#PullTheRipcord

[Logosdruid-emerald-dream]

@Jalen-emerald-dream

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.

Yeah but then you’ll just have another expansion where every class / spec is identical between players and APM is the only differentiating factor. That’s not healthy for the long term of the game.

@Jalen-emerald-dream

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.

OK, you personally disagreeing doesn’t change the fact that, at the time, people just did garrisons mainly and logged until more cooldowns came up. What’s being explained is why the numbers dropped so severely early into WoD, not whether or not you had fun with the expansion.

@Jalen-emerald-dream

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.

Depending on how you define “boundaries” and “issues” then it could be the case that no such things are even possible for you. It would be like you saying “Yeah I’m all for circles, that also have four sides connected by 90 degree angles”.

@Jalen-emerald-dream

But in terms of participation for raids, that’s not horrid at all.

Given survivor bias and a bajilion systems to indirectly nerf raids, yes.

@Jalen-emerald-dream

Again we don’t know the number of players who have cleared Normal.

Flex, technically. “Normal” is “pre-normal” since Heroic is tuned to the “old normal” difficulty. So if that has high progression, it’s because Blizz HAD to add that pre-normal difficulty to get people raiding. I know it’s been a while, but recall that the reason we’re having this argument is that you had the hypothesis that the average raiding skill in the player base has increased over time. And now you’re citing that by saying “look if they keep adding easier difficulties, participation goes up! So obviously players are getting better!”

The point is that if players were getting better, pre-normal difficulties (two of them over two consecutive expansions) wouldn’t be necessary, regardless of how many people do or don’t participate in the newer / easier difficulty.

@Snowmaker-turalyon

Also, this kinda of thing will not work when you:

1. Actively encourage players to do multiple types of content.
2. Actively force players who want to get better at one content to do another (forcing PvPer to PvE, and vice versa).

Yep, I’ve been agreeing to this all thread. Of special note is the fact that PvPers and M+ people, who chose their content because they were tired of the time commitments for raiding, explicitly DON’T want to have to raid to be the best at their chosen content. And this is true whether or not covenants exist, in whatever form they exist, in whatever power level they exist, with whatever restrictions they exist.

It’s so basic that we can put the discussion of covenants off to the side completely, pressure Blizzard on that front until they cave (the Vault signals that they are on the fence about it. Why have 3 different kinds of content if you only get one piece of gear from one piece of content? It’s just something they need to fix regardless, and it’s kind of a red herring when discussing covenants due to that fact. Everyone I’ve heard agrees this change needs to happen, pro covenant flexibility or against.

@Waidmann-gilneas

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.

This is a trap. If a supporter of this choice (like myself) doesn’t do multiple content on a single toon, we’ll be accused of being lazy and just wanting the game dumbed down to our level. Another reminder that I used two specs for Arms, and two specs for DK tanking in Wrath and I enjoyed the mathematical advantages I got from doing such. I traded flexibility for efficiency.

If a supporter does do multiple content on a single toon, but verbally says it’s immersion breaking for them that their character never has any strengths or weaknesses, then they’re called a hypocrite.

@Zarrín-zuljin

You know what would’ve been an awesome way to implement “covenants” and “soulbinds?” Creating interesting and different story/questlines for players.

They’ve tried that. Most players don’t care. I’d bet money that Blizz has metrics that show most people just skip quest dialog, which is why they just come out and say (like it’s a blatantly obvious fact) that the only choice “meaningful” to players is power.

@Buz-alterac-mountains

Trying to change something, that players have had for years.

Well, during those years WoW subscriptions have tanked and not recovered since the Pre-Cata days. Blizzard told themselves they couldn’t get those people back, Classic happened, and Blizzard is going after them again. Smart business. Better 12 million subs than 3 million (or whatever insanely low number is left).

@Buz-alterac-mountains

Also I find it ironic that their solution to making it more “tune-able” is to severely limit it.

Why? It’s necessary. It can’t not be the case. If there’s an optimal talent selection for a given fight AND players can, at minimal cost, swap to that talent selection, AND everyone in the raid swaps to that talent selection, then raids will have to be tuned around that optimal talent selection.

