"Does it matter to you casuals if we hardcores get fluid covenants?" Yes, here's why.

[T-34]

Did you just try to claim that locked in Covenants will somehow hide that you're a bad player from other players? That it will somehow allow you to "get in to more groups"?

This system isn't going to magically make you a good player.


I can't believe what I just read. Baffling.

But you must admit that his post is better than the usual posts where players like him cry about "gate-keeping", "being excluded", "toxic elitists", "ban Raider.io" etc.
I have answered him that no matter what system Blizzard implements to obfuscate our ability to discern bad from good players then the good players will "break" that system and find a way to evaluate player skill/experience.
It baffles my mind the energy and time bad players spend on trying to trick and game the system in order to get carried. If they just spent a fraction of that energy and time on bettering themselves then they wouldn't be bad.
But it will never happen because when a good player thinks "how can I get better?", a bad player is thinking "I am good and the reason people won't play with me is because they are mean".

[KrayZ33]

see i asked why you think its meaningful. you didnt answer that apart from is different compared to 2 clicks.
but in what way?
immersion? certainly not cause its a TIME GATE based on number of RESETS
effort? time gating and world questing is not effort its time killing which has become the norm. Its also immersion killing.
Blizzard design purpose? Nope because we all know people wont stop asking for resto druid in 15 just cause covenants
Pyschologically filling because you cant swap on the fly? nope because since when is being restricted for the sake of being restricted fullfilling? never in any kind of psychological experiment.

Do you know what has been proven in one though? when you give people shit deals they tend to try and rationalise them out of defense of feeling a variety of negative emotions. This surreal situation matches the experiment perfectly.

?
I answered your question perfectly fine.
I already did so multiple times even before that. You just don't seem to accept the reason.
Really, I don't want to bother with you anymore when you are that dense... So how about we just...ignore each other?

I mean, you basically write incoherent nonsense in my eyes. So it's hard for me to follow anyway. I'm not talking about grammar or anything like that (my grammar is horrible too)
You seem to fly from one topic/train of thought to the next in an instant.

Like

Blizzard design purpose? Nope because we all know people wont stop asking for resto druid in 15 just cause covenants

where does that even come from? At no point in time has it been mentioned that they are trying to balance classes by limiting their covenant choice. Ever. I don't even know the mental split you have to do to even think about it. Where is the connection to that?

Like

Pyschologically filling because you cant swap on the fly? nope because since when is being restricted for the sake of being restricted fullfilling? never in any kind of psychological experiment.

Psychologically filling? Do you mean - like...what?
Do you mean that it doesn't change anything if you can or can't swap on the fly? It doesn't do anything to you when you can't swap it out just like that? Are you making the same decisions if you could? Huh?

What even makes you think it's restricted for the sake of being restricted, did you even read the interview? That's just your biased opinion.
So what are you trying to tell me? That my biased opinion is wrong because it's different?

Seriously... what's wrong?

What is that talk about shit deals even about? I'm currently not playing WoW in BFA, I stopped after the first raid because I didn't like how Hunters played out. BM is really boring for me and MM is a strict downgrade from it's Legion counterpart, which I've loved to play as.

I'm getting a deal that I like, so it's not a shit deal I have to downplay.
It has been clear since day one that covenants aren't changeable just like that since they have been introduced. That's what got me interested. So I'm not defending from a position of "it's not so bad, I don't care either way". I'm defending that postion because I actually back it and it's what I want.
That much should've been obvious since forever by now.


You don't get anything out of it, I get that.
You don't understand however, that some people do - I don't know how many (I don't care either, because it doesn't change my view on this), but it certainly isn't a case of 1 in a million as I can see clearly from these threads that have been created.
I explained to you how and what exactly feels different from doing a quest do redeem yourself is different from just swapping talents around.
I already explained that I'd like to see both version. Swappable talents, but fixed Covenants. Some things to use for the situation at hand, some to dedicate your character further into the direction you want...

[razorpax]

So... what now?
Is it somehow adressing what I said in the quote?
I'm not even saying that player power has been connected to decision in the past or anything. It's certainly something I'd like to see... but.. you are making arguments for points I didn't take there.

