The "Meaningful Choice" Fallacy

Community General Discussion
1

Hello friends,

So that we know I’m discussing, I’ll try to make this first part akin to a TL;DR. A lot of this is “feelycrafting,” but that’s all we can do at this point.

  • Conduits appear to be like “Major Traits” in Legion Artifacts.
  • Soulbinds appear to like “Minor Traits” in Legion Artifacts.
  • Covenants should be freely swappable. Punish players through non-combat gameplay by using RPG elements, such as NPC interactions (they ignore you).
  • Covenant Signature Abilities should have overlapping/sahred mechanics, thus making each spell more flexible in usage, especially when compared to each other.
  • Nerf Door of Shadows range to reduce cheesy gameplay.
  • Utilize Reputations as a way to introduce RPG elements to Covenants.

I’m rarely one to site Youtubers, but I want to bring extra attention to Preach’s video because, honestly, he’s right and his points are very strong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlXRZvHnYIU

I’m not going to echo his points verbatim, but I’d like to bring my point of view.

This a pretty long post. The TL;DR is at the top.

The Meaningful Choice Fallacy

I no longer support being locked to Covenants.
Non-damaging, unique abilities/mechanics cannot be balanced between each other.

You cannot have unique, impactful abilities AND balanced choices in most situations. You either get watered down abilities, or you get unbalanced abilities. We can probably agree that it’s not acceptable to outright lose due to “picking the wrong Covenant.” Because of this, you can expect any “wrong choices” to not be punished. This undermines the idea of a “meaningful choice.”

Blizzard can (and should) try to balance it, but there is always a right choice, and a wrong choice. You are forced into a system where you have mandatory choices or meaningless choices.

In a game where choices matter, to pick the wrong choice means you risk being ostracized. The culture in gaming today is all about optimization of one’s time. The social agreement is “don’t waste my time and I won’t waste your time.” When we have all the answers, we know what is acceptable and unacceptable.

Tuning numbers is relatively easy. What is actually difficult to tweak are mechanical strengths and utility. Blizzard recently used the terms “Puzzles” to describe ways to make different abilities feel strong or “the right choice” in a given situation. It’s not that I don’t trust Blizzard, it’s that I don’t think it’s a realistic goal. In a way, “meaningful choice” is lip service.

Preach made a great point – Encounters cannot be designed around lacking a Covenant Ability. So, if you have an ability that is “the right choice” then you’re going to find that it’s effectively overpowered.

Let’s imagine you had Necrolord’s Fleshcraft and you came across a puzzle that is trivialized by having more effective health. Basically, you just need to survive damage. Classes and specs with multiple damage reduction abilities can easily cover most sources of damage that would favor Fleshcraft, therefore Fleshcraft is weak for those classes and specs. At this point, you’d look at the other Covenants for their abilities and run the same critical thinking exercise.

Fleshcraft (Necrolords)

Every class has damage mitigation and/or healing. If Fleshcraft is mandatory, players without it will die to its puzzle. If you don’t need Fleshcraft to solve a puzzle designed for it, then Fleshcraft is meaningless. For combat usage, Fleshcraft might be the worst ability available simply due to the setup required. You can have an extra 20% health as a shield, that’s actually not terrible. But the long channel time for reapplying the shield is not fun to press. It looks awesome, feels awesome to press, but lacks that something special to make it a good combat option.

­Door of Shadows (Venthyr)

It fills a niche most classes do not have access to. The ability to teleport is not a mechanic Blizzard can design gameplay around. Because of this, the ability to teleport will trivialize most puzzles related to movement. (It will not negate prolonged sprints, such as gauntlets…which don’t exist in WoW.) All endgame content the game is balanced around is instanced. By virtue of this fact alone, Door of Shadows is the defacto pick for all instanced combat, and therefore the endgame itself.

Soulshape (Night Fae)

This ability is very good for the reasons Door of Shadows is not. It is great in prolonged movement. But it’s simply overshadowed by Door of Shadows because, mechanically, a teleport is superior to a Blink in most situations, especially when Y-axis is involved. It’s not that Soulshape is bad, but a 30% movement speed increase for 12sec is probably only good for Death Knights…and even then, it’s not that great. It’s hard to pass it up an ability with a mechanic you don’t have access to. Even Death Knights have Wraith Walk available, but they don’t have a teleport.

