Before any announcement of what was in shadowlands, there were NO requests in the forum for “meaningful choices” that entail being restricted from your favorite content by a bad choice you were forced to make.
If you want to take the discussion back to 2 decades ago to avoid having to admit that no one was asking for anything remotely like this, then there’s nothing to discuss, is there?
The problem is that it’s four rather specific things that don’t really always mesh with the class fantasy they’ve put forth.
Sure some people might like the idea of it on a character but it makes it a very hit or miss thing, whereas making a class specific system is more likely to be a hit.
People who are interested in a Paladin fantasy are likely playing a Paladin, after all.
This is why class halls worked for the most part… except priests, hunters, and monks. I still have no idea what the hunters and monks really did and I played through both class halls.
The consequences should definitely be just over strict enough to prevent flavor of the month mass switching.
Maybe a little more, to be honest, to accentuate that this choice has MEANING.
I think your missing a key element, people didn’t want the covenants to be switch-able. They want the abilities to be, covenants can be permanent I doubt anybody would care as then it would be primarily cosmetic thing. The problem is, that currently the abilities are tied to the covenants.
There is a fairly easy and IMO obvious solution to this and I’m not sure why Blizzard doesn’t want to do it? Besides the excuses they’ve already given…
and if you don’t think the “reasoning” they’ve given aren’t excuses then your kidding yourself and need to go play a singleplayer RPG instead. Stuff like that just won’t work in WoW, there is way to many issues with tying abilities to a near permanent choice it just won’t work considering those abilities can be nerfed & buffed later on.
Literally make anything else a permanent choice, nobody would care. Just don’t do it to abilities.
I will never agree that gameplay should be sacrificed for lore.
Dumb question: why does it matter? What harm comes to you personally if people to FoTM things?
This wouldn’t have to be a thing if Blizzard could actually balance.
the opposite resulted in wiping out old gods, the black empire and azshara in the same expac
No that was bad gameplay too IMO.
Even if they are absolutely, perfectly balanced, it’s still a bad system. Covenants actively discourage you from trying new stuff and experimenting with different interactions between abilities and whatever content you are doing.
For example: Let’s say that a new dungeon, raid, torghast boss, etc. comes out and you are Night Fae. However, you think of a potential cool interaction with a certain mechanic if you had the Venthyr ability. Well, that’s too bad unless you want to make that a permanent choice. I’m not even talking about min/max here, I’m just talking about ways people like to have fun in WoW by trying new things.
I lose out on a system that as it stands is far more interesting. I don’t want a few cheap suits to wear.
Do classes as well? Do you play only one class throughout the whole game? Surely you have different classes to try different covenants.
I should’ve clarified I was talking about balancing classes. Sorry.
But yes, this system is garbage.
How? I’m not being facetious, but how do you lose out on an interesting system?
How are the suits cheap? You can rent an expensive suit (most people do).
Not really. You don’t have to delete your Paladin in order to try something on a Warrior.
Sure, I will have alts. But the Covenants have class specific abilities. So if I want to try stuff I’ll need 4 Paladins.
Yeah, no. I wish people would stop throwing out “RPG” as an excuse for any lame game design that pops up.
They’re not though. They’re reputations on steroids and the steroids will wear off once 10.0 comes out. Then you’ll be left wondering where your “hard” choices went to as we move onto new content.
As it stands, I romanced the wrong character in swtor and in order to romance the other one, I would need a second sith warrior.
Ok? Why should WoW copy a bad system from a bad game?
Alternatively, if this goes well, we could expect to see this sort of thing become permanent 