Level squish in future expansions

[Omedon]

If they set everything up properly, it shouldnt be hard for them to squish again without even showing it.


Shadowlands:
Every xpac: 10 to 50.
Shadowlands 51 to 60

Next xpac
Every xpac: 10 to 60
Current: 61 to 70


All they would need to do is just slightly alter their math and every expansion could be from 10 to 60 instead of 10 to 50.
Effectively, this would act like a level squish every expansion while visually not appearing so.

I’ve seen this suggested before but it doesn’t address something that blizzard themselves have said was a motivation for the 60-squish: Empty levels. They want more dings (it might even be every or every other) from 10-50 to gain something substantial and permanent whether it’s a new ability, talent, a flight level or a feature like lfd, and (as I interpret it) they’ve done that arrangement now for the potentially evergreen 10-50 to hold it forever.

Yes, the math for the Chromie time bracket is, I’m sure, flexible, but the number of systemically relevant and permanent gains-per-ding is much less so.

[Squigglyo]

I’ve seen this suggested before but it doesn’t address something that blizzard themselves have said was a motivation for the 60-squish: Empty levels. They want more dings (it might even be every or every other) from 10-50 to gain something substantial and permanent whether it’s a new ability, talent, a flight level or a feature like lfd, and (as I interpret it) they’ve done that arrangement now for the potentially evergreen 10-50 to hold it forever.

Yes, the math for the Chromie time bracket is, I’m sure, flexible, but the number of systemically relevant and permanent gains-per-ding is much less so.

That wouldnt produce empty levels though, its not adding any new levels to the 'previous' leveling, just takes the 10 levels used for 'current' and moves them into the 'old', everything 51-60 would still be unlocked at the same time.

No matter the solution, they will be adding 10 levels in some way every expansion, so their only issue with empty levels would be in the 10 new ones they add unless they decide to move everything around for some reason.

[Omedon]

That wouldnt produce empty levels though, its not adding any new levels to the 'previous' leveling, just takes the 10 levels used for 'current' and moves them into the 'old', everything 51-60 would still be unlocked at the same time.

No matter the solution, they will be adding 10 levels in some way every expansion, so their only issue with empty levels would be in the 10 new ones they add unless they decide to move everything around for some reason.

Ok, but... the idea is your class is pretty much done growing into the fullness of its power and feature access at 50, and then you start the most current expansion which doesn’t have to grow your class or feature access much further until the level cap at 60. 51-60 I think there’s like one more ability per spec that changes somehow (as affliction corruption gets an opening direct damage portion for example) but otherwise 51-60 is carried by... well, being current.

Stretching the 10-50 character growth, the majority of “systematically relevant dings” to a 10-60 spread... will create more empty levels, and unlike the current expansion, leveling needs those “relevant dings” to carry it.

It remains to be seen if level 61 will ever exist again. I suspect we will know in just over a year’s time.

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One more thing: I highly doubt they zapped almost every xp bonus from the game (especially heirlooms) if they intend to raise the level cap ever again.

[RemasteredClassic]

My uncle's brother's uncle who works as a mobile lunch vendor near the Blizzard building entrance, told me that we are going to have what has already been confirmed (minus the little details) for what it would look like come 10.0: GAME PLUS.

No more XP leveling past 60. Yes progression is a big part of an RPG, we know, we know, but it doesn't necessarily NEED to have player XP levels as there are a thousand ways to progress. ESO is a good example of such an MMORPG. They can simply introduce elite levels that would be reflected on the player's info page when you inspect a player, it would show how many expansions that player has experienced at max level.

[Schattenlied]

I highly doubt that, that would basically kill the game at that point.

People said every squish that was ever done would "kill the game", none of them did.

Fact of the matter is everyone stops caring (if they ever did to begin with, I wager most don't) that the squish even happened 2 weeks into the expansion because it doesn't fucking matter... As long as you're still stronger than the person 1 level below you everything is working the same way it always did.

[NineSpine]

It's not my solution, it was a hypothetical to try to figure out WHY losing 10 arbitrary levels feels bad, and if changing the window dressing so to speak changes how you feel about it (which you didn't answer). That's not actually what I would design.

Second, the secondary rating correction is not the only problem. Another problem is the leveling flow. The primary reason we're having this leveling squish is to fix the leveling flow. It allows you to level using only 2 expansions. One "obsolete" expansion and the current one. I highly doubt they're going to throw that all away for whatever comes after Shadowlands. If we simply change the "obsolete" expansions from 10-50 to 10-60, this means they have to redo what level you earn your abilities at or the leveling flow changes (even if the time to level does not). If we don't, then we're now leveling in 3 expansion (and 4... then 5... and then we're back to where we started).

