My Ret Paladin/Outlaw/Feral who can never find any farking HASTE on anything loved reforging.
I still hate that they removed that.
Vers, Vers, Vers, Vers, Crit Crit Crit on every fricken thing is really making me annoyed lately.
No one was forced to grind the ring or cloak . I did both because I wanted to and to be honest those are truly the last 2 real legendaries this game has had .
The people that complained about the cloak are those that couldn’t get to Ordos at the time because they had no cloak . To be honest it has been long enough Blizz should just open it up so any one can do him now .
If they’re gonna remove the ability to get an item that locks content out, they need to open the content.
It’s kind of stupid to keep the lock in place when the means to get the key no longer exists.
Is there an actual reason they had to remove the cloaks in the first place?
I mean, most of the other legendaries can still be gotten.
Like I said it has been long enough now , they should open it for all to do . Should of been done by Legion to be honest .
I got the cloak and the Ordos kill the first day or 2 after Timeless Isle opened . So I honestly don’t care if people without the cloak do it now .
To be honest I care even less then people that care about keeping covenants locked care about that . And the being able to grind another covenants renown after getting one to 40 so the abilities can be switched around is a reasonable compromise. In fact one might call that pulling the ripcord.
Ring and Cloak were BiS during their respective expansions iirc. Many, many people cried out that they were forced to PvP in order to get them. Not to mention during TBC that Glaives were BiS and players moaned about the drop rate for both.
This isn’t new.
Guess what the pvp part was the easiest part . The hardest part was pre nerf when you had to get 6k valor instead of 3 k . Even that was easy to do .
There were plenty of people that did fine without getting the cloak or ring that raided .
They just gave a little push . The difference is with these systems you pretty much can’t even play open world content especially at max level without them .
Tier sets , trinkets , and pre Legion on legendaries did not make up a big chunk of what used to be passive abilities in your spell book or already established talent trees , like the Legion on systems do .
Wow. What a narrow view. I love the themed choice. I love the storylines. I love the idea of choosing a covenant and one and done for the entire expac.
But they tied it to character power, so I guess I’ll just not enjoy playing the game in various end-game content, right?
I run a training guild who’s only requirement is that you bring your best, not be the best. We take any spec, and spec/cov combo. It’s not important at the level I do content.
I hate this system as it’s been designed. It’s not good enough for me, you’re absolutely right. But I certainly don’t fit in the narrow box you’ve designed for those who don’t like the system. >.<
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An online game without any challenge is one that’s already dead.
I feel you are throwing a lot of nonsense that may or may not be related. For example, just how popular is classic? Do you have the numbers? If TBC weren’t coming out how many people do you think were still playing classic? My guess is not many.
Let’s not throw anecdotal evidence around like they mean something. There may or may not be a relation there, you don’t know, I don’t know. I’d much prefer to keep the discussion logical and reasonable.
I don’t think classic was popular for the reason you think it is (and was it really that popular? how long did people stay on classic sercer? Would they be playing still if TBC weren’t coming out?)
Here are my final thoughts on covenant abilities being locked, since it’s clear that you aren’t open to thinking about this from a different angle. From a gameplay standpoint, it is at best a non-issue. For people who don’t care, it might as well not be there. But for people who do care it hinders gameplay. Therefore objectively speaking it can and should be consider a problem.
From an RPG standpoint, I’d argue it’s optional. Think about it, if Blizzard had not marketed it as a RPG element, and covenant abilities were like a talent row, would you really care? At what point in your story play through did you think, geez, my covenant abilities really totally make sense to the plot here? It’s optional at best. I came from Moongurde, I used to RP, and you don’t ever see people in RP throwing the name of their abilities around. You might see DK gripping people in RP, or rogue sneaking up on people, but you are not going to see “I pop my swarming mist and envelope all around me in a bloody shadow.” Besides, think on all the RPG games you’ve played, give me one that forces you to make a decision that affects character power without providing sufficient information (keep in mind when you first make your decision you don’t even have soul binds).
It’s been covered repeatedly in games media that a large share of WoW’s MAU is due to classic. I could spend a bunch of time digging to find those articles, but you could just speculate on how the journals got their numbers, or if they were justified in inferring what they did from the wording of the investor calls. Given that there’s potentially no end to your selective skepticism, I don’t see the point in spending hours digging this up, because I have no evidence that any of this is in good faith.
