Watcher did say that it is a serious point of contention in the Development team.
There should be favourable reasons to be in a particular covenant - and your choice should have weight.
This is an MMORPG.
It is too difficult to say what is better for the game, and how players would respond to it.
If it was to be made a talent choice - players should need to go through plenty of hoops to get to that point.
Optional rep grinds - completing story lines etc…
I think that is far more rewarding than giving players a power they don’t deserve.
Afterwhich - your alts get the same covenant talents from you mains hard work, but not the exalted rep, and not automatically completing story lines.
These are rewards though. Same as any other thing.
Why do you think people did challenge modes? Lots of people did it for the limited gear that was offered for completing it. It was a thing that said “Hey look, I did this content!”
This is going to be “Hey look, I belong to this covenant.”
This ability is very up in the air as it wasn’t included in the blog post, but I’d like to point it out as a very big red flag for this system:
The Night Fae Paladin ability is currently an aura.
Now, we don’t know the specifics of how it works, but auras traditionally don’t stack. This means that if you have more than one Paladin with the ability, it does absolutely nothing.
It’s a pretty easy thing to change, don’t get me wrong, but I see it as a huge warning that Blizzard isn’t fully thinking through what they’re doing with these abilities, and it really highlights some of the flaws of the system.
And I would argue the exact opposite. Having the ability to freely switch anything at any moment removes any meaningful choice as you will just swap to the better skill every time.
There is no choice and if you wanted to use the weaker skill you will get bullied by the meta anyways cause you can freely switch for free so why aren’t you?
Some type of permanence and trade off is kinda needed for a choice to actually mean something.
Choice can still have weight if it’s made on each piece of content you engage in.
It promotes collaboration, communication, and strategizing with your group/team.
It makes the game and that system exciting - not just because it matters from match-to-match/dungeon-to-dungeon/boss-to-boss based on many variables, but because it also allows you to use and experience all of the abilities.
Choice, challenge, player agency, fun, and so much more is enhanced with the ability to choose flexibly.
Otherwise it’s just - ok I guess I’ll pick this one and then all of the other benefit and player agency that could have been a part of the game goes out the window.
The idea is to not freely switch at any moment - the permanence comes at the combat/content level; given that there is so many varying kinds of content - this doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Better yet since they are only in alpha they can change/improve the system before it has to be “fixed”…imagine actually using a development stage to develop.
Well, if people are mad that they have choose “ability or cosmetic” make the cosmetic the part that can be switched, because the ability should have some weight to it.
And the opponents of the system are simply saying, “Give us the same choice but keep it separate from Covenants,” so that we can actually enjoy the exploration, story, and aesthetic of the Covenant we choose and not be tied by abilities.
They basically want it like Class Halls in Legion, with artifacts being a separate system.
That isn’t a choice made at the player level. This is the issue with the extreme min maxing in gaming today. The more variety and customization the harder it is to balance. This is why the game is more and more homogenized. The meta will tell you what is best and you pick it cause gamers have turned into Sheep.
The entire system has weight to it. It’s Scryer and Aldor dialed up.
It’s a cool system in an RPG game which you get to choose a second faction. Remember when Ion said that people constantly ask “Is WOW even an RPG anymore”?
No it’s not because everyone wants to be able to do everything.
I mean, i think it should stay as is, but if anything gives I’m just saying the cosmetics would be the better give to say “oh, you can get any cosmetic if you get exalted with all 4”
So a game like FF VII, where I got to choose my abilities flexibly through the materia system, that was an e-sport, not one of the most famous RPGs in history? Flexible choice in RPGs has been around for decades.
You have to put leveling into each of those materia, adding weight to the system, a fully leveled fire materia is much better then one that has never been equipped
Yeah I think the dev team had a wake up call in the right direction. Like if you’re asking if your MMORPG, the face of the MMORPG genre, is an RPG that’s not good.
A caveat that offers: just level them, and a Fire 2 is not going to be as effective as Ice 1 against a Fire boss.
They said swapping Covenants will be difficult.
And as many people have already pointed out, the request to change is the fact certain Covenants are going to have preferred abilities that’s going to all but lock you into certain ones (less choice).
In other words, I dismiss your point. By all means, please give me examples of the beloved standard rpg with inflexible progression.