I did the survey earlier on my phone.
When I got to this question I went: “What? a level squish? Never heard this being mentioned!”. Considering I only look at Blizzard sites for info (minus any FaceTwatter publications as I do not use either site)
Personally I do think that 1-120 is rather a large gap, but should there be a squish? I’m not so sure.
dunno why people are mad about this, how is going from 1-120 especially if you’re an altoholic a good thing? i’d much rather have 60-80 levels to go through before i can do end game stuff
If you dont like 1-120 how is 1-80 better and why not get RID of the level at all?
Considering the disaster statsquish has been in some regards I personally am against this. Unless they manage to make lvling meaningful again which I doubt they would.
How about stop adding levels and focus on the end game content.
Make extensive long raids and challenging dungeons that can take weeks to finally complete with huge rewards edit for clarity these dungeons will have multiple directions which players could map themselves, some lead to dead ends etc different levels of challenges with some being available to only the best of the best players but even pushing them to new limits.
Expansive zones where instead of repetitive quests we do invasion style objectives which push the story forward much like the living story in GW2.
Gear can be upgraded by materials players gather but you can also loot rare Armor which increases your power, make professions fun, give us rare schematics which are truly rare, but also the option to craft gear which is actually decent if a player wishes to spend the time grinding the materials.
Basically make WoW and MMORPG again.
Okay so gonna clear up some stuff because people either have no idea what the level squish is, or are spreading misinformation about it.
Firstly, the level squish has no effect on power, it’d literally just cut out certain milestones from leveling. Say if they reduce max level to 60, a 60 would be as strong as a 120 now, and could easily do the level 40 raid ICC. level 119 wouldn’t exist while 118 would become 59.
Secondly, Ion specifically stated that if the level squish happens they’d also somewhat reduce leveling time with it(most likely reducing the exp needed on the higher levels which would take the longest when doubled up). So yes the squish will make leveling quicker.
Thirdly, Level Squish DOES have actual improvements beyond the psychological one of increasing rewarding levels but making them take more seperated. Example, you are level 55 after the squish, you are getting level 55 quest rewards and dungeon drops. In the old system(assuming 120 to 60) this would be 110, and be followed by 111 which no longer exist. This means at 55 you spend up to twice the time to reach 56(was 112) and get up to twice as many gear upgrades during that level. What this means is, that your strength relative to 55 foes will increase up to twice as much for the duration you spend at that level than when it was 110 and you hit 111 half way through to 112, which reduced how much secondaries your 110 pieces were worth and set you out to replace them with 111 ones. Not to mention the difference in ilvl between level 54 55 and 56 gear will be also greater which means it will also feel better to replace(this matters more on the early more squished levels, where the ilvl differences were very small between just single levels). TL;DR: The power gain within a single level through gear is far more pronounced when you have fewer but longer levels.
Fourthly, if Blizzard tried to even bring back MoP classes(which were bloated so much Blizzard couldn’t keep adding new things to them after) you’d have a hard time cutting those into 120 pieces to give back during the leveling. People may like Classic Talent Trees, but in truth no one wants their Shadow Priest Talent tree be remade by taking away Shadowform to make it a talent again, or other built in tools just to slowly over leveling give it back. And no just tacking on extra power to make a talent tree that gives 3% more damage to every damage ability by every spec is not a solution to keep giving people something, that is the lazy way out.
I will be honest reason 3 I mentioned is the main reason I support the level squish, as it brings out something in leveling that people really like during max level, gear being actual noticable upgrades and makes them relevant and unreplaced for longer. It will be nice to get less useless levels, but this is where it is at.
The number of levels is irrelevant, imo. The problem is that only the levels with an associated talent are of any note. They could literally hide odd-numbered levels without having any change to how the game plays.
Or they could squash it so that level 1-15 is “level 1” and it would still make no difference, since zone scaling takes all of that away anyway. Same story 16-30, etc.
(Which isn’t to say I disapprove of zone scaling, at least below the current expansion’s content. I rather like being able to choose my own route 1-60.)
One of the most important things to players has been the ability to go back and solo old content for transmog, pets or just to try and get those very rare mounts. Changing to a system where you’d take 2-3 expansions worth of gear to actually finally go back and solo BFA stuff would piss the majority of the playerbase off.
