Can we make it like Pillars of Eternity or Balder’s Gate while we’re at it? You know, proper rpgs.
They’re my favorites but I don’t think it’d work well for WoW.
They didn’t say what it would be at blizzcon, just that it would be a considerable cost to change and that you would want, as a player, to put a lot of thought into it.
But it also makes sense from an rpg perspective.
If the 4 covenants benefit from us going into the maw and killing stuff, then they would be happy to let us choose whatever allows us to make that happen.
Why would you, as a leader of one of the covenants, want to hinder a hero trying to help your cause?
The us military doesn’t take your rank away if you switch branches for that same reason.
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This is assuming the majority of players will min max this stuff and won’t just pick the one they find the coolest. Even 10% of mage player base will screw with a system like that or so it seems to me.
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I’m just here for the UwU beam.
That said, I think the goal here is to have covenants provide a whole host of different things. Between the abilities, Shadowbinds, and different access/abilities in Torghast, (they’ve said that different factions will have access to different places in Torghast) the idea is that even if any one aspect is better for one faction, the odds of any faction being strictly better than another in all scenarios is low enough to never happen.
Again, day traders “screw” with prices by trying to trade on noise. That’s fine. The price still perpetually converges on an equilibrium.
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I’m talking more during the testing phase, which hasnt even occurred yet. And I know “Itll be fixed in alpha, I mean beta, I mean 9.1, I mean 9.2, etc…”
But my point is we are predicting a problem that has yet to occur or be tested. There will always be a mathematically correct choice, that’s unavoidable. But as long as they are withing 1-5% of each other who cares?
Anybody that is trying to get the most out of their character.
I will continue to hold the position that the covenants should not be tied into character strength as much as they currently are. They should be mostly cosmetic.
Then let’s remove all talents all together, as there will always be one better just keep that one.
Oh and classes too, remove anything that isnt mathematically the best, because that’s all that matters right?
For the average player 1-5% won’t matter to them. They will pick which ever they like. Past 5% sure people will start caring.
Living life by only what is best preforming leads to a boring life.
This thread is about making a system that picks up on players picking up on differences greater than the cost of switching covenants and reduces the benefit of doing so to the point where there isn’t a benefit to switching anymore, so bringing things to the point where people don’t care.
Introducing the new Covenantfinder (Part 1), switch covenants as soon as a year after launch!
Your system will do about as much as warmode scaling has done, and if anything will make it worse.
Alternatively, we can just remove the covenant requirements. 
I’m not really a fan of them anyways.
Nice, reductio ad absurdum. You’re better than this, Felsavior.
That isn’t even close to the same and you know it. You can change those all on the fly without massive cost investment–well, other than class. The way Blizzard was talking, we’ll either have to spend loads of gold or do some pita timesink questline to switch covenants.
If you could switch them by popping a tome and clicking a button or two without much cost? Sure, go ahead.
For anyone aside from the casual playerbase, these are terribly designed atm though.
Choices don’t NEED to be permanent. Talents matter and can be changed. It’s one part of the game’s player agency that I really enjoy.
There’s no reason any covenants can function the same way.
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Yup - tanks get hit the worst.
If you’re a dps only class - the same covenant will likely be useful to you across the various specs and content - but not so much with classes that can heal and tank.
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I sure hope not. That would be a huge step in a bad direction.
When there’s already games that give you access to all classes through 1 character - influencing people to create multiple versions of the same class across multiple characters seems dreadful and a huge shot in the foot.
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I use over the top dramatics to push one of my points, if we did everything based only on the best choice we would have no choice.
I have always had the standpoint of not balancing the game around the top 1-10% of players. Because that leads to bad design and games failing, eg wildstar.
And again, my overall point in this thread is that we are trying to create a problem for something we have not been able to see and test yet.
If we were mid alpha, sure this conversation might be needed. But all we have seen right now are ability previews through game informer and blizzcon. And so far they all sound like they can be on par with each other (I havent checked them again in a while though, I remember there being a stink about the dk abilities and the nature dudes sounding like the best).
But that’s not WoW. Tier bonuses in Legion switched when you changed specs. Talents are freely changeable as well.
There’s nothing about an RPG that necessitates consequences.
Meaning and reward can still be given to those who stick with a choice without punishing those players who play across multiple specs and content.
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I don’t mind them being tied to strength, provided that players can switch freely - without a cooldown, charge, or regrinding.
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