No Preach...

[Dreen]

Damn what a successful bait, 7 pages in 1 day

[Essem]

Having a choice is not robbing anyone from anything. Restricting choice is robbing people of choices.

If somebody dont want to change covenant, ability and soulbind because he believe it is lore explained for x character to have it then option which enable changing it does not affect him in any way whatsoever.

The argument boils down into - i dont like chocolate, i love chips, so shops should stop selling chocolate.

Weird argument, its more like. You decided to have chocolate before you entered the store, but you cant decide you want chips instead when ur in the store. The shop never decided to stop selling chocolate.

[Lurker1]

Youre wrong. And here's why. I watched your most recent video, about the covenant "imbalances ". Heres the thing. This is an mmoRPG. A roleplaying game. What makes a great role playing game, is CHOICE. Our character makes an important decision, on which cause to fight for. Which to put their strength behind. And, to paraphrase the immortal Syndrome,"When all choices are the same...they don't matter". Preach, your words: you don't care about the story. You don't care about transmog. Without those things, as said by a Blizzard Game Developer, the game is basically a math equation. That's NOT an RPG. Speaking as someone who has made the Lore my area of expertise-as you have made the mechanics-Choice is important. It is VITAL. You, and those in your camp, want all abilities, all flavor abilities, all the things that make up CHOICE-to be irrelevant. Its like going to a restaurant, and looking at the menu, and no matter what you order, its all the same grey goop. It makes PERFECT sense for the Night Fae to be able to move vines and such in a dungeon. It speaks to lore, to who they are as a people, and is flavor. I am not a Mythic raider. I've raided Mythic, but its not my cup. I love the lore of the game, PASSIONATELY. And Transmog-what I wear, whom I represent-it matters. The powers given, the abilities inferred-it matters that only one covenant has the blink ability, or the spirit animal ability, or even an owl butler-if all covenant had the SAME things, they would be the SAME GREY GOO No, Preach, I wholeheartedly, passionately disagree. This isn't aspersions cast on your knowledge of the game play mechanics. This is a player who has that level of knowledge of the Lore. The Story. Which, you said you do NOT care about. So, to close, yes. Choice matters. Not in the minescule dps increase. But in the fact of it matters WHY WE FIGHT. - PANDAREN EMPEROR

Well said sir or maam!

[bloodwulf]

Not trying to pick a fight, but genuinely curious, how do you as a DM deal with players that accidentally or on purpose come up with hilariously OP builds that do degenerate crap like trivialize most encounters from the word go or worse, solo whole cities and even countries in a matter of seconds? Or have you never encountered one of the truly OP builds in the wild so to speak?

I've always felt the best way to deal with that is a mature conversation out of game. Like, "Dude, your wizard is cool and all, it's nice that you can manipulate time before initiative is rolled, but we gotta dial this back. It's not fun for everyone else when all the mobs die before combat starts."

Those builds are a lot harder to pull off in PF2 and 5E, but my solution is just to throw harder stuff at them, even if that involves tweaking numbers of existing mobs (we have a Screen for a reason, hides our rolls). I dont play to kill players, i play to tell a story with them and for us all to have fun. If my players become minor gods through character crafting and item acquisition, well then they begin to fight gods that are upset with them invading the pantheon.

[ablib]

This creation of this thread solidifies what I've been saying for years. The only reason streamers are popular, is because the type of person that chooses to watch that crap, care what they think, or puts them on pedestals, essentially fails at life.

[TheFirstOnes]

While I agree that a RPG needs choices like covenants, we're talking about a MMOrpg emphasis on the MMO as you can see, in an MMO there will always be a meta which dictates what is the best and everything else as sub par, while not hindering your capability to progress on your own pace in a normal rpg, you're most likely locked out of some content just because of your personal choice in an MMORPG, and i'm not talking about special flavoured lore which lbsh nobody would bat an eye about, but no I mean some M+ keys, certain Raidgroups you name it.

As a purely openworld choice Covenants will be a success, in relation to any meaningful instanced content they're as bad as benthic.

This, basically. Kinda doesn't help that this will force guilds and classes to pick the ones that are BiS for them, rather than the ones they purely like as a whole.

