please pull it Blizz .
Your current nerfs are making covenants less meaningful then if you would of pulled the ripcord.
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There you go, I fixed it for you.
That’s been my thought on fixing things - although not specific the way you’ve outlined. Your specifics deal with how to reconcile things from an RP perspective. I like it. 
That doesn’t really work in an MMO with various styles of content and widely changing partners/groups.
Again - you seem to be thinking from a single-player rpg perspective, not an MMO perspective.
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In Heroes of the Storm, you’re locked into the talents you choose for the entire match. There’s no way to swap around after you’ve made your choice.
Not even close. In a single player RPG, there’s no reason why you can’t have everything on your character at all times (see Skyrim), because there’s no design pillar that has you fulfill needs that other players lack. If you’re going to make a massively multiplayer game, the very first design question you have to ask is how to make players complements, rather than merely nuisances. And if you don’t have a good answer to that question, you get… well the current state of WoW since Cataclysm really.
It’s the only way to make an MMO(RPG) work. Otherwise you’re just playing an MMO action game and boiling players down to APM because there’s no other dimension by which they can set themselves apart from other players of the same class / spec.
No that would be you. In Dark Souls, you can boil fights down to twitch reflexes and make all difference in class expression due to physical finesse because the only one you’re holding back if you suck is you. In an MMO, where Blizzard wants a critical mass of lots of different players at lots of different spatial / reflex levels, they need to emphasize the RPG aspects in which your character gets to be strong in X because you’ve declared them to be strong in X, in trade for weaknesses in Y.
I mean, seriously, is D&D a single player RPG to you or…?
Sure, and after the match, the talents reset so you can always play mindgames with the opponents to see which talents you ought to build on a match per match basis. I don’t see how that addresses the problem.
EDIT: I mean, what you’re arguing here is that WoW has less commitment than a MOBA, which is already light on character commitment, in favor of twitch reflexes to carry the match. So thank you for making my argument even stronger I guess?
Don’t waste your time with Logos he’s just another Trollnechka and Khaeryn.
He’s just trying to derail the thread.
#pulltheripcord.
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Those who attempt to de-rail threads like this unknowingly help us keep it alive.
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Not sure why this thread is still alive, Ion said that they’d never pull the ripcord.
He may say that now, but it will be nice if this thread is still going once they realize the mistake they made. I told you so’s taste like chocolate cake.
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Replayability.
In Vanilla, where content was limited - sure.
But in todays WoW with so many kinds of content and players actively wanting and playing their class for the express purpose of playing across multiple specs/roles - then no, forced complement setups isn’t really enjoyable.
With so many combinations of group/raid/arena teams’ class make-ups, the ability to think, plan, and strategize is enjoyable and provides for diverse gameplay filled with meaningful choices. The idea that there’s a “correct” choice is a huge overstatement - there rarely is the correct choice, there’s just one combination (of many tens of thousands) available that may or may not be successful.
I disagree.
Talents, specs, essences, even corruptions being freely swappable don’t make the MMORPG of WoW not work. The restrictive systems of corruptions was annoying - but even a freely interchangable corruption system wouldn’t have somehow invalidated WoW as an MMORPG.
No they don’t. You have no authority to make statements about what’s “needed”.
D&D is not an MMORPG. It’s also not a single-player RPG.
D&D is fine with restrictions because you have your group from beginning to end - just like you have in WoW from encounter to encounter. So you can make your choices to function as a team.
Your D&D connection is fine as a parallel to WoW, but on a content by content basis - which is exactly what the flexibility players are asking aims to achieve: The ability to freely swap and change things from content to content.
Whenever people compare D&D to WoW it’s like they a re going apples and oranges are both fruit so they are exactly the same.
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I’m very happy to keep the thread front and center. Nothing I’ve done has derailed the thread. I haven’t brought up politics or any completely unrelated topics, nor do I want to see that happen. In fact the closest I’ve seen to that behavior would be those who attempt to side step my position by psychoanalyzing me, i.e. “you only want X because you’re…”.
