How should leveling be handled in 10.0?

[Thraenduil]

So what about the next expansion? Stuck farming 3 expansions worth of raids?
And then 4?

And then you'd probably only do raids that gave BiS loot, so you'd be stuck doing the same 4-5 raids literally for the rest of the game. I mean, why do the new raid if it doesn't give better loot? Why do the new expansion content if it doesn't give any worthwhile progression?

It's an RPG after all, it's about making your character stronger.. There's no point if you don't do that.


And unless the new content is worth doing, no one will do it, which means they won't make new content, because why make new content if there's no return on investment?


Or, do you mean you'd only have to do 2 expansions worth of raids? Then you're picking the last option, with stats inflating infinitely, and again, being completely pointless because you'll easily reach any sort of cap you want, and again, no point to doing new content because you're already gearcapped, so why bother.

Either way, no new content will be developed after a while, which means dead game

Usually people do new content because it's fun and different from the rest. And even if some of the better gear drops from older content, you still wound want to try new stuff with that gear. Or just go to arena to rompstomp people.

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Yeah, I wonder why Blizzard doesn't make WoW into a totally different game...

No one wants Wow to be like PoE, FF or any other game. But it doesn't stop blizzard from borrowing ideas from them

[Relapses]

No one wants Wow to be like PoE, FF or any other game. But it doesn't stop blizzard from borrowing ideas from them

"Borrowing ideas" in this case simply meaning that Blizzard redesigns from the ground up the way the entire game works so that its current max level endgame-focused reward structure is completely upended to match those of other very different video games.

[Unholyground]

They should move away from leveling each expasion if they are going to continue the heavy focus on borrowed power. Keep it 60 and have players work towards the new systems out of the gate. That would also slow players down and make them actually do all the quests in a zone over time.

[Th3Scourge]

Don't add new levels, just make the story chapters a playthrough to the end to 'unlock' endgame content (M+ raids etc etc). It's likely they will still leverage off borrowed power etc so we will likely have to level that up to obtain player power. Scale all Chromie levelling to 60 so we don't ever have to go back to the steaming pile of dogshit that is SL

[Jabakaga]

They should just have 60 as the cap either by move everyone back to 50 or just skip the levels. Leveling is no longer part of the game just some way for them to tell the story, few people actually care about the lore. Even cinematic skip addon was popular in SL release shows how interested players are in the lore.

[Amnaught]

Last expansion content for gear is actually a cool concept, I am all up for it.

Same.

Level from 1-60 in Timewalking Campaigns, then latest expansion is just higher item levels. Literally just squish the gear at the end of expansion back to level 60 questing ilvl in preparation for the next one.

[Argorwal]

Leveling is an outdated concept. Leveling is so completely twisted in WoW these days that you actually become more gimped as you level up (in the past few xpacs) until you get to max level and get some pieces of gear.

Should just do away with it altogether and let people jump into the endgame loop.

This is a function of them deciding level scaling is a good idea.

Before level scaling it wasn’t as noticeable that you got weaker as you leveled because you went to a new zone. It just make “sense” that a wolf in Blades Edge is stronger than a wolf in hellfire peninsula.

Now with level scaling you don’t get to see that progression with all zones scaling the same.

It’s also a function them removing defense rating, crushing blows, hit chance, etc. which were all there to make leveling naturally have progression without massive gear changes since it was all based on your level vs the mobs level.

[rrayy]

I didn’t say we should put people back to 50, but I don’t think going to 70 is a better solution. There’s just as many problems.

There aren't any problems with going to 70. All they have to do is make 1-60 take roughly the same amount of time that 1-50 does now.

[Amnaught]

Beat me to it. The only other way I could think of to gear and secondary stat reset us each expansion would be to turn whatever gear we have into baseline greens and make us gear up in the new expansions content again. But that might be too radical.

Or

And hear me out

Just like gear can change level in PVP, let gear change level depending on the expansion you're currently playing in. So Shadowlands gear is still the best gear for Shadowlands content, but no better than questing greens in 10.0 content.

[Accendor]

So what about the next expansion? Stuck farming 3 expansions worth of raids?
And then 4?

And then you'd probably only do raids that gave BiS loot, so you'd be stuck doing the same 4-5 raids literally for the rest of the game. I mean, why do the new raid if it doesn't give better loot? Why do the new expansion content if it doesn't give any worthwhile progression?

It's an RPG after all, it's about making your character stronger.. There's no point if you don't do that.


And unless the new content is worth doing, no one will do it, which means they won't make new content, because why make new content if there's no return on investment?


Or, do you mean you'd only have to do 2 expansions worth of raids? Then you're picking the last option, with stats inflating infinitely, and again, being completely pointless because you'll easily reach any sort of cap you want, and again, no point to doing new content because you're already gearcapped, so why bother.

Either way, no new content will be developed after a while, which means dead game

I know I make this sound easy, but: Find alternate ways of progression. AP in its first iteration was a great start.

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That's just mathematically impossible. The whole point of leveling is to soften the reduction of power that need to happen.