Not to mention Blizzard's weird need for "balancing" shit that doesn't need to be balanced. BiS Covenant pickers are going to get pounded then, if Blizzard decides to "balance" a BIS Covenant, nerfing the shit hard, and therefore pissing off players even more instead, which is something I CANNOT blame them for.

Covenants are by far the 1 thing that seems to be hurting this expansion. Really.

[Skildar]

this is very true. And to people asking for OP to answer preach directly in his video comment, doing this will do next to nothing. Blizzard won't see it as it would get burried whereas starting a thread here will make it visible to blizzard.

I really like the fact that there is a choice. It does mean that balance will not be perfect and that in the end you will probably want to change covenant if you want to have every aspect of your character maxed out to reach highest dps numbers.

Is it a bad thing? As long as its 5% diff then I will not care about it. The people that are interested in finishing mythic raids the first month of its release don't care about reading quest texts and lore (exceptions aside).

And when it comes to the dungeon format (8dungeons doable in MM+, 4 covenants, each covenant award a powerful bonus in 2dungeons) it's clearly awesome! Of course your friends might choose the same covenant and you will hate it, but you will also look for new online friends to play with! What's wrong with that?? oO'

[Aliven]

Weird argument, its more like. You decided to have chocolate before you entered the store, but you cant decide you want chips instead when ur in the store. The shop never decided to stop selling chocolate.

Better then.

You are upset because that rpg let you change classes for a fee. So you petition to cut that feature because you believe paladins (one of the class) should be devoted only for it path.

[Bbrigham]

Damn what a successful bait, 7 pages in 1 day

Not a bait. True feelings, opinions and facts

[Soluna]

Moreso I care not for the what the weak-willed will do. Like you just said, they already expect nonsense, and that'll never stop. So Blizzard isn't helping the issue by catering to them.

First of all, who is more weak willed? Is it the people you described, or people like you who do not see covenant decision as an RPG choice UNLESS IT'S FORCED?

I am sorry but while you are partially correct that people are weak willed to cater to meta strats/comps for a +15 or stuff like that, what do you win by being a hipster who advocates forced choice?

All you get is being a hermit with friends who secretly wish that you would stop performing bad, and picked a covenant that makes sense for the content you play with them, and they would most likely replace you when a new cool person of your class is recruited to the guild, is as friendly as you, but respected other ppl's time and picked the right covenant for the right content to push?

You know what Blizzard isn't helping with? With forced covenants, because the issue is already there, and blizzard is making it worse instead of fixing it. Do you know how you go about problems? You find a solution, and apply it. You don't magnify the problem by adding another unknown factor to the equation and pray it works.

Also, you keep talking about 'fun'. Let me ask you this, I play a Warlock, and I play all 3 specialisations. Affliction, Demonology, and Destruction. I really like all 3 facets of a warlock, therefore I try to learn and enjoy all 3 specialisations for my own personal enjoyment. Now, we go in shadowlands, and I see that Necrolords (let's forget about the numbers for a moment), provide a very fun build for Destro (Fire-focused instead of chaos bolt focused), an Execute build for Affliction. I see that Demonology has 0 fun interactions with Necrolords, and would be much cooler with Bastion, whose ability is the only one that has remotely any real interaction with Demonology. Then I see that Ardenweald has an ability that interacts with drainlife, but only Affliction has any real interactions with drain life, if you pick a certain talent, but that special effect is essentially dead as demo/destro.

So now, for me, who I seek fun as a Demo, Destro and Affli, since I love spicing up things, how do you propose that I get to play whenever I like (and have fun) with the following:

a) I like destruction with fire spec (necrolords)
b) I like execution spec for affliction (necrolords)
c) I like drain life spec for affliction (ardenweald)
d) I do not find any interaction for demo with covenant abilities particularly interesting other than scouring tithe (bastion)

So how am I supposed to have fun in the game? Do you want me to grind to change covenant every single time that I want to play something else? Or do I have to play 3-4 warlocks in order to get the most out of the game, by having to play 3-4 times more than I needed to play in previous expansions to get the same amount of fun? Why is my fun split in slices? Can you answer me that? Without numbers, just fun. This is what you, and many other 'RPG' fans, or people who say 'it's all about having fun', don't understand. Deep down, you don't care about everyone's fun, or RPG. All you care about is being able to pigeonhole yourself into a niche spec that no one would accept you with, and saying 'it's alright to be an arcane mage with a horrible covenant ability because blizzard told me it's okay!'. So basically for you to have a safety net, because you are too weak willed to actually back up your decision and your own, we need to play 1/4rth of the game we used to enjoy.