I’m happy to keep discussing the issue. I’ve seen this points brought about ad nauseum on youtube, reddit, and elsewhere for weeks. But to date I haven’t seen any defenders of this position reckon with the other side of the issue, and some go as far as to say “who asked for this?”. I, and people like myself, have asked for this. There’s a market of people you don’t know that Blizzard is trying to cater to. You can understand them or just keep insinuating that they’re evil fun ruining tyrants.
As far as “I told you so’s” go, I’ve been running that victory lap since Cataclysm, no reason for me to stop now.
This. There are many other players like us that very much enjoy the punishing nature of these systems.
Ralph, Argorwhal, myself, and many others are huge proponents.
The biggest value to us is how punishing the system is to both casuals and try-hards alike for not playing the game the way we want it to be played.
Simply pick a class, a specialization, a type of content, and now a covenant and play the game that way.
If you deviate from that, you get punished. Either roll another character of the same class to vary your gameplay or just stop playing.
No, the relevant comparison is that you don’t have to have a lot of finesse to play D&D. You declare what you do, you built your character for the stats to declare it, and you roll a dice. Simple. It’s the kind of game that anyone can pick up, and how good you are at the game is heavily balanced toward how you plan your character outside the game.
In a MOBA or an action game, the vast bulk of your proficiency in the game results from your physical finesse, reflexes, etc. Those are all the way at the other extreme of the scale.
An MMORPG can’t be completely at either end. If it’s too far on the D&D end, there’s so many things outside the player’s control that they simply wouldn’t tolerate it from a videogame.
If it’s too far on the MOBA / action game end, then you’re just going to segment the playerbase according to physical finesse, and when people get tired of feeling like 2nd or 3rd class citizens, they’ll just quit. Further the game will just have players size other players up purely by their physical proficiency and make probabilistic decisions about how likely taking X player will “screw them” because the player “sucks”. So the community will invent more and more exclusive mechanisms for maximizing the probability they find physically competent players, because that’s the only standard left to measure.
MMORPGs must walk the line somewhere in the middle, allowing players to have a decent chunk of character power in virtue of their choices made outside the game, not just the second to second choices made in the game. This allows players to properly complete each other, gives players more dimensions to evaluate players than raider_io score, and makes endgame more inclusive because raids have to be balanced around the fact that people may not have perfectly optimal party comps for every fight, meaning tuning is more forgiving.
The quicker you understand this, the quicker you understand why Wrath had 12 million players, and the subs have been crap since Cataclysm.
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Skyrim.
Any why do you think Blizzard is doing this? They saw the success of Classic and they’re trying to see how they can mildly tweak the game to bring that segment of the market back to retail. The fact that Classic, an over 10 year old game, is rivaling retail to the degree that it is, is probably a major eye opener for them. They’re really going to be shocked once they get a Wrath server up.
But they’re not choices, because choices have consequences. There’s no strategy if you can just say “nevermind, I take it back” every 10 seconds.
Icyveins and other sites disagree. The choices are OBVIOUS based on the content you’re doing. I can look at a current talent tree and know what that talent is “for” in seconds, even if I’ve never played the class before. Blizzard basically smacks you upside the head with it.
The MMORPG of WoW has been broken since Cata.
Neither do you. The difference is, I’m providing arguments, you’re just mad.
Also known as… wait for it… GUILDS!
No, because content is tuned around respecs, which removes all RPG elements from each encounter and just makes the player expression in an encounter equivalent to an action game. That’s what you’re missing, over and over and over again.
I do think Classic is influencing this design approach - but my point still stands: it makes sense when content type is limited.
Which is exactly why there’s so much friction now - there are more kinds of content. It’s like trying to fit diesel engines into electric car designs. Sure there’s a lot of great aspects to diesel engines - but they just don’t fit into the current mold of cars.
You’re locked into your choices for the piece of content you’re doing. The consequence is not having access to the talents, essences, convenants, conduits, etc. that you didn’t choose.
There are still consequences, they’re just restricted on a content by content basis.
Warcraftlogs, WoWhead, and Icyveins do offer generic guidance on what likely functions the best in various scenarios - but that doesn’t mean those are “correct”.