Aside from that, paying gold for swapping out talents, visiting a trainer to do so, did at least make sense.
Not saying it was the best way to handle it, it certainly was better than what we have now though in my opinion.

You said the talent system we have now hasn’t been in since day 1 So I pointed out it has for 8 years
Then they removed aspects of the game that achieved the goal they say they want to achieve from this covenant system

Allowing swapping of abilities isn’t getting everything because you still have to choose between them

It’s another row of talents locked behind a BS system that will change in a couple months. Me taking the venthyr ability while in the kyrian covenant doesn’t mean I’m not a kyrian because I still have the soulbind and the cosmetics.

The same ppl saying they want things to matter seem to only care about an ability and if that’s what decides the covenants worth it’s a failure

[DemonDays]

But you must admit that his post is better than the usual posts where players like him cry about "gate-keeping", "being excluded", "toxic elitists", "ban Raider.io" etc.
I have answered him that no matter what system Blizzard implements to obfuscate our ability to discern bad from good players then the good players will "break" that system and find a way to evaluate player skill/experience.
It baffles my mind the energy and time bad players spend on trying to trick and game the system in order to get carried. If they just spent a fraction of that energy and time on bettering themselves then they wouldn't be bad.
But it will never happen because when a good player thinks "how can I get better?", a bad player is thinking "I am good and the reason people won't play with me is because they are mean".

That's what I'm saying. This guy just wrote hundreds of words justifying why this system benefits him as a bad player.

I guarantee he was also a fan of Titanforging because it grossly inflated his iLevel from doing LFR and WQs.

The time spent writing this post could have been spent..... Getting good?

[goldlock]

That's what I'm saying. This guy just wrote hundreds of words justifying why this system benefits him as a bad player.

I guarantee he was also a fan of Titanforging because it grossly inflated his iLevel from doing LFR and WQs.

The time spent writing this post could have been spent..... Getting good?

That isn't how this works...

I wish it was. I find it easier to think of them as a unending horde of mindless undead tearing and ripping apart any content they touch. Not because they enjoy it but because they are compelled to destroy anything interesting or slightly challenging. The history of the game has been a slow retreat from this type of player as they have consumed tiered difficulty, heroic dungeon, and more.

Each time they take a new content and befoul it they immediately lose all interest in it and begin besieging the next. They will not change for they can not. Simply bar the gates and man the walls.

[Tortuga234]

I think the dungeon covenant buffs are a genius move that kind of shuts down many of the arguments raised by the top players, especially how covenants will supposedly negatively impact the casual playerbase.

In making all covenants useful for different dungeons, they basically ensure that no covenant is the bad one. 200 iq move by Blizzard right there.

There are still more areas where they could add covenant bonuses to make them even more useful across the board.

Yes, you are going to be so useful in 2 dungeons. And not invited to others.

[qwerty123456]

I mean half the raid is generous we sell mythic mounts and we can only safely carry one player with a more optimized group then most players will full bis from raid and usually above that from mythic + chest.

There isn't that big of a margin of error. If the entire raid played a secondary spec ( assuming dps pures here) I doubt we would kill the boss.

I think blizz will have to relax the difficulty slightly if they really want this system to work beyond pick your best or benched.

I'm not saying a raid half full of carries. I'm talking about a group of players who might be using passives that are subpar because they don't want to deal with an extra skill to push, or doesn't change from an aoe skill to single target when needed, etc...

But maybe they do need to relax the difficulty slightly. If ever mythic raider has needed the exact same setup of classes, talents, and gear as everyone else then that kinda defeats the purpose of "bring the player not the class" that they used to say.

What's really funny is that you think only high-end raiders don't like this.

Guess we'll see what happens when this hits live then. Gonna be fun.

There is no choice, the lockdown stays conduits don't get changed, simple as that. Might as well be permanent.

Why though? Can't you handle putting in some effort to change your covenants?

There is also though a large number of players who actually enjoy to experiment with the ruleset. Which is the fun thing with rulesets, experimenting with them to get different gameplay/results.

And you clearly can. It will just take more time and effort to do so now. Thankfully Blizzard isn't forcing you to stick with one covenant forever unless you want to.

[Rayzen17]

I'm not saying a raid half full of carries. I'm talking about a group of players who might be using passives that are subpar because they don't want to deal with an extra skill to push, or doesn't change from an aoe skill to single target when needed, etc...

