Basically how it was before the Cata prepatch (if I remember the timing correctly) ^^.
I still am not sure why they simplified it so much. And even then couldn’t make all the talents viable.
No. It might mean that some zones cover a larger amount of playing hours without having to scale, though, and that means there’d be more zones per level range.
I don’t think you’ve thought this through.
I mean obviously players would notice they had less levels after this squish. That’s obvious.
But ask yourself what feels more terrible:
- Getting a level up that causes all the other mobs to be stronger too, but in turn also causes all your gear to be tuned for lower level, therefore making you weaker, and you also get no new spells, talents, or anything else at all.
- Not getting a level up so none of the above happens, and when you do get a level up you do get something new to look forward to every time, even if it takes longer to get there.
I think 2) is vastly, vastly superior. It’s not fun to get a level up that makes you categorically weaker, EVER, and frankly I’m not so personally attached to the level number on my character portrait that I care if it’s reduced, and I’ve played this game for 15 years. If people can survive stat squishes, they can survive this as well.
It’s already 1/10th of what it used to be. The problem with levelling is it’s easy and boring, and getting a level not only doesn’t reward you with anything half the time, it actually makes you outright weaker against literally the exact same mob at the same location at the same point in time. The current system is terrible, and making me level up doesn’t do anything except make me not have to worry about it. That’s a great idea though, innit? Just make the entire core of World of Warcraft completely irrelevant. Those 1500 hours of great content added over the last 18 years? Who needs 'em! xD
Will do.
Pretty sure ESO is starting to rival WoW in playerbase now. It’s very big (2.5m active players), very much alive, and quite vibrant. By contrast, all metrics we have of WoW points to around ~2.4m active max level characters in EU and US combined. Yes, it’s still bigger than ESO, but not by as much as you think. ESO is NOT dying at all.
So fix that instead? In Legion it was justified due to your weapon-progress, we lost that. Step up Blizzard!
Now we use it as an argument to justify level-squeezing. That is the reversed world if you ask me.
I rather have 1-120 doable in X time, than 1-60 in the same X time. You get your abilities after the same Y time, taking as long to feel progress.
Another point; how many players start (over) from scratch regularly that look up against the 120 levels? It is just that the last 20 levels you don’t gain anything and only lose power.
Whether that’s from 100 to 120 or 45 to 60, potato potáto.
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I don’t think the focus is just the abilities but also the power increase.
If you squish the level, the jump in power between 1 lvl and the next one will be much more noticeable than it is now.
Will not solve anything if the leveling stays as is but it would be a good first step
While it would be better because you dont have to level 8 levels between new abilities for some specs, leveling is still a bore to the point that no amount of EXP requirement nerfs will fix it even if making it quicker makes it more bearable, it doesn’t improve the experience itself
I would definitely support this however as part of a patch that improves leveling but a shrink alone might not be enough for the long term and I’m not sure how effective it will be short term without other changes to leveling
The level bloat is a problem, but only because of how unexciting leveling is which comes from the BFA pruning (probably earlier then that dit some)
This happens as a result of the scaling. The scaling happens because Blizzard wants to give us a wider range of choice about where we want to level up. The reason we had a narrow choice of where to level up is because we have a lot of levels and the world was levelled statically.
In order to remove the effect I speak of, the scaling has to go. In order for the scaling to go and not make the game super linear, the amount of levels covered by each zone must go up or the amount of levels must come down.
It kind of is a reversed world, yeah. Blizzard somehow managed to create the concept of levelling down. Doesn’t get more reversed than that.
Why do you want levels that do nothing or, even worse, make you weaker? What do they add to the game for you?
Almost nobody, which is the problem. I wish that more players would find WoW’s levelling engaging, and, above all else, I wish that new players would come here. With this levelling game this game doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of attracting a new generation of players.
It’s the process of gaining each level that changes. It’s a pretty big deal while levelling. Afterwards? You’re right in that sense, it doesn’t matter.
Well, for me personally the time it takes to reach max-level weighs much more than what I get for dinging once. It’s fun for a moment (although that vanished since you don’t have to go to the trainer anyways, an ability suddenly shines in your bar), but after killing one mob that feeling disappears rapidly.
If we keep the same simplified and often unworthy talent-system and even sometimes lack of useful abilities, it does not matter if we can reach 60 or 1000 “oh yey, i have three new talent to choose from, 1 is trash, 1 is only for high end raiding…so 3rd it is dances” just no.
So please, just fix the real problems first :). Then we can talk about level squeezes.
If we do keep the current talent system, which by the way I am not in favour of, and we want to get a new talents from 10 to 60, say, then we could have 6 rows and therefore get a new talent every 10 levels. Not 15, but 10, and there would be no 20 levels of no talents at the end of it all. Add in 4 PvP talents at levels 15, 25, 35, and 45 and… why not let’s add another one so we have the trinket + 4 regular PvP talents to add one at 55, then a player with warmode would never go 5 levels without a new talent, except the first 10 (which I’m ok with - we want to provide a gentle intro to the game’s systems anyway). That’s a huge improvement.
But if you’re suggesting we go back to the old system of having 51 points that we can put into one of 3 trees, picking up passives along the way and active ability every 10 levels, I’m right there with you.
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That may be true. But I doubt they make it go much faster than it is now to reach max-lvl. Thus the speed in which you gain your talents and abilities barely changes. In your example it’s just spread out equally.
Yes, yes I am. Well in some form. Perhaps not exactly how it was…but close. 
Guild Wars 2 manages to remain at a max lvl of 80. Still pumps out additional class mechanic content through elite specs that you have to play and explore to fully unlock.
I think we should bring back learning at least some spells at Class Tutors again.