The only tuning knob left is optimal APM. This is as deductive as any mathematical proof. There’s no circumstance which can be conjured up in which this isn’t the case.

@Buz-alterac-mountains

Compared to severly limiting it, which practically requires Blizzard to be near perfect with Balancing otherwise the entire X-pac is screwed.

No it really doesn’t, that’s the POINT of limiting it. If they have a raid and on average Blizzard can expect like 20% of the raid to show up with M+ specs because they can’t swap and M+ is their primary content, then guess what? That has to be the central tuning for the raid/fight.

What that means is that people that did pick optimal stuff are overtuned for the fight, and they can carry people that are undertuned for a fight. In exchange M+ groups might see some raid builds in their packs. And if M+ isn’t tuned around everyone having optimal talents, the same situation will apply.

That’s how RPG’s ought to work. The party gets a “bonus” to X when X happens and someone has relevant traits. The content shouldn’t be tuned assuming players always have the relevant traits for everything.

[Zarrín-zuljin]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

@Zarrín-zuljin

You know what would’ve been an awesome way to implement “covenants” and “soulbinds?” Creating interesting and different story/questlines for players.

They’ve tried that. Most players don’t care. I’d bet money that Blizz has metrics that show most people just skip quest dialog, which is why they just come out and say (like it’s a blatantly obvious fact) that the only choice “meaningful” to players is power.

I disagree with saying they tried it, because the only thing they’ve offered are some vague dialogue options that had no effect. In many cases in choosing a “different” dialogue choice just proceeded to being forced to give the “correct” response. As far as I remember, Aldor vs Scryer in BC worked in a somewhat fair fashion, offering some different content/storylines without having a major player-power discrepancy. But as mentioned - the general case is “Saurfang vs Sylvanas.” Nothing changes. That’s not branching options for content/storylines - it’s an illusion of a choice which has no bearing on anything.

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

@Buz-alterac-mountains

Compared to severly limiting it, which practically requires Blizzard to be near perfect with Balancing otherwise the entire X-pac is screwed.

No it really doesn’t, that’s the POINT of limiting it. If they have a raid and on average Blizzard can expect like 20% of the raid to show up with M+ specs because they can’t swap and M+ is their primary content, then guess what? That has to be the central tuning for the raid/fight.

What that means is that people that did pick optimal stuff are overtuned for the fight, and they can carry people that are undertuned for a fight. In exchange M+ groups might see some raid builds in their packs. And if M+ isn’t tuned around everyone having optimal talents, the same situation will apply.

That’s how RPG’s ought to work. The party gets a “bonus” to X when X happens and someone has relevant traits. The content shouldn’t be tuned assuming players always have the relevant traits for everything.

I agree with you mathematically but disagree with this strategy conceptually. It’s a needless overcomplication by adding an additional level of complexity in systems requiring additional variables in balancing. I get that if you allow players to optimize this on the fly, it will lead to tuning bosses with some expectation that players will optimize on the fly (making it more complicated/difficult). It also opens up the ability for players to “optimize” for one fight (probably suck at the next) and progress slowly with extending lockouts. But whatever.

My point mainly is that these systems aren’t needed/desired and removing them actually removes the complexity of these additional balances.

[Kyrrena-icecrown]

You’re thinking of Akama. Statwise he’s exactly the same. But if you chose the pro-Illidan demon hunter he’s not willing to work with you so you re-sever his soul and use the shade of akama instead.

[Jalen-emerald-dream (Jalën)]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Yeah but then you’ll just have another expansion where every class / spec is identical between players and APM is the only differentiating factor. That’s not healthy for the long term of the game

That may be the fact for your class but I have a hard time believing that. They for the most part have retained most of the design they’ve had in BFA, which each spec if pretty different from one another, while unprunning old abilities. I do not believe all the classes play the exact same at this point and require Covenants to feel different from one another.

