You don’t look at the different covenants and choose one?
Are you pressured to reroll fotm every meta? Is that what we are encouraging now?
Again, why stop there? Why not make switching racials and classes “flexible” too?
Don’t make “player agency” half assed. Go all the way. Everything swappable with the push of a button. Because nothing screams fantasy/ adventure rpg like homogenization.
He is making observations on the way he would like the game to be, for him. Grats.
Why stop there? is just weak as hell man and you know it. It’s completely unreasonable to assume that making an external, expansion-specific system will suddenly spark some movement that will essentially delete what makes an MMORPG an MMORPG.
Why you might ask? Look at the game’s past, plain and simple.
People said Why stop there? at the requests of making Essences account-wide, saying we would then ask for account-wide reputations, account-wide gear, account-wide anything! Where are these people asking for those since Account-wide Essences are in the game? Nowhere to be found!
People said once again Why stop there? at the requests of making Legion Legendaries more accessible, saying it wouldn’t stop there if it happened! But like Account-wide essences, it did stop there.
This is an incredibly weak argument. Why stop there? Because as it turns out, the players are reasonable and know when too far is too far. The last 2 expansions shows that.
Bunch of systems are released in a really bad and dysfunctional state (Legendaries, Artifact Power, Azerite, Essences, Corruption), people complain for months, Blizzard finally gives in with a solution that should’ve been there since day 1.
Covenants are no different.
Yes bro, SO TRUE, Pls let me change my class at any moment 
Player agency and Meaningful choice are not arguments, they are buzzwords much like antivaxxers say they are well informed and did their research, everyone will be playing the best classes anyways pls daddy blizz I really need that 0.000001% dmg increase for my lfr molten core
There are literally two separate threads asking for account wide gear. Praising Swotr for it because it makes switching classes/ roles easy. Or FF and how you can be any class you want with one character.
Weird. Because the classic player base won’t stop talking about how great the game was before all the qol.
This could be the most comedy thing I have ever read on these forums. This player base is anything but reasonable.
And people are laughing at them. Great point you make!
Two different games, two different communities? Hello…?
From “nowhere to be found”… to oh, we “laugh” at those people. And how is that any different from me laughing at you because you want your version of player agency and are surprised that not everyone agrees.
It’s one community. It’s one game. But instead of picking a direction and sticking with it, we have compromised on everything. It didn’t make anything better, it just steadily gets worse.
So much worse, that millions of people just left for a train-wreck version of the game with zero qol, abysmal balance but at least it was a fantasy/ adventure rpg as advertised.
Daark coming in with so many strawmen you’d think he owns a farm.
Stop trying to turn the conversation away from what the thread is about Daark.
This is a literal fact that you cannot know anything about. Nothing indicates anything of that kind.
The closest thing to that would be the Q1 earning calls specifically stating that the game is in a far healthier state, quoting the earning call directly:
Two. WoW version 1.12 is a patch that was released 14 and a half years ago. The game received 7 expansions since then, drastically changing it over time.
Because we should care about what some trolls say now? I’m sure you’re smart enough to figure out that asking for account-wide gear is absolutely absurd, and will be a request that will never be catered to.
I think I got baited too much already by your strawmanning, so let me just go back to the actual topic.
I will use a different approach to illustrate the problem.
You have these external systems that are impacting the player’s power for the last 2 expansions.
Artifact Power, Legendaries, Azerite Gear, Essences, Corruption.
For every single one of them, there were requests to make it either less grindy, more accessible, more flexible, and so on.
What happened for every single one of them? Let’s break it down:
Artifact Power
So for Artifact Power it essentially took an entire expansion to get to an acceptable state, only for it to still be a pain to deal with and eventually gets removed in the incoming expansion.
Next!
Legendaries
So Legendaries started off as a disaster and an RNG mess, became a little bit better in Legion, only due to Blizzard giving in very slowly by increasing the droprates, and then in BFA pre-patch players are finally allowed to buy the legendaries they want. It’s how it should have been since day 1! The new iteration of the system in Shadowlands shows that.
Next!
Azerite Gear
Azerite Gear starts as a very underwhelming system, taking a ton of players agency away by not allowing to respec constantly and making it difficult to obtain the exact piece you want.
Players constant complaints over the months made Blizzard give in with a vendor, an extra ring of traits, and by removing the “regrind” mechanic.
Yet another system that could have been drastically better since day 1.
