Choose your topping/seasonings for the next 2 years

Community General Discussion
61

How is restricting us to a covenant going to fix this? They have to balance a warrior going Venthyr the same as a warrior going Night Fae.

There is literally zero difference in the amount of customization except that it belongs to 2 separate players.

You mean having 1 player going either is bad? Why? What does it break?

@ Hínáta

We’re talking about covenants here, not classes.
A class is a permanent addition to your character, covenants are temporary.
You know you make a permanent class choice when you make your character.

Covenants aren’t even comparable to classes, you know why? because Switching them is still allowed, just that it’s convoluted.

If you guys want to go the RPG route, then i suggest blizzard lock everyone in only 1 spec. You chose your faction/race/class/spec/covenant and we’re all good. We’d see a "blade"storm on the forums like never before.

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I personally would be fine with that. BM for life.

Anyway, I’ll end this discussion here. You have a certain mindset which Blizzard (and I too) deem ‘not good for the game’. If they have their way (and I don’t see why not, it IS after all THEIR game), you will have to adapt.

Have a good evening.

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Sounds good, thanks for the discussion.

But i don’t know how i’ll have to adapt to something that is not set in stone yet. :slight_smile:

Evening.

64

Covenants are not the same as classes however they apply the same philosophy as classes: make a choice as to what you want to excel at you can’t flip back on instantly.

Why does this kind of choice only have a place in a characters beginning? Why can’t it belong at the end?

Also, the topping analogy is a bit off in my opinion, as you’re choosing a RL example that basically nowhere has a mutual exclusivity, which simply tries to paint it as absurd by comparison.

A more apt comparison would be heading to a food court, and being allowed one drink per course of your meal in a swanky restaurant there, with a predetermined menu, which you have to enjoy for the entirety of that course and not being allowed to repeatedly change your drink midway because “beer goes best with the steak but the wine works better with the vegetables.”. They’ll let you change drinks once, but if you swapped your beer out, they won’t bring it back if you ask for it again. This analogy exists in reality. In the other establishments in the food court you can change your drink when when you like.

Now you can argue it’s still unreasonable and why is the restaurant in question ruining your fun by imposing artifical choices. However they determine the philosophy of what “dining means” in their establishment. The other places in the food court allow you to “optimise” your drink as much as you like, and nobody is stopping you doing that still. That still exists.
It is just this new restaurant doesn’t operate like the others.

Nobody is losing choice, a new option is simply operating on a principle you don’t like. Hypothetical options not being taken is not the same as losing literal freedom, otherwise you have to interpret every decision you make In your life that closes off hypothetical doors in the future as “not a decision, but a infringement of my freedom” which is absurd.

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Mostly because when you do it at the beggining you are defining the window you are going to use to interact with the world and the very essence of what your character is.

While covenants can’t compare to that, not only because they don’t have enough depth, but also because you know from the start that they won’t last forever and they are just the new convoluted system they are using as a way to provide some borrowed power that they can easily remove when the expansion is over.

66

You didn’t see past the comparison.

The real example is how you are content on choosing only one option but you are also forcing me to pick only one.
Instead of both of us having 4 options, where you can pick one an stick with it if you like it so much.

This is about forcing others to play like you want.
This system is restricting us from playing like we want to play.

You think locking essences this way now would make people happy?
You think locking covenants this way will make people happy?

Why do you need to be restricted to only one choice by default?
It’s not logical that you would like only one option instead of 4.

Comparing this to classes is irrelevant btw, we made that choice a long time ago, we’re not asking to change this now are we?

If you want to play all classes on one character only in a game i recommend Skyforge just for this(whale ruled game but has nice graphics and some fun abilities, classes are also nice and variable).

67

You still have four options. You just can’t double swap on them. It means your choices involve more decision making due to the weight of them than simply selecting “weekly mythic template 01” and go.

Also my stance is wait and see before throwing the baby out, not “remove free choices” but seeing as you brought it up, why is it okay for every other system in the game (talents, customisations, essences, azerite, specs) to operate on the way you prefer to play, and that’s fine and dandy, but when one comes along that isn’t the same it’s “other people being forced to confirm?”.

You can throw out the “you can simply stick with one choice though.” The point is the choice isn’t meaningful because you know you can reverse it whenever you like. That’s what people are arguing about, it’s about feeling like the direction their character takes means something beyond the creation screen.

As said I’m more of the mind to wait and see, but I can see where this argument comes from. Once upon a time say I knew if I wanted to solo elites as a hunter, I’m levelling up as BM. So my choice meant something. Now it’s irrelevant if I choose survival because I can become BM whenever I need to. Your argument is i can somehow recapture that feeling by simply pretending I can’t respec.

Essentially it’s an argument of “if you adapt your mindset, everything is fine.” Interestingly in this topic where people not in favour of covenant lock are confronted with arguments about “changing their mindset to see it as selecting one buff rather than losing several buffs” it is dismissed as nonsense to require them to change their perception and that it is no argument. Surely the same would hold for telling people “just stick with one then and treat it like you can’t change it, change your mindset.”?

