Meaningfull choices are bad game design

Community General Discussion
1

People don’t want meaningfull choices. Unless you’re a RP player, gameplay should always be the priority. Having gameplay locked behind “meaningfull choices” is, and will always be a bad thing.
People will always try to be optimal, and we will always get answers like "It only affects top players who play mythic+25+++ content "
But this is absolutely wrong. People will always try to take the best for their group, no matter the level.

Please make it so meaningfull choices DOESN’T affect gameplay.
Skins, mounts, story, it’s ok, but gameplay should NEVER be affected. It’s fine to make choices, when it’s about chosing a group, join some NPC, to do the part of the story you want and get the skins you want.

But having it tied to gameplay elements, and make it affect how you’re going to be picked in groups, and how effective you will be is a terrible design.

People started complaining, and never stopped complaining about this since all the covenant shenanigans where announced.

Everything could be so much better IF :

  1. We could change covenant, or just level up every covenant without having to change.
    OR
  2. Make it so covenant aren’t tied to specific skills or bonuses that actually affect players effectiveness
    AND
  3. Just take the system we had with Essences, and make the same system with the Conduits. Bonuses you can change only when in town, not during the dungeon, and once unlocked you can swap them freely.

Chosing your covenant because you like the story, the characters, the skin and everything is fine. But that’s all it should be.

If this doesn’t happen, Shadowlands will be one of the worst and most limiting expansion we’ve had in a long time.

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2

Dont presume to speak for everyone. I like having a meaningful choice.

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How is being limited good?
Being tied to a choice and never being able to change is only good for people who don’t want to think about what’s best

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Tomayto, Tomahto
Where you see it limiting your specific playstyle others see it expanding their with more options than we currently have in BFA.

In a MMORPG it’s always a balancing act. You want to keep it involving for the player that they feel part of the world.
But you also want to gave them ve able to play without a lot of hassle.

Saying one or the other is ruining the game is just missing the point.

That’s what making a choice is. It has consequences. If you can change your choice. You never made a choice in the first place.
If I choose to eat pies for the next 5 months, then notice I’m fat I can’t just decide to instead of having eaten those pies, I ate a healthy diet and then poof I’m thin and healthy.
It would have been like I never chose to eat those pies.

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i think this is a failed Argument really.

Meaningful choice is nothing to d owith “dont wanna bother thinking hurrdurr” the game has like 15 interchangable systems… this would be like 1 more… no one would care

Some do like the idea of classes being slightly different… Some Did actually like the concept of Priests having specific racial abilities

the concepts not bad. the gameplay it could end driving is though, you are correct on the optimal thing, someone could feel forced to play a convenant they Dont like for optimization.

also blizzard tampering with the system after release will also ripple badly.

it has Negative impacts for sure. but i dont think this is the problem. if blizzard did prove the playerbase wrong and we saw the convenants pretty damn balanced and we could all choose our favorites… have our small advantages in different fights and it all even out

i think most players would be perfectly accepting.

the likelyhood of that being the reality is Unlikely.

the likelyhood is… it’ll get scrapped because human natures gonna Step right in the way of this concept.

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6

The player power removes thwe choice for me and many more. Even if i hate everythign about that covenant is bad, the power comes first.

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Meaningful choices are better than the abilities you get from 50 through to 60 just being re-hashed/re-branded abilities or meaningless passives ripped from spells you already had just to give you a sense of “progression” even though by that point its not really progression, or unpruning by that point.

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8

removing the ability to change things around and having no option to take AoE for a dungeon and ST for a raid encounter is removing options not giving more, you literally have less choices to make.

literally all they need to do is decouple the abilities from the covenants, and treat like what they are, glorified talents.

that way covenants can be the system they should be, a choice that has some consequence, that gives you the abiliity to take cosmetic items and story based on your personal preference for it, and you dont have to feel forced into taking something you might not like because that would give more power

9

You’re completely missing the point. Meaningfull choices should be made when you enter a zone or a dungeon, to chose the right talents, and right abilities that will suit your activity. Locking yourself into something you chose once and then never change again after is meaningless, you chose once, then it’s there and you never think about it again. It’s a lot less choice.

Also your exemple is completely wrong, this is a game, not real life. It would be better to say you decided to eat pie, but then went on the scale and saw your weight, and instead decided to eat something more healthy. THAT is meaningfull choice, doing something according to the situation, and not making a choice once, which is stupid, no one will think “i’ll eat pie for 5 months”. The same way no one will think “i’ll never change the way i play for 5 months, no matter the type of content i play”.

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Do you change your class when you zone into a dungeon? No? Then you made a meaningful choice when you created your character.

