Will Blizzard nerf your "meaningful choice"?

[kaminaris]

Probably because you don't pick a hero at the start of a season of Overwatch and then get stuck with it unless you do multiple days of WQs.

Its even worse since you have considerable amount of time investment into specific hero. Only to be disregarded at least till the end of patch or sometimes till end of expansion.

[glszino]

The only current meaningful choice is which legendary I should target for mythic week. Should I target one for 400 ashes or 2 x 200 ashes and then upgrade them. That's meaningful.

The covenant choice is a punishment if you care about performance. You will choose one because it is either good or just doesn't suck compared to the others and Blizzard will make balance changes after heroic/mythic week and you will end up with something shit if you are unlucky.

Blizzard can't event balance talents of a same row for a single spec, there is no way we are going to end up in a situation where choosing a covenant won't matter that much for performance because they are all within 1% of each other.

[razorpax]

Well the rest of the covenant system is not tied to player power and it is mostly for fun. But again, when you say:

"listen i never change talents based on fights and i will probably never swap covenants but fuck the guy that wants to have the game the same as before"

The point is that they want a different game from you. The min maxxers getting boned in the proccess is a consequence, not the goal.

Placing a talent behind a time gate does change the game, because player expectations will be different. It is clear to me that they want this expansion to be about meaningful choice and player agency.

You can argue that WoW never had meaningful choice, and I mostly agree with that. Following that train of thought, it does not make any sense for them to be enforcing something like this now. And that is a fair argument.

I think people that want it to be easy to swap are being a little too apocaliptic about it. I'm sure it will be fine, it does not excuse the system btw, but I do not think it will fundamentally break the game, I think it will just add needless busywork. And one thing that we have to consider is how the players will react to it, E.G.: If the players do not invite unoptimized player to the group, it could potentially be pretty bad. If players do invite them, but rather have someone more optimized (my personal guess) It will not be as much of a big deal and if they don't care, well, then it will be fine.

As for your examples, while I have a problem with the way you portrayed them, I can generally agree and understand where you are coming from.

1. you take away player agency with the power and covenant lock
2. never said the game doesnt have meaningful choices

just make it to where you can swap the powers

you still get the covenants that you have to pledge to and therefore theres still a meaningful choice

the problem is blizzard wants to FORCE 100% of every player to care about it and thats not going to work. Players who are effected by it are voicing their concerns and being yelled down by players who are not effected by it.

already on beta we saw "lfm necrotic wake necrolord please" which confirms blizzard has added another possibility of failure

im not saying everyone is going to be effected by it or that it will destroy the game because if you are in a guild you are fine and if you are top end youll have a way around it which depending on the overall endpoint of covenant swapping and if you can have multiple quests to rejoin then you will just bank the quest turn in.

It will not break the game but that doesnt mean its something that should happen. I honestly think people dont get that the biggest thing ppl are asking for is jsut the abilities to not be tied to the covenant

ion talked like everyone wanted to swap covenants constantly
forums act like people want to swap covenants constantly on every boss

but the reality of this is simple: we want the abilities unlocked and couldnt care less about keeping the covenants locked

ive seen arguments from both sides and the side fighting for the lock to remain say
"you dont see the full picture because legendaries and soulbinds"
but we have them on the beta and....its a bad argument
soulbinds have 1 ability in most trees that at most add X% stat
conduits are 1 per covenant
legendaries arent even connected to the covenant unless you lose the strength of it if you swap covenants

"it doesnt make sense storywise"
it does though because we help eachother all the time through callings and world quests

"I dont like it because it effects MY RP"
ok thats a fine point
however at no point does timmy swapping an ability impede your fantasy

again this entire discussion is pointless because we will see changes in 9.1 and a pointless empty line about hearing feedback after players who think it will be a good change actually see what happens. Also no world first guild is going the extreme of making 4 characters of a single class....its a joke just like the lamp post back in tbc

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The only current meaningful choice is which legendary I should target for mythic week. Should I target one for 400 ashes or 2 x 200 ashes and then upgrade them. That's meaningful.

