Dragonflight Alpha - Build 44649 - XP to Level Changes

[Firefall]

Blizzard will always suffer from the three fundamental character progression flaws: As you expand power systems, how do you address 1) Stagnation, 2) Bloat, and 3) Power Creep.

1) Stagnation - Players get bored of the same abilities, and the same systems, after a period of time. Not expanding power progression is not an option. You could make a perfect Vanilla-style 51-point talent tree, but it will become invalidated once you break that 31-20 sweet spot.
2) Bloat - The gravest danger. Indefinitely expanding any systems- talents, borrowed power, whatever- leads to a host of problems. How do new players catch up? How do you balance so many abilities together? Address homogenization? Accommodate so many keybinds? Prevent arbitrary grinds, but keep the journey meaningful (the lvl 120 conundrum). Avoid pruning, while players hate losing things?
3) Power Creep - One solution is horizontal growth- each iteration gives more options, but not more resources. It could work, except for the need to justify the new abilities/systems (to avoid 1) Stagnation), leading to a cycle of obsoleting old abilities/systems and removing them as options (in Pokemon, there are once-Uber tier legendaries who have fallen 3 tiers simply by not keeping up with newer mons. I'm sure TGC players have their own anecdotes).

There is no good to solution to solving all three issues. Borrowed Power was Blizzard's, and many other developers', unhappy compromise. You avoid the core flaws, but risk taking away a system players grow to love and replacing it with something they don't. Blizzard's particular formula over the last 3 expansions has also tied a significant grind to the borrowed power, so the turnover invalidates a lot of player's time and effort, irritating them. Perhaps that could be added as a fourth core issue: How do you respect a player's investment?

This is a great post that shows an in-deoth understanding of games.

But mmochamp so the thread will continue with "blizzard is so bad why can't they just solve it all!1!!"

[munkeyinorbit]

Sorry, but that is bullshit: then in the next expansion, you need to remove them again because new players would need to do the old content to get them or old players does not get a power-up at all. Nope, leveling is the easiest and fool-proof solution for it.
Personally i would go one step further and add paragon-levels as a progression-system too; because why not?

I simply don't see the value of an eternal 60 level just because some people doesn't want to level. Naturally i am biased because i want actually to level up. And a paragon-system could be an ideal solution to add some form of progression without any temporary system. Could it even have power progression: yes, as long as it isn't removed in the next expansion, that's it.

We've already had paragon levels and people hated it. Do you even remember Legion?

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not saying there's no point to do the process that is leveling. I'm saying you can do that without increasing the level cap, and only worry about scaling damage. There's just no point to increase the level cap other than an arbitrary feeling.

Paragon is a good example of what could be included and consistently added onto.

You mean like SL? Where leveling was actually pointless. You could get to max level in SL and still be locked out of dungeon content.

[Apexis]

Heirloom has had no effect on XP since Shadowlands as they removed all XP bonuses.

That is true. It does however does reduce the consumption of rested experience by 30% with two pieces on.

[Gorsameth]

Blizzard will always suffer from the three fundamental character progression flaws: As you expand power systems, how do you address 1) Stagnation, 2) Bloat, and 3) Power Creep.

1) Stagnation - Players get bored of the same abilities, and the same systems, after a period of time. Not expanding power progression is not an option. You could make a perfect Vanilla-style 51-point talent tree, but it will become invalidated once you break that 31-20 sweet spot.
2) Bloat - The gravest danger. Indefinitely expanding any systems- talents, borrowed power, whatever- leads to a host of problems. How do new players catch up? How do you balance so many abilities together? Address homogenization? Accommodate so many keybinds? Prevent arbitrary grinds, but keep the journey meaningful (the lvl 120 conundrum). Avoid pruning, while players hate losing things?
3) Power Creep - One solution is horizontal growth- each iteration gives more options, but not more resources. It could work, except for the need to justify the new abilities/systems (to avoid 1) Stagnation), leading to a cycle of obsoleting old abilities/systems and removing them as options (in Pokemon, there are once-Uber tier legendaries who have fallen 3 tiers simply by not keeping up with newer mons. I'm sure TGC players have their own anecdotes).

There is no good to solution to solving all three issues. Borrowed Power was Blizzard's, and many other developers', unhappy compromise. You avoid the core flaws, but risk taking away a system players grow to love and replacing it with something they don't. Blizzard's particular formula over the last 3 expansions has also tied a significant grind to the borrowed power, so the turnover invalidates a lot of player's time and effort, irritating them. Perhaps that could be added as a fourth core issue: How do you respect a player's investment?

Exactly this. And crucially when the players complain about something they rarely consider this.

They want new abilities, no pruning and no bloat. But don't consider that these goals are opposed and offer no alternative solutions.

