It’s convenient that we live in a world where you can have your opinion and I can have mine and neither of us are objectively “correct.” I certainly won’t be engaging such a system and I have no intention of playing if it goes live like that.
This isn’t [RPG] where locking yourself out of a faction, but you get benefits from a faction you wouldn’t get if you’d chosen the other faction, makes sense and adds to the immersive experience, the story lasts a few days and the content lasts years. This isn’t the kind of game that honors long-term decision making on any meaningful level; patch changes from patch to patch will nerf, buff, and alter your choices.
You might choose [Covenant] because it does well but then see it nerfed in 9.1. So you switch, and then it ends up being the better one in 9.2.
They did say that joining a different one would be possible, but that rejoining one would be the harder thing.
Story shouldn’t effect player power In an MMO and if you think it should then I believe that a single player game is more your forte. I certainly won’t tell you to not play WoW because I imagine you like it but it’s important to remember the genre of game you’re playing.
I can see the OP point. People doing higher end keys are pretty finicky on who they invite to a group. I could very well see them wanting that teleport ability to bypass certain parts of a dungeon.
I mean it is the range + cd, void elf port/blink warlock portal most of those in these situation rarely let you actually skip mobs and instead just pulls them. I think people watch the video of it in practice and it was used to literally skip big group packs. Either way i’ll try to get more concerned when the later alpha builds go up and or beta starts.
you are right, ignore Swalsh he is an idiot who simps hard for his favorite streamer and only came in here to be negative, if the post had been about enjoying a nice walk on the beach he would have come in and argued against it because this is the only way he can get acknowledgment, i mean he seriously said in this thread that BFA is a great expansion with great systems… need i say more
I’ve been wondering this myself - this system sounds like it would be absolutely lovely … in a singleplayer RPG.
In an MMO, however, where multiple forms of wildly disparate content, playstyles and even skill-levels are the name of the game? That I’m not so sure about.
No it really shouldn’t not to this extent choice should matter on a fight by fight or dungeon by dungeon basis. You shouldn’t be put at a disadvantage in portions of the game for choosing something based on lore or aesthetics.
I break your legs, I break your arms, or I break a single pinkie. You must pick one of these. Obviously one is a much better choice to make that comes with the least downsides, but you do have a choice after all.
People are griping at the illusion of choice because some of the selections are just seriously “rofl, why?” tier.
It’s also the same gripe people have had about talents in this current format where it seems like one or two have their use on a line with one talent being laughably garbage and not even worth considering. I.E Legion Outlaw Rogue talents where you had an actual choice on two of the tiers. The others were “This one is vastly superior in every conceivable capacity for anything.”
People don’t like being given a choice where there is very clearly one superior answer, because the superiority trumps almost everything else. You think if the worst looking covenant to me gives me a teleport that I just won’t take it over everything else? It’s way too good, or everthing else is way too bad.
The only way you’ll see choice in this game by the way is if it’s all the same ability just with a different aesthetic.
Can only hope we’ll get another Awakened style affix in SL. xD
Eh sometimes it does happen though. I can occasionally get hit by stuff like that, which is where mage barriers come in handy. That necrolord shield would be nice as insurance too.
I maintain that these Covenant abilities should have been fun and flavorful at best.
Look at the Vulpera racials. Are they competitive, or the best for any particular content? Hell no - but they’re oozing with racial flavor, really fun to play around with, and add little conveniences that, while they don’t make you any faster or more efficient at the game, are very nice to have.
The covenant abilities should have been more like this. Closer to toys than abilities, though still having occasional, niche applications all the same.
I honestly think they should have just affected the animation of some of your abilities to fit that theme. Like skins in other games. Pop a big CD and maybe something about your model changes to reflect your covenant.
Issue is Blizzard is on this really weird tightrope where they feel it necessary to make things have meaningful impact. We have precious little bits of content that don’t offer you anything huge but are just there for fun, largely because they see minimal use. But they’ll make the abilities ridiculous so you feel like it wasn’t an awful system because you’ll be forced to actually engage with it. As opposed to if it was truly just cosmetic, few people might engage with it meaningfully after they get what they want out of it which destroys Blizzard’s “time played” metrics when people aren’t obligated to play their game for arbitrary points to progress something.
This community is truly amazing. First, we have threads bashing Blizzard because every class is just builder/spender with no creativity or variation, and then we have comments like this.
In an effort to make the game easier to balance, Blizzard homogenized classes so that they were functionally more similar than ever. And the result? Everyone complains.
So Blizzard takes that feedback and says, ok, we can’t do that with covenants. We have to actually make them functionally different. People don’t like when everything is the same.
And then you complain at that too! You now want them homogenized so that they are all balanced!
Didn’t quite a few people run all kinds of alts in Legion to get the class artifacts and mounts? It may only be four covenants, but I don’t think everything would be dead for interest within the first month, especially if they get creative and keep adding fun, flavorful things throughout the expansion. NOT actual combat abilities but, as someone mentioned earlier, more like toys. I feel like a lot of people enjoy the toys they do have.
I’m sorry there is an actual strength/weakness system in an RPG even though the other 95% of “choices” are just all strength no weaknesses because anytime they would be a weakness you trivially swap it to a strength.
So what? There is more to do in WoW than just one thing. The RPG element you want in WoW belongs solely in single player games. Covenants being cosmetic and having the story and fun things tied to them, NOT combat abilities, is the RPG you should get in WoW. That’s it.
I’m baffled that you’re okay with players being stunted in what they want to do and how they want to play in this game.
Is it really a choice if the min-maxers are going to decide what the “best” choice is and then exclude anyone who doesn’t do that? Sounds more like the illusion of choice.
Lets be honest the best thing they could of done was not give covenants signature abilities, go the Legion route and design new class abilities/talents not tied to covenants and make them a cosmetic/thematic choice only but I doubt we’re going to change Blizzard’s plan this far into the design.
If anything Venthyr will be nerfed to oblivion and we’ll all be Necrolords or Night Fae 2 months into the expansion instead
