[Survey] Level squish IS coming per Blizzard

[rrayy]

It is far more likely that I am not alone with this point of view. Henceforth it is logical to say "we". In fact, there are so many players you can probably make any statement you want and say "we" and you will find one that thinks alike.

But I am not going to do that becuse I only speak for me. When you speak with "we" you act like you speak for EVERYONE and that only people who listen to you count. Well you don't because there are many that don't agree with you. That is why I speak for only myself and never use the term "we". Nobody should.

[Eosia]

Look at how badly the game got broken by squishing the itemlevels in bfa. So many things broke. You think this is something they can just throw together and release in a patch ? when squishing itemlevels bugged out so many things, squishing the levels will make the game burn. Thats not something they can do in a middle of a expansion, they need to make a new one based around it, so you can play the new current content while they still run around putting out fires in the old content which is not so much played anymore

Things "broke" in BFA because of how the original item squish happened. They did it by hand where in 8.0 they set up a new system that allows them to automate the whole thing when they need to do it again. The things that "broke" was stuff they didn't catch because of the sheer number of spells, items, etc.

If this is legit I don't see the point in it. Lets say they change the new cap to 60 just for an example. If 1-60 takes the same amount of time as 1-120 then it's only a visual change which means it might not look daunting but it's still going to feel the same, if not worse. Lets say an hour of time currently gets you 5 levels (again just an example) if they change it so the same amount of time gets you 1 its gonna feel like crap. It's not the end of the world if they do the squish I just don't see too many positives.

Exactly. We only went up 5 levels in Cata and MoP yet the leveling time took the same as it did roughly to go up 10 levels in BC, Wrath, WoD, and Legion as well as BfA.

[arkanon]

Last time the sub count information was released, it was still millions above its number 2 competitor. I think most people would be surprised if it dipped below any other mmos. Even if it did, it's still one of the top mmo games out there. The only reason I mentioned the sub count was because of what the previous comment was saying. I don't think sub count is everything, but it does say something if it manages to draw in such a large audience.

But like i said, and you chose to ignore - there is like.....ONE competitor that can be compared when you remove the MAJORITY of mmos by excluding anything that is F2P or doesn't quite fit someone definition of an mmo. And that competitor does not measure their subscriber count the same way as wow USED to.

You cant just take info from like 4-5 years ago, using a metric only they use, and say "see, they win!" well yeah, in a race with only one horse its pretty easy to pick whos going to win. This is something that has bugged me for years now - comparing wow to nothing else and saying "see, its the best!"

I think hours of play, or MAU narrowed down to just wow would be a better measure - i know a bunch of people who paid for the 6month sub and quit 2-3 months in. They would still count as subbed but havnt played in a few months now. It all boils down to comparing like for like. Whatever metric is used, it needs to be used by everyone.

The way many ppl do it is like saying Tom Hanks is the best actor in Cast Away.

[Caerule]

I'm fine with them doing a squish. It's just a number. It's not fundamentally going to change anything for me.

I'm sure they'll combine it with something. But unless it's a full world remake, I am unlikely to benefit in any way from this new system. So, like with item level squishes, I don't care even a little bit.

[Nfinitii]

Then add new abilities and special rewards. IN no way do they need to do a level squish at all. And you are kidding yourself if you think this game really attarctsnew players at this point. A level squish will not change that.

The game does and needs to attract new players, as well as returning players. A level squish by itself has no impact on the game, it would merely serve as a perception thing. Which alone can be powerful. It surely doesn’t hurt end game. You don’t need 120 lvls in the game, pretty much after lvl 45 ur only looking at a handful of abilities left for ur class. Lvl 80 is the last level u get a class ability, then u only have 2 more talents. So 20 more levels for 2 talents, then 20 lvls of nothing. That doesn’t feel good or rewarding. And depending on ur class u might only have 1 or 2 abilities/talents left that feel impactful after ur lvl 60 talent. 120 levels doesn’t feel good, going 15-20 lvls at a time before getting something relevant doesn’t feel good.

[Kaleredar]

Are we just assuming that the OP's purported email is "true?"

A lot of you seem to be putting the cart before the horse, here.

[Fred Skinner]

I don't care about most people, either Blizz should revamp the professions from the groud and make it so vanilla has maybe 3 ore types and 3 herb types, 2 for bc and so on, or don't take my choice away. I wanna mine what I target. I craft transmogs for my alts, for the AH, imagine if you wanted copper, but could only get whatsitcalled Thorium, I think is the best vanilla ore. So thorium. I mine thorium, then I visit some arbitary trader that would tell me X amount of Thorium is equal to y amount of copper. No thanks.

