Well i didnt do it on my main, I did on a geared alt (close to the main when it comes to power). Also im done with the characters on the server im currently playing on, moving to Ravencrest for SL.
Better stuff to do huh? I donât believe that for one minute. You must have spent a considerable amount of time putting in such a superb trolling effort that it is difficult to believe you have better stuff to do. This is the stuff you do, and you are so good at it /tips hat.
Thank you ugly classic gnome alt.
Thank you for your kind words.
But I really did have better things to do.
I donât lie, yo.
I know pure gaming talent when I see it.
/bow
If you werenât a classic horror doll, Iâd kiss you.
Just reportthe pig until he will be an ugly memory.
Iâm going to organize my reply in categories because I have identified many patterns and repetitions. This will clarify why this is poorly argued.
- Adhominems
So you managed from your review of my post about game design to infer that I am deceiving, a liar, hypocritical, lack morals, a fraud, a coward, and have bad intentions.
Needless to say if you keep up with the slander, I will not reply to you anymore. You will not be able to debunk my arguments if you leave the discussion by breaking the contract of respectful debate. This is in your hands.
- Basing the whole thread of your argumentation on one faulty assumption
See, what you did there is making up a weak opponent in your mind, beating him up, and convincing yourself you owned your real opponent.
The real opponent being twofold: someone that doesnât argue in bad faith, and the concept at stake, not an implementation of that concept, nor specifics of that implementation.
You have not argued why the idea of providing persistent choices offering different power profiles is bad for the game.
- Assumptions about my personal choices
I donât have to answer those, but just because I can:
â I will not be choosing Necrolords
â I have done above +15 keys (no reward incentive and not very fun)
â I have raided mythic
â I donât only play rogue, got 2.2k+ rating in 2s & 3s with a dps and a healer role
â I play outlaw rogue, very broken for pvp right?
â I am a MBSE (Model Based System Engineering) software engineer in the aerospace industry. Enough maths and performance concerns for you?
Where is your god now?
Variance in pvp loadouts
This is simply not true. We are arguing facts at this point. They sometimes change their loadouts playing the same comp versus the same comp, even in tournament settings.
And how do you determine what works? As for the crunch, have you ever heard a pvper mention simcraft? How do you model a pvp situation? In these situations, the only data you have is what you experienced in the game, there is no accurate quantifier for how a game went.
On the topic of simcraft, even top mythic plus players advise you not to sim your character for m+, but rather copy what the top players do. How do these top players figure out their loadout if they donât use numbers themselves? And how many nuances are lost in translation when the reasons for these loadout choices do not appear in the snapshot of a character? Why is there variance in the loadout of top m+ players?
You argue against an imaginary position there, or it is a strawman. Nobody argued that losing was their goal or what motivated their choice.
- On covenants
This was not the topic at hand. Are you saying they donât mind not being able to switch covenants (as in, the abilities and the passives) freely if only they could apply the cosmetics/narration they wanted? This is a substantial deflection.
As for the other topic (dividing player power and rpg choices), this would be antithetical to the RPG genre. Iâll address both this and the framing of covenants as talents with a comparison.
Covenants are much closer to races than they are to talents. For both covenants and races, you have:
â one notable ability (ex: extra vanish through shadowmeld vs sepsis)
â a few passives & perks
â character appearance, cosmetics
â lore elements & general theme
â faction belonging & group identity
â meant to be a persistent choice
Because the race choice is well established in wow, you donât see people demanding to uncouple the race ability and the race aesthetics, or make it free to switch, or mix the ability of one race with the passives of another race. Same goes for classes, you wouldnât ask to switch on the fly.
You are correct about this, they brought it upon themselves with the design decisions of modern wow. A large player base plummeted with the advent of hyper-accessibility and meta-gaming as a core gameplay element (there was always meta-gaming but it wasnât put front and center through flexible choices among other things by the game design). There are more reasons of course.
This reduced the player base to either dissatisfied players that consider that wow has lost its magic (like me), or players that come specifically for the action-rpg meta-gaming focused game it has become. So it makes sense there is such a controversy when reverting back to a more rpg/game design oriented feature. It also makes sense they would like to attract back some of the players that have left.
I just donât think they consider these failure points. To paraphrase what an original wow game designer said, âitâs good to let players think they got away with somethingâ. He also thought it was amazing that players like the ret that one shotted a boss figured out that kind of things.
Of course, this was immediately fixed because it trivializes content, but the point he was making is that you donât want to over-engineer the numbers, i.e. solve problems the players should solve, and you want to let players have variance in their build and keep the feeling of being op. If you over do the balancing, you make classes very tame and remove that player experience.
- Avenues for innovation are good, both for performance and gameplay
Itâs funny you transformed âinnovating is good to improve your performance and is a good gameplay elementâ to âdeliberately sabotaging your performanceâ. You donât argue in good faith at this point.
The best players do precisely this. You even see pvp players sometimes tanking their rating to try out a new build or a new comp, and pve players doing runs with alternative builds and comps. How do you figure out the better option if you never try it out?
If you are expected to do this, then this is bad game design. You sacrifice player experience for player performance. This is not your goal as a game designer.
Sure, you can do this. My point was that having access to wrong choices gives a path of progression for novice players and attributes identity to them.