Summon Steward (Kyrian)

Arguably, this spell is the most flexible of all of the Covenant Signature Abilities. The healing is actually pretty helpful, and so are the Cleansing effects. I feel the healing provided by the Steward’s Phial is better than the temporary health given by Fleshcraft simply due to availability. Steward’s Phial is on demand, where Fleshcraft requires a lot of time and setup. Steward’s Phial has the Cleansing effect, and Cleansing gives it that special something Fleshcraft lacks.

Signature Abilities: What needs to change?

I think Door of Shadows is the only overpowered ability at this time. Even if it had a 5min cooldown, it’s really strong. I think it can still exist as a teleport, but I think nerfing the range would do a lot of good (25 yards, down from 35 yards). If it feels lackluster after this change, I think it could be improved by making it a Physical spell (castable while Silenced) and/or castable while moving.

I think Fleshcraft is too weak as it is. First off, it should be instant and apply the full value of the shield. The theme of the spell is cool, but it needs that extra something to elevate it. Passively, if it automatically “devoured” nearby corpses within a 30 yard radius and “ripped away parts” from nearby enemies, you could have it empower your current cast (more shielding). From here, you have an on-demand shield with quite a lot of health (~30% max health on average). It would be better in many ways than Steward’s Phial, but Steward’s Phial would retain its niche and have some more advantages.

I think Soulshape is actually in a good spot. When you consider PVP usage, it allows the player to flee enemies or pursue their targets. If we see a nerf to the range of Door of Shadows then Soulshape can keep up with it in PVE as well.

I think Summon Steward is weird, but honestly not terrible. One change I think would help is if Steward’s Phial was bottomless. If possible I think it would also be pretty amazing if you could have your Steward help you with clicking Summoning Stone/Meeting Stone portals. If anything Summon Steward is your Owlbro of Convenience, so if they could click your summoning portals that’d be dandy. (You’d have to tell Owlbro to click the portal though, it needs to be that way.)

Covenant Restrictions and Swapping: What should happen?

Honestly, with the direction Blizzard wants to go, I do not feel there is a viable option that supports a meaningful choice. In its current implementation, to balance these abilities is to make them rather irrelevant.

Conduits and Soulbinds are fine and offer a tuning knob for these Covenants. But we’re stuck on the mechanical power of these abilities. Trying to balance different mechanics is somewhat of an impossible task.

I think freely swapping is needed, but it needs to fit the RPG side of things. It doesn’t appear Covenants are friendly to each other, so a system based off Major/Minor effects would not fit the RPG theme. It would look out of place, and make selecting a Covenant meaningless.

I think the only way to handle this is to minimize any penalty for swapping. I think leaving a Covenant should have a minor impact on progression, possibly costing Anima/other currency to join antoher Covenant. However, I would refuse a stacking punishment (such as increased costs). I think swapping 10+ times in a week is a bit much, but it should be allowed. Penalties can still be introduced, but they shouldn’t significantly impact your performance. If it impacted your non-combat experience, that would be a good fit.

Swapping Covenants and RPG Elements: What should happen?

I think something most players would be okay with is creating an impact in open world content. Perhaps you could tie quality of life to Covenants. I feel this direction plays into the RPG aspect of things, but doesn’t significantly impact combat performance…it’s just sort of a pain in the butt you’d need to accept. The idea is NPCs of that Covenant are treating you as a deserter and won’t offer you assistance or services.

Reputation systems should play into this. I feel Reputations have become a measure of the number of world quests you’ve completed. I think we should utilize the “Friendship” system instead. For example, you can be Exalted, but your faction might think of you as a prick after you left them. Using this type of system to influence how the world reacts to your actions would be more fun and interesting. You’d be able to lower your “Friendship Rating” with a faction after you leave, but you wouldn’t damage the World Quest reputation bar. In this way, you could utilize the “Friendship Rating” by adding it as a restriction on specific items or interactions. Your choices would actually have in-game consequences in this system.