There's also the large number problem. Keeping numbers at a reasonable level for readability. Smaller numbers are more digestible and without stat squishes they get unwieldy rather quickly. Now you can disagree with this point, but I'm reasonably sure Blizzard agrees with me or they wouldn't be on their third stat squish. When everyone says "just abbreviate" they tend to forget about one key point. 1,234 vs 1,234k is easier to distinguish than 1,234k vs 1,234m by the virtue of the first being the absence of any letter vs the presence of a letter rather than having to differentiate 2 letters. Just play endgame Diablo 3 with abbreviated damage numbers on for a bit and you'll see what I mean.

So even if we did your "behind the scenes" leveling, you haven't solved the large number problem. That's why, to me, it makes the most sense just to go full reset every expansion and be done with it. But then again, that's always been my preference even before I knew the level squish was a thing, this just simplifies it because now we don't have to worry about adjusting the leveling scale ever again.

EDIT: Also, if we're not actually "leveling" as you suggest, what happens next expansion.

Player A "leveled" through shadowlands and had his ratings adjusted.
Player B didn't.

What happens when they both start questing in the next expansion?

Losing ten levels feels bad because you are being reset back to a progress point you were already at and told to regain ten levels you already had yesterday.

Once a piece of content is moved to 10-50, it’s rewards are going to be scaled to that range. This is already what’s happening to BFA. Shadowlands gets moved to 10-50 in both of our models so some of your points are moot. Numbers are going to inflate either way, unless you are advocating an item squish every expansion too which is another terrible idea.

The problem with your solution remains that it is unnecessary, and that you think “lol I don’t care so you shouldn’t” is how games are designed. There is a big difference between “We are changing how leveling works, it’s an entirely new system, and we’ve introduced unsolvable problems like too many levels too quickly, so now we are going to shrink the level cap to accommodate that” and “we are going to arbitrarily take away ten levels every two years and reset your progress”.

The former has some benefits that come with it that make it viable. There’s more to be gained through the squish. Your squish is just unnecessary entirely. You want to solve under the hood math problems by taking things away from players. That’s never a good idea.

The real solution is simply that the new expansion has higher ilvls than the old one.

In all circumstances, some kind of squish that fixes secondary stat scaling, which is the only actual problem here, will be less obtrusive and feel better than “haha now you are level 50 again”.

[rrayy]

Yes, you did. You always do less at the beginning of an expansion at level cap than you did end game previous expansion. It happens every time because someone with that gear gets almost no upgrades while leveling and their secondary stats go way down. I have personally seen it happen every time unless there was something like 2.0 that changed a lot of specs to make their base way higher. Regardless of any squish, the amount of secondary stats goes down so much while you're leveling you do less damage at level cap than you did at the previous cap.

Only when Blizzard did a stat squish. Going through all the expansions before the stat sqush you were always getting more powerful. The only thing that changed was the mobs you were facing also got more powerful. ALl you had to do was kill max level mobs from the previous expansion as you level up in the new one. You absolutely were killing it faster and faster with each level You are absolutely lying trying to claim you were doing less at 80 than you were at 70.

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Ok, but... the idea is your class is pretty much done growing into the fullness of its power and feature access at 50, and then you start the most current expansion which doesn’t have to grow your class or feature access much further until the level cap at 60. 51-60 I think there’s like one more ability per spec that changes somehow (as affliction corruption gets an opening direct damage portion for example) but otherwise 51-60 is carried by... well, being current.

Stretching the 10-50 character growth, the majority of “systematically relevant dings” to a 10-60 spread... will create more empty levels, and unlike the current expansion, leveling needs those “relevant dings” to carry it.

No it won't. You can add more rewards. It's not that hard. It is a complete fallacy to say it will create empty levels when you can add whatever rewards you want.

It remains to be seen if level 61 will ever exist again. I suspect we will know in just over a year’s time.

Quite likely.

One more thing: I highly doubt they zapped almost every xp bonus from the game (especially heirlooms) if they intend to raise the level cap ever again.

THey zapped all the XP bonuses because leveling is now so fast. It has zero to do the intent to raise level cap or not. As it is, they can always put XP buffs back in. They have already used them over the past 6 months.

[Shaetha]

No it won't. You can add more rewards. It's not that hard. It is a complete fallacy to say it will create empty levels when you can add whatever rewards you want

You have way too many posts on this forum to actually believe this statement.

