Just FYI
That is not the case. That kind of things was always present in the game and we still have it today, and itâs not going away. However persistent choices and all that I have described is a dimension that was removed from the game in the last expansions, and the covenant feature hinted at reintroducing it.
You donât understand my point if you say that.
Iâm not an executive or an influencer or in any capacity of âpushingâ anything. Stop crying as if I was taking away something from you. Whatever we say here has no bearing on the release. I am talking about what I miss about the game and the lost potential of covenants. Donât engage if these are of no interest to you.
Saw some of the nerfs. Rip Serrated Bone Spike.
By last expansions you mean half the games life cycle, âpersistant choiceâ is a mentality, like i said if you dont want to switch dont switch no one is putting a gun to your head, what you are describing are restrictions. Also you had this âpersistant choiceâ in BfA, you couldnt swap azerite as easy and you couldnt swap corruptions as easy, did you like those âpersistant choicesâ ?
Oh and FYI the respec button was there even in classic it just cost 50g, soo yeah no.
Nope, azerite was terrible. Not a persistent choice either, itâs a piece of gear (i.e. loadout) that gave you an ilvl boost but traits downgrade or vice-versa, what should have been reward moments felt like downgrades. No equivalency there.
Listened to a dev interview say he reluctantly added that option and still wasnât sure to this day if it was a good decision. This is a lot of âfrictionâ though, you wouldnât respec while leveling for example, and it is costly enough at max level to not change at will or make it trivial.
I donât mind it letting you change if the cost is substantial and tied to the idea that âyou have to work for itâ, itâs like changing career in real life, doesnât make sense to be hyper-specialized in one domain and the next day be hyper-specialized in another domain or change nationality everyday.
Thats a decent middle ground imo, let me grind out all the covenants and let me switch as much as i want, the âmeaningfull choiceâ crowd can just not grind and stick to theit choice.
No one cares what the devs think, the only thing that matters is what the players think. Remember devs tough azerite and corruption were good systems, also Blizzards design phylosophy flip flops every patch in 9.0 they will say meaningfull choice matters and in 9.1 they will say minmaxing is a meaningfull choice.
No not really, people in classic are rolling with thousands of gold, also if we are going to pull examples from vannila,tbc and wrath there wasnt much reason to respec then, specs were ~70% the same, that is not the case in retail, a destruction warlock is very different than an affliction one, even i wouldnt go affliction in a M+ because affâs AoEing tools suck and the GCD makes it really frustrating to multi DoT and even if you do manage to not pull your hair out the dmg is not worth it. So before we talk restrictions and frictions how about blizzard design our classes in way we wont need to, this system does not promote playing to your strenghts it promotes pick a content you wont be screwed in.
I feel like you took a very liberal interpretation of what I said. For example, if you want to switch class, the âwork for itâ part is to reroll a character. In Legion for specs, it was to upgrade your artifact weapons, in BfA it was to get spec specific azerite pieces. I would have liked something proportionate relative to covenants, akin to rerolling.
My proposal was to have a âchargeâ system, that would let you change for free early on and you would get one charge when there is a patch update or ability change (because the âcontractâ is broken then) or a situation that warrants it.
Players are terrible game designers.
I donât mind the hardcore players that want to spend their gold every time they want to pvp or raid, they will always circumvent the system and grind a ton for a slim improvement. However this is not accessible for the players that donât want to put in that kind of effort (meta-slaves then casuals, otherwise they would be in the hardcore category of players that never complain no matter what the system is) so it is not practiced/expected as a gameplay element.
The equivalent to hardcore players in Shadowlands, if the covenants were actually restrictive, would have been to level characters of the same class/spec with different covenants, and different legendary upgrades. Canât complain about not getting the same benefits as hardcore players if you donât put in the same work.
An example of what I mean by expected gameplay. Being able to be in two covenants so easily with no penalty within the same week, means that you get to be in your bis covenant for m+ and your bis covenant for raid. Itâs too easy/advantageous to pass on, this is not something restricted to hardcore players, itâs such a marginal advantage that it is expected to do it.
This is what i mean. Like legion artefacts and classes you need to level them, let me level all 4 coveanats and use them.
This however is not proportionate.
I do not have a set number of how many times i can relog my character nor do i have charges on my respec button.