Just to list a few things leaving a Covenant would do:

  • Lasts some amount of time, likely 24 hours or until next daily reset. Debatable.
  • Loss of access to rejoin Covenant (based on timer).
  • Loss of access to Flight Masters (you can arrive, but not depart)
  • Loss of access to some vendors, such as quartermasters.
  • NPCs would glare at you in-game as you walked by them and sometimes talk about you in public channels (/say). Similar to the Death Knight starting experience.
  • Unable to purchase/use Covenant-specific items while in poor favor.

All of this wouldn’t effect combat performance; and it would absolutely play into the RPG elements of things. RPG elements don’t always need to be about combat performance.

Who cares if it’s imbalanced?: (Why I care…)

We are trying to avoid the same problem with Legion Legendary items, and BFA Azerite traits, and BFA Corruption effects.

Imbalances are pretty much the only reason why many players care about optimizing their character. They want to know what’s best. It’s as valid a playstyle as is “not caring about sims.” Imbalances are expected, but many players feel like there is no choice if the imbalances are extreme. It’s not about nerfing fun, it’s about making every option fun.

Popular arguments and ideas:

In this section I’m just going to quickly address popular arguments.

What if they only worked outside of instances?

  • Covenants are an important expansion feature. It would be really bad design if you are unable to utilize a core feature where most of the endgame takes place. To support this idea means you support locking these spells out of Torghast, Battlegrounds, Dungeons, Raids, etc. That does not come off as fun.

Why not make a Major/Minor system like with Essences?

  • RPG elements. Being ability to pick your Signature Ability and your Class Ability regardless of Covenants defeats the purpose of Covenants. Many players enjoy the “package deal” that we get with Covenants. There should be consequences for leaving a Covenant. Many players don’t think that should be a massive impact to your in-game performance. There are other ways to give it those RPG elements.

Whoever wants to play multiple toons of the same class just for Covenants is crazy. Don’t balance the game around them.

  • Perspective is important. Is it any more crazy than playing multiple toons for a chance at a rare mount? Not really.

  • Players want to have their character at their best. There’s nothing wrong with that, and this absolutely happened in Legion. In fact, players outside the Top 0.1% would make a new toon and powerlevel it to 110. The impact these items had were huge. It was more efficient to re-roll than it was to grind for another drop.

Covenants shouldn’t be swappable, it ruins the idea of a meaningful choice.

  • Making Covenants swappable will help avoid any issues from the past. It also makes nerfing/buffing Covenant abilities easier. Blizzard is going to make changes. If Covenants were locked, it would upset a lot of players who picked a Covenant because it was determined to be the strongest for their character. This actually ruins the choice these players had made.

Why not just buff the weaker spells?

  • You’re balancing in around class toolkits, not so much as the other Covenant Abilities.
  • Weaker spells should be buffed mechanically. “Homogenization” is typically a dirty word, but it also means things easier to balance. Buffing weaker spells by creating some overlap across the Signature Abilities would blur the lines of where a spell is “the only good choice.” It moves away from a design that gives a clear winner, and allows each spell to be good, better, or worse when compared between each other.
  • We want these spells to excel when possible, but we don’t want it to be a mile ahead. Door of Shadows is seriously overpowered.

Thank you for scrolling to the bottom of this post. There are as many right ways to play WoW as there are players. In my opinion, allowing players to freely swap Covenants will be the better direction for WoW for all players.

91 Likes
2

Long and worth reading. I agree with Preach and what you say quite a bit.

You did leave one option out though and that is removing the signature ability before it can tarnish the expansion.

If it doesn’t exist nobody wins nor loses. Isn’t the RPG potential in the story, cosmetics and class abilities enough?

18 Likes
3

I think removing it would reduce Class Abilities, Conduits, and Soulbinds to a (complex) math equation. Part of what makes the Signature Abilities great is that non-damaging abilities are situational and cannot be mathed out easily.

It’s a bit strange what I’m suggesting for Signature Abilities, because you’d think homogenization means your choice matters less. But if you consider that you’re mixing a few mechanics (example: AB, BC, CD, DA), it makes your choice of Covenant feel more like you get to pick your preference, but you also don’t feel forced into a Covenant for competitive play. There will be good choices, better choices, and worse choices, but you’d have at least 2 “better” options no matter the situation. You’d also get 2 “worse” choices, but it’s better than 1 “better” and 3 “worse” options.

