if a rental power is fun, who care? No one complained about artifacts in legion even though they were rentals. Fun is fun.
Yes, they also stripped abilities from kits going into Legion to make way for legendaries and forgot to re-add them in BFA which lead to some of the least enjoyable versions of a spec to play ever.
No one complained because it was a completely new system of infinite grinding. Also when you reached certain milestones, you had it. There wasn’t a point where you were being denied abilities for going a certain way. You got all of them.
Rentals are not fun or offering meaningful choices if they are held up by other rentals.
Legion artifact weapons will held up by legendaries. Stripped legendaries from the equation and then Blizz took away artifact weapons…no wonder Battle for Abilties received its reputation so swiftly.
Now, Blizz thinks that since they are making the rentals active buttons you push instead of passive that it is okay? Nope.
Still not cool that with a button press I am doing three times the damage of my class abilities. Not cool at all.
What do you think will matter more to people in the moment-to-moment gameplay; the novelty of setting your character apart via locked-in choices or being suboptimal in most areas of content due to that choice?
People like you who worship the developers and their terrible choices are the absolute worst of this community. Anyone who goes as far as to say “I hope Blizzard stands their ground” given their nonstop, serious design missteps over the past few years should be ashamed of themselves on account of their gullibility and blind optimism.
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Seems like the common legendary complain for 4 expansions now .
Blizzard will ignore as usual and you guys will be made to deal with it . 
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Neither of you are even remotely interested in making a good, fun game system here. You’re just obsessing over some arbitrary, undefined set of criteria that a game must apparently tick off to count as an RPG.
P.S. Imagine going on about how RPG elements matter and then going on to suggest something as ludicrous as mutilating all of class design down to just 3 classes.
You literally just regurgitate the word “RPG” onto every argument and think it excuses and proves everything you say. That’s not how this works.
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What you have here is two different communities. The pre-WOW MMORPG player types that brought the player, not the class and still downed content. Then you have the typical wow player where wow is their first mmorpg and could take the player and still down content, but chooses to choose based on class, spec, and covenant choices because they care more about squeezing every last ounce of performance out of a player. Where are all of the latter people when I’m hiring new leads where I manage, lol?
Because we have more information now than ever. Wowhead, Mmochampion, RaiderIo, Simulationcraft, WarcraftLogs ect. ect. We have access to pretty much a plethora of information that just wasn’t as readily available during the early days of WoW.
The second part of this is players are wanting to complete things as quickly as possible because Blizzard have added quotas on most of their content. AotC, Cutting Edge and PvP Rankings come to mind here. So of course players are going to want to naturally be the best they can be so they can clear content as fast as possible.
Not to mention content has become a lot more difficult for players. End bosses on Heroic and pretty much the latter half of Mythic are no joke.
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I never once regurgitated the word RPG that way. I merely stated Covenants were a nifty RPG element, of which the game is sorely lacking of the past several expansions.
Regardless, I’m intrigued with Covenants and I’m intrigued by having a choice that holds actual weight. Whether you like it or not, having choices that matter is very RPG like. Though if you would’ve bothered to actually read everything I’ve said, I also fully acknowledged that I understand where top end players are coming from with their complaints, I just disagree that things should constantly be changed to appease the top 0.1%-1%.
I also said that Blizzard has put themselves between a rock and a hard place with this whole ordeal. But since so many people are afraid of getting an extra button or two, we are stuck with temporary gimmicks as our power progression. I’d much rather the former. But if we get something new and unique, yes, I’m totally onboard for it, even if X will be better for Y. And Y is better than Z unless you do A.
I also said I don’t care if they make them freely interchangeable. The whole premise of Covenants was that our choice held some weight, which we haven’t had anything even remotely similar since BC with the Aldors/Scryers. By all means, make them interchangeable, but in doing so, make Soulbinds more than just generic bland passives. Make the soulbinds hold some weight, even if its just a tiny bit.
To your P.S comment, my agreeing with Aresia was on the fact that RPG’s involve choices that matter. Strengths and weaknesses. Stuff like that can be huge boons for the game if done properly. I never once implied, nor acknowledged their comment about mutilating class design down to 3, as I’ll admit, that bit is asinine.
Look, I get it. The people pushing world firsts and Cutting Edge and stuff want to squeeze out every possible thing they can, even if its the most unfun boring thing possible. If it’s 0.2% better, 2% or 12%. It doesn’t matter, they’ll do it. So I genuinely understand the frustration with Covenant abilities.
That’s why I said I hope Blizzard can find a way to make things work for everyone, because its a tricky spot they have found themselves in. It’s entirely possible they may indeed make it work. It’s also entirely possible(based on their track record) that they will mess up royally. As Garrosh once said, times change. So maybe Blizzard can to.
All that said. While I fully understand the high key runners and Mythic folks arguments over why it’s bad. It still doesn’t change how I feel, about how I’m intrigued over having choices that hold actual weight. Are you right? Am I wrong? Or are you wrong and I’m right? Neither, we are just players who think and play differently. Which is how it should be.