I think we need to be realistic, this is not what’s on the table. What Ion spoke of was a level squish. And he did it for a second time. I don’t believe for a moment we will get anything else. They have looked at the problem, considered all the options and this is the one they have decided on. When he says he wants feedback he is not looking for an alternative, but for opinions on how best to implement this.
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what you are saing is kinda true but you have to take 2 things into consideration .
if they nerf levels but keep time needed that you will need exackly the same time aka i.e 400 minutes between obtaining each talent - so what difference woudl it make if its 10 or 15 when it has exackly the same lenght ?
the problem is not with amount of level only with how much time it take.
you will see this fiasco very soon in vanilla when most of people quit before level 20 because that already the level when it will take you minimum 2 hours between each level -_-
and your solution woul be exackly htis - 60 levels but betwen each 2-4 hours per level . its a terrible boring grindy outdated system that has no place in current mmorpgs.
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I love how so many of these threads turn into Razien vs people’s opinions.
Learn to see beyond your own noses.
Read other people’s opinions and consider them. Don’t off-handedly dismiss them. That makes you a far worse fool than you think them to be.
Well a alternative to “reducing levels” whould be a introduction of some secondary system such as “mastery system”. Every 5 levels or so you get a mastery point, which can be spent on different skills to empower/change them.
Like for a holy pries spending points in flash heal, whould improve it’s effect, perhaps very usefull for mythic+. However for raiding you might want them in prayer of healing for more AoE healing/effects. Perhaps it whould look like this;
Mythic+ 5/5 points in smite, holy fire and flash heal.
Raids 5/5 points in prayer, Sanctuary and Hymn
PvP 5/5 points in Flash heal, Desperate Prayer and renew.
Then it could be that first two ranks add more base power, where as 3rd point add a 2ndary effect to a base spell perhaps 3/5 renew whould add; Your mastery now affects renew(for example).
A system such as this whould add more interesting milestones and diversity at the same time.
Of course not. That was already easily tunable, and I don’t want them to change it. If anything I’d like them to slightly increase it (after making it way more fun!) but I know for sure that won’t win me any friends 'round these parts, 'cause everyone has completely lost faith that levelling could ever be fun again.
Correct. Nobody is arguing you should get more abilities or get abilities faster. What we’re arguing is you shouldn’t level up without getting an ability, passive, rank upgrade, etc.
Sure thing. ![:smiley:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
But that talent system with 121 points… I mean come on. You can feel how silly that sounds, right?
So instead of
Played 10 hours, gained 20 levels, gained 2 ability, gained 1 talent
You rather see
Played 10 hours, gained 10 levels, gained 1 talent, gained 2 abilities
Mhm, doubt if that’ll feel so much better.
So, make it 60-70 points (although Im fine with 121 points)? How it was in TBC? One point per 2 levels is not too bad is it.
why would it sound silly ? in games like PoE from what i understand you have hundreds of abilities to chooose on grids and people claim its amazing game.
even old games like FF 10 had hundreds of places on grids to fill up .
No, he was very clear that it was an internal debate about whether to do it at all.
I just fear what the alternative is. If the alternative is even more level scaling, even more watered down progression, etc. then I’d much rather take the hit to my level number.
The difference is you don’t level up and get weaker compared to other mobs as a result without getting a point to spend.
One of the things that makes levelling up fun is the fact that you get to put points into your stat sheet. Not only do you get a character upgrade, you get to choose how to upgrade your character. This was discovered by the very first RPG game makers all the way back in the 1970’ies, and it remains true to this day.
If you level up too often, it can become annoying to keep assigning an endless stream of points. If you level up and don’t get a point, that moment of excitement doesn’t happen at all.
The classic developers were so obsessed with this feeling of “ding” that they gave us class trainers, telling us to go all the way back to our capitols with excitement in our hearts for what we would get. However, once we got a lot of levels and the game sped up, this became annoying rather than exciting.
100% totally and completely disagreed in every way possible.
Those games are also not designed for PvP at all. PvP means you need to be able to understand what kind of choices your enemies can and have made, and that means there can’t be 3 billion points.
And to be honest with you I think FF10 had an awful character progression system, and I’m not a fan of PoE either. I prefer Diablo 2. Personal opinion, of course.
This was basically the system we had prior to MoP’s talent wash-out.
Talent specialisations were trees. You didn’t have to commit to a spec, but could select multiple things from various trees. All abilities were put onto tiers on the trees, some abilities were sprinkled in, some activated passives but mostly it was improving how your abilities worked in a specific way. The high-end content players needed to fully go for a tree, as at the top of each was a core ability for the specialisation (Shadow Dance for sub, howling blast for frost dks etc).
Then as well, some abilities were low enough in a tree, that you could select an ability from another spec as part of your build. I remember playing blood DK with Lichborne specced from the frost tree.
There used to be so much variety…
I genuinely think they need to return to this design of talent system. The increased variety meant you could get a talent point every 2 or so levels and that felt so rewarding.
A level squish isn’t needed, but lots of small changes throughout the levelling AND end game experience are needed to improve the overall quality of the game and make it feel more worthwhile to go through the levels we currently have. The change I mentioned above would be a good start.
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No? Most classes in the game have around ~25-30 abilities at this point, and many of them have 2-3 ranks.
Also I want the traditional talent system.
Instead of played 10 hours, gained 20 levels, gained 2 abilities, gained 1 talents here’s what I want:
Played 10 hours, gained 10 levels, gained 4 abilities, upgraded 3 abilities (to have a stun, to work from stealth, to last longer, to reduce enemy armour, etc. etc.), gained 10 talent points and spent them on 1 ability and 9 small passive effects like extra HP, armour, crit chance with a certain spell, haste for a certain spell, what have you