like numbers in the millions and billions).

Like I said in my first post that you quoted, cosmetic rewards are the only long term solution. A system like honor levels but with normal levels would be best, but simply putting in class specific cosmetic rewards in the gaps between power rewards would be an acceptable bandaid in the mean time. Cosmetic rewards never need to be pruned, once you have them you've got them forever.

Also I'm not sure why you brought up the second point about Wrath ilevels. If anything, a level squish would make things even weirder. We'd probably have MC gear the same ilevel as ICC gear.

I still don't understand what reward structure you're talking about while leveling that would not be solved with level squish. Right now it is bad, yes. But less levels would solve that. Or at least make it better.

Obviously I don't have the whole template from vanilla to BfA to match levels with ilevels and stats, but going just by the logic, if there were only 60 levels, matching 200+ ilevels would be easier thant to 110 levels.
Levels - ilevels - stats. These go hand in hand. We've only had number squishes and ilevel squishes previously, which fucked up everything below max level, because we still have 110 levels to distribute these.
Rewards and stats and numbers were just fine up until mop. The whole fuckery came with wod and legion and bfa.

We have many many empty levels. You ding, yeey, and nothing happens. You don't get considerably more powerful (in a scaling world it's an oxymoron to begin with). You rarely get talents, you rarely get anything meaningful. Level squish could solve this, if done properly.

[Sunblaze]

If the ever intend to make leveling interesting, it needs a squish. Dont see it happening if we need to level from 1 to 130.

[chaoticcrono]

honestly if you wanna reset levels and stats and progress and everything else just make a new mmo already....

A new MMO would fail miserably though because the current blizzard has no clue what fun is and wow is chugging along on name recognition

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If the ever intend to make leveling interesting, it needs a squish. Dont see it happening if we need to level from 1 to 130.

doesnt matter if there are 5 levels or 500 levels... if leveling isnt interesting its because the content is stripped down and boring since they removed all the little things that made the game interesting. reducing levels wont fix the problem of leveling being nothing more than a boring chore noone wants to do...

[vertigo12]

Right and I agree with you. But say a new player with no context now skips Silverpine goes through a bunch of expansions where it doesnt matter but then gets to Legion with Genns massive hardon for fighting Sylvanas. They are just like woah wtf is happening here. It makes absolutely no sense. This happens alot through alot of the expansions.

The only solution is Cataclysm v2 on a storyline level but noone is willing to tolerate that anymore. The amount of sacrifice to whatever expansion its tied to is too much for most players to be ok with. So I dont know how we address this anymore, theyve layered so many bandaids ontop each other leveling and storyline wise I dont actually think you can do a narrative fix so really focusing on the gameplay experience is all they can do.

Not unless that Cata v2 is Azeroth pre Sundering. Or basically a time travel expac back to Black Empire heights.

[Onikaroshi]

I am completely sure this is still a thing. At least it was when i levelled my KT druid.

It's not, they were entirely removed when Legion came out.

[seleri]

We have many many empty levels. You ding, yeey, and nothing happens. You don't get considerably more powerful (in a scaling world it's an oxymoron to begin with). You rarely get talents, you rarely get anything meaningful. Level squish could solve this, if done properly.

It would only solve "empty levels" as you put it. It doesn't solve the lack of rewards.

Like I said, the only benefit would be the optics for new players. I can understand the argument that a new player coming in may be intimidated by 120+ levels (though I've yet to actually meet one that is).

A current player will realize that even if there's only 60 levels, it will still take the same amount of time to get a reward as it does with 120 levels (without a significant exp squish). That is the issue. I don't know how to explain it any simpler than that, maybe it's a language barrier thing.

A level squish without an exp squish is pointless because the current rewards (abilities and talents) still take the same amount of time to earn.
A level squish with an exp squish without proper compensation invalidates weeks/months of time investment.

Cosmetic rewards are the only rewards that can be added in the long term because they never need to be pruned or squished.

[Sondrelk]

honestly if you wanna reset levels and stats and progress and everything else just make a new mmo already....

A new MMO would fail miserably though because the current blizzard has no clue what fun is and wow is chugging along on name recognition

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doesnt matter if there are 5 levels or 500 levels... if leveling isnt interesting its because the content is stripped down and boring since they removed all the little things that made the game interesting. reducing levels wont fix the problem of leveling being nothing more than a boring chore noone wants to do...

There are quite a lot of upgrades during normal levelling. And you seem to be vastly underestimating the human psychology when it comes to simple rewards.
Just look at the GCD outrage. At most i would assume a player loses maybe a full minute tops if you count the timep layed for an entire year.
And yet the outrage was as if Blizz had slashed the gamespeed in half.