Never argued for this or anything related to cosmetics, another strawman.
- Following the meta
I donât think this qualifies as an advice you canât pull off. An example of this is a warlock that is better off playing mage in Classic because he doesnât manage to not pull aggro from the boss.
I donât think the intent behind beta-testing is figuring out the end of season meta for top players.
Since you brought up you play arcane mage, why did you go for this off-meta pick?
- Flowery styles
At least that made me smile. Itâs not my first language, thank you for the under-handed compliments. This is more flowery/vague/fancy/empty though :
You took the word âfeelâ that I used and made it out to be an anti-performance thing. The reason I used this is because when you ask a pvp player why he picks this option, he sometimes answers with âit just feels betterâ. The same way you pick up a physical tool and gauge how it fairs by using it. You donât have analytics to tell you if itâs good, you must go by feeling.
Fun is the primary thing a game designer must âengineerâ.
Choice and freedom are good tools to adapt to situations and provide character defining features.
Difficult to make these words sound bad in the context of a game.
- The arguments you quoted but did not address:
- Why I talk about covenants
Not really. The system as it stands now does not enthuse me in comparison to how it was pitched. I donât have an incentive to defend a system where you can play two covenants a week. Nor do I have an incentive to convince someone that doesnât have the same goals as me. Pro-ripcord and anti-ripcord players donât want to play the same game. I think this is the most agreeable conclusion we can come to.
The controversy sparked a good game design discussion, made me wonder what made the game fun/immersive/addicting back then and how it was lost in the process of providing more ease of access, flexibility and things players wished/asked for, fragmented the player base and highlighted the difficulty of integrating a game design decision that aims to add depth to a game structurally layered with decisions that did not attempt to do that.
this is exactly what i mean, you shouldnât care, those spells/skills should have an impact, which is why i meant to put those in to the base class, why cant those things from the covenants just be a different animation style for your spells or maybe just some new visual aura type effects. I understand your point about some being seemingly very useful and some being next to useless which is why i dont see why blizz keep pushing this as a performance boost. If people want the performance boost let them get it from gear, maybe from farming content i dont see why these systems always have to have a performance element in them.
Imagine your pally alt having the choice between some new wings to choose from instead of that stupid shadow damage spell. and then just boost the pallys main toolkit to compensate.
Oh I fully do blame them, i said so in the post, and i understand that for those high end raiders they dont care what they have to do they just want the kill, i dont mean that in a bad way, i just mean maybe there could be a better system of gearing for those high level raids. Instead of always using the xpac game systems which is always almost impossible for them to balance because everybody want something different.
Maybe when they get gear dropped from those mythic bosses make it enough to allow further progress without relying on borrowed power all the time, because that what is happening, gear is being dampened because of the exponential impact that the borrowed power is having. DPS is going up so so fast from tier to tier because of the damage modifiers being applied through these systems, surely it would be better without these performance enhancing sides of the system just make them cosmetic.
Mate i agree with you, spell effects and cosmetics are way more of a meaningfull choice than power in the long run, the thing is you need the power now to play the expansion propeerly, in 2 years time when covenants go the way of the artefact weapon you will lose your power (only to be replaced by a new âfun and exiting systemâ) but your mogs and mounts will stay, so my question to Blizzard is why is this the case ? Cant we have an expansion free from borrowed power ?
My pally alt is going Kyrian XD, if i picked the proper covenants for my alts aswell i would go insane. Bad enough i will probably have to go Kyrian on my warlock âpukeâ.
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Itâs either that, or I would have to assume youâre so extremely ignorant about the gameâs mechanics that questions should be asked about how you managed to find your way into PvP.
You posting from Rogue NE isnât doing you any favors, as it does look like S-tier guy preaching about how important is balancing everything around A > B, B > C, C > A so there are no âobviousâ winners. While S > A, S > B, S > C so S-tier guy IS the obvious winner. Not only annoying, but profoundly untrue, hypocritical and it shouldnât be surprising itâs not well-received.
Didnât sign anything like that. If you made an assumption that I did, well, mistake #1. Again this makes me press X to doubt: a PvP player of all people should know better than to assume that if YOU do something, someone else ALSO does. âAll is fair in love and warâ, English saying goes, and the history is written by winners, as losers donât get to say anything about it.
What this also tells me about you is that you pay more attention to appearance than substance. The letter of the rule, but not the spirit, and not the execution. Again kinda surprising because in the age of transmogs, illusions, and whatnot WoW players really, really should not judge things by how they look unless itâs all they do.
So excuse my blunt, direct, brutally honest terms: You seem to be a very naive person, because you seem to believe in what ActiBlizz says and ignore their deeds pointing out that theyâre feeding you a load after load of bull.
I assumed youâre going to make the best possible choice of those offered aka go Necrolords. Because, as you should know, at the end of the day PvP is zero sum game. For someone to win, someone else has to lose, and if something grants you advantage over the other guy, why the f would you not do this cool thing?
Do you think your opponent has the same unwritten and unenforceable rules as you do?
That heâs not determined enough to do what it takes to secure victory for him?
That heâs oh sooo civil and gentlemanly and friendly as to handicap himself to allow you better chances?