I’ve done thorough research on it, but the last time I carefully argued my case, I was basically just called an autist and ignored (data matters until it’s inconvenient) and I just don’t have the energy to bother this moment.
This coming from the guy that says “My position on unlocking abilities is right unless you can prove me wrong”. Spare me.
Begging the question.
Anything can hinder gameplay in any game. Hence Game Genie back in the NES days. “X can hinder gameplay” isn’t sufficient for a lack of X.
Problems are normative oughts, objective facts are is. Need I remind you of the is-ought gap? Moore’s open question?
Yes, covenants as they were advertised was the only thing that got me to buy the expansion. Blizzard’s inability to do math and make things remotely balanced caused me to leave in disgust. Now I’m happier leveling in classic where at least my gameplay isn’t hampered by Blizzard’s inability to do math.
They aren’t plot devices, they’re meant to differentiate a character within a class as a specialist for certain kinds of content. That’s it. This is equivocating on “RP”. I don’t care about the story. I don’t care about dialogue trees or any of that boring crap. I care about making a character that’s different from your character in virtue of my decisions, and not just gear drops / which dungeon groups we get. That’s the heart of roleplaying is that my choices dictate my outcomes, without having to rely on physical dexterity to bring them out.
Vanilla WoW (RIP Ret Paladins). Diablo 2 (RIP people who don’t prep for immunities). Dungeons and Dragons (I knew absolutely nothing about class mechanics when I first played). Final Fantasy 1 (You choose your 4 character classes before you start the game). The question is, which RPG’s can’t I name that do this, and the answers are going to be on rails “JRPG’s” where you don’t actually choose anything and your entire game is just on rails.
Even if your point about knowledge didn’t have counterexamples, no one is arguing that knowledge can’t be accommodated. You want to try out your skills / soulbinds in a training dungeon? Knock yourself out. Try things out all you want before you make a decision. I’m 100% in favor of Blizzard adding a practice dungeon you can queue for with AI bots or something. But trying things out doesn’t get you “Let’s make characters with 100% strengths in all situations due to freespecs”. Just doesn’t follow.
The heart of an MMO is players needing other players because they can’t do everything themselves, and this goes not just for inflated boss numbers and the trinity, but within roles in a party. You should have specs / classes pigeonholed into ST damage, and others with weak ST and strong AoE where you can’t just freespec out of it on a whim. Weak damage and necessary party support skills (like heroism). And all archetypes should need each other to complete endgame content.
If we don’t have that (like now) then everyone does everything and you just take the best numbers / utility and you’re literally just relying on Blizzard’s math to see if you get a raid spot or not. Lame.
I’ve always thought the restrictions made sense in single player rpgs, not mmo rpgs with various types of content.
In vanilla, you could swap your talent choices easily and the game didn’t have arena or m+.
The restrictions don’t make sense from a lore perspective. The restrictions work against the goal of character identity. The restrictions remove meaningful choice and water down the “choice” when most players end up picking what sims the best.
The restrictions ended up being a combination of glass shards and sand in an otherwise delicious meal.
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I think the numbers prove the exact opposite. Not being able to switch pushes people towards the math.
If we could freely make meaningful choices, tons and tons of casual players (who dwarf the top 1%) would be able to make choices for themselves and have fun experimenting and testing things out in their own rather than being pushed towards the meta.
The current setup with the restrictions is what’s lame. Being free to make choices on a content by content basis would have been fun an enjoyable for so many casual players.
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I repeat covenant locking sucks for people who plays multispec multicontent.
It’s not about mythic raiding only. So stop using mythic raiding as the reason that we don’t need it to be swappable.
Eg. Shadow priest. Mind Games make or break pvp but night fae is far ahead in Mythic plus. Kyrian offers a unique ay style that can be a brand new experience especially for raiding.
Guess what? Pick one and stuck.
I was venthyr, but after 2400 I swap out to focus on mplus.
Guess what? I stop pvping because without mind games, it felt bad.
