To be fair, I’ve always said that they should matter more. I enjoy WoW, but honestly it is an extremely railroady game. I wish it were less so. One of the reasons I appreciate the covenant system coming up.
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The azerite system was boring and frustrating as hell. I don’t think covenants are going to be like that though.
Unfortunately this is inevitable in an MMORPG. Players cannot have an effect on the larger story or world. If they did it would negatively impact other players. Fallout 76’s NPCs that were just added shows this. For players to have an impact on the world it would need to be a single player game (not saying that such a thing would be a bad thing btw).
Except they are exactly like that, they are borrowed power rev 3.0
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But it’s constantly being ignored that if they wanted for more RPG elements to be in the game, then they should first fix how everything works rather than bring in an RPG element that competes with gameplay.
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It’s weird that “RPG elements” was what they used to justify an inevitably poorly balanced mechanic.
When people invoke RPG elements, they usually refer to class design/progression, professions+ their usefulness (which seem to be coming back, so credit where it’s due) and having a story where their involvement seems to mean something.
I don’t think anyone ever said that “Azerite is a great RPG mechanic because you have to make a choice, even if there’s one clear winner and the rest suck!”
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I don’t think me choosing Venthyr and you choosing whatever is meant to have an effect on the larger story. I simply appreciate its potential to give characters some uniqueness.
Azerite was just boring, unintuitive, and it was all about making sure you had the right traits. Covenants are a meaningful story choice, a different way to experience the game. and a way to separate characters from each other in a fundamental way. Not the same at all beyond the borrowed power thing.
And yet Azerite is far more deeply rooted in the RPG, we are literally being assisted by Azeroth her self via the heart to defend her. We should be grateful and bow down at her graciousness. (we didn’t)
Maybe if Azeroth wants me to be grateful, she could MAKE MORE THAN TWO TRAITS GOOD FOR ME.
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So how does that justify harming other players gameplay?
And this is really no different. You probably won’t have enough information when choosing a covenant other than “that looks cool” or “That fits my character concept”. That to me is a horrible way to do a borrowed power system.
Fair… very very fair. This is also going to happen with covenants.
“But Ion said they’ll let it be purely cosmetic if it ends up being unbalanced!”
subtext: "In the final patch after two years of dealing with a failed system and countless nerfs that don’t address the problem."
It doesn’t.
We’re going to get a taste of each of the covenants throughout the questing experience, and you can always look up info if power matters that much to you.
IMO, folks should just choose what they want to play for RP reasons, but I know the min-max folks will choose what is “BiS”. The problem IMO is the folks pretending they’re Method when they don’t really need to be.
I’m reading that as “I have a bet we’ll loose subs, but it’ll probably have to go live first”
So why insist on doing so then?
Which won’t get into soulbinds, just the story.
I think I should have the freedom to choose for whatever reasons I want. Be that “It looks cool” or “It does better with my current build” or “That fits the RP I’m doing”. But denying me that doesn’t make sense to me. That’s what people are asking for, to deny that and force it to be only for RP… which isn’t good because quite a lot of folks are playing either in tourist or push mode.
Please also stop assuming everybody is aping method… it’s disingenuous and rude.
Which is exactly what happened with Legion Legendaries.
Already stated this.
You’re right. You do have the freedom. Does RP matter more, or does power? Decisions, decisions, and you have a tough one ahead of you!
No I don’t, because you’re taking it from me. You’re insisting in ruining others gameplay, even though you’ve already admitted there is no reason to do so.
Do you know what a lot of players do when faced with punishing decisions… they unsub. That’s the impact this design will have. I can’t see the RP being worth that hit, particularly if blizz’s long term solution is to destroy it anyway. It’s just a bad design to assign player power to “hard decisions”.
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And account wide essences, but I suppose those came later.
Still, it’s a trend I don’t expect them to break. Blizzard will continue to do only one balance pass every few months or so, which isn’t even remotely close to how much work would have to be done to make this work, and that’s not even including potential imbalances within the base classes themselves.
If you level 4 characters of the same class you can play all 4 covenants and just swap between them depending on the content you’re doing.
The only tough part is keeping track of which one belongs to which covenant, unless you add surnames like JessailKyrian, JessailNightFae, etc.
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I’m taking nothing from you. You have 4 covenants to pick from and the freedom to choose any of the 4 you like.
Hell if it were up to me I’d put in the 5th, the Maw covenant that Sylvanas got to choose.
I’m not unsubbing over it.
That’s an incredibly unreasonable workaround, do I even have to explain why?