I honestly don’t remember them saying the technology wasn’t there. Isn’t that the whole point of this thread? That they admitted to having the ability to do it hence “pull the ripcord”.
They backtracked and said they couldn’t do it after all.
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There has been a decent amount of talk in this thread about how a big reason that having friction when changing covenants is bad is because balance changes will alter the conditions that some players were basing their choice on. So now that a patch has come out and Blizzard made significant balance changes they decided to alleviate the friction such that people can make their choice again. That seems really logical and reasonable. 
Over the last month leading up to 9.1, my M+ group cleared our 16s in every dungeon, and even tried our hand at 17. And as we did so, pushing harder and harder past the limits of ilevel upgrading, the more and more bitterly I felt just how trash my Covenant’s class ability really is for my spec.
And now, with the release of 9.1, the new soulbind expansions have boosted every other Covenant even higher above mine.
I did what all the Covenant supporters said I should do: I chose my Covenant based on story and theme over power, and the more time goes on, the worse that choice pans out.
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Well there’s your problem.
You listened to a bunch of people whose primary defining trait in WoW is their dislike of people who actually know how to play the game.
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To this day, the WoTLK talent system gave players the most actual versatility with their class to play the game they wanted to. Hybrids could actually be hybrids. Pumpers could actually be pumpers. And you could go with a new build whenever you wanted, plus it served as a gold sink.
12 Million people played in Wrath.
What happened?
They fixed what was not broken.
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I swear it’s just contempt. Everything they do is just mired in it. People complain about needing to regrind multiple legendaries and their response is: “Fine. Ugh. You can grind soul ash endlessly. You idiots only gonna get 180 a run though. Idiots. Run 29 wings to get a legendary. And I hope you choke on it.”
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I love how people parroted “Oh you can infinitely farm it now” and this is what they gave us LOL…
The ripcord at this point would not save how uncompelling it is to play this expansion…and I thought BFA was bland.
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I’m not sure what this is about. Kyrians are my people and I’ll never change.
When i see the devs talking about meaningful choices and all their philosophies with the game i just cringe thinking how much they see themselves as great visionary game designers
[taps his shoulders] yeah yeah ion you’re the kojima of the mmos
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And you shouldn’t have to , but shouldn’t those that would like to try different builds based on what ever content they are doing or what ever spec they are playing at any given time be able to do so ?
Players: We don’t like this
Blizz Team: Ah it’s because you haven’t had a chance to play this, we can foresee you really will enjoy this
Players: No seriously we did PTR and we don’t like this
Blizz Team: Oh… what if we… gave you more of this?
Covenant Legendaries
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By try different builds, do you mean change from their current friend to a new friend who performs best?
Thats basically what I’m hearing about these covenants.
I think blizzard should just keep changing current covenants until all of them are the best and people can choose freely without worrying about which one is better.
If they can’t balance 4 covenants, how could they ever balance this game with all the skills and classes and races involved?
Its like… their pop quiz before the exam. Its an indication of what they are actually capable of on a small scale which they should be able to manage, right?
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I’m with OP. #pulltheripcord I’m so sick of them not balancing their own game and forcing the meta on us if you want ANY chance of doing content! Just let me freely choose so I can decide what’s best for ME and MY playstyle.
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A lot of us actually want the abilities our classes get from the covenants separated so that we can pick the best ability for the content we are doing and yes some people would like to beable to switch easily because some covenants are better for some specs in a class but not others.
They have never been able to since this game launched so why not give us the freedom to pick what we want for what ever content or spec we are doing at any given time.
This whole system is just a way to make the numbers look good to the investors . Nothing more ,nothing less.
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Funny thing is , there was not set Meta until Blizz went we will balance things so it won’t matter what you pick during the beta.
For a person that doesn’t want there to be metas , Ion did a great job making Night Fae the rdps one .
It’s more than that, though. They need to balance the 4 covenants for each class and spec. 4x12x3=144. They needed to have balanced 144 different spec, class, and covenant combinations for this system to have worked. They failed. Hard. Understandably so, I might add.