Try to answer these things Xaxxas.

[msdos]

wait. your argument actually is "pvp has a meaningful choice, you just don't care about it." and then say you don't care if M+ gets a meaningful choice or not? that's nice.

i'm also not saying you can't do x or y with a bad covenant choice, just that people will give you shit for it. heck i even said i would love a meaningful choice to be possible.

"Then you say you don't care" No, I didn't, you made that up. Also M+ has meaningful choices. Tbh, it's raids that are looking short with the Cov abilities. But that wasn't the point of post.

[Orwell7]

You know OP, I missed the times when people didn't was as selfish as you are.

When people didn't want to play a solo game disguised as an MMO, but want to do group content.
And you know what, I am a group-type player. I want to be useful to my group to get to my goals - but you are selfish, because YOU want your goals first, THEN think about the others, if you even think about someone other than yourself.

The game was most fun when someone could easily jump into the game (get what they want, you know), and play with their friends. When there were easy 5-man dungeons to harder ones (ICC 5-mans), when there were easy raids (10-man normal ICC) and harder ones.
But the BARRIER to do group content was a LOT lower - you leveled up your character, and BAM your friends could do a few loot runs for you and then you are set to ENJOY THE GAME.
You don't want that? You want to "suffer" for your "hard earned" achievements? What is wrong with you?

[msdos]

Sounds like someone has no clue of how to actually bring out his specs/abilities potential in a PvE setting. Not all of us are grey loggers like you friend. If you think the Necrolords Warlock ability can be compared to Ardenweald one, then all hope for you is pretty much lost.

"Not all of us are grey loggers" What even is this? Whatever you're accusing me of being I doubt it's accurate. I do everything in the game or at least try.

I haven't looked at Warlock abilities yet, so no, I don't think anything.

You don't need to be presumptuous and start name calling, it isn't necessary.

[AngerFork]

To each their own. I like that you enjoy the game that way. Most of my friends and I are kinda scum in regards to story/quests. We click through as fast as we can just to rush progression. I did enjoy Bwonsamdi, but overall I hated the story of BFA, and most of the lore so far. I really do feel like their writers have amnesia. But I also hated the story in FFXIV, so maybe I'm just a bad example. But knowing the folks I've raided with for over a decade, most folks I've run into are quite similar. Feeding into that locust effect devs complain about.

Agreed on the story of BfA. The writing team really does seem to be willing to put forth big moves without thinking of how the reactions would go afterwards, then sweep those big moves under the rug when the moves don't go the way they want the story to do. Teldrassil was one such example, as was Neptulon (him showing up in Legion was so freaking weird).

I'm kind of with you on the FFXIV story. I've been playing that during this down time and while there are beautiful lands and some good characters, the story feels so ego-centric to me that it's hard for me to get into it. It all seems to focus around how awesome I am and honestly I kinda like just being a unique cog in a machine far greater than myself.

[Doffen]

Disagree with Preach a lot, with this as well. What he wants most of all is another WoD. Raid loggng would be the perfect solution for him and players like that. I just don't want that. There are more to the game, to any game than just performance. It should only matter a little bit. It should not be the go to experience in a game like WoW. Covenants is not only an answer to make impactful choices and see what fits you as a player. Its an answer for giving back that feeling of belonging somewhere, a place where your character can make an impact on the story, the characters story.

Its more important than performance for many. Taking away that choice, as in make all the abilities/soulbinds freely swappable they can just delete Covenants all together. Make all transmogs unlocked at the same time. Those who think its about transmogs and RP only are sorely mistaken. The choice is a defining part or the expansion. Not to mention balancing them would be harder than it is now. Making all the abilities and soulbinds changeable just like that is going to be a balancing mess.

