9.0 General Discussion

[FlubberPuddy]

You can change this talents though they are just a grind. Its like saying can you spec between fire AND frost as a mage!

Switching for different content is proactive and engaged. Randomly picking something and then going "whatever" is passive and bland...

What are you even saying? You're not even answering the question I posed to you. Just going off on another tangent doesn't mean you've defeated an argument.

"Switching for diff covenant is proactive and engaged" no it's not.. switching talents to fit a specific fight isn't engaging at all unless you're defining "engaging" as "I push buttons". Then someone can keep casting Arcane Intellect over and over and that must be the most engaging gameplay right?

And again, don't know how many times I gotta bring this up but Covenants have more attached to them than the covenant active ability.

What are you going to do if they do make covenant abilities switchable but then the Soulbind that synergies best with your chosen ability is in another Covenant? Are you gonna say 'let players pick which Soulbinds they want too!!!' then? What about specific legendaries that require specific covenants?

Are you going to start asking for all those to be choose-able/switch-able at whim too? Then picking a Covenant literally does not matter which is the opposite of their goal in the first place.

[FlubberPuddy]

That would have been far too drastic a change to suddenly spring back on players, something like that you would need to ease players back into. Said something being what covenants essentially are. Variety in combat dressed up in an all-encompassing choice that changes how you approach the game and cannot be easily changed.

Pretty much. Same thing with them reducing loot and also making it so that items don't RNG more than whether they drop or not. All the changes are easing players to move away from some of the design decisions that ended up not having worked out.

Also I doubt there's very many people playing that don't enjoy the current talent system. I think people just miss talent trees because it had lots of passives on top of an active ability, aka you felt your character growing. Not simply using whatever rental powers came between expansions only to have them go away or give up something else in exchange for them (putting them into talents). Characters currently don't grow past lv 100.

[Sondrelk]

Pretty much. Same thing with them reducing loot and also making it so that items don't RNG more than whether they drop or not. All the changes are easing players to move away from some of the design decisions that ended up not having worked out.

Also I doubt there's very many people playing that don't enjoy the current talent system. I think people just miss talent trees because it had lots of passives on top of an active ability, aka you felt your character growing. Not simply using whatever rental powers came between expansions only to have them go away or give up something else in exchange for them (putting them into talents).

The talent trees was very much an archaic system after Vanilla honestly, it worked great when the player was supposed to spend most of their time on levelling, for which getting a tiny upgrade each level that slowly worked you towards the big upgrades works wonders, it just doest work that well when you play a game where the majority of the content assumes you already have everything unlocked.

Speaking of, hopefully Shadowlands adds a talent tree back in for levelling. Not one with choices at endgame, but instead one with open-world buffs that allows players to approach the levelling in different ways. Like getting movement speed after handing in quests, or faster hearthing. Things like that.

[Vyomesh2]

For all the systems that had problems, it was. That's the main reason Blizzard included these things so early in Alpha this time, so they can get enough time to rework them if needed. I strongly disagree with your opinion that they do, though. People have been complaining about lacking RPG aspects for years, now the stop-having-fun-guys come out of the woodworks. This is a game, not a spreadsheet.

I'm all for having fun. You should see some of my ridiculous mogs.
I just don't think that a choice like this should impact gameplay to such a strong level. Just looking at the class I currently play, then Revendreth seems BiS for me(Havoc DH) Now, I like them the best. So for me it's actually fine. Hell, if it stays as is the Revendreth ability might even be good for both Havoc/Vengeance. I am just arguing for the principle of it. Take a class like Druid for example. There's going to be a Covenant ability that will make Feral actually good(No disrespect to you kitties out there :P ) But then for Boomkin a whole other covenant is BiS. This flies entirely in the face of the flexibility of the class. There are druid players out there who Main Resto in M+ and then go Feral in raids. With a system like this they can't really do that. I mean they can, but they are going to be heavily crippled in one area.
Because that's how WoW, and more importantly, the community of WoW works.

Now, this is just an example, but let's say that Kyrian is amazing for Resto but garbage for Feral. Even if this only makes for 2% less DPS for Ferals, the community perception is going to be "LMAO KYRIAN FERAL XD" And this might not affect the people who are in steady guilds. But those in the PuG world are going to be heavily gimped if they choose the "wrong" covenant. Not because of the spreadsheets, but because they either need to grind in some way to gain the "right" covenant or just accept their fate and main Resto if they want to joing PuGs.

This shouldn't be a thing.