Having balance between 144 different unique setups is a crazy daunting task. Which is why they should have never done it. It should have just been talents from the start with covenants being a cosmetic choice.
Covenants are the absolute most meta thing Blizzard has ever introduced to the game. Noone is allowed to actually test builds…so what does the playerbase do? We see guides, we do math. It isnt worth the stress of just “picking what we like”, only to find out later it is severely underperforming. I honestly can’t think of a better way to enforce a meta than by locking people into a choice, I really can’t.
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The crazies part is how they’ve managed to completely misunderstand and misappropiate what “meaningful choice” actually means in the context of RPG design. When people outside of Blizzard talk about “meaningful choices” in RPGs, they’re talking about meaningful story choices. Choices available to the player that dramatically affect the story and world of the game.
Easy example off the top of my head, early in the Dark Brotherhood questline in Skyrim, you wake up in a strange place where a woman you’ve never seen before introduces herself as the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, and tells you to kill one of three hostages held in the same room. You can kill any or all of them, and she’ll unlock the door, allowing you to join the Dark Brotherhood and continue a storyline in which you rebuild the Brotherhood from shambles.
Alternatively, you can choose to kill the woman, setting off a questline in which you raid the Brotherhood’s stronghold, slay all inside, and wipe them out of Skyrim for the foreseeable future.
But an MMORPG can’t deliver on that kind of story, because there’s just no way that any developer could sustain the infinitely branching narratives that every player making different meaningful choices would result in. Just look at the hissy fits being thrown by Sylvanas loyalists that their choice to remain loyal has amounted to nothing. Of course it has; there’s no way it could have done anything else, because they would have to develop two separate concurrently running stories with completely different outcomes to make that choice meaningful.
Covenants are a weak attempt to split the difference by making your “meaningful choice” affect the story for you without affecting the story of anyone else, so the narrative doesn’t branch out of control. But it’s only an illusion of meaning, because the choice doesn’t actually change the story. The story of every Covenant, and of the Shadowlands as a whole, is the same regardless of what we choose. The only thing our choice affects narratively is which quarter of the exact same unaltered story we play through.
And don’t even get me started on the idea that character power is a “meaningful choice.”
But this is actually impossible, because not only are they trying to make all of the Covenant abilities competitive against each other, they’re trying to make them competitive for each spec of the same class, some of which are wildly disparate in their mechanics and abilities.
Take my Covenant class ability, for example. Primordial Wave is the Necrolord Shaman ability. It’s a 45 second CD that casts Flame Shock on our target if it’s hostile, or Riptide if it’s friendly, and causes our next Lightning Bolt or Healing Wave, respectively, to hit all targets currently affected by our Flame Shock DoT/Riptide HoT for a buffed amount.
This is fantastic for Elemental and Restoration, because both of those specs have efficient ways of spreading that DoT/HoT, respectively, so it’s easy to get high value out of. But Enhancement doesn’t have those same tools. Enhancement doesn’t have Riptide, it has no way of spreading Flame Shock to multiple targets without casting it on each one individually, and Flame Shock has a cooldown that prevents it from being kept up on more than a few targets at a time i this way.
For Elemental and Restoration, this ability is fantastic. For Enhancement, it’s terrible. And because this difference is due to the difference between the specs themselves, there is no way for Blizzard to make Primordial Wave competitive for Enhancement without either A) making it OP for Elemental and Restoration; B) changing it so significantly for Enhancement alone that it might as well be a different spells; or C) change Enhancement’s spec mechanics so that they can spread Flame Shock’s DoT efficiently, potentially opening up a whole new can of balance worms.
Character power should never have been tied to Covenant choice.
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Please, do we not value critical thinking anymore?
Currently the quest chain that allows you to switch covenant takes at most two weeks. Make the quest auto complete without the second part. Guess what? Woobam, there is the ripcord.
Sure it might not make much sense RPG-wise, neither is doing 4 dungeons in 2 weeks and basically twiddling my thumbs inbetween.
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