big true
I’m still not convinced it can be
I’d be surprised if they didn’t have catchup mechanics
and that’s a casual level thing, letting players who joined late get up to speed with their friends, it would be horrible for the low end if there wasn’t
I understand preaches apprehensions and just felt bad that Ion (like the dad) was telling preach (the son) I understand where you are coming from but this is how things are going to be for right now.
Boils down to this for me as well. Why I won’t be playing shadowlands if p
It goes live like this.
It’s Preach that wants all these things. And Ion trying to say that it’s ultimately not the direction THEY want to take it because at the end of the day. They have their own vision, they have to at least try to include various peoples playstyle into it or at least consider it which is how games or anything of entertainment goes. I guess I am just used to playing games the way devs wanted and not play them if I didn’t like it. But discussion is healthy and voicing complaints as well are too.
Ask any developer not at Blizzard. It’s not as cut and dry. I tend to ignore the people just bad mouthing Blizz at every step. BUT that video was pretty hard to watch.
Minor tip to Preach is I hope he can be a tad bit more professional instead of cutting Ion off with laughter or something. It definitely felt like Ion was the adult and preach was the child in some respect.
As much as I personally agree with preach’s side of this discussion. I agree with you concerning this. Some of his eye rolls and laughs came across as very unprofessional to me. I expected a bit better conduct from him, and usually he delivers better.
Yup, I try to stay level headed and while having my own opinion and not agreeing with some of what Preach said. I do like his content and I found that hard to watch because it’s that kind of attitude that companies take note of and MIGHT (big MIGHT) avoid him for future discussions, interviews or whatever.
see, your whole argument hinges on the fact that covenant abilities being lock provides a way for there to not be a right or wrong way to play, and that is just false.
pugging any pre covenant content would have explained it. below the top 5% of raids or M+, no one cares about anything but your ilvl, damage numbers, and some raider IO indication that you can clear the content.
now in that 5%, this is where things like what your class/spec bring to the table REALLY matter. these are balance issues that the whole community has been trying to get blizz to fix FOR THE WHOLE EXPAC. DH, Rogue, Resto being seen as required for high end M+ has been raged against.
so with that said, locking covenant abilities add another layer of required into the cutting edge, leader of the pack community.
i dont know why people are trying to create a scene of “no one will take me in M+ because i cant teleport.” and if that isnt required “no one will take my tank in M+ because i cant fleshcraft”
it will happen. just like people wont take bad specs to content, they will now not take bad specs OR bad covenants to content.
Yea, the more people that essentially advertise WoW that quit the better. Blizzard doesn’t need their sub money anyway. But wait…I’m not a “tryhard”, I’m a casual that realizes that having to choose between having fun gameplay or having a fun rp choice feels bad, and will probably unsub for the first time in 4 years because covenants are a horrendously bad system. So it looks like “tryhards” aren’t the only people that you’ll lose to this system.
There’s no benefit to restricting this.
All it does is get in the way of how people like to enjoy and have fun in the game.
Well said. These restrictions just get in the way of how people have fun.
And they don’t actually give the proponents anything outside of satisfaction that other people are being punished and forced to play a certain way.
Here’s the real kick in the teeth:
I, as a role-players, don’t get ANYTHING that impacts my actual gameplay for you guys being gimped.
The system is just punishing you guys without even rewarding role-players like myself.
The system ends up just influencing you guys to created 2-4 characters of the same class so that you can enjoy the game in various types of content. And for the RP community - we don’t actually get any rewards for that.
Regarding Covenants:
Ion brings up this idea that player choice needs to be meaningful, and of course the competitive community is going to care about not having the right covenant ability for each progression encounter, but because it’s so difficult to switch - he claims - the pressure to switch actually vanishes: it’s done, the Night Fae Rogue will always beat the Necrolord Rogue on that fight because their ability better matches the encounter, etc.
Imagine if the same logic were applied to the Talent system. The talents you picked while leveling your character, were permanent. If at level 15 you picked Fortress of the Mind, that character couldn’t change that later on when they realized it sucked. The only answer was to reroll, or go through a very long questing process to swap covenants and unlock all the covenant power. Players would rightfully be angry about not being able to change Talents anymore.
