#PullTheRipcord The covenant class abilities must be untied to the covenant choice

And so you think game design decisions should be made in favor of this small group of players and at the expense of the rest? If you are stuck with what you choose, then people will have to accept it and bring you along. Otherwise groups won’t have enough players to choose from. Besides, I’m sure everyone will still be able to do 15s, mythic raids, and pop just fine with whatever they choose. strong text"Once you make it easy to swap abilities every group/raid leader will expect that, impacting the more RPG centric players that also enjoy heroic raids and high mythic + keys"strong text

I would argue that the majority of players are the ones raiding, doing m+ and pvping.

If end game was based around tmog farming, then I would understand covenants being locked.

No what’s impacting RPG centric raiders and M+ players is being forced to choose a covenant that doesn’t resound with them.

If I see a player in my raid group running a weird talent rn and he tells me that it’s good for this one fight I say ok cool man. If I see one with a covenant that is a 20% dps loss, I’m just going to bench them.

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Hard choices with rentals often fails.

The main reason Blizz argues that tier sets had to go was, because they forced “hard choices” on gear which are rentals.

So they turn around and force hard choices on rental abilities instead?

No thanks.

Give back tier sets if you are going to pull this type of shenanigans.

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What expense?

Assume the class abilities are untied from the covenants. In what way are you impacted? It’s still an impactful decision to make.

Your raid sucks if they dispute your decision. Sorry if that’s harsh, but any class from any covenant will be able to beat mythic raids. Anyone telling you to sacrifice fun for a bit of dps probably isn’t good for your fun. And why play a game if not for fun?

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What expense are you talking about? That is my point. The people who aren’t in the “small group of players” don’t get punished for making an open system where as the opposite directly impacts the “small group”

Thanks for the hot-take 0/12 raider, I’ll pass it on.

I’ll let them know we can unequip our gear and unlearn all our talent and beat bosses with the power of FuN!

Its a slippery slope. You untie the abilities, people are happy until they find out that the soul binds and legendary also are a meaningful difference and then complain about that. I’d rather just leave it alone and have meaningful choices than to lose it all.

God can we stop parroting this point, it’s insufferable

‘meaningful choices’ feels like something an antivaxxer would say to a doctor.

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Slippery slope argument doesn’t hold. The soulbinds are not impactful enough, and should they be, you actually have a choice between 3 inside one covenant, in comparison to the class abilities where there is simply no choice.

I will be the first to be against anything more than making the class abilities untied to covenant.

reread the post you quoted that snip of mine from. I explain it there

You tried to explain it, and you failed tremendously.

You brought up “RPG centric players” and seemingly forgot the RP stands for Role Playing, which is why mEaNinGfUl ChOiCeS could be story/visual only.

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Right. The game should be “gameplay first”. What makes a great games is allowing players to feel like they get to do what they want to do. Making player make a meaningful choice that deprives them of cool factor creates a negative emotion towards the game.

Blizzard should go back to making players feel empowered by making choices they want. Allow players to pick the abilities they want but tie the gaining or progress to their selected covenant. That way they feel good by looking how they want and get to progress with or towards abilities that they like.

Blizzard can still have their “time played” metric but they need to do it in a way that makes the journey rewarding and fun. If they fail at this again they will lose a lot of players over the grind to nowhere.

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I will play SLands way more if the covenant abilities can be flicked around.

Nothing will turn me off doing other content out of raid faster if i have a objectively worse ability than my other class people in .

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That’s just what it comes down to. (Not the antivax thing, those people are nuts)
Sorry if it isn’t a priority for you, but it should be clear from the sheer number strong responses that people just really want different things from this feature.

Personally I’d love for these covenants to behave more like prestige classes than just RP story choices. I think players could learn something from valuable from being forced to do their best with what they have rather than always having the optimal approach.

But to be fair I don’t raid or have people depend on me anymore, and I don’t really blame people for being worried about the consequences to their performance. Hopefully it’s either closely balanced or such a mixed bag of choices that optimal becomes an unrealistic calculation.

RPG choices involves choices that last beyond an expansion. Tying meaingful choies to rentals undermines the entire spirit of RPG game play.

The only reason people tolerate gear resets is because of the health of the game. But you don’t see classes/specs or races in WoW being treated like rentals.

The lack of choices and player agency that lasts beyond an expansion is a real crime.

Trying to act like covenants will offer player agency or RPG elements is truly misleading.

No one is going to confuse azerite armor and essences from BFA with providing RPG elements.

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Anyone who thinks this is remotely a possibility are out of touch as Ion is.

So far the “sheer number strong responses” supporting keeping the system the same have come from people who balance of skills does not impact at all.

I understand there are people who don’t push difficult content wanting to be the best version of themselves also, and that’s a great thing. But if you’re doing 10 keys or Heroic and are against opening the system your opinion on balancing skills for content is irrelevant.

Then refead it. I was very clear. You are reading while being emotional, so comprehension is failing you. Give me two minutes and I’ll put it into quotes for you because I’m generous.

Don’t waste your time, really. I read it and I disagree.

So why should covenants trample upon RPG elements of classes or specs? What makes covenants more RPG and offer meaningful choices when they are rentals and undermines the core of WoW?

The current diablo B devs have desperately tried to make rental abilities work and have failed expansion to expansion. They had a chance to bake in rentals from legion heading into BFA and refused to do even that.

Having essences do more damage than a backstab, sinister strike or eviscerate feels bad.

Having covenants that will be tuned to offer more damage/utility than baseline class tool kits is bad.

That is not meaningful choices or RPG.

That is player apathy. A disconnection with classes and specs.

That leads to homogenization…which was the whole point of pruning in the first place?

I guess now classes/specs instead are homogenized with rentals instead.

Don’t forget rental power in corruption!

Nothing quite like 28% of your damage being a corruption.