Horizontal progression ideas for Forever, inspired by OSRS (10 item concepts)
As a WoW and OSRS lover, I thought it was only fitting to think of some item concepts for Forever which will help foster horizontal progression and keep new content from killing old content.
I put together 10 rough item concepts with a lot of inspiration from OSRS, each built on a different underlying principle:
Weapon/item upgrades: a new drop that upgrades an existing item (Brutality Blade from Garr)
Multi-item crafting: one trinket built from shards off four dungeon end bosses
Items with limited charges: fuelled by Dark Runes from Scholomance
Tier set conversions: turn your Tier 1 into an off-spec version
Bounty trinkets: Slayer style tasks out in the world
Weapons for specific enemy types: e.g. a polearm that's best against dragonkin enemies
Countering boss/enemy mechanics: situational gear, like the Onyxia Scale Cloak
Quest-gated gear: a long chain through every dungeon
Zone completionism: rewards for fully completing a zone
Rare recipes on old bosses: reasons to keep running low-level dungeons
These are really rough ideas and not balanced designs in the slightest. Any number on a new effect is shown as "X" because I've no idea what the right values would be. The point is the principle.
Would you want to see anything like this in Forever, and which do you think would/wouldn't work?
Would love to hear other ideas and people's thoughts! :)