By all means, make it interchangeable. But I’d like to see more weight to Covenants than just “lul this armor sucks so I’ma go X cause its armor looks cool”. You know? Soulbinds could fill that niche, if they tweak them appropriately and not make most bland and generic. Time will tell.
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That’s not an excuse I’m willing to accept. I’ve played MMO’s since 2002, 8-14 hours a day sometimes just like a lot of MMO players back then, and we didn’t treat each other like trash. Many of us older folks that played back then are still playing MMORPG’s, obviously older now with more responsibilities, and still aren’t treating people like trash.
What I mean by trash, is using them like they’re just a number. I don’t treat my employee’s like that, and I won’t treat someone in an activity that’s supposed to be fun like that either. Playing at the highest level takes a lot of skill. That skill is gotten by pouring hours of practice into that activity. Something a lot of us can’t do due to real life responsibilities. However, many of us who used to be able to do that still enjoy “harder” content, but haven’t lost that part of us who enjoyed the role-playing game with choices side of us that embraced the RPG years ago.
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I think another way to look at the two camps of people is like this:
How did everyone play a game like Skyrim or The Witcher 3? Did they choose a character build they found fun and beat the game with it? Or did they only choose a build that maximized performance and beat the game with it?
The first probably selected spells, skills, and abilities that fit their ideal character theme and had a blast, while the latter probably picked the most OP build and had a blast trivializing everything.
That’s the way a lot of us play WoW. We value hard RPG choices over being able to optimize our character as long as that every choice is at least viable in all content.
Imagine getting fired from your job because you weren’t the optimal choice. You did your job just fine and accomplished the company goals, but someone else could do it better, so screw you. Feels great? We want that attitude in the game?
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Regardless of whether or not you accept it isn’t a concern to me. Nor do I really care about how long you’ve been playing MMOs. I’m just telling you what I believe to be the truth on the subject matter.
And this “not treating each other like a number” is a fallacy. I look at my guildies essentially as people first. But they also hold the mentality that they don’t want to hold the guild back because of what they prefer aesthetically. They wanted to help the team push as far as we could go because we all shared the goal of wanting to get CE.
This wall that they’ve created, won’t last the entire expansion. I guarantee that people will push back on this and want the abilities to become more flexible. Especially if they’re wanting to push content in different aspects of the game. You can take the angle that players are looking at others as a number, but that’s completely missing the issue that’s going on here.
Which is that players want to be able to excel at all forms of content and not be held back by a borrowed power system that’ll be gone when Shadowlands is over.
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You can’t compare two different genres. Goes beside the point anyway.
The argument saying the choice will not be meaningful if this goes through has to stop, it is completely false. It’s been stated a ton as to why already.
Going through with this change makes every side happy:
- The players who want to untie the class abilities off the covenants can optimize for each content, or making use of different abilities for the same content even;
- The players who want to preserve the notion of RPG into the game gets to keep it since the choice still maintains permanent heavy consequences;
- Blizzard gets to win a lot of players’ favor.
Excited to see who’s gonna answer me saying the choice won’t be meaningful, showing they didn’t read!
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You’re points are valid and those of us I’ve seen so far wanting Blizzard to stick to their guns have acknowledged those points. We just don’t agree those points are worth changing the system over, because we believe any choice you make will still leave you viable in all content.
It comes down to that there are two different camps of players on this subject that don’t agree and won’t ever see eye to eye on it. Like many of us have argued, if we agreed with your stance, we’d all be switching to the FOTM class because not doing so would be holding the team back because we’re not playing the best class and spec for the pushing top tier raids, mythic+ keys, and arena rating.
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If, and only if, that’s all they did then some of us wouldn’t care. But give an inch and they take a mile as they say. None of us believe that if Blizzard caved to this, that they wouldn’t cave to the other when people figure out that their Covenant choice would not allow them to be optimal in all forms of content. As the Classic players like to use due to the above points: “No Changes, please!”
But you are agreeing with my stance. You said the points I’ve made are valid. Thing is you don’t have to do anything if the content you’re partaking in isn’t really about pushing as hard as you can.
Making the choice be open does not in any way take away from your ability to do that. Because I can tell you one thing if the players are as horrid as some think they are, God help you if you make the wrong choice and then are faced with the wall that’s the punishment for abandoning said Covenant.
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This is even more support for the “remove covenant abilities” camp. You wouldn’t hand a juggler just barely able to keep 12 balls in the air 4 more balls so why would blizz want four more facets to balance when they can’t even get the classes right after 15 years.
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Many people said the same with Account wide essences. Saying people would ask for account wide reputation, gear, or a ton of weird stuff
Account wide essences happened. Those people asking for absurd stuff are nowhere to be found.
The exact same would happen with Covenant if this goes through.
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That’s not true at all. Most players I’ve ran raids and mythic+ with in the past have all had the elitist mind set even if it was “only” heroic raid difficulty or lower keys. They invite what’s optimal or best, whether that was a higher ilvl than the raid even drops, or a higher raiderio score than is necessary for the key.
I believe more people would pick a covenant they enjoy over what is optimal, so the elitists would just have to choose the player over the covenant if they’re wanting to fill their raids and groups quickly.