Leveling is the main reason old content becomes soloable, and upending that system would ruin that. Not to mention if they just keep giving better gear, unless they literally decide to give away free gear for casuals that’s good enough to complete the new harder stuff they will never actually be able to go back and solo anything, which would p much kill the game(rather than make them do harder content, they’d def quit) Again people expect old content to be soloable when they out level, you cannot just take that concept away and expect them to enjoy whatever new casual content is there for them.
[quote=“Caesa-draenor, post:46, topic:55625, full:true”]I will be honest reason 3 I mentioned is the main reason I support the level squish, as it brings out something in leveling that people really like during max level, gear being actual noticable upgrades and makes them relevant and unreplaced for longer. It will be nice to get less useless levels, but this is where it is at.
[/quote]
sorry but thats not true. you level 1-110 in looms you will be levelin 1-50 in looms and in 51-60 gear doesnt matter because of the ilevel scaling.
For me it depends how they do it. Not having to wait so long for basic abilities such an interrupt or an aoe ability is an improvement. However, if those reduced levels take just as long as levelling to 120 now then it’s kind of a meaningless change. Levelling is boring and monotonous and has not been improved with scaling.
There is no ilvl scaling till max level, mobs do not get stronger unless you level up, equiping better gear does not affect them.
Secondly Heirlooms do not cover for all of your items, and the vast majority do not use more than the items that give EXP%. Even then new players will never have heirlooms and the game shouldn’t be designed around people who are using them.
I have never seen the point of a level squish and never will. Removing odd numbers and dividing by 2 is probably the best way but is not needed.
I like dinging often and this would change that a lot and since the majority of people are already at 120, or in yours the classic 60, it would not affect that many people. So why change it?
That is only true for 110-120 azerite items, they are a good source of stats otherwise.
I can’t honestly answer this without fully understanding the implications.
Too easy to say yes, then regret it later.
Need a lot more information first.
The only implications in the OPs version is less dinging and a few item level changes. Vanilla to TBC would happen at 30 not 60 as now, and small things like that. So it’s not worth doing.
Hence why I suggested making professions good enough again, friends and Guild members could craft gear that is almost as good as the current tier for them leaving on the best gear bind as soon as you craft.
You could also gradually increase the slope of armour scaling as the game progresses, this would last a hell of a lot longer than the current method.
As for previous expansion content that could be toned down by doing the numbers when an expansion releases creating a sense of power increase. It’s a little more leg work per expansion but definitely has its benefits in longevity and replay value.
Obviously I’m just shooting in the dark as this would require a massive overhaul on Blizzards side.
What about soloing then?
That is something I do mainly with my time to farm old content for pets, mounts & mogs.
Heirloom Wrist? Heirloom Gloves? Heirloom Belt? Heirloom Boots? Yes I find it sad if people are literally running around with only 4 free spaces for upgrades(and one of the reason I will not touch heirlooms if this goes through) but again, heirlooms shouldn’t be what leveling gets designed around.
You would probably need to be 5 or 6 levels above the expansion to do it easily in the new system.
To my mind the issue isn’t the number of levels - it’s empty levels from 81 to 120
Between 81 and 120 what do you get in the way of character progression? Apart from 2 rows of talents, 1 @ 90 and another at 100.
Those levels are currently pointless, they are just an incrementing number. Make those levels meaningful by introducing a 3 tree talent system as per Vanilla / Classic with 31 points in each. Something to look forward to at every level.
The trees don’t have to be solely Spec based either, 1 could be a combat tree, another a resource / profession tree and the 3rd a utility / pvp tree.
Legion was good in that respect, when you gained an Artifact level it gave you something tangible, the numbers got to be a bit extreme but it was good to have a choice of the initial direction you took.
Less Dings and knowing Blizzard a lot of BUUUGS thats all it would be.
Instead of 120 know you would be something like 60 making the level number absolut useless so we could rid off it altogether
[quote=“Caesa-draenor, post:57, topic:55625, full:true”]
Heirloom Wrist? Heirloom Gloves? Heirloom Belt? Heirloom Boots? Yes I find it sad if people are literally running around with only 4 free spaces for upgrades[/quote]
Why? Looms where ALWAYS meant as a reward for people who managed to level to max, to get there faster the next time?