I have a crazy idea, remember that part of your UI called cookie-cutter talents? Add the covenant skills there as you play Shadowlands, pick and choose and grind whatever rep you want for cool goodies. Add to it the soulbinds and utility spells from covenants and bang, fixed.
Remember, is not about just min max is about friggin fun.
Ok name me some MMORPGs that make you sacrifice power over aestethics, or the so called “meaningfull choice” that gimps you.
Please God, not this again…
For the hundredth time, wanting an AoE ability in heavily AoE base situations, like dungeons, and a single target ability in single target situation like the majority of raids bosses, is NOT min-maxing. For goodness’ sake, you’re going as far as calling it obsessive. It’s the feeling I get from playing my character that matters to me. Being stuck with a single target execute type ability knowing there’s an ability I can’t use that is a ton of fun to use on trash in dungeons is just going to make me not want to play dungeons. I just want to use abilities where they fit their intended design, which I didn’t even have a say in. As of now, for anyone enjoying more than one of 3 core end-game parts of WoW, those being PvP, dungeons and raids, picking a covenant is just about what’s going to universally suck the least in all of their favourite types of content.
What’s a “necessary design flaw”?
And why is respeccing suddenly the equivalent of murdering a puppy? I’ve never seen anyone go “Oh my god I hate that I can change this choice that I regret making in this video game… I hate that I have the option to fix it at a cost. And all these people playing what they want are ruining my fun… but I’m going to keep playing the game and never mention this feeling until Blizzard plants it in my head one day and makes me think that’s what this game needs after 15 years”.
Honestly, by some of these ideologies, I’m getting the feeling you people must think that Witcher 3 is the single worst RPG ever released in the history of the RPG genre just because you can do whatever the hell you want in that game. And believe me that would make you one of the tiniest minorities in the world.
Yeah, this would fix it. Question is how many people would be fine with them being so week now that they’ve seen how interesting a lot of them are. But you still have the issue with the signature abilities. Turning into a fox to run slightly faster and blink 10 yards doesn’t compare to a 35 yard teleport or a shield for 50% of maximum health.
Ill tell you why, because it fits the narative.
Honestly im starting to thing at this point that so many people actually eat soup with a fork.
It’s ok lads, SL will be alt friendly. Plot twist is that you will play 4 alts of the same class.
That is literally impossible. You can’t design anything around a mix of things on such scale. You have the class, the class covenant ability, the signature covenant ability and then how that class synergizes with that signature ability. Also, you can’t assume that those thing will always be present, because in some cases there just won’t be a necrolord for example. And you can’t assume that it will never be there either. The only way to “balance” around this is to not balance around it and just pretend that covenants don’t exist, which will only make the fights too trivial because of covenants. It’s a mess.
Suddenly everyone who was pushing and celebrating the philosophy change towards more class focus and unpruning is gone and everyone wants a meaningful choice everywhere instead. Must be a coincidence I guess. Nothing to do with planting ideas in people’s heads and fixing problems that don’t exist. I chose a warlock in the character creation menu, not a destruction warlock. I don’t have a main spec. I am a warlock.
I WANNA SCREAM!! THIS STUPID PHRASE HAS NEVER BEEN UTTERED BY ANYONE UNTIL BLIZZARD DID IT!
Every single time complaints have been mate in terms of “WoW is not and RPG anymore”, it was either because of the leveling, the loot, the story, the characters… whatever and I got that and I understood those reasons. A choice that allows me to have more fun in the game is a million times more meaningful to me than choosing something I know nothing about and hoping I’m not going to hate it. I want the choice to mean that I will have fun, not hope that I won’t regret it in three weeks.
Choices here, choices there, choices inside choices, choices on top of choices, irreversible choices everywhere. So I have to choose a troll, then choose a warlock, then choose to be ONLY destruction, then choose to be ONLY Necrolord, then choose to play ONLY with this specific conduit in this slot. You want to change even a minor part of your character? MASSIVE CONSEQUENCES!!!