Covenant/class is not on the same scale as respec. Rerolling as in resetting your character progress. When you leave your job for another company, you canât just come back the next day, and leave again, an so on. You have to commit. You can specialize and take on different domains however.
I just donât think itâs cohesive to unlock at will different sub-classes on the same character. Itâs more appropriate to do it on different characters if unlocking everything is what you want.
Whats a sub-class ? Covenats are not sub-clasess your beloved game director back tracked his comment on them.
Now you are back tracking, you said and i quote
Your examples where
and
Also you want it to be
Well then, when i level up a lets say DH i dont lose my warlockâs levels pr gear for that matter, and when i leveled my artefact weapons for Demonology i didnt lose any levels in my Scepter of Sargeras and when i get a second Azerite helmet i do not lose the first one. Sooo are we now moving the goal post or are we not agreeing with the rules we ourselves set ?
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And when you level a venthyr dh you donât lose your progress on your kyrian dh. This is consistant with my examples and why I said the work to put in to have another covenant should be akin to rerolling.
Ah but a covenant is not equal to a class. A Demon hunter will survive 10.0, covenants however, well i doubt you will be able to fit them in your bank but⌠lets say it wont be memorable. And if you see them as equal to classes the im trully sorry for the very abrupt crash with reality you will have upon release. But to further disprove your point tell me how does 1 ability 3 augments and a bunch of generic passives (by generic i mean not in anyway shape or form interact with your class) a sub-class make. A spec however is WoWs term for subclass, now it offers bassicly the same utility across the board, but it comes with a toolkid a rotation and talents. Speaking about specs they will also survive 10.0. Also covenant are changable but come with a timegate, so no even the game developers do not agree with you that 4 characters are âproportionateâ.
I have said it before and i will keep repeating it, if you do not want to switch dont fing switch alot of us do not share your mindset. Anyway you have already discredited yourself and proved you are talking out of yourâŚwell you know.
Oh one more thing
Actually you do lose your progress, the 2 DHs will not have identical gear. Not the case with artefacts and azerite.
Obviously a class is much richer than a covenant. The way they are similar is that in both cases you commit to a power profile (you wont disagree they are consequential since you always ask for balance), and narrative/theme/faction elements.
The purpose of these restrictions is to make you invest and commit for the duration of the expansion.
The mention of 4 characters is in the case of hardcore players that want to unlock everything at the max potency, not the nominal gameplay. Itâs up to you to meet these unreasonable demands if you want to be hardcore. You canât ask for the benefits of hardcore without being hardcore, it negates the category and their prestige.
Anyway, pleasure talking to you.
Thats like saying a whale is simmilar to a dog because they both breath air.
Actually i have. Just because Blizzard decided to lock them does not make them simmilar to classes in anyway shape or form, this is the problem.
Play it your game shall we, just like talents they offer you abbilities and augments, so why do we have to jump trough hoops to swap them ( I am sure you will disagree).
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I fear no man, but annoyed me⌠It scares me. Wish I was that creative when writing stuff for school/studies.
It better be, looking as it seemed to use up all my creativity for the next few days. No thanks necessary, I derive pleasure from clarification 
Thereâs a solution for that: Old talent trees where you got a point every level. And spacing spell ranks: you get X ability when you start at rank 1, then it gets improved every 15-20 levels in SL or so.
So again your solution to the meta problem is more segregation instead of less. Iâm not even going to touch implications of THAT. Just saying that my moral/ethical judgment of your person keeps going down and words âcorruptâ and âtyrantâ do come to a mind.
More chore than fun, twisted and evil.
Yeah, this is kinda strange coming from someone who ostensibly likes freedom of experimenting and trying things out. Down with the tyranny! We have nothing to lose but our chains!
Implications of what you propose would be taking away some other playersâ ability to have fun their way. And this is so uncouth and base way of telling someone off, shame on you! Thou hath neither class nor style!
Ah, here we go again. So the software engineer is moonlighting as itinerant salesperson. Only those guys can be so fixated on perceived value as opposed to real value. Wake up grandpa, itâs 2020 not 2004, people can use sims, they can crunch out whatâs worth what and when they find out youâre shorting them, guess what, no more deals of century for you. Instead they will give you torches and pitchforks treatment, free of charge.
Phrase âanal-retentive control freakâ somehow keeps sneaking up to the forefront of my mind. Dear Stunner, kindly do not try to dictate to other people how they are to have their fun, when they can do have fun, and in which exact ways they can have it.