2 Likes
4

The main overarching concern I have with the covenant system is that it requires making an incredibly important choice for your character, all the while hoping that Bliz doesn’t fundamentally change the factors that led to this choice. Given their history of handling balancing and patch tuning, I have very little reason to get it right this time.

We’ve seen this all before, with classes, specs, trinket balance, Legion Legendaries, Azerite traits, essences, and corruptions (EV and IF say hi). We’re even seeing this now with the corruption vendor. Gushing Wounds was fine until it was put on the vendor; suddenly, however, it’s too good and needs a nerf because everyone can stack it. Oh, but they couldn’t actually get the nerf out this week, so it’s definitely getting nerfed next week (just like it was definitely getting nerfed this week). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

It doesn’t feel like a very meaningful choice if you can’t trust the other party to uphold their end of the bargain.

16 Likes
5

I’ve been saying this since Blizzcon when they announced them.

6 Likes
6

Conduits should also not use consumables.

Covenant swapping would create more player agency and provide players with meaningful choice.

2 Likes
7

How about instead of putting any kind of restriction/debuff/punishment, they give players bonuses/incentives for staying loyal to a single covenant?

Swapping could be completely free and easy - but by taking advantage of this, you forego RPG/consumable/resource benefits that aren’t strictly related to power.

14 Likes
8

I’d prefer they only kept the primary damage covenant abilities and remove all mobility abilities altogether. I’d like to be Night Fae as monk but I know its utility is useless to me compared to Kyrian / Venthyr. I want the Night Fae aesthetic without suffering for making that choice in end game.

2 Likes
9

I like this approach much better that provides tangible rewards players receive for their “RP” choices:

4 Likes
10

I’ve already rolled 4 warriors and 4 demon hunters for shadowlands. It would be really nice to not have to worry and deal with maintaining multiple versions of the same class.

I’m 100% for having freely swappable covenants. Instead give people benefits for staying committed to a covenant for an extended period of time.

6 Likes
11

I absolutely agree that you should be able to freely switch your Covenant. I also agree with the idea that instead of punishing someone for switching, those who stay loyal to one Covenant should receive some kind of perk as outlined in a few other posts in this thread.

A very important point that Cyouskin brought up is that if you are able to freely switch your Covenant and Blizzard decides to attach a cost to it, let’s say 1,000g to switch, then it needs to remain at that same number forever. There should never again be a system in the game like azerite reforging where the price doubles every time.

7 Likes
12

Content needs to be designed in such a way where “just math it to min-max” isn’t always the objectively correct decision in all forms of content.

Meaningful choice cannot exist without meaningful circumstances. “You can’t change this easily!” is not what makes a choice meaningful or interesting by itself, but it important.

The best case scenario with any system like this, is that all of the options are distinctly useful in different general forms of content (best PvP ability, best M+ ability, etc) and that the player themselves participates in all forms of content so they have to choose which to specialize in. This still sucks, big time.

But this is the best we will get without a substantial shift in design philosophy that make encounters puzzles to figure out rather than steps to a dance.

P.S.: Separate power choice from a system that’s mostly about lore/cosmetics because lol I’m not looking forward to deciding between taking the ability I want, taking the ability that’s the best, and choosing the covenant I am most interested in. Every choice will feel like a loss unless all 3 happen to align.

5 Likes
13

Someone else had a great way of putting this:

What Blizzard keeps putting forward with this “balancing using different puzzles” is a goal, not a solution.

Just like balancing the different classes by having different encounter types is a goal, not a solution.

Blizzard does not have a solution. There is no confidence to be had in this idea from the get-go, and that’s before even factoring in past performance on their part.

Meanwhile, we the player base, have to sit here hoping that they’ll pull off some impossible hat-trick with their “experiment” while things that actually matter, like improving the base classes or making torghast fun, go by the wayside for months.

For what? A ridiculous idea of RPG choices that has nothing to do with these abilities? Is this experiment actually worth the time and energy being put into it?

10 Likes
14

This would definitely work within the “Friendship System.” Consider this – if you reach max rank, you could have access to exclusive buffs for open world content. NPCs out in the world, and giving them assistance could increase your favor, regardless of Covenant; Bodyguards could join you if you’re of a certain status.