The covenant choice is a punishment if you care about performance. You will choose one because it is either good or just doesn't suck compared to the others and Blizzard will make balance changes after heroic/mythic week and you will end up with something shit if you are unlucky.

Blizzard can't event balance talents of a same row for a single spec, there is no way we are going to end up in a situation where choosing a covenant won't matter that much for performance because they are all within 1% of each other.

you can only wear 1 leggo
so target your best which in some cases is from the raid

as for the talents just from my testing on my arcane mage
kyrian for straight ST
Necrolord for cleave
NF for never
venthyr for worse than never outside of maybe pvp

its not even a mattter of numbers because they all work fundamentally different
kyrian is a debuff
necrolord is a CD that empowers the main spell for arcane but just filler for the other specs
NF is a melee aoe which reduces your CDs
venthyr is a debuff to cast on casters that does so much damage each time they cast

the CD of each is different


this is the same in pretty much every class

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I disagree. You're making a choice on how you want to play the game and what you want to focus on. You're just fixated on the negative half of the equation. It's like saying "these talents suck because I don't get option B and C when I pick A." Yeah, that's how it works. You pick one option out of a selection at the expense of the others. "Oh lame, I can't shapeshift into a bear because I chose to play a warrior. This game sucks." It's the same kind of logic.

I bet that most players will play what they enjoy, and because they enjoy it they'll play better. Anyone that is absorbed by the theoretical BiS covenant either a) doesn't play well enough for it to make a difference, or b) will min-max anyway and the RP was never a consideration just as it never was in any world first race.

Or do you want the RP AND the DPS? You want talent A, B, AND C? You want to be a warrior than can cast frostbolt? You can't have everything and that makes the game better.

can ppl stop equating this to class choice

the abilities are glorified talents tied to a system that you would only ever choose based on cosmetics and story in every other expansion

its like if you were in the DH starting zone and when you choose who to kill instead of just adding story flavor you got a choice between 1 ST ability and 1 aoe ability

if you keep the gift of nzoth you get a 5% damage bonus in raids but if you cleanse it you get 5% bonus in dungeons

that is essentially what they are doing here and we all saw the backlash from the sylvanas loyalist questline due to one side getting a toy and the other getting nothing

you can give two equally shit players the exact same mage in terms of everything beyond the covenants
no soulbinds just the ability
place them against a patchwerk boss
1 venthyr and the other is any of the other 3
the venthyr will always be worse

[Kaver]

I disagree. You're making a choice on how you want to play the game and what you want to focus on. You're just fixated on the negative half of the equation. It's like saying "these talents suck because I don't get option B and C when I pick A." Yeah, that's how it works. You pick one option out of a selection at the expense of the others. "Oh lame, I can't shapeshift into a bear because I chose to play a warrior. This game sucks." It's the same kind of logic.

I bet that most players will play what they enjoy, and because they enjoy it they'll play better. Anyone that is absorbed by the theoretical BiS covenant either a) doesn't play well enough for it to make a difference, or b) will min-max anyway and the RP was never a consideration just as it never was in any world first race.

Or do you want the RP AND the DPS? You want talent A, B, AND C? You want to be a warrior than can cast frostbolt? You can't have everything and that makes the game better.

What you write here is not true and you clearly don’t get the point in relation to what problem people have with the covenants. Educate yourself

[glszino]

A game must be designed to be fun. If I login and I face a wall of stupid restrictions for "mEanInGfUl ChOicE"... that removes the fun for me, I'll probably want to find something else to do after some time.

The performance abilities linked to covenants are the seasons 7 and 8 of Game of Thrones. That's just too bad, Shadowlands has so much potential.

It is probably too late to have good changes before 9.1 anyway so the people who don't like that will have to suffer from it until then.

[Sluvs]

1. you take away player agency with the power and covenant lock
2. never said the game doesnt have meaningful choices

just make it to where you can swap the powers

you still get the covenants that you have to pledge to and therefore theres still a meaningful choice

the problem is blizzard wants to FORCE 100% of every player to care about it and thats not going to work. Players who are effected by it are voicing their concerns and being yelled down by players who are not effected by it.

already on beta we saw "lfm necrotic wake necrolord please" which confirms blizzard has added another possibility of failure

im not saying everyone is going to be effected by it or that it will destroy the game because if you are in a guild you are fine and if you are top end youll have a way around it which depending on the overall endpoint of covenant swapping and if you can have multiple quests to rejoin then you will just bank the quest turn in.