If you DO think that, I wonder why arenât you playing some sort of knight in shining armor on a white horse, you know, the kind that was dying left and right on European battlefields around 1400 when peasants with guns & blunt weapons were slaughtering them despite codex of chivalry, training, and expensive equipment, because they turned out to not be meta enough. How it is youâre playing a rogue, the dirty fighter extraordinaire, backstabbing sneaky git who only fights those heâs sure to defeat with that mindset? Asking because you seem to care about RPG side of the game.
Thatâs kinda like saying that even if the project was a total failure, the idea is all right, if only SOMEONE could get the details done properly! Well, if the idea was so grand, then why didnât they get it right the FIRST time? If instructions are not clear and commands not explicit, it is the commanderâs fault. (You HAVE read the Art of War, as good PvP player, havenât you? If not, donât worry, yesterday was the best time, but today is 2nd best)
Iâve been having this discussion through the last 2 years and I refuse to be diplomatic about its results. âSure, the Azerite/Essences/whatever else IDEA was brilliant! The details being absolute and utter trash? Weâll work it out in 8.1! Or 8.2! Or 8.3! Uh, guys, looks like it wasnât so hot after all, but donât worry, weâll get it right in 9.0! Or 9.1! Uh, no big changes anymore, sorry about that, but 10.0 will SURELY nail it!â How long do you keep taking someoneâs BS before you call them out on it?
The idea being brilliant doesnât matter if it turns out to be unusable. Youâre aero engineer? Ask yourself why ALL aircrafts arenât working on nuclear power yet. Itâs absolutely doable, both USA and Soviet Union built such crafts and got them to fly. Also costly, impractical, dangerous, requiring certain minimal size to put reactor & safeties on board, INSANELY dangerous in case of failure/crash. AKA not really practical because sure sounds awesome and looks cool but in reality it isnât worth it if other simpler, safer, cheaper, more reliable solutions also get the job done.
And my little example done, the Covenant idea is wrong at the base level because WoW is not RPG but MMO with RPG elements. You cannot take a wrong idea and somehow make it work right in practice, like you cannot build an aircraft out of lead because itâs too heavy and soft. Itâs doomed from day one and looks like emperorâs new clothes - all fine and dandy until someone notices itâs big fat LIE.
Dude, YOUR idea, YOUR responsibility if youâre in charge. ActiBlizzâs idea = THEIR responsibility to get it done right. Because who else is implementing that? Players?
Someone somewhere in the corp decided to put this âmeaningful choiceâ idea into game. They told someone to work it out. Theyâre responsible for how this turns out - if they didnât like, they could intervene and say âThis isnât how we thought of it, more like thatâ. Or get someone else to do the job better. Delegating the tasks doesnât absolve you of being responsible for their completion - you made the decision how to go about it, youâre going to get applauded if it gets done well, youâre going to get booed if it fails.
Making things look like nobody in particular is responsible for them is called âDiffusion of responsibilityâ (Google it up) and itâs one of reasons why corporations in general have bad rep. âJust following ordersâ rings a bell? Itâs exactly this kind of excuse. Read: If it turns out OK, you deserve reward, if it turns out bad, someone else deserves punishment. And this is considered psycho/sociopathic behavior so excuse me for not mincing words used to describe the matter, it is what it is.
Again if youâre buying it, and looks like you do, youâre eating BS served by the corpâs PR dept. Those are some hard working Joes, they deserve a reward!
Because itâs already in there. Itâs called âClassesâ. And they canât balance them to save their own lives, thereâs always some S tier spec, the point is to reduce the disparity between top and bottom so itâs say 5-10% and NOT 30-40%. What do you think will happen if they add ANOTHER layer of systems on top of classes?
Thatâs your decision and youâre going to get its consequences. I can point out itâs likely to be worse than X in Y situation, but I wonât be the one who gets to not invite you to activity A because thereâs someone else with otherwise identical loadout AND 30% better covenant so taking you is objectively worse choice. Letâs see how long you persist.
Would be strange if you didnât try. Rogue NE is currently at the top of meta for Mythic+ because even if they werenât doing good DPS - and they do VERY good DPS - and if Shadowmeld is not enough for your needs, they bring something unique to them: AoE stealth which allows to skip things. You think THAT isnât strong advantage & BIG incentive to get Rogue to M+? Even if you decide not to do this cool thing, you CAN. This is additional advantage and in competitive environment such things matter.
It wasnât on this character though, so I assume that 1) you had to have a guild or some other organized group 2) they had to invite you into raid and then you had to pull your own weight otherwise they likely wouldnât keep you if there was a better option. Unless 3) you bought a carry, then all bets are off.
A question, did those guys tolerate your Happy Fun Experiments with bad builds on their raid time or did you do that cool thing on dummies/pugs/something else not to waste their time? Or were you that one guy who does what he wants and if others donât like it, they can leave?
Then you really shouldnât say anything about âbalanceâ as BFA PvP is a complete #^%@show. People 1shotting others with spells that are in theory intended to heal. People 1shotting others with TD. People having to stack CD upon CD upon proc upon proc to possibly be able to kill the opponent or itâs 3 minutes long wait for next kill window cuz self-healing too high. SOME classes are still 3.x-like turrets while others are jumping around like monkeys on speed.
NE outlaw rogue. Shadowmeld is kinda 1 more Vanish. This is VERY powerful in smaller sized PvP because itâs 1 more reset you can do or 1 more CD they have to deal with.