[Luxeley]

You completely ignore the "MMO" part of the genre. MMO means interacting in groups with other players to take on difficult and in some cases competitive content. When you do that, whether in a guild or a pug, you're forced into decisions that optimize your performance. Like it or not, this is the WOW culture. If you engage in both Pve and Pvp or play multiple roles with the same toon, you're CAN NOT possibly optimize your toon. Not to mention, no later than patch 9.1, there will be class "balancing" and the goal posts will be shifted, rinse and repeat for 9.2 and maybe even 9.3.

[Adamas102]

Not trying to pick a fight, but genuinely curious, how do you as a DM deal with players that accidentally or on purpose come up with hilariously OP builds that do degenerate crap like trivialize most encounters from the word go or worse, solo whole cities and even countries in a matter of seconds? Or have you never encountered one of the truly OP builds in the wild so to speak?

I've always felt the best way to deal with that is a mature conversation out of game. Like, "Dude, your wizard is cool and all, it's nice that you can manipulate time before initiative is rolled, but we gotta dial this back. It's not fun for everyone else when all the mobs die before combat starts."

I only have a couple power gamers in my circle of friends, but while they're aware of some combos that would be considered degenerate they haven't attempted to put them to the test themselves. I usually over tune pivotal story encounters anyway so I encourage my friends to be as tactical as possible. IF one of my friends truly decided that beating the game trumped the enjoyment of all our other friends and was using a degenerate combo to achieve that end, then I'd probably find a way to counter it in game. As far as mechanics go, anything a player can do a DM can do better (and I don't just mean "rocks fall, you die" unless that's already a scenario I've set up as a possibility). Fortunately, it has never come to that.

[Bbrigham]

You know OP, I missed the times when people didn't was as selfish as you are.

When people didn't want to play a solo game disguised as an MMO, but want to do group content.
And you know what, I am a group-type player. I want to be useful to my group to get to my goals - but you are selfish, because YOU want your goals first, THEN think about the others, if you even think about someone other than yourself.

The game was most fun when someone could easily jump into the game (get what they want, you know), and play with their friends. When there were easy 5-man dungeons to harder ones (ICC 5-mans), when there were easy raids (10-man normal ICC) and harder ones.
But the BARRIER to do group content was a LOT lower - you leveled up your character, and BAM your friends could do a few loot runs for you and then you are set to ENJOY THE GAME.
You don't want that? You want to "suffer" for your "hard earned" achievements? What is wrong with you?

I...er...wow. i haven't had my morality questioned so hard since the Karen in Sunday School.

- - - Updated - - -

You completely ignore the "MMO" part of the genre. MMO means interacting in groups with other players to take on difficult and in some cases competitive content. When you do that, whether in a guild or a pug, you're forced into decisions that optimize your performance. Like it or not, this is the WOW culture. If you engage in both Pve and Pvp or play multiple roles with the same toon, you're CAN NOT possibly optimize your toon. Not to mention, no later than patch 9.1, there will be class "balancing" and the goal posts will be shifted, rinse and repeat for 9.2 and maybe even 9.3.

And thats fine. I approve that. But I love story. And taking my story choices away, is not ok

[SecretAgent]

People crying over Covenants is dumb because they've been exposed. If you PVP, your meaningful Covenant choice is there. Basically what people are suggesting (being able to switch around) completely removes that PVP choice from PVPers.

You gotta think about it. PVErs don't think the Covenant choices are meaningful because they can't actually do anything with them, they can't make big plays. All they can do is go into a raid or dungeon and hope they look good on the meter or at most hope they're fun to use inside the confines of their spec.

This is dumb and bad
You are basically saying "choose what you need to be good at, PvP/raids/mythic+ ? "

What if i play all of them and dont want to be bad at any?

Now you say "you can still complete them lul 1% dmg wint make a difference"

But we all know its not gonna be 1% . Most likely 20%+

People only take the best classes for mythic+ those who can do it best... not those who "can"

[msdos]

From a PVP standpoint, if they make them swappable, then that completely kills any choice for me. I simply pick the best ability for M+, then switch when I need to. Then the entire game becomes, "well you should be switching because you can and we, the players are also doing it and we expect you to do it too".

I can't wait for that to end and I hope Covenants end it.