It will not break the game but that doesnt mean its something that should happen. I honestly think people dont get that the biggest thing ppl are asking for is jsut the abilities to not be tied to the covenant

ion talked like everyone wanted to swap covenants constantly
forums act like people want to swap covenants constantly on every boss

but the reality of this is simple: we want the abilities unlocked and couldnt care less about keeping the covenants locked

ive seen arguments from both sides and the side fighting for the lock to remain say
"you dont see the full picture because legendaries and soulbinds"
but we have them on the beta and....its a bad argument
soulbinds have 1 ability in most trees that at most add X% stat
conduits are 1 per covenant
legendaries arent even connected to the covenant unless you lose the strength of it if you swap covenants

"it doesnt make sense storywise"
it does though because we help eachother all the time through callings and world quests

"I dont like it because it effects MY RP"
ok thats a fine point
however at no point does timmy swapping an ability impede your fantasy

again this entire discussion is pointless because we will see changes in 9.1 and a pointless empty line about hearing feedback after players who think it will be a good change actually see what happens. Also no world first guild is going the extreme of making 4 characters of a single class....its a joke just like the lamp post back in tbc

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you can only wear 1 leggo
so target your best which in some cases is from the raid

as for the talents just from my testing on my arcane mage
kyrian for straight ST
Necrolord for cleave
NF for never
venthyr for worse than never outside of maybe pvp

its not even a mattter of numbers because they all work fundamentally different
kyrian is a debuff
necrolord is a CD that empowers the main spell for arcane but just filler for the other specs
NF is a melee aoe which reduces your CDs
venthyr is a debuff to cast on casters that does so much damage each time they cast

the CD of each is different


this is the same in pretty much every class

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can ppl stop equating this to class choice

the abilities are glorified talents tied to a system that you would only ever choose based on cosmetics and story in every other expansion

its like if you were in the DH starting zone and when you choose who to kill instead of just adding story flavor you got a choice between 1 ST ability and 1 aoe ability

if you keep the gift of nzoth you get a 5% damage bonus in raids but if you cleanse it you get 5% bonus in dungeons

that is essentially what they are doing here and we all saw the backlash from the sylvanas loyalist questline due to one side getting a toy and the other getting nothing

you can give two equally shit players the exact same mage in terms of everything beyond the covenants
no soulbinds just the ability
place them against a patchwerk boss
1 venthyr and the other is any of the other 3
the venthyr will always be worse

1. To be fair, player agency also means dealing with the consequences of your choice.
2. Oh, I know, that is an argument that I am making. The game doesnt have meaningful choice for years now. So it is pretty jarring to enforce it now.

The pool on beta is quite small, so we cannot know how rampant that will be, but yeah, if it becomes the norm, then that is a problem, but it is pretty cool that dungeons have bonus for each covenant too. This flavor is awesome (better than the abilities IMO).

But if it is made to be 100% Swappable, I fully expect people to change on each boss, as it is with talents. Regarding the story, we can only acess chapter 1 of it. For all we know 9.1 is a war between covenants and 9.2 gets a new covenant.

I just REALLY wished we could get a position from blizzard on this. If they are keeping the system as is, make a blue post, if they are not, make a blue post too. This uncertainty is wearing my hype down. I will be fine either way, but just communicate.

[Kyux]

What you write here is not true and you clearly don’t get the point in relation to what problem people have with the covenants. Educate yourself

I have read countless threads on this point. The problem people have with covenants is they believe the abilities will be unbalanced, forcing them to pick one covenant for a BiS ability at the expense of being able to choose one that they prefer for thematic reasons or otherwise. Similarly, they think it's bad that player power is stuck behind such a choice that you can't easily change. I think that's a fair summary? Happy for you to add to it (not being sarcastic here).