Fundementally it’s a new addition that behaves differently. People expected it to follow a similar route because “player power always has” but it doesn’t mean it always will. If blizz were changing how something in game works currently, I’d totally get it. But introducing something new that breaks precedent? I don’t see it as similar precisely.

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You say “due to the weight of them”, i think you meant to say punishment. There is no “weight” to such a decision, there is punishment though, don’t act like it’s some deep system.

And why is it okay that it operates freely now?
How is it not okay? You are free to choose anything you want, you are not restricted.

It’s simple really, you prefer to be restricted, i prefer to not be:
1.1) Essences - Unrestricted

a) I can swap/choose any essence at any time - I am getting what i want
b) you can chose only one essence and keep it - You are getting what you want

1.2) Essences - Restricted

a) I can’t swap/choose any essence at any time - I’m not getting what i want
b) You can chose only one essence and keep it. - You are getting what you want

2.1) Covenants - Unrestricted

a) I can swap/choose any covenant at any time - I am getting what i want
b) you can chose only one covenant and keep it - You are getting what you want

2.2) Covenants - Restricted

a) I can’t swap/choose any covenant at any time - I’m not getting what i want
b) You can chose only one essence and keep it. - You are getting what you want

Notice how at the Restricted setting that i’m not getting what i want, but at the unrestricted section, you are getting what you want?

You can lock yourself in your covenant and stay there, that is your gameplay choice to make, just like i want my option to chose any covenant i like and swap around.

Unrestricted allows us both to get what we want, restricted only allows you to get what you want.
This shows exactly how selfish you are, you are gaining zero benefits if covenants are restricted or unrestricted. The choice to use multiple doesn’t matter to you since you don’t want to use it.

69

Something’s wrong 'ere. Where’s the Nutella topping? :eyes:

70

That will come in Patch 9.3, blame Blizzard for being lazy and not shipping them early. :frowning:

71

Make covenant spells swappable. Done.

72

I don’t really follow any of this but all I want is sexy vampire parties to be my BiS Convenant.

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Go and bribe the top leads at Blizzard… xD

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They can come to my sexy vampire party :vampire: :partying_face:

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See man, i wanna do that Venthyr party gig too, but i wanna do other stuff as well. Blizzard is a real killjoy with these restrictions. And so are some others. :smiley:

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76

The problem is that the way they are treating the issues at hand is going to punish a lot of players that are simply not part of the problem and just enjoy playing MMORPGs in certain way, without hurting anyone by doing so. There is nothing wrong about min/maxing, trying to be as best as possible with your character or simply playing around with different stuff. The way i like to have fun with the game does not affect you in any way just as yours doesn’t affect me.

Here is the thing though. I agree that requiring extreme optimization for everything is an issue, but PuG’s with crazy requirements have always existed. What has changed is that now we have more and better tools to group up with more people to do more content and that added to some other changes over the years has made us be more detached of smaller communities like guilds or even servers.

Having those tools has good parts and bad parts and in my opinion the real solution should be trying to find a way to deal with the negative consequences those tools have (mostly, how they affect guilds as a concept of small community of like-minded people) instead of adding layers upon layers of complexity hoping that the players that enjoy the game in a certain way will end up giving up in playing the game the way they like it but they will somehow still want to keep playing the game. In fact, so far adding more complexity has only achieved that people has more stuff to ask as a requirement when creating a new PuG.

I don’t believe that punishing your paying customers until they behave the way you want is a good practice. If you don’t want certain type of players in your game, then be honest about it, but don’t keep taking their money while you are focused on making their experience worse.

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77

The saddest thing is I will 100% go with the one I need to, but then I’ll be even more mad that I can’t have sexy vampire parties.

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78

If these restrictions stay and if i’ll play Shadowlands, i’ll probably go with the one that seems to touch on as many of the things i like to do.

I already have pre-purchased Shadowlands since i got it with account balance, but my sub runs out in 3 months… idk if i’ll be buying more time or not(got enough balance, idk if i’ll spend it now). It depends on how Blizzard shapes covenants up.

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Covenant choice, as explained by the Perry Bible Fellowship (not always safe for work):

Link to the comic page

The way things stand at the moment is that you will be asked to make a choice before you have adequate time to play around with any of the abilities, especially if you play more than one spec and do multiple types of content. There is also a chance that the abilities that you most enjoy using are found with the covenant that you find the most aesthetically displeasing or that you’re ideologicallly opposed to. And even if you find a combination that you like at the beginning of the expansion you’re still at the mercy of Blizzard changing things so that the ability you like using suddenly works differently.

The ‘meaningful’ choices should all be story-related if they must exist at all in a game that must always have a poop quest. Give people the abilities and tools to have fun in the content that they enjoy without placing arbitrary restrictions on what spells they can cast.

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80

Better if you do that now, you never know… :smile: