One of the great changes in SL - is the M+ weekly chest being expanded to 6 choices.
What if sticking to a single covenant for over x weeks would add one extra choice to that list?
Or what if the Anima we acquired in our weekly chest had a 10% boost once that “x week” threshold was reached?
I also like the idea of giving players an option to acquire in-game consumables as a reward.
Just ideas - but the thing they all have in common is that the people trying to be competitive and diverse while also being competitive don’t get punished just for trying to be “try-hards” at all aspects of the game.
All of those options also don’t objectively provide sole value to “the man”.
Any ideas you’d like to share that are outside the box? Or are you just happy to be brain-washed by Blizzard to just support whatever they decide?
This is way too complex. I’m not saying there aren’t any solutions to this but this is 100% not a solution.
How long exactly do you have to stay loyal to a covenant to get this covenant unique only mount that less players are going to get?
What happens if I decide to switch Covenants every 5 months until the expansion is over? Do I qualify?
If I switch ONCE during my time playing do I lose the mount?
I’m just confused how exactly this works.
There is a mount that exists, you have to stay loyal for your covenant. So now you’re punishing everyone who maybe wants to hop covenants every 6 months, that’s 1/4 of the entire expansion as a new covenant.
Great questions and points - I just threw out one idea as a thought starter.
But the foundation of the idea was to reward the committed players rather than punish the players that want to switch.
Various other great ideas have been suggested as other options in this thread.
To some of your questions though - perhaps the cut-offs are each tier. So if you stay committed to one covenant for a whole tier, you get the mount.
Then you can switch within a time period and if you stay committed until the next tier - you get another reward; it could be another mount, or maybe just a different tint of the covenant mount (kind of like Legion Artifacts).
There’s lots of ways to slice and dice the variable to answer your questions - I’m just putting some of those together as ideas.
They definitely could go that way, but it would have to be considerable rewards, if it is just a single mog it would be rly pathetic.
For example when we see the plate mog for Venthyr, it just looks like some red plate mog, it doesnt feel vampiric enough, a mog that would feel vampiric enough would be something like a long cape, black and red colours, victorian era clothing etc.
There are other ways that could make the RP side more interesting, for example as venthyr you could have bat wing instead of cloaks, or a rly long cape that could even levitate, or other small things like vampire teeth on your character of any race, things that would obviously signify you are part of that covenant and into that vampire/goth fantasy. Or like a toy or appearance that changes you into a lich for maldraxxus.
The problem is they need to focus a lot on those and create something that truly feels like that covenant’s fantasy.
Hell they could even place with gameplay a little and give open world gift/curse effects that would fit the theme like an item that increases your damage at night outdoors(not raids or rated pvp) while decreasing the damage on day etc.
They definitely can make the visual and aesthetic aspect matter more, but they ll have to put a lot of effort into it and have it behind long grinds that can only be achieved by staying with that covenant for really long
It was pretty bad going into BfA - eventually they nerfed it.
It was non-existent in Legion - WHICH WAS AMAZING.
But essentially doubling the gold with no cap was the cost and it got out of hand quick - exceeding the gold cap in some cases. All just because people were trying to play optimally… that baffles me.
Why would you ever want to actively punish players for wanting to play optimally??? Wouldn’t you want them to have the ability to play optimally if they’re willing to put in the time and research into strategizing and planning for the content they’re about to play?
That’s where the idea of finding OTHER ways to provide meaning and value came into play.
On principle it didn’t make sense. That doesn’t mean that you still accomplish what you’re going for through another means.
Thanks for trying to think outside the box and being willing to offer up some great ideas for other options that could provide meaning to our choices!.
Honestly, it’s less because of that and more because when they announced covenants and “consequential choices” it took me back to Asheron’s Call - where I began my MMO journey. A game where character choices absolutely had consequences; you could quite easily build a perma-gimp and for a long time in that game there was no way back - you lived with what you made that character into. And the first character I rolled there was exactly that.
I know that - and many other things about games like AC - turns a lot of people off, but knowing I could screw up made me think more, consider what I was about to do and the downstream ramifications, before I made character decisions. I liked it. And that, the thought of genuinely consequential choices, appeals to me. Weird, I know.
Which is fine - people can still have that option and play with that mindset.
I have a couple in my guild that hate flying and transmog. So they just don’t fly. They end up getting Pathfinder 1 and 2 - but they just don’t ever use it because they prefer ground-based gameplay. They also never transmog their gear.
The key thing I’ve always respected about them - they don’t want those things removed and to impact the entire player base. They’re happy they have the option to restrict themselves and play with those kinds of limitations without making the game inconvenient for others.
They still have a choice - and it matters and is meaningful to them; so they are happy to make that decision for themselves and don’t need everyone else to adhere to the same restrictions to get value from the choices they make.
All they’ve said is that it will be costly and time consuming while comparing it to Aldor/Scryers switching, which consisted of dailies and buying/farming a lot of consumables.
You’re not fully understanding what I’m saying if this is your retort. It’s total freedom for some people at the expense of putting others in tighter chains.
It’s just one suggestion for a different type of “chains” that doesn’t objectively benefit Blizzard without actually providing benefit to the players.
You don’t have to make the “chains” so “tight”. An option that was mentioned up above was to set the timeframes for the rewards up by tier instead of the whole expansion - and in relation to the mount example - you could have each tier of commitment reward a different tint of the mount (or different mounts all together).
The idea of offering non-aesthetic rewards was also suggested on a different “tightness” of chains - which would solely benefit players without feeding Blizzard.
People wanted their choices to have meaning - that’s one way to provide that without punishing players in a manner that only ends up benefiting Blizzard. As a person who enjoys the RP side of things - I would much rather be rewarded, and honestly never liked the idea of charging other people just because they’re trying to play optimally across the different specs available to them (especially when that was the reason they chose their class in the first place).
It’s also just one way of doing it - the OP has said this multiple times.
The point of the thread is to discuss different ideas of providing value and meaning to choices that don’t charge people and that doesn’t only end up providing objective value to Activision-Blizzard.
Players made it pretty clear in Legion and BFA that they don’t like being locked into a single play style for their character when others are available, so it’s perplexing that Blizzard keeps doubling down on making it difficult to change it up.
Agreed. The WHOLE reason I chose a druid was because I could help out my guild in any role they needed. It also helps out a ton when we need to fill a 5th spot in an M+ run.
The thing that’s most confusing to me is their direction in the opposite way of other MMO-RPGs.
Other games offer WAY LESS restrictions beyond just role - they’ll let you play any class on the same character.
Not only does this allow for diverse gameplay - but it essentially provides account-wide rep which has been requested my lots of players.
Then you couple in other games’ approach to flying and having it unlocked after completing zone content on the ground without a year long wait.
I just don’t see why they would want to push players away from WoW and towards these other games that have a lot more QoL features that are actively being requested by the WoW players.
This sounds like an amazing idea! Definitely delves into the covenants better - because you’re right - the armor transmogs do look a bit more generic and not as tied to the covenants in the way your suggestions do.