Not sure if you deal with how ideas are implemented, because this is big part of the issue. See above part about ideas and their execution. And being kinda person of science, I assumed you should be more concerned about things being practical, not how they look. Especially in aero industry where âcoolâ things are just not done because in the long run costs, durability, safety concerns, etc. are more important than short-term awesomeness.
Iâm a militant follower of The Meta Reliable and Verified, aka That Which Works. As opposed to Meta Thatâs Not Confirmed Yet, Meta Thatâs BS After Crunching, Meta That Looks Cool but Doesnât Work.
Sure, they can do it, if only to confuse their opponents, or to try something they perhaps havenât figured a counterstrategy to. Victory is the only determining factor in the long run, because sure you can fool someone once in rated arena, but 2nd time they will be aware you can do this and prepare accordingly. And then itâs going to become another part of meta: A trumps B, to counter this you can do C, D or E, C is best in this situation, in another D is better because so and soâŚ
Does it get them enough output/cc/mobility/survivability/whatever else they need? Or is something else doing it better? Thatâs testing the hard way and it works exactly the same like PvE sims: Enough iterations and you get statistically reliable results. For example DHs are considered strong against casters because they have tons of anti-caster utilities. Or DoT-based rDPS is more likely to win than direct damage-based rDPS in combat that involves lots of LoS-blocking terrain, but in open combat chances are it will be the other way.
If you watch warrior going against frost mage for 1001th time you should arrive at some conclusions. What, not doing it yourself doesnât count? Who said that? And more importantly why should I care? What works, works! Vae victis!
Because thatâs what worked for them. Tested the hard way for who knows how many times. Iâm calling your BS our here: Law of Large Numbers, rings a bell? If not, hereâs the gist of it: In the long run, results tend to some average. THIS is the practical result of their testing - âItâs best to nuke this trash group and skip that other group because itâs proven to be faster/easier/more failproofâ. Therefore no need to do the number-crunching again.
Personal preferences or what they consider best for THEM PERSONALLY. Thing is these preferences cannot be too hard on their performance. Iâm talking single figures % because any larger would likely be too much of a drawback.
Or confusing other people, because if the opponent is weaker, they have advantage. Whatâs keeping them from screwing with othersâ minds? Inspection during M+? Maybe in MDI, but not in everyday Mythics.
I shall strive to be more explicit: Iâve been pointing out that PvP high-end contenders donât experiment in rated matches for the fun of it. They experiment to find out new (read: not yet easy to counter, thus advantageous) or unexpected strategies. Confusing opponents works too, if it means they win. They DONâT do this in matches they care for winning. Again the law of large numbers & zero sum game, things matter in the long run - if something works reliably enough, often enough, they will use it, and if it turns out to be, say, better vs DKs but worse vs everything else - 11 of 12 is kinda more likely to happen than 1 of 12 - they wonât use it because sure itâs cool to own DKs but they canât reasonably expect to only face DKs and nothing else.
THIS is why Rextroyâs antics usually arenât that bad, because they need some sort of very specific setup, environment, combination of debuffs, 5 seconds window to execute something perfectly on 5m cd etc. Statistically itâs a fluke, as it cannot be replicated easily & reliably enough for this to work in everyday PvP, doesnât matter that you get 1shotted ONCE if you still win more often in the long run. That one time it WAS easy & reliable enough - Prot Paladin with 200+ corruption - it was hotfixed with surprising speed.
Lost in translation I think.
In general itâs about splitting, separating, making the RPGey choices & player abilities individual and not package deal because MMOs donât work that way, see the part about ârightâ idea and people somehow getting it wrong for 9001st time and STILL thinking itâs completely right. We get ONE real RPG choice in this game - which class we want to play. EVERYTHING else can be changed with some effort, gold, RL money. And this one permanent choice is enough.
In particular itâs about players NOT having fun on their fairy DKs etc. because come on, youâre the RPG guy, you have to admit itâs jarring to say the least. The solution to this issue alone would be making Covs cosmetic. But looking as the power is tied to aesthetics, well, itâs practically a set of talents you can switch once per week. Kinda like all other things that you can switch at will but not this one. Because reasons.
Theyâve been doing it since 2004. Why do you think people were switching talent specs? And WoW is MMO with RPG elements. NOT RPG. Your choices have consequences not only for you but for everyone playing in group with you. What if you do something wrong? You try to fix it, right? Oh, sorry, youâre NOT allowed to correct this for a week yet! And looking at ActiBlizzâs record of âbalancingâ nerfs/buffs every Tuesday, itâs going to be absolute $%@#storm, so better to solve the issue now. Before it blows.
Being a Wrath child, Iâd like to remind you that in RPG/lore aspect 4 different factions working against current expansionâs main enemy is a thing as old as 3.x. Those guys didnât have issues with helping each other. They didnât require us to prove ourselves, but only once every week when we wanted to do something for other faction. They didnât offer anything that was literally causing you to be 30% better. Only real long-term player power the 4 main WotLK factions offered were head enchants, and come on, it was like 30 spell power when you had about 3-4k. About equal to 1-2 gems in power. Not 30% of your total performance. And itâs not like you were marrying one faction and swearing to keep away from all others. And you could get these reps by doing their quests, dailies, or tabard. Infinitely better than âyou will grind these WQs and you will like it!â BS.
