Game would be more fun imo if we could swap covenants freely. It just adds so many styles and choice to the gameplay.
I like that kind of customization.
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You really don’t think class choice affects
both your power improvements and your cosmetic options?
I’ve linked the definition already, a “meaningful choice” is not what you think it is.
A meaningful choice in a RPG is one which the player knows they are making, has consequences, and the player has information to inform their choice.
All of these characteristics are correct for covenants, as they are for your primary professions, as they are for choosing Wolvar or Oracle and all other similar “meaningful choices” that are available in game.
These aren’t new at all, we’ve had these choices for 15+ years. They just never were named by Blizzard in a way that made it prevalent to laymen.
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Other than tier sets that they don’t make anymore, no, I don’t. Plus there are hundreds upon hundreds of transmogs you can collect without sacrificing stats, talents or whatever for your class.
Just because there are numerous other examples of the same issue, it doesn’t justify a faulty design. Even with the covenants have the characteristics for meaningful choice, it’s still a crappy one in the same way as the other examples. “Pick this option or don’t raid.”
Meaningful choice perhaps but it is still practically no choice whatsoever.
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Welcome to min-maxing in RPGs. You either do what the numbers tell you, or GTFO.
You want fun? Do what you want.
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Armour types? Weapon types? Factions? Mounts? Toys?
Even aside from tier sets there are plenty of cosmetic restrictions based on classes.
Social contrivances.
The literal worst performing specs in the game have beaten mythic Denathrius the supposed hardest content in the game.
If players of the worst specs in the game can do the hardest content, then no, having the “incorrect” covenant is not going to prevent them from doing it.
A Balance Druid with the worst covenant is still going to be better than a Sub Rogue with the best covenant.
I would have loved to see a recolor of all class spells to match the covenant color with a huge questline equivalent to the green fire questline with a mage tower like difficulty.
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Those examples fit the concept of meaningful choice. Of course you cant have mages in plate or warriors in cloth. Picking a faction was simply which side appealed to you the most, sure one could say one side is better yet there has always been high end raiding groups on both sides. Sure there are facials, but the differences they made were not anywhere as severe as covenant abilities can be.
Mechanics of a game wont stop them, but people could. With most of the player-base in the raiding or mythic plus scenario, its entirely dependant on whether or not said person of said spec/non ideal covenant is even picked.
One could say form their own group but thats also easier said than done.
FFXIV doesnt do this. You could play whatever class fits your style and nothing would hinder you like horrid imbalances or borrowed power stuff.
And still do whatever you find fun.
Incorrect. There are right and wrong materias for your class, and more favorable secondary stats depending on your class.
Try again.
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Materia are immensely easy to acquire, yes you need specific ones for your class but it takes little to no time. Nor are they gated behind some group of people you are either friends with or not.
You are still able to play whatever you want in terms of classes. Borrowed power not included.
I’m confused to what you are arguing.
Because I hate to break it to you, but there IS a tier list of DPS, there is proper rotations, there is proper gearing, there is… wait for it… MIN-MAXING IN AN RPG.
How in the hell you are trying to argue against my point, that there is MIN-MAXING IN AN RPG, I don’t understand.
Between us two, I’m arguing that FFXIV does not do it anywhere near as badly as WoW has.
Yes there is min-maxing, but not as many as you think with FFXIV and plenty of people that dont min-max to the absolute 9 times out of 10 won’t be ridiculed from other people.
I apologize if I said something like ‘FFXIV doesn’t have min-maxing’ when what I was trying to say it’s nowhere near as bad as how WoW has handled it for years.
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Ok now that the point has been established
Yeah, because the communities are COMPLETELY different. WoW has this whole e-sports mentality thing going on that is bleeding into the community that makes people go “oh so that’s what the ‘pros’ are doing so I should do that too!”.
The only real point in needing to min-max in WoW is in cutting edge content like World First Races and mythic+ key pushing, or high rating arenas/rated bg (do people still do that btw? haven’t seen or heard anyone complain about that yet shockingly enough).
Everyone plays differently however, but I am always adamant in finding my own way and learning things inside and out and playing what is the most fun to me.
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Which is a totally understandable and valid.
My main issue in regards to covenants with the other fellow I’ve went back and forth with a few times was that, since we’ve established these are two different communities, the E-sports mindset that’s been drilled deep into WoW so much so that a looooot of groups, guilds or what have you prefer the better optimal routes for the sake of advancing through a path of least resistance.
Now sure, another point that has been made is someone could very well choose not to go the meta route and play what they want… but they will be in for a lot more obstacles, headaches and gray hairs making the choice they give you with the covenants feel like, well, no real choice.
See now this is where I believe you are misplacing the blame. This is a community problem, not a game system problem (or covenants in this case).
Covenants as they stand, in my personal view as a non-raiding non mythic+ non arena playing casual, are perfectly fine. My thought process when choosing covenants for my character has always been first what feels right, and second what looks right. Not what covenant is gonna give me the biggest numbers or the most flexibility to do everything at optimum.
I play games for fun, and its sad to see this community devolve over the past 16 going on 17 years go from playing an MMORPG where you meet and adventure with other people to explore and discover a world, to this elitist mindset of min-maxing pansies.
Then again, the head was originally from elitists jerks.
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The only issue I have is that there is this perception that e-sports rose and then it “infected” rpgs. I view it as gamer culture became more streamlined and information much more accessible and the path to least resistance was measured out and distributed - and thus the rise of e-sports.
A minor shift in perception, but an important one. The classic mmo-rpg started to “e-sportify” in order to live. If what worked back in the day, still worked, these elements (competitions, the insertion of various game genres) wouldn’t have been injected into the formula as it complicates development.
I’d probably never shift Covenants, as I’d have to dive into a lengthy RP story to accomplish it and I’m just not that invested in this game atm - but I’m fully against the design of the system, as I feel that it’s mixing two things that to choose between that is practically hard-coded to generate dissatisfaction.
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covenants are bad, I’d prefer if the power systems were unlocked, but at this point I think anybody still playing has navigated the situation in one way or another.
Power focused players have selected on power. RP focused players have selected on RP.
There are bigger fires to put out. Covenants are more or less ignorable after selection.
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I believe however that developers, depending on how they design and execute their content, can push and influence the community to play specific ways.
They can sure try, but in the end players will play how they want to in the end.
For example, I don’t think Blizzard originally intended for Thaddius to be facerolled back in vanilla with 38 fire mages stacking rolling ignites, but the player base did it.
I don’t believe they designed Kazzax to be one shotted with a ret-pally reckoning bomb, but the player base found a way to do it.
The developers can only plan and design for so many different possibilities that its impossible to literally get them all.
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As much as temporary powers exist, pulling the ripcord this far late into a development cycle would mean that development time would have to be taken away from the set course and towards untying the system/rebalancing specs with no temp power.
This might cause some cut content and some direction shifts which could ultimately tank an expansions narrative and content. I would rather them try to fix the issues associated with it – rather than go full nuclear.
Though I do hope they take the lessons from this and realize that they need to either:
- Figure out a way to better balance temp power and make it less restrictive
- Buckle down and actually give a new talent tier/rework the talent trees.
- Just rework the talent system.
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I completely agree. People aren’t having a fit that they have to pick a class. The same logic applies. Different classes have different abilities and different strengths and weaknesses, and a choice has to be made. Some people pick what they want, some pick because it’s the FOTM. If you want a game that is exactly how you want it, write one. Plenty of failed MMOs out there that did whatever their backers/players demanded.
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