Level squish survey

Community General Discussion
61

Heirloom removes half the point of the game for the leveling process, gearing. There is no point in doing dungeons because you can make most of your gear level with you, so the only thing that matters while leveling is suddenly exp efficency because activities that are meant to reward you with gear that makes you kill stuff faster as a trade off for not being as exp efficent are suddenly worthless.

And the thing is, and will remain so, that leveling should not and will not be designed around an optional system being used that artificially speeds it up and removes gearing from the picture. Anyone can use them for all I care, but do not ask for that to be the driving force behind designing leveling. Also do not continue denying that my point 3 when not using Heirlooms indeed is an improvement to the experience of leveling.

One of the most discussed things in endgame is the rate, difficulty and various nuances of gear acquisition, so why can’t one come to the conclusion that the fact this aspect of leveling was over time seemingly removed because of the rate at which gear is outleveled has gone up and up while gear earning speed stayed the same(though they may have increased the frequency of gear awarding quests, it does not matter when it takes a fraction of the quests to reach the next level as when they were made in the cata revamp)

62

Just to be extra sure I have now gone on a level 114 alt, increased their ilvl via quest rewards, and mob health did not change, there is no ilvl scalling till max level.

63

Haha puny I love you. Get 'em, champ!

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64

I dunno in which WoW you live but gearing does NOT happen while you level! Gearing starts when you reached MAX level. AND it always has.

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65

Considering that every level after 80 is essentially pointless I don’t really see the problem of a level-squish. From 80 to 120 you get exactly two new talents and that’s about it.

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66

So what you are telling me leveling dungeons were always just a source of exp(despite being provable they didn’t become so until after the dungeon completion bonus came in with LFG which wasn’t added til Cata)? You are seriously trying to convince me that people who aren’t max level yet at no stage of the game gave poo about their gear?

Have you per chance heard of this little known thing called twinking where people would literally hunt down extremely rare low level BoEs to increase their power in the level range?

And even if we assume that you are correct, and it only ever has been a max level thing, then why not take one of the most important things to work toward at max level and apply it on a smaller scope in leveling, say by doing a certain activity that awards less exp you could get items that are stronger than your average quest reward or green drops, say a dungeon like structure, and the reward is it makes you kill stuff faster to make up for time you could have spent doing exp efficent things. Tell me why does that in any way sound like a bad thing to apply to leveling while actually not making you weaker and even slightly reducing the time it takes to hit max level.

67

This is a big no from me. It will make leveling feel like it takes even longer. No thanks.

2 Likes
68

They forgot to add the “oops, we will also squish your abilities with it” :^)

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69

Perspective of leveling from a noob. I’m fairly new to the game started playing properly last year and even I can tell you that leveling this guy without any heirlooms was pretty good at first but after level 60 it just becomes painful and I even feel that with heirlooms. Level 60 is where most of my alts go to die.

It started off great from 1 - 60 because you still get spells at that point and you can see yourself progress as well as talents frequently since the leveling is fast. 60-80, I was bored out of my mind, you used to level up super slowly (this was before the 40% XP nerf), you got like 2 talents and learned 2 spells. 80 - 90 was OK because I hadn’t done the zones before and the questing in cata and mists sort of carried it for me but at that point you stop learning core abilities and get like 1 talent so it’s fortunate that the good storytelling there was enough to keep my invested. 90 - 100 was meh because I was used to flying and didn’t know about the bonus objective spam and at that point I got 1 talent. I also felt quite weak at that point but that could’ve been my crappy skills. 100 - 110 was enjoyable because I felt really strong with the artifact weapon and enjoyed the zones a lot, using some of the gemstones or whatever for the artifact felt pretty fun even if it didn’t do anything. 110 - 120 left a lot to be desired, I actually felt weaker which is not what I want when at a higher level and just seemed to get worse as it went on.

I definitely feel the sense of progression could be improved. A level squish could be the way of doing it so the fun of 1 - 60 remains but for the whole experience but I still really want to solo old raids and stuff so they would need to find a way around that like with a legacy content buff. Also I would prefer more frequent talents. Like every 5 levels or so, perhaps the old talent trees but they look to be frustrating to manage at a high level. I just want to feel something when I level up not well im 75 got a talent and now have to wait 2 expacs worth of leveling for something new.

