Thoughts on Leveling

Hi there!

I'm running a new campaign, and I wanted peoples' opinion on how Leveling Up functions in D&D 5e. I have always felt that it was too cheese-y and unrealistic, so I opted to make my campaign episodic, with an episode for each level and each episode being longer. I wanted to start at Level 1 because I wanted to encourage more creative roleplay potential, and allow for players to try and solve problems in ways beyond simply combat (which I assumed would work well because my players are not too combat-focused, and none of them made min-maxxed or even combat-focused characters).

However, they come at me today surprised that the Level 1 Campaign is taking so long. We are on the third session, so I am confused, but they all want to be at a higher level with cool new abilities.

I suppose I am here to gauge the general interest in things like this. I'm a little disappointed, but I'm willing to speed up the pacing to get them their early levels; especially since Level 3 is such an important capstone. Does anybody else understand what I was aiming for, though? Are there other players and DM's who have suggestions for the future?