[Hitei]

Or you could just do it before you go questing for the day. It does not matter if you turn it off at Level 10, 30, 45 or 49. It's only disruptive if you make it and try to use it as an excuse to do something that you can easily rectify yourself.

What are you even talking about? Hello? How is "don't level at all, just turn off XP at level 10" a solution to the fact that hitting 50 while doing Chromie time yanks you out of any area you are in? It's not disruptive """if you make it""", it objectively disrupts the quest flow the second you hit level 50 by forcibly teleporting you to your main city.

The issue is not that I hit 50, log off for the day, and then can't go back to old zones to continue the storylines (lmao, "just do it before questing for the day"), the issue is that the 5th of 20 murloc kills dings 50 and now you have a 60 second timer to either completely abandon your current objective and rush back to quest hubs to turn in any completed quests or give up, after which you either have to navigate all the way back to where you were to continue questing or abandon a log of completed and half-completed quests--because you were disrupted in the middle of working through a zone.

Do you not see that your evidence for it not being disruptive is literally "lol, just deliberately stop (read: disrupt) your leveling prior to the game doing it"?

[richardhuntr]

-snip-

I don’t understand why blizzard did it this way. Why not put up a message telling the user that keeping questing here won’t net any exp but they can finish the story if they want. Or they can go back to the capital and enter sl.

[Lplatehealer]

Because there is nothing WoW fans love more then to outrage

You sir, hit the nail on the head. It is not even the majority, the ones who rage do not even play and rage just to rage.

[ExtremelyCrusty]

Leveling barely exists anymore in WoW, it's a shame.

[Dracullus]

I don't think waiting for pre-patch to level remaining 50s is good idea. Current leveling take few hours and you can do it on autopilot. I suspect Threads of Fate will be nerfed to ground during pre-patch just like WoD bonus objectives. In DF world they want people to level 1-60 through different stories, not 1-50 in Chromie and then mandatory 50-60 speedrun in SL.

Beside, catching up with old shit is last thing you want during pre-patch, believe me. This is time to get taste of new content and be hungry for more before launch.

[Ealyssa]

Oh- okay, but why? The 50-60 I understand, they have always done this at the end of an expansion, but why any change for 1-50?

To make 1->60 the new 1->50 obviously. How is that hard to understand ?

[Sariengrey]

this game has lost its way so hard lol. Been diving into a bunch of other MMOs that I half played over the years and I am stunned at how much better some of them are than the current state of WoW.
Blizz has every reason to be looking over their shoulder
As an 18 year WoW vet (and still playing) I can honestly say, other companies are doing it better now
Blizz better get it together this next xpac, they are getting passed by

[JotaRandom]

the only thing concerning is that you need less experience in some later level than you need in some earlier... maybe it will be fixed later but for now it look awfull and show we are still in alpha

[Donald Hellscream]

Nice, it makes leveling alts even faster, which I really appreciate.

Maybe I am selfish, but after doing the story content dozens of times at this point, its nice to have it be over in a breeze for future alts.

[Buffbringer]

To me, this once again does not address the main problem when leveling alts: the xp needed to level in the current expansion (60-70 in this case).

I really wish Blizzard implemented a way to level alts faster in the current xpac content. I don't know, maybe an account wide buff after you get your first/main char to max level.

That being said, it's not too terrible to level from 50-60 currently, but after the third alt, it gets old fast, since you don't have the many options you had when going from 1-50 with Chromie Time. So, they could either allow Chromie Time to get to max, or buff the xp gained for alts. Make it a toggle option if people want the normal experience.

[cigawoot]

this is beyond ridiculous. leveling was ajoke already and htey are nerfing it ? just remove leveling to 50 completly and leave storymode or something there.

It's almost as if every WoW expansion since the beginning of time has nerfed leveling's XP curve.

[Lawlhero]

Easier to level alts? No complaints here. good change. Dont make new players suffer through Shadowlands. Imagine being brand new to the game, getting introduced to covenants then 10 levels later dropping that system.

[Th3Scourge]

The only positive I can see so far about DF is that you can memory hole Shadowlands entirely and pretend it never happened

[DeltrusDisc]

I... don't think anyone was needing this or asking for it.

It was already painlessly easy and quick to level.

[Velerios]

We've already had paragon levels and people hated it. Do you even remember Legion?

And still Legion was one of the most beloved expansions there is. The issue is not paragon levels, the issue is the insanity with the numbers. Also this could be easily avoided by making the power progression only in the first levels of an possible paragon level, while when you go far deeper, it changes to only cosmetic rewards. Let's say at the beginning only level 1-20 gives abilities or damage increase while everything below only gives you cosmetics.

Hey, it works with battle-passes everywhere else too; only do not remove them, it's as simple as that.

In the end, leveling is a way of character progression and removing it for the lazyness or the "fear of high numbers" is idiotic.

[DelusionalBear]

for those of us who can't think in negative percentages