But maybe they do need to relax the difficulty slightly. If ever mythic raider has needed the exact same setup of classes, talents, and gear as everyone else then that kinda defeats the purpose of "bring the player not the class" that they used to say.




Why though? Can't you handle putting in some effort to change your covenants?



And you clearly can. It will just take more time and effort to do so now. Thankfully Blizzard isn't forcing you to stick with one covenant forever unless you want to.

I don't mind putting effort to upkeep them, i really don't.
Put the grind in the game and let me switch instantly, okay?

[Vakir]

Why though? Can't you handle putting in some effort to change your covenants?

When you're dealing with a mega-corporation that benefits from player engagement statistics, the push and pull of a "game as a service" becomes an inextricable war with a company that is not your friends and does not view you as an individual, but as a dollar sign.

Any RPG of any stripe is going to have character progression, and that's fine and expected, but they're always going to make the progression scale one that they can get away with. Grinds were decreased to entice more casual players to get them hooked more easily for a more varied audience. Similarly, they'd make grinds much harder to bump player engagement if they knew it would work. You see the sweet spot now with delayed timegating and bar filling with catchup mechanics instead of grinds that can be done at your leisure but require investment.

What this means is "Why not just do the 2 weeks to do your Covenant for every single swap under every single type of content, lol?" is a bad precedent to send. It means Blizzard will always amplify the ceiling to ludicrous levels for anyone who does want to optimize under the justification that it's a small percentage of players that are whales, when the reality, by Ion's own admission, is that these issues trickle down regardless. Doing something pretty much amoral because you feel you can get away with it is still pretty fucked.

MoanaLisa made the same terrible point here with "Well, people knew what they were signing up for when they went with cutting edge play!" when that's a weak falsehood. Legitimate challenges that need to be overcome with coordination, planning, and execution that are within feasible reach when optimized are fine. The game has had some of the hardest encounters in a long time in the last 2 expansions. But back in things like pre-nerf SSC/TK, trash respawns were 30 minutes, mobs were bullet sponges that split into 5 more bullet sponges (the colossi before Hydross were a bitter example), and people forget that the Hyjal attunement was originally going to be one vial per kill per boss, coming out to 25 weeks with a consistent, unchanging team. Just because these came out of top-top tier content didn't make them any less terrible design decisions that were scaled back in response to feedback. I could lock Mythic N'Zoth behind a Heart of Azeroth Level 110 gate, and it wouldn't matter to most because it would only impact the very top percent-of-a-percent of players, but it would still be asinine and bad game design.

While there will always be a high bar for commitment in competitive spheres, there is a limit on bullshit. And creating tuning based around optimal choices, something Blizzard admits they do for top tier content, means that people will be enticed into making this decision. So it isn't truly desiring a meaningful choice, it's trying to see what other arbitrary timesinks they can add that are just subtle and insidious enough to get away with.

"Titanforging is gone, so now players don't need to run multiple difficulties anymore. The Great Vault expands loot, so RNG is less of an issue, despite less drops. AP grinds are gone, so we don't have long-tails on progression. But we can't JUST keep them hooked with time-gated Renown, so we need some kind of new hurdle. Better hide it behind the illusion of meaningful choice!"

The reality is that if this is accepted, it sets a fucked precedent.

[goldlock]

I'm not saying a raid half full of carries. I'm talking about a group of players who might be using passives that are subpar because they don't want to deal with an extra skill to push, or doesn't change from an aoe skill to single target when needed, etc...

But maybe they do need to relax the difficulty slightly. If ever mythic raider has needed the exact same setup of classes, talents, and gear as everyone else then that kinda defeats the purpose of "bring the player not the class" that they used to say.




Why though? Can't you handle putting in some effort to change your covenants?



And you clearly can. It will just take more time and effort to do so now. Thankfully Blizzard isn't forcing you to stick with one covenant forever unless you want to.

A raid using subpar passives over a skill is a raid that won't clear the last boss even with the last bosses gear (in most cases).

There is some variation in group when it comes to z'noth kills but the core of every group looks the same bring the player not the class was never a thing at CE.