Next!
Essences
Essences starts off as a nice idea to help fill the holes that Azerite Gear could not fill due to its underwhelming nature. Though the excessive grind to obtain them is noticed quickly by players, especially those with the desire to maintain alts.
Took a few months of complaining, but we finally got them account-wide! As it should have been since day 1.
Next!
Corruption
And as I typed all of this, I just now realized that the Legendary Cloak follows essentially the same pattern as the Essences.
Initial grind is fine on your main, though it gets a nerf for the acquisition of the layer ranks before people even hit rank 15 for the first time. Then the most recent nerf, drastically reducing the cloak grind for your alts.
So basically, every single external systems that increases your character’s power started off as something that lacked flexibility, was not as accessible as it should have been, reducing the players’ agency. And then Blizzard came and “saved the day” for all of these systems, no exception!
We are once again in a situation where Blizzard presents a new system that shows the same flaws as all these other systems had. Should we roll with it and simply wait for the inevitable fixes coming in 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3? Or should we try and make it better now?
Do you think Covenants have these flaws ? If not, why do you think so? I look at the previous systems and I see a lot similarities.
I think the covenant system and it’s spells and soulbinds sound pretty cool. Hopefully it works out.
You are right. Roll out catchup day 1. Empower alt armies and fotm re-rolling. Gut any kind of long term power progression.
Because you are right. Most this games player base claim to love vanilla, bc, and wrath. Claim they were the best expansions. Which is odd. Because they had no catch-up, no qol, and some of the most atrocious balance ever.
Again, you are right. They need to just give up trying to do anything remotely new or interesting. Add a new talent row, 1 aoe, 1 st, 1 useless. Make 2 raids, 10 dungeons, zero world content and make it super alt friendly. WoD 2.0 here we come.
They had catchup, just not as often as now.
Vanilla dungeon patch, tbc badge gear and mount Hyjal raid (that was basicly free loot), wotlk badge gear again.
Only vanilla was mostly without QOL and it’s one of the biggest reason people prefer tbc or wotlk over it.
This answer shows you simply didn’t understand what I wrote, or missed the point entirely. I don’t care about being right or wrong. Don’t put random words in my mouth, provide your points, and discuss the issues at hand!
Or strawman more. I think I can predict your answer, it would fit the pattern you show in your answers!
There is no issue. You think catchup should exist on launch. I do not. There are actual reasons that grinds and scaling power exist. They do not want to repeat naxx40 or Sunwell. They want players to access content. In order to do that, they have two options.
Create content for the top 30 guilds, then nerf it into the dirt for everyone else. People complained.
So instead they tried creating long term power progression that effectively soft nerfs content so that players continue to amass enough power that it will eventually over shadow mistakes. Players complain about this as well, because they need instant gratification.
There is no win in compromise. They need to pick a style and go with it.
How about we let them be the way they are planned to be. Having to stick to the choice we made is kind of cool specially with abiliites. It’s like choosing our class. Or do you think we should be able to change our class anytime we want to? All they are doing is adding an augmentation to that system. The only issue here is the ones you people keep making up in your mind due to a really bad perception.
I’m honestly interested if people who disagree with making them a talent system have any idea how to argue a point without using a strawman.
Unbelievable.
There is an issue. You just chose to not see it because it does not affect you.
You refer to players’ praise on old expansions. Do you understand that these old expansions benefited greatly from not having external progression systems, almost at all?
If you try to find similarities in character progression between BC/Wrath with Legion/BFA, the only thing you will find is gear. And even then with Titanforging/Corruption being in the modern game, it’s almost a stretch now.
The only comparison you can make now that we know of the Covenant system, is to the Aldor/Scryer situation in BC. I find this comparison almost irrelevant. There is merit to it, until you realize that people are comparing some minor Shoulders enchant being stronger than the other with an entire system meant to hold its own for the entire expansion.
I am honestly curious if any of you people who think this is a bad system has even given it a chance yet. Or just like to screech at the top of their lungs about anything like a crazed protester.
We’ve given chances to similar external systems 5 times now.
Artifact Power.
Legendaries.
Azerite Gear.
Essences.
Corruption.
And soon to be Covenant if it stays this way.
All follow a similar pattern.
The company you put Covenants in only shows your ignorance to what the system is.
They are all external systems, expansion features, that impact your character’s power and progression.
Tell me how they are not similar again?