What happened to just playing the game and having fun doing it…
but there is a difference between min maxing your character which has been present in this game since its inception, and constantly rerolling to different classes each month though.
all i want is the ability to have the ability to make use of different options that should be given to me, rather than having to make a choice that could have a different answer within a month of the expansion launching, considering they are making it difficult to swap and swap back depending on what you want at any given time.
if i for example want to focus on mythic+ as a warlock then i should probly take venthyr, which i like the theme for as well as the ability being a good fit, the problem is that i raid as well, and the venthyr ability is essentially a dead spell on ST. it gives absolutely no advantage and it would never be pressed, unless it isnt balanced and just does insane ST damage.
imagine they had introduced the artifact abilities but they told you to pick one and then in order to get another one you had to give up the progress you had on the other one and start from scratch, you you were basically stuck having to only play a specific spec for the entire expansion, imagine as a warlock that aff is good for the first tier like in BFA. when 8.1 hit the buffed destro and it was good for dungeons, which aff has been terrible for all expansion. as someone who enjoys both raiding and aff how do i make the choice to be good at one and be useless at the other, its just not a fair choice, and just shouldnt exist in the game out right.
Exactly. If you design the encounters without the min/maxing of covenants in mind, then the people who did min/max will just trivialize the fight, which in terms will force more people to min/max it so its trivialized for them aswell. I also want to point out that i do not want or advocate for trivial fights , but this will happen, its human nature to pick the path of least resistance.
Exept they are not ireversible. By 10.0 we will have scraped this system. The covenant abilities are going to be A) scraped in the next expansion or B) made into switchable talents/build in to your class/spec. Both of these outcomes make your choices meaningless in the long run. Actually in the long run the people that made theirchoices because of the cosmetics and story will be the ones that have had the meaningfull choice. Now the consequences here will be only for those that wanted to maximize their performance and to experiment during the expansion. The thing I really dont get is how and why arent people seeing this.
but this is a fundamental missunderstanding of the game, because there is a difference between someone who is a warlock and someone who is a destruction warlock, i made the choice to actively play all 3 specs because they are designed differently and they each have strengths and weaknesses that make them good in different situations,
much like the covenant abilities, warlocks being the main example as they are the ones im familiar with, venthyr, night fae and kyrian are most likely going to be a lot more effective in dungeons, because of how they work in general, considering that raids are generally more ST focused that dungeons this means that AoE abilities are next to useless and the venthyr ability and the night fae ability would both mostly be a dead spell in the raids. forcing someone who wants to primarily focus on dungeons to be locked into a choice that them becomes completely useless any time you are not in that specific environment is bad game design and should be changed.
and i really dont understand people who claim that giving players choice is removing players choice, there are other people that have commented saying that they will actively go agaisnt the “norm” or “meta” and take talents that they enjoy or prefer. so why is this something that they cant do with the covenants, they would be given that choice.
removing this choice from other players basically sets up one of two situations;
either you have to roll multiple of the same class in order to have access to all of them.
or you have to play through an entire expansion worried that they will randomly decide to nerf or buff something that means you have to then change over to something else in order for your character to be up to par. which in itself is a problem because the next patch will come along and some changes could be reverted, or other buffs and nerfs happen meaning that the one you originally left is now strong, but thats a shame, because rejoining a covenant that you have previously left is being designed to be difficult,
realistically they have 2 main options for the system to not be a completely an utter failure. they need to remove the power from this system and leave it as an aestethic choice which im sure everyone will be happy with, just pick the one you prefer yourself and that you like the transmogs for,
or the other option is to get as close to perfectly balanced as they can for the 9.0 release and then never make any balance changes. anything less than those 2 options causes more problems than the system is worth
It is. You’re trying to use the minimum number of stacks while maximising output. Your thought process when making that choice is not roleplaying.
No, not that example. I’m arguing for toning it down to the point where only people who are obsessed would still believe it’s an issue. Right now it’s just straight-up an issue. It’s too powerful.
What if it only slightly, slightly sucks instead of completely sucks?
By the way, the current talent system is this problem taken to its logical conclusion. If we can change it all the time, why don’t we have them all all the time?
A necessary design flaw is when you run into a design issue that you don’t know how to solve no matter how long you think about it. There just has to be a compromise.
The issue there was Blizzard wanted talents to stick HARD, but they also wanted levelling to take 250 hours. That’s a bit extreme.
The compromise they came up with was the respec with rising gold costs.
Something similar could work for Shadowlands. But tomes? That ain’t it. Removing covenant abilities entirely? That ain’t it.
There’s a difference between respeccing a few times and respeccing every 30 minutes.
You’re all arguing for the every 30 minutes variety. I disagree.
The Witcher 3 respec potion is exceedingly rare. If you think The Witcher 3 respec potion is anything like respec tomes, you’re an idiot!
No, they can’t be directly compared. That’s OK. The 35 yard teleport needs to be checked for skip issues.
