Preserving the feel of an RPG, and borrowed power

Community General Discussion
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First I would like to thank the devs for the outstanding game that has been such a source of entertainment to myself, and many others over the years. Their job is a difficult one, since people are constantly demanding change and no matter what changes they make, a lot of folks will undoubtedly be upset.

Lately there has been a lot of talk about preserving the feel of an RPG by imposing penalties on players who want to change covenants. I don’t actually disagree with that. It does make sense.

The issue is that player power is going to be granted by the covenants. If the rewards from the covenants were cosmetic only, there would be no issue whatsoever.

NPCs granting powers to players feels bad in so many ways. Firstly, it feels like the player’s character is partially not in control or responsible for anything they actually achieve in the game. I mean would we be able to go through the expansion and complete the raids if we don’t do a single quest for the covenants? I’m guessing no.

Second, if the covenants are so powerful and the majority of our power comes from them, why do they actually need our help? This game is actually starting to feel more like the WOD mission table, where we send NPCs out to do everything for us. It doesn’t need to be like this. All our power came from gear before, why do feel the need to reinvent the wheel?

A few examples of things that are currently in the game that are the polar opposite of an immersive RPG experience;

Our powers somehow vanished one by one since MOP. Did our characters suddenly forget them?

My class gets nerfed, and is inexplicably weaker than he was the day before.

I go to a new area and get on a flying mount, and it can’t fly for some unknown reason.

Warmode.

Sharding.

I could keep going, but that’s probably enough examples to get the point across. They’ve never cared about preserving the feel of an RPG in the game before. Why pretend to now?

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your cant conflate in game “story” issues with game mechanics or developer direction. no your flying mount didnt forget how to fly, nor did you forget a skill if it got pruned.

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I completely disagree with the argument that ‘player-power’ is attached to covenants. It’s different power based on spec & soul-binds. If you pick Maldraxxus, congratulations you’re now more effective with aoe, if you pick Venthyr you’re now more mobile. Choosing between these isn’t denying you “player power” it’s you picking between what you desire more for your character. It’s different power, same as choosing between your spec. When you go Assassin vs Sub, youre deciding whether you perfer enhancing your stealth, or empowering yourself with poisons, that’s not denying you player power. I think free spec changes was a mistake because picking between those is no longer relevant, you get to be good at both whenever you want. It’s irrelevant.

Y’all talking about ‘Player Choice’ by letting people change covenants whenever they want are full of it.
“If you want to stick with your covenant, what does it change if I can change mine? It doesn’t effect you in any way!” No. It does. If everyone if locked into their covenant, you can’t deny people a group based on their choice, because everyone will have different covenants based on what they valued, unless you wait a month to find out what’s best, then only a handful of people will have it.

If everyone can change covenants willy nilly, then everyone will be expected to. It doesn’t matter that I picked Venthyr for the Transmog & aesthetic, groups will force me to go Kyrian for the ability despite what I want out of the game & kick me if I don’t. That effects me negatively. It denies player choice if everyone can change, because everyone will just pick whats best based on the dungeon or boss, and people that don’t will be screwed. Locking people in removes that issue, because you can’t deny based on that choice anymore. I love this extension of the system we first saw during TBC with Aldor and Scryers to a much larger extent.

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I’m pretty confident theyll kick you for having the wrong covenant. If you could swap then you have a chance to stay. Otherwise you’re definitely kicked.

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I disagree with the premise. If everyone is locked in, then you can’t judge based on the OMG 2 abilities you get from your covenant. Unless literally everyone is waiting a whole month to choose their covenant for the elites to find out whats best to choose for them, everyone is going to pick their covenant based on what they think is cool or what they think will be best individually for them.

Swapping just means you always have to swap, whether you want to or not. If you can’t swap mid raid, nothing can be done about it. If you people want to level 4 characters, go ahead. The average player won’t, and the average player isnt going to deny people based on what they personally wouldnt do.

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So what happens after that month when the meta is established?

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Is it borrowed power when it stays with us for 2-3 years ? I’m ok with borrowing something for 2-3 years, after a few weeks it will feel like its mine.

Then a new expansion with new changes happen and move on to the next new thing.

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Then the people who are already locked in, are locked in. You just deal with it. 2 abilities will not break the game.

Oh, your death knight has an abomination arm even though venthyr would be better for this 1 fight in this 1 raid? Oh well, you’ll do 3% less damage than if you had the other, it’ll be fine.