We already had traders in the game that sell old for new. There is nothing lost if your highest skill level only allows you to farm the newest stuff. In return you always get the mats appropriate for your skill level while leveling. And if you manage to collect 100 copper ores, that would be way enough to skill up your crafting professions, as you would combine 2 copper bars with a 5 copper coin vendor item to create an item to skill up. Beside that, you never would need copper bars again. To create transmog items, you could utilize the trader.

And you could farm your mats whereever you liked, and always would farm the latest materials. As the world scales with you.

Also imagine the AH. Where eventually you only see thorium, because most people have maxed out their profs. That would be terrible! You ruined the AH too btw, grats on that I guess.

At highest skill level you would get the highest material, which you could use the material vendor for if you needed older materials. So nothing is lost. You only had one material at endgame that matters. Which is not really bad compared to the mats bloat you have nowadays.

Just think about the profs that are using the ores, where you need both the "cheap" ore and the expensive + even the rare one, (both Obsidium, Elementium and Pyrite in Cata for example.)

You would not need these anymore.

Well I honestly hope you don't live off of these ideas of yours, I'd be sorry for your players.

Do i look like a game designer to you? I am just a player who throws in some ideas. Sorry, you do not like them. Offer better ones. Your idea to return to a low number of crafting mats is not really any kind better. And only because you label something "classic like" does not make it better.

[Dastreus]

I love how the first few pages seems to be almost entirely doubting OP, and then it's revealed on the home page that it's happening. loooolll

"Pics or it didn't happen"/ "shopped" basically.

[Kaleredar]

It was reported on multiple sites, including WoWhead... OP also isn't the only person that received the mail.

The survey did / is happening.

...But how do we know that it isn't just the same band of trolls all reiterating this same "survey?" Even MMO champ's "source" was some dude on reddit; wowhead sourced the same guy.

Like, it's always "some random person posted that they got this survey." It's never a site mod or somesuch.

[Qnubi]

But I am not going to do that becuse I only speak for me. When you speak with "we" you act like you speak for EVERYONE and that only people who listen to you count. Well you don't because there are many that don't agree with you. That is why I speak for only myself and never use the term "we". Nobody should.

No, I don't act like I speak for everyone. That's just your illogical assumption. The word "we" does not imply everyone. It implies me and everyone that thinks/feels the same which is 100% correct. If "we" was everyone then nobody could ever use it simply because there is not a single thing everyone agrees on or everyone is part of, including obvious definitions like are "we" human. You will find someone that disagrees.

Since this is going off-topic "we" should probably stop talking about it anyway.

[Asphyx22]

But like i said, and you chose to ignore - there is like.....ONE competitor that can be compared when you remove the MAJORITY of mmos by excluding anything that is F2P or doesn't quite fit someone definition of an mmo. And that competitor does not measure their subscriber count the same way as wow USED to.

You cant just take info from like 4-5 years ago, using a metric only they use, and say "see, they win!" well yeah, in a race with only one horse its pretty easy to pick whos going to win. This is something that has bugged me for years now - comparing wow to nothing else and saying "see, its the best!"

I think hours of play, or MAU narrowed down to just wow would be a better measure - i know a bunch of people who paid for the 6month sub and quit 2-3 months in. They would still count as subbed but havnt played in a few months now. It all boils down to comparing like for like. Whatever metric is used, it needs to be used by everyone.

The way many ppl do it is like saying Tom Hanks is the best actor in Cast Away.

Yeah, but you are eliminating all other mmos for the sake of your argument. If anyone is ignoring anything, it's you. I consider every other mmorpg to be a competitor, and I have tried a plethora of the other mmos. None of them compared to this game (I still wanna check out FFXIV one day. I've heard good things about it).

I'm not here to say wow is amazing or anything. It's been pretty boring lately, but that's just my opinion.

[rda]

I am not a fan of the level squish because I think it will just serve as an excuse for the devs to do "something" which would not really solve anything, but will still break things.

We had two stat squishes. Were they successful? I don't think they were. We had tons of things in old raids and during leveling breaking - and all that just to see lower numbers on nameplates and in logs. This wasn't worth it.

[Revamp Man]

LOL So because it is something you want I shouldn't bitch because it would be meaningless? You do not get to tell me what I think is meaningless or not.

