First… calm down we haven’t even seen what their ideas for covenants are.
Furthermore, y’all gotta learn that you can’t have everything both ways. If you want choices then be happy for choices. If you want everyone to have the best of every choice then you’ll have to learn to be ok with everyone being the same.
I personally want the covenants to be far different than each other and if one has the best skill for tanking and I take it so be it. That character will be a tank for the whole expansion. If I decide to dps one night and the pugs complain they’ll either live with it or kick me. Big deal. I welcome the choices even if it leads to the possibility of choosing wrong.
I think there’s an erroneous idea that there will be a clear “best” for a role. That’s not going to be the case. Between the class abilities, possible soul binds, “which covenant is best” will be the same kind of question as “which class is best”.
If they can garauntee the Covenant system and abilities will go untouched no matter how underpowered or overpowered they prove to be then yes im fine with making my bed and lieing in it.
However if i choose the best possible covenant for my prefered spec and than 3 months in the nerf the covenant ability into the ground and buff another, then that is not player agency that is a bait and switch.
And if you have played this game for any amount of time we can all sit here 100% certain the covenant you choose (if it provides good spec synergy) WILL get nerfed at some point and another will be buffed in its place.
That is not player Agency that is a Blizzard made Dilemma that we cn all see comming from a mile away.
I am not asking for everything - I’m just asking for the choice to choose one freely based on the many combinations of roles/content/match-ups that I come across.
I only get 1, and as a consequence none of the others, once I engage in that content. That’s the cost involved.
I don’t want whatever is best - I just want the opportunity to make my own decision across that various combinations of gameplay I’ll come across throughout the expansion.
That’s deliberately misinterpreting my words and you know it.
You know exactly what I mean by my sentence(s) you’re quoting. The “choosing” is in reference to the role/content, not to the abilities themselves. AKA: Each role/content has a ‘best’ and you ‘choose’ that based on whatever it is you’re doing.
The problem is, this is how it will go. These abilities will be fun and interesting at launch. People will quickly figure out which one is the best and blizzard will compensate for that by trying to balance them because people won’t have a way to easily switch between them. They’ll balance them into boringness where our rotations are better off leaving them out for most specs.
Having unlimited choices you can change with the only barrier being “be in a rested area” is not a meaningful choice.
I don’t think he meant what people hope he meant.
That is…there is very little content to actually do, and alts can get caught up instantly to a “main” status with almost no work.
Thats fine if a person wants it.
But I do not feel that meets “player agency”. If you want more options you can readily rotate between, because none of the options actually gives you a consequence other than “find a rested area”…then ask for that.
People don’t want to actually make a choice unless they can immediately change that choice with no penalty.
So much this. The dps aspect of the covenants I am all but ignoring. The utility aspects will be defining.
But no one (myself included) is asking for irrecoverable choices. Thats on the opposite end of the spectrum.
I am only saying that it seems like people only want “choice” if they dont actually have to make a choice, because they can instantly nullify it.
I am really struggling to figure out how that applies here.
All I am saying is the community should ask for what they actually want, and not grasp at buzz words that sound fancy but can ultimately back fire.
If I have 16 abilities, and 1 of those abilities is the best for your class for each type of content you can do (M+, PvP, etc.), then you’re going to choose that 1 ability for that content.
You’re asking to be able to have access to every ability all at once so you can choose that 1 ability for whatever content you’re doing, and swap on the fly when you change your content.
Again, that’s not a choice. If you’re going to do M+, you want to be able to pick X ability. If you’re going to do PvP, you want to be able to pick Y ability. You’re deliberately obfuscating what you actually want under the guise of calling it ‘player choice’.
So are current talents not a choice? Is that how we’re going to define a choice now? By your arbitrary personal measure?
The reality is, people already completely exclude classes from certain content just based on the balance of the classes at that moment, what do you think is going to happen to the people that do as you say and choose whichever one they feel like and don’t have the specific one best for that particular content. I’ll yell you. They’re going to be excluded just like they are when their class is underperforming or not fitting the niche.
It’s not a choice at all. What you really want is X ability for Y content. Full stop.
By not having access to every covenant’s abilities, you naturally can’t fulfill that condition. Covenant X may have the best ability for content Y but not content Z.
I’m not clear on how that means I’m not choosing though. I am using my understanding of my class, spec, situation and the content I’m about to go into in order to have the highest chance of succeeding alongside myself and my friends.
Just this afternoon I used the essence of the focusing iris on mythic Hivemind to make sure the second wave of adds died in time. It’s not optimal for DPS, but given the situation it felt to me like the correct one in order to achieve mine and my friends’ goal of killing the boss. If I didn’t choose to do that, we’d likely still be stuck trying to kill that boss.
To be fair they aren’t really. The only real choice in talents is “do you change based on your content, or do you stick to the same talents you like?”
All expansions upto I think MoP or WoD? I would deem are considered ones where they were a choice.
Even when we had dual spec or even when we had access to all three we couldn’t just change our build freely. Some people would even use their two specs when we had dual spec for the same specialisation just so they could have one that was designed for PvP and one for PvE.
Simply because that choice mattered and the cost to revent that choice was high.
Key term Odinreborn has been referring to is “consequential choice”.
Ie a choice that is meaningful and has repercussions.
The choice in talents and essences today are what I would call “superfluous choices”.
Ie they don’t really mean that much as you can always change your choice with ease.
A more consequential choice in the current game is simply which class you decide to play. Although I would say that is to the extreme degree as game wise that is unchangeable.
Because it’s not a choice. You’re going in circles at this point.
Let’s say you want to do M+.
If I give you 100 abilities, and 1 of them is simmed to be the best for M+, you’re going to choose that best ability. There’s no choice in the matter. There’s no decision making. It doesn’t matter whether I give you 16 abilities spread across 4 covenants or 1000 abilities spread across 100 covenants.