I think creating more incentives, rewards and achievements would address your concerns while letting other players still play and enjoy the game the way they like, without having your vision of the game pushed onto them.
For example - instead of punishing players for sticking with one character/class across various kinds of content and roles, reward players who complete content across various classes.
Something like additional achievements and mount skins for completing AotC/Dungeon master across 3, 4, etc, classes.
Same could be done for roles in addition to classes.
At this point, if you really want to make the system punishing make it worht my while. Give min/maxers access to all abilities and soulbind, but make them join the maw. As a reward/consequence I get to be flagged for free-for-all pvp and can kill anyone in the world that side with covenants even in warmode off. Now this will be fun. You want a war with min/maxers, you’ll have it.
It does seem like there’s more of a battle between players, with one side trying to force the other to play a specific way and the other side just wanting the freedom to play in a manner that is enjoyable to them that doesn’t impact the other side.
Diablo 3 has seasons, and with each season are seasonal conquests. In addition to doing all the bog-standard accomplishments with each season like clearing X Rift (Keystone Master), the seasonal journey requires you to complete a certain number of seasonal conquests. You have a number of conquests to choose from, and one of the conquests I’ve always enjoyed is to complete the current content with at six different “specs”. This requires at minimum two different characters to complete since each class typically has four “specs”.
WoW does have some achievements to hit max level with multiple characters, but it’s basically just a leveling thing, it has no relevance to end-game.
That said, even if Blizzard added this, it wouldn’t mean I wouldn’t want Covenants to be the way Blizzard suggest they be. Simply that I would also like that system because it sounds like a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with Warlords of Draenor because I raided with three different characters and kept them geared up - it was the only thing to do in the game at the time, but it was fun, especially since BRF was a dope raid. It’s my firm opinion most players who play a lot would have more fun if the game encouraged them in whatever ways it could to break their “one character” mentality and play multiple characters.
Okay. I’m not asking for people to delete their characters every 3 months. But I think the idea of playing only 1 character in a game with 12 classes, 20 something races, 2 major factions, and so forth is somewhat objectively wrong and it really should not be catered to as the optimal way to play, in fact it should be deliberately sub-optimal.
Do I think that people should be having to reroll 4 of the same class? Maybe not. At the same time, if someone wants to play two of the same class, maybe they SHOULD be rewarded for it?
This is why I like this multipler system. If I want to play a Venthyr Warrior and a Night Fae Warrior, maybe I should see a bonus and save some time on the anima-grind front, especially since there will likely be other grinds (like legendary grinds) that I have to participate in. Maybe allowing one player to invest into two Covenants on their main is fine, but if they want all four they need to decide if it is truly worth it, and if it is, decide whether they REALLY need all those Covenants on one character, or if they’d be fine splitting it up 2 and 2.
While I think that it’s great to want to play alts, I put the line at making multiple of the same class. For me it’s terrible when most of the game isn’t about covenants, you would have to play 4 times most of the same thing mostly with only covenants making it a bit different only in Shadowlands, when it will be discontinued next expansion.
Back to the OP’s quoted point - make things about rewards instead of punishments.
Reward players for achieving things on multiple classes - don’t punish them for wanting to play a character across their classes roles, covenants, and all the kinds of content available in game.
It’s more that, the game’s integrity as a MMORPG is that it has RPG still in the name. It might as well go from being a MMORPG to being just a MMO, nothing else behind that name, or a hybrid of MMORPG and ARPG since ARPG elements from Diablo keep sneaking their way into the game’s designs. At the end of the day, it’s not really story or anything, it’s a design choice that makes games what they are categorized as and again: every expansion the RPG element from this game as an MMORPG keeps going away in favor of giving players the “I want it now” experience. Yes, grinds suck sometimes, but that is literally what you are signing up for in an MMORPG, don’t like it don’t pick that genre. The Korean stuff has like 1000% more grind to them because WoW keeps catering to people who want it the same way as Burger King’s “have it your way”
It’s like…growing up you sometimes or maybe normally get told “you can be whatever you want to be when you get older” by your parents or by someone who is trying to inspire you and not limit you. That is not the case at all, though, as people are born differently. You have strengths and weaknesses, as does every other thing in this world and that even should include in games. People keep trying to get the game to go into more fair things, but that should not be the case with anything except abilities for the same classes. One class should be designed around mythic+ and be great at it, while being only good or mediocre at PvP and raiding. Another class should be fantastic at PvP while being only good or decent at mythic+/raiding.