My point is that while the abilities will not be perfectly balanced, the difference in ability power will be minimal in comparison with other factors, most importantly, player skill. Playing your class well will more than make up for not picking the BiS covenant. On being locked to a covenant: it's not a big deal because of my previous point and in any event the benefit to RPG, thematics, character identity, and story outweigh that negative. Additionally, conduits etc will smooth out any power imbalances.

Bottom line is it's not that big of a deal for anyone, and for those for whom a small imbalance does matter (eg competitive mythic raiding etc), they always have and will min-max at the expense of story. I'm fine with that.

What about my comment is "not true"? I said that you often pick one option at the expense of others in WoW such as classes and talents, and then I speculated on players playing better. One's a fact that's hard to dispute, one is personal speculation.

[Gaidax]

1. To be fair, player agency also means dealing with the consequences of your choice.
2. Oh, I know, that is an argument that I am making. The game doesnt have meaningful choice for years now. So it is pretty jarring to enforce it now.

The pool on beta is quite small, so we cannot know how rampant that will be, but yeah, if it becomes the norm, then that is a problem, but it is pretty cool that dungeons have bonus for each covenant too. This flavor is awesome (better than the abilities IMO).

But if it is made to be 100% Swappable, I fully expect people to change on each boss, as it is with talents. Regarding the story, we can only acess chapter 1 of it. For all we know 9.1 is a war between covenants and 9.2 gets a new covenant.

I just REALLY wished we could get a position from blizzard on this. If they are keeping the system as is, make a blue post, if they are not, make a blue post too. This uncertainty is wearing my hype down. I will be fine either way, but just communicate.

I'm not sure what's uncertain there.

What you have in beta now is what SL launches with. They are not going to change the system 7 weeks before launch.

There will be a lot of tuning and maybe some Covenant class abilities will get a bit changed, but that's it.

[Sezh]

I have read countless threads on this point. The problem people have with covenants is they believe the abilities will be unbalanced, forcing them to pick one covenant for a BiS ability at the expense of being able to choose one that they prefer for thematic reasons or otherwise. Similarly, they think it's bad that player power is stuck behind such a choice that you can't easily change. I think that's a fair summary? Happy for you to add to it (not being sarcastic here).

My doubts towards the system are threefold

1. By adding player power to the covenants, a person who cares about player power no longer has any meaningful choice to make. The choice is made for me. I would have liked to research the story and lore of the covenants, compared transmog on my different characters and picked based on the covenant I like the most. But I will have to pick whichever covenant performs best. At the end of the day though, I can live with it because it's performance that matters and aesthetic is just a fun bonus.

2. The people who pick their covenant based on aesthetic will never have their choice forcefully made wrong. They won't wake up one day to their transmogs changed, the characters in the covenants removed, the look and feel suddenly turned into something else. The parameters by which they make their choice day 1 will never shift. Mine will. I will wake up one day, every week, every month, who knows how many times, and the choice I made will have been turned into the wrong choice by forces outside of my own control. How much impact this will have is directly related to how difficult Blizz will make it for me to swap back and forth endlessly, so this might never be a big problem.

3. The right choice for my main spec or is not the right choice for my other specs. I will main a holy paladin, and for me, Kyrian so far outperforms all other covenants by quite a bit. But I also enjoy playing ret in dungeons. For ret, the best choice is night fae. Sure I will be able to perform in dungeons with a suboptimal covenant on my ret spec, but it's still annoying.

I'm not panicking about the system, I think it'll be fine. I'm not even sure how to fix the issues I have without causing other issues, but yeah.

[Caerrona]

My doubts towards the system are threefold

1. By adding player power to the covenants, a person who cares about player power no longer has any meaningful choice to make. The choice is made for me. I would have liked to research the story and lore of the covenants, compared transmog on my different characters and picked based on the covenant I like the most. But I will have to pick whichever covenant performs best. At the end of the day though, I can live with it because it's performance that matters and aesthetic is just a fun bonus.

2. The people who pick their covenant based on aesthetic will never have their choice forcefully made wrong. They won't wake up one day to their transmogs changed, the characters in the covenants removed, the look and feel suddenly turned into something else. The parameters by which they make their choice day 1 will never shift. Mine will. I will wake up one day, every week, every month, who knows how many times, and the choice I made will have been turned into the wrong choice by forces outside of my own control. How much impact this will have is directly related to how difficult Blizz will make it for me to swap back and forth endlessly, so this might never be a big problem.

