Restrictions placed on player power are always, to some extent, arbitrary decisions made by the developers. The other guy is complaining that the current system compels him to level multiple hunters just so he can have access to the best covenant for pvp, for raiding, for M+ etc. while still playing the class he enjoys.
The only thing this translates to is that he doesn’t want to be penalized for making a choice. He absolutely must have easy access to the BiS for literally every form of content in the game, otherwise the system is bad.
But again, you could make comparable arguments about any restriction the game has. Rogues are good for PVP but not for M+? “Why are you forcing me to roll an alt that isn’t a rogue?” You main a hunter but your guild doesn’t have any more dps slots for the upcoming raid? “Why are you forcing me to play a healer class?”
The argument that a system is restrictive is not an inherently good criticism. You could criticize the time factors of a restriction: “it takes me six months to undo a bad decision!” You could criticize its magnitude: “this restriction ultimately makes my class bad at everything it touches!”
But the fact that you’re being asked to make a choice with actual consequences, and it is that fact that is being disliked, is not good feedback.
You claimed the rip cord doesn’t exist. It does exist without significant technical changes. That is the discussion at hand. At this point I do not care about their “design goals” they are actively detrimental to a healthy game. My friends list has gone dark even faster than bfa.
THD daily tweets about how bad the cov system is. So do quite a few other players who are objectively elite. Yes they do what they have to do because they literally get paid for it but they don’t do it quietly by any means.
We should be able to play all 4 covenants simultaneously. Pick one class ability and one signature ability, with the ability to swap between them in rest areas. Then let us upgrade all of the sanctum stuff for each covenant on the same toon. We could have the transport networks completed for each zone, for instance.
My understanding however, is at the top of M+, having a good mix of Covenants represented is equally important for your group to succeed. I’d rather look at the medium ranked playerbase for a distribution. Not top.
I begrudgingly understand why they wanted covenants to be at least a semipermanent choice, not saying I agree or disagree, but I at least can see what they were shooting for. But between what we have now and having the ripcord pulled, I don’t fully like either option.
But what you just described would ultimately be the best solution. Make the sanctums the main quest hub for each zone. Allow us to start upgrading and purchasing cosmetics while leveling. Open the flood gates on anima acquisition, it’ll still take all expansion to fully upgrade and buy stuff from all 4, but at least that dopamine hit of being able to buy something would come much more frequently. Sadly they wanted to force us into a permanent choice simply because we haven’t made one since the character creation screen.
PS: I do also believe there is some merit to having to weigh pros and cons when choosing a covenant. Having trade offs that require you to sacrifice performance for utility or vice versa make the decision more difficult, and dare I say, meaningful. But while a game like EVE can get away with having trade offs built into pretty much every aspect of the game, that type of gameplay just doesn’t work in wow.
There is literally no more or less of that with covenants. If people want to compete, even remotely, they choose BiS to get any advantage. If people didn’t used to care about competition, they wouldn’t choose BiS. Literally nothing has changed in this regard.
So we shouldn’t play the class we enjoy ? This is aa game not real life there should be no right or wrong choice . The only choice we should have to make is will the choice be fun or not .
The restrictions force more people down the bis path because it prevents people from being able to try and experiment with other options. Same goes for conduits.
You get that with your soulbind choice. You can also get that from talents. There’s lots of meaning behind the choices a player makes within a piece of content.
I’m gonna be honest, bud, I’m trying real hard to understand what you mean here. But if the only takeaway from my response was that I’m asking you not to play the class you actually want to play, then my only conclusion is that you didn’t read it carefully enough.
Obviously you should choose the class that comes across as the most fun to you. But how does that invalidate the comparison I made between picking a covenant and picking a class that isn’t able to perform all roles or all content optimally?
Bingo. We’re the maw walker here to save all of shadowlands. There’s no reason to be pigeon holed into one at a time. It actually makes more sense from an RP perspective to be able to serve and help all of them at once - because we ALREADY DO.
Classes are permanent and will stick with you long after SL .
Covenants are like lets say disposable razors once they have served their purpose you trash them and once SL is over Blizz is going to trash covenants. They will be around for people leveling maybe in the future but after SL they are going to be about as relevant as class halls are in current content.
Again, the frustrating thing is that I feel like we’re talking past each other. Every time someone tries to argue against restrictive covenants they make arguments that don’t have anything to do with the nature of these specific restrictive covenants. The last one is “it’s restrictive therefore it’s bad.” Great, cool, so is 90% of decisions that are locked to your class in RPG experiences.
The argument you’re making now is “covenants are temporary therefore they shouldn’t be restrictive.” Which doesn’t make any logical sense. Expansions are designed to be self-contained experiences. Sure, we know in the future the central gameplay mechanics will be dumpstered, but that’s not supposed to impact our experience in the present.
Also, I could turn your argument on its head: “You really have no reason to be concerned about the existence of restrictive covenants, because they’ll be gone anyway in under 2 years.”