You start an expansion with 10% crit and end with 50+%. There has to be a way to returning to 10% or you'll obviously hit a wall where all stats are capped.

If leveling is the way to make you weaker because you have no other way of handling the transition from one endgame to another that is just failed game design. At least soften the blow - new talent row or something similar, that still lets you feel progression during the leveling process.

[Relapses]

AP in its first iteration was a great start.

And where is AP now? Oh right. They removed it. Because it was terrible.

[Ahraa]

Personally I'd like to just see the level stay the same and introduce another form of progression.

It's been pretty traditional to increase the level cap by 10 levels per expansion, but I feel at this point (lore wise), our characters are pretty overpowered. Like why are we still leveling up? We've taken on the burning legion, dethroned the lich king, killed a world ending dragon, literally traveled through death and (presumably) dealt with a first one. I mean at this point I'd say we've reached the maximal potential a person could.

Instead of a level cap, maybe a general progression of quests and story lines (that's hopefully NOT time gated) to unlock specific dungeons, raids, hubs, etc.

[Amnaught]

This is a function of them deciding level scaling is a good idea.

Before level scaling it wasn’t as noticeable that you got weaker as you leveled because you went to a new zone. It just make “sense” that a wolf in Blades Edge is stronger than a wolf in hellfire peninsula.

Now with level scaling you don’t get to see that progression with all zones scaling the same.

It’s also a function them removing defense rating, crushing blows, hit chance, etc. which were all there to make leveling naturally have progression without massive gear changes since it was all based on your level vs the mobs level.

I think a combination of what they did with Cataclysm zones and Shadowlands zones is the way to go honestly. Cataclysm zones all scale to 50, but start at varying levels from Azshara at 10 to Vashjir at 45. Then in Shadowlands, you still have to do the zones in order, but on alts you can do them in any order. So combining those, you'd see the scale gradually get more intense, but then on alts just do whatever zones you want.

Personally really bugs me that I can do most Legion zones from level 10 onward, but can only do Argus or Suramar for 5 levels. "Go kill 10 infernals for me in Azsuna. Argus space-cats?? Are you insane?!?"

[Argorwal]

I know I make this sound easy, but: Find alternate ways of progression. AP in its first iteration was a great start.

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If leveling is the way to make you weaker because you have no other way of handling the transition from one endgame to another that is just failed game design. At least soften the blow - new talent row or something similar, that still lets you feel progression during the leveling process.

They used to use stuff like defense, crushing blows, and hit chance to soften the blow with leveling. Your level vs a mob level meant something due to those types of stats, so while you for example lost some crit chance by leveling, you still felt stronger because you were killing mobs you couldn’t at lower levels due to them now being yellow instead of orange/red.

A combination of level scaling and removal of those types of stats/mechanics have killed the progression of leveling.

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I think a combination of what they did with Cataclysm zones and Shadowlands zones is the way to go honestly. Cataclysm zones all scale to 50, but start at varying levels from Azshara at 10 to Vashjir at 45. Then in Shadowlands, you still have to do the zones in order, but on alts you can do them in any order. So combining those, you'd see the scale gradually get more intense, but then on alts just do whatever zones you want.

Personally really bugs me that I can do most Legion zones from level 10 onward, but can only do Argus or Suramar for 5 levels. "Go kill 10 infernals for me in Azsuna. Argus space-cats?? Are you insane?!?"

Yeah I actually liked how shadowlands did it’s leveling with “sorta” scaled zones. It just needed more leveling zones imo, like 6-8 instead of 4 so we would have some options like in MoP.

[Ealyssa]

At least soften the blow

That's the whole point of expansion leveling, to soften the reduction in power and hiding it behind increased mob health and damage.

There is no other solution to the problem. It just can't be solved if you want meaningful loots at each tier.

[cparle87]

Or

And hear me out

Just like gear can change level in PVP, let gear change level depending on the expansion you're currently playing in. So Shadowlands gear is still the best gear for Shadowlands content, but no better than questing greens in 10.0 content.

How is that very different from how it is now? Shadowlands gear will get replaced with new expansion stuff. And your way will just incentivize people keeping sets from each expansion going on for farming purposes. Like having a timewalking set, but it just gets worse with time.

[Drusin]

idc as long as scaling isn't fucked up.

[Amnaught]

How is that very different from how it is now? Shadowlands gear will get replaced with new expansion stuff. And your way will just incentivize people keeping sets from each expansion going on for farming purposes. Like having a timewalking set, but it just gets worse with time.

Yeah, I would like to need sets from each expansion in order to effectively do that expansion's endgame content. Sounds better than letting the gear be vendor trash once the transmog appearance is collected account-wide. Right?

[Ezyah]

Creating Leveling is a waste of ressources imo. 300+ quests that could be dungeons

[cparle87]

Yeah, I would like to need sets from each expansion in order to effectively do that expansion's endgame content. Sounds better than letting the gear be vendor trash once the transmog appearance is collected account-wide. Right?

Um... people's bank space? Either that or create another gold sink in the form of having to pay 10g to... is it when you add or remove?, whatever... from void storage.