Do you change your race or faction before zoning into a dungeon? No? Then you made a meaningful choice when you created your character.

Both of those are much more permanent than Covenants - which you can change. You can even go back to a covenant you left, it will be just a bit harder to earn their trust back, is all.

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11

Has nothing to do with class. When i enter a dungeon, i change my talents, my armor, my essences, my corruption, that’s the basic, you adapt to what you do
My class and race and faction weren’t meaningfull choices, it was just to my taste, and doesn’t affect my gameplay.

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Yes it does. Try being a disc priest in M+. Or well, a priest in M+ in general.

Covenants are pretty much the same, except you can change them, unlike your class.

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Yes, and that’s a spec, and you adapt your spec to what you need to do.
Doesn’t have anything to do with class/race/faction which are just to taste

Also i’m not talking about class balance, i’m talking about new system added to the game to add even more reasons for people to not be taken in dungeon. If you say that being a priest is bad for mm+, then imagine being a priest with the wrong covenant, even more reasons not to be taken.

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“Meaningful” choices are only bad because we’re not used to making them in the game. The more we have to make these choices, the greater the satisfaction for our choice and the less-punishing the non-choices become.

Of course, it’s up to Blizzard to make sure there are no perpetually “wrong” choices, every choice should have a moment where you’re very happy you picked it.

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15

Having no weaknesses would be bad game design, choices are fine.

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16

Meaningful choices give a depth to your character. It connects it to the story. It makes you think about the steps you take and it incentivizes people to play more than one character to experience the whole story.

However, meaningful choices that affect your dps, healing or tanking capabilities are a bad idea. UNLESS it’s PERFECTLY balanced. And we all know blizzard won’t be able to perfectly balance it judging by their years of complicated system balancing attempts and failures.

Unfortunately, we’re at a dead end. Blizzard had a vision for this upcoming expansion and it’s too late for them to change it. It’s one of their typical Naive point of view and their overconfidence in their balancing capabilities.

They did this for a bunch of reasons. Not just to make covenants a selling point or to center the whole expansion around them. But to give that sensation of multi choices being acceptable and not getting to see one build being used by everyone.

So they planned on giving us so many choices and options for a combination of legendary, soulbind and covenant, that we just wouldn’t be able to find the single best option. given how every encounter would require different tactics and every ability will have different effect in different situations.

It sounds good in theory. In reality however, we’ll have balancing issues, one shot stupid builds, terrible backlashes when the inevitable balancing comes around to nerf your chosen covenant/ability/soulbind/legendary, etc.

It’s one of those good on paper, but TERRIBLE in reality type of things and blizzard just is too optimistic to see how bad the system will turn out.

They’re aiming for the 100% while everyone’s happy with 80%, but will end up giving us 50% while we know it could have been 80 if they didn’t insist on shooting for something they couldn’t do.

But if they manage to actually pull it off, which i highly doubt based on years of experience and based on the most recent one corruptions which came in with a ton of problems, even though it’s a much much much less complicated system in comparison to what is about to come in shadowlands, I’d welcome that wonderful surprise.

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17

Lots of words, not enough substance.
What “gameplay” you’re talking about, exacly?

Being locked into convenant and ditching it having consequences is as much “gameplay” as unlocking everything on the Legion Artifact tree was a “gameplay”.

Regardless - I like having choices, and in the end after chosing one I should reflect and think if it was meaningful. I also like the idea of consequences of our choices - something World of Warcraft lacks for quite a some time.
I mean, look at Sylvanas loyalists…
Or talent choices, I mean it’s convinient to switch talents on the fly but is it even a choice if we swap them constantly between trash and bosses / based on enemy comp in pvp? We could as well have all talents unlocked at max lvl and save the trouble of swapping.
And now that I think about it, it would be as much a “gameplay” as any other.

So I disagree, it’s not people not wanting meaningfull choices. It’s you not wanting it, while I actually do.

PS: Be specific.

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18

Most of Mythic raiders are against. That being said, those who don’t do raid seem fine with that system. So I guess… Blizzard should just ease the life of 10%of player base that do high end content, either Pve or Pvp ie disable covenant in instances and just let covenant in open world and Tjorgast.

That’s the point. I still don’t get why Blizzard would invest so much time and energy into a system that is going to be overcomplicated.

To add more, if a covenant provides 50% more dps than the other 3, then there is not so much choice over here…

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They want to break Meta playstyles and theory crafting as much as possible. The sad thing is that they will never break it no matter how hard they try, the evolution of the game and its players says enough about this.

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If you change it at every fight it’s not a meaningful choice… that’s quite literally not what it means in the slightest lol…

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