One topic that these forums haven’t discussed much in relation to covenants is how tying player power to one’s choice of covenants will negatively impact the role playing community.
I’m a Tauren restoration druid. Role play is important to me. I like to do keys. My best covenant for pushing keys is necrolords. /smh
To not handicap myself, I will go necrolords and I will hate every moment of it.
I invite other RPers to post how negatively tying player power to convenant choice will negatively impact their game.
I understand the concerns, but at the end of the day Blizzard won’t be swayed by RP. We’re the type of players who will always find our own fun. That’s something Blizzard has given the freedom for, but ultimately RP is what we do with it.
I like to run M+. I’m a Heroic Raider. I’m firmly setting my choice for Night Fae for role play reasons. Because to me, role playing and the feel of my character is more important. Unless you’re MDI or World First, I don’t think choosing a Covenant you won’t enjoy to be the right choice. However, you are making that choice because you’ve deemed what’s important to you.
Mostly, I’m on the fence about the restriction. Honestly it doesn’t even seem to be that bad switching. But I can respect the interesting point of having a choice actually matter, so I’ll wait to see how it plays out before condemning it.
There is no real point to the choice though. None of the covenants talk about it after making “the choice”, and you do world quests and work for every covenant after choosing. The only thing choosing does is lock you out from the other covenant sanctuaries(after working with them leveling and still doing world quests for them in their zones), the last half of the leveling stories(based on my beta leveling experience the covenant stories feel more of an ending to the leveling stories) and prevent you from using their abilities and soulbinds. There isn’t any story behind the lock and exists only to limit players ability to be the best at their chosen spec in whatever content they want to play.
Like I said, I’m mostly indifferent due to lack of exposure to it myself. I’ve been on the unlucky streak of no beta for the past, like, three expansions. However I can say I don’t hate the Covenant lock as much as I hated what I saw of Azerite early on.
And it was only while playing that my hatred for Azerite grew. So I’d need to experience it for myself, which probably won’t happen until October 26th with my luck.
Honestly, if launch sucks without being able to switch covenants. I’m just gonna end up pushing RP for the entire expansion like years ago. It’ll be time to pull out my old monk that I mained for RP. Because screw playing through another BFA
The fact Ion mentioned a ripcord is pretty much a telltale sign they anticipate a bad reaction due to how bad it currently feels. If I play I’ll be going Night Fae unless the DK skill is heavily nerfed. It feels wrong to be a fairy Death Knight but it’s stands so far about the other covenant class abilities and has great synergy with the soulbinds.
When you play through the base story it makes no sense how the PC from an RP perspective separate from the actual game play experience should be limited to only using one covenants abilities. I get the idea behind the aesthetic choice of Covenants and representing a faction within the Shadowlands, but the way the designed the utility and class skills to be locked with them will be more of a burden than a boon for anyone that does more than one form of content on a class.
It’s fine if different abilities favour specs and builds for different forms of content but only if we can change them without extended cooldowns/time gates. The balance of all these layered systems is going to be a mess and instead of spending the entiretiy of the expansion trying to fix them(giving us BFA 2.0), I’d rather they focus on the actual content this time.
If they tie the abilities directly to your equipped soulbind, unlock all the base covenant stories so we can play through them and recruit every soulbind while still declaring to represent one faction for their Sanctuary/renown rewards that would be the best option. Let our characters play the role of the Maw Walker fighting to save the Shadowlands and using all the powers/help from it’s denizens available to us while still getting to pick which faction best represents who we see ourselves as. Then maybe they can spend less time trying to make every covenant equal in all forms of content and give us more content and better rewards for our chosen covenants down the line.
I find this reasonable. Forgive my speaking from ignorance as I have a very superficial understanding of the systems, and I’m so much more used to forum outrage for trivial things that I tend to jump to that conclusion. I still think it’s fair to speak up my stance, but I do appreciate having the explanation provided to me.
I would hate for another Azerite mistake where they spend the entire expansion trying to fix it, and honestly I think the game needs to stop with expansion specific systems to begin with. So I can definitely agree more after your explanation to why Covenant locking feels bad.
So you are going to choose min/maxing over roleplay.
So roleplay is not actually that important.
‘other RPers’?
Sorry, if you are choosing min/maxing over roleplay, to the point of choosing an in-game situation that you claim you will hate, you are a min/maxer, not a RPer.
Are you actually trying to say that people can only be one thing? This sort of backwards thinking is what led Blizzard down this road. You may NOT be a raider and a PvPer. You may NOT be a raider and a M+ pusher. You may NOT be a roleplayer and a raider.
Where is this kind of logic coming from, seriously dude. Where?
All the content in the game should be available and able to do at the by even the most casual of players with tools that will help them achieve the best chance of success.
Why should a player be punished for trying to help his group?
As an rper, I must admit I dont know many rpers that would play the meta for keys. We typically rather would get cool mogs, work on stories, and well… rp.
This thread feels a bit like somebody is saying they rp to get another angle on the changes they want, but of course don’t really rp all that much if at all.
I used to know a guild that would raid and RP through the entire raid. They weren’t the greatest players in the world, but none of them were intentionally handicapping themselves, either. The warriors were wearing plate instead of their bar RP gear, so where’s the disconnect? Why can’t people be both? Sounds to me like you’re gatekeeping RP. People who play well aren’t allowed to RP. That’s kinda messed up, bruv.
I think your putting words in my mouth, and I don’t appreciate it.
Also I used to do the same thing, raiding and RP with a guild whose goal was to do both. I didn’t find it that easy to balance both though I did manage it.
Then why shouldn’t the RPers try to be as strong as possible in that environment? Why do they need to conform to your vision and gimp themselves to continue being RPers?
for trying. But be aware that it’s easier to bang your head against a wall, compared to trying to convince players on this forum.