"Forced" or "Mandatory" covenants

[Echocho]

There were no builds though. You all took the exact same choices. Everyone was the same and the arguments people are making over mandatory covenants would be hypocritical if they support the old talent trees. Since everyone took the "mandatory" choices.

Yes but you don't have to remake the same mistakes. With how the current talent system is designed I doubt you'd see any cookie cutter builds because there's no "one size fits all" build you can create, you have to make choices.

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Permanent choices don’t work well for mmorpgs. They aren’t single player rpgs

Balancing, nerfs, changes over time etc... make permanent choices in WoW impossible. Why not ask to be permanently locked into your talent choices like you are in single player rpgs? Fact is, wow today is an mmo arpg with more in common with diablo 3 looting wise than wow classic or eq. Permanent covenant choices go against everything modern WoW is about

Well then the task is to make permanent choices work, not to abandon them.

[Lahis]

Yes but you don't have to remake the same mistakes. With how the current talent system is designed I doubt you'd see any cookie cutter builds because there's no "one size fits all" build you can create, you have to make choices.

And you can change talents to fit the current situation you are in. Only an idiot will go into a cleave fight with single target talents.

With covenants, you are locked into that single target spell.

[justandulas]

I mean you can, just play Horde. or Forsaken. :P I kid, I kid.

But seriously yeah. It's like.. rather than make a new game/IP that focused on that e-sport ARPG stuff (or fix Diablo to do it) they decided to put that stuff into WoW and it only superfluously resembles an RPG now. Gone are most of the things that made an RPG and RPG, and they only linger enough to still sort of exist but as a shadow of their former selves (yeah I'm being dramatic). The fact they seem to be catering/focusing on people who all things considered really don't care about the RPG aspect of an RPG is the most telling. They're catering to people who seem like they'd rather be playing an FPS or some sort of game like that with world championships and ELO or whatever that ranking system is called than an RPG with RPG elements.

I think Blizzard has honestly lost the way. I was watching some old Blizzcons from like 2005 and god it's like night and day. Their entire philosophy and everything has shifted and IMHO not for the better

Why do you think I followed sylvanas and garrosh over the other warchiefs? Some of us picked horde to be the villains. I didn’t originally roll zombie evil wizard (ud lock) to eventually become the hero of Azeroth. I’d rather play kel’thuzad than thrall. But I digress

You’re right and part of it is actually due to diablo 3. A lot of the old guard designed legion and left before launch, when Blizz hired jay Wilson and most of the diablo 3 team to design wow and it’s gear. The rest, is history. The game is more diablo 3 than wow classic.

Playing wow classic is a much more pure rpg experience in some ways because everything is so well designed (minus some of the classes and specs). It all fits together neatly.

Retail is bloated with system on top of system on top of system, and they are usually rented power now so the house of cards tumbles down every time it’s removed during a major reset

[Lolites]

...which in turn makes any story/thematic differences of the covenants a moot point since it's all about the bonuses anyway (For tryhards anyway, this casual scrub is choosing Ardenweald for my NE main :P ), so from a different angle it's still a right choice and a wrong one (The difference is still in the air, alpha-test and all, but with Blizzard's balance track record...), still not fun, no matter how you look at it.

eh, thats still true for tryhards, and fuck them game was adapting to them for far too long
well im frost DK so as soon as i saw necrolords set i knew which covenant ill go no matter abilities or other bonuses

[justandulas]

Yes but you don't have to remake the same mistakes. With how the current talent system is designed I doubt you'd see any cookie cutter builds because there's no "one size fits all" build you can create, you have to make choices.

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Well then the task is to make permanent choices work, not to abandon them.

The design team is likely incapable due to lack of old school experience, and current game design philosophy.

Example: we don’t actually gain new abilities or powers anymore the last 4-5 years of wow, we rent them for the expansion and lose them day 1 of the next expansion. If you choose poorly for covenant and get permanently locked into the wrong choice; you may as well take shadowlands off and come back next expac

With permanent power gains, permanent choices can make sense like a single player rpg or old school mmorpg. But when it’s just rent a power for the expac, it makes no sense and is detriment to the rest of the designs of current wow

[Zyky]

as much as they deny you now for not using the "correct" class/spec/talents/corruptions - some extremely high progres s groups and som tryhardds will deny you, vast majority wont give a fuck...

The "vast majority" is already what is dominating the narrative of what's acceptable and not. That's why you barely see any classes/specs that aren't "meta" completing +15s or higher. The vast majority of players are already picky and if you actually believe otherwise you must be deluded.

[Nobleshield]

Let's be honest here the only reason we have this rent-a-power bullshit is because Blizzard doesn't know how to do proper Alternate Advancement levels and they don't want to balance things outside of the current expansion which they would if they added new baseline powers, reworked talent trees etc. And probably not want to deal with the PVP whiners about how X is OP because with Y AA levels they can oneshot them.

[alturic]

I see terms like these being throw around way too much, like you won't get to choose the covenant you like.

This is pure bullshit. You can do whatever the hell you want. It won't cost you a raid spot, you can still do m+ and pugs won't spit on you.

