So, you’re saying they had to combine them because they couldn’t manage to make four interesting factions and decided that only one “meaningful” choice was better than one “meaningful” one and one easy one?
How would the covenants not being tied to power change that? Even if the covenant choice becomes entirely frivolous, how is the power choice any less of a “meaningful” one? You’d still have to pick what you wanted to favor, whether for min/macing or just enjoyable gameplay.
hmmm Maybe I should of ended the original post on a different note. This wasn’t intended to be about covenants, but more about how we get what we ask for. Just not in the way we intend it. But I can see where I derailed my own topic so carry on lol.
I also think people not getting invited to groups due to covenant choice is going to be largely overblown unless balance is horrible tipped in one covenants favour for classes
But I think you’ll find what will happen in most cases will be what happens now, people will mostly end up taking the best covenant for most situations
As balance stands now for rogues necrolord looks like the go too for most specs, the bone spine is good single target damage, it can be applied on 3 targets, it’s ranged, it’s low energy cost and can be used to its maximum utility with all 3 specs
Yes it did hahaha
If it’s not delivered in the way the players want then it’'s bad. Even flying under the “players are requesting a solution” banner if it’s bad all they are going to do is create a new issue for players to not like.
Also let’s be honest, no one cares about covenants. The problem is the restriction on swapping.
That would be the case if for example people only did one single type of content, but even then that doesnt work because raid bosses are highly different and many times a pure single target build isnt that good, and same can happen with m+ during tyranical weeks where a pure aoe build might not be that good.
So you have to choose one ability for ALL forms of content and encounters, not just one single sim.
You do know that’s going to result in players from classes picking the spell that’s best overall then?
It’s fine, I just take it as my statement being correct. People are basicly just going…yeah but… I don’t like it!
Genies are forced to grant wishes, but you can force them to give you what you want by being specific to such a degree it is impossible they can twist it.
Err, yes? I never said otherwise.
You still haven’t answered why that choice is no longer meaningful if it’s made without being tied to covenants though.
This is a sad case of we didn’t ask for this
The reality is people asked for more work on classes (which granted we got) and less borrowed power (which we also got)
However I don’t really recall anyone saying “we should pick something and then have an obnoxious time swapping it around”
People go mental about changing azerite traits and the hoops we have to jump through to get essences
However aside from the slog that is getting the essences I’d say they’re largely popular and the freedom they provide has been extremely nice as far as game play goes
Because a preference between mogs and themes is quite clear and obvious for most people, you arent gonna find many people who are gonna be uncertain whenever they want to join goody 2 shoes angel group and edgy vampires.
Meanwhile as you can see by the forums you will see a ton of people being unable to choose what covenant to join because they would like to have all the abilities but at the end of the day they can only CHOOSE ONE.
I’m not asking why the covenant choice isn’t meaningful if it isn’t tied to power. I’m asking why the power choice isn’t meaningful if it isn’t tied to covenants.
Even if we go with your stance that covenants aren’t real choices because they’re easy, you still end up with one easy and meaningless choice (covenant) and one meaningful (power).
Meaningfulness of a choice gets degraded when the choice doesn’t matter.
Imagine if you will a person has 4 Friends, they can in this case only choose one friend to be their best friend. The meaning of that title now has a meaning. The person you choose feels special because of that, and you personally likely chose that due to some extra connection you have with that friend.
Now lets say you can swap around who your best friend is. And literally nobody cares. Changing from moment to moment which one of your 4 friends is the best friend makes that choice no longer feel special when you are picked, and it also makes you no longer really need any reason to really choose who it is.
When you have to commit to something, the choice you make is not only more impactful but it has more meaning.
I haven’t said anything about having to commit or not.
If that choice was separate of covenants it would still be meaningful AS LONG AS it is as restrictive and limited as covenants.
Because like i said, if we go encounter by encounter basis like Ion said there’s always an obvious mathematically right build, now if you have to find a build for 20 different encounters because you only get to stick to one build, now that is a lot harder.
And many might not want a build that excels ok at everything and prefer ones that excel in 8 encounters are average in 4 and sub optimal at 8.
I think part of it is that Blizzard often adds their own little twist to things that players do ask for, that no one really wanted.
Sometimes it feels like a begrudging “okay, you can have this, buuuuuut…”
Yeah sorry, used to talking in circles. This is about the powers being connected and how come it needs that to be meaningful?
Same thing really. If the covenant doesn’t offer something you desire, then the choice doesn’t matter. There is no reason to choose any particular covenant. So with the case of the 4 friends, it’d be trying to choose your best friend out of the 4 when none of them have any special trait you like, or you feel no real connection to any of them.
Power is something everyone cares about, not everyone cares about transmogs.
The concept of covenants is great. The implementation where they affect gameplay is terrible.
Blizzard is terrible at implementation. For instance, legion was great, the one main problem area as far as power progression was legendaries. They decided for their next expac progression system they would double down on the legendary concept from legion. Why? Why would they double down on the worst part of the expac? For shadowlands they are trying to make new order halls, except instead of them going by class they are a choice. That is an inherently worse system than legion order halls, because instead of doubling down on your class identity and getting set abilities from it you are forced to choose between fun gameplay and fun lore/aesthetic/story.
Blizzard needs to stop and think about what they did right in legion before they make new expac progression systems.
Story choices and aesthetics matter. People desire them.
Wasn’t the issue with legendaries in Legion that they was RNG and you couldn’t target them? I thought the ones in shadowlands are crafted so pretty targetable?