Honest question. But how is it being used to grief?
I find this funny, a lot are the same people that don’t care if you lose half of your progress from 1 death in the Maw, but are crying that they don’t want to lose progress here. I thought they liked to be punished.
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Because the game design is set where it is a choice and you are discourage from changing. The community won’t be understanding about that, and will weaponize it for the best group outcome in a pug setting.
The fact that pugs and group finders have that much power to force the meta on a community in itself shows that it is a problem. A guild can make certain rules like that, but pugs? I consider the power that group finder has and the tools at hand is a form of griefing. Other players should not force a meta down the community throat. We have guild system for that, and when the overall community can tell players play this way or don’t get invited to certain content. It is a form of griefing.
You could say build a guild with players like you. But that is much harder to do because with group finder players are not require to be social to do content.
No, they want players who appreciate having multiple choices to suffer.
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That becomes player choice at that point. Be less than optimal or lose multiple weeks of progress in order to become optimal again. I am not going to say its good game design… it is just their attempt at killing the meta and trying to prove there is no wrong choices.
yup, and if the community can’t be understanding about it and wants players to do that. Well that is a community problem.
No, you wont, and anyone saying something like this isnt someone you want to group with anyways.
I don’t think they’re actually trying to “kill the meta.” I think that’s just the sort of thing that some posters on here say.
You might be right. I just know that Ion spoke about there being no wrong talent choices, covenant choice, etc. I take this direction as just them basically testing the waters of forced decisions and seeing how the community adapts to a version that does not allow for completely optimal play.
I think that’s just their usual design goal. Talents are supposed to be choices, useful for different situations and for different types of players (all passive builds, etc). Same with Covenants, they’d like all the abilities to be interesting and for some abilities to be better in some situations.
But even if they miss that mark, players will still be able to optimize themselves. It will be much, much more painful to do it. But people will still do it, because that’s what doing the hardest content like Mythic raids will require people to do. Blizzard won’t design their game around unoptimized players.
Easy, they leave.
Players, Humans in General. Will always BY NATURE, take the path of least restiance. The more restiance you add, the higher the chance for them to say, yep screw that I will do something else.
Here is a Flow Chart of how this goes down.
Players will pick the covenant they like for aesthetics.
Players will try to join a group. The player will either.
A. Have the right Covenant for the activity and be accepted.
B. Have the wrong Covenant and be denied.
If accepted, they will move on to the next stage. If denied they may move on, or they may, Do something else.
Players try to join a different group, for another form of content. They will either
A. Be accepted, and move on.
B. Be denied and do something else.
Players denied either or both times (Or all 3 if you put PVP in the mix) will attempt to change covenants, see they cant / its hard, and uninstall. Its not rocket science, its human nature.
9.3 SL, will relize they bleed half the little already remaining playerbase, and try to make a change. AOC will be out by this point and it will be too late.
WoW will decide to not make another expansion, and instead focus on their more productive IP.
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I’m not quite as bullish on this. And the reason why is pretty simple: most players will have no idea what the optimal Covenant is for most of the game’s 36 specs, especially if it changes between M+ and raiding.
Their game is designed around players not being optimal at all. The community has adopted this optimal or bust mentality. You can clear Mythic raids and get cutting edge without people being optimal in terms of talents, corruptions, etc. You will need a higher item level as a raid to compensate for that but it is very doable. Raids are always tuned for the previous difficulty item level. Now will the average player defeat Mythic N’Zoth with 460-465 item level? Of course not. That requires optimal builds, performances, etc. Can you at 475-480 with less optimal builds? Yes.
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Or another thing.
Make it so hard for the community to be able to switch specs, where a large part of the community does not have the most optimal for whatever content forcing players to slow down to a point where they just said bump it will invite anyone just to get it done.
The stage of Blizzard doing anything and wow will die is long over. The community proved no matter what Blizzard does it will have a strong player base. The empty threat of game going to die is looong over.
It’s a spectrum. You can clear Mythic N’zoth with a bad raid comp, but it’s much easier to do so with a stronger comp. If Blizzard gets the balancing wrong on Covenants, trying to do Mythic progression raiding might look a lot more like doing Mythic N’zoth with 3 immunities than doing Mythic N’zoth with a Mistweaver Monk in the raid.
Thats exactly the thing though.
They 100% do.
Lets start out with its not 36 specs. Because 20 of those wouldn’t go at all without covenants.
Go on Retail right now and try to Q M+ as a Affliction lock, you will not get a group. IF someone forgets that Aff is trash, the rest of the group will tell them.
So yes, for the Playable specs they will 100% remeber the correct covenant, not like its hard anyway. Venthyr skip now stacks to 2, if your not Venthyr your not going to M+
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Like only Night Elves get to do M+ on the Alliance side? I don’t see that.
Fallacy.
Mythic is 100% balanced around optimal players clearing it in Herioc raid gear. Always has been.
The gearing inflation and getting Mythic geared outside of mythic raids is what allowed bad comps to clear the content.
ALL Mythic guilds, not just WF, ALL, have a Bench, and if your bad at a boss you sit. Because you HAVE to. Until its outgeared. I know the Ion Logic “Maybe your bad at that boss, but you will do better on the next one, so it evens out” no it doesn’t. You will be sat for the boss your bad at. Hope it doesn’t drop gear for you.
Then to compact that down to more causual peeps. Fatboss will tell you ideal classes and covenants for every herioc boss fight. Given the new meta of Pug 1 boss and start the group over for the next, the same will apply there.
They cant forget, because they will literally be watching the Fat boss video while pugging for that boss, and they will bring the optimal classes and covenants for THAT boss.
Then we have PVP, where your choice will 110% make or break your ability to get high rated, as you are playing against optimized players.
M+, ya you can AFK and complete a 15. However the mentality is baked in, so you wont be brought.
If they continue to tune difficult content the way they do - then being optimal will continue to be a requirement.
Making all levels easier is they only way to really attack the meta.
If the covenants were flexible and chargeable without any fee/ punishment/ time gate players would feel more comfortable and safe choosing what they enjoy. The restrictions just drive people toward the current meta because players won’t feel safe deviating from it.
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Easy way to attack the Meta.
Delete Mythic Raids, change the loot to drop old mythic in Herioc, and keep balance the same.
Done no more need for a Meta.
That is the only 2 options. You either have Faceroll content, or you have a Meta. There is NO in between.
That only fixes PVE, PVP will ALWAYS have a Meta.
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