There’s a ton of potential there. :slight_smile:

1 Like
15

Agreed.

I just don’t think paying customers/players should feel punished/inhibited for wanting to play the game in all it’s forms.

Some players chose Druids/Monks/Paladins/etc. SPECIFICALLY because they could play multiple roles across various types of content.

This system FORCES a “master of ONE” mentality instead of letting a player choose to be more casually a “master of none” - and essentially eliminates the possibility of a “master of all” without having to level and upkeep 4 characters of the same class - which just seems ridiculous.

All for what? Something us casual/RP players could still achieve in the game under a flexible system? No thanks. It just reeks of trying to milk players for time and imposing unnecessary restrictions on people that pay to play this game.

8 Likes
16

That’s already happening with or without the signature ability.

It just so happens with the signature ability in there the math is simplified to Venthyr or bust.

Without it the math is increasingly more complex and choice now means something positive. In that the differences are mathematically calculable and less concerning than a wholly imbalanced factor.

Well, to me it’s less a mathematical problem and more a grading problem. In that you don’t need to know how much better the Venthyr ability is you just need to know it’s better than the other 3. Then maybe the class abilities are tuned down to compensate for that faction having the best signature ability.

I don’t think it’s wise to ever have a position of x cannot be graded therefore we’ll never balance it.

Yes, devaluing the Venthyr teleport will ultimately make the discussion more worthwhile. But like said how you do this and how much is in this giant void that is incalculable. For example you nerf it to 25 yards and it proves to still be a no-brainer in practice. I do agree sometimes abilities will be incalcuable in their worth but we know they’re worth more than other abilities at a cursory glance.

What I’d rather not see is the 25 yard nerf become something much more destructive six months into the expansion when a lot of people have bought into the Venthyr covenant. That is not going to be a good moment.

3 Likes
17

This is another problem with systems like these, and we’ve seen the consequences of it several times since they started these weird experiments in Legion.

They’re so afraid of devaluing time and effort invested into these systems that whenever something gamebreaking arises, they’d much sooner nerf the class mechanics themselves that play into the problematic interaction than the system that isn’t even staying. Just makes the experience worse for everyone, especially for people who aren’t abusing these problems.

I really, really wish they’d stop these experiments unless they are going to make them secondary systems that they are okay with tweaking independently of necessary class changes.

…Also it would help if they would settle on class design that people actually like before trying these supplementary power systems that are used to solve fundamental problems with the spec rather than enhance them.

9 Likes
18

I like the idea of a “friendship system” and that covenants and RPG elements in general are about more than just combat efficiency. The game should have more of this regardless since RPGs are supposed to be more than just murderhobo simulators with a story.

However when it does come to combat performance I feel like even though people go on about being worried they picked the wrong choice and got ostracized that it’s not all that different from how it is now.

I’m told that I can just opt to not respec if I think freely respeccing is bad, but then I’m also told that I’m doing it wrong and I should feel bad if I’m not always using the optimal build in any given situation because I’m “wasting everybody’s time”.

So apparently I can’t just opt to play whatever I think is fun without being just as ostracized as people are worried about with Covenants.

It’s starting to feel like even giving us a choice in character builds is pointless if we’re always expected to just pick the optimal choice.

3 Likes
19

It’ll be worse - because this adds one additional layer of criteria that people are looking for.

3 Likes
20

Well designed systems shouldn’t have obvious, optimal choices. Achieving perfect balance is impossible so while there is always “right” and “wrong” choices in that regard, the best way to counter that problem is by forcing a decision commitment through different types of challenges that make you wish you had different options throughout the whole experience.

The problem is, they don’t do that outside of M+ in which they treat the entire dungeon as a single encounter. It sort of works in M+, but the reality is that Tyrannical/Fortified basically makes most of those sorts of decisions for you; and we’re still playing in an era where talent/essence/trait balance is so bad that you don’t have much freedom even in the best of times.

Committing to a single ability via a covenant isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the reason why this sucks is because the commitment is supposedly massive (so, too far in the other direction) and doesn’t take into account a player’s desire to play different forms of content - or even different specs, so the decision feels horrible no matter what you pick.

3 Likes