Okay, so, I finally put together the time to get my Mag'har orc to 110, but it's also allowed me to look at the ridiculous pile of problems that the current "leveling" experience currently has. Here's a short list:
First of all, the actual game itself (rather than expansions) is now almost completely ignored. The scaling of mob levels and experience helps the problem by keeping a single zone appropriate for all of your levels, but what this does is
effectively remove three quarters of the original world. If you're random-queuing for dungeons, it will remove even more than this. Not only does this dramatically reduce the encouragement to play a far bigger game than any expansion,
it makes basic profession development practically impossible.
Then, of course, there's the random-queuing for dungeons. The opportunity is wildly out of line throughout, as it's not up to you which one you get, which means the potential time-demand can vary dramatically. Despite this frustration (or continually getting the same dungeon),
random-queuing for dungeons as a tank or healer is by far the fastest route to level 60, at least. Because of the travelling that general questing requires, random dungeon-running is extraordinarily more beneficial, particularly for those with the heirlooms. The provision, of course,
then changes dramatically when you reach level 90. Not only do the waiting times seem to rise, potentially even slightly earlier, the next two past expansions are considered singular which unloads substantially less dungeons than the rest of the game. The 90 to 100, for example, drops to
a single dungeon every two levels... Making questing suddenly worthwhile, especially for damage dealers who have longer queues.
Of course, there's the class development.
It stops at level 80. That's when pretty much your entire class skills package has been unlocked, and is on your button bars.
That means there are effectively FORTY levels about to be worked through, without a single development. Sure, you could include the additional two talents, but two 'choices' over forty levels and no choices over the live expansion? That's extremely poor and smacks of lazy design. Of course, class performance also randomly changes due to the
scaling that gets randomly applied as far as the character is concerned. Moving into Warlords drops item quality, as does the live game, which has a nuisance impact on the heirlooms you've piled gold into.
So, to summarize,
the majority of the original game is skipped which is a real shame,
you can't develop your professions which guts the content's depth,
random-queuing for dungeons obliterates the pace of any other content which demands random groups you won't get to know,
the dungeon experience then changes dramatically at level 60 which is wholly pointless,
class development ends at level 80 which is fundamentally absurd, while
the gear scaling changes see your character drop its power for no explicable reason whatsoever.
It's little wonder that new players are being boosted, but that essentially gives them barely any content or experience, makes the achievement screen utterly pointless, provides precious little experience or learning environments, guts other systems (particularly ALL professions) and destroys the means in which that new player can learn some actual lore that'll help them understand why things are happening.
As far as I'm concerned, I think this is potentially the biggest damage to new player retention. There's no way that I can prove that, of course, but there seems a huge pile of issues that would stop anyone from retaining their subscription.
So... Do I have any ideas that might fix this?
Unsurprisingly, I do.
1. First of all, the level number has got to drop. Dramatically. My belief is that the maximum level should be 70...
And should always be 70. The original game should reach level 60, with the Cataclysm zones being re-scaled as part of it because they are consistent with its timeline. From here, every expansion should take you from 60 to 70 with the maximum players returning to 60 when a new expansion is released. This reinvigorates the original game itself, recreates the means with which to develop your professions, makes class design much more fulfilling, and keeps dungeons advantageous but not ludicrously so.
2. All expansions, once passed, should be made part of the Caverns of Time. In-game mobs therefore give players a chance to go and experience them at level cap, with all mobs scaled to the level cap...
But have large powers removed in order to maintain the cosmetic availability to players. Not only does this remove a HUGE stack of bizarre problems, it gets rid of the item scaling issues, gives players choices, rebuilds the entire story, and lets players choose what they want to be involved in. The choice then becomes the full game to the current expansion, rather than the full game, to Outland/Northrend to Cataclysm/Pandaria, to Draenor, to Legion... So on.
3. Drop the numbers in professions. Honestly, it's gotten silly. We're now in a system that effectively guts the early versions, where there is some really nice cosmetic items, and creates a 'current' level of 150 for the most recent expansion. It removes the depth, the fun and the variability. The original level of 300 is just fine, with the current expansion jumping to 375, and the drops happening with the new expansion the same way character levels do. Suddenly, there's a chance to wholly recreate the depth the systems once had, and even let the system build powerful items that can be competitive given a players expertise. It makes sense, and could relaunch professions. I also support a change to one creation profession, and
all collection ones.
4. Heirlooms should be renumbered. The fact that they change, as expansions change, is just a nonsense. And because the character level has been cut in half, there doesn't need to be a 50% to 60% increase. Remove the levels of each heirloom (while returning the gold to the players that spent it), they always work to level 60, and increase your experience to a maximum of 10%. It's a simple one.
5. Item enhancement is removed. It's great when those quest rewards proc into something more powerful, isn't it? Well... No. When you're leveling,
it's absolutely and completely pointless. Once you hit the cap, it'll be gotten rid of extremely quickly or, even worse, if you get it too early, then all it'll take is a couple of levels to see it gotten rid of. It could have an impact on enchanters, but it would do nothing for anyone else, so there's effectively no argument, at all, to keep doing this. Personally, I dislike it at level cap, but I understand the intent; I've no intent what it's supposed to be doing for people who are leveling.
6. Fix the PvP reputations. It seems unrelated to this thread, because it is, but the reputation demands have become really needless given the number of battlegrounds that now exist. Rather than having a separate reputation for all of them, or the random no reputation found with a few,
group them all up and reduce the number of reputations that the game has linked to PvP. So battlegrounds that are similar should be applied with the same reputation.
7. Drop the maximum of the achievement pane. Given that the entire game, other than the current expansion, is being skipped effectively, the number of achievement points make it a fundamentally broken piece of content. Even if a new player nailed every single one from the current expansion, he or she
is absolutely miles behind and will never catch up. Cut the number in half, dramatically reduce the ones that have been needlessly expanded, and then turn current expansion achievements into the pointless rewards when the expansion is replaced. That keeps the achievements for those who earned them, but doesn't count them to make the content so broken.
At this point, there are so many other things I'd like to suggest but a great many of them are more of a level-cap, current-expansion argument so I'll leave them out. Of course, it's also noteworthy to remember that this post is too big for the vast majority of people to read, but maybe a designer will. And lastly, because I reckon new players are now less likely to stay than ever before, buying games that encourage you
to skip the overwhelming majority of the game just shouldn't be chased.
That's the start of this thread - what do you guys want to continue with?