So people are rightfully skeptical with having player power determined by what covenant you pick. Which makes people forgo a covenant they’d pick for lore/aesthetics into the one that is useful for their class instead. Both Blizzard, and a smaller faction of players, use the crutch of “B-b-b-ut this is an RPG! You should always have meaningful choices!”
Which is correct. We should have meaningful choices added to the game. Then I read this…
Sylvanas Loyalists
Sylvanas’ Loyalists have abandoned her . While players were given the choice to side with Sylvanas or Saurfang during the War Campaign, there won’t be any future choices as to whether to side with the Banshee Queen during Shadowlands . There may be some flavor moments when interacting with certain NPCs which allude to the choices that were previously made, but there’s a single unified story in mind that the developers want to tell.
Oooh so there won’t be any future choices to make! You know, the thing that puts the RP into RPG! Convenient! So not only is our past choice not respected but they force you into a direction you may not want to pick. So choices don’t matter anymore. Unless it’s to defend the biggest problem of covenants.
Do choices matter, or do they not matter? Make up your mind Blizzard. Don’t come up with this nonsense as if you’re respecting players and their choices on one thing then completely ignore us on the other.
Look at what Blizzard says regarding covenants:
- Some of the community thought Covenants were a cosmetic feature, but they are a core part of the gameplay and story.
- You’ll have traits, trees of traits, Covenant specific legendary items, transmog, and more.
- There is a whole package of Covenant specific things. Covenant abilities are just a part of the package.
- The team hopes that they’ll be able to balance Covenant abilities so that there isn’t a huge power difference between them.
- The team is holding out for meaningful choice.
- Is the game still a RPG anymore?
- The second that the team says that only cosmetics fall into the choices that are hard to change is when the RPG elements are removed from the game.
- Not every power choice needs to be easy to change on the fly.
- The team is trying to save the beating heart of the RPG genre.
- The difference between Covenant abilities should be situational preference.
- They can fall back to allowing you to swap Covenant abilities if they fail, but it’ll look odd and feel bad. The game loses something by doing so.
- What is a path forward that isn’t just “Don’t ever attach power to any kind of meaningful choice”?
Funny how that was from the same breath that told players “We want a single unified story in mind that the developers want to tell.” Suddenly choices matter again!
Like look at this nonsense. “Is the game still an RPG anymore?” I dunno is it? Everytime I try to actually do something for roleplay I get screwed on gameplay. The one singular solitary roleplaying choice you finally gave us in the 15+ years has been dumped on. With confirmation that there won’t be any attempts to expand on this further. Yet you dare try to pretend you’re doing me a favor by keeping this an “RPG” with “meaningful” choices when I want to pick my covenant.
Except what if I wanted to pick my covenant because of its aesthetics or lore matching my character? Sadly that choice has been robbed from me. Since this is an online game you compete with other players and anyone who picks the suboptimal covenant for their class/spec will be at a disadvantage.
It’s adorable that you think you can balance 4 covenants so that they match a similar level of power. When you can’t even balance 3 talent picks in the same tier. 90% of talents are not a choice. There’s a best one, then there’s two other ones that are mathematically inferior. The only time we get to make a choice are on those rare rows that aren’t providing damage buffs and are like a QoL utility.
Can’t wait to waste an entire expansion for Blizzard to figure out that this is a bad idea all over again. Despite how players have already told them what is wrong time and time again.
TLDR:
There is no choice when your characters power is being decided by it. There’s a wrong choice, and a right choice. Anything else is an illusion. Keeping things tied to merely aesthetics would finally free us to make a choice we want to make. But apparently that goes against the “Is it an RPG if the choice isn’t meaningful” philosophy. A philosophy that is dumped right out the window when regarding story choices.
I dunno about you. But I think it’s a hell of a lot easier to come up with two alternate story paths for your character to take in the main story line. Than it is to magically find a way to balance 4 different covenants across the many class+spec combinations in the game.