And this is why it isnât making any sense. We have a system that does these things already - races. No need to stack ANOTHER system like that on top of existing one. Racials are already unbalanced to get more players into Alliance and itâs not helping. And balance issues: How the f is the ability that synergizes with burst CD to be balanced against ability that synergizes with sustained dps for spec X if all it does is sustained dps? Remember math? 12 races, 36 specs, x4 covs, 144 combos. Our sun will go red before THESE guys get them reasonably balanced.
Now this is simply untrue. You just havenât looked enough, every once in a while someone brings this up. Wonât be done though because the corp is pushing better Alliance racials as the way to get blue numbers up. Wonât work - PvE players were trickling down to Horde for too long and the disbalance is too large to fix quickly with half-measures - but itâs not stopping them.
In the ideal 50-50 ratio though removal of âmeaningfulâ i.e. performance-related racials should be considered. Then people would play races only for their appearance. Like in a real RPG! Wouldnât this be glorious?
Itâs not just about RPG aspect of butterfly-winged DKs. Itâs more like that itâs another system the game didnât need. ANOTHER problem the game didnât have before they created it. ANOTHER system on top of system that doesnât solve the original problem, creates a NEW problem, and now you have 2 problems instead of 1.
ActiBlizz does have a history of creating WoW problems that didnât exist before and then leaving them unsolved to fester for some time until they just canât keep them anymore because losses > gains. If they want to attract some players that have left, then Iâd like to see 71 pts talent trees, rep tabards, NO artificial timegating, NO mandatory grinds every day.
They should. Theyâre the devs. They have more powerful tools at their disposal than humble Simcraft. They know the game is 16 years old and people changed with it. Has Rextroy taught you nothing? You skip the implications, you skip the testing, you get what you deserve. And this coming from the guy big on âexperimenting for yourselfâ. Unless you donât consider potential of ability to be worth thinking about and testing to see what happens when you combine this ability with that cool thing. And then you add another. And few others. What can go wrong, youâll ask? EVERYTHING!
Murphyâs law says that if something can fail, it will. This is why redundancies are important, if one thing fails, the system doesnât catastrophically fail. Unless you make everything dependent on a single thing, this thing ALSO depends on another single thing, etc., and then one single thing fails, like something has 30% higher performance than other, and you discover the whole frickin system is wrong because itâs idea is basically unworkableâŚ
Story time: You as aero engineer make aircraft that canât fly safely faster than x, and then you put in it overpowered engine that allows 2x. What exactly do you think will happen, eh? Lawn moving? Beating the worldâs land speed record? Or is it an accident in making?
This might have to do with you liking the theoretical rules too much and the practical, real ones not so much, but maybe not - why people keep driving cars faster than theyâre allowed to? The answer is because they CAN as itâs physically possible. So itâs reasonable to assume that some of them will do it, if only for lulz, not even talking here about advantages of doing so. The one simple fact that itâs possible means you should consider it. Otherwise phrase âshort-sightedâ in the metaphorical sense comes to mind.
This is why BioWare for example are considered very good game developers - they play their games themselves, they know the players will try doing all sorts of crazy stuff, so they try to prepare for everything. Then theyâre not surprised when someone breaks their game like Rextroy is doing. Old Blizzard guys were like that too. Notice that currently WoW top staff either isnât playing, or really isnât something to talk about. Then notice the amount of âunexpectedâ synergies that often were not intended. Draw your own conclusions.
Innovating is good IF it improves your performance. If it doesnât, why did you do it? For lulz? To reinvent the wheel? You can do it on your own time. Itâs not rocket science at this point.
Mind me asking where the f did you raid Mythic and managed not to learn that? Didnât you think that maybe those 19 other people have other things to do than putting up with you being a deadweight, effectively wasting their limited time in game, or wiping them due to low DPS & not making the check as experiments for fun arenât quite up to task?
When I was seriously raiding about 10 years ago you could experiment say on trash mobs in ICC, not the heroic 25 bosses. Fooling around on boss just to ascertain that doing something bad is in fact REALLY bad idea would very likely result in you being benched & replaced in the best case as peopleâs time and raid slots were limited but manpower was not. Worst case, youâd be kindly asked to leave voice comms, then raid or guild kick.
And about wording, you might have noticed Iâm not one to sugarcoat bad things.
When you do it on your own time, meh, itâs your business, Iâm not your parent to tell you what to do with your time.
When you canât - or WONâT because sims bad, they bark, growl and bite - estimate whatâs good and whatâs not, AND you want to find out the hard way, AND you let 19 other people down because of it, well, tell me what it is if not sabotage. Letting your group down? Wasting their time? Being creatively disruptive? Antisocial behavior?
Willful - because you WANTED and DECIDED to do that. Deliberate - because you did it ON PURPOSE. What, didnât you have enough dummies to try it out alone? Did it require 20man raid? Or couldnât you bother to ask if itâs OK to try something crazy that may potentially result in wipe so you did it anyway? Thatâs just rude and disrespectful at best, ignorance or trolling at worst.
And then they stick to whatâs best because itâs best. Competitive environment, zero sum game, the winner takes everything, you know the drill by now, go! Losers need not apply!