A level squish won't fix many of the underlying problems with levelling, but it will make levelling "feel" better, which is enough when all you are tweaking is a number that shows up in your character screen.

[chaoticcrono]

Cosmetic rewards are the only rewards that can be added in the long term because they never need to be pruned or squished.

maybe they should just remove levels entirely since scaling mobs make leveling pointless anyways...

remove stats too...

just make this barby doll simulator....

[Sondrelk]

It's not, they were entirely removed when Legion came out.

Nope, just made a mage to double check. Spell ranks are still a thing.
Fire blast is a level 3 spell. At 18 it become a guranteed crit and at level 48 it becomes a spell with 2 charges.
Blizzard is learned at level 18, it gains an upgrade at level 63.

Spell ranks while levelling is totally a thing.

(Yes, there are more spell ranks than just 1 for each spec.)

[chaoticcrono]

There are quite a lot of upgrades during normal levelling. And y ouseem to be vastly underestimating the hyman psychology when it comes to simple rewards.
Just look at the GCD outrage. At most i would assume a player loses maybe a full minute tops if you count the timep layed for an entire year.
And yet the outrage was as if Blizz had slashed the gamespeed in half.

A level squish won't fix many of the underlying problems with levelling, but it will make levelling "feel" better, which is enough when all you are tweaking is a number that shows up in your character screen.

it will feel better to some and not others... the stat squish felt terrible so by that logic it shouldnt have been done, same with mob scaling...

[Sondrelk]

it will feel better to some and not others... the stat squish felt terrible so by that logic it shouldnt have been done, same with mob scaling...

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it will feel better to some and not others... the stat squish felt terrible so by that logic it shouldnt have been done, same with mob scaling...

Stat squish felt good to me, so by your own logic it should have been done. It also had a tangible benefit for the GUI, so i guess my side wins because it is opinion AND a tiny benefit to the game.

[Gadzooks]

I know this is a loot based game, but I don't think loot, or talents (or the lack of them) is the problem that a level squish is addressing.

I think they're seeing allied races not performing like they'd hoped. Survey says: "I ain't leveling from level 20 AGAIN, F DAT." Leveling has been an issue for a while, and Chilton and Hazzacostas ignoring it for so long has made it an almost-crisis.

But they won't nut up and do what's really needed - remove large chunks of old content. So, they make the level cap 60 again - there's still 15 years of content to slog through.
Imagine you wanted to watch the last season of Lost again. But you had to start from season 1, and watch every season, until Netflix unlocks the final season. Yeah. You can imagine the reaction. The same one that's getting pretty common with WoW players - "OMG ZANDALAR....I have to WHAT?"

Like a lot of their fixes, a level squish is an illusion of a fix, because the mountain of content is still there. Because they don't do real fixes, The World Of Hazzcostascraft is all about illusions of solutions. A level fix is the easiest one. It's just numbers. God knows the WoW teams have always taken the path of least resistance.

The hard fix is making hard choices, like taking everything from vanilla through Wrath, and throwing that on Classic servers, and starting players at what was level 80. Or getting rid of player levels, because they're meaningless now, gear level is the only one that really matters. Paragon is a system that works - hey, they've copied Diablo III extensively already, why not paragons? Isn't reputation pretty much a Paragon system anyway?

But no, they need the illusion that WoW is populated and healthy at all 120 levels, even though most people know anything before 120 is to be gotten through as fast as possible, and it's not like the devs don't like the income from selling boosts, either. So a level squish won't really accomplish much, other than confuse players even more than they are now, when they leave the current patch content. Because in the end, that's the only content the devs seem to care about these days. They've spent 15 years dropping old content immediately, and it's come back to bite them on the ass, hard.

They could make the hardest choice of all, and admit WoW is so big now, so bloated, it's unworkable, and it's time for a fresh start. But I wouldn't hold your breath on that one.

So this is what you get. Meaningless "squishes", that don't address the core problems. Level squishes will be the same as the others they've done - confusing, and then so common, nobody pays attention, and the problems they were meant to address are still there. But hey, they care, they tried, right? Illusion.

And, I just saw that an Ex CM is implying on Twitter that this survey wasn't even generated by the devs, so...could be all bullshit, anyway. Which means I just wrote all that for nothing...and if anything describes my MMO-C career better, I haven't seen it.

Now I'm depressed. I need coffee. Bah. GET OUT OF MAH BRAIN WOW. Why can't I quit you?

[Octoberfest99]

removing more from the game... seriously just make a new game instead of constantly removing stuff from this game to try and make it new...

removing levels is really dumb just like removing other things you earned.

If you support players getting a free 110 when they buy the latest xpac or if you support heirloom gear that grants bonus XP, you already have voiced your support for a level squish.