3. The right choice for my main spec or is not the right choice for my other specs. I will main a holy paladin, and for me, Kyrian so far outperforms all other covenants by quite a bit. But I also enjoy playing ret in dungeons. For ret, the best choice is night fae. Sure I will be able to perform in dungeons with a suboptimal covenant on my ret spec, but it's still annoying.

I'm not panicking about the system, I think it'll be fine. I'm not even sure how to fix the issues I have without causing other issues, but yeah.

My suggestion for a decent compromise was to keep the cd on switching back but renown transfers with you.

Like start of xpac farm your raid progress covenant -> progress is over -> swap to m+/pvp (or whatever order you want).

Patch 9.1 is about to hit -> swap back to raid covenant -> repeat.

You don't lose the power from the renown going to 0 but you can't swap every single boss either. It would make it so your not punished for prioritizing what you need. And the mounts/tmog/whatever for lets say kyrian deactivates when you swap to NE and NE activates.

[Veliarne]

I have already chosen the 4 characters i will be playing for SL (to experience all 4 covenants). Everything is based on roleplay, not dps improvement. I will probably main one of them(to be decided) and i guarantee that my guild (we do heroic every raid tier) will be ok with it. I really hope more people/guilds think this way.

[Gaidax]

I really hope more people/guilds think this way.

Well don't confuse what you see here with reality on the ground, vast majority of players are of a similar mindset to you. Only a sliver of high end (or, often, pretend high end as seen in these forums) players are rising a fuss about it.

[Veliarne]

Well don't confuse what you see here with reality on the ground, vast majority of players are of a similar mindset to you. Only a sliver of high end (or, often, pretend high end as seen in these forums) players are rising a fuss about it.

We should reassure them, perhaps they'll understand that it's totally ok to play like this. #itsokaytobecasual

[Echo of Soul]

1. To be fair, player agency also means dealing with the consequences of your choice.

Somehow people seem to ignore that part of the equation. We (the community) were really down Blizzard's throat in early BfA about us not having enough agency and now that they give us exactly that we're down their throat about that too.

Agency isn't about picking only what's good, it's just as important to be missing out on other things to the point that it stings as a consequence of your choice.

[glszino]

I have already chosen the 4 characters i will be playing for SL (to experience all 4 covenants). Everything is based on roleplay, not dps improvement. I will probably main one of them(to be decided) and i guarantee that my guild (we do heroic every raid tier) will be ok with it. I really hope more people/guilds think this way.

The problem will not show in a heroic guild. The covenants problem will show its face in PUG whether it is for heroic raid or M+ (even low key level)

That's for the low/middle difficulty. For hard content like mythic raid and high mythic+, you need to care about performance.

[Sluvs]

I'm not sure what's uncertain there.

What you have in beta now is what SL launches with. They are not going to change the system 7 weeks before launch.

There will be a lot of tuning and maybe some Covenant class abilities will get a bit changed, but that's it.

I think my main issue is with the pulltheripcord movement, it started very recently but gained a LOT of traction. And to me, it feels weird that they have not addressed it in any way shpae or form.

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I have read countless threads on this point. The problem people have with covenants is they believe the abilities will be unbalanced, forcing them to pick one covenant for a BiS ability at the expense of being able to choose one that they prefer for thematic reasons or otherwise. Similarly, they think it's bad that player power is stuck behind such a choice that you can't easily change. I think that's a fair summary? Happy for you to add to it (not being sarcastic here).

My point is that while the abilities will not be perfectly balanced, the difference in ability power will be minimal in comparison with other factors, most importantly, player skill. Playing your class well will more than make up for not picking the BiS covenant. On being locked to a covenant: it's not a big deal because of my previous point and in any event the benefit to RPG, thematics, character identity, and story outweigh that negative. Additionally, conduits etc will smooth out any power imbalances.

