Possible Idea: Instead of Raising Level Cap, Just Bump up Old Content

[Kent088]

Just thinking, what if instead of bumping up the level cap, you just made old content from previous expansions bump up to higher rewards?

Example: Pretend its 2013 and 5.4 Drops and the level cap is 90. All the really old content is worthless, all the closer old content is less relevant. MoP had 3 raid tiers.

Why not just set three difficulties for raids: LFR, Timewalking and Standard.

Timewalking raids are all previous raids bumped up to a current expansion/cycle's relevance.

So instead of all these different difficulties you have:

SoO (Heroic equivalent difficulty in 5.4)
ToT (Flex equivalent difficulty in 5.4)
Terrace, MSV, HoF, Timewalking (Normal equivalent difficulty in 5.4)

And in 5.2 the equivalent would be
ToT
Terrace, MSV, HoF
Timewalking

And then LFR is for all raids, and awards a level of gear equivalent to Heroic dungeons but slightly stronger, IE, better optimized, more epics, tier set bonuses.

Under this system:
1. Old content stays relevant
2. Old content can be played as old or new: Run Tier 6 Sunwell or Tier 14 Sunwell in 5.4.
3. LFR level players can see the story and play more casually, and progress their character.
4. No need to design so many raids around so many difficulties just for them to be replaced and forgotten.
5. No need to run the same raid one million times across all the difficulties, meaning you have actual refreshing variety in your raid progress.

This can apply to dungeons, scenarios, events such as the escalation patch as well. Only issue I see is with world bosses but I'm not sure those are so make or break. Could probably make it apply to old world content in some way.

Dungeon example in 5.4:
MoP Heroics = Timewalking Heroics
Timewalking Dungeons = Leveling MoP Dungeons

Only time the Dungeon example wouldn't apply is when an expansion is fresh, so current heroics are preferred.

Overall, in the Raid example, you can now progress at 60 this way:
Standard Mop/Timewalking Dungeons > High Level Quest Gear, Crafted, etc. to bump up to your Heroic dungeon requirements > MoP Heroics and LFR > Timewalking and Tier 14 > Tier 15 ToT > SoO

Then maybe for completing an expansions Pathfinder, you are incrementally awarded more power to your character such as talent points, passives, or whatever, in addition. So go quest in Northrend when Wrath drops if you want to feel like a more powerful 60 than you did in Outland.

I would say the only caveat is that experiencing a Timewalking raid wouldn't be just like experiencing it as current content; To save development time you would simply have to tune numbers or raid wide buffs which would change approaches for sure, but not in any way that would really have some disastrous effect.

[Kyphael]

Doesn't have to be that complicated. They should have never done a level squish to begin with. Numbers are just arbritrary anyway.

[Kent088]

Doesn't have to be that complicated. They should have never done a level squish to begin with. Numbers are just arbritrary anyway.

They shouldn't have raised the level cap IMO, because eventually the game caps out at 255 and the numbers were so grotesque that they couldn't keep up. The reason they had Garrosh heal 3 times in the SoO fight was because giving him all the health at once was very intense on the games resources.

[Elbob]

yep i wanna farm my bis set tier after tier across 5 expansions... stop reposting the same bad ideas plz. There are reasons why the level cap gets raised stop trying to reinvent the wheel on this. Wows expansion and leveling systems are fine.

[Biomega]

Doesn't have to be that complicated. They should have never done a level squish to begin with. Numbers are just arbritrary anyway.

They are, but 500 is easier to deal with than 500,000,000. Not to mention that mechanically, you need different variables to store very large numbers.

This is a matter of practicality first and foremost.

As for why level caps increase: that's mostly to give a sense of progression. They COULD just scale things through e.g. ilvl and leave levels the same, but they want people to feel like they're entering a new world with a new expansion and raising the level cap reinforces that feeling.

[Ealyssa]

Doesn't have to be that complicated. They should have never done a level squish to begin with. Numbers are just arbritrary anyway.

No they really aren’t what a dumb statement…

Without leveling you can’t reset stats on characters. Say you end an extension at 40% crit, you need a way to get back to sub 10%crit and that way is slowly decreasing stat ratings value during leveling. And yes, you need that stat nerf or wow would have end at WotLK with lv60 characters having 100% every stats and gear loosing any purpose and progression.

[Kent088]

yep i wanna farm my bis set tier after tier across 5 expansions... stop reposting the same bad ideas plz. There are reasons why the level cap gets raised stop trying to reinvent the wheel on this. Wows expansion and leveling systems are fine.

You clearly didn't read the post at all

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No they really aren’t what a dumb statement…

Without leveling you can’t reset stats on characters. Say you end an extension at 40% crit, you need a way to get back to sub 10%crit and that way is slowly decreasing stat ratings value during leveling. And yes, you need that stat nerf or wow would have end at WotLK with lv60 characters having 100% every stats and gear loosing any purpose and progression.