Shouldnât design the game in a way that requires 3rd party apps to determine if the new item is upgrade or not. And this isnât 2004 anymore, donât expect players to not use sims if they were doing it for some time because itâs advantage over testing the hard way.
Iâm not sure I understand. Did you mean that doing things the wrong way is kind of a sign ânew player hereâ and as they get more experienced theyâre improving?
You did say a lot about âRPG choices where things are not clean-cutâ being fun while it doesnât matter if they are RPG choices or some other choices, mechanically they are just choices that players are required to make like all others and like all others they will be crunched by sims and live testing.
This is what I mean by works over looks - this thing does that, and that other thing too does that, giving them different labels doesnât make them work any different, and it bewilders me that you seem to believe so: Mechanical numbers-based choice bad, but put âRPGâ sign on it, paint red/blue, and suddenly itâs good? That you did not consider implications of something doesnât absolve you of responsibility for it. This is the practical end of all ideas - theories are put into practice and tested the hard way, the one you seem to be a big fan of. Itâs all fun and games until something is found wanting, huh?
Thereâs no real âplaystyleâ to choose in PvE apart from class/spec. Youâre melee or ranged, dps/heal/tank, you do whatâs required, and your spec, gear etc. dictate how you do it. If I got this part correctly.
And in this example the warlock would be better off lowering their threat generated, getting the tank to increase their threat, or both, before even CONSIDERING rerolling. Because what exactly prevented the warlock from pulling it off? The tank not up to the task? Warlock overgeared relative to tank or tank green like fresh veggies? Good guides mention the conditions of such things: Donât go all out 2s after pull if the tank is struggling etc., and the problems can be solved. When thereâs will, thereâs a way.
Allusion to general state of BFA aka Beta for Azeroth. If youâve been playing these last 2 years you should know what Iâm talking about. The amount of things that were rushed in and not fixed, not mentioning polishing, resulted in BFA being called that and many other unflattering backronyms. Rextroyâs videos are just a very visible and widely understandable example.
Was playing Arcane since Iâve got my hands on the game in 2009. In Wrath it was kinda 98% in sims and up to 110% in practice spec, but FAR more flexible than Fire and one of few specs with âpureâ 100% player-controlled direct damage which was big then, so meta enough. Didnât like Cataclysm much, took a long break, came back in Legion, was pleasantly surprised itâs different yet still viable and fun. Then BFA pre-patch came in and pretty much broken Arcane. Considering this and all other âX not broken! X is feature!â BS that BFA brought, Iâve taken another break. Coming on and off since 8.2.
You might have noticed Iâm not bothering to do anything âseriousâ like raiding above LFR or M+ or PvP. Decided not to, if only to screw up their âplayed activity Xâ metrics, and most of BFA content isnât looking terribly fun to me as itâs grinds everywhere, so leveling alts, clearing up the backlog lists, etc. And srsly not gonna bother to work my fingers bloody if BM hunter comes and does everything better, easier, and doesnât have Arcane âimmobile ST turretâ drawbacks. They fixed what was not broken until they broke it? They can fix it again. THEN I can think about caring to do something. And you might notice I still care about my characterâs performance, enough not to use âmetaâ builds, but kind of hybrid that works well enough to do the job.
You keep talking about choice this, fun that, etc. not examining what exactly makes them tick. And then you say RPG choice is OK while not-RPG choice is not OK despite them being pretty much the same thing, only different labels. This isnât a good thing.
Better than âShut up if you donât have anything reasonable to say, trollâ, donât you think? And itâs the absolute classic masterpiece of psychological horror genre. Say it isnât, and Iâm gonna have liver and Chianti for dinner! 
See above, some people didnât get the reference. Explained that it might or might not be related to troll also being âitâ in English. And calling âuncouthâ people who donât care for classics is letting them get off lightly anyway 
And then you can measure that tool and compare it to others so you find out what this âfeeling goodâ really is: weight of the tool, how you hold it in hand, the weight distribution, its balance. This is numbers crunching. The part that sims do for you so you donât have to try 9000 different tools the hard way.
And really top end PvP guys are the very definition of hypercompetitive. If - hyperbole here - taking a dump in the midst of arena match would somehow help them win, theyâd do it. They are the epitome of life that finds a way, because if they donât, someone other will, and will likely jump over their metaphorical dead body. If those guys say they âfeelâ this is best, then it usually means âthis seems to work best because this and thatâ. Unless youâre talking about casual PvPers who go for whatâs cool and not what is most efficient in the long run, then all bets are off.
Fun is subjective, therefore more options should equal more fun, except when you bind âappearanceâ options to âmechanical powerâ options because thatâs what people were complaining about since 2004. Transmogs and weapon enchant illusions are in game because players didnât like this. And ActiBlizz is trying to get it back into game and seems surprised people donât like it.
And then thereâs the whole THING of being able to adapt but once per week. Does it sounds like fun? I know that for me it so bloody much doesnât. Reminder here: In Classic you can reset talents for some gold, gets up to certain cap, might get expensive if you keep doing it, but you are not restricted in any other way from doing it. In Wrath you could have 2 fully decked out specs and switch between them pretty much whenever out of combat unless in Arena or BG after prep time. And this was considered good.
