Unpopular opinion: Turn heirlooms into leveling buff enchants

[Doffen]

As long as the xp bonus stays, I'll level up naked if that's a thing.

[Aldo Hawk]

You know, i belileve, one of blizzards most devastating decisions ever was to devalue old content, by making old crafting useless, by making old gear useless, by making leveling rewards as like gear useless. By making the whole old world obsolete.

One idea to make old content mattering more would be to make leveling and leveling rewards actually useful again. Which includes character progression with gear upgrades.

That would mean, heirlooms, as they are now, should be replaced or removed. As blizzard surely would not like to give up their heirloom tab, and the hundred thousands of gold they sell them for (tokens!), i would suggest to transform heirlooms into leveling enchants to items, which give additional experience, and some minor stats upgrades. Instead of a chestpiece which levels with you, you get an enchant for your chestpiece which raises int or str or agi by 2%, and your experience by 5%.

Same goes to the other heirlooms. This would mean, that leveling would return to character progression. The heirloom tab still would be there, but once you got a new item, you had to reattach the heirloom enchant to the new item.

Just one of a possible hundred ideas to make low level content more compelling. Another idea would be to add difficulty levels for questing. You had easy, normal and heroic questing. Easy would be what we had prior to legion, Normal would be after legion leveling difficulty, and Heroic would be a difficult level of questing best played in a group. The higher difficulty would reward more gold and vanity items.

What would be your ideas to make old content more compelling?

I have been suggesting this to my circle of friends since years ago. Because I came to the conclusion that if they fixed the poor itemization and leveling of the game, heirlooms would still be there to break it again.

So reusable experience enchantments for the pieces would be good in many ways.

It would just be an XP boost without adding extra stats, and if the heirlooms are less powerful, it would not create such problem of having to decide to not use the XP boost for the stats (which is something that doesn't happen because stats and leveling is fucked up so is not important at all).

Yes, I think this is a good replacement for the heirlooms, since I have been thinking about this exact same solution with (I think) the same points you brought for it to be done this way.

[doodle90]

Have you even used heirlooms in BFA? They are always like 2-5ilvl below current level blues. Upgrading the weapons now is pretty pointless. The armor makes you weaker than current level blues and waaay weaker than Azerite armor.


Also with just an exp buff how do you fix someone vastly out leveling their gear since they are gaining exp at almost twice the rate? In a scaling world you just get weaker with each level since quest rewards and drops wouldn’t keep up.

[Obelisk Kai]

True, but at that point does it really matter if the leveling content is considered irrelevant? In order to make it so somebody would need to level several different toons, which means that they have already replayed leveling content much more than they might have under normal circumstances. I would call that a win if I were blizz since leveling content is being played now more than ever.

Maybe lessen the % increase per max level. 10% per toon? 5%?

I would suggest that if they wish to deal with the heirloom issue they are constrained by what they have now. Now, people who have only two or three max level characters can still have a 50% or so experience buff. Were we to move to a system based on numbers of characters, people who currently have access to that large buff could instantly be deprived of it which is something Blizzard will strive to avoid. The system suggested could have made sense had it been the one chosen initially, before heirlooms, but the existence of heirlooms now constrains the possibilities of a solution.

The rationale for a replacement system is to remove scaling gear that corrupts the gameplay loop of levelling. The buff they provide to levelling experience though will probably have to be preserved. This is why I believe a new interface would be the best solution.

[Zantera]

I feel heirlooms is a bit of a mixed bag with both positives and negatives. The xp buff is great for alts and as someone who's played the game since the beginning, I don't want to have a slow "meaningful" leveling experience on my alt because i've done all that on my main and i'm not looking to reroll, but I'm still interested to get the allied races leveled. The heirlooms being gear has a few positives like enchanting it makes for an OP feeling while leveling. BUT ofc the negative is that you start your journey and end your journey wearing 80% the same gear, and that negative feeling has definitely taken over the good feeling of being a constant twink.

So yeah if there was a way to get the XP bonus without having to sacrifice gear slots for it, i would be all for it.

[Daedius]

Don't think the OP grasps the whole point of heirlooms, and that is to stop the consistent need of replacing gear that you would quickly outlevel with otherwise with the XP buffs...

Stop beating a dead horse...

[Cyi]

The other advantage of this type of system is that not everyone would be running around in the same looking outfits. It would bring so uniqueness back to the world. Of course, they could just let you buy an XP potion heirloom that would encompass all of it and that would solve the problem as well.

[Soon-TM]

I think that heirlooms should be deleted from the game, and replaced by a purchasable XP token, which gets more effective (and more expensive) with every max level toon you have. For example, 1 max level toon = 10% XP buff, 2 toons = 20% buff, and so on, capping at 5 toons.

Of course, that implies that max level should remain constant across expansions, aka the rumoured revamp to levelling (including a level squish) - which I really doubt Blizzard has the stones to pull it off.

