Level Squish Thread - Why it would not work

Community General Discussion
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Essentially what a level squish would do is remove half the levels from existence.

Firstly – If you have 120 levels and reduce it to so that we only have 60, half the levels will fall on “.5” for example: Lv1 turns in to Lv0.5. Lv2 turns in to lv1. Lv3 turns in to Lv1.5, etc.

What would happen to these levels? Would a level 85 character change precisely to level 42, with half their level full of experience? IF so, would they un-learn whatever ability you normally get at lv85? What about all that they previously have achieved? Can they even implement a system like this thát precisely?

Secondly – You would also have to re-divide levels in to new PvP brackets because the power level that currently is quite large between levels such as 60 and 70 is now much, much smaller as they only differ 5 levels.

Would we still go with the typical 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60? Or do we also divide those in to half-brackets to maintain the amount of brackets currently exist? The latter again would be impossible to do due to certain levels ending at 0.5.

Do we now put what used to be lv60 and lv70 inside of the same PvP bracket? What about 80 and 85? 100 and 110?

Third – It would mess up itemization and the item distribution in PvP brackets.

Gear inside of these brackets would be too good for what level you are at, You can for example currently buy a nearly full socket-set from lv70 PvE vendors (for very little gold) and gear yourself quite well for PvP. While this is not that big of an issue if at all right now but imagine what is now a lv35 character running around in PvP with full Epic socketable gear. You’re not going to have fun. (I thought you didn’t want twinks in leveler bgs anymore?)

There are many, many more issues that would arise such as:

  • Enchant scaling
  • what level you get your mount at
  • Professions and the level requirement there-of
  • The power of actual gear and weaponry
  • Class-balance and at what level you get what ability/spell
  • What level Allied races
  • What level Hero classes start at
  • Up to what level the free-to-play demo goes
  • Item levels

…to name only a few amongst many others.

Leveling speed would also likely be either too quick or too slow. Currently you can go from lv1 to lv60 within a few hours of game time. You would have to re-make the entire leveling curve once again.

My point here is that you would have to re-design the entire game just for the sake of “squishing” a few levels while there are far better alternatives that are also much more fun for the players.

Which brings me to my next topic: A better alternative to Level Squishing.

If the reason that you want to squish level is that 120 levels take too long to go through to reach End game, then rather than having the experience requirement for leveling up ramp up the higher level you become (like it does now) you can figure out the precise amount of quests that you want players to have complete to level-up.

For example: Currently at level 20 you require 44K experience to level up to level 21. Every quest gives you about 4K experience. This means that you need to do around 10 quests to level up.

Again, currently the number of quests required to level up ramps up the higher level you become and this is what causes the slow leveling pace.

If you want to reduce the amount of time that new players are required to go through to reach endgame then the best, most direct, most non-intrusive and simplest way to go about that is to make every level require a very specific number of quests to level up.

If that amount is 10 quests per level then you would need 1000 quests to level from 20 to 120. This may sound like a lot but remember that that would be the amount of quests needed if you:
1: Do not kill anything that grants experience,
2: Don’t open any chests,
3: Don’t kill any rares,
4: Have no heirlooms equipped,
5: This also doesn’t take “report to” mini-quests in to account.

Adding all of those, I feel like 10 may even be a bit too low.

The actual numbers would require some testing.

Now you may ask yourself where does the “fun” aspect of all of this come in?

Currently we do not receive any actual reward when we level up, so I suggest that we get a revised, improved version of the old Talent system back that grants us 1 talent point every time we level up.

In addition to that I suggest that you give us back Class Quests that reward us with actual abilities, possibly more experience than normal quests give and even cosmetic passive effects such as the Green Fire Warlock Quest Reward.

This alone would both speed up the leveling and make it much more fun to go through.

There is zero reason to believe that we need a level squish that is guaranteed to mess up the entire game for a long time before it actually starts to show some form of positive results when a much better and direct result can be accomplished simply by changing the way we earn experience and the amount of it.

Oh, lastly…

You do realize that at some point we’ll have to do this ágain? as in ánother level squish? This is most definitely not a long-term solution.

Edit: TLDR: A level squish will never work. There is no short way I can explain ‘why’, aside for saying that it’ll mess more things up than bring positive change.

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Thanks for the long post. Seriously, I don’t agree with most of it personally, but it’s encouraging to see someone as passionate as you strike me be.

I’ve recently been leveling a Warlock. I’ve touched 6 areas in Kalimdor and one zone in Northernd. And my lock is 78.

Means I’ve probably not set foot in 90% of the potential content so far.

Why is this relevant? It highlights that there’s SO much content these days which merely serves the single purpose of getting to end game.

So yeah, there’s always room for improvement, and thinking outside the box is always good.

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Thanks, that’s because I have no faith that this will be pulled off correctly, like, at all. You would have to do it just right and I think that we both know deep down that that’s not going to happen.

Edit: That’s not because I don’t have faith in Blizzard, It’s because I believe that there exists no way to actually pull this off correctly. There are far too many issues. Many people will lose something if these changes go live.

I agree! we need to do more with old zones!

…But… you know, if you squish the levels then that still means that leveling up takes longer and that every zone that you currently claim ‘only serves the purpose for leveling’ still only does just that: Serve a purpose for leveling.

Why not put more endgame content in older zones? World quests? New dungeons? World bosses? World events?

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A level squish would retain new players. Imagine starting wow and learning you needed to gain 120 levels to do the endgame content.

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I don’t get this argument. 120 isn’t at all a daunting number as long as it only takes 20 minutes for you to level up once? If that’s the case all the way to level cap then I don’t see the issue. at all.

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Because leveling is incredibly hecking boring?

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I levelled a warlock a long time ago, I have kept him up to date on most expansions.

I decided that since i can have more characters per server to level a 2nd warlock to find; I do not get void walker at 10 anymore (now 20), I do not get succubus at 20 (now 28) and I do not get felhunter at 30 (now 36).

So if I’d levelled this new warlock in the past to 30 then left it then come back, I would have lost my felhunter.

So, I don’t really see a problem with losing abilities as they get reshuffled?

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Then speed it up?

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So basically just make quests give more XP?

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You’re missing the point. Abilities re-shuffling happens every expansion. The point I am making is that if you cut the level cap in half then that means you bring a gigantic load of unnecessary work upon yourself.

Not only do you have to re-design at what level every class gets every ability.

You also have to redesign at what level everyone is able to equip any item. Learn any profession. Learn mounts. Flying. etc and that is only ONE of the issues that this change would bring.

All while you could just change the way players earn experience, add the old talent system and re-design it, and you’d be done.

It is literally that simple.

As well as the following:

And with “revised” old talent system i’m saying that you could both make it bigger and add much more passive effects in the tree. You could even add cosmetic rows, they don’t even all have to be abilities or ability-enhancing-passives.

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I don’t personally see it happening.

At most I can see 120 being the final cap and we level through the neck instead.

Blizzard would effectively be remapping WoW entirely into the modern age.

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I pray to any higher power that will listen that this does not happen.

This entire concept of squishing levels left me with such an incredibly disgusting taste in the mouth. I honestly can not believe that it is even being discussed at all.

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Suggestion one: Cover your real level number with post it note, cover your xp bar with painters tape. Write small add on that says “Ding” every time you get new skill or talent point. Now every ding feels special and you have spent same time gaining it than you would in the squished system (but nothing is broken in process!)

Suggestion two: Blizzard renames levels to “points”. 120 levels feels a lot. 120 points is not that hard to achieve. It even sounds really rewarding, with every ding you get new point! (disclaimer: these would not be points you can spend to anything, it would be just new word for levels that wont sound so hard to achieve)

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Maybe they could change the levels and have a system to level up for every expansion individually, so there will be still 120 levels but to reach the current expansion high end content new players wont need to level up all those 120 levels.

So instead of having 120 levels there will be 60 Classic levels, 10 TBC levels, 10 WOTL levels, etc.

But instead of being all 120 mandatory new players will need only to level the Classic levels, 20 leves from expansions between TBC and Pandaria and the 20 from Legion and BfA. That means only 100 levels and that number will remain the same no matter how many expansions are released. In the next expansion Legion will be moved to the intermediate pool of expansions and BFA and the next one will be the two mandatory.

For any player who skip an expansion every time he step in a zone of that expansion his level and item level will be scaled down to the first level of that expansion, some sort of mandatory Timewalking, until he reach the max level in that expansion, that will allow the player to play in that zone without scaling down.

To allow players to skip expansions Blizzard could use the same system from timewalking to automatically scale up player ilevel to a minimun value, so any level 60 who choose to skip to Pandaria wont be playing as a level 80 with Classic greens.

If still 100 leves are still too much, they can made the original 1-60 level into just 30 levels with the same required experience as 1-60.

Internally there should no be many problems for the game because the original 120 levels wont go away, they will just made some optional, so the power progression between expansions, items and content in general wont be broken

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Yes that would be way way way less complicated and easy to understand :man_facepalming: :man_facepalming: :joy:

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There is nothing to understand. You do are a player, not a developer, you do not need to know how the game work internally to play. You only need to understand that after playing 1-60 in Classic you can choose to level up 1-10 in multiple expansion and from your level 60 Classic youre gear will work the same way if you choose WOTLK or Pandaria, you do not need to know that between Classic and Pandaria there was 20 levels.

The same happens if you go back to previous expansions that you have skipped. If you have skipped Cataclysm and want to level up there you will be same as a new player who choose Cataclysm because you are both the same, players who have not level on that expansion, both of you will the same, Cataclysm level 1

The way is implemented could seem complicated to you, but that is irrelevant because you are not one of the developers, and given that the system could be made with things that already exits on the game it means probably wont seem very complicated for the developers.

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I don’t understand him either, so I let it go. I re-read it like 8 times but still can’t figure it out.

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Where is the complication? Is simple math.

There are 120 levels that now every one is forced to play, those 120 levels and 1-60 from Classic, 60-70 TBC, 70-80 WOTLK and so on until 110-120 BfA.

So if instead of requiring any player to level up all 120 levels make them level from 1-60 and then choose two expansion and level in there 10 levels

That is 60 + 10 +10 = 80

Then require to level up the 10 levels from Legion and 10 levels from BfA

That is 80+ 10 +10 = 100

In the next expansion, Legion is moved to the list of optional expansions and the mandatory expansion would be BfA and the next expansion. So there will be still 100 levels now, in the next expansion and every expansion in the future.

So intead of having 120 level required to play the current content in BFA there will be 100 levels required for current content and the other 20 levels will be optional. WIth every expansion they just move 10 of those previous levels from being mandatory to being optional and make the new 10 levels required to play the new content. So in any given expansion a new player will require only 100 levels to raid/pvp/mythic in the current expansion.

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Oh you mean like how you can choose between tbc and wotlk right now, yeah sure.

that still leaves us with the issue of having to squish 20 levels, however… that’s still way better than having to squish 60 levels, so…

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There is nothing to squish. There will be still 120 levels, just 20 of them will be optional. If you skip from Classic to Pandaria the game will scale your level and ilevel to level 90. If you move from Pandaria to WOTLK yout gear and level will go down to level 80. Change the player instead of changing the world. It is just what happens in Timewalking, but that is just how the game works, there is no need for the players to see that change, the player only needs to know that from Classic they can level up in TBC, WOTLK, Cata, Pandaria or WOD and all will have the same difficulty with their gear and level.

Of course it would be confuse for any players to see their level change from 60 to 80 and then back to 70 but that are just the old levels, there is no need to show these numbers to the players. Instead of that level 60 will be Classic 60, level 80 in Pandaria will be Pandaria 1, level 70 will be WOTLK 1. Just like in the professions there is no longer a level from 1-800, there are independent levels per expansions.