Excuse me for using âpersonalâ argument again, itâs just asking to be used here. Youâre a Rogue. No matter what spec you are, no matter what youâre doing, Bone Spike is just the best solution, always. So it doesnât affect you, got it, youâre fine with it, OK, the point is OTHER PEOPLE will NOT be fine with it because it will affect them! You think itâs fine that one week someone is prepared best for PvP but has to suck in raiding cuz canât switch yet, so itâs low output or benching?
And explain WTF you mean by âyour skill relative to that gameplayâ. Man, if Iâm Arcane, Iâve got stacking burst cooldowns, Maldraxxus is a no-brainer because itâs another stacking burst CD, so how exactly does my skill in the gameplay affect whatâs best Cov? In DPS terms itâs Maldraxxus because math doesnât lie, if I stack cooldowns, Iâm doing more damage than if I scatter them. Thatâs basic math, chapter Multiplying.
Did you mean âIf you canât execute your basic spec gameplay, maybe the more foolproof Cov might be better for youâ?
I didnât touch THAT because I thought itâs obvious. You put in game something that potentially changes your performance by 30%, and you make it impossible to switch it at will, youâre asking for people to be benched/rejected/kicked on the basis of their Covenant. This is BAD. We donât need ANOTHER LAYER OF META on top of all others while the others still leave much to be desired. Broken system on top of broken systems, and they say itâs gonna be great, not broken, totally working! Like RNG Legiondaries, AP grind, Azerite, Essences, PvP BFA gearing, currency vendors, and everything else.
Illusion of choice is there since MoP. Homogenization of playstyles is there since someone got the first DPS meter. Deal with it. And because I like throwing references at people, TIMES CHANGE.
Complete 0 difference balance, no, RELATIVE balance in which no single spec is best at everything, yes. See the part about 30% being grounds for benching someone and taking someone else. Being Arcane Mage, I could probably talk you into suicide by explaining how exactly BFA class/specs balance is somewhere far away on vacation. Strange thing you didnât see that for example Shamans are sooo soft targets in BFA while Havocs are green-glowing flying cockroaches that donât die when theyâre hit with nuclear weaponry. Oh wait, you DID see , you just didnât observe, because you didnât FEEL it on your own Rogue butt! (No, I donât like touchy-feely people who canât seem to speak straight about how things work. Deal with this cheap shot of mine too)
Anti-ripcord players want everyone to play the way they want them to.
Pro-ripcord players want everyone to be able to play however they want, implications pointing at âwhatever does the most DPSâ. And honestly can you say itâs surprising? Challenge mode, Mythic+, numbers usually reserved for calculation of distance between celestial bodies, RNG raging out of control, systems on systems causing players to use 3rd party sims to estimate ROUGHLY if something is upgrade, unintuitive crap like PvP scaling, ActiBlizz made the game that way - more about performance than anything else. They get exactly the game they designed. No buts, no backsies, no complaints!
Youâre sweet-talker, arenât you? Works well with some ladies, not so much with players already fed up with vague Corporatese doublespeak. Just saying
The one thing Diablo devs wonât do. Because how otherwise they would lure people in next expansion?
Since Legion they just canât seem to think of something else. Really wish theyâd stop. I can see one possible reason for the devs to keep reinventing the wheel - knowing Activisionâ business practices, theyâd likely be âlaid offâ - read âfiredâ - as soon as they would cease to be necessary. So theyâre dragging their feet, working slow as molasses, so the corp has to keep paying them, and after 2 years old wheel gets retired and new one is installed, complete with all old issues
The reason why making Covenants âmeaningful RPG choiceâ is killing the RPG thing for many players. Donât worry, hopefully soon itâs gonna be ground off to cosmetic 5%. Otherwise, well, there will be 9.2 patch in which the game will become somewhat playable.
âŚHoly Wicked Witch? Havenât seen that one yet Not one of covenants really fits my transmog, so I guess itâs back to TBC clown suits. Necromancy and bone shields belong on DK, not arcane casters -__-
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The wall of text crits me for 10,000,000. :- ) But it was an enjoyable read, thanks.
Stunner, Iâll say it much simpler:
Your position is that the choice of being optimal in content X and so non-optimal in content Y is a good one. But it is not. Practice shows that people prefer making hard choices which would make them good for X and bad for Y (a) rarely and (b) with full information regarding what itâs going to be like, and guarantees that it wonât change significantly. In all other cases people prefer choices that can be easily undone without repercussions. So that they can experiment.
In WoW, the hard choice is that of a class. It used to be class+spec in that you couldnât switch spec too often, it was prohibitively expensive. And what did they do? They removed the cost of switching the spec. Because people didnât want the choice to be this limiting. And - get that - it was good! Allowing people to switch specs freely was good, it added tons of gameplay and made things much more enjoyable.
Adding a hard choice for covenants is just bizarre and stupid. It fails both (a) and (b) above. It isnât rare: once per expansion is not rare enough. And we donât have full information and we wonât have it like, ever, because they will be constantly adding / patching / extending the feature. Thatâs why making covenants a hard choice is simply wrong, it cannot work.
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Itâs like some sort of going back that I donât understand. I mean, they lessen those restrictions only to 180 degree again, even if it was fine.
Itâs like PVP and PVE separation, it was fine but they suddenly 180° in legion
and it does not feel good. PVP and PVE should be separated.