[kranur]

Doubt it. They only reason for the squish is because things got out of hand. They won’t need to do it again for a while.

With the super exponential power increase that they do? It will barley be enough for the expansion after shadowlands.

Literally the power from bis pre-raid to fully decked end of expansion, it increased 10x

[Usernameforforums]

They should just remove levels if that were the case. Make it more like monster hunter where your gear is the level. Instead if ilvl itll be ranked gear. Rank 1 will be your starter set, rank 8 will be your dungeon set, rank 9-12 will be raid tier sets. Each expansion(EX1/2/3/etc)there would be something like ex1 rank1 for world, ex1 rank 8 dungeon, ex1 rank9-12 expansion raids.

But this is an idea for another time. Maybe in the future when they get tired of the idea of levels. Level grinding in this day of age is just tiresome imo. Yes it has it benefits by helping people learn their class, kinda. But a guide helps more really.

[rrayy]

You have way too many posts on this forum to actually believe this statement.

It's true. The fact that you think they can't is stunning. They did it before, they can do it again.

[Sughs]

Doubtful. It would feel really bad to log in and have lost 10 levels like that.

More likely what they will do is keep the cap at 60 permanently. When a new expansion comes out, the ilvls are higher And you need to do the questing to unlock the endgame content. Shadowlands then becomes the 10-50 zone. Rinse and repeat.

I wouldn't mind this.

[rrayy]

There are new people not coming to the game because it takes 120 levels to get there. Blizzard will lose people no matter what they do. They are taking the route that they think will lose the least, *and* get more new players.

If you don't like the idea of going back to 50 every expansion here on out, I suspect you might as well quit now, because that is the most likely route they'll take.

YMMV.

NO it is not the moist likely. ANd you missed the point I was saying. It';s not about level 120 anymore. What I am saying is you resume increasing level cap with 1-150 now becoming 1-60. You do that until 100 then you reset back to 50. And it is naive to think that there is going to be this large surge of new players to a 16 year old game. They should be focused on keeping the ones they have because you aren't going to get enough new players anymore to replace the ones you have.

[rrayy]

If they didn't think they were going to get new players, why did they make Exile's Reach, and make a 'default path' for new players?

You can think all you want. Doesn't mean it is going to happen at all or in any number that would be significant. Remember, Blizzard doing something doesn't mean they are right. They have been wrong plenty of times. This is the company, after all, that thought it would be a good idea to remove flying completely.

[NineSpine]

You can think all you want. Doesn't mean it is going to happen at all or in any number that would be significant. Remember, Blizzard doing something doesn't mean they are right. They have been wrong plenty of times. This is the company, after all, that thought it would be a good idea to remove flying completely.

But... they didn’t remove flying completely.

[Drusin]

I remember reading a blue post or an interview where Blizzard said that future expansions will work like Shadowlands according to the level squish and max level:

Every new expansion we get set back to level 50 and the new max level is again level 60.

Unfortunately I can't find this blue post or interview anymore.
Can someome please help me?

I've never seen such a blue post but I have seen players saying it so I'll guess that's what you've seen

[SniperCT]

Saw someone mention ESO's champion points and honestly I think that might be the way to go. (and if they made champion points account wide like ESO that would be *chef's kiss* amazing)

Just not sure how it could translate into how wow does gearing and power, though.

Basically in ESO you hit the cap, and then all questing/content/etc you do earns you champion points which you can then spend on different ways of increasing your character's power. And it's account wide so your alts will always be caught up this way (meaning new alts just need to gear up and maybe unlock some things to catch up to your main).

So in wow the cap stays at 60 forever but you still advance in power. I believe ESO also lowers the CP requirement for older content once it's no longer relevant so that new players/characters can experience it and get caught up both gear and CP wise.

So say you need 200 CP to enter a raid. One expansion later they lower the CP for that raid to 125, so you can then use that raid (and other content from that period) to get more CP so you can catch up to the newer content easier. In a way it would make older content more relevant, and eventually you'll be powerful enough to go back and solo it.

[Krimzin]

I remember reading a blue post or an interview where Blizzard said that future expansions will work like Shadowlands according to the level squish and max level:

Every new expansion we get set back to level 50 and the new max level is again level 60.

Unfortunately I can't find this blue post or interview anymore.
Can someome please help me?

Wont happen unless it absolutely has to. Doing even once leaves players with a bad taste.. Having to level to 120 then getting set back to 50, not a pleasant experience and not one they will ever make a recurring theme. So now they have 6 more expansions til you are back to 120 after Shadowlands, doubt if will be in the next 10 years if ever.