Yeah honestly - that’s exactly what I would be happy with.
Maybe people are just conflating the covenant with the abilities?
Like you stick with a covenant and have to stay committed to that ONE - but you can still use any of the abilities you’ve already earned.
I guess I just thought it made more sense to associate the change at the covenant level since, I think, the soulbinds would interact with the abilities and being able to balance everything ACROSS covenants would be more complicated.
There are also RPG’s that go in the opposite direction - Warframe with weapons and frames. FFXIV with classes (jobs).
But WoW isn’t a loot-shooter game. It’s a descendant of Everquest.
The reason not to make all the active abilities shared across Covenants would be that those abilities are distinctive to the specific Covenant, they would be the most visually impressive, and most likely prominent rewards that you get for progression within the Covenant story.
The soulbinds would more likely be passive and not as distinctive. But they could still be strong in terms of power in a particular type of content.
The combination should allow for tuning so that a particular choice isn’t so much better in mythic+, for example, that playing the other Covenants in that type of content is frowned upon.
That’s the only real pitfall that needs to be avoided, imho. There can be pros and cons, just not to the point of creating huge imbalances.
FFXIV is an MMO-RPG; not a shooter looter game. Warframe is a 1st person RPG.
I just mentioned both because they’re RPGs which is what everyone is hinging their arguments on.
Warframe is definitively not a first person RPG. It’s most certainly a 3rd person, over the shoulder arcade looter shooter heavily based on resource farming.
I think you can set the camera to be 1st person or over the shoulder. But it’s still a role-playing game.
No, it’s not. 0%. There is no option to be in first person also, quit talking about a game you clearly don’t know anything about when trying to make comparisons.
This goes against everything essences did, by grinding out Blood of the Enemy I learned to like epic battlegrounds and now you’re saying that’s not their vision and I’m not supposed to do both PVE and PVP? To hell with that everchanging vision.
A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game ; abbreviated RPG ) is a [game]in which players assume the roles of [characters] in a fictional [setting].
Are you arbitrarily making up some other definition of role-playing game that I’m not aware of - because based on this one, it 100% is.
That would literally be every single game in existence ever. When playing mario bros, you assume the role of a plumber going to save a princess in a fictional kingdom.
Even Digital Extremes, the developers of the game, would disagree with you. They describe their game as “a cooperative free-to-play third person online action game set in an evolving sci-fi world.”
“Warframe is a free-to-play action role playing third-person shooter multiplayer online game developed and published by Digital Extremes.”
For the record - I’m not saying you’re wrong. I confirmed it is a shooter - but it’s also a role playing game.
You lifted that description from Wikipedia. I’m quoting the developers.
I don’t think they’ve ever outright denied that it’s a role playing game - nor would I expect them to when the game clearly meets the definition of one.
But if you find me a reference where they explicitly deny their game being a role-playing game, I’m open to looking at it.
What do you think about the idea of offering rewards to players that remain loyal to a covenant as opposed to restrictions on the try-hard players?
If I make a group and want to optimize it, who are you to tell me I’m wrong in doing so?
If you disagree with how I run my group, make your own?
No. People are only saying they want more choices but not Player Agency as the game industry term. Player agency isn’t a literal term. It means something in game design.
There has to be negative consequences. Not exclusively positive consequences.
Players actually don’t want player agency.
I dont know but this doesnt seem like the player agency we all wanted? I thought it was more geared to not having to do world quests, or the ability to purchase gear instead of grinding it out in dungeons, or things along those lines. Not the ability to choose locked covenant abilities.
Nah he doesn’t in the slightest. All this encourages is following a guide and not experimenting. If they were talents much like you do now in pvp you would swap talents based on what you were facing. Meanwhile people would react to what they would think you would swap to and swap their own. It becomes a fun little chess game at the start of an arena match.
everquest/ffxi guess what ffxiv is a descendant of 