This is the problem with Blizzard trying to make WoW an E-sport. It stopped being about an adventure and more of a competition.
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It’s Blizzard’s fault? Is that why when Classic released, without any Blizzard incentives people raced to 60, raced to Rag, raced in BWL, etc. etc? Can you explain how that’s Blizzard’s doing and not just the culture surrounding video games as a whole now?
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Personally, I don’t see it that way. I see people that are trying to make it that way. But why should fun be mutually exclusive or zero sum? If that’s the case then one section of the community must lose. If that’s the larger section of the community it will hurt the game.
We need to try to avoid that at almost all costs. Long term games that aren’t fun aren’t played… just ask Wildstar. It prioritized the fun of a select group over the fun of the player base as a whole and died.
I don’t even know what the question is but I’ll throw out the fact that sims are self imposed by players.
The game should not be primarily created to accommodate that style of play as it is not core to the game’s design.
But I’m saying that BFA almost required people to sim. The point I’m making is that you are saying sims are self imposed by the players, but in BFA’s systems it’s so difficult to tell whether a piece is an upgrade due to Azerite traits, sockets, corruptions, secondary stats being random, and other things like that.
Now, if we look at Shadowlands all of that stuff is being removed. Gear is just “gear” now and we will most likely be able to tell if something is an upgrade without simming. Covenant choice, especially Venthyr teleport, has NO impact on sims whatsoever, yet that is the ability most people are complaining about.
So my question is, how does free Covenant ability choice in SL promote simming compared to what we have now in BFA? Especially when these Covenant abilities, or at least some of them, have ZERO effect on sim numbers.
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The argument presented for free choice is that people will only use whatever sims the best and will have to “swap” to perform better in various content or roles.
I haven’t seen anyone argue that they have zero effect on numbers. That’s a first for me.
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I’m not saying this to be condescending even in the slightest, so please don’t take it this way: have you ever simmed your character? Right now, people are saying that Venthyr teleport is a must for M+ and you might get denied group if you don’t have it. Venthyr teleport has absolutely no effect on sim numbers, because it is just a way to skip a rough mob pack, or take a short cut in a timed M+ run.
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i think people forget that FOTM is how blizzard gets players to spend more time on the game. you make ideal characters for your ideal rp. then you make fotm characters for high end gaming. fotm switches every other patch or so, and thus, you get busy making another fotm if you’re a fan of end game.
People are saying all kinds of random nonsense all the time.
What is that supposed to mean?
…and the entire argument, on the forums at least, has been about being “forced” into one covenant or another based on sims.
People who complain about meta have never tried to be good at anything in their lives.
Meta exists in all competitive endeavors. Any person who wants to take their hobby to a next level will follow a meta in that hobby to get there.
For the layperson, it doesn’t necessarily need to be followed but it’s the path of least resistance. Even outside of world first rushes and any other instance where meta will surely make a difference, it still reduces time and effort needed to be spent. Some people want to log in, do what they want to to and log off. Following “fotm” allows a player to do that without any extracurricular effort. It also mitigates risk when pugging, where there is such a higher risk of failure.
You can’t thoughtcrime players into not doing that. Blizzard can’t really balance it without risking complete homogenization, but I think that ball is more in their court than anyone else’s to try to balance this.
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Making the covenants freely swappable with no restrictions satisfies both sides.
The people who like to min/max and make choices throughout an expansion that involve strategy and diversity get to do that.
The people like myself that enjoy role-playing can still choose to be loyal to a single covenant and enjoy all of the story and aesthetics that comes with it.
The only people that aren’t satisfied are the ones that want to force others to play a certain way and that enjoy the suffering/annoyance that causes.
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It doesnt
There is no strategy or diversity involved because the choices are obvious based on single target/aoe/boss/dungeon, therefore there is no choice.
A no brainer is not a choice
You do realize you arent the 2nd group right?
The 2nd group is us, people who enjoy the RPG aspect of game due to its impactful choices that lead to a more immersive game with much more investment compared to to some irrelevant Cod characters that flip their loadout every few minutes.
The real choice is the choice of not having the other 3 abilities, the min maxers dont want to make that choice because they want EVERYTHING like children who demand they should have everything.
Hopefully Blizzard seems quite consistent on this issue so I doubt they will allow covenant switching back and forth, at least not until the last patch of the xpac : )
For many players these kinds of choices aren’t “no brainers”.
Some people actually think about the group composition and the boss/dungeon/arena opponents to decide what to choose.
I think you don’t realize that you’re in the 3rd group I talked about. You want to force others to play how you want.
I enjoy the RPG aspect of game due to its impactful choices that lead to a more immersive game with much more investment - I just don’t want to force others into playing that way if they don’t want as long as I can still choose to play how I want.
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Community perception is a fickle thing. Not to mention the pug world.
It’s not designed that way. If you and a group of your best friends started today from scratch, you could be raiding heroic without ever looking at anything outside of the game. It wouldn’t be easy, but it’s doable.
Players choose to do the homework, and that’s ok if they want to play that way.
FTFY. This isn’t something exclusive to WoW, and it’s not because of WoW’s systems and RIO that this happened. The culture surrounding all video games is different than it used to be, and it’s not going change. Making covenant abilities exclusive won’t magically transport us back to 2008 where most people played for fun and immersion.
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You play WoW for fun? I didn’t think that was a thing.
I try to, sometimes the systems in the game make it difficult.
As someone who almost exclusively pugs, this is why you have guilds and friends. What we see now in M+ is NO different then how arena or RBGs have functioned since the beginning. Comp matters. While you are correct in that most players likely don’t know why it works, they still play it because it affords them the best opportunity for success.
When you want to be competitive, you also want to remove any of the known obstacles. So you start out with a comp that you know works, instead of trying to figure out something that may not work.
this is flat out wrong and I have the experience to show it. Be in arena or M+. Comp matters. Now, this isn’t to say that there aren’t many combinations that might work together, but just being good at your class is NOT enough to play at the top level.
To that, you are irritatingly glossing over the impact the covenants will have on play. Many of them will quite literally change how you play your class in some settings. Some are very much geared towards PvP, while others are geared towards dungeons or single target fights in raids.
Look, this is false and is being said 100% by a player that is on the outside looking in.
You don’t have to want to be world first to want to be good or the best you can at your class. This isn’t to say you will ever get close, but players want to be the best they can within the realm of possibility relative to their abilities. To do that, just as I said, they want to remove any potential KNOWN obstacles. So if a player KNOWS this comp or this class works, they already starting off from a very good vantage point.
this is just garbage man. so sick of seeing this line of thought. You are basically saying you don’t need the best because you aren’t the best. Well, with that line of thinking, you will never be the best because you never put being the best first.
This is nothing new. Anyone who wants to argue otherwise simply hasn’t been playing at a level that matters. Guilds have been stacking or taking the best specs for ages. The problem now is one of design, not the community.
QUIT blaming the community for flaws that game has introduced.
So what changed? Well, we lost class and spec identity. Now you can get scrolls for buffs, drums for lust, items for bres, etc. We have seen classes become MORE homogenous and that has made damage one of the largest defining factors for many comps.
To that, dungeon design has also become fairly homogeneous, even compared to legion. Every other pull is just another AOE pull. We don’t have dungeons that help highlight the strengths of each spec.
In the end, the game has pushed us in the direction we are headed. Quit blaming the community for simply want to be good at the game.
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Fun WoW player here. There aren’t many of us left, and we are kinda like unicorns. Kind of like the League of Legends players who play for fun; we are a rare breed nowadays.