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

OK, you personally disagreeing doesn’t change the fact that, at the time, people just did garrisons mainly and logged until more cooldowns came up. What’s being explained is why the numbers dropped so severely early into WoD, not whether or not you had fun with the expansion

Then you misread what was said. I wasn’t talking about my enjoyment. You said if you don’t like raiding, here’s this dumb garrison that does all your crafting for you. My response was, yeah but there was also PvP you could do. All in all, if you didn’t like raiding you could go do PvP. Had nothing to do with my enjoyment.

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Flex, technically. “Normal” is “pre-normal” since Heroic is tuned to the “old normal” difficulty. So if that has high progression, it’s because Blizz HAD to add that pre-normal difficulty to get people raiding. I know it’s been a while, but recall that the reason we’re having this argument is that you had the hypothesis that the average raiding skill in the player base has increased over time. And now you’re citing that by saying “look if they keep adding easier difficulties, participation goes up! So obviously players are getting better!”

The point is that if players were getting better, pre-normal difficulties (two of them over two consecutive expansions) wouldn’t be necessary, regardless of how many people do or don’t participate in the newer / easier difficulty

I don’t think that’s a strong argument at all. Because if we entertain your stance on Heroic being the “old normal” difficulty then we’d be running into the same wall with people saying “Raiding has become too difficult” and people would’ve quit. But in fact the only players who I’ve seen scream for nerfs are players who partake in LFR. Case in point right now being LFR N’zoth.

The people in Cata was saying that the raids were too difficult. Now you can just join a pug and at some points even down Mythic bosses. So yeah, I dare say the average playerbase has improved. They won’t be clearing Mythic, but the fact that pugs are downing bosses that are harder then Cataclysm bosses shows growth.

[Logosdruid-emerald-dream]

@Zarrín-zuljin

My point mainly is that these systems aren’t needed/desired and removing them actually removes the complexity of these additional balances.

I just explained why they’re needed. From a design perspective, they’re needed to make a bigger % of player power in certain contexts in the UI, rather than in their APM alone. It’s really basic.

@Jalen-emerald-dream

That may be the fact for your class but I have a hard time believing that. They for the most part have retained most of the design they’ve had in BFA, which each spec if pretty different from one another

No I mean two people of the same spec are identical, obviously.

@Jalen-emerald-dream

You said if you don’t like raiding, here’s this dumb garrison that does all your crafting for you. My response was, yeah but there was also PvP you could do.

No what I said was, the player perception at the time was… and here’s why the subs tanked.

@Jalen-emerald-dream

Because if we entertain your stance on Heroic being the “old normal” difficulty then we’d be running into the same wall with people saying “Raiding has become too difficult” and people would’ve quit.

But it is the old normal. They literally just called Flex “normal” and called “normal” “heroic” at the time. That’s just factually what happened.

@Jalen-emerald-dream

So yeah, I dare say the average playerbase has improved. They won’t be clearing Mythic, but the fact that pugs are downing bosses that are harder then Cataclysm bosses shows growth.

Or, it shows that the amount of exclusionary features that people are using to put pugs together while lowering the probability of getting “bads” are getting more sophisticated. But the fact that you can more exclusively pull a biased sample from a population on demand, doesn’t really say much about the population you’re sampling from.

[Jalen-emerald-dream (Jalën)]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

No I mean two people of the same spec are identical, obviously

I see no issue with that. Primarily because you can give everyone the same tools but only a few of them can apply it to their fullest potential. Every Hunter on our realm had access to Explosive trap during MoP. Only 1 of them was known for Rooftop PvP.

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

No what I said was, the player perception at the time was… and here’s why the subs tanked

It’s one of the primary reasons for sure. There just wasn’t any content.

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

But it is the old normal. They literally just called Flex “normal” and called “normal” “heroic” at the time. That’s just factually what happened

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Or, it shows that the amount of exclusionary features that people are using to put pugs together while lowering the probability of getting “bads” are getting more sophisticated. But the fact that you can more exclusively pull a biased sample from a population on demand, doesn’t really say much about the population you’re sampling from

It does though. The growth came along with the access to tools like Group Finder and all the information Wowhead spoon feeds the players. Back then our knowledge was limited and our access to the raids was essentially funneled into the servers that we played on and the guilds that housed them.