Leveling is about progression. With my current main and other toons, i leveled all 120 levels. Level squish takes away my personal progression. I love to feel over powered vs low level content. I do not want the feeling of something being taken away because a few whiners are afraid of big numbers. Progression needs to be maintained and that is the biggest positive to keeping levels as is. You want to keep the levels from getting out of hand? Stop at 120 and add paragon levels instead.

- - - Updated - - -

Who is this "we" you speak of? You only speak for you and for many the game is fine as is. Stop acting entitled to the point where the game should solely revolve around you.

- - - Updated - - -

Show me where you are getting sub numbers? Og right, you don't actually have a source.

The game is still very profitable, so the rest of your claims are BS too.

You're the one saying that a squish is stupid and for lazy developers but want to add paragon levels....that's even dumber than a squish

So all 119 levels are meaningful to you

Including the first like 5 that you could just hit 3 mobs and get?

What progression other than "muh numbers" is taken away from you with the squish?

[Lei]

"muh numbers"

I can only read this with John Snow voice and acting.

[chaoticcrono]

How is that a downside?

I like keys so for me its a downside...

[Schizoide]

Alternate advancement mechanisms such as paragon levels are the traditional approach to level inflation, because they offer a much more shallow progression curve than traditional levels. But WoW already has alternate advancement. It was added in Legion and retained in BFA-- artifact power.

The core problem here is the devs can't think up enough meaningful rewards for 120+ character levels, with the consequence being that gaining most levels isn't exciting or cool. This is exacerbated by the world leveling system added recently where you can never really outlevel the monsters, so you always perform at roughly the same power level, and the "new" talent panel, where players aren't rewarded with a talent point every level. The devs tried various ways to approach this like "level perks" and improving abilities with ranks 2 and 3 at later levels, but they really didn't address the core problem.

So they have a problem here, and no doubt have the metrics to prove it's worth design and dev time to fix. Those metrics must support a strong conclusion, because a level squish has got to be a ton of work. Do you just make each level take 3 times as long, and figure that's OK with a meaningful reward? When you're addressing the leveling experience (again), do you really expect players to endure the severe quality differentials between the various expansions moving back and forth in time? And with the example of Cataclysm behind you, how much work are you really gonna invest in the new player experience? Do you really think this will revitalize WoW and grow subscriptions over time? And if not, why bother?

[arkanon]

I like keys so for me its a downside...

What did you like about the old system? Keys still exist in the game, you collect them, and open locks with them. That hasnt changed.

[chaoticcrono]

What did you like about the old system? Keys still exist in the game, you collect them, and open locks with them. That hasnt changed.

most of the keys were removed...

In patch 4.2.0, the keyring was removed, as were many of the keys within it. Keys that still had a purpose were moved to the player's inventory, while those that weren't were deleted. Deleted keys that could be sold to vendors were converted into gold and mailed to the player by The Keymaster

For dungeons, any locked door that required a dungeon key was changed into a simple door that can be clicked on to open it.

The reason I liked the old system was

1. it made sense for places to have locked doors
2. it gave a sense of progression since you needed a key (which sometimes required a quest chain or dungeon in order to get) to access later dungeons or locked off areas.
3. it rewarded exploration and gave nifty shortcuts for people who went out of their way to get it.
4. it was something useful to collect and it felt nice to have something people needed when in a group or even when out and about on your own.

[kamuimac]

You're the one saying that a squish is stupid and for lazy developers but want to add paragon levels....that's even dumber than a squish

So all 119 levels are meaningful to you

Including the first like 5 that you could just hit 3 mobs and get?

What progression other than "muh numbers" is taken away from you with the squish?

the current one.

instead we already have hint how long post sqish progression will take. aproximately 120 hours to max level. this would make leveling significantly slower and more annoying then it is today .

they have to have some kind of plan if they are asking about squish - shame they didnt tell us it already

they have this info in question about boosts price reduction 40 euro for +/- 120 hours of leveling.

[arkanon]

most of the keys were removed...



The reason I liked the old system was

1. it made sense for places to have locked doors

I called this already - you cant use "it made sense" in a game where you get dragons in the mail, and it sits in your mailbox, despite being the size of a house, and you could retrieve it from any mailbox on the planet, or a second planet, and even a totally different alternate timeline. You cannot talk about realism in a game like this. The others are just rubbish - all of those systems still existed before the keyring, and after the keyring. You still need to acquire certain items to access certain areas - you still need to meet certain criteria to access certain raids and dungeons - and shock horror - keys still exist.