These are not your few percent differences. Allowing us to switch, does not remove content from you. But adds content to us! Why do ripcord defenders care about how other plays this game.
Why?
It’s as bad as people advocating to remove LFR MPlus Mythic Raids Pvp. Let people play what they want to play.
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True, but specs weren’t basically different classes like they are now. Your class kit was your class kit, and you got what you got. So changing specs change which skills are emphasized a bit, but that’s it. Now? You want AoE go fire, 2 target cleave go Frost, and then within those specs you have talents that MASSIVELY change your playstyle to be more ST or AoE focused, etc.
People have tools to make their characters basically good at any situation with the press of a few buttons, which didn’t exist in classic. As I said in my first post (today) classes seem to be designed with a grab bag of tools that let people do a bit of everything and thus people just flock to “the best” in any category because genuine class tradeoffs are non existent. Hence covenants.
I don’t buy the lore argument. The idea of soulbinding is that you literally bind your soul with the energy in the realm you’re aligning with. It’s not about who you’re buddies with, it’s about what kind of energies your soul takes on, and your soul only goes one place when it dies. So even if I cared about lore and not function (I don’t care about lore) the argument isn’t coherent.
The restrictions are the ONLY thing that can give your character identity, otherwise you’re just a few button clicks away from any other character. It’s the same problem Diablo 3 has. What they need is more permanent character differentiating things you pick while leveling to identify your character.
Yeah we restore meaningful choice by removing choice because everyone just does everything with a few clicks of a button. Yes. That makes perfect sense. I’m sold.
Yeah if Blizz did this right, players shouldn’t have to sim to figure out what the covenant abilities do. Venthyr for hunters should just obviously be far and away the best ST choice. The fact that other covenants are even in the same ballpark is laughable because otherwise you just pick them given the AoE utility. If the players can’t look at the ability and go “Yeah I know what that does” then the system is badly implemented in practice, but that’s not an argument against it in principle.
But in Diablo 3 you can swap at will and people STILL just follow the math / guides. We have a clear counterexample for this. People are going to be lazy and follow the math no matter what, it’s a ceteris paribus condition no matter what you position is.
The only question is if we’re going to make the meta have tradeoffs (sure you can be a nightfae warrior, but your ST damage is going to lack) or if we just let people swap so they never have any weaknesses in their character whatsoever, and all that matters is tuning and physical dexterity. That’s the only relevant consideration here.
Yeah but that never works out in practice. It’s a nice thought, but lazy people gonna be lazy. Also freespecs are the opposite of meaningful choices because they’re consequence free.
You know in wotlk they introduced dual spec?
My rogue was pve/pvp spec in them.
Prior to that? I respec and pay 50g.
The pain point? Needing to click through all your talent points back and forth.
We moved away from that as part of QOL.
And the most important point being. I can be optimal in either content with a flip. I’m not locked to being optimal in 1 content I choose to excel in.
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Yes, I had two arms specs on my warrior (AoE and ST). I gave up the flexibility for DPS / Tank, or DPS / PVP in order to have multispec at the ready for PvE content. I know, right? Tradeoffs! It’s shocking!
My DK had two PvE tank specs (blood, frost). No DPS spec, no PVP spec. Why? I wanted flexibility between different kinds of fights, and it cost me something.
That’s the point. Eventually you have costs or constraints, otherwise you run into the problem where the only differentiating factor is gear / dexterity / class tuning.
But what you’re missing is that we didn’t just move away from clicking through talents. We can swap 3 specs on a whim, swap talents within each spec on a whim, have a separate PvP talent tree, etc. This is far beyond 2 specs (which I’d happily go back to).
Dude, if you wanted to switch. You can. With the cost of respec 50g? Lol and slight inconvenience.
You can’t do that now.
Shocking to equate the two.
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Sure, but what you’re missing and what I already explained is that classes didn’t have as many tools back then as they did now. So it’s not like there’s an “AoE” spec, a “ST” spec and so on. In some sense your class was more restrictive. Now most classes have tools for everything, all that matters is tuning (and there’s the expectation that classes should be tuned to do everything).
So there’s no specialization anymore. Hence covenant skills.
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All I want is to be optimal in the multiple contents I do, which I can prelegion, and partly BFA.
I can’t now.
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