Now, I am going to say to agree to disagree here, with you and anyone else who disagrees with me. We're never going to agree.
So I am going to drop the Covenant subject and go back to being hyped because almost everything else about Shadowlands looks fucking amazing to me.
(Like THorgast. Holy crap I can see myself dump an ungodly amount of time in there with my army of alts.)

[Sondrelk]

I'm all for having fun. You should see some of my ridiculous mogs.
I just don't think that a choice like this should impact gameplay to such a strong level. Just looking at the class I currently play, then Revendreth seems BiS for me(Havoc DH) Now, I like them the best. So for me it's actually fine. Hell, if it stays as is the Revendreth ability might even be good for both Havoc/Vengeance. I am just arguing for the principle of it. Take a class like Druid for example. There's going to be a Covenant ability that will make Feral actually good(No disrespect to you kitties out there :P ) But then for Boomkin a whole other covenant is BiS. This flies entirely in the face of the flexibility of the class. There are druid players out there who Main Resto in M+ and then go Feral in raids. With a system like this they can't really do that. I mean they can, but they are going to be heavily crippled in one area.
Because that's how WoW, and more importantly, the community of WoW works.

Now, this is just an example, but let's say that Kyrian is amazing for Resto but garbage for Feral. Even if this only makes for 2% less DPS for Ferals, the community perception is going to be "LMAO KYRIAN FERAL XD" And this might not affect the people who are in steady guilds. But those in the PuG world are going to be heavily gimped if they choose the "wrong" covenant. Not because of the spreadsheets, but because they either need to grind in some way to gain the "right" covenant or just accept their fate and main Resto if they want to joing PuGs.

This shouldn't be a thing.

Now, I am going to say to agree to disagree here, with you and anyone else who disagrees with me. We're never going to agree.
So I am going to drop the Covenant subject and go back to being hyped because almost everything else about Shadowlands looks fucking amazing to me.
(Like THorgast. Holy crap I can see myself dump an ungodly amount of time in there with my army of alts.)

Much of this problems stems from the specs and talents being extremely easy to change though. An elitist has a point when asking why a Feral chooses a terrible talent when a different one is plainly better with no drawbacks, not so much when that choice is locked behind a significant grind, and that goes without even mentioning that players have a good reason to stick with a covenant they like considering they are going to spend a lot of time looking at the aesthetic.

[protip]

I'm all for having fun. You should see some of my ridiculous mogs.
I just don't think that a choice like this should impact gameplay to such a strong level. Just looking at the class I currently play, then Revendreth seems BiS for me(Havoc DH) Now, I like them the best. So for me it's actually fine. Hell, if it stays as is the Revendreth ability might even be good for both Havoc/Vengeance. I am just arguing for the principle of it. Take a class like Druid for example. There's going to be a Covenant ability that will make Feral actually good(No disrespect to you kitties out there :P ) But then for Boomkin a whole other covenant is BiS. This flies entirely in the face of the flexibility of the class. There are druid players out there who Main Resto in M+ and then go Feral in raids. With a system like this they can't really do that. I mean they can, but they are going to be heavily crippled in one area.
Because that's how WoW, and more importantly, the community of WoW works.

Now, this is just an example, but let's say that Kyrian is amazing for Resto but garbage for Feral. Even if this only makes for 2% less DPS for Ferals, the community perception is going to be "LMAO KYRIAN FERAL XD" And this might not affect the people who are in steady guilds. But those in the PuG world are going to be heavily gimped if they choose the "wrong" covenant. Not because of the spreadsheets, but because they either need to grind in some way to gain the "right" covenant or just accept their fate and main Resto if they want to joing PuGs.

This shouldn't be a thing.

Now, I am going to say to agree to disagree here, with you and anyone else who disagrees with me. We're never going to agree.
So I am going to drop the Covenant subject and go back to being hyped because almost everything else about Shadowlands looks fucking amazing to me.
(Like THorgast. Holy crap I can see myself dump an ungodly amount of time in there with my army of alts.)

People aren’t going to see your covenant when you join a group, so you’ll have a chance to prove yourself before you get kicked. Gear, skill, and just not dying will be far more impactful than 1-2% throughput from choosing the “wrong” covenant. The only times people will get kicked truly for their covenant choice is when people go out of their way to ignore all of the other factors that have greater influence. Like am I really going to take a night fae Druid over a kyrian with ahead of the curve for my normal run just because night fae is slightly better dps? Of course not. This idea that people will be kicked from groups isn’t entirely false, but it’s definitely exaggerated.

[huth]

I just don't think that a choice like this should impact gameplay to such a strong level.

But then it's not an important choice anymore. Those two things are directly linked. You are asking for any impact your choices have to be removed.