Bottom line is it's not that big of a deal for anyone, and for those for whom a small imbalance does matter (eg competitive mythic raiding etc), they always have and will min-max at the expense of story. I'm fine with that.

What about my comment is "not true"? I said that you often pick one option at the expense of others in WoW such as classes and talents, and then I speculated on players playing better. One's a fact that's hard to dispute, one is personal speculation.

I dont know... Night Fae DK ability seems WAY better than abominations limb. While perfect balance is impossible, I feel like some classes do have an option that is heads and shoulders above the others.

[razorpax]

1. To be fair, player agency also means dealing with the consequences of your choice.
2. Oh, I know, that is an argument that I am making. The game doesnt have meaningful choice for years now. So it is pretty jarring to enforce it now.

The pool on beta is quite small, so we cannot know how rampant that will be, but yeah, if it becomes the norm, then that is a problem, but it is pretty cool that dungeons have bonus for each covenant too. This flavor is awesome (better than the abilities IMO).

But if it is made to be 100% Swappable, I fully expect people to change on each boss, as it is with talents. Regarding the story, we can only acess chapter 1 of it. For all we know 9.1 is a war between covenants and 9.2 gets a new covenant.

I just REALLY wished we could get a position from blizzard on this. If they are keeping the system as is, make a blue post, if they are not, make a blue post too. This uncertainty is wearing my hype down. I will be fine either way, but just communicate.

We have started slowly getting choices with consequences since before legion

Sure it’s not something that is equivalent to the covenant system but let’s take a look at the covenant system

I’m an arcane mage
I choose venthyr because I like the aesthetic and cosmetic rewards along with the story more than any other covenant.

This choice means I don’t get the story or cosmetics from the other covenants

That’s where the consequences are. Blizzard doesn’t think that’s enough

So as a venthyr I also have an ability that I can only use on casters and it only does so much damage. Compare that to a debuff on a short CD or a burst CD (I think night fae would work but I’m ignoring it because it sucks even though it works better than the venthyr) this means I will have a dead button in most pve fights.

I pay a gameplay consequence because of a cosmetic guided choice.

The ability being swappable means I’m not punished for it. I get to enjoy my choice without being punished in one part of the game That is unconnected to the other part in every other way.

There are some dungeon and raid bosses that don’t really require the change but let’s say that a raid boss has a really dangerous casting mob and the venthyr ability is super useful and almost mandatory for progression. Why shouldn’t they be able to swap the ability??

[bullseyed]

Why does it have to be everyone?

I care about doing my best in group. And so do a lot of other people.

Because you claimed "no one" is playing a covenant because they like it.

Are you really struggling to read your own claims?

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But I still think the overwhelming majority care about having optimal conditions.

It is easy to look at the class breakdown in raids and m+ to determine your wild claims here are false. If they were true, people wouldn't be playing non-fotm classes and specs.

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The covenant choice restriction makes no sense from a lore perspective

In a world where people get attacked or killed for supporting the "wrong" sports team in some neighborhoods... This is surely the hottest of takes.

Maybe in SL they should have Tyrande just decide to join the Horde. It makes no sense for anyone to be mad.

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So how likely is it that you will make your "meaningful choice" of choosing a covenant with a strong ability and then Blizzard will just nerf that ability 2 weeks later right before the raid is released?

Is it really a "meaningful choice" if Blizzard can just change the baseline of your choice?

We should be able to press a button to change class whenever we want. After all, Blizzard can just nerf your class choice after you level the character.

[Wuusah]

In a world where people get attacked or killed for supporting the "wrong" sports team in some neighborhoods... This is surely the hottest of takes.

Is this supposed to make sense or are you drunk and rambling?

[Hadriker]

So how likely is it that you will make your "meaningful choice" of choosing a covenant with a strong ability and then Blizzard will just nerf that ability 2 weeks later right before the raid is released?

Is it really a "meaningful choice" if Blizzard can just change the baseline of your choice?

Its extremely likely, but so what? we've done this same song and dance with every single system blizzard has ever implemented. The people who care enough will switch to whatever the new FotM covenant is and life will go on.

That last statement is also stupid. Do you not consider your class a meaningful choice simply becasue blizzard could change some numbers at any given time?