Being Wrath-age altoholic I couldnât agree more. This is made the game fun, not having 5 identical abilities on 5 different characters that all do the same thing, only different visual effects.
Now whoâs breaking the contract of respectful debate?
Oh my poor baby! How even will you be able to play now? You will have to make a meaningful choice that youâve been preaching all along! Dreadful, simply dreadful! Ez mode S-tier PvP playa forced into making hard decisions with real cost! Now do you see? DO YOU?!
This would be acceptable. Exclusive content thatâs not class-based is just bad, making it achievable with some effort would be kinda OK. Provided it DOESNâT take 2 years.
And that is another reason for why exactly BFA was so bad in practice. Because those guys are so out of reality itâs painful, they donât see the result of their work, they donât get that instant feedback that bites them in backside when somethingâs not quite right. Like someone else in this thread I could point out.
You had all the âbasicâ spells available at all times. Only really spec-exclusive spells were locked in specializations. Talent trees were just making some abilities better than others so you had natural incentive to use them more, not artificial âYou get those 5 spells, thatâs all you get, and you better like em, we could prune moreâ.
Gee, this must be why BFA devs did so horrible work on it⌠Methinks they prefer playing slot machines though.
Looks like roast is back on the menu, boys!
So gentlemanly, civilized, and courtly. Iâm sure Amonet is positively swooning right now
Now why have you forsaken me? Too hot to handle? I donât always burn people, but when I do, itâs called Teldrassil 
Now this is why everyone should read forum: Hilarious and on the point 
Yeah, we already have it, itâs called CLASS, itâs permanently locked, and we donât need another thing like that on the top of original. There can be only one!
And here comes the light of reason: Two things are pretty much the same, so why one, that we can only customize in very limited way, is good and another, which we can tinker with whenever we want, is bad? Theyâre either both good or both bad. Labels, packaging, paint job doesnât change the nature of something or its inner workings.
For one, a classes toolkit works with itself. My Demonâs Bite fuels my Chaos Strike, my talent Cycle of Hatred fuels my Eye Beam, which fuels demon form, which fuels my Chaos Strike etcâŚ
Covenants: Here have a class ability and a core ability that donât have special interactions, and have some generic passives that do a bit of everything.
Thatâs not a class, thatâs not even close.
Thatâs not even a subclass.
Me being able to cure bleeds every 5 minutes and drop a glowing seal every minute and another DH being able to put a shield on themselves every 2 min and summon a demon to kill every 3 min does not make us different subclasses when every other element of our kit operates in exactly the same manner except the difference is âyou have a chance on hit to gain crit, i get versaâ.
I mean, does putting haste gems instead of versa gems make one a subclass? If you equip an active trinket and have haste wep enchant and another guy has a different active trinket and crit wep enchant are they now a subclass of you? Nonsense.
Subclasses are spec-level differences.
A shared basic toolkit
Some different abilities that share similar functions across the specs to retain the class identity.
Different abilities that achieve different roles of the spec
For example:
Both Havoc and Vengeance get Immolation Aura in SL, Spectral Sight, Both use Fury.
Mobility is a core DH theme as is transforming. Havoc gets a dash, vengeance gets a leap. Havocâs transform buffs damage, vengeance buffs their tankiness. Both have a builder, both have a spender with slight differences.
For drastic differences, Havoc gets a lot of burst aoe damage and haste, whereas vengeance gets completely different stuff like demon spikes and fiery brand.
Vengeance and Havoc are subclasses of Demon Hunter because they share some kit, thematics and themes but have some differences in how they represent those things and roles they can play. They clearly differ in how they appear in combat and the moves they use.
If I see a Kyrian Dh and a Venthyr DH fighting side by side, if their cov abilities are on cooldown I will not be able to tell the difference between them at a glance. They are certainly not subclasses.
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Thank you. My goal is not to antagonize. There is no use and no way to convince someone their idea of fun is inferior to another.
When I point out the fun elements of the game that were removed and caused players to leave en masse or become dissatisfied, and the counter-argument is âyes but this doesnât relate to my modern-era kind of funâ, itâs a bit redundant, weâre not arguing over the same thing.
I read your post, maybe I should have liked it to let you know.
Most of your answer was agreeable/complementing things you agreed with (for example when you say you like talent trees).