I’ll hold up the stance that I made it sound like the jump was massive, but I still hold that players across the board have gotten better at the game.

[Mossclaw-wyrmrest-accord (Mossclaw)]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Yeah but then you’ll just have another expansion where every class / spec is identical between players and APM is the only differentiating factor.

If it was just APM, that would be a boring game, but it’s not. It’s awareness, the understanding of the synergy between the three major roles in an encounter, the knowledge of how far you can push, and the understanding of the flow of the encounter. In fact, the more you learn, the more rich the tapestry of an encounter becomes.

Being able to go to a site and glean the best setup given the best circumstances is the not the boon to player performance that it is billed as. It may not even fit the player’s ability, although that is a rarer event.

I meandered a bit, but my point is that it does not take huge differences between characters to end in quite a bit of variance in the outcome. At the pro-player level, sure, I can see that, but the majority of players do not play at that level. There is no reason to design so much difference between choices of expression that it precludes players from feeling good about engaging in all forms of end-game content on the character that they main.

[Logosdruid-emerald-dream]

@Jalen-emerald-dream

Back then our knowledge was limited and our access to the raids was essentially funneled into the servers that we played on and the guilds that housed them.

I mean, as opposed to now where everyone is server hopping to only a few mega servers, and people are even jumping factions to do more high end raiding and avoid finding “bads”? This is just evidence for players being exclusive to ensure random success rather than a systemic change in the average of the whole population.

@Mossclaw-wyrmrest-accord

If it was just APM, that would be a boring game, but it’s not. It’s awareness, the understanding of the synergy between the three major roles in an encounter, the knowledge of how far you can push, and the understanding of the flow of the encounter. In fact, the more you learn, the more rich the tapestry of an encounter becomes.

i.e. optimizing your APM. The fact of the matter is that it’s the physical finesse of the players that dictates more than the choices they make about their character.

@Mossclaw-wyrmrest-accord

I meandered a bit, but my point is that it does not take huge differences between characters to end in quite a bit of variance in the outcome.

I know. Which is why we have 4 raid difficulties instead of 2. Blizzard needs to close that gap, and they doing it by taking some of the difference between players that shows up in fine motor skills, and brings it into the UI. It’s why pruning happened, it’s why so many corruptions, etc. were random procs. It’s very clear what Blizzard is doing, and it should be blatantly obvious at this point why they feel the need to do it.

@Mossclaw-wyrmrest-accord

There is no reason to design so much difference between choices of expression that it precludes players from feeling good about engaging in all forms of end-game content on the character that they main.

The fact that you don’t like the reason doesn’t imply there is no reason.

Edit: Some other things to note here is that feelings are subjective. Blizzard isn’t responsible for you “feeling good about X” because they simply can’t be. It’s impossible.

We had this system with dual specs in Wrath. I got a mathematical benefit to using two Arms specs rather than using an Arms spec and a Prot spec. I got a benefit to using Blood / Frost tanking specs on my DK rather than just one tank and one dps spec. In Wrath people just built jack of all trades “cookie cutters” for the most part and didn’t care that you could use dual spec to optimize. They didn’t “feel bad” that I did more dps than them on ST / AoE fights because I specialized.

Further, in the present, note that legendaries are going to have a very similar lockout structure for a large chunk of the expansion. You spend you 100 ash to make a legendary, and that legendary will be good for some content, bad for others. You can’t make another legendary to do the other content until next week. If you want to bump the ilvl of your legendaries, it costs you more weeks worth of ash and so on. It’s basically the same exact lockout system until very very far into the expansion and not a soul complains about how the legendaries are designed in that way. Subjective.

No one controls how the players feel about X but the players.

[Buz-alterac-mountains]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Well, during those years WoW subscriptions have tanked and not recovered since the Pre-Cata days. Blizzard told themselves they couldn’t get those people back, Classic happened, and Blizzard is going after them again. Smart business. Better 12 million subs than 3 million (or whatever insanely low number is left).

Grasping for straws a bit?

That’s not related at all and you know it.

