No. Those two things are the exact same thing. There is absolutely no difference. The meaning and affect of them are the same. There isn’t any meaningful separation. These things are LITERALLY the same. In every single appreciable way there is no difference.
adjective
taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory.
Losing a reward and being charged*, in their usual and most basic sense, are* exactly the same thing. I literally used literal correctly.
If you’re supporting this topic. Then you’re literally supporting COSTING your tank and healers a mount or similar for helping out.
I already explained, in very simple terms, how opportunity cost works. If you still don’t understand, that’s your bad. The cost is the same. Moving on.
The entire point of covenants is that you have to pick one, and that choice has an impact. It’s like picking between Aldor and Scryer during BC. Simply being able to swap at will takes away the impact of that choice, especially if say, you have no interest in grinding rewards on that character and have others alts that you can do that on.
Want to heal in a raid? Sec guys, gotta swap covenant. Want to tank? Oh wait, guys, gotta swap covenant. Doing a bunch of open world gameplay? Covenant swap!
Covenants are not a buff that you can change at will depending on the situation, nor should they be.
Is there an option out there to just throw down some tough love and tell people that not everything needs to be 100% optimal in an RPG?
If you’re min/maxing as a competitive raider then limiting how often you can switch solves your problem because you’re on an even playing field with everyone else and you have limited covenant changes to use strategically so you don’t have to over grind any resources.
If you’re min/maxing to be helpful and play a healer or tank for people who wouldn’t otherwise have one then this is entirely unnecessary and they’ll still be happy to have you with a less than optimal, but still useful covenant ability.
If you can’t stand the idea of doing something that isn’t 100% optimal then this would be a good time to learn how to let that go and have some fun doing the best you can with the skill you like the most.
Then why did Blizzard make so many different kinds of content and at such high levels of challenge?
If the game overall was more like Vanilla and max/min’ing didn’t matter - then there wouldn’t be an issue. But that’s not how the game works today.
Personally - my biggest issue is that the 2 ways people have highlighted that will likely be the “cost” is giving Blizzard gold or wasting people’s time doing redundant content. Neither of those really gives RP players like myself any benefit.
I like the idea of rewarding players that stick to their choice instead.
Blizzard doesn’t get rewarded for putting barriers in the way of players wanting to be competitive and players don’t waste their time repeating content they’ve already done.
Aldor and Scryers first and foremost affected shoulder enchants(from what I remember) and crafting recipes. They didn’t define every aspect of your character’s ability and talent progression for the entire expansion.
The way it was explained was that Covenants are a bit like the Scryers and Aldor in BC - its a decision you make based on which one you see as working best for you at the time. You can swap in that case - if you get Scryers to Exalted and get all the items or patterns etc you want, you can go back and cancel it and join Aldor and start again.
Ion said its a “weighty choice” and I find that satisfying - not everything in this game should be lightweight and easily done, or it has no sense of achievement. If they locked it and make it totally unchangeable then yes, that would be a shame. But obviously they aren’t. So if you choose one and find out along the way that you don’t care for it, you are able to do something about that.
This is tough to manage when you produce a variety of contents and allow for highly competitive and skilled levels of play across them.
Like I mentioned above - it’s like they make a buffet of food, but then don’t actually want you to experience all of it unless you either pay them, or grind time away doing content you’ve already done.
I’m all for casual gaming and immersion - and as someone who values those things - charging people to switch up aspects of the game that impact the performance (power level) of gameplay just doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t see what I get as a role-playing hippy casual.
People have mentioned their being “meaning” behind the consequences - but I don’t “feel” any extra meaning just because someone else has to pay Blizzard gold/time so they can help out their guild run a key, arena or raid in a competitive fashion. It’s like you paint this picture of “value” - but in reality, the only value is to Blizzard as a way of doing 1 of 2 things - getting gold from it’s customers or making their customers repeat content they’ve already done and earned.
I just don’t see value for their players - only for Blizzard. Now if somehow the people that stuck it out with their covenant received the gold/time from those other players in things like consumables/repair subsidizes - this would be a completely different story.
It’s like those political supporters that blindly continue to support their politician of choice even though it’s transparent that they raise taxes and then pocket the extra revenue - all without really having much to show for it in terms of objective value for the people they’re supposed to represent.
That being said - value can still be derived without feeding Blizzard gold or playtime.
Rewards is one option - I wonder what other decent options are out there.
Ok, I’ll bite; what reward - that isn’t fluff like mogs, mounts, or pets - would you propose for people who stayed loyal to a single faction as opposed to people swapping for min/max purposes every time they switch roles?
Almost no one is playing so mechanically perfectly that they need to squeeze out every last fraction of a percent. Only mythic raiders would even need to consider this and even then, really only the people pushing world/server first.
It’s odd that Blizzard approach forces that on players instead of say - supporting their ability and pursuit of being masters of all trades.
Especially when the game would benefit tremendously if more players became masters of all trades. It not only adds additional ways to play - but enhances players’ skill when crossing into non-dps roles.
Such an weird approach for a game developer to take - actually putting downward pressure on player performance and de-incentivizing diverse play.
To think - WoW used to be more liberal back in Vanilla compared to the competition. Now it’s actually pretty conservative and has gone the other direction.