WoD says otherwise. WoD had many flaws, but its reliance on class mechanics being present is well known and was well implemented. Not reading the rest.
I’ve uttered it for 10+ years. Not my fault you haven’t paid attention.
No, I really don’t think you did. Respeccing is fine. Respeccing constantly and losing your sense of identity is a problem.
How does changing talents and your specialisation cause you to lose your sense of identity?
To be honest, you should be able to do them all and once done you should be able to respec into them just like chaging your class spec that way you can choose which would be suitable for the content you’re doing and not be stuck with a covenent you dont like just because its bis for your class/spec.
The specialisation is no longer actually specialisation, and as a result of that you become identical to everyone else in all but name and looks.
Can’t speak for anyone else, but a BIG part of Tahra’s identity is that she’s a Beastmaster hunter. If I’d respec her to Survival, she’s still be Tahra in name, but her whole flavour and fantasy would change.
Respecing has been the same since the games inception.
Covenant choices are fine, as long as the abilities are de-coupled from them.
I like covenants and the idea behind them. Me picking a covenant is a meaningful choice that will shape my experience in the months to come.
That is the definition of meaningful choices in ANY RPG. Not being locked into a talent. Covenant talents are not RPG choice. They are just that, talents that you press, just like Meteor, Bladestorm and the likes. Why should they be locked?
Furthermore, absolutely no one is stopping you from choosing your covenant based on aesthetics and sticking with it. That is still a choice but the OPTION of being able to change them without some gating would still be there.
It doesn’t subtract from your experience one bit, but it does ruin the experience of a large portion of the playerbase who want to optimize their character.
Gating player power behind this is a very, very dumb idea.
Another thing that I am 100% sure will come of this, once it is live is this:
Simulations will determine the best ability for the class. The ones who like to optimize will go for that covenant. This will then ripple to the others, especially in pugs where you won’t get invited to a +10 or +15 because of your covenant choice. It’s literally the case now with Feral druids, Enhancment Shamans and some other specs. “Oh you are mage Venthyr? Get your own group bruh”. Then some of those people will want to swap, so they can get into a group or a guild. They will swap. Balance patch rolls in and destroys the covenant ability or the conduits. Now you have to swap to the other one. But YOU CANT.
Do you see how this affects many players, not just the “super tryhard nerds”?
We are not asking for them to remove covenants. They are awesome idea and I really, really like everything about them. Except player power.
You are just stuck with your choice. You can not even try out others for fun for a week or so, and then go back to your old. Why can i not just go Night fae for the current unknown class ability (was blessing of seasons), and then think that the 5 holy shocks on a minute from kyrian are maybe also cool to try out. And then the doors of shadows from Venthyr. The game just prevents you to have fun.
Stuck for 2 years!
So the same as the game has been since it was created then?
that was the sole request i have been trying to say for the past 2 days on this thread.
the main issue i have is that i dont want to see the night fae or the kyrian be the best covenant for me, because i prefer the themes for the venthyr or necrolords, if they make the kyrian or night fae the best option then they will make me feel compelled to make that choice because i dont want my character power to be affected to heavily by the choice. and that will lead to me not enjoying the expansion as much as i could if they just made this system correctly and made the choice purely aesthetic.
yep…
i think that they will be able to swap, but they will have to give up all of the progress that they have made on the initial covenant they had joined, and will have to start from scratch with the new one, the real issue is when the next balance patch comes out and they make the original one the best again and you have to swap back, because thats where all the main limitations will be.
or having to swap between different covenants in order for your different specs to be better suited to the content, take a demon hunter, if they are playing havoc in raids and vengeance in dungeons, they could very well have completely seperate covenants being “BiS” which means they would have to swap between them all the time, which is being made damn near impossible without having to constantly redo a bunch of quests and unlocks. making the game about a 1000% more work for anyone who cares about character power than anyone else,
why should people get punished for caring about their character power, compared to those who are just looking for RP value, why should the RP value be more important considering how both are and equally important factor in an RPG
not at all, sure you make a choice with your class but thats about it, you have talents but you have always been able to essentially change them on a whim and you have had the option of trying out different things, the only decision you have ever been locked into really is the choice of class.
Exactly. Which is why I’m confused how being able to change these things freely would cause some to lose their sense of identity.
i dont know honestly, my best guess is that they feel as thought the option to change means that some person is going to and force them to change, but even though people have said they are fine picking talents that they like and sticking with them and not changing them, apparently that would be different with the covenant abiities.