Unpopular opinion: Turn heirlooms into leveling buff enchants

[strongyp]

Moved to the right section.

2 points.

1. This is the Classic WoW forum, not General Discussion. This doesn't belong here.

2. Currently, non-heirloom gear is typically better than heirloom gear except the heirloom gear has the exp bonus. While I would be all for this kind of change, I think it's better the way it is now. You use gear that could be replaced with something better, but you don't for an exp bonus tradeoff. If this was replaced with enchants, there would definitely need to be NO stat bonus and, if anything, a negative stat effect.

this is literally posted on General Discussion, why you assume this is classic forum?

did you read the whole page?

[Aggrophobic]

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?

No. If you don't like them, don't use them.

[CasualVader]

Honestly I love the heirlooms and I would rather have more heirlooms to fill up all my slots instead of seeing them removed as I am quite the altoholic.

The 1-120 experience for me to to focus on getting from 1 to 120 in a smooth and enjoyable manner and having to constantly replacing gear is quite the annoyance and heirlooms made that experience nicer.

I would rather see Blizzard making the 1-120 scale better so some pieces of gear could actually be more used for people who are leveling their first or possibly second or third character who doesn't have heirlooms as the current ''state squish'' really did reduce the power level of gear when leveling.

Blizzard did solve the issue of heirlooms being way too OP by reducing the stats of them, and reason why I love heirlooms is because I can enchant them and never have to get another enchant when leveling, I even switch weapons with different enchants during the dungeons (1 for trash, 1 for bosses) and so on.

[rogueMatthias]

My idea would be to have a stacking 25% xp boost buff for each max level character you have.

That way The more max level characters you have, the faster you'll level up other ALTs.

[horbindr]

i like the idea, but tbh it's too little too late. only big changes can salvage leveling at this point.

[Aeula]

I’d be fine with this so long as they’re infinitely obtainable like heirlooms currently are via a menu.

[Understarmor]

2 points.

1. This is the Classic WoW forum, not General Discussion. This doesn't belong here.

2. Currently, non-heirloom gear is typically better than heirloom gear except the heirloom gear has the exp bonus. While I would be all for this kind of change, I think it's better the way it is now. You use gear that could be replaced with something better, but you don't for an exp bonus tradeoff. If this was replaced with enchants, there would definitely need to be NO stat bonus and, if anything, a negative stat effect.

2 points.

1. Youre a fucking moron you don't belong here.

2. Currently, I don't think you read a damn thing that this man actually said, he never once said that heirloom gear was better, he said that it devalues old content. He said that he would rather not have gear that you keep because it helps you level but instead you get to see all the old world gear because they turn into leveling enchants.....learn to read please....and take your condescending attitude somewhere else.

[Aeula]

My idea would be to have a stacking 25% xp boost buff for each max level character you have.

That way The more max level characters you have, the faster you'll level up other ALTs.

As an altoholic, yes please. I’ve got 14 120’s. So that’d be 350% extra exp. that’d be amazing.

[Eazy]

I completely agree. But I wouldn't want them to be enchants. I'd rather see them as buffs.

Heirlooms makes older/low-ilvl dungeon/raids items worthless and that's what's wrong with them.

[Understarmor]

when classic is so boring that people who begged for it are going back to desperately trying to cchange retail

stay in your museum nobody wants this garabge in retail

if anything blizzard should put in more heirlooms to speed up leveling further and to fill up missing slots so people dont have to use any gear from game besides looms.

this is probably the dumbest post on the forums, regardless of section.....

[Obelisk Kai]

basically you want blizzard to remove something because you cant resist using them.

Very few can resist using them, that's the problem. As I said, the advantages conferred by using them are simply too strong and they gut the gameplay loop of an RPG. You don't need to worry about gear until you reach endgame with heirlooms. That in itself removes one of the best parts of an RPG's gameplay, the thrill of getting an upgrade.