When the meta is set, you just deal with it. You cannot have the best possible solution for every possible fight 100% of the time. I like equating abilities & talents to a card game, every ability, every talent, is a card in your deck you draw at any time, unlimited times. But you still have to pick what cards you put in, and can’t sideboard mid match.

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I get that but your post mentioned a lower risk of being kicked because everyone is locked into covenants. When the meta is established, I’m saying people will be kicked all the same. How will it not be different? Because you’re locked in? Yeah, people arent going to care. Theyll still want the right covenants and kick you.

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That’s not true. A lot of people will go on Wowhead, Icy Veins, and other websites like that to see which is the best for their class numbers wise.

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So literally just a handful of people will be able to do content, right. The vast majority of people don’t go to icy-veins, or wowhead, they just play the game. If they feel they’re under performing, if they arent happy, they’ll look it up. Maybe*

If literally everyone is locked in, then the pool of players who have the ‘correct’ covenant is reduced. And you’ll have to deal with people who don’t have the ‘correct’ covenant, and you’ll finish the content all the same.

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Not everyone is a forum hero. Mom’s & Grandma’s and children play this game, and they don’t care about what icy-veins says. They’ll pick what they want & they’ll do content all the same.

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Power being tied to choices we make is a long held tradition in RPGs. It only fell out of being a thing in the modern MMoRPG. WoW and up. I like the idea that they are trying to give WoW that feeling, but I dislike the Idea that it’s making my fellow WoW lovers feel alienated, or somehow targeted. I hope Blizzard is capable of finding some form of middle ground for us both. After all, we all really just want the same thing anyways. To play the game that we love, the way we love to play it.

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Yeah, but like, you can though.

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So you’ll deny 4 out of 5 people that got lucky and randomly picked the one they like that just happened to be the best, yeah, no. Those other 4 you denied will make their own groups, and they’ll do content just fine without the min/max.

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That’s like saying people are going to be kicked from groups for not being a fire mage.

In reality it’ll probably only happen if they screw up the balance so much there is a drastic difference in numbers between them, like what typically happens with classes.

Which the biggest concern is going to be if they can’t get the balance right and do screw it up that much, which it’s not like there isn’t precedent for that happening when we look at class/specs in the past.

Though in that case, we really should be pushing Blizzard to balance better and be more aggressive about fixing underperforming things rather than leaving some stuff to rot for a while.

For everything, not just covenants.

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So, I will address these.

Yes, because they do not want to keep reinventing the wheel when it comes to classes, but keep continuing to keep the same class design makes a lot of people get bored of it each expansion, thus new ways to try to do the same thing for some classes. Granted, this doesn’t go so well half of the time. They also try to cater to newer players who have not been around since Defense Rating, Hit rating and other things were a thing.

Yes, with each expansion your character is SUPPOSED to get weaker and then grow stronger. That’s how games work. If you were strong off the bat and never got any stronger, why would you keep playing an RPG where the entire purpose is to get stronger?

They honestly don’t want people flying, at all. It literally takes away from what their whole art and design teams have done for the world. When you’re flying, you’re not looking at the trees from below on the ground floor. You’re not looking at the same environment they designed. This would make me mad, to have a game where I designed art for it, and then people just skip over it after I’ve worked so hard to do it. They said that they cannot take flying away because it’s part of the game now and has been for a very long time, so they have to put restrictions in because of that very reason.

Warmode has always been around. Back in the day it was known as PvP servers. You were 100% flagged the moment you hit level 20, and nothing could ever change you being flagged once you were, I don’t think. They just changed the name to help dead PvP servers be able to maintain and make world PvP a thing and incentivize it.

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Sharding is there to help transition when there is an overflow of players for a particular server/area. If they did not do this, you would be waiting hours on end to get a quest done, like back in Vanilla where it took 6 hours to complete quests in popular areas because so many people were around.

They have cared about it, and did so to preserve it. However, it does get more towards a single player game half of the time, plus, as the game goes on it gets easier and easier, thus taking away from the feeling of an RPG as they cater to casuals so that way the person who has only 15 minutes to play the game can hop on and do something with their character.

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That’s great! They should. Exclusion will still happen just like it does today.

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Cool, so we agree there’s 0 issue with restricting covenants. But if you open them up, you’ll be required to swap, thus eliminating player choice.

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What if…all the other 3 get together and are like you know what. Number 1 can bite us. And choose to start excluding the best. Now that would be interesting. Wonder how difficult it would be to find a group if 3/4ths of the game didn’t want to play with you.

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