Preach A Conversation w/ Ion... Additional Thoughts

Community General Discussion
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I thought this was a very interesting conversation. Weeks ago when I listened to Preach’s arguments as to why he wants the flexibility to switch covenants without commitment I thought to myself maybe he’s right. But after watching this video, I think Ion and the WoW team are in the right to have them fixed, and here are my thoughts on why:

If you had the ability to choose which covenant ability and soul binds you wanted whenever you wanted, there would be a 100% right way to play the game for every single encounter, and Mythic community would tell you how to play the game, which would disseminate throughout the entire player base. Thus player’s would be in a situation where they could either choose to play “right or wrong”.

But rather with fixed covenants there isn’t as clear of an answer, and if there is, its not the player’s fault for choosing “the wrong” covenant; and I believe this is Blizzards intent. Blizzard doesn’t want to give people the ability to always choose the 100% best option for every single encounter.

Imagine a world where it’s expected of you to change every single talent and covenant and soul binds for every single fight. That doesn’t sound fun. But for the guys that willing to get a 5% dps increase, that is what they are willing to do. And when that happens it becomes the new norm for the rest of the community. Which takes away player’s choice.

I rather have a system where we choose a covenant that has strengths and weaknesses. Some will sim better on some boss fights than others, but there probably won’t be a covenant that has 100% best for everything; in fact, I’m sure it’s part of Blizzards goal to make sure that won’t happen.

In conclusion I wonder if Preach realizes that by having the capability to choose every talent, and every covenant, and every soul bind for every fight, so that you would never make a “wrong” choice, is essentially the same thing as saying give me 1 button, (so don’t make the wrong choice) so I can win.

Additional thoughts: Imagine tuning a Mythic raid based on having all of those possibilities; it would probably be a nightmare. Or, it would become face roll for Mythic player’s because they would have every possible tool available to them…

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My thoughts after watching that video yesterday, Preach was trying hard to hammer home his points and Ion was doubling down on how the Developers feel and their reasons behind why the systems in place are the way they want them.

Kind of reminds me of my children, when I’m like Nope, and they give me this long winded explanation as to “but why” and I’m still like well, maybe, maybe and then Nope.

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You seem to be looking at things from a strictly raiding perspective, where different players may have covenant abilities that shine in different encounters. Outside of the very top end, this is probably fine, outside of maybe venthyr teleport.

However, what if you want to play multiple specs, or different types of content, where some of the abilities are extremely strong, and others nigh useless? Let’s say I’m playing affliction warlock, and two things I like to do are mythic+ and 2v2 arena. Should I pick the venthyr or night fae abilities for aoe in mythic+? Or do I pick necrolord with the extremely strong single target ability, to be competitive in arena? Which content should I be gimped in?

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Streamers shouldn’t dictate the design of this game. They live in their own bubble having their followers regurgitate their own words back to them.

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Okay so this might surprise you the reason that streamers get big is people agree with them and watch their content. A large chunk maybe not a majority but a large chunk think it’s awful design to have 4 new spells and only get to use 1 without a massive grind.

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I mean really, the bottom line of the whole “conversation” is: it depends on tuning.

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Which is something that blizzard hasn’t really shown any ability to do recently look at corruptions.

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The lessons from the interview are very clear

YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD AT EVERYTHING, YOU HAVE STRENGHTS AND WEAKNESSES

and the tryhard community hates that

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Aye, which is understandably why Preach remains suspicious of Ion’s experimentation with the covenants.

I’m suspicious too, BUT: the communication between devs and players has been remarkable to say the least when compared to other alphas and betas (remember the BFA alpha?) and the vision and game design philosophies for SL are solid, which even Preach agrees on.

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No all it means is people will literally play one aspect of the game unless they want to make multiple charcters. I want to play a dh my primary spec is veng which means I’m going vampy boys for tp and the on burst extra burst cd. Now let’s say I want to pvp well I’m not going to want to stay veng I’m going to want to be havoc and while tp is okay it’s nothing compared to hunt for target swapping and forcing pressure.

For the record I just made 3 extra dh’s whether I level them or not depends on what I decide I want to play it will likely be either dh or monk maybe bdk but I miss mobility so much.

Instead of having multiple classes like I prefer to do I am right now planning to level at least 2 of the same class probably more.

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How do they live in there own bubble? They have a literal chat box on the side when they stream!

The developers are the ones in their own bubbles.

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a simple solution to this is talent locking, which I believe m+ does? and pvp doesn’t let you tome into something else after it’s started

but that can’t exist for raids, cause they take hours, versus 10-20 minutes for an “appealing” run of a dungeon

if there’s a boss with a lot of adds, you want to take aoe, it’s better for your group, this is a team game

it’s not a bad thing to take your loadout seriously, it’s being conscious of your potential, and maximizing it to help your team overcome a challenge

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So if I understand this correctly, Blizzard is trying to reduce the pressure on players to conform to a meta by making it harder to assemble a meta-perfect team (and thus in theory, make group-builders less picky about who they let in).

This tension between wanting to optimize one’s build vs the game resisting easy optimization feels like territory we’ve been visiting through RNG drops (legiondaries, corruptions), but this time framed as a “choice” under the player’s control rather than a drop out of their control.

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Just stopping by to do my civic duty of flagging Ralphs post.

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He will never get actually sanctioned for all the rule breaking he does so what’s the point

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I’m casual and I don’t mind meaningful choices as long as long is it doesn’t cost me too much time and hassle. If the covenant choices were like classic’s talent tree that costs few gold then I would be okay with that…wait a minute…why am I talking to Ralph?!

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Meta will not be something people could achieve anymore unless they either level 4 of each or only play one part of the game, so thankfully we are going to see more variety and people who are different instead of having meta slaves all copy the meta build and be the same

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It doesnt, you stick to what you like and then do all the content you want, just like now how all specs can do all the content they want right now.

Bar 25+ but that is epeen mode and devs dont care about balancing that.

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Do you really think re-specing will be easy in Shadowlands?

To everyone else: Stop it! I don’t like ralph’s trollish mambo jumbo either but I never flagged him or anyone else for that matter. Just stop.

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guys I don’t think ralph’s posts constitute trolling

they may be standoff-ish, but there is an argument at their core, arguments that many people will be making independently of him

fairly confident that’ll be temporary, you can quote this at me in the final patch of SL

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