decline nonmeta
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Ignoring the fact you quoted then ignored an important point… we won’t have this agility. That’s something we’re losing in shadowlands. And that is a deliberate by design decision.
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I’d limit those to Abilities-- there’s only two, it’s not that much information, and the only one you really need to pay a ton of attention to is the class ability, as the other is generic-- Soulbinds (I’m pretty sure Conduits are mostly just a generic system tied into this? I don’t have beta so might be wrong), and then the last three lumped together as aesthetics. Add lore/story, and that’s four things to have to put much effort into checking ahead of time.
I don’t think that’s too much information, especially when you’re being encouraged to prioritize.
I forgot Legendaries too while I was typing this, but I don’t think those are tied to Covenants? It’s not something you have to consider when you’re making that decision.
Edit: Limiting them further to Power, Art, and Story; on the Power side, it took me maybe ten minutes to dig through all the currently available information to decide what Covenant I want for that, the Art aligns closely enough for me to be happy, and I’m planning on playing a character through each Covenant for the stories for that to not matter too much. If I changed those, where I want Art or Story, I’d probably do the same check in a different order; Art, then make sure the Power side isn’t unacceptable, or whatever order you’d want.
I’m saying that within the Covenant. I’m comparing the Diablo 3 class system to a Covenant choice In Diablo 3 you can play a class and go with some build and even if you’re off-meta for that season you can make choices to make it work.
The problem seems to be they promised us levers and knobs withi the Covenant to tune our experience within the Covenant, and they’re not there yet.
I literally don’t want to change my Vampire to an Angel. But I want my Vampire, if he sucks at AE DPS, to be able to make some kind of decisions and be better at AE. Maybe he won’t be the best but at least pivot a little bit and smooth out that weakness.
With conduits they are related to the covenant, they are just static is my understanding. So it’s more having something to fill the slot activates it. But I don’t think the importance of Soulbinds can be understated. They are intended to be the agility they are taking away, and they will have serious impact on day to day play as the azerite replacement in effect. To me soulbinds are probably the most important power features of a covenant. So the fact that they aren’t even fully fleshed out and we’re already in beta should be of massive concern.
But to me the main concern really comes back to: This is going to make the quality of life worse for the majority of players in my opinion, it overwhelms them with information and systems, it forces them to choose between aesthetics and power, and in some cases even between playing alternate specs (DH for example gets hit with this hard).
Why should I have to choose a worse quality of life if I tank on my DH? That makes no sense whatsoever.
Diablo 3 and FF14 both have developer controlled metas. I wouldn’t necessarily use them as comparison points because they developers tightly control their metas deliberately. They are well aware of the viable builds well before they make changes. WoW does not and cannot because of how crazy they’ve made the power systems.
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Strongly agree!
I don’t agree! Well, at least conceptually. No beta, so I don’t know if this is the actual implementation. This information should essentially be drip-fed to you through the levelling process, so by the time you’ve made it to your actual decision, you already have a decent feel for all the related systems. The info dump should mostly be a refresher, not all new information being presented to the player.
As long as the class/spec is functional, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being less effective in a role you didn’t prioritize. If it’s non functional, yes, I agree, but sub-optimal isn’t non functional. I can’t answer why, that’s just the direction Blizz is going with, but I kind of like it.
Note: I’m not angry or frustrated at you so apologies if it comes off that way. I’m rather frustrated at the Devs on this issue.
I like your optimism, but my experience and past experience says that’s probably not going to happen. If Blizz were parents trying to teach their kid to swim… they’d just shove them in a river and say “Eh… they’ll be fine.”
So there is a difference between sub-optimal and non-viable and the difference between the covenants are that stark in some cases for different specs. It could literally be the difference between being the person your raid can trust to fill in when a tank is out, to being relegated to third tank on odd fights or the ‘mid level dungeon tank’. It’s a serious gap. So all blizz is doing is punishing people for helping their friends out and that feels really bad.
In BFA if you wanted to dual spec all you had to do was get the gear and save the bag space. In shadowlands you need to make an alt.
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How I see it is like this:
Blizz: “So, we’re adding a new talent row to all classes for this expansion!”
Players: “Awesome, I can’t wait to try out 3 new options on my favorite spec in my favorite activities!”
Blizz: “Well, actually, this is a little different. See, you choose one talent in this new row, and it’s the same ability across all the specs, with a few minor differences where necessary.”
Players: “…Ok, that’s a little weird, but they’re probably just instant damage or healing abilities, since anything else would be so hard to balance across all the specs, yeah?”
Blizz: “No! They’re all different and unique! It’s a new extension of your class instead of your spec!”
Players: “That sounds hard to balance. But at least we can swap on the fly between the three option in the tier.”
Blizz: “Actually, no! Once you choose a talent on this tier you’re locked in!”
Players: “…for like the whole raid?”
Blizz: “Nope! For the entire. Freaking. Expansion!”
Players: “That seems like…ugh. Ok. Whatever. It’s a new ability so we can just ignore and barely use it. Kinda a waste. But whatever.”