I know of one boomkin that got world first boss damage dps on Mythic N’zoth for changing up a few things from the other top 9 boomkins - because there was freedom to swap, diversify, try things out, and break the mold of what the “correct” build was. That’s smacking back with meaningful choices enabled with flexibility.
I don’t think you know what MMORPG means then.
I disagree. It just removes the elements YOU value. There are other elements that players value in an RPG.
To be fair - in a fantasy game with magic involved, the sky is the limit when it comes to “RP”. So whatever you think is being “removed” is based on what you personally think is “required” of an RPG.
But last I checked, you’re not some RPG Diety that sets the standard for what is needed in an RPG.
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Nope! That’s not what I’m talking about! I’m not new to the term.
You can have Shamans drop a totem that empowers all the team members with a stronger ability to cleave. You can have Frost Mages apply a debuff to targets that increases their vulnerability to Frost damage. You can have Feral Druids have the ability to apply a damage increase to all beasts within your roster. You can have Unholy DKs be able to apply debuffs that increase the physical vulnerability of targets.
I can go on and on about synergy and building team compositions on that. But guess what? That’s not in the game. Hasn’t been for a very long time. So supporting a system that restricts players like this makes no sense because it essentially can lead to some players being pretty much useless.
Example: I couldn’t imagine using anything other than Kyrian or Venthyr for PvP progression. If it turns out that Night Fae or Necrolord are superior for PvE progression, I’m screwed. That’s never going to feel good because I want to partake in 3 aspects the game has to offer. I have to essentially choose which group of players I put on a lower pedestal and that’s crap.
If you think that Blizzard is interested in a Emerald Nightmare style of Mythic Raiding difficulty (which was cleared in a single night) then you’re sorely mistaken. And personally I’m with them on that notion. Mythic should be the hardest difficulty in the game for players who actually want to push themselves. I’ve done it. And personally the only thing that’s truly holding me back from wanting to do it again is this Covenant system which will only serve to restrict me from doing PvP if the Covenants don’t line up. Which is dumb.
I keep saying this over and over again because you’re choosing to ignore the strength difference between the Covenants. And not realizing how much further the rabbit hole goes in terms of players who are getting screwed by this design.
^ These ones in particular.
Because that would require a rehaul of how the game is and we’re so close to launch that I believe that’s not even on Blizzards table to do it. So either the game changes to adhere to the Covenant system or the Covenant system needs to change to adhere to the current game design. Which again, I don’t believe is on Blizzards table to even try and drastically change everything which will only leaves the latter.
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Thing is D&D is a table top rpg and WoW is a video gamje rpg. For a video game physical finesse and reflexes are required.
If WoW was a video game where you clicked on a dice icon to do things then yes it would be comparable to D&D but it is not so there is no comparison other then that both are types of rpgs.
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They had this planned out before Classic launched . They have even said in the past the plan at least 1 to 2 expacs ahead. They are probably already on the planning stages of 10.0 already . This has nothing to do with the success of Classic .
#pulltheripcordb4anymorestupidcommentsgetposted
Right, which is why I already said earlier that they need to double down on the vault design they already have, make gearing more separate (something PvPers have been asking for, FOREVER now anyway) and let that do the rest. If gearing made sense, the vaults design already restricts characters to being good at one kind of content in virtue of the fact that they can only get one piece of gear from a single piece of content per week.
But this has nothing to do with covenants. I can advocate for parallel gearing paths for the M+ and PvP types while still holding my position on covenants as good specialization.
Yeah but the talents are OBVIOUS on a fight by fight basis so your opportunity cost for picking other talents is zero. There’s no friction for the player. If you were locked into talents for a raid dungeon, the opportunity cost for maximizing your talents for one fight, is your loss in efficiency for all other fights in that raid dungeon for the rest of the week. Consequences.
At that high on the logs, a large portion of throughput is using guild mates to help you cheese high damage. I know, I did it for my friend in Wrath on a couple fights with my blood DK. Once the content is on farm, yeah people will use jank. What’s most important is progression.
I’ve described it several times. Sorry you don’t understand why WoW subs are still garbage.
Yeah elements which already exist in like 4 other genres making them not RPG specific. This is just dishonest.
You’re right. Street Fighter is now an RPG because we’re roleplaying fighters. Gotcha.