You could alleviate that by doing this system but just at the new level cap too

[Elbob]

You clearly didn't read the post at all

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You could alleviate that by doing this system but just at the new level cap too

yes but your example was within an expansion, then the post is about not increasing level cap. you should revisit your example to actually be across expansions and explain it WAY more clearly. Are you trying to imply the last 3 tiers are essentially the current content only?

cause you also say "Timewalking raids are all previous raids bumped up to a current expansion/cycle's relevance." So are the raids current relevant or not? Do these raids drop current competitive gear? What about stuff from vanilla or tbc? cause according to you its bumped to relevancy but obviously there arent reversing scaling difficulties that far back.

your idea is either half baked and not thought out, not explained properly or just straight bad. You wanna clear it up use the current wow as your base. On the highest selectable difficulty what ilvl would SoD, CN, Nyalotha and lets say Firelands drop? Current mythic SFO drop 278 at max ilvl (lets ignore the half level jump on last bosses)

[Revamp Man]

They'd have to replace old gear with every raid then
I'm honestly waiting for ToT timewalking so I can have my broken RoR

[Kent088]

yes but your example was within an expansion, then the post is about not increasing level cap. you should revisit your example to actually be across expansions and explain it WAY more clearly. Are you trying to imply the last 3 tiers are essentially the current content only?

cause you also say "Timewalking raids are all previous raids bumped up to a current expansion/cycle's relevance." So are the raids current relevant or not? Do these raids drop current competitive gear? What about stuff from vanilla or tbc? cause according to you its bumped to relevancy but obviously there arent reversing scaling difficulties that far back.

your idea is either half baked and not thought out, not explained properly or just straight bad. You wanna clear it up use the current wow as your base. On the highest selectable difficulty what ilvl would SoD, CN, Nyalotha and lets say Firelands drop? Current mythic SFO drop 278 at max ilvl (lets ignore the half level jump on last bosses)

I explained this in the post: In 5.4 if you ran Firelands, BWL, ICC, or Serpentshrine Caverns, that gear would be the equivalent to Terrace, MSV, or HoF. If you are normally a top tier raider, you will just do SoO like you would anyway. If you're a middle tier raider, then you will do the ToT you never did. If you are a lower tier raider, you will either do Tier 14 MoP or do Timewalking. If you don't raid much at all, you can LFR your hearts content out

[Elbob]

I explained this in the post: In 5.4 if you ran Firelands, BWL, ICC, or Serpentshrine Caverns, that gear would be the equivalent to Terrace, MSV, or HoF. If you are normally a top tier raider, you will just do SoO like you would anyway. If you're a middle tier raider, then you will do the ToT you never did. If you are a lower tier raider, you will either do Tier 14 MoP or do Timewalking. If you don't raid much at all, you can LFR your hearts content out

And here is why its half baked, the are multiple difficulties of the current tier so people can see the NEW content when its released not 6months later after the other people have already beaten it. And how would this work for world content, how disjointing would it be get all these new dailies in zereth Mortis but then you go raid SoD if you aren't a mythic raider???? Yeah back to the drawing board with you.

Also how is any of this related to the level cap? Which is part of your thread title. Do you want the level cap to sit level and new raids to keep coming out that are the same difficulty of of the previous tier? Would they drop the same ilvl as the tier before them or higher?

[RaoBurning]

I agree with the perma-time walking bit. It's a thing FF14 does out of the gate (at least since I started playing) that's super neat. I can queue for a level and gear synced dungeon or raid from any expansion. Any dungeon I meet or exceed the requirements for, at least. Loot doesn't change but it's still just really cool.

No idea why Blizz didn't just phase in Timewalking for every expansion like this. Even if it was just the handful of dungeons per xpac they already did. Sucks seeing Wrath come up on the list and then "oops I'm super busy that week guess I'll try again in... I don't actually know what the cycle timer is."

[Kent088]

And here is why its half baked, the are multiple difficulties of the current tier so people can see the NEW content when its released not 6months later after the other people have already beaten it. And how would this work for world content, how disjointing would it be get all these new dailies in zereth Mortis but then you go raid SoD if you aren't a mythic raider???? Yeah back to the drawing board with you.

Also how is any of this related to the level cap? Which is part of your thread title. Do you want the level cap to sit level and new raids to keep coming out that are the same difficulty of of the previous tier? Would they drop the same ilvl as the tier before them or higher?

It's not half-baked. I said in my post LFR would include all raids. So when SoO drops, if you'd like to see the story, go do an LFR run, in this timeline.

[Temp name]

It's not half-baked. I said in my post LFR would include all raids. So when SoO drops, if you'd like to see the story, go do an LFR run, in this timeline.