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I think we see these contradictive movements on everything simply because they want to add something new and shake things up but they are not creative enough to create movements in any of the new directions. So we constantly keep moving back and forward on a couple of known directions.
And âlessonsâ? As in, âwe learned our lessonâ? Forget it, thatâs just words. They donât learn a thing and donât even intend to. They frequently go full circles.
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Sure, itâs natural to prefer easy and safe options as a player. But making things hyper-accessible and inconsequential removes valuable player experience.
You donât get to progress your character in a particular direction investing in and/or commiting to a path of progression that makes you a specialist or gives you ahold of a niche. You âbuildâ nothing, just flip switches, as if your character was some kind of control panel. Not very fulfilling.
You donât get the sense that you own your creation. Your past choices are not reflected in your character identity, so it has less definition, uniqueness, depth and persistance within the world.
As an agent in the player ecosystem, you would not have remarkable markers, i.e. no opportunity to refine some aspect of your identity because anybody can be anyone at anytime in that regard.
That is also less opportunity for group identity, meaning players sharing an archetype of those types of markers. There would be value in identifying necrolord rogues as âthe m+ roguesâ, venthyr rogues as âthe raid roguesâ and night fae as âthe pvp roguesâ for example.
Having persistence and friction in your choices prevents flavor of the month meta-slaving to an extent because you wouldnât be able to replicate builds as easily, and would be better off improving the path of progression you initially commited to (would have been the case if there was no catchup mechanics on renown for example, because switching would imply missing a few conduits slots and soulbind abilities).
Not having access to an option increases its perceived value. There is an emotional attachment to an ability you wish you had but canât have (negative experience), or an ability that you have and others canât have and cherish because of that (positive experience).
The delta between the negative and positive experiences gives more value to these options. Having power locked behind investment or commitment forms a good reward structure.
Some of these might be lost on you if you think from the perspective of a player that naturally wonders âwhat makes me the most efficient and whatâs the most practical systemâ.
This is from the perspective of a game designer that attempts to engineer fun, immersion, meaningful/unique player experiences among other things. A lot of it has to do with player psychology, toying with your negative emotions, etc.
Since they are a choice of that nature, would you consider classes a bad mmorpg feature ?
You do lose access to some builds for your character. However this offers more replayability and varied builds across the player base.
If you were able to switch at will, you would pick the best option for the situation, so thatâs one type of gameplay relative to one situation.
If you are locked into an option, for example a covenant that isnât meta for aoe and you want to do aoe, you have to come up with an aoe build for this covenant. So that would be four types of gameplay relative to one situation.
Playing a different covenant would be a different experience in that sense, like playing a different class or spec would be to a much larger extent.
I donât think so. Letâs imagine that talents are being locked. Iâm in an arena facing a 2 warrior comp. I can pick talent eye for an eye that would give me an extra defensive tool against such composition, because this is my experience. Except thatâŚI have a talent that gives me more mobility which dps warrior outclass retâs mobility. My experience is then useless because I canât adapt.
This is so wrong. So a rogue player who would want to play all 3 formats should either level up 3 rogues or accept that he canât commit to the 2 other aspects of the game? This feels so bad.
This is what covenant is supposed to do, but it fails so hard. This system would have been wonderful in 2004. Weâre in 2020 and information is so easily accessible that itâs a natural thing to except every single player to know what build to take.
This is not because meta slaving is harder that it would remove it from the game.
Except that initially, Blizzard did not wanted us to switch covenant. Now, we can, but having to wait 1 reset feels meh.
Can you let me decide whats a meaningfull progression for my character ? If you dont like it dont do simple as that, just dont promote this BS system on people that do no share your perception of âprogressionâ or fulfillment".
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couldnt agree more, we should be given a class and game that works together. im sick of piling all my time in to a system like this, its totally meaningless after the xpac is over.
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Absolutly, i mean why arent spells like Cataclysm(warlock) and Epidemic(DK) baseline, these two examples (and there are more) absolutly contribute to the specs toolkid beeing complete, i mean who designed it like this ? Has anyone seen a Havok DH playing without Demonic ? In most cases than not, its not even about meta, often the best performing builds are the ones that complete the spec, now we wont have that with covenants because locks.
How am I deciding anything for you ? What does âpromote on peopleâ mean ? Is this some kind of private club or closed political gathering ? Iâm giving my opinion, on a public forum, youâre basically saying âdonât talkâ, you donât get to.
I highlighted the things that are lost in the process of turning a persistent choice into a loadout and making things more accessible in general. This goes against the popular argument that pulling the ripcord would have changed nothing for players that were against it (I consider it already pulled as far as Iâm concerned). This is also more in lign with the early design philosophies of the game (relates to removing talent trees, QoL changes, etc).
No you do not get to progess your character in a meaningfull way, i however do.
No you âbuildâ nothing, again I however do.
Your manner of talking implies that we (the people taht do like switching things) dont find meaning and/or fulfilment. See no now you are promoting an pushing this system on us. Like i said if you find it meaningfull or fullfiling to not swap specs,builds good for you dont do it, we however like to dress for the ocassion and genually find it fun. Imo mastering a list of builds on multiple specs, knowing how and when to use all your abilities even the ones that are not active right now is more meaningfull than beeing a specialist in your niche. Essentially Iâd rather not be a cookie dispencer but a cookie machine.