But this is EXACTLY what is going to happen if the Covenants are easily swappable. People will literally swap mid-raid multiple times if it means min-maxing and being “the best”. Anything that blocks them from doing this is not okay. Think even Arenas, where people already swap races and such to be the best, allowing them to swap covenants on the fly is only natural to them.
And if they have to do anything besides click a button to swap, they will constantly complain because they got to the 3rd boss and got booted from the raid because they “didn’t pick the right Covenant”. Even worse, some people will just sit on the bench until that 3rd boss, get ported in and then dropped right after. And this will happen at all levels, not just top tier (which I know some of them do stack and swap classes when pushing the highest raid tier and I’m fine with that).
I don’t think your ideas are bad honestly, I just don’t think there is anything Blizzard can do to make a majority of people happy in Shadowlands. If the Covenants were purely a rep/faction system from the start, people would probably just sigh but be ok with it. But they didn’t do that so here we are.
I remember playing TBC and having to choose Aldor or Scryer, and while there was usually one of those that catered to your class more than the other, you weren’t severely punished by all the other players for picking one or the other. And if you wanted to change, you could, it just took some time and grinding. I get that they didn’t have a bunch of spells and abilities tied to them too, but I like the general concept personally.
Times have changed though, and the instant gratification generation has set in for good I think. If some had their way, we’d be able to start the game at max level with any spells, talents and equipment we wanted, able to pick any faction and instantly be exalted with them, already have flying but somehow have an endless personal progression system. Oi.
Tremendous post OP, I fully support everything you say.
I’m a mythic raid leader and going into Shadowlands I hate the idea of having to have multiple of my class ready to enjoy all the content I want to at max strength.
Is everyone here who wants the covenant system to change playing optimal races/optimal class specs? Because if you’re deviating from anything your sims tell you to play, by your own logic you’re wasting everyone’s time by not being the best you can be.
So don’t join the Scourge covenant. I imagine the powers behind whichever group you do fancy will do just fine. I’ve yet to see a valid argument. I’ve seen theoreticalys and in world first conditions, but nothing that says “If your Paladin takes the Angel Covenant they’ll be unable to handle the raids.”
You are still assuming world first raiders don’t care about RP (and it affects more than just world first level raiders).
As it stands, the angel covenant is absurdly bad compared to the others. Could I complete a mythic raid with it? Sure. But that’s not because I took the angel ability, it’s in spite of taking it.
There’s also more to it than just being able to complete a raid. For starters, this is a social game. You don’t raid with just yourself, you raid with ~19 other people. When you’re raiding at a high level, and you decide to dick around with a bad ability for RP, you’re wasting the time of other people, not yourself, and they have every right to remove you from the group in favor of someone that wont waste their time. Should a raider, or m+ runner, or pvper, etc, have to make that choice? Is that really a compelling choice.
A brilliant post OP. Well reasoned and well defended without using “scorched earth” logic.
Perhaps the problem is in the bundle. That is, the mix of RP elements with game mechanics. RP commitments should only be forsaken at a cost as that is life, but game mechanics require flexibility.
Is this mechanic good for leveling but useless for Mythics? Is this one good for PvP but not so good for Heroics? Basically, we end up having to consider our end game and then everything works from there. No RP, no excitement of discovery or building an identity, but rather grinding toward an endgame we hope is still there.
I’d love for Blizz to consider decoupling some of the elements to allow for more satisfying RP and immersion and then freedom to maximize based on endgame choices.
I noticed you’re a blood elf ret paladin. According to Bloodmallet, for the Retribution spec, Tauren sims better. So by your logic, you are wasting the time of other people by choosing to be a blood elf. And any raid/guild leader would be within their rights to remove you in favor of a tauren ret paladin.
Or we can all just not care, play what we want, and not exclude each other based off preferences.
I think it is rotten to the core. It’s going to fragment the player base to the point where people will have very little to do after completing their covenant chores and the fraction of content they have access to. And people with very little to do are likely to quit, not try to force themselves into content they cannot hold their own in.
But for me, since druid will be trash except for resto, I won’t have any options at all but to not play the game. And that’s what it will come down to. People who have next to nothing to do in the game and can’t improve their situation are going to quit, not pat themselves on the head for choosing the right way to gimp their playstyle, the most perfect of perfect rpg gimps possible.
“Have faith that everything will be perfectly balanced as I do” is hardly an argument when we look at legion legendaries, azerite traits, essences. corruptions, hello?
The difference between races falls within statistical variance. That’s why my original post uses the terms “acceptable” and “unacceptable” when it comes to min/max culture. Hyperbole doesn’t help.
You’re post is so retarded that I’m not even sure why I’m bothering to respond to it. I guess I’m bored.
First of all, Bloodmallet is a terrible website that has a ton of inaccuracies, so it’s pretty funny to use that as an example. Second, even if we believe Bloodmallet, there’s a 0.4% difference between tauren and blood elf. Not 4%, 0.4%. Literally, not figuratively, nothing.
To even compare that to what these covenants are going to be is so beyond ludicrous that you should honestly just feel like an idiot for even bringing this up and then acting like you have some sort of moral high ground over “the terrible mythic raiders who exclude you”.
Perhaps you shouldn’t go around claiming that you know how people should play their video games, which is ironically pretty damn exclusionary.
I know in Throne of Thunder, entire guilds were race changing to Troll because at the time they had a racial that did extra damage against beasts. How would they have reacted if one of their players stood up and said “no I don’t wanna be an ugly tusked freak, I like my pretty blood elf!”?
I can promise there are folks who min-max to the extent that anything even remotely suboptimal is considered wasting the time of others.
I think we have most of the concept now, and we can tell what’s going to happen
you could tell that this is going to be meta hell at the drawing board
also you could gut door the same way they gut heroic leap, no path available, and don’t make it a “teleport” so enemies will notice if you try to pass them with it
Stop this garbage strawmanning. Remain on topic or just go…
As for the OP, this is an extremely good post. Just gonna link this to whoever shows signs of backward thinking (to put it nicely), hopefully it’ll be enough to convert them.
It is on topic. You guys are nitpicking minor covenant details, threatening to exclude others for picking a wrong covenant, and saying we should change them nilly-willy, when at the same time you guys are playing all sorts of “suboptimal” choices. It seems hypocritical to me.
Covenants will obviously not boil down to a difference as small as 0.5% between each other. The class abilities alone being drastically different, in most cases, will make picking a Covenant a bigger impact than a racial choice. Add the soulbinds, conduits, legendaries to that pile of things that will impact your character’s power. Differences of ~0.5% has a null chance of happening.
Just give it LoS issues or make it so that you aggro mobs you pass over in instanced content. To me, Door of Shadows should not be used to skip trash packs. It should be an escape tool during encounters.