- People who play multiple roles/specs aren’t heroes. Stop making it sound special. I did it with no issues in BfA and will do so again in Shadowlands.
- Again, again, AGAIN, you can still do this without changing covenants. Stop pretending you can’t.
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as the devs even mentioned; just think aldor and scryer. this is nothing new, other than there is 4 to choose from this time.
In casual content - sure.
But Blizzard does a really great job with it’s challenging content where max/min’ing is essential every tier.
That’s why and how the % of players that achieve Cutting Edge each tier is so low.
Being altruistic doesn’t mean you’re a hero. It just means you’re willing to put the greater body of the community before your own desires. These are the people that are willing to sacrificing blowing stuff up as dps so that the guild/group can kill bosses with them in a tank/healer role. They’re just good, all-around, decent human beings.
In BfA it was possible when you saved your duplicate azerite pieces. You’d have to keep multiple sets of gear - but this was a way to make it possible. Covenants don’t work that way.
It’s also needed for the more challenging content that’s tuned quite precisely, and where every % and inch of movement matters.
I never took what he said as twisted - it’s objectively true.
You can switch covenants if you pay blizzard; whether it’s with your time or your gold - other players don’t get anything from someone having to jump through hoops just so that they can help a few guildees run a key.
I love RP and lore. But I’ve never liked people being charged for just wanting to play the game in diverse ways in the more hard-core versions of the game.
All in the name of giving players like me “RP” value? I don’t buy it - because I gain nothing from others having to suffer.
I like the idea of rewarding players who stick to the RP game style rather than punishing others.
It’s a pretty basic and simple principle to see.
In an ideal world - this would be great. But then it would likely homogenize each covenant too much and become the same set of abilities with just different colored animations.
Choosing a covenant should be about cosmetic rewards and flavor NOT about combat effectiveness. What will happen if one covenant ends up being way better than another? If they then nerf it, everyone who chose that covenant for the combat abilities will be really mad that they have to grind out a new covenant.
The combat ability should be on the arbiter and not depend on your covenant. The soul binds should be equivalent between the covenants.
This would be way less work for them and a better game play experience over trying to balance 48 combat abilities and however many soul binds.
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Meaningful choices have consequences. It’s a trade-off and yes, that prohibits the “just stop in town or burn a scroll and change specs” gameplay. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but obviously I’m not a min/maxing endgame content pusher. I see their point, but I like the consequential choice model Covenants are providing.
3 Likes
I wholeheartedly agree. I like meaningful and lasting choices, but I’m also not an end-game pusher. It strikes me that Blizzard are not designing their end-game around requiring covenant switches anyway. I liked the Aldor/Scryers choice in BC because by the end of the expansion I truly felt like a Scryer. I’d been with them so long I built an association with their campaign.
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Why wouldn’t you prefer a reward based model for sticking with a covenant for the whole expansion?
What makes punishing and charging others more preferable to you?
Did they confirm it’s gonna cost gold to switch?
Sure, skills or power boosts people who Covenant-hop don’t get?
Bingo. THe more punishing and limiting, the better.
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I don’t understand - how does that explain why you wouldn’t prefer a reward for yourself rather than a punishment to others?
Or is the punishment to others the reward for you personally?
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I can already see a G’huun-like fight where the guides are going “and then have the raid use covenant X ability to avoid Y mechanic.”
You completely missed what I was trying to say. You asked:
I replied…
In other words, if you’re saying my reward for not Covenant hopping is a power boost or meaningful ability that people who bounce between them don’t get - then sure. If you’re saying “Oh no, nothing that affects gameplay, just some fluff like a mog, a pet, or a rep-mount”…then no thanks.
And that, by the way, is rewarding me without punishing you. You get your base Covenant ability/abilities and can hop (at some modest without being punishing cost) and I get rewarded for not doing so.
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But they still get the same power level you do when they switch - they just have to pay the penalty for it.
It sounds like you just enjoy the punishment to others.
Which is fair - you just don’t need to avoid trying to beat around it.
Then no, that’s not rewarding me at all for staying with one. You specifically said:
And I said that’s fine…if it’s a gameplay meaningful reward and not fluff.
In short, sure - swap Covenants for their baseline abilities but people who don’t do that will be rewarded, and not by a new suit or a puppy to follow them around.
For example: You and I join the same covenant, we both get the baseline abilities. After X time there’s a “Loyalty Bonus” in the form of some other ability or boost. If you swap, that “Loyalty Bonus” disappears and the clock to getting one again resets to 0.
If I were designing it (based on the limited amount I know about the atmosphere/story the devs are trying to create), I think I would have made it more like the essence system, where you progress with different covenants to unlock abilities, but you can then slot those unlocked abilities freely (except for a restriction against mixing abilities from opposing coventants).
People focusing on a single competitive character would be able to respec as needed, people with a stable of alts could specialize as desired.
10 Likes
Well said all around.
Aside from the alt-grind - essences function well and are pretty fun to use. They could carry all of these positive aspects into the new expansion and retain all of that positive value.