Level squish - how to avoid it in the future

Community General Discussion
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I have been thinking of how soon they will need to do another level squish after the one that will come with Shadowlands update. I believe it’s just a matter of time, perhaps several more expansions/years till the numbers ramp up again (iLvl, stats, professions, character level etc). So I thought to myself: perhaps there is a way to revisit the whole character progression concept in the game rather than having the need for regular squishes?

Here’s the general concept which I hope you guys get the gist of and appreciate and take it from there adding more features and improvements:

We don’t probably need “character levels” at all for progression (although it’s okay to have them for the sake of “unlocking” mechanics)

In my opinion, Blizzard did a nice try with Azerite armor, Heart of Azeroth (HoA). Still, It’s the same leveling system placed into another leveling system: we level up the necklace and obtain access to new skills. Although technically we don’t level up our character, in reality we do so through the necklace. I’m assume at some point they will either replace HoA with some other leveling system or build one on top of it and again, it’s just a matter of time.

How to make sure we don’t let the squish happen again?

Switch from the VERTICAL progression system to the HORIZONTAL one. You can also put it as “quality over quantity”. It’s always easier to scale horizontally rather than vertically. Plus, it allows for more creativity and causes less “harmful” consequences over time (like ridiculously high dmg/HP pool numbers).

This relates to everything: character, professions, zones, mobs etc. To explain what “horizontal” progression means I’ll make a few examples from the game mechanics which I think could be potentially subject to this change. There may be surely a lot more things eligible for this, so please feel free to share in the comments and hopefully Blizzard will notice them.

  1. Revive the crafting system, make the game more “craft-centric” or “craft-oriented” than what it is now (drop-oriented).
    a. Crafting should become more diverse. Top gear should be available through different crafting professions. It should not be necessarily better than the best drop from raids, but at least it should be on par with one. The idea is: those who love crafting should be able to make use of it; those who love raiding/PVP should also be able to get the good stuff from these activities.
    b. Gear (crafted/looted) should have an option to be customized via professions: one should be able to, say, swap haste with mastery or versatility with crit if they want to.
    c. Add more features to crafting (such as special magic threads for tailors, grinding stones for weaponsmiths, plates for leatherwork etc) which give unique skills/secondary stats to any gear when applied. I know some of these already exist in the game in some professions, still there is much more room for improvement.
  2. Revise the equipment system: what equipment character can wear and what effects/skills may be obtained from wearing a certain type of equipment or a combination of those:
    a. Based on what weapon we equip, we will receive a different set of skills.
    b. Based on what weapon we equip, we will receive a bonus/stat change. Make a weapon choice more diverse and meaningful/beneficial. For example, if I, as a warlock, go for a two-hand staff, I will get less haste (-%), but, say, it will hit harder (more int.) OR the staff will randomly with certain % root/stun a target on hit. On the contrary, having something in my off-hand would increase my haste (+%) or add a “spell lock” random proc. As a hunter, if I equip a crossbow, I will get a % stun chance on hit. Long bow will give me higher attack rate. Short bow will have a passive explosion effect for arrows etc.
    c. Allow different classes to wear different armor types which rewards or punishes with certain effects/passives accordingly. For instance, as a rogue I want to be able to wear robes and it will give me a % spell reflect/immunity. On the other hand, I will get more “squishy”. As a warlock, I want to be able to wear light armor: I will sacrifice casting speed and/or mana pool, but I’ll get a % of stun/slow/root immunity etc.
    d. Add more weapon/off-hand item types to the game. It will allow to further diversify the game over time, WITHOUT a need to add more levels to the gear, character.
  3. Give mobs in different play zones various affixes and unique immunities (instead of just ramping up their HP pool and damage output) - similar to how Diablo III does it. It will make players develop a strategy of how to kill a certain monster in the most efficient and safe manner and think twice before blind-attacking them.
  4. Make the mobs “socialize” more with each other. Or at least certain “families” of them. Imagine you attack a kobold and instead of just attacking you back it will all of a sudden retreat to its den and then bring his buddies with him to strike back at you. Another example: If you carelessly hurt an orc and there is his buddy-wolf nearby, they will both attack you in tandem and cooperate together (stun you and bleed you to death) to quickly put you down.

To sum up, this is just a glimpse at what ideas one may come up with based on the “horizontal” development approach. I’m sure you guys have a ton of stuff like this you’d like to get implemented in our beloved game and my biggest dream is that some of these are liked by Blizzard and they consider going this route rather than just giving us more levels, higher stats and skins from expansion to expansion.

Thank you for reading this and if some of you feel the same and agree with at least some of my points, please do not hesitate to share, comment and up-vote!

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Two issues :

  • If this gear is BOE then along with the WoW token it legitimise P2W as you could get something on par with the best gear in the game through real money. There’s already some of that with raid BOE and boosts in the game but this would just make it mainstream, which isn’t really a good thing imo
  • if this gear is BOP then you force players to take the crafting profession making their gear and the one making their weapon of choice. That’s pretty unfair to players investing a lot of time and ressources on their professions especially if they have unobtainable recipes and yet want to play on this character.

How do you plan to deal with that ?

This is interesting altho it still share the above issues.

Would be pretty cool as long as they are mostly BOE

does this mean we get rid of the current weapon restrictions ? Or on top of them ?

While the idea is interesting your examples aren’t. Random CC procs are not really interesting because you’d want to plan around your CC, not just have them proc randomly.

In the same vein there’s a serious balance issue if the only difference between two weapon types is a stat multiplier and a proc. There’ll be a mathematically good choice and a bunch of wrong options.

What could maybe work imo would be some kind of weapon mastery talent tree or perks. Each weapon would’ve unique perks and be able to deal with different situations in their own way. There’ll eventually be a mathematically good choice there too but you’ll have more options available and hopefully a more balanced system.

We may see more things like that in shadowlands, the Maw should’ve a system which makes a whole zone increasingly hostile against you with patrols occasionally sent to kill you if you stay there for too long. Not exactly mobs interacting with each other but similar.

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p2w is already legitimized. 3 tokens m15+ clear plus nzoth hc

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You make a fair point, but I wonder if WoW will survive long enough to actually need another squish…

If World of Warcraft is gonna survive for another ten or so years then ALOT needs to be done in the grafics department. New games pop out all the time, one better looking then the other. So before we come up with a better way to “lvl up”, maybe we should see if we gonna need it…

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I’d say, replace the current weapon restrictions with this new system.

Also, thank you for your comments! All points are pretty fair. I agree with them, there are things/conflicts to be considered thoroughly.

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You could make it bound to account, and after equipping it on a character it becomes soul bound to that character, that way creating it stays relevant as well as it not being bound to the character that crafts it.
But in this case you’d still have a problem where some crafting professions would move towards a pure solo crafting situation.
And I’m probably still missing some big issues that would rise.

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If they are clever then they are going to implement a easy system that can repeatedly apply further level squishes each expansion so that everyone above 50 gets put down to 50 again once the next expansion rolls out. While maintaining a max level of 60.

No more excess levels, and whatever expansion feature is introduced and tied to the level range 50-60 plus extra not tied to the level, so that we dont end up with more expansions where we are levelling two systems for some reasons like 100-110 and artifact weapon and 110-120 and the heart.

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