[StrawberryZebra]

Personally I find the weekly lockdown of the conduits a good thing because it will prevent the majority to excluding people for choosing the "wrong e.g not most optimised" Covenant or Soulbind.

You do realise that the weekly lockout isn't going to prevent optimising for content, right? People are still going to expect you to change to appropriate soulbinds for M+ affixes, which bosses you're progressing on and such. M+ especially since it lines up well with the Affix rotation. That's not a bad thing, most people already do this when they reach a high enough key level - They make sure they've got appropriate Talents, Traits, Corruptions and Essences for the content.

For the people reading this thinking "I never have to do that", you're either being dishonest or you're not doing content at a level where this kind of thing matters. Honestly, even if you're not doing content at the level it makes a difference, I'd be genuinely surprised if you didn't swap away from corruptions like Twilight Devestation or Echoing Void on Bursting and Bolstering weeks.

Simplifying that into just having the right talents and soulbinds does make preparation easier and faster at least. Which is a positive outcome, I'll not deny that.

What it will do is prevent you from changing what you're optimised into. So, for example, if you're optimised for progress on one boss, and you kill it and move onto the next, you can no longer be fully optimised for attempts until next week. Which, assuming you're not overgeared, may well be enough of a handicap to cause your raid to fail - Especially when you consider that the 19 other players in your group are also not optimised for the fight either.

What this won't do is suddenly lower the requirements needed to join a group. People in Mythic raiding and high M+ keys are still going to expect that you've taken the time to learn about your class and understand it well enough to be a contributory member of the group - That includes choosing the right Covenant and Soulbinds for the content you're doing. Not doing so is letting everyone else in that group, who has put in the effort, down. Badly.

Are you familiar with the Bartle Taxonomy? It's overly restrictive on the Achiever subset of players, fairly restrictive on the Killer group and has no positive impacts for the Explorer and Socialiser. Which is the core of the issue, Blizzard are hamstringing a large portion of the playerbase without providing any benefits to, well... Anyone.

[qwerty123456]

When you're dealing with a mega-corporation that benefits from player engagement statistics, the push and pull of a "game as a service" becomes an inextricable war with a company that is not your friends and does not view you as an individual, but as a dollar sign.

Any RPG of any stripe is going to have character progression, and that's fine and expected, but they're always going to make the progression scale one that they can get away with. Grinds were decreased to entice more casual players to get them hooked more easily for a more varied audience. Similarly, they'd make grinds much harder to bump player engagement if they knew it would work. You see the sweet spot now with delayed timegating and bar filling with catchup mechanics instead of grinds that can be done at your leisure but require investment.

What this means is "Why not just do the 2 weeks to do your Covenant for every single swap under every single type of content, lol?" is a bad precedent to send. It means Blizzard will always amplify the ceiling to ludicrous levels for anyone who does want to optimize under the justification that it's a small percentage of players that are whales, when the reality, by Ion's own admission, is that these issues trickle down regardless. Doing something pretty much amoral because you feel you can get away with it is still pretty fucked.

MoanaLisa made the same terrible point here with "Well, people knew what they were signing up for when they went with cutting edge play!" when that's a weak falsehood. Legitimate challenges that need to be overcome with coordination, planning, and execution that are within feasible reach when optimized are fine. The game has had some of the hardest encounters in a long time in the last 2 expansions. But back in things like pre-nerf SSC/TK, trash respawns were 30 minutes, mobs were bullet sponges that split into 5 more bullet sponges (the colossi before Hydross were a bitter example), and people forget that the Hyjal attunement was originally going to be one vial per kill per boss, coming out to 25 weeks with a consistent, unchanging team. Just because these came out of top-top tier content didn't make them any less terrible design decisions that were scaled back in response to feedback. I could lock Mythic N'Zoth behind a Heart of Azeroth Level 110 gate, and it wouldn't matter to most because it would only impact the very top percent-of-a-percent of players, but it would still be asinine and bad game design.

While there will always be a high bar for commitment in competitive spheres, there is a limit on bullshit. And creating tuning based around optimal choices, something Blizzard admits they do for top tier content, means that people will be enticed into making this decision. So it isn't truly desiring a meaningful choice, it's trying to see what other arbitrary timesinks they can add that