The reason sub numbers dropped were due to various other reasons. Not because players gained the freedom to switch between all three specs / talents at will.

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Why? It’s necessary. It can’t not be the case. If there’s an optimal talent selection for a given fight AND players can, at minimal cost, swap to that talent selection, AND everyone in the raid swaps to that talent selection, then raids will have to be tuned around that optimal talent selection.

Because as I’ve said they’ve done that for literal YEARS and now they all of a sudden want to do it a harder way for no apparent logical reason. Especially after one show of an X-pac when their subs are probably down and the only thing keeping them a float is Classic.

Seems logical to take a gamble like that. But I suppose Overwatch is doing the same thing so… I’m not entirely surprised. Blizzard never learns

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

No it really doesn’t, that’s the POINT of limiting it.

Yes it does and it only takes a few minutes to look at the current state of the beta and see that Blizzard are realizing this SYSTEM DOESN’T WORK… so in a panic they are nerfing pretty much everything to the ground.

Wait, that sounds familiar?

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

That’s how RPG’s ought to work. The party gets a “bonus” to X when X happens and someone has relevant traits. The content shouldn’t be tuned assuming players always have the relevant traits for everything.

That’s how a singleplayer rpg’s work.

For an MMO, it can very rarely work that way. Why? Because it’s simply bad design.

You want your meaningful choices? Covenants, with cosmetics and their signature abilities. There’s your meaningful choice, they can go back to being perma locked. But the 48 Class specific abilities should work just like a new talent row.

It’d be easier for Blizzard, it’d be easier for the players and we wouldn’t have this giant headache that Shadowlands is going to be at the beginning for a lot of players until they inevitably fix it during 9.1 / 9.2, just like they did with Legion & BFA.

[Timbaeslice-frostmourne]

@Buz-alterac-mountains

The reason sub numbers dropped were due to various other reasons. Not because players gained the freedom to switch between all three specs / talents at will.

This makes me laugh, LFR has released since then so clearly LFR is the reason sub numbers have tanked ! Damn the casuals we could have been in a golden age still! GRR!!

[Logosdruid-emerald-dream]

@Buz-alterac-mountains

The reason sub numbers dropped were due to various other reasons. Not because players gained the freedom to switch between all three specs / talents at will.

The reason the subs tanked was because raids got too hard. And raids got too hard because Blizzard made a conscious decision in Cataclysm to streamline talent trees, reforging, removal of stat caps, etc. and instead make the difficulty “in the environment / mechanics” of raid encounters. This is just historical fact, and quite frankly incredulity isn’t an argument.

@Buz-alterac-mountains

Because as I’ve said they’ve done that for literal YEARS and now they all of a sudden want to do it a harder way for no apparent logical reason.

A reason has been provided, you don’t like it. But you don’t get to use literal logical fallacies such as an appeal to incredulity, and then complain that a reason is / is not logical. You aren’t qualified to make such a judgment.

@Buz-alterac-mountains

Yes it does and it only takes a few minutes to look at the current state of the beta and see that Blizzard are realizing this SYSTEM DOESN’T WORK … so in a panic they are nerfing pretty much everything to the ground.

No, Blizzard is just not committing to a design decision like a bunch of cowards. They know what they have to do, they’re just hedging and watering down their systems because they don’t want to pull the trigger. Their indecision will cost them.

@Buz-alterac-mountains

That’s how a singleplayer rpg’s work.

And multiplayer RPG’s like D&D
And MMO’s like Classic EQ
And more examples I can go on about, but it’s you who’s making assertions without arguments, so I’m done wasting my time.

@Buz-alterac-mountains

You want your meaningful choices? Covenants, with cosmetics and their signature abilities. There’s your meaningful choice, they can go back to being perma locked. But the 48 Class specific abilities should work just like a new talent row.

Those choices aren’t meaningful because metrics show that players don’t care about mere aesthetics and quest dialogue. Players put more time into things that enhance their gameplay. That’s why Blizzard is doing it, on top of the other reasons I listed. Your rhetorical equivocation on “meaningful” won’t dodge that bullet.