Same could be said for covenants, too. Some are great for one set of content and not so amazing with the other. The entire point of them making leveling very quick and easy is so you can have alts or multiple characters. If they were to keep the level design the way it was back in classic, I could see them letting you have one character probably do it all, as it took a lot longer to get to 60 vs 120 now or even 60 in SL, but that’s not the case in the slightest. If you’re worried about nerfing and whatnot, then make multiple characters of the same class, like a lot of other people do usually.
Sorry, I misspoke. Covenants won’t be worthless, but the choice will be. Making them easily swappable for gameplay purposes makes the choice worthless. Making them not affect gameplay, but be a much more locked in choice makes the choice valuable.
There’s no really hard definition for rpgs unless you’re a purist. Fortunatly wow is not a pure rpg game and was never a pure rpg game. This is the burger king kind of game, this is a game for everyone. And it has been the most sucessfull when it was for everyone.
Actually, ion has said that how covenants are being implemented is a big topic of debate in the dev team, which means some of the devs realize this is a terrible way to implement them. Also, yes, if I don’t enjoy the gameplay of a game I stop playing it. Many people stopped playing during bfa because of azerite gear. Covenants in their current state are way worse than azerite gear. If they go live as is I wonder how much more the population will shrink.
Well, that’s kind of what I’m saying. Imo covenants determining your aesthetic/storyline is more than enough to make them worthwhile. Gameplay shouldn’t be linked to them at all.
No, they aren’t. If you aren’t on the other side of the fence, you don’t get to say what we think. You have literally been told by other people they are not enough. You really have this idea that what you want is what everyone wants don’t you?
Now, that’s great, but do you think you forcing your wants on others will help or hurt the game? Nothing is taken away from making covenants not affect gameplay, because you can still choose and stay locked into the ability the covenant would have originally had. But you’re right, let’s lose players because you want the game to be designed out of spite.
What you want will piss me off. What I want will piss you off. There’s no middle ground. One of us has to lose. It’s that simple. If you think what I want is spite, that’s on you. You sure as heck aren’t concerning yourself with what I want out of the system, why would I care if you’re not happy if I get what I want?
Either way hurts the game, yes. Because it cannot be a “choice” if you’re locked in and if you’re not locked in then the value of even picking it in the first place completely diminishes the aspect since you can swap. It’s the same for talents and other such things, yes you can swap them, but right now there is no value to them at all because of how many times you swap them. You’re looking at things from a numbers perspective, while others look at things from an elements perspective, basically being: “if there is choice, then there is no value to it because there is 0 downside to it thereby no mistakes. If there is no mistakes, then there is no worth.” You can only understand what you have by losing it or having the ability TO lose it, but you do not when you get to swap things easily and have it back instantly without much work.
I think I got that point across? Not sure if I’m explaining it 100% correctly here, but yeah.
It’s not out of spite, it’s out of integrity for the game itself. Choices. Should. Matter. If you can swap so easily, they lose value, 100%. They just become something you don’t even care about. When was the last time you actually enjoyed picking your talents? Without including numbers, I mean just picking the talent because it is what you wanted, not what a guide said, numbers dictated or anything else besides what you actually wanted/thought was coolest?
I agree with the idea of rewarding people who stay committed, but those rewards don’t seem feasible.
This way, you could have multiple characters just sitting AFK in Covenants, and earning free things like consumables.
You’d need to either force them to do a certain amount of content to be eligible for those rewards, or only one per covenant.