This, right here, is the very problem people have with it. If it came with a cost, yes, some people would be fine with it, probably most. It does not come an additional cost, there is no downside to you swapping between covenants if they made them swappable as fast as talents, etc. If they make it a choice of swap once a day, swap once a week or something that comes with a heavy cost, then yes not a problem. That gives agency to swap and it gives an actual loss, but swapping them like talent points =/= a heavy cost to anyone doing so.
Choices should be meaningful, and in a world where you swap talents freely, they do not hold meaning. How often do you and others of your position look at a talent, regardless of the fight, and go “That’s neat! I’m using that.” - not a numbers / vanity thing of “This gets me X% better dps” but the “this sounds so cool!” kind of way? The answer will undoubtedly be; not too many. You did that at the start when you first started playing, then you learned of performance and go “ah, nah that is terrible dps.”
Also, to those assuming people will check covenants, they will not outside of the top raiders. Guilds do not care what talents you pick or maybe I’ve never came across any at all that worry bout it. Could just be me, though. Unless I’ve gotten lucky 100% of the time for 100% of my guilds, which could be the case, covenants will end up the same as talents/races etc.
People will just care bout logs/experience for raiding or the number of your raider io score for mythic+.
You have to do that with insurance already and the upkeep to maintenance for the car, plus any other car thing related.
But it’s not more restrictive than others. It’s literally how the game was designed, almost 2 decades ago.
Also, to edit on that: The other games were a lot more successful that had the same design as WoW. WoW killed them, though, because it incorporated what a lot of them did to make itself better than them, that plus it already had a lot of people subbed for a long time and some of those people just did not want to go “Well, time to give this up. I’ve been playing this game for 15 years, time for a change.” No, most were going “Well, I’ve been playing this game for 15 years. I’m 15 years dedicated at this point, all in.” kinda thing.
The problem is how the covenants are so generalized that characters of the same class can be drastically weaker or more powerful based on the current system.
True, Blizzard has to draw the line somewhere. Many of us just think they are drawing the line in a terrible place.
Even if you aren’t interested in difficult content, it doesn’t mean that others aren’t. It’s not an opinion that difficult content, more often than not, requires optimal play, and if someone chooses a weak covenant ability, they’re hurting the group effort. Therefore, it is in the interest of those who want to complete difficult content to choose a viable path to complete it. If you pick a nonviable option for completing content for aesthetic reasons, then you can’t blame the community for not taking you to complete that content. This is not a question of decorum, as your response “community inapropriate” language suggests. You say yourself that you wish for balance, and that visual style is your primary concern, so why do you care if character power is decoupled from aesthetics?
The consequences can exist on the piece of the game you’re currently playing. The cost is not having access to the other covenant abilities for that covenant.
The need to stretch that out beyond a content-basis is your subjective opinion about how the game should function.
I disagree. Players having the ability to change things between raiding, M+, and PvP (even in a single day) is very meaningful. I think you mean that choices should have punishment, not meaning.
No you don’t. You pay for insurance (your subscription) while you own both vehicles.
You don’t have to call your agent each time you jump into the other car and let them know you’re driving this other one now.
And the maintenance would be part of earning your way through the covenant rewards and systems. You’d have to continue grinding for conduits and progressing through the enhancements they make to the system each tier/patch. Which we have no problem doing - that’s part of what we’re earning.
But the ability to switch freely is all that we’re asking for.
A lot of casuals are going to go with whatever covenant is meta for their spec because they might someday want to attempt to join a pug for something and not get outright laughed at. I don’t give a rodentia hindquarters about being 100% “optimal”, but the WoW community sure as frakk does.
They will not. People assumed that people would check your azerite gear, talents etc, for letting you into pugs. In the pug world only 2 things matter: your raiding experience for raid pugging and for mythic+ pugging it would be your raider io score. literally nothing else matters to 99% of them.
Towards the end of the expansion or raid tiers, it changes from raid experience to being “maybe item level” but that is still a big iffy, as i have seen a lot of people invite 440 in heroic that had 3 or 8/12 mythic linked with their main so it showed up on raider io addon as them having mythic progress.
Most often than not, though, towards the end of the raid tier it is usually item level, at least in the 150+ pugs I’ve been in, that is always how it was with raid leader. Experience > iLvL > anything else. Mythic+s people are picky usually only about your raider io score. Still will not be a covenant thing, nor talent thing just like it was not an essence nor azerite thing, nor an artifact weapon level thing, or any of that in Legion.
I think the system would be a lot better this way.
Having a flexible system would provide players agency, allow them to have fun and change things up when wanted/needed - but the rewards would still provide role-players an option for their style of play.
I dislike having the xmog rewards restricted to your active covenant though. Seems like a silly thing to put in place - especially when many people xmog to prior expansion gear sets or custom sets anyways.
I can’t argue here. Covenants are just one additional layer of discrimination to the game. Restricting the ability to change them just intensifies that discrimination and eliminates the possibility of someone changing things up for the good/strategy of the group.
I am curious to know what your experience has been like.
Also curious to know of what pugging is like for others, especially other classes, as I have been in over 150 pugs this patch alone. In every single one of them, the leader picked raid experience, getting those mythic raiders in over the others who have just heroic or normal experience. Anyone with just normal experience queing for heroic was disqualified a lot of the times because the RL was not wanting someone who did not know heroic mechanics. Now, maybe being a warlock and summon person, I got privileged in all 150+ and got very lucky. It is, however, difficult to believe that in 150+ groups, I would be lucky enough to find someone decent in each and every single one of those.
If you did not have experience, but were 475+,a lot of times the exception was made. I was able to watch people actively discussing things in chat, going “why don’t we pick that mage?” and the leader declining or saying something like “he has never done heroic.” “ok yeah, he is 475? we can pick them up.” and things that go along with this route of thinking, so I assumed it was normal after 100+ groups of this and for WoD, Legion, and BFA as well.
Maybe, again, I was lucky though. Idk, but that’s how it’s always been with my Warlock and my Druid.
Giving up a “benefit” that everyone else gets is the same as being punished. Look at WM. Alliance players were “punished” by this so-called “benifit” no matter what they did. They either gave up a significant experience and resource bonus, or they got slaughtered because horde outnumber ally outrageously in PvP. Now I didn’t use it because I loathe PvP, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth that blizz will never remove. Especially because the bonus had nothing to do with PvP. The same reason hordies complained about the increased AOO rewards the ally were offered. If the “benefits” the covenants offered were purely RP or cosmetic that would be fine, or if they amounted to truly minimal throughput (<1%) then it’d be ok, but blizz has shown ZERO ability to balance anything that closely, and the WoW community has shown even less tolerance for anyone palying " sub-optimally".
They are not the same. Especially to players that would enjoy the game by swapping covenants when they’re done raid tanking and want to dps in arena.
Having to forego a benefit is way different, and more acceptable, than having to regrind through a covenant to get back to a place you already grinded to.
You can certainly frame it as a “kind” of punishment - but it’s drastically different than an obstacle like having to re-earn something you’ve already attained that takes a lot of time.
That’s great if your want to play that way. Some of us don’t, and having the easy change option available wouldn’t take away from your choice to stick with one at all. You’re just forcing your undesirable style on everyone.
The most impacted folks will be average Joe’s who want to use multiple specs and have to be gimped in one. If I have to choose the best for tanking, but it’s bad for DPS, if I’m not tanking on raid night the meaningful choice I’m going to make is probably to log off and do something else instead of hurting my team because my DPS stinks.
It’s exactly the same. Covenant 1 gives A, Covenant 2 gives B. Your benefit system means after x time with Covenant 1 you now have A+. You swap to Covenant 2 to for M+ and now have B. On raid day you swap back to Covenant 1 and now you have A, you would have to re-spend the time to get back to A+. Which is exactly like “having to re-earn something you’ve already attained that takes a lot of time”. The only difference in your “benefit” system is you start at some baseline and get better, and with mine you start at zero, and work up to baseline. Either way you are effectively “punished” for swapping.
Precisely. There are many of us who already enjoy role-playing and don’t even use certain features in BfA because they don’t suit our RP playstyle.
Players from my guild and communities choose to not even get/use the wrathion cloak because we just reject the corruption system overall.
But others take it even further and don’t change talents or use flying because those don’t fit into how we want to play the game.
Giving everyone the option to use those things doesn’t prevent us from role-playing how we want.
The same will be true for covenants. If we value commitment, then we’ll stick with one for the whole expansion even if everyone else can swap around whenever they want.
Others having choices and options doesn’t take anything away from us.
Others having restrictions also doesn’t give or add anything to the game for us either - and even if it did, I’d feel bad that I’m gaining something at the cost of others having less fun in the game.
Not at all, provided the progress within the covenant is preserved.
If the rewards fall outside of the covenant, then when you swap back to Covenant 1 you’d be back at A+ - but maybe would have less profession materials, or whatever bonus was given for loyalty.
The ideas shown up above to provide rewards all hit outside of the progress within the covenant abilities/soulbinds.
Given the current state of Windwalker in PvE, most Monks I’ve talked to feel punished for playing a Monk by virtue of just having nonexistent scaling with gear.