Blizz: “No you can’t ignore it! Because when you choose that one talent for all your specs in all your activities — that’s super complicated to abandon and then try and go back to for reasons — it also gives you access to mounts, transmogs, activities and more!”
Players: “So…The whole expansion is based around us choosing one talent for two years for all specs and all activities, even if it’s not great for all of those things?”
Blizz: “Yes!”
Players: “And if I choose one talent that totally changes my spec and rotation and is really fun, I can’t get the transmog I really want without rolling an entirely new copy of that same class?”
Blizz: “Exactly!”
Players: “And that copy character won’t get the fun-awesome spell, and will have to settle for something that’s mediocre for two years because it’s impossible to balance, because they want to get a cool mount and outfit?”
Blizz: “See? You get it!”
Players: “…”
Ralph: “This is so going to upset a portion of the player base, and I will troll them relentlessly because I personally don’t like how they choose to enjoy the game we all have to share.”
Blizz: “Go for it! Just keep making threads, buddy!”
Fin
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Indeed. Has everyone already forgotten the months and months and months and months of complaints from mostly casual players about Essences taking too long to grind (reputation, honor, etc.) and not being account-wide?
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Oh, I guess all of those people saying they didn’t enjoy azerite, essences, and corruption in their initial forms just kinda… don’t exist? And Blizzard responding that they designed the systems that way intentionally didn’t happen?
Lore DIDN’T come to the forums after BfA launched and tell people the developers would in fact make Azerite reforging even worse if people didn’t stop trying to do it?
Good to know!
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“But I want to play one character for all content REEE.”
Seriously, I see this from Mages and Rogues a ton. Sometimes Warlocks, although not as often. These classes have been pampered and isolated from the existence of the meta for so long that they think that they’re entitled to just play one character all the time and be one of the best five specs and always get an invite to a raid. Entitlement is honestly the biggest problem Blizzard wrestles with, and it doesn’t help that some of the developers have had an agenda and fed that entitlement and kept it alive for so long.
If every class experience at least one expansion where all their specs were semi-garbage and they needed to play a different character to push content for at a top level I don’t most of these problems wouldn’t exist. But because these people have become entrenched, they think they should be allowed to play one character all the time and have that one character be “meta” for all forms of content which is kind of insanity. WoW has got to be the only game in existence where that has been the case.
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Why shouldn’t blizzard respect their player’s time? They players are paying blizzard to play the game. Shouldn’t Blizzard provide a modicum of respect in return?
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Right.
And casuals complained about that because despite efforts of some to make it seem like only a high end problem, a min/max problem, or a “mEtA” problem, casuals also like to:
- Change builds
- Plan their build for certain content
- Have acessibility to more options for their character
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Uhh…??? What are you talking about?
You’d be surprised how much we agree here. I think Blizzard is going to fail utterly and it’s going to be a complete shortshow. I just think it would be even cooler if they succeed.
Right now we’re at ‘could’, and like I said above-- Magic Eight Ball says Outlook Poor, but I’m hopeful.
I’m of the opinion BFA’s Azerite is even worse for dual spec, but that’s a different conversation. I think we can agree that an outcome where swapping specs feels outright bad and punishing isn’t ideal.
That’s not true at all. Stop parroting that line, it’s completely false.
I don’t really enjoy those systems. Blizzard should be lambasted for them. Covenants can’t be judged fully because they’re not even completely in the game.
Edit: Stupid fat fingers pushing stupid buttons before I’m done.
If people aren’t able to experience the majority of content on a single character that means they have to play alts… not everybody has time for that. Or the ability to keep an alt geared enough to see all of it. So to de-facto require alts to see content that the player could previously see without an alt, is extremely disrespectful of Blizzard to their players and their time.
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Casuals also want to be able to pick a choice and not be told by other players they’re wrong for choosing it. They want to plan their build but they don’t want 12 soul-bind trees thrown at them all at once. They want to access options but they don’t want lose content because they’re “noob traps” (and being noob traps, Blizzard stops trying to fix them - see Shadow Priest where Blizzard lets talents be bad because they assume people can just not take them).
You can be damn sure if Shadow Priests were locked into any of their talent choices Blizzard would actually feel motivation to fix their issues. But they don’t, because as long as 1 option is good that’s good enough in a swappable system. Those other two options have effectively been deleted. Instead of having a choice and locking that choice, you have only one thing that exists at all.
Blizzard is making the time. Your weekly chores, according to Blizzad, should only take in total about 3.5-4.5 hours per week in total in Shadowlands depending how much much you drag your feet on certain things.
Leveling is also significantly faster.
It looks like an alt-friendly expansion.
Let’s not pretend elitists will stop existing because of a new system. This will happen regardless of anything else put into or taken from the game.
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Your opinion here is contradictory to the results we actually saw among the majority opinion of casuals in these discussions with Azerite, with Essences, and with Corruptions.
They were more concerned with having options than they were concerned about being told what to do by hypotherical players they don’t actually interract with
Suggesting fear of the big bad min/maxers is driving their thoughts and opinions sounds like a borderline fear tactic. You are sensationalizing what actually happens when players have options.
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bUt cHoICeS nEeD tO mAttER
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