[Kokolums]

Well something needs to be done:

1. You get an heirloom tab so finding gear no longer matters (which removes complexity).
2. Mobs scale to your level, which means you no longer have to plan out a great leveling route the way you used to (which removes complexity) and you no longer feel like you power up each level (so it doesn't feel good to level)
3. Heirlooms grant xp bonus (which makes it easier).
4. The gold reward for leveling didn't change, so that incentive for leveling was removed (back in BC, you'd earn about 3000g for leveling a toon from 1-70 via questing, which was a LOT and made it worth leveling an alt)
5. Talent trees were removed, which removes satisfaction from leveling.
6. A lot of the buff spells were removed, which means you can't help fellow levelers with buff spells (which felt good to do an encouraged people to level more) and without those buff spells it feels more antisocial. I'd have entire trees of spells and skills to help fellow levelers instead because it would be SOCIAL.
7. You can just buy level 110.

Could you imagine if Blizzard adopted this attitude towards mythic raiding?

1. You can build out a a mythic gear tab with gear that scales to the encounter, so finding gear in raids no longer matters.
2. Bosses scale to your power level, so you can never 1 shot anything and it requires probably 15 wipes minimum.
3. You can just pay $60 and get a full mythic gear tab instead of buying them from a vendor in game for gold.

[analmoose]

Just seems like hassle with no purpose. Constantly re enchant gear every time you get an upgrade, and hope that you're getting one so you aren't stuck with subpar gear for 10 levels.... or have a nice piece of gear you never need to bother changing or looking at until you're max level. Really not a tough decision. You're gonna vendor all the drops as you level anyway within a reasonably short amount of time so what's the difference. The mental gymnastics you people play with boggles my mind. Does it really make you feel more engaged or special to equip some different stat stick every few levels?

[StationaryHawk]

Heirlooms solves the problem of outpacing your rewards. You're never going to be able to balance reward distribution for both players with and without an XP boost.

The other advantage of this type of system is that not everyone would be running around in the same looking outfits. It would bring so uniqueness back to the world. Of course, they could just let you buy an XP potion heirloom that would encompass all of it and that would solve the problem as well.

Just transmog them. Heirlooms are even discounted.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

Just remove heirloom gear altogether at this point. Since they nerfed the stats of heirloom gear they are essentially worthless at lower and middle range levels. I will say, one refreshing aspect of Classic WoW for me is actually looking forward to completing quests and getting gear rewarded from it and it lasts. Gear in retail questing should have the same feeling.

[Alyajna]

I posed the exactly same suggestion a few days ago so I 100% support this idea and I really hope blizzard is thinking about revamping the heirloom system.

I would like for heirlooms to be reworked. Instead of a piece of gear, they could be turned into a permanent (but removable, if wanted) buff to the slot that you'd "apply" on your alt when you create it if you wish to use heirlooms.


The slot would then be "enchanted" and benefit any piece of gear that gets put there. This frees of the actual equipment slots to be used again. So instead of pants with +10% exp bonus that you wear until level 120 that have slightly better stats then most gear, the slot itself would have a 10% bonus and apply a +5% (or less, or more, just throwing out a number) stat boots to any item put there. This makes dungeon drops useful again, quest rewards, etc.

Not being able to be excited about anything while leveling feels so bad. So long between talents. So long between skills. The bulk of quest reward and dungeon drops and crafted gear useless. A change like this would at least bring back a little excitement when a quest reward or dungeon drop isn't even glanced at because it's not worth losing 10% exp.

[Nefarious Tea]

To be honest, heirlooms should have just been turned into a permanent account-wide xp boost. Having to pop them out of collections and delete them later is so pointless.

[Nefarious Tea]

*snip*

You can bitch all you like but old content has been invalidated since BC. They lowered the xp required from 1-60 when BC went live. It's not like this is a new mindset.

[Kithelle]

Oh no! Devaluing gear that will just be tossed away a few missions later when you get something better! For shame!

[Zyrinx]

Make a stacking 10% experience buff for each Max level character on the account. Then I won't care about heirlooms but until then, just get me thru the slog asap.

- - - Updated - - -

To be honest, heirlooms should have just been turned into a permanent account-wide xp boost. Having to pop them out of collections and delete them later is so pointless.

Yep, this.

[Fred Skinner]

You can bitch all you like but old content has been invalidated since BC. They lowered the xp required from 1-60 when BC went live. It's not like this is a new mindset.

It is no new mindset. Yet, a devastating one. As the recent history in wow development shows.

[Nefarious Tea]

It is no new mindset. Yet, a devastating one. As the recent history in wow development shows.

Honestly, between expansions making old content irrelevant from a gearing perspective is probably not a bad thing.

It's the whole thing they've been doing since 3.1 where each raid tier makes the previous garbage. People were running every raid in BC, even Karazhan right up until the moment we could get on the boats to Northrend. But when 8.1 hit, 10M normal Ulduar gear was as good as 25M Naxx/EOE/Sarth, and 3.2 with TOGC made things even worse: 10M normal TOC gear was better than 25 hard mode Ulduar, and there was another 45 item levels above that with TOGC 25. It was absolutely wild.

They did it, of course, because Blizzard straight up admitted later that they thought he playerbase was too stupid to understand linear progression so they made it exponential, and we've had two squishes that haven't helped at all to bring that ridiculous powerslide under control.

However, 3.0 making 2.0-2.4 content worthless? That I'm ok with.

EDIT: my bad it wasn't 15 ilvl jumps in Wrath, it was 13 and they only made it 15 ilvls with Cata, but still.

[zlygork]

I fully support this idea, leveling definetly feels better when one equips new gear and stuff, but no amount of "feeling better" would ever justify decreasing the exp bonus.