WoD was the least “raid or die” expansion. You could gear yourself up in heroic gear via just the garrison missions. Only thing you had to do to set it up. Get a few first boss kills on said difficulty.
So basically exactly as the game is now, just with new cosmetics? I agree, but we can’t have that. They need to limit our ability to play the game. I’m surprised they don’t just limit the players to 6 hours a day.
I’m not talking about gear. I’m talking about stuff to do in the world. As was everyone else making the complaints at the time.
I apologize, lately any mention of raid or die has been usually about gear. Though, even when not counting gear as an issue. WoD did have other things to do. Technically it had the first emissary type quest, clear this area to fill a bar, and had other daily options. PvP through world, ashran, bg, arenas. it’s just garrisons took over every aspect of the game that it actually became log in, garrison table, log out. So it still was the least raid or die expansion.
And meaningful in the worst way. I’m choosing “what’s the least bad option for my class?”
There is absolutely no fun in that meaningful choice. Yes it, it does have meaning, but I would hope that a game aimed at providing entertainment could see that creating a system where I choose the “least bad” option is a poor idea. No one is getting hyped or excited for “well out of these two uninteresting and fairly useless abilities option B has the least amount of wasted things for my class”.
For people to love this game and keep coming back it needs to be a choice of “both of these abilities/covenants are AWESOME I want them both so bad but I can only choose one. I can’t decide which one to take!” That is something you don’t hear in feedback about the covenant, conduit, soulbind system.
Had they designed the Covenant system with that in mind then we wouldn’t be in this predicament. If you remove the power progression part of the Covenant system and make the abilities and conduits interchangeable, then we wouldn’t have to spend another expansion trying to balance a system that’ll never be balanced.
I disagree. Primarily because I was a PvP only player during that expansion and not once felt pressured to do Raiding. That, and my realm at the time was big for World PvP and there was a ton of fights that went on.
And I’m personally not against that. I think that the Devs should’ve started with the core part of the game first. I’m all for RPG elements that don’t step over boundaries and cause issues.
For instance I loved the fact that as a Hunter I could expose targets in the underground part of Vault of the Wardens. Or Prot Paladins and DHs having an easier time exposing the demon at the end of the Court of Starts. Or hell even all of the randomized traps to lure the guards away from the 2nd boss that could be utilized by certain classes or even professions.
But in terms of participation for raids, that’s not horrid at all. Again we don’t know the number of players who have cleared Normal. And I’m hard pressed to believe it’s between 50-60% of the WoW playerbase. Me personally, I’d call that a success while also taking a look at the amount of players who even tried to begin with.
Like I’ve said recently make the class abilities obtainable via leveling so we can use them like talents but give a way so there is some player power to them being tied to the covenants like ranks.
Have different ranks for them that are earned via rep when we do wqs in a covenants zone. There will be some that may get farmed more then others depending on what specs or content a person does . Then for the signature ones just make them zone abilities.
#ripcord9.0.5
That’s a design and game philosophy that only Blizzard can decide. If this is the direction they want the game to go to then sure, nothing the rest of us can do.
I will say this again, like I’ve said in many other threads. For me, raid is primary content, but I also enjoy M+ and PvP. If I pick a covenant best for raid and it’s junk for M+ and/or PvP, then I will simply not play those content. If this is what Blizzard wants, then so be it.
Also, I am not entirely sure why others’ punishment is value to you.
Again, this is a game philosophy kinda of thing that Blizzard has never mentioned. If this is the direction they want the game to go then so be it, I know many will play less of the game or simply stop altogether.
Also, this kinda of thing will not work when you:
If they really want to push this, then they need to decouple all content types first. Which I REALLY severely doubt this is what they are going for.
Please just pull it already. Cosmetics only for covenants!
Maybe he doesn’t want casuals to play his game . Maybe the real elitist aren’t the min/max meta slaves but the rp choices matter you must play this way , our way or not play at all crowd is.
#ripcord9.0.5
It really felt like one of those “because I can’t have neither can you” sort of thing.
One thing I’ve noticed is that most of ripcord supporters are saying why it’s a problem for us, while most of those against ripcord are saying why it’s not a problem for them, or that we should’ve simply played the game as they were.
The irony is they will do multiple forms of content on a single toon and still want people to be punished for doing the same.
They say they don’t mind being punished themselves but I find that to be a large pile of steaming male bovine patty.
Obviously Blizzard is taking their inspiration on “meaningful choice” from American elections.
Cause trying to decide which turd is less of a turd is a great decision!
You know what would’ve been an awesome way to implement “covenants” and “soulbinds?” Creating interesting and different story/questlines for players. No powers attached. Choices with whom to side with and let us see how it interacts in the world. And if you want to experience other storylines, play another character. Pick a side, make choices, experience stories, receive aesthetics, and let’s see how NPCs react to our decisions.
As a BFA example, if I side with Sylvanas vs Saurfang, I want citizens in Orgrimmar to be “boo”-ing me as I walk by afterwards. But I don’t want to have a 10% DPS reduction, otherwise I’ll never side with Sylvanas.