@Timbaeslice-frostmourne

This makes me laugh, LFR has released since then so clearly LFR is the reason sub numbers have tanked !

Who said that?

[Timbaeslice-frostmourne]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Who said that?

I thought we were taking monumental leaps?

[Yogsothòth-tichondrius]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Those choices aren’t meaningful because metrics show that players don’t care about mere aesthetics and quest dialogue. Players put more time into things that enhance their gameplay. That’s why Blizzard is doing it, on top of the other reasons I listed. Your rhetorical equivocation on “meaningful” won’t dodge that bullet.

Yep, blizzard keeps thinking everyone wants to rp this game. The last covenant i want to go is night fae, but guess what it’s by far the best for spriest, no new xmog for me.

[Waidmann-gilneas (Waidmann)]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

Another reminder that I used two specs for Arms, and two specs for DK tanking in Wrath and I enjoyed the mathematical advantages I got from doing such. I traded flexibility for efficiency.

Ok I’m confused .

How did you use 2 different specs fore arms when arms is a spec?

[Waidmann-gilneas (Waidmann)]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

OK, you personally disagreeing doesn’t change the fact that, at the time, people just did garrisons mainly and logged until more cooldowns came up. What’s being explained is why the numbers dropped so severely early into WoD, not whether or not you had fun with the expansion.

The reason subs dropped early on was not because of raid or die . The early drop was due to the flying debacle.

Subs dropping to raid or die came with 6.2 being such a long patch with nothing other then Tanaan being offered for open world . Then again there were plenty of us that could find stuff to do besides raiding . Some of us did the mythic wod dungeons and worked on alts.

#pulltheripcordwodoverbfa

[Mafic-emerald-dream (Mafic)]

Anima is boring. Anima as a reward for questing is boring.

Soul Bind system is still boring.

Conduits and legendaries are cool I guess. Covenants have been nerfed to irrelevancy at this point.

[Waidmann-gilneas (Waidmann)]

@Logosdruid-emerald-dream

No, Blizzard is just not committing to a design decision like a bunch of cowards. They know what they have to do, they’re just hedging and watering down their systems because they don’t want to pull the trigger. Their indecision will cost them.

They are probably doing more damage to their systems with the watering down of them they are doing.

All they had to do is uncouple the class abilities from the covenants by allowing us to earn them as talents as we quest. If they wanted a way to tie them to each covenant a better way would to have been to give them ranks .

The more rep you earn from a covenant by helping them via WQs the more powerful a spell becomes.

Soul binds should of been made to work with any class ability or just unhook those from them and have them as just basic passive tree.

Signatures just make them zone only abilities.

[Daark-cenarius]

@Waidmann-gilneas

Ok I’m confused .

How did you use 2 different specs fore arms when arms is a spec?

Dual Talent.

@Waidmann-gilneas

The reason subs dropped early on was not because of raid or die . The early drop was due to the flying debacle.

8 million people quit over flying? Yikes. How did vanilla or classic ever make it?

[Waidmann-gilneas (Waidmann)]

Dual talent is switching between specs . How do you do 2 of the same spec other then having it on 2 different toons.

@Daark-cenarius

8 million people quit over flying? Yikes. How did vanilla or classic ever make it?

If you actually read all of what I said in response to Legos going people quiting early in the expansion.

I said THE EARLY DROPS were from the flying debacle and the raid or die drops came with 6.2 when there was not much open world content.

But you keep cherry picking like you always do and thanks for bumping the ripcord thread.

[Daark-cenarius]

@Waidmann-gilneas

I said THE EARLY DROPS were from the flying debacle and the raid or die drops came with 6.2 when there was not much open world content.

WoD started with 11ish million players. They bought it knowing there was no flying. Subs fell in 2015, long before 6.2. You believe that people dropped $80 on WoD, leveled to max, then quit in 2-3 months only because of flying? Ok.

@Waidmann-gilneas

But you keep cherry picking like you always do and thanks for bumping the ripcord thread.

Do you think that people just look at the total posts on the thread but don’t actually read the posts. And just assume since the thread is popular, everyone agrees? Ok.