Shadowlands Game Designers Protecting Us from Covenants

[Timbaeslice-frostmourne]

After watching the announcement, It’s safe to say now is the time to get mad.

[Laydeecandy-illidan]

What was in the announcement?

[Timbaeslice-frostmourne]

That ain’t nothing changing with covenants currently.

[Veranarana-pagle]

@Rankin-shandris

We’ll see how many people hold onto this view after their covenant gets nerfed into the dirt.

There are a lot of people who can’t think for themselves and will instantly go for the FOTM covenant because youtube tells them to. These are the types of players that burn out on WoW super quick every patch. Who cares if they get salty when their OP FOTM covenant gets nerfed? Just play what you want. I’m positive Blizzard will tweak the numbers on all of them to make them all roughly within the same ballpark as each other +/- some small wiggle room depending on the content. Probably no more than +/- 5% on things that are going to be like 15% of your overall damage. What’s 5% of 15%? Not much…

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

@Veranarana-pagle

I’m positive Blizzard will tweak the numbers on all of them to make them all roughly within the same ballpark as each other +/- some small wiggle room depending on the content. Probably no more than +/- 5% on things that are going to be like 15% of your overall damage. What’s 5% of 15%? Not much…

They couldn’t get Legiondaries within 5% of each other. They couldn’t get talents within 5% of each other. They couldn’t get azerite traits within 5% of each other. They couldn’t get essences within 5% of each other. They couldn’t get corruptions within 5% of each other. But sure, they’re totally going to get a significantly more complicated system more finely balanced than all of those simpler systems.

[Veranarana-pagle]

Oh they chose not to. They allowed those things to force metas and intentionally didn’t hard nerf things. Gear is replacable somewhat easily. Covenants are not. They will take balance seriously with them because they don’t have a choice and I strongly doubt they are going to make it easy to swap between them until the end of the last patch of SL.

[Qwaai-tichondrius]

@Veranarana-pagle

I’m positive Blizzard will tweak the numbers on all of them to make them all roughly within the same ballpark as each other +/- some small wiggle room depending on the content.

I don’t know why you would think this, especially when history tells us it won’t happen.

Take the warlock ones. Decimating Bolt is pure single target. Impending Catastrophe is uncapped aoe. On a single target they might be reasonably close, but on 2 targets the aoe will be twice as good. On 5 targets it’s 5 times as good.

That’s also completely ignoring the difference between a teleport and a shield Sometimes one is orders of magnitude stronger than the other. These are impossible to balance and it’s going to frustrate a lot of people for the entire expansion.

---

Swapping around builds for free or cheap is also pretty common in a ton of RPGs. “The abilities you use are locked in” is hardly a cornerstone of the genre. What does it matter to you if some people want to swap around and experiment?

[Laydeecandy-illidan]

@Timbaeslice-frostmourne

That ain’t nothing changing with covenants currently.

RIP Shadowlands.

[Mafic-emerald-dream (Mafic)]

Yeah shadowlands is DoA.

I don’t see how these layers of systems helps the core game play. Core game play is the foundation of any MMORPG and for WoW.

[Madbeatz-illidan]

@Mafic-emerald-dream

I don’t see how these layers of systems helps the core game play. Core game play is the foundation of any MMORPG and for WoW.

The systems seem really interesting - but restricting the covenants just ruins it all.

It’s like having a delicious breakfast with all your favorites and then just pouring pickle juice all over it.

[anon42980455]

@Madbeatz-illidan

Here’s the part of video that stood out to me:

There’s a famous story about World of Warcraft - in the story, Blizzard didn’t want people to play the game for too long - so they introduced a system in the beta where the longer you played, the fewer experience points you’d get for killing monsters and whatnot.
But players hated it. They hated seeing the numbers going down. It felt like a punishment for playing the game. So Blizzard did something pretty clever: they flipped the system on its head.

Now, players can build up a rest bonus whenever they’re not playing the game, and then get an experience points boost when they next log in. It’s essentially the same numbers, says Blizzard, but making it a reward rather than a penalty made it much more agreeable to fans.

This example is actually used in a lot of video game related classes. It kind of surprised me. I think I’ve seen it like 3-4 times used in psychology in video games talk.

[Madbeatz-illidan]

@anon42980455

This example is actually used in a lot of video game related classes. It kind of surprised me. I think I’ve seen it like 3-4 times used in psychology in video games talk.

I mean it makes sense. I don’t understand why they’re reverting this kind of strategy when it comes to covenants when there are tons players, including people with platforms that make a living around WoW, that are saying they are going to want to switch covenants frequently.

[Oakenshroot-durotan]

@Madbeatz-illidan

I mean it makes sense. I don’t understand why they’re reverting this kind of strategy when it comes to covenants when there are tons players, including people with platforms that make a living around WoW, that are saying they are going to want to switch covenants frequently.

The current team doesn’t understand their customers the same way the old team did, basically.

Here’s a modern example that’s very similar to the XP thing back in the day - Artifact Power.

In Legion, the AP you got from activities increased exponentially over the course of the expansion. The end result was that past effort was not as valuable as future effort. People thought it was kind of goofy seeing such large numbers but in general no one said they felt like they were losing work when Artifact Knowledge ticked up each week.

In BfA, they reversed the system. Literally identical in function, but opposite in presentation. Now, each week people would see their earned AP go down when Artifact Knowledge clicked over. Suddenly the forums were flooded with complaints about losing effort even though the system was identical to Legion in every aspect except for the presentation.

Basically, the modern team did the exact opposite of what the old team did.

[Madbeatz-illidan]

@Oakenshroot-durotan

The current team doesn’t understand their customers the same way the old team did, basically.

Here’s a modern example that’s very similar to the XP thing back in the day - Artifact Power.

In Legion, the AP you got from activities increased exponentially over the course of the expansion. The end result was that past effort was not as valuable as future effort. People thought it was kind of goofy seeing such large numbers but in general no one said they felt like they were losing work when Artifact Knowledge ticked up each week.

In BfA, they reversed the system. Literally identical in function, but opposite in presentation. Now, each week people would see their earned AP go down when Artifact Knowledge clicked over. Suddenly the forums were flooded with complaints about losing effort even though the system was identical to Legion in every aspect except for the presentation.

Basically, the modern team did the exact opposite of what the old team did.

The issue is that the covenants are working out to be much worse.

With AP - it was just perception.

With covenants, there are actual barriers in the way of people that want say, raid as a tank and dps in pvp and that would like to change covenants for each of those.

[Ragartetarka-bleeding-hollow]

@Phoenickz-sargeras

Yes, they’re valuable BECAUSE of the ability of loss.

I disagree. I think they’re valuable because the have an impact on the content we’re running.