In my opinion how to use some old Blizzard Magic to Fix the incoming Conduit and Covenant systems.
With respects to Conduits currently being destructible.
If the original goal of having them be destroyed was so that there is some cost and consequence attached to swapping around conduits then a very simple solution would be to limit the number of swaps that can be performed within a given time period.
If we want to swap conduit perhaps the first time, we do so it’s free while the second time we do so incurs a time penalty (perhaps no free swap for 1 hour). At this point players can either swap conduit immediately by destroying the item or they have the option of waiting out the timer before swapping again. We all know how much players hate time gates so to help with this we can implement a new in game currency attainable perhaps through world questing (to make it available to newer of more casual players, as well as keep world quests relevant over a span of time) as well as Mythic+ Dungeons above a certain level. This would be reminiscent of Echoes of Nyalotha. Players can then use this new currency to purchase an item for a Flat and Fixed fee which would allow them to safely change their conduit and would be needed for each subsequent conduit change for the remainder of that day (resetting with daily reset).
With respects to Covenant Abilities. I honestly don’t believe that all abilities should be available to everyone regardless of covenant choice. The way I think of it, is a bit like martial arts. These class abilities taught to you by the covenant are like the martial arts taught by a particular school. It would be silly in my opinion to attend a school for Karate but I am instead learning Wushu. In the end though I also understand the need for the hardcore player to have that added level of flexibility and having to restart all progress with a covenant upon changing in order to benefit from a new covenant’s ability would be a bit off-putting. So how do we fix this? Again, we can look to our Echoes of Nyalothaesque currency. Recently I was looking at Grówl’s stream and he was talking about how easy it was to get enough echoes to experiment with various corruption setups because of the amount rewarded per dungeon and the number of dungeons they did per day. Therefore, it’s not too much of a stretch, to imagine that the top 1% of players that can make full use of various covenant abilities would be able to attain enough of this currency to make this idea meaningful. The idea is simple, a limited number of a certain item made available for purchase at a vendor, this item allows players to swap all of their progress within a covenant over to a new one OR alternatively it may TEMPORARILY unlock the abilities of another covenant and restricts the player to using the new ability for a period of time. Any of these items purchased within a weekly cycle will expire at the weekly reset.
This does a few things
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Limits the frequency with which players can change covenants or covenant abilities to avoid it being used like just another talent point system, another variable an easily changeable loadout.
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Allows for greater flexibility than the current system.
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Allows players a chance to “correct” what may be perceived by others to be a poor choice.
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Still allows newer or weaker players to make changes because it uses a currency that is readily available to them.
This particular item should be
- Limited to only 1 - 2 purchases per day or perhaps a set amount per week.
- Should also be purchasable with gold so that wealthier players that don’t wish to “grind” world quests or Mythic+ still have an avenue to obtain this item and won’t feel pressured into doing content they may not want to. These gold purchases should also be counted toward the daily or weekly hard-cap. Gold purchases would also free up additional currency for the purchase of Conduit Resets further adding to the flexibility of the conduit system while attaching substantial cost to each change.
If people still have issue with the system after making compromises of this level; compromises that allow for greater flexibility while in a large way maintains the core vision of the developers. Then I don’t know what more to say. I don’t know how difficult it would be to implement but I see this as possible “fix” to the concerns expressed by quite a few. To the player who doesn’t care about swapping things around at all, he can experience things exactly the way Blizz intended. For the Mid-Tier guy who wants to use the cookiecutter “BiS Loadout” he can -with very little effort- change some key decisions later on and have his character play the way he wants it to. For the Top Tier Min Maxers, they can put in some extra work and make key changes suited to the content they’re trying to do in order to take advantage of the new abilities to the fullest. I would much rather have the system in it’s full with a few extra hoops to jump through, than see it scrapped completely because a section of the player base has an issue with it. At the end of the day we need to realise that some players have no problem with it being just the way Blizz intends it. We all need to respect that fact and respect the fact that we all have opinions and everyone’s entitled to it, and in my opinion these changes would “fix” things.