Nor are these proposals for the system to be entirely removed. Instead, the suggestion is that the experience buff that the heirlooms currently represent would be applied to new characters via a buff or an aura that is independent from gear. This would preserve the heirloom benefit, whilst separating it from gear and thus restoring a large chunk of the gameplay loop of levelling a new character.

Blizzard wants to fix the levelling process. The scaling system introduced at the end of Legion was one part of this fix. The next part is the inevitable levelling squish and the associated tweaks to spells and talents to make levels themselves meaningful again in their own right. Doing something about heirlooms will hopefully be a part of this process.

[Understarmor]

Maybe just remove all the Heirloom Items except one (Necklace/Ring/Trinket) and have that item give the necessary XP buff instead and maybe a small HP/Power buff?

Would make gear meaningful again while leveling, of course you can transmog to it but it's not the same.

If this was implemented in BfA they could have given the Heart of Azeroth early, maybe lvl 10 with a quest from the Speaker of Azeroth and give the Necklace as a gift to prepare for future events (BfA). This quest would replace the HoA Acquisition quest for alts.

thats actually a pretty cool idea, give to a new character at level 10 so they feel like they are going to be a big part of the future even though they are just starting out on their journey, i like it!

[Shinrael]

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?

Yep. It's about time they did this already.

[Firedemon]

They could just make a trinket and remove all heirlooms.
First time you get it it's 5% bonus xp and 2% increase to all stats up to level 60.
Then you can upgrade either it's xp and stat bonus to 10%/4% then 15%/6% all the way to 50% xp and 20% stats or the level it works to 70, 80, all the way up to 110.

[Milfshaked]

when classic is so boring that people who begged for it are going back to desperately trying to cchange retail

stay in your museum nobody wants this garabge in retail

if anything blizzard should put in more heirlooms to speed up leveling further and to fill up missing slots so people dont have to use any gear from game besides looms.

Show me on the doll where classic hurt you.

[Obelisk Kai]

Well the rumor is that 9.0 is going to rehaul the world and give a level squish, what better time to tackle this issue?

A level squish is pretty much guaranteed at this point. The thing about heirlooms though is similar to flying. The convenience of heirlooms is as attractive to some players as rapidly gaining access to flying in the opening days of an expansion was, despite the huge drawbacks both have for the design of the game. Ultimately, Blizzard tackled the flying issue. Yet the heirloom issue is still there, corrupting the gameplay of levelling yet still liked for it's convenience.

IF Blizzard decides to do something about heirlooms, there is going to be a backlash. It will be similar to the flying backlash because the convenience of what heirlooms offer will be missed and a lot of people won't care about the huge negative impact they actually have. Blizzard, as custodians of the game, has to care however and they have left this particular issue fester for a long time.

I like to think it was because they didn't have a clear plan of what they wanted to do rather than that they have no intention of dealing with it. Time will tell.

[Chrotesque]

My idea would be to have a stacking 25% xp boost buff for each max level character you have.

That way The more max level characters you have, the faster you'll level up other ALTs.

Love this idea

[Nfinitii]

It’s probably not that unpopular. Heirlooms do mess with gear progression. I’ve been lvling a shadow priest on bfa and classic together. And there is like no progression on bfa compared to classic. After sinking a bunch of hours into classic I got excited to c greens. When I switched over to bfa I got that same excitement then realized I never use that stuff in bfa. Lol

[Redroniksre]

Changing them to a buff is fine, but you cant remove any of them all together because of the money people spent to buy them. If they deleted all my heirlooms i would be pissed because of how much i sunk into it.

[Obelisk Kai]

I agree with pretty much everything said here.

What did you think of the idea @rogueMatthias had on post #26?

I can see the attraction but you can have dozens of characters now so I doubt it would be implemented in such a fashion, as once you reach a certain experience bonus you'd probably render all content irrelevant.

It would probably be simpler to have an interface allowing you to apply certain buffs to your character with those buffs being purchased by your main. The effects would increase incrementally for each purchase, and you would also be able to purchase to extend the level cap for those buffs to remain options (i.e 10 levels of experience buff of 5% each with caps of 60, 70, 80 etc. or whatever their equivalents are post level squish).