but your argument is contradictory. in an RPG role playing game you have to make a choice.
what you mean is you want the flexibility to change everything to fit the need. nothing bad with that.
This game is not a spreadsheet simulator and should not be designed as such nor treated as such.
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This is Ions Double Speak. He says you cant have choice if you can freely choose talents between pulls. What kind of nonsense is this? Of course you can have choice, its in the same freaking sentence. The ability to choose a world quest build, a per boss build is one of the greatest rpg elements of this game.
Being able to call upon all the covenants power is literally more choices and they have more meaning then grind one and forget the rest.
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You mean how BFA was treated? Every possible upgrading requiring simming of your character, which includes simming corruptions and Azerite traits? Free covenant ability choice doesn’t turn the game into a spreadsheet simulator, at all.
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Well, that’s such an absurd distortion of what I said that I’m actually speechless.
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Sorry.
Anyway:
MMORPG game design
RPG elements >>>>>>>>>> spreadsheets and sims
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How do you get the playerbase to stop spreadsheeting to find the most efficient builds and then knocking over content that isn’t tuned for those builds?
This is correct only for “Role Playing Game”
Once you add “Massively Multiplayer Online”, Top performance and sims >>>> RPG elements.
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Actually… it literally has been since day 1. Hence why there were “cookie cutter” talent builds during vanilla and they’re still there in classic today. Hence why there was “BiS” in vanilla and there still is in classic today.
And this:
If you create the game around specs that are supremely sub-optimal… then those willing to go the distance will absolutely wreck the game, thus destroying any semblance of difficulty.
If you create the game around optimized specs/covenant choices… then congratulations… You haven’t made a “meaningful choice.” You’ve just made wrong choices.
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FotM is fine when it comes to very high end content such as pushing world first and very high keys, etc. Below that content a lot of things are viable barring some outliers, and really is a playstyle choice.
I myself have no desire or interest to mythic raid. I play the game to relax and have fun, and I just don’t view that type of stress and pressure as fun. However to use that mentality below content where it actually does matter is absurd. If you are wiping on content where it should not matter because of that little bit of dps, hps, or survivability there are larger overall issues.
Blizzard will never get talents balanced, short of utterly taking them away. Class balance is equally a pipedream.
Now if a class is truly and utterly broken, then that’s a real concern that Blizzard has to address. Take priests at the start of Cataclysm. They were kick on sight because they’d go oom during the first trash pull of many instances, and that was with CC being applied.
As far as Convenants go, it is just an elaborate talent choice. For those who do enjoy multiple activities it does mean that x covenant is going to be inferior for the spec your playing, or some of the content your doing. For those running mythic raids that is a playstyle they are opting into.
I’m actually interested in actually having to make a choice. As of right now there are elements of several convenants I really like and really dislike. Aesthetics, abilities, etc.
I’d be OK if it came with a tax, or perhaps a cosmetic debuff that said they betrayed their former covenant for x amount of time. At the same time if a covenant was hotfixed for whatever reason a player should be able to swap for free. Like changes to the old talent trees when Blizzard would mess with those every patch.
I find it interesting that the thing that nobody brings up in this discussion is FUN. At the end of the day having fun matters more than RPG elements, more than having the optimal build, more than anything really.
Fun means different things to different people but it’s not zero sum. One person having fun doesn’t mean another can’t. Those arguing such are arguing a fallacy in my opinion. Moreover designing a game to be deliberately harmful to the enjoyment of the player base is an anti-pattern regardless of how you play.
Let’s reset the conversation to be about what’s FUN and not to be accusatory towards other players or to try to say that how they enjoy the game is wrong. I personally don’t care if people use matlab to figure out what the optimal build is and then run around deliberately in the exact opposite role playing their favorite super hero. If that’s fun for them… more power to them.
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If anybody talks about fun then inevitably that one guy will come in saying “fun is subjective so your opinion doesn’t matter”. That will then shift the conversation elsewhere.
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It is, that’s right. So why not talk about what fun for you rather than trying to ruin others fun? That’s not hard IMO.
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Look at classic wow. People will take feral druids, ret paladins, dps shaman, and shadow priests to heal 5 man’s while leveling. Why is that?
Because when I talk about what’s fun for me literally nobody will care and most likely use it as ammo to dismiss the point as subjective. That’s why nobody talks about what’s fun for them.
That’s the problem though. Some people find it fun to have a choice that locks their character into a covenant. Part of me is with those people. It does make your character into more of an individual.
Others (and the other part of me) find it fun to create an optimal character (regardless of difficulty). That part of me is screaming in frustration as I’m sure I’ll be forced to pick a covenant that I don’t particularly like (necrolords… ugh…) just so that I can be optimal.
Neither is wrong, but neither is exactly right either. As such… the only way I approach this is from the perspective of someone who’s watched WoW consistently move towards high difficulty content that is relatively tightly tuned. Which has created a playerbase that prefers players to have optimal set ups rather than suboptimal set ups. I can already see the complaint threads forming up about people not being able to pug because of their chosen covenant.
Look at where failing to talk about fun has gotten us, it’s gotten us saddled with unfun things. Even if it is talking into the winds the devs do read. So what if other players dismiss it. If you can say definitively “This is what I find fun and what I value in the game” nobody can take that from you.
And that’s fine.
This is not fine. Being forced to do something that has a negative impact on your fun just because you feel you need to is not fun.
I’m not looking at it from a sides perspective, I’m just asking what’s fun. To me I think that’s being lost in the conversation and it’s going to really hurt the game. I’m deliberately avoiding making my personal position clear here. What I am asking people to do is step back and ask themselves “Is what I’m saying really fun for me?” and “Why am I discounting the other person’s fun?” That’s all.
well keep in mind it is grievous week and the community has it burned into the brain that priests struggle / go oom with grievous. While that is true to a point - any seasoned healer that knows their class well enough will accept and thrive at the challenge not in spite of but because of it.
So which part are you saying is not fine though? Is it not fine that I want to be optimal? Or is it not fine that I feel forced to pick something I don’t like?
Cause that’s the crux of the argument for me. I’m perfectly fine with people wanting to be optimal and I’m not really sure why they’re being maligned for that being how they enjoy to play. Heck… there’s plenty of people who play pure RPGs like Oblivion and Skyrim and specifically create builds to be as powerful as possible.
But that’s the problem. Those two sides are polar opposites to each other. You can’t satisfy one without upsetting the other.
You still didn’t answer my question? How does free covenant choice compare to the sim-fest that is BFA gearing via corruptions, RNG stats, and Azerite abilities? How would that be more sim-based than what we have now?
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