[FlubberPuddy]

Someone enjoying something has nothing to do with good game design, especially in an mmo
like pretty sure people were enjoying getting free gold in WoD and Legion, doesn't mean it was good

I could argue it does. People who play Classic with janky ass balance and very easy difficulty raids doesn't mean it's bad game design that all those people are enjoying. They just like that despite what could be considered 'flaws'.

The main thing here is like what Sondrelk was saying. The talent tree of old made sense when leveling was a much bigger component of the game. Now that most of the game's components happen at end-game, which Blizzard even emphasizes by cutting levels and making the leveling take not very long at all, that old style of talent tree doesn't make a lot of sense. Which is why it's put into end-game systems like Artifact weapons, Azerite Traits, and Covenants.

Now I don't play nowhere near all of the specs but the phrase "Dead talent row" where the obvious one is clear for all situation is multiple times present in multiple specs and reached its hight this expansion

So the problem is not just people miss something "old good new bad" its like they replace it with a system that has less feel of power growth (which pretty much everyone admits) and didn't solve the "you have no real choices" issue, which was the entire reason for the talent system redesign
Like I have open my arms warriors talent tree right now and it the right choices are as nuanced as danuser boner for sylvanas

Talents in the current design tho are a lot more powerful. There may still be a 'cookie-cutter' that one can follow if trying to eke out max performance and the 'dead talent rows' are because Blizzard still needs to better balance the niche use picks over those that are general use.

Like for instance the Paladin row where it's Fist of Justice vs Repentence vs Blinding Light. Someone in another thread showed something like FoJ is picked 65% of the time over the other two. Rep and BL have niche uses so they're picked less over FoJ. That doesn't mean those are 'dead talents' tho, it's just more often than not there's not much of a reason to hard cc mobs so Rep uses a lot of use out of it and the amount of aoe burst available in the game means one should almost never use BL unless they're pushing uber high 24+ m+ keys. A point where the game doesn't even give much reward because it's not catering to that sliver of min-max play.

I think people that consider "dead talent row" is when there's an obvious choice one picks, like using Ret Paladin again. Almost virtually everyone picks Wake of Ashes over Consecration or that Judgement ability. That in effect causes a dead row because WoA is so core than it doesn't fit as a talent. Which is why in Shadowlands WoA is becoming baseline.

Talents today have a different intent, they're meant to open up different gameplay styles not necessarily 'feel power growth' which was the intent of the old trees. It's just that people haven't changed their mindset or realized that Blizzard changed their mindset.

"Talent tree" with the idea of power growth has now moved to expansion end-game systems, which is effectively what Soulbinds are. Talents themselves now are for changing your moment to moment gameplay (AoE or Burst or Sustained or CC or Survival/Defensive? etc).

[Loreguy126]

I mean you don't know what a casual and a hardcore is to start with your nonsense. A six hour a week casual can fully clear mythic and if he adds a extra few hours to that he can also be a glad. Now he cant be the second cause of your rp desires.

A terrible hardcore player can play sixty hours a week and still be 1400 or lfr tier,

#1 - I don’t know a casual player who can clear mythic in a few hours, if thats casual you should rethink lots of things.

#2- Someone who raids mythic can still do PVP, always can always will be as long as there are the two in place. I doubt the new covenant system is changing that.

#3- because I run LFR I’m “casual” ? Lmao okay... Maybe mythic just isn’t worth doing anymore at where I am in life. Heroic & LFR is fine for me

You sound like a whiny baby who thinks Santa didn’t get them what they wanted this year, then comes Christmas and presents and you got it all.

[FlubberPuddy]

Much of this problems stems from the specs and talents being extremely easy to change though. An elitist has a point when asking why a Feral chooses a terrible talent when a different one is plainly better with no drawbacks, not so much when that choice is locked behind a significant grind, and that goes without even mentioning that players have a good reason to stick with a covenant they like considering they are going to spend a lot of time looking at the aesthetic.

This. You don't often at all see at large the community asking everyone to have specific corruptions and essences and shit because by far it's up to RNG or doing specific content that most may not ever care to do.

[Loreguy126]

#1 - I don’t know a casual player who can clear mythic in a few hours, if thats casual you should rethink lots of things.

#2- Someone who raids mythic can still do PVP, always can always will be as long as there are the two in place. I doubt the new covenant system is changing that.

#3- because I run LFR I’m “casual” ? Lmao okay... Maybe mythic just isn’t worth doing anymore at where I am in life. Heroic & LFR is fine for me

You sound like a whiny baby who thinks Santa didn’t get them what they wanted this year, then comes Christmas and presents and you got it all.

