I’d like there to be more about building my Paladin into a variety of different builds, especially considering faction is tied to race.
People like going on about how borrowed power and the Covenants are the problem here, but that seems to be missing the point. At least anybody responding to what I’ve been saying.
Unless you’re prepared to tell me that you honestly believe if they baked all these abilities into talents and made talents hard to switch on a whim that there would be no problems because it’s not borrowed power or tied to a grind anymore.
I’ve been rather clear that what I want are choices about character building that are meaningful and aren’t something you can change 15 times a day on a whim just because that’s what you need to do to be optimal.
Now I would personally prefer that it happen at the character level rather than another borrowed power mechanic that we’re going to throw out in 2 years, but I can’t say as I believe that I wouldn’t get just as much pushback if I made a thread asking for that.
That’s why you have specializations.
And we could get talent trees of old if anything.
The choices the covenants offer are basicly what base class design could be.
Also, you can not changes your talents if you don’t want to. But why someone else should be restricted because you don’t want to?
Moreover in modern gaming, choices are only meaningful if you let them be. Nothing stops me from making 4 dks and make them join different covenants. Is my choice more meaningful then? Not really.
Spec is something that can be changed on a whim, however.
As I’ve already pointed out in this thread, the whole “but it’s optional, just don’t do it if you don’t want to” doesn’t really help that everybody else gets to do it in areas of the game that are inherently competitive like PvP.
Not to mention there’s a whole lot of bad design we could add to this game under the pretense that “it’s optional, you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to”. That has never been a particularly strong argument for something being in the game.
For me it’s just wanting to bring down people that want to be able to change talents because you don’t want to be doing it to be competitive. The thing then becomes that people will just take the one that works best most of the time.
I think it’s fine that people that are competitive can min/max at some point. I guess we can disagree on that.
For me the gain of making those choices locked is so small that it shouldn’t be considered. Because so far the only explanation for those gain was making it a more meaningful choices, but we all know it won’t affect the game story so what now? It’s just a cosmetic/power choices.
But if you want to make it hard to switch so more casuals people can’t switch be my guess. But I won’t be the most penalized by this, casuals will be. I only want to play my main dk if possible because that’s my main character. This choice basicly will make it so that’s not possible as a min/maxer because of how absurdly strong are the just the pure utilities from the covenants abilities and soulbinds. I’m not even considering the dps difference atm.
You avoided my direct question, that I asked you twice.
One more time. If a “Good” paladin joined an “Evil” warlock coven, without changing from “Good” to “Evil”, in an old school RPG, would you be ok with specifically that? No alignment/philosophy changes, just joins another ‘club’ on a whim.
I said I’m fine with it if it happens in wow. If you scroll back. Because paladins in wow have worked with evil forces before like death knights.
It wouldn’t happen in an old rpg for sure, but if in a dnd a player made a background and found a reason to make it work I would still consider it if I was the game master.
Actually the definition of what a RPG is very specific, and can be read up on at Wikipedia (for example).
Enabling a weapon out of a single necessity is different than joining a club to be with those people and what they represent all the time, story/fantasy wise.
If you admit that WoW is a RPG then you also have to admit that being able to switch Covenants is a non-RPG thing to be able to do. Which is totally fine, if you do not play WoW as an RPG but instead of a MOBA-like end-game grinder.
That META point needs to be discussed and agreed upon by the community, really, or Blizzard needs to (and I think they have) state what WoW is, a RPG, or a MOBA-like end-game grinder, and go from there (which I think they are doing).
Well I knew this was coming.
Not it doesn’t mean that.
Like I said I view covenants as small reputations that I can purchase favors by working with them. They don’t make it so you alienate all players that chose another covenants, else that would be fun to force your guild to all roll the same.
It also doesn’t mean that covenants needs to offer powers, there’s nothing that force them to go that way.
A rpg is simply a role playing game with a set of rules and systems.
It doesn’t mean that they have to lock choices, they can lock choices.
But it is more a game design choice then.
Which is in this case for me doesn’t make the game better.
If you want realy story based choices, like they do with ESO I’m all for it. But this isn’t what covenants are about. For me it’s way worse because they want you to make a choice that is mainly for cosmetic and power, not a choice that define your personality. Which is what meaningful choices should be about.
By the rules of what makes a RPG, Covenants have a very specific purpose, they are not just game mechanics of reps.
If by a purely game mechanics mechanism point of view, they are as you described.
I’m just trying to get to a point of if WoW is a RPG or not, and determine rules based on that. You can’t call it a RPG then ignore what it means to be a RPG and validate your opinions based on that WoW is not a RPG. Either it is , or isn’t, and that has ramifications, either way.
I have a read it. And like I said the only main rules is playing a role with a set of rules and systems. Wow fits that. Are you playing “less” of a role without covenants? No.
But if you have Covenants, then you need to have the class fantasy of Covenants in your RPG game.
From Wikipedia …
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game;[1][2] abbreviated RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making regarding character development.[3] Actions taken within many games succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines.
Both authors and major publishers of tabletop role-playing games consider them to be a form of interactive and collaborative storytelling.[2][10][11] Events, characters, and narrative structure give a sense of a narrative experience, and the game need not have a strongly-defined storyline.[12] Interactivity is the crucial difference between role-playing games and traditional fiction. Whereas a viewer of a television show is a passive observer, a player in a role-playing game makes choices that affect the story.[13] Such role-playing games extend an older tradition of storytelling games where a small party of friends collaborate to create a story.
Not really, nothing force it that way.
Your quotes are not saying anything that would say that they have to.
They can be part of my adventure and help my character develop, but it doesn’t mean they need to give me powers. Just going throught the story is character development because you character has learned something new and now will probably act differently.
You and I both know that in a class fantasy ruled setting a GM would not allow a Paladin to join a Warlock cult (for example). That the class fantasy of the players and the world building has rules involved with it, things that make sense story wise, and those that do not, which the quotes speaks towards, story telling, a core component of RPGs.
You should have the testicular fortitude to just say you want to treat WoW not as a RPG but as a MOBA, and that you want to change what you want on the fly to suit the end game moment. Trying to keep calling WoW a RPG but then insist on being able to change things on a whim to suit your end-game needs does not clarify the issue, but clouds it.
And for the record, I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. I think being able to change class specs easily in the game is a great improvement of the enjoyability of playing WoW, and that would seem to go against class fantasy as well, somewhat.
Already answered to that, depends how the world is organized in that fantasy. An old fashion gm wouldn’t do it probably. A modern one? probably if you find a good excuse.
You should wake up from old game nostalgia.
There’s nothing that says that wow isn’t a rpg if they didn’t have covenants.
Wow is an rpg right now. It is not a rpg that offer a lot of determining choices. But it is one nonetheless.