Ion Hazzikostas has confirmed the fall back plan is to open up covenants

Community General Discussion
82

I like the idea of the covenant as is. I want to make a choice, and have it stick.

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83

It’s really not.

I play a Guardian Druid sometimes. Does that make me a bad player simply because I don’t play a Warrior, even though a Warrior is “better”? No, because most people understand that you’re “stuck” in your class and/or have other reasons want to play it, not that you’re simply an idiot for playing it.

The point is some choices made reflect that the the player is bad at the game, and some choices reflect a preference towards other elements like art, feel, playstyle. Like the difference between classes.

I’m glad that Ion gave up on Conduits because those were a “right vs wrong” type of ‘decision’, but I’m also glad he’s sticking to his guns on Covenants.

People in this community simply don’t understand them. Either they don’t understand them, or they’re simply “Burger King” players who actively hate the idea of playing an RPG while playing an MMORPG.

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84

Ralph on suicide watch

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85

Almost like this preach guy is a pretty bad journalist.

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86

The refusal to make them into essences is mindboggling.

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87

Heaven forbid you have to ponder the choice because of its consequences rather than look up a guide and slot whatever the guide tells you to for each spec.

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88

It’s rather simple, and it’s because they want to experiment on more people than just the Alpha / Beta people.

We’ve been experimented on since the beginning of vanilla, whether anybody realizes it or not, and it’s not like it’s a bad thing. They need to play the field to see how they can keep their company afloat.

I mean, does it suck for us at times, yes, but all in all I personally still enjoy the game as there is still much for me to accomplish.

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89

Heaven forbid someone wanting to be optimal in the content they’re doing.

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90

This - they need to innovate. They can’t rest on the laurels of good M+ and good raiding, because they won’t be the clear best at those forever, and if the other game has some other features, that’s a problem.

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91

Personally I think they’ve made covenant choice as flexible as I want it currently. I like the idea of it as is, just like I liked the idea of soulbinds/conduits as is. I’m not a top end player though so I’m sure that’s where the disconnect is coming from. I have my hopes that they’ll continue with the system framework they have in place (with small adjustments as needed I’m sure) but I’m not looking to argue over it, because at the end of the day we aren’t making the game, blizzard is. I’m sure I’m missing more than a few points anyway.

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92

Yeah I’m not the type of player who needs to look up a guide my dude lol

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93

You are free to level alts.

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94

Heaven forbid I want to play multiple forms of content on the same class

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95

You have this backwards. Opening it up now blows up a lot of stuff. Opening it up slowly later fits the lore. Right now, the Shadowlands are in shambles. It’s so bad that the Arbiter’s voice says that you must dedicate solely to one Covenant to get it up and running, you literally don’t have the time and resources to do more than establish a single foothold in the Shadowlands.

Later, once we’ve got things up and running and we’ve established diplomatic relations with the other Covenants, we can start opening up features from other Covenants. We can divert Anima from our fully restored realm to other realms and mend those realms as well as the relationship between the realms.

Freely swappable Covenants at the start blows up all of the lore and setup. The Covenants are at odds with each other right now, they don’t trust each other, they’re not going to allow an outsider to just pick and choose on the drop of a hat who they are allied with if they haven’t proven themselves.

Mechanically, there’s a ton of systems in Shadowlands. Restricting you to one Covenant will prevent you from feeling overload. You will have one garrison, one set of mission followers, three soul-binds, one unique social event, and like 6 different world quest hubs you need to restore. Additionally, you will have emissaries that will send you to each world quest hub to help patch things up. Just is on top of needing to play Torghast and The Maw for a total of roughly 2 and a half hours each week.

Imagine multiplying all of that by four. Absolute madness. Complete and utter madness.

The TL;DR is that most people don’t understand how big the Covenants are. If you open the system up, you will absolutely drive the casuals away with system overload

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96

Who?

/char

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97

I think it’s bad to announce fall back plans. It will just make people throw tantrums to force that fall back plan. Make people play it without knowing what you have in store if it don’t work. Then if people find it working at an acceptable level they won’t just do stupid stuff to skew things in their favor.

98

All of this QQ about the Covenant system makes me sad. Most players don’t like to have to make a choice in a RPG game. Min-maxers are ruining the Covenant purpose. “We don’t want to make choices we just want to be able to switch at will with no punishment”

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99

If you have freedom to change your choices that means you also have the freedom to keep your choice and make it stick. Having covenants become open does not remove anything from your experience.

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100

I sort of want to just pick one and be with it for the whole expansion. Like one of those harry potter houses. I think if people cared less about min/maxing it would be better.

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101

Hes 12/12 mythic. Safe to say he plays it

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