Some things you react to while forgetting/ignoring what I said (ex: the âSerrated Bone Spike solving everythingâ argument that you consider a âroastâ when I told you I was not going to pick it).
Some things are just a repeat of your previous counter-arguments so I have nothing more to add. No point in having a circular discussion.
Some things are just banter/flavor text/rants, donât need to expand on the small things.
And for more practical purposes, we just canât go for walls of texts every day (weâre both guilty of this) as it is draining/not sustainable/time-consuming/not worth for an amateur conversation on design philosophies, so forgive me if Iâm looking for some kind of closure.
Itâs also not worth building up tensions forever when we engage in these disussions for entertainment. The ratio between negative and positive experience becomes unfavorable. You donât want these relationships/interactions in your life.
Yes, a covenant doesnât provide a comprehensive toolkit. The comparison was not with this perspective, they are sub-classes in the sense that they offer distinct power profiles (ratings in st, aoe, pvp, utility, sustainability, burst, etc). Itâs easy to negate the statement if you remove the point of view/context.
They do have interactions with both your class and your spec. Serrated Bone Spike works with Blade Flurry, Sepsis works with toxic blade (not to mention it literally procs Vanish, a class ability), Flagellation works with Deeper Dagger, outlaw buffs affect combo point generating covenant abilities, energy/combo point considerations and other neat interactions I learn about everyday that I wonât reveal here.
You have different types of perks: some are class specific (covenant abilities), some are spec specific (conduits), some are unique to a covenant but homogenized across classes (soulbind abilities & covenant signature abilities, you can only have so many gap closers/self heal), boring perks that are just stats (you have those in talent trees too).
You will be able to tell them apart in their activitiies and performance profile, if Kyrian is optimized for X and Venthyr is optimized for Y for example.
There are visual elements like animations and cosmetics and other info like covenant specific buffs/debuffs, which are important to pick up on in pvp for example, which is a great gameplay feature.
I mean special interactions with each other, not the core kit.
So the covenant is a package deal, yes? ie I pick Kyrian I get Elysian Decree and Summon Steward.
Those two abilities have no special interactions with each other.
None of my conduits cause them to impact each other. The best thing the binds do is alter my summon a bit, but it doesnât give it meaningful interaction with Elysian Decree, and the soulbinds that interact with Decree are minimal- largely restricted to âusing it gives a buffâ.
Their pairing is completely arbitrary, and yet they are part of the same âbundleâ.
This is contrast to classes where within my DH âbundleâ my abilities work with each other and relate to each other. Using this impacts that, or buffs that, or makes it cool down quicker. Theyâre meant to work together.
You could easily swap Elysian Degree for Sinful Brand (venthyr Dh spell) and there would be absolutely no changes required for any of the conduits, or soulbinds. That tells me the design of these elements wasnât considered properly in terms of it being a kit.
Part of the problem here is giving everyone the same stuff (ie Summon Steward) because it limits this perhaps; but that doesnât have to be the case, Blizzard easily could have made the class-specific abilities themselves involve the interaction.
This is the issue, itâs not that the class ability doesnât impact my class (it does) itâs that itâs paired with a random generic ability that varies greatly in itâs use but they come as part of a pair. So if I do want the generic ability I have to (ideally) also want the class-interactions the other ability offers otherwise iâm only making good on one half of the deal. But because they do not relate to each other whether they âwork well togetherâ or not seems completely random.
Like, as a DH tank having access to a âcure allâ and self heal is nice. I donât need a lot more mobility, I have that in droves, but being able to cure myself would be nice. It does mean though that I have to then take Decree as well irrespective, but the pairing isnât natural. Itâs like saying âIf you want to buy a steak, you must also have a spannerâ. Nobody would complain if they offered potatoes with the steak because that makes some sense, but in the case of many classes the pairing of the abilities is completely off and doesnât feel smooth.
Venthyr is a good example for DH. A teleport, which is used as either an engage (unlikely, given both Havoc when running momentum and Vengeance in general get benefits from engaging with their class abilities) or a retreat (more likely) is paired with a debuff you use to reduce the damage an opponents deals for a short period within melee range. So an escape (increase distance) is paired with an ability that operates on the principle youâre going to be staying in melee to see the benefit. That makes very little sense.
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That is true, but why should they interact with each other ? Does Toxic Blade interact with Crimson Vial ? Why would you force an interaction between a defensive ability and a damaging ability ?