I wish we had downvotes too so I could hit this comment with one of them
People aren’t saying this because we hate everything blizzard does
People are saying this because it’s just a stupid idea
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Being able to switch abilities can still involve impactful choices.
If I tank for my raid team - the choice I make will be very impactful; just as the choice I make will be when I go and run 2s/3s in arena in Arms/Fury when I’m done with raiding.
Leveling multiple alts of the same class to make this feasible is such a horrible way to approach things. Are they going to start deducting xp everytime we die next?
This isn’t the 90’s - gaming has evolved far beyond such primitive game systems.
Everybody seems to be an expert on something they read about in a blog post.
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IKR.
At least let’s see them play a little bit.
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Also In bfa we can choose many azerite skill which end up to be focus iris yet sometime I would like to choose other skill like teleport to high ground to fight melee class
Main problem is you have get back to chamber of heart just to change it. Put Station around the zone like in mechagon should be an answer to this issue
Why blizzard design tons of skill when people only forced to choose 1 or 2
And now they fix that by forced us to get unwanted skill by covenant gate instead
The moment I saw Covenants at Blizzcan (not a typo) I went right, another faction. Another enforced grind to achieve something that will probably be mutated or changed or removed or made obsolete over the term of the expansion.
Some Anima, anyone?
Rather than make factions a gameplay choice that relates to fun or useful benefits (eg professions, small useful ingame items, mounts, whatever) its another thing to tie us into repetitive gametime.
It makes me feel like a poopoohead to complain about something not even tested yet - and I may very well be a negative nelly for saying so. But I’m not sure how else I can see it, since they have already shown us that this choice opens specific class abilities that I can’t see them handing out on Day 1. And never changing, ever.
Sure, why not have Covenants that we choose to support. Even have them reward us with something when we turn in quantities of Anima. But let it be that ‘player choice’ thing they talk about and not a carrot on a stick of powers and abilities that should be included in our characters as baseline, or abilities earned as we level.
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Being forced to choose which way you will be gimped so as to be ineffective in other situations is the opposite of player agency. It is a false choice forced on us.
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Ok , for those who get alpha access , please copy 4 toon of your main and test them all on 4 covenant.
After that we would get a more clear picture and may give blizzard a feedback to hot fix the game in 9.3 patch
I get the feeling that this is going to be an “account-wide essences” sort of situation, where Blizzard sticks to their guns for no good reason, and then takes a half-step towards giving us what we want.
I mean, yes, if I’m starting a new alt for 8.3, and I complete the intro quests, I get two shiny NEW essences to slot into my necklace, but if I’m going to enjoy the essence system, having more essence choices makes that a lot more fun, doesn’t it? And I already worked toward unlocking those essences… So…
I think it should be the same thing here. If I’ve already progressed far enough with a covenant on one character, let me gain access to those covenant abilities on my other characters.
That way, I can feel more free to pick my covenant based on the visual aesthetic and lore, instead of what’s optimal.
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Remember when Ion said Shadowlands would be “alt-friendly”?
I wonder what he meant.
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Haha what gave that away? The fact that people want to flip flop around their decisions lol
Apparently most people want choices, but meaningless choices they cab change on a whim instead of actually being an important decision.
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Wouldn’t having more options make this system more interesting, and offer more choices to the player?
Oh, no wait. Maybe you think “agency” means FEWER choices. Or you think it means that players who make the wrong choice, or that regret their choices should be punished by having to spend more of their precious time, throwing away their previous efforts, and grinding away at a different faction.
Make no mistake, this system is here to trick you into sinking your time into grinding a reputation. It’s not about “agency.”
It’s minmax madness at its finest. There is no “good enough”, if your character isn’t perfectly optimal on every dimension it’s crap.
This is a community problem, not a blizzard problem.
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Isn’t that the whole object behind player agency and choice though? You get to make the decision of whether you want to go with your favorite aesthetic covenant, or alternatively you can pick it based on the current numbers and hope they aren’t changed later, or affected by scaling etc.
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Being able to pick one covenant ability to use for progression raid tanking, and then picking another for running arena’s as fury/arms isn’t meaningless.
Those choices matter, are important, and are very impactful when you play various aspects of the game.
Is it really a choice if you assign a covenant to each sector of the game? It’s functionally no different from just baking those bonuses into the role. In order for there to be any actual choice involved there’d have to be multiple abilities that are roughly equal for each role, which is a much taller order.
I think there’s a lot more diversity possible beyond just role. Content plays a huge factor - and in arena’s it matters even more.
One ability might make a difference when you have teams that each have a healer - but if you’re a healer up against a team with all dps, another ability might be way more impactful. So the same role; but different choice - and it matters.
I’m trying to reserve judgment but these types of expansion specific power I just feel is bad design. can’t they add something to the classes that will last beyond the expansion? a choice between abilities is good, but hopefully we won’t be locked into those choices and can switch easily.
With the system as it stands, I make one choice. I choose my covenant at max level and that’s it. I don’t see that choice as “Do I want to be a vampire or a necrolord” (As an example). I see that choice as “Do I want this character to be optimal in raids as a tank or in PvP as a dps”.
Agency to me means choices, here I get to make a choice between 4 things once. Whereas if I were able to change these abilities I’d be able to make a choice out of these 4 for every single spec and content combination I have available. Lowballing that (2 specs, 5 types of content) gives me 10x more opportunities to make a choice and be rewarded for that choice.
I want player agency, I want to make choices based on context and information. To me 10 > 1
Unfortunately, it seems like the community is already up in arms on hour zero of an announcement due to an unfortunate perception problem (e.g: “Sim or bust”).
The community only wants choices so long each choice they pick is optimal with respect to their current content or role. If someone changes to a Tank spec, they want to be able to change to whatever covenant has the best Tank ability. If someone changes to a Heal spec, they want to be able to change to whatever covenant has the best Heal spec, on a whim, with no consequences. Anything outside of that will be met with cries of ‘reduction of choice’.
It doesn’t matter how small the gap is between their current choice and the simmed optimal choice is. To the community, so long as their current choice is simmed to be suboptimal, it’s therefore labeled as the ‘incorrect’ choice and a ‘waste’.
This isn’t a problem specific to World of Warcraft, but it’s a flawed problem nonetheless that Blizzard (or any game company) can’t solve because the community has decided that simming takes precedence, regardless of their own level of play or what content they choose to do.
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