PS-

When are more Alpha invs going out?

[Sondrelk]

PS-

When are more Alpha invs going out?

After the latest Gifdwarf earthquake subsides.

[Laughingjack]

or alternatively it is a final regression on the most egregious change since Vanilla, that of spec vaariety. Similar to Flying that problem reached its apex in MoP (or Cata flr flying) and every expansion since has attempted to remedy teh wrong they commited, Blizzard makign this choice could finally pull players out of the idea that they should always play only what is optimal, instead of playing what is fun.

This is something that should be obvious to anyone, but players are a stubborn bunch, and unless you make them realize the problems they are having they won't change. So making the players have to choose between important abilities while at the same time having to weigh that choice against what covenant they enjoy personally might be that important wake-up call.


And elitists will be annoying and elitist no matter what, which is why you should make it difficult to change the covenant, that way the elitists lose their ammunition. In the same way that the only way to make players realize how bad flying had gotten was for WoD to start reimplementing creative ways to let players explore the zones, like making Aviana's feather pseudo-flight a massive reward, and having Nagrand allow mounted combat.
Sometimes players need a reminder what games can actually be when you move away from catering to those who want the game to be over as quickly as possible.

I never really understand when people bring up "fun" as a point in their argument. I don't find bosses that require X amount of immunities to kill more fun because some people can't change spec to make the fight doable.

It feels like you honestly don't play wow with the reasoning your employing... players don't change specs or talents often because they are marginally better. They change because they are massively better for the specific encounter.

Your wake up call as you call it is simply the desire for things to be " LOL rAnDOm" and honestly I wish that kind of design would fuck right off.

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What are you even saying? You're not even answering the question I posed to you. Just going off on another tangent doesn't mean you've defeated an argument.

"Switching for diff covenant is proactive and engaged" no it's not.. switching talents to fit a specific fight isn't engaging at all unless you're defining "engaging" as "I push buttons". Then someone can keep casting Arcane Intellect over and over and that must be the most engaging gameplay right?

And again, don't know how many times I gotta bring this up but Covenants have more attached to them than the covenant active ability.

What are you going to do if they do make covenant abilities switchable but then the Soulbind that synergies best with your chosen ability is in another Covenant? Are you gonna say 'let players pick which Soulbinds they want too!!!' then? What about specific legendaries that require specific covenants?

Are you going to start asking for all those to be choose-able/switch-able at whim too? Then picking a Covenant literally does not matter which is the opposite of their goal in the first place.

I mean... yes in a video game I define engaging as pushing buttons and engaging in the content not some weird cutscene rp where I pick a line like some cheap choose your own adventure book...

As for your soulbind nonsense yes RP man I am going to keep pushing that players be allowed to make compelling game play choices over your boring RP without the need for excessive grinds to do so.

[Sondrelk]

I never really understand when people bring up "fun" as a point in their argument. I don't find bosses that require X amount of immunities to kill more fun because some people can't change spec to make the fight doable.

It feels like you honestly don't play wow with the reasoning your employing... players don't change specs or talents often because they are marginally better. They change because they are massively better for the specific encounter.

Your wake up call as you call it is simply the desire for things to be " LOL rAnDOm" and honestly I wish that kind of design would fuck right off.

Bosses are designed that way because that is what is required for difficulty after all the classes become increasingly homogenized.

Besides, what can be considered "fun" is quite subjective. But in my experience people tend to have the most fun when they are able to work around the established rules of the game, and not when they are given all the options right in front of them and the optimal choice is always readily available.
This is why for instance it is more fun and rewarding to get to the top of Mount Mugamba in Zuldazar and finding the dragon skeleton and then gliding down as opposed to flying up there, seeing it, and then flying back down.

If covenants were freely interchangeable then the nuclear option is always available. There would be no need for players to feel clever by figuring out creative ways to use their power, or even feeling accomplished when the AoE ability they have is amazing for a boss the guild is struggling on.

[Laughingjack]

#1 - I don’t know a casual player who can clear mythic in a few hours, if thats casual you should rethink lots of things.

#2- Someone who raids mythic can still do PVP, always can always will be as long as there are the two in place. I doubt the new covenant system is changing that.

#3- because I run LFR I’m “casual” ? Lmao okay... Maybe mythic just isn’t worth doing anymore at where I am in life. Heroic & LFR is fine for me

You sound like a whiny baby who thinks Santa didn’t get them what they wanted this year, then comes Christmas and presents and you got it all.

1) I mean you know me. I take about four hours to do it.

2) They can not do so at a high level effectively without swapping around talents and essences its my entire argument that customization and flexibility is a good thing.

