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.
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…
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.
I’m even arguing it’s not even a choice at all. As it doesn’t have any impact or lasting consequences.
After switching it’s like the previous never happened.
Instead of a choice it’s more a mandatory pick.
Following the OP’s perspective.
To be fair I’m basing this on talents and specs and such. As we still don’t really know how or what the final SL system will be like.
Ion stated he didn’t want players to be optimal for every encounter, wether it was AOE or single target.
I wonder how “meaningful choices” will look like when people won’t be picked them because they are not optimal for that specific encounter.
At the end of the day it seems they want:
Competitive gaming, with Mithic plus dungeons designed around a timer, which people have to play at their best.
Non optimal builds because of “meaningful choices” and RPG.
This will infuriate people in my opinion.
They are basically asking for people to waste more time, when people don’t want to waste more time.
They simply added another layer of scrutiny.
Now not only a key holder will look at the raider IO score of the applicant but also the Covenant, conduit etc. And if they are not as he expects, tough luck, there’s more people applying.
At the beginning, when everyone is leveling, I believe everything will be fine.
But wait until those MDI groups start participating and everyone will want to copy them.
Will anyone be surprised if this happens ?
Here is where they don’t seem to understand or don’t want to understand.
In vanilla everyone was welcomed because we lacked players. It was server based.
I remember getting whispers in this character, from people that added my name to their friends list and asking me if I wanna join them for a 10 man raid. Sometimes 20 man raid.
They didn’t care for my spec or build because having someone is better than none.
That changed when people could chose from players from other servers.
That is not going back.
There’s more demanding than offer.
People making groups will segregate, every single time.
That happens from top to bottom.
Conclusion: they want people to waste more time, running dungeons and raids with “meaningful choices” and this will not go well.
I don’t see how gameplay focused players have any meaningful choices, these are always simmed and you get told what to pick. You don’t get a choice about it. Essentially every Paladin is going to be told to take the Night Fae as a Covenant Yuck… but as an RPG focused player, I can pick whatever I want. So it’s not really Covenants that are preventing your meaningful choices, it’s people pre-determining what’s the best and having everyone fit into those moulds. It’s happened since Classic and will continue to.
And this is where RPG meets MMOG.
While in a single player game, like Ghost of Tsushima you can chose your play style, like fighting honorably as a Samurai or dishonorably as the Ghost, in a MMOG you are dependant in other people in order to progress.
And none wants to waste time with player’s that aren’t optimal.
The issue is at this moment you can be up to 20% less strong just by picking the ‘wrong’ choice. Yes it is an RPG, and in an RPG also you char strength counts.
Also there is no choice. We are not able to try them out. We are maybe going to see the abilities during leveling. I am a healer so i need a healing situation to try things out. Also this trying has to be on a decent level, not on a stomp-level. We are gambling instead of chosing. And then you find out you are 20% less strong by your gamble.
When there are a couple of good choices, lets hope so, there are different playstyles tied to your class. And you kick 75% of those playstyles out by chosing 1. You can not even have fun with another playstyle for a week and then go back to you main choice. It is all so terrible unfun
That’s their intent. And I don’t get why that is not fine. It’s like exponential cost increase for Azeroth armors…Why, just why preventing players having fun?
Even classic, where min-maxing is useless, has a lot of min-maxing… Yeah, gaming evolved.
Dat ist why I proposed to disable any covenant stuff into M+, raids, instanced pvp. Dat is a perfect middle ground.
Not playing in pugs.
More seriously, they just have to wait more. Dat is so fun!
Again : I still don’t get why Blizzard don’t disable this stuff for instances…
People seem to forget dat raids are harder, thus picking the best option is a respect toward your mate. At this point, if raids were as challenging as classic, we would need less min-maxing. But on the same time, Dat ist nein for me, raids are good as they are now.
Also rextroy (that’s how it’s spelled?) showing how the different corruptions can one shot people shows that you can get crazy results when you go off of the beaten track.
Especially when you can play around, test, theorycraft further, test again, you get to better results yourself. The moment we have to make our covenant choice we know nothing. We are making a meaningfull gamble, not choice.
Meaningful choices are bad game design? Why have classes then? Why have different races? Why not have exactly three classs - tank, healer and dps. Remove choice completely. When you make a character, you already make 3 meaningful choices - you picked your racial, you picked your faction (which if you look around the forums, is NOT just a vanity choice), and you picked your set of specs.
This is way, way more meaningful than covenants. People who play exclusively flavor of the month classes are in fact the tiny minority. I mean the types who swap mains with patches or meta shifts.
Imagine booting up an MMO and you see it having only one class. Would you play that garbage? Why would you, when it doesn’t have any meaningful choice during character creation?
The fact is that covenants or not, we all love meaningful choice. To me, covenants are class halls 2.0 and the only problem is that this time, you can pick your class hall. You couldn’t in legion. There was like 13 of them, and if yours stunk - well, that’s it, you couldn’t change it. Your character was garbage until the end of the patch or the expansion.
Should every class have a tank, heal and dps spec? As a demon hunter, you can’t heal. But what if the group needs a healer? Why shouldn’t you be able to just swap to a healer spec?
You are also not in a contest to claim Activision Blizzard rewards, apparently.
Just got remembered, recently by Activision Blizzard to claim the mount locked behind Mithic + 15.
What a laugh.
They go out of their way to defend “meaningful choices” while locking rewards under content you have to play with the best build MDI has to offer.
Any doubts try to see how well BM hunters are doing vs other specs in Mithic Dungeons.
Well, you are probably not being kicked out of raids with “kick the resto shamans, invite holy priests.” We got way underperforming classes in specific content. We will get way underperforming covenants in SL too. Guarenteed. It is not about 1% optimal, it is about not underperforming. And the option to have fun. More fun with more playstyle options.
You won’t get kicked out of raids as long as you don’t stink. Covenants provide one more avenue to stink up your character, and with the current meta of simming, looking everything up, I get why people would be afraid of having to make a choice of their own. We haven’t had to do this for a decade now. We’ve always had a statistic, a third party, making the choice for us. We just claim the credit for being good at the game, even if we’re only good at simming our gear.
I am a healer, i am not able to sim anyway. People need to be informed, able to test, try out, theorycraft more and have more fun. I mean, i got like 4 different corruption builds too.
And i dont stink. resto shamans had that issue in uldir. Way underperforming. Nothing a resto shaman could do about that.
In vanilla if you wanted to raid the meta was MM and SV after you got enough agility.
In BFA it’s BM.
No matter whether you are if it’s serious content people will tell you what to play.
Whether it’s a pug from Mithic + or your guild.
The key holder will want to upgrade his key and your spec will be scrutinized.
Your guild won’t be taking you unless you are optimal.
You can play casually, but Activision Blizzard themselves will lock mounts and rewards on the highest difficult content.
And they will remind you to claim them before the expansion ends as they did recently.
All of this screams:
“We want people to waste more time”.