Heirlooms definitely have their place as an easy quick way to level but the leveling experience should not be designed around those as being gear people would actually use and instead as the sort of “cheat codes” that they are.

But that’s the the perspective of a noob like me.

1 Like
70

Just install an addon that divides all display of your level and other players’ and mobs’ level by two, if numbers scare you. Job done.

And that’s why I think Blizzard have something else in mind, that is hiding behind the banner of a level squish.

And a lot of us aren’t going to like it.

That is a deeply horrible thought, but I’m afraid you might be right. :frowning:

5 Likes
71

“We accidentally removed half your abilities too. Lol oops. :man_shrugging:”

3 Likes
72

Please, it’s a feature

2 Likes
73

F E A T U R E :weary::ok_hand:

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74

@Caesa: are you seriously comparing the situation in Classic to TODAY? facepalm

And btw twinks these day use looms with Enchants. Welcome to 2019, we are not in 2004 anymore.

75

I want them to squish Classic into 1-30. Make all old expansion into legacy content(easy so you can solo it).

At lvl30 you start with the current expansion and you get paragon lvls(azerite lvls,artifact lvls etc) that are locked to current expansion.

Kinda like the current profession system.

This way you dont have to slog through ALL old content, basically 1-30 is to teach you how the game and your character works, after that welcome to current content.

How long should 1-30 take? ~15 hours.(someone who comes home from work and plays the game 2 hours everyday for a week should reach current content)

76

Now it’s obvious that you didn’t get it. And about the rewards you are over-exhagerating what i ment to say, when you get a level in RPGs you actually get a power-increase in some different ways, and sometimes some other things, on Mass Effect for example (the Trilogy, i don’t know about Andromeda) you don’t always unlock a new ability each level you gain, but you get some points that are a footstep ahead; in the actual leveling you are gaining nothing, not even a power-increase (in some cases i would say it’s a power-decrease, but that’s another topic and is about the scaling issues).

Again, you are over-exhagerating what i said, a reward it must not always be something big, it must not always be something tangible, but the leveling in RPGs is a progressions system, and the actual WoW leveling it doesn’t feel a progression at all.

That’s just what i said, no more, no less

77

@Lonvelius: it would feel worse 1-30 would feel great but 31-60 would feel bad because you would be missing spells and it would feel still like a drag.

The 110-120 feeling weeker is because of the stupidity they introduced in legion called scaling.
Before Legion people complained questing was to linear and then they had the “glorious!” idea to make everything scale to your level so you could quest wherever you wanted to without getting more powerful then the mobs because you dont outlevel the mobs anymore before you reach your max level, and start leveling your item level…

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78

Well you can thank scaling that you DONT get that anymore as we USED to…

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79

Atleast you got something about what i said. But it’s not only about the scaling, really.
Never wandered why peoples miss so much the Vanilla / TBC talent trees? No, it wasn’t because of some of the talents themself, some like Thick Hide (Feral Druid) was totally passive and boring, but was needed to get to the next talent row.
Never wondered why peoples miss so much the weapon profencies? We have lost basically any progression in regards of the leveling, and the scaling is only the last one added to it. I can pass about the scaling if they do something to give some progression to the leveling system, i’m pretty sure other games have scaling in the zones but still don’t suffer a leveling progression system like we actually suffer in WoW.

That’s why i’m ok with the level squish IF done correctly, it must not be as a stand-alone feature, it need to be supported with other changes

80

Yeah if they just halved the levels and called it a day then I don’t think anything would be solved. I’m talking about if they still kept the spells around the same time or something like that. I know that they are trying to base it off of Classic where rewards were meaningful and leveling was lengthier but I honestly don’t think that sort of super long experience is what the post-Wrath audience really wants.

Yeah I heard about that. When people say you can pull like 5 mobs in BFA I sincerely doubt you could at freshly dinged 120. You hit like a wet noodle and feel like paper at that point. I actually remember a bit before 7.3.5’s scaling (this isn’t my first toon, it’s just the first I leveled by myself, my first is actually a dwarf hunter I was duo leveling), it was quite the cakewalk but a bit irritating zone-hopping.