And what about the people who do harder than LFR but not mythic content? Those wouldn't do SoO

[neescher]

No they really aren’t what a dumb statement…

Without leveling you can’t reset stats on characters. Say you end an extension at 40% crit, you need a way to get back to sub 10%crit and that way is slowly decreasing stat ratings value during leveling. And yes, you need that stat nerf or wow would have end at WotLK with lv60 characters having 100% every stats and gear loosing any purpose and progression.

That is why they introduced ratings instead of flat % increases to hit/crit on gear back in 2007. With prepatch, 800 crit rating is no longer 40%, it's now 10%, boom problem fixed (arbitrary numbers, but you get my point).

Not that I agree or disagree with the original point, but this is really not a problem.

[Maell]

It's not half-baked. I said in my post LFR would include all raids. So when SoO drops, if you'd like to see the story, go do an LFR run, in this timeline.

All I have to say is that you would be perfect in a middle management position.

[MrLachyG]

I explained this in the post: In 5.4 if you ran Firelands, BWL, ICC, or Serpentshrine Caverns, that gear would be the equivalent to Terrace, MSV, or HoF. If you are normally a top tier raider, you will just do SoO like you would anyway. If you're a middle tier raider, then you will do the ToT you never did. If you are a lower tier raider, you will either do Tier 14 MoP or do Timewalking. If you don't raid much at all, you can LFR your hearts content out

here's the problem with your proposal. let's use 5.4 as the patch example since you did. so you have 3 difficulties for Siege of Orgrimmar - LFR, Timewalking and Standard? and Siege of Orgrimmar is heroic level difficulty. then you have ToT which is also available on LFR, Timewalking and Standard but it's Flex difficulty? then Terrace, MSV, HoF but they are Normal difficulty?

so first off, you have it backwards. when Flex was added it was a level below normal, not above. I distinctly remember LFR dropping 528 gear, Flex 540, Normal 553 and Heroic 566. Then it got renamed to LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic but they still dropped the same ilvl gear.

so basically what you're saying is keep old content relevant by bumping up the ilvl to whatever the Normal raid would give for the patch yeah? while restricting the new raid to mythic level (formerly known as heroic). so for MoP you would have MSV, HoF, Timewalking raids drop Normal gear, ToT drop heroic gear and SoO drop mythic gear?

here is why that is a bad idea. standard guild runs 2-3 nights a week. they start off doing normal then move into heroic but they don't touch mythic (using the current difficulties). so where do they start? do they start by running Sunwell Plateau for their hunters? or maybe Firelands for the caster legendary. what about Dragon Soul for their rogues so they can do the questline to get the legendary Daggers? oh by the way Paladins want to go do Naxxramas for a trinket, Mages would love to go do Molten Core again for another incredible trinket, Warlocks want to do Ulduar, Demon Hunters want to do BT for the Glaives. Paladins, Warriors and DK's all want Shadowmourne

do you see the problem here? why old raids cannot be kept current? sure, some of the items I mentioned like trinkets/rings might be replaceable as they move on but you cannot argue that legendary weapons would stay with them. so now instead of farming 1 raid like we currently do, a raid group is farming 10+ raids a week which they don't have time for because they are a 3 night a week guild. so they can only do 3 raids a week which pisses off 2/3 of the raid group each week.

secondly, if you implemented this system then you gotta ask yourself: who is it for? clearly not the casual raiders, as mentioned above it just pisses them off. so it must be for the semi hardcore groups yeah? so you want them to first clear a raid they already cleared in the previous patch to help them gear up for the new raid, then they can start tackling the new raid. oh and yeah because of the difficulty only the ones who raid mythic will see it. I mean you can always do it on LFR right? yeah that's a whole lot of fun. let's lock the new raid in behind the hardest and easiest difficulty but nobody wants to do the raid on easiest difficulty because it drops shit gear.

your idea is a horrible one, stop trying to fix a problem where there is no problem!

[VinceVega]

MANY people like the levling at the beginning of every expansion.

It is my favourite time of every expansion. Followed by the first raid.
I don't want them to get rid of it.

Also: Making EVERY raid item EVER current will create the most horrible balancing problems you can ever imagine.... there will be inevitable a set bonus or something that is, combined with class changes, laughable OP. Can't give you an example. But there will be one set or trinket that will destroy balance.

Also the problem with rereleasing old content is.... it is old content...

also where is the item cap? Can i just run EVERY single raid in one week and be capped with loot for that difficulty?
Does it have max. ILvL? Game over in one week.
Does it not have max level only say... normal? Than it is for casuals. They don't really want this much. It would be overwhelming and no one would have any idea what to do.
Are are legendaries suddenly current again like glaives, valanir and atiesh?

[Mic_128]

Doesn't this mean we get to keep farming the same BiS items every expansion?