People will create competition out of anything, even if they are on the same team. It’s natural. My seven year old can’t just play catch with me, but has to create an elaborate game where there is a winner and a loser. I just want to throw a baseball.
Blizzard has some responsibility to avoid wild extremes and provide a game design that offers some consistency (unlike the wild RNG of corruptions). However, if performance is in an acceptable range, where even the minimum is perfectly capable of clearing content, min/max is mostly in the heads of the playerbase. There is a minimum bar this game sets to be able to clear content, and anything else above that is gravy. Sure, in things like mythic raiding the minimum bar is much higher, but it’s certainly not that high for everything we do in WoW.
If we’re all trying to jump over that minimum bar, maybe we just need to start focusing more on it being cleared than focusing on who cleared it by the largest margin. Having the in game tools to jump over it consistently is on Blizzard’s design; who jumped over it the highest is a player created issue.
I guess I’m just tired of all of the negative. So long as a covenant choice isn’t so bad that it mechanically limits my ability to clear content, or so good that it’s virtually impossible to ignore, I’ll have fun. I like the idea of expanding beyond Horde and Alliance and almost having a second faction to call home, so here’s to making the Shadowlands a virtual escape from the horrors of 2020
Just imagine how much better it would be if they uncoupled power from covenants and let us freely swap that power. Covenants could be a flavor/aesthetic/story choice.
Assuming the discontent with covenants is solely coming from “Min/maxers” or the "top 1% is silly.
I don’t feel extreme about the topic in one way or the other, as I know I’ll be able to make it by regardless. However, would I say I’m excited about this new system? No, not really at all. Do I think the ripcord needs to be pulled and just push delete? No, not really… But I’m still not excited for this system.
We’ve been experiencing borrowed power systems for years now. People likely have a good idea of what is coming our way.
There will always be only one way to max. One set of talents, one set of azerite, essences, corruptions… this will be the same in SL.
People who play like this (nothing against wanting to be all you can be) don’t have any choices. They must spec a specific way, and change for every possible encounter. This is fine, and very fun for many people.
Mythic N’Zoth was beaten by people in 460 gear with rank 6 cloaks and hardly any corruption. You don’t have to be max to do anything in this game.
It’s a game. Play the way that is most fun for you.
Back in Vanilla every spec was capable of clearing the content. If you actually do the theorycrafting on it, DPS checks in raids are hilariously easy even for the “hard” DPS checks like Patchwerk. The game back then seemed to largely be built around the idea that we didn’t know what we were doing in playing our characters.
and yet, people still weren’t rushing to take Ret Paladins or Balance Druids as DPS because they were so vastly inferior to the top tier DPS builds. Taking the higher DPS setups meant bosses went down faster and there was less time to mess up in other ways.
Granted that’s an extreme example, but that’s the effect that imbalance has. The greater the imbalance is, the less likely the lower performance options are to be taken by people because they make a successful run that much less likely.
and that’s a Blizzard made problem since they’re in control of the balance of the game.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe I ever said that at any point. I was addressing min/max specifically, not as the only reason.
I can see that point of view. Personally I like becoming more invested past just aesthetics, which is what I think they are going for. They wanted it to feel like an Alliance or Horde choice, so I can understand that.
Many of us just play… but we use guides to help us. And who wouldn’t look at the guide and go… Pick this because the top X pick that… I know I do.
You can claim only the min/maxers are effected and I’m hardly that, but I will go with the flow… and essentially the reality because… there effectively is only one choice.
I haven’t ever wasted a second thinking about min/max. When I want to play a game all I care about is whether it’s cool and it’s fun.
When I look at the new covenant system I think “Wow that’s looks really cool and really fun”. That’s all that matters and I’m going to have a great time playing SL.
Why stop at that? Why not also remove class restrictions so everyone can build their own class?
Sometimes you need to make decisions in order to feel invested in the outcomes. If I could freely switch everything i get from the covenants what makes them different if any night fae can use maldraxxas’ things and so on?
Because classes have been around for 16 years. Covenants will be tossed in the trash after 2 years and have zero impact on next expansion. Hard to be invested in such a temporary system…
WoW without min-maxing would be like CS without guns.
WoW is an incredibly numbers based game that was designed by huge min-maxers in the EQ scene, like Jeff Kaplan, who was basically the leader of Method before Method were ever a thing.
It’s not a “player made problem”, it’s the natural outcome of any game that’s basically an incredibly pretty excel spreadsheet.
At the moment the covenant choice can lead to a 20% or so disparity in performance. Will it make it totally impossible to clear content? No.
Is that a fair standard? Probably not.
I don’t want to be the very best possible - but I do want to feel like disparities in performance are a result largely because of my skill. It is totally ridiculous that players with the same gear, same spec, and same rotation, can be so disparate because of covenants and soulbinds.
Whoever thought of making covenant specific abilities failed the players.
You can’t really quite help human nature. Education helps but it doesn’t always work out that way. You have to check the stats and figure out what people are going to do and this was an easy prediction.
The first time I heard about the class specific covenant abilities, I knew it was a horrible idea.
I’d like blizzard to prove me wrong but statistic wise from a balance standpoint from all the new systems in wow tells me something else.
Covenants should have been purely aesthetic, maybe some utility.
min max literally happens in every single game even non competitive ones… its human nature to find the most efficient path. blizz needs to stop trying to change its player base and change the game to fit them.
They are actually both problems, but who can control them is different. Since a player’s ability will always factor in, you’re going to get a performance bell curve for everything. Blizzard needs to make sure there aren’t any bell curves where you need way more performance/skill to jump the hurdle, or virtually none to do so.
Competition inside of that is a player thing. Mechanics aside, if 30k DPS is needed to clear an encounter, and I got 40k while you got 60k, it literally doesn’t matter that you were 20k higher than me outside of bragging rights. I just think sometimes that’s more what it’s about than actual functionality.
I’ve seen the warnings. I know there are warnings about balance (i.e. one choice being far superior than another). However, I’m not convinced that the “inferior” choice will shift the bell curve to the point where it requires so much more to clear content. Still, Blizzard absolutely should avoid that big of a power difference, but I suppose what’s “reasonable” is up for debate, since there will always be a best and a worst when choice comes into play.
You mean the 12% to crit, haste, vers, or mastery that people put on each item? Super RNG man…
I don’t understand the point of this post. You can clear content without gemming and enchanting (a basic example), but if it’s available to use, why wouldn’t you use it? That’s not min/maxing… well I guess it is but it’s also just common sense.
What’s natural is for any human being to want to improve or perform better than they were previously. This isn’t min/maxing. It’s just improving.