3) Your a casual based on how much you play. If you are doing 20 hours a week of something in this game your pretty damn hardcore.

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Bosses are designed that way because that is what is required for difficulty after all the classes become increasingly homogenized.

Besides, what can be considered "fun" is quite subjective. But in my experience people tend to have the most fun when they are able to work around the established rules of the game, and not when they are given all the options right in front of them and the optimal choice is always readily available.
This is why for instance it is more fun and rewarding to get to the top of Mount Mugamba in Zuldazar and finding the dragon skeleton and then gliding down as opposed to flying up there, seeing it, and then flying back down.

If covenants were freely interchangeable then the nuclear option is always available. There would be no need for players to feel clever by figuring out creative ways to use their power, or even feeling accomplished when the AoE ability they have is amazing for a boss the guild is struggling on.

Can you name any of these people...?

This sounds like a bad fanfiction of a what a game is. I haven't heard of anyone going around and climbing in game objects for the fun of it. I imagine with how large the player base is there must be someone but I doubt you get to triple digits with that.

[Sondrelk]

1) I mean you know me. I take about four hours to do it.

2) They can not do so at a high level effectively without swapping around talents and essences its my entire argument that customization and flexibility is a good thing.

3) Your a casual based on how much you play. If you are doing 20 hours a week of something in this game your pretty damn hardcore.

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Can you name any of these people...?

This sounds like a bad fanfiction of a what a game is. I haven't heard of anyone going around and climbing in game objects for the fun of it. I imagine with how large the player base is there must be someone but I doubt you get to triple digits with that.

I had loads of fun attempting to get on top of the Violet Citadel in Legion Dalaran before flying became available by attempting to use all the tools at my disposal. It was challenging, but the satisfaction of doing it was infinitely more fun than being able to fly somewhere easily.

There are entire subsections of the game dedicated ot getting into places that are blocked off, like the area behind the Ghostlands portal, or back in Vanilla when people tried getting into Hyjal.

If you simply gave these players the ability to teleport behind the invisible walls and see behind it with no difficulty then the fun gained would be severely diminished.

[Laughingjack]

I had loads of fun attempting to get on top of the Violet Citadel in Legion Dalaran before flying became available by attempting to use all the tools at my disposal. It was challenging, but the satisfaction of doing it was infinitely more fun than being able to fly somewhere easily.

There are entire subsections of the game dedicated ot getting into places that are blocked off, like the area behind the Ghostlands portal, or back in Vanilla when people tried getting into Hyjal.

If you simply gave these players the ability to teleport behind the invisible walls and see behind it with no difficulty then the fun gained would be severely diminished.

Alright..that's super? Stop fucking with my talents at end game.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I haven't heard of anyone going around and climbing in game objects for the fun of it.

Umm that was like a big thing in vanilla people trying to get to places they want to. I dunno what you are smoking.

[Zero Wing]

its my entire argument that customization and flexibility is a good thing.

I agree with you that customization is good, but I disagree with you that the amount of flexibility you desire is ultimately a good thing. You say that there's no difference in making choices that are difficult to reverse because people are going to put in whatever effort is necessary to reverse them, but that's a difference. Making choices stickier without making it an absolute impossibility to reverse them is different than being able to make changes on the fly. And let's remember that we're not talking about all systems, here. Blizzard is not mooting the idea of making talent choices expensive and time consuming again, for example. So we'll have some choices that are sticky and others that are not.

[FlubberPuddy]

I mean... yes in a video game I define engaging as pushing buttons and engaging in the content not some weird cutscene rp where I pick a line like some cheap choose your own adventure book...

As for your soulbind nonsense yes RP man I am going to keep pushing that players be allowed to make compelling game play choices over your boring RP without the need for excessive grinds to do so.

Except RP in this game carries gameplay elements. Such as picking your class and race. It's always been there. You're just whining now that it's also at end-game instead of right at the beginning of character creation.

Here's what you can do if you're so concerned about about using the best ability: Wait for the theorycrafters to evaluate what's good where and pick it like all other cookie cutter peeps. You don't have to concern yourself with that as we'll know before the game is live.

And keep pushing that, you're just gonna be disappointed. WoW has never been about balance and competitive balance akin to e-sports levels, nor has it been about the very marginal minority. Even back in Vanilla they balanced classes based on how many feedback they were getting from players, and the classes that had more people talking got the most changes. It was a case of "what can we do to appease the majority" back then and it's always been that case going forward.

My question is if literal world first people are defending covenant abilities staying as stuck choices, what's your defense? These are world first people who are fine with it.