I actually like the Covenant choices from a roleplaying perspective, it’s cool that a Venthyr Fury warrior would have different flavor from a Kyrian Fury Warrior. It would make a lot more sense though, if the power of covenant abilities wasn’t just DPS abilities, but utility and soft power in the world. As example, each covenant ability could instead give a mobility spell - Door of Shadows for Venthyr, maybe all Kyrian grow wings, granting Demon Hunter’s double jump and floating, Kyrian DH’s get triple jump or something. Night Fae give everyone Travel Form so they can run long distances super quick, but can’t attack in that form, etc.
Then you can also give players utility benefits. Maybe all Necrolords can make healthstones, all Venthyr can summon allies like Warlocks, Kyrians have portal spells, etc. This sort of power distribution is meaningful, flavorful, desirable - and not a disempowering balance nightmare for competitive players - where potentially we need to play and gear multiple characters for different encounter types. As example, if Rogues are best for single target DPS, and Venthyr is their best single target covenant, do we each gear a Venthyr Rogue for single target fights, and also a Night Fae Hunter for AOE fights?
Now here’s the real problem. That’s actually a competitive solution to the problem - gear multiple characters with multiple covenants and swap as needed. But that problem still exists for everyone else - and they don’t have a solution for it - they just become disgruntled because they suck when it matters most, because they picked Night Fae when they should have gone Necrolord. As it stands, Covenants are not player-empowering choices, they will be remembered as dis-empowering regrets.
Now let me offer a solution. Instead of building borrowed power systems that are always poorly tuned, untended after their initial design, and drive the community nuts - put all the major damage-related choices into the Talent system, so they can be swapped as needed, at personal preference. This is an empowering experience to be able to swap talents because you think it might be better, and swap it back when you regret the change.
You can even salvage Covenant design effort by making planned covenant abilities into a new talent tier. This may mean you need more Talent tiers, which I don’t see a problem with adding. Give us 10 talent tiers or more, and let us make choices - rather than random Legion Legendaries (randomness of drops was the problem, not legendaries themselves), or random Azerite Traits (randomness again), or Corruption (randomness again, hey is there a pattern here?).
You want to give players meaningful choices that affect their combat experience? Expand and balance the talent system, stop adding new borrowed power systems and locking all major player power choices behind, “I don’t have the good legendaries/azerite/corruptions/etc”.
You want to give us flavorful story choices, like Covenants? Give us soft power - how we traverse the world, boons we provide to our party, etc. A better solution for adding player-flavor via covenants would have been to give them unique spell colors and animations. A Venthyr Shadowpriest could have red mind flays and spell effects to symbolize blood-drinking / vampirism. A Kyrian Shadowpriest could get their Dark Archangel wings during Voidform and blue-ish spell effects.
I read the “YOU AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD AT EVERYTHING” arguments as “I’m not good at everything so you shouldn’t be allowed to be either!”
Honestly, if it was just boss to boss stuff it would probably be fine.
The big problem for me is I enjoy pvp, pve, and m+.
For raids, ST dps will likely be king.
For M+, AoE.
For PvP, survivability and utility.
The game is being designed so I have to choose which area of the game to focus on, and be gimped in the others. That or roll 3 chars of the same class, which I don’t have the time or interest to do.
If Ion is telling me picking the type of content I want to do is meaningful choice…well I have news for him. My meaningful choice will be picking between a third of WoW’s endgame and a different way to spend my time.
Right now…leaning towards playing more golf the next couple years.
pretty much sums up the thread, well said.
I felt like preach came across like the dad in this scenario.
Whats that song? “Ooh la la” about the grandfather singing to his grandson trying to give him advice but realizing it is futile because when you are young you think you know best.
Ion seems determined to ride this crazy idea of his straight into the grave. Like cmon man why are you so stubborn?
We told you legendaries in Legion were gonna suck to farm, you didn’t listen and it wasn’t fixed until way later.
We told you azerite and warfronts were gonna suck but “no no you just don’t see the big picture trust us its gonna be awesome”
Now we are telling you covenants are gonna crash and burn, but Ion and Blizzard can’t admit they were wrong for some reason. I guess pride?
Well spoken. Given Blizz history I can see how the balancing could ended up abysmal. Tying Player power to covenants is probably a poor design.
I support the Blizzard theory, but given their history the real world application of this system won’t work.
I wish there was a better way not to have cookie cutter builds.
man i forgot how many bootlickers play retail, ppl like you are why the game gets worse every expac
this will be the 1st one i dont buy Lol