Its all about meta, all about progress, all about balance. Even though most people aren’t actually competing against others, it feels like everyone thinks they are. (Refering to the lfg tool and how you get denied for a +5 if the slightest thing is off on your char)
I played mmorpgs since forever and what i really miss about the older games i played is that the fantasy and rpg aspect was a huge deal. Nobody cared about balance (unless something was extremely off) or progress this serious, in those games it was truly PvE, people just worked together no matter the class or what not. Everyone made their own choices and was just happy living in a fantasy world and everything was chill.
With WoW it really just feels like a math competition, you’re going to sim your char, pick one of the top classes and cast out those who don’t. It’s just not a game where you can relax much while playing. Guilds where these things don’t matter much are increasingly hard to find. Well, people in general who don’t care much about these things are hard to find.
Sure, we get a lot of choices in this game, but usually only 1 choice is what gets you invited so its fake freedom. I really hoped covenants wouldn’t influence gameplay but now its perhaps the worst borrowed power system we’ll ever have to deal with. So are soulbinds etc. I am really not excited for Shadowlands at all and will probably look for another game because i am so tired of this.
Edit: Yeah i could ignore everything i don’t like, i’m not required to do content where it matters, but it just throws me off knowing basically everyone else is playing like this.
A couple of days ago, me and a friend were checking out the legendaries and covenant abilities of the two classes we wanted to play. Warrior for him and Death knight for me.
After reading through, we were thinking how awesome it would be to try this, and that and the other combo, and this one and went through a list of all the possible fun mixes we could come up with.
Then we realized, we have to choose one covenant, so we’re stuck at one decision. And it has to be the best one, otherwise, it’ll most likely be a 20% or probably more, downgrade for damage.
Ironically enough, the system they designed specifically for the purpose of making players go for what they want instead of what they have to, by overcomplicating it, they made it more reliant on following numbers than ever.
And they basically killed 90% of the potential experimenting and playtesting the content with this one STUPID decision for covenants.
And it has to be the best one, otherwise, it’ll most likely be a 20% or probably more, downgrade for damage.
Why does it have to be “best” one? Are you Hall of Fame mythic raider so you have to go to extreme limits to get every bit of damage you can? Why don’t you just go for whatever you find most interesting to play?
Covenants will go through so many changes and nerfs for first few months that picking “best” one is going to be hit or miss anyways.
You have to be extremely clueless to say something like that.
This won’t be a racial thing, which is like a 1~2% boost.
The system will make some choices, OVERWHELMINGLY better. You could very well end up performing at your best, and still doing 70~80% of other people of your class because of those choices.
And then a couple of months later, a new nerf comes up and now you go into the process of farming renown all over again, because now you’re also forced to change to the best thing again.
Blizzard doesn’t have proper balancing. They have what you call, nerf hammer. They DESTROY OP stuff. They don’t balance them.
I guess this can’t be explained to you this way. Just wait till you play shadowlands, so you could see for yourself. Anything above normal raid and you’ll see the difference.
Contrary to popular believes, wow’s PVE became harder and harder over the course of the time. If PvE was as easy like in wrath (in terms of class rotation and boss mechanics) then there would not be that need for such min maxing. But here is the thing…Those challenges are the reason why raiding is a good experience nowadays. And in Mythic, you only have 20 available spots, so you gotta make some choices…like…not bringing a spec that suck, because you know… “Bring the class, not the player” and on the same time, some specs are bringing everything on the table whereas other spec don’t. Playing a dps spec from a class that has a healing spec (Except SP and Balance) is such an awful experience in BFA.
There are certainly non raiding and non M+ guilds. I just don’t know what would they spend their time on.
Yes. Borrowed power is frustrating, but you gotta admit. There is not much around it.
Giving classes more and more buttons to push on default, with every expansion, just makes the next step, an inevitable pruning the way it was done after pandaria. They can’t just give more and more power to you every time and never take anything away. This strategy, while it has its downsides, is probably the best way they can do these things.
Imagine if Heart of azeroth was permanent. Now you’d be grinding BFA stuff in shadowlands and future expansions too. or if they made them into default abilities, then you had to balance the game around another extra layer of complexity.
And one thing most of us can agree on, is that shadowlands crossed the line already with complexity.
you have to check if the players you play with are able to compete against those NPCs.
What gives me enjoyment is beating hard content and if someone else is handicapping themselves by not knowing how or wanting to play their class the optimal way I won’t be able to beat the hard content. It’s a team game you know? I don’t want to play with people that have a fantasy that they are some god tier paladin doing alot of damage, I want it to be reality. It’s just that simple.
They maintained the same amount of spells from wrath up to MoP, so I do think they could have kept going this way. I mean, removing stuff, changing how spells work is not that big of a deal.
What a nightmare eh eh.
I feel like I need a rocket science PHD + a computer science PHD in order to figure out wether or not this piece of gear is an upgrade or not…
I really don’t like those layers of complexity, but we’ll do with them… I guess…
This is what happens when you destroy faction identity by adding elves to horde. Role play as what? Undead? Orc? Brutal and honorable horde?
No you’re just majority barbie tmog farmers. Ex alliance who switchedbecause their sought-after race was denied and given to the favourite blizzard faction
… I don’t exactly understand what you want from others. To play the way you want them to? It’s not enough you can play the way you want, but you want others to also adapt to you instead of you minding your own fun and others minding theirs? That’s never going to happen, everyone is looking for different things and finds fun in different ways. I just don’t understand the point.
Yea. And once you’re kicked from all groups because you’re dealing 30% less damage in comparison to all the other mages, We’ll see how you’ll feel about numbers.
Like it or not, there’s a certain level of expectation in this game if you want to do anything high end. EVEN normal raids and low key mythic+ runs. You won’t get far, if you think you can get away with whatever choice you make because it doesn’t matter. The truth here is, that it does matter.
What facts have you brought up ? That horde play blood elves ? Guess what mate thats a choice. You keep blaming racials over and over again for the faction imbalance yet Alliance has the superior racials. I get it and i know that there is a major problem in the Alliance but its not due to racials or Blood elves, its because the hardcore scene is over at Horde.
Because not even the one ability I find most interesting comes with my favourite covenant. In fact, the ONE ability I find interesting to play and most transformative as a warlock comes with the ONE covenant that I really don’t want to be a part of. Not my fault that ability is also the strongest currently as it doesn’t change how it works. Go on, call me a filthy mythic raider for wanting interesting gameplay without the cost of aestethics and RP.
This is inevitable if you design fundamentally different abilites and put them in a pack with what’s supposed to be an RPG choice, and the very core of the issue players have with covenants.
