After two stat squishes and the revolutionary level-scaling introduced at the end of Legion, Blizzard has shown itself willing to do some radical things to keep WoW's 15-year history from overwhelming the game's systems.
Leveling from 1 to the level cap was, in the first few expansions, designed to take roughly the same amount of time. In Vanilla, the climb to 60 was a serious one (and indeed, was considered to be a big chunk of the game's purpose - raiding was for a small minority of players until they realized how popular raids were getting, and later expansions' greater focus on the endgame took some time to develop.)
The initial solution to this goal was to simply reduce the amount of experience one needed to level up in old content. If it used to take you X weeks to hit level 60, it would now take you somewhat less so that, with the new content, you'd spend the same amount of time trying to hit, say, 70.
Cataclysm saw two developments here: first off, three expansions in, the original 1-60 range was starting to feel like a smaller chunk of the overall leveling process. We also, with the revamp to the Old World, got much more solid quest coverage at all levels. Before Cataclysm, once you hit around level 40, you might do a couple quests in Tanaris and then run out because while there were more to do at level 45 or so, you'd still be level 41 or 42 when you'd finished the existing ones. The expectation was that you'd either grind or, more efficiently, grind dungeons (which were more structured and had the added benefit of boss loot.)
Cataclysm created a world in which there was always a quest to do that could level you up, and far more quests in every zone. That, coupled with the lower experience amount you needed per level (which got lower and lower as more expansions came out after Cataclysm) meant that you'd shoot through zones, all your quests turning green or even grey before you were halfway through the zone's story.
Level scaling fixed this to a certain extent. You were free to spend all the time you wanted in, say, Silverpine Forest, even if traditionally, you were supposed to be on your way out at level 20. Now, you could be level 55 and still have plenty of reason to keep questing in that territory.
Leveling actually slowed down somewhat with this scaling - the power of heirlooms was reined in, and monsters were buffed, while experience requirements to level up were either unchanged or even made larger. The intention here was that, while it would take longer to level up, you'd enjoy it more because there was actually a challenge to it.
I think that this has been a partial success, but there's another issue that it doesn't address.
By the time expansion eight comes out, Cataclysm will have been out for ten years (yes, we're all super old.) This blog started at the tail end of Cataclysm, which also makes me feel old. The point is: while the Cata-era quests are all well and good and still massive improvements over the vanilla design (even if I do miss the scarier Western Plaguelands and the dry Thousand Needles - though I love the "new" one as well) for most veteran players, these quests are old hat, and even if they were absolutely the pinnacle of quest design, we've been through them so many times that they're still kind of a slog to get through.
So how does one make leveling more fun?
First off, you could just not incentivize it. Right now, the main reason to level up the old fashioned way is to get Allied Race heritage armor sets. I've gotten three - Lightforged Draenei, Void Elf, and Nightborne - but barring some similar incentive, I really don't imagine I'll feel super motivated to do this again on any non-Allied Race character unless we get a new class that starts at level 1, like the Monk.
Between character boosts you get at each expansion (I have three and I have used none of them) and just the fact that players who have played for a long time tend to already have a ton of alts leveled up, we don't really need to do much leveling outside of the new content.
But if we want to make that process both enjoyable and less daunting, what might we suggest?
First is the purely numerical option: halve the XP required to level from 1-110.
This could very well result in leveling being a shocking parade of dings, but with level scaling, that's less of a problem. With the level cap now at 120, we're at fully twice the level cap we initially have. And when you factor in the fact that 80-85 and 85-90 are full expansions' worth of leveling content, you could argue that the level cap really ought to be 130. With so many levels to go through, seeing those dings come fast and furious will probably make those numbers feel less daunting.
Next, I think they should really consider expanding level-scaling.
As it stands, you have a couple different level brackets:
1-60 is "Vanilla" content (of course, it's really the Cataclysm revamp, but you get the drift.)
58-80 is Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content.
80-90 is Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria content.
90-100 is Warlords
98-110 is Legion
110-120 is BFA.
So obviously the first thing I'd do is make 90-110 a mix of Warlords and Legion, just to continue the idea of giving people options. While Warlords' strongest suit was its 90-100 leveling, I think I'd love to just jump into Legion content as soon as I could.
But beyond that, I'd also try to create more of an overlap. I think it's fine to have a minimum level for certain content - you shouldn't go to the Broken Isles at level 30. But I think a greater overlap would really help certain stretches.
For instance, right now the 58-80 stretch, through BC and Wrath, is the slowest part of the process. It's not terribly surprising, given that this represents the oldest part of the game that exists. Not only do they both have old-fashioned quest design (though I do think Wrath's was a big improvement over BC's, which still have a lot of "go everywhere in this zone and kill a million of these guys" quests) but their age also means we're done them all many times for over a decade.
I think the 1-60 experience is not terrible, and if we were to reduce the amount of XP you needed to make it through them, there would be barely any reason to complain.
So first thing, I'd make the vanilla zones scale up to at least 70. Give us some more time to finish out the many available zones there, and let us decide how much time we want to spend in BC/Wrath.
The remaining strategy would mostly involve extending the scaling cap on each expansion, creating more overlaps and thus more player choice.
So I'd like to see scaling that looks like this:
1-70: Vanilla
58-85: BC/Wrath
80-100: Cataclysm/Mists
90-110: Warlords/Legion
110-120: BFA
Naturally, you'd want to see the current expansion be relevant for its entire level range, but the understanding would be that once expansion nine was out, BFA and expansion 8 would be paired up in its level range, and Legion/Warlords would scale up to 120.
The whole point here is to give players the opportunity to both remain in content they enjoy longer and to skip stuff they're less interested in. Yes, there will be a ten level range where you do need to be doing BC/Wrath stuff, but that's literally half as much as you currently have. And if this came with an XP squish, those ten levels could fly by very quickly.
And on the other hand, if you really wanted to replay through Outland - maybe you haven't done so since 2007 - you could potentially spend 27 levels there.
These numbers are, of course, open to tweaking. The primary goal would be to create more overlaps. You could even argue for letting players access content earlier than you ever could before - going to Outland at level 40, for example (though I'm not prepared to argue that quite yet.)
Squishing XP can have consequences, but I think that level scaling gives them a great tool to prevent them from being too bad. Expanding scaling could help deal with it if entire continents start to go green too quickly the way that zones did prior to the scaling solution.
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