Making permanent choices is a crucial part of the RPG experience. We should have more things like this so we could express ourselves and make our character unique from others of our class.

Anything, always, that has X versus Y will be the proper thing to pick. In a game of numbers, there will always be a proper/better thing to pick over another. I would much rather that than a feature that does nothing but cosmetic things where you *can* pick whatever the hell you want and not have it affect your performance.

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The "vast majority" is already what is dominating the narrative of what's acceptable and not. That's why you barely see any classes/specs that aren't "meta" completing +15s or higher. The vast majority of players are already picky and if you actually believe otherwise you must be deluded.

But what's wrong with that? If you were making a team, would you pick from Player A, Player B, or Player C if Player A was the best, B was mediocre and C was suboptimal.

I personally have more of a problem with people who have the viewpoint of "I pay for my game to play how I want, shut the fuck up" when in a group environment than those that actually value other's time.

[Nobleshield]

Anything, always, that has X versus Y will be the proper thing to pick. In a game of numbers, there will always be a proper/better thing to pick over another. I would much rather that than a feature that does nothing but cosmetic things where you *can* pick whatever the hell you want and not have it affect your performance.

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But what's wrong with that? If you were making a team, would you pick from Player A, Player B, or Player C if Player A was the best, B was mediocre and C was suboptimal.

I personally have more of a problem with people who have the viewpoint of "I pay for my game to play how I want, shut the fuck up" when in a group environment than those that actually value other's time.

I think the problem is how prevalent this "min-max or fuck off" mentality has infested the game (most games). Especially since people seem to have A) Inflated sense of self-worth (i.e. everyone thinks they're a pro and would only be recognized as a pro if everyone they played with didn't suck) and B) An overinflated idea of just what's needed. So if B is enough for content, you don't NEED to pick A but people will because A is "better" so they think A will make things easier

The issue comes when this min-maxing mentality removes people's choice and agency and then tries to sound morally superior while doing it which is almost always what happens. You only ever see this sort of toxic behavior from the min-max crowd, never anyone else, and they are incapable it seems of understanding that you don't need to be 110% all the time to do things, and being 110% doesn't make it always better.

[Jujudrood]

I see terms like these being throw around way too much, like you won't get to choose the covenant you like.

This is pure bullshit. You can do whatever the hell you want. It won't cost you a raid spot, you can still do m+ and pugs won't spit on you.

Making permanent choices is a crucial part of the RPG experience. We should have more things like this so we could express ourselves and make our character unique from others of our class.

For the majority of casual level content, and the majority of the playerbase, you are absolutely right.

The only people who will feel the "forced" covenants are the top tier (Mythic teams, high arena, high M+), which is probably only about 5-10% of the playerbase, but the *real* effect is the "trickle down economics" of it, where you have the elite who put together the information on what each class/spec should choose in terms of Covenant based on the content type.
At the end of the day, there will be a mathematically superior option for Content A that can and most likely will differ from the mathematically correct option for Content B, and that's what the elitists, the tryhards, and the wannabes will push.

You see this level of separation today in classes/specs alone, where if you're not a pally or disc priest, a pug may not want you to heal for them, even in a heroic raid.
It's not because shamans or druids can't handle the content, but it's because they see the top tier do something, so obv it's the *only* answer to them.
Add in covenants, maybe it will become "M+15 <dungeon here>, needs heals, monk only, covenant C only", just another filter on top of the class/spec/role filter that's still there today.

Will this affect every one and every group?
Will the majority of players even notice this inconvenience?
Absolutely not.
It will be the same as it is today, maybe slightly more annoying in some regards (for the elitist/tryhard/wannabe created groups), but for the majority of content, for lower M+, BGs and lower arena, and normal/heroic raiding, people will still do exactly whatever they want and, for the most part, not be ostracized for their choice.
If you want to be a progressive mythic group, then you are stuck with making one more (semi)permanent choice, but hey, at least you can change covenants without rerolling (the only way to change classes), so there's that.

[klogaroth]

For those who are happy with how the system is now, and would just run the same covenant whatever, what do you gain from coupling covenant choice to Shadowlands rental power? If rental power had been implemented as a sort of extra talent system, and covenant choice was seperate, would that bother you? We don't even know if the covenant powers are final, after all we're still in alpha, but some people have already chosen their covenant. For those people, surely it makes no difference whether the powers are coupled to covenant, since they've chosen knowing that the power is subject to change.

I understand not caring if rental powers are tied to covenants if it doesn't affect you. What are the arguments in favour though, and do you think they outweigh the arguments in favour of being able to pick powers as appropriate for the content you're doing? If powers were to be divorced from covenant choice.

If your solution to all this is to end up with 4 powers that do the same thing but come in green, red, blue, and purple, why not just make them all the same to begin with and save a lot of time layering systems on top of each other to cancel themselves out?

[Frolk]

If you choose to participate in high end content you give up the ability to choose fun abilities over min/max ones. A very small portion of the population plays this way, the rest of us like to have fun and don't care that we won't hit Glad.