The punishing aspect of this system - limiting players effectiveness in content types in exchange for aesthetics and/or effectiveness in other content - seems designed to force people into one form of content (or, when they have to do other forms of content, they have to do it at a mediocre level). On top of that, every time they find they need to “re-tune” something (because balancing 36 specs AND all of these aspects is pretty much impossible) players will get hit with the “punishment” stick.
On top of that, these are more examples of pure bloat tossed on for the sake of bloat. Try getting a new player or a returning player and explaining the BFA systems of pathfinder, azerite armor, azerite necklace/essences, legendary cloak, and corruption. Then explain the need to do PVE/PVP/M+/Raids/Visions/Assaults/Emissary to try to accomplish everything in a week.
“Okay, so you have this azerite necklace, and you need to get essences for it which are unlocked via Island Expeditions, Battlegrounds, ranked PVP, Raids, Mythic+ and reputation grinds. Also, the essences have ranks to them and you need to progress to get higher ranks. Also the necklace levels up as you gain artifact power from… well pretty much anything to some degree or another.
“Also, your head, neck, and shoulders are azerite armor slots, and they unlock certain special enhancements, and ideally you want to maximize the best combination of possible enhancements across the three. If you don’t get the best items though don’t worry - just save up enough titan residuum and go buy them. You get titan residuum from scrapping other azerite armor and/or doing Mythic+ dungeons each week!
“Also, some of your gear will end up being corrupted and potentially have cool abilities - though some of them are completely useless. It’ll vary for your class and spec and stats. You have to level up your cloak to increase your corruption resistance so you don’t just immediately die from having corruption (or have weird things happen to you in the middle of combat). Also, you can cleanse corruption off the items and/or buy new corruption for some combination of corrupted mementos, echoes of nyalotha, and coalescing visions.
“And for content, you can raid looking for raid, normal, heroic, and mythic difficulty for loot. And dungeons can be normal, heroic, mythic, and mythic+ which goes up in difficulty! Then there’s battlegrounds, epic battlegrounds, brawls, arenas, ranked arenas, ranked battlegrounds, and world PVP. Then there’s holidays/events, and things like brawler’s guild.
“Every week you should complete at least one M+15 dungeon each week to get the maximum item level item - which comes with corruption - from your chest (and titan residuum), do your emissary quests and assaults to get echoes of nyalotha (plus resources), fill up your conquest bar to get a PVP chest (and more echoes), and do a 5 mask vision for a high ilvl item with corruption as well! Then try to fit in a raid to get more gear.
“Then, every time you get an item, run a complicated simulation to figure out if it’s actually an improvement/how you should change your azerite armor/optimize your corruptions/etc.”
I tried bringing back friends and honestly they looked at it and gave up after a month. And Shadowlands seems even MORE convoluted. Optimizing covenants/soulbinds. A thousand things to bring up the number and quality of options in your weekly vault. Even the command table got more complicated.
The game desperately needs story immersion like this. I have friends who tried to get into the game, but couldn’t get invested in the story (especially because the leveling doesn’t allow you to complete a story before you’re thrown into the bog of endgame systems.)
I have no issue making alts for story purposes. I made one of every class in Legion because I loved the concept of the order halls. Some were bigger hits and others were misses, but I loved the idea of my class having a real story impact. Blizzard constantly fails to understand this simple principle.
Even if I may have thought the BfA story was utter trash, and that they’ve butchered Sylvanas in about every conceivable way, you cannot deny that the choice offered in that questline brought up engagement in the story like never before. The complaints about that questline were never “Gosh why am I not getting any cool powers from this?” It was entirely “Gosh, why is this not changing my story at all, to the point I’m just doing the same quests as the rebels but reporting to Nathanos afterwards?”
Trying to change something, that players have had for years.
Yep, seems smart and in the know. Not ignorant at all (sarcasm) 
(Primarily talking about Blizzard not you btw.)
Also I find it ironic that their solution to making it more “tune-able” is to severely limit it. Where as if it was a talent row (like it should be) you wouldn’t have that issue as much because if a Talent dies in a patch, like what sometimes happens. Players won’t be as annoyed by it as it’s a simple swap.
Compared to severly limiting it, which practically requires Blizzard to be near perfect with Balancing otherwise the entire X-pac is screwed.
Again, smart. (sarcasm)
LMAO That fish feast change.
I am 1000% convinced nobody plays WoW at Blizzard outside of Ion in Mythic raid. What on EARTH.
I agree. Remember the starting quest for the Demon Hunter where at the end you have to pick between one of the two DHs? Guess what the difference is in terms of story? Absolutely nothing. There are opportunities like this where they could’ve expanded upon for so much more.
This is also what confuses me whenever I hear people refer to WoW as a RPG. Let’s be real, if you were playing RPG, there are much better ones out there. Even FF14 is a better RPG than WoW is.
Technically, the system wont punish them. Or at least that much since they’re never going to participate in a level of content where it actually matters. Most likely, they wont even really use their ability if it has a cd longer than 60s, which again is fine since they’re probably going to farm Torghast floor 1 for their legendary and then complain it takes way too long to get their legendaries, or that those of us who are clearing floor 8 are getting way too coddled(for lack of better word).
In the DH order hall, you do get one or the other as you progress, and one is a ghost because of his fate in that starter quest.