Ill be patiently waiting for threads like "I didt pick the Venthyr Teleport so i cant do skips in M+so im not getting any invites to high M+ pugs, Blizzard fix this"

[Lolites]

The "vast majority" is already what is dominating the narrative of what's acceptable and not. That's why you barely see any classes/specs that aren't "meta" completing +15s or higher. The vast majority of players are already picky and if you actually believe otherwise you must be deluded.

i dont base it on belief (as seems to be the case for you) but rather reality, i play icecap dk, at the begining of bfa it was considered extremely bad compared to either other classes or unholy, or even breath build, yet i had never issue to find group... so i dont know perhaps im extremely lucky, or, perhaps, most people are not as picky as you think...

thing is, if you dont push absolute peak of content (mythic hall of fame or 20+keys or whatever) you can play whatever you want, and if you do push for that peak you ALWAYS had to pick the best class/spec/talens/profesion etc.

[Popastique]

Ill be patiently waiting for threads like "I didt pick the Venthyr Teleport so i cant do skips in M+so im not getting any invites to high M+ pugs, Blizzard fix this"

And the answer will be: Switch Covenant if you want to pursue that niche content. What's the problem?

[Lolites]

For those who are happy with how the system is now, and would just run the same covenant whatever, what do you gain from coupling covenant choice to Shadowlands rental power? ?

if covenant abilities would be easily swapable like talents you would be definitely required to use on boss the one that is better rather than the one that you like, unlike with them being semi-permanent, nobody will tell you "well this boss needs different covenant ability so go grind it and then we will continue raid" but its sure you would be told to swap abilities if it took two seconds...
and even if you wouldnt be required to do so, you would feel a bit shitty not changing it when its so easy...

[klogaroth]

if covenant abilities would be easily swapable like talents you would be definitely required to use on boss the one that is better rather than the one that you like, unlike with them being semi-permanent, nobody will tell you "well this boss needs different covenant ability so go grind it and then we will continue raid" but its sure you would be told to swap abilities if it took two seconds...
and even if you wouldnt be required to do so, you would feel a bit shitty not changing it when its so easy...

The point of de-coupling them is that you would have them all available, like an extra 4 slot talent row. It'd be like someone saying "please take ring of peace on this fight, it is part of our strat". You pop a tome, or your hearth and get a summon, and you move on. Maybe you prefer black ox statue more, but would you really go as far as to never take ring of peace even when it's useful?

Remember you don't level the covenant abilities themselves, you level soulbinds. Which are currently swappable. The situation of someone asking to swap your soulbind already exists, and if you have issue with it in the hypothetical, you have issue with the system that's currently planned to go live.

[Lolites]

Maybe you prefer black ox statue more, but would you really go as far as to never take ring of peace even when it's useful?

if i dont like that ability or i dont know how to properly play it? definitely, but if its "permanent" i wont be even asked to change it and i can play with the one i like...
obviously i wouldnt be that much of an asshole to pick "wrong" talent and underperform in raid and slow people back IF its easy to swap, and i would sacrifice bit of my fun to support raid performance, but with "permanent" covenant ability i dont have to, raid leader would just have to understand that on some bosses i will perform better and on some worse (which is already a case due to class and spec)...
of course it could lead to problems IF you push for hall of fame or m+20 or any "peak" content, but that shouldnt be concern of 99% players so fuck that, top 1% would spend ridicoulous amount of time on preparation no matter what

as for soulbinds, they seems so far early in development its kind off pointless to speculate about them, but from what ive seen they would be a bit too complex for raid leader to know which is best for who based on talents ans so on, with covenant ability its not so difficult... plus they are mostly passives so changing them wont really impact your gameplay and fun you have

[Lahis]

And the answer will be: Switch Covenant if you want to pursue that niche content. What's the problem?

M+ is not fucking niche content. It is required core part of the game.

[Saltysquidoon]

i dont base it on belief (as seems to be the case for you) but rather reality, i play icecap dk, at the begining of bfa it was considered extremely bad compared to either other classes or unholy, or even breath build, yet i had never issue to find group... so i dont know perhaps im extremely lucky, or, perhaps, most people are not as picky as you think...

thing is, if you dont push absolute peak of content (mythic hall of fame or 20+keys or whatever) you can play whatever you want, and if you do push for that peak you ALWAYS had to pick the best class/spec/talens/profesion etc.

So you never had issues finding groups intentionally playing a bad version of a poorly performing spec but you never had trouble finding groups when you weren't pushing high keys, colour me surprised.

This is all missing the point anyway. There is a difference between taking longer to find a high pug because you prefer to play muti even though combat is better in m+ and not having a teleport so you can't perform skips.
The difference between taking a good fury warrior and a good retribution paladain is seconds or maybe a minute off the timer, the difference between having the teleport and not having the teleport could be minutes. They already had to add an affix to stop shroud being broken does m+ need more optional fuckery?

[Ghostile]

The problem is that when a "Meaningful choice" has an objectively right and a wrong answer, it's not really a choice anymore.

For many people, the choice between "I like the theme and transmog of this covenant" and "This covenant lets me do better in PvE/PvP" is a non-starter, *that* is the issue people are complaining about.

I doubt it will be black and white pvp vs pve, it will most likely be situational.
One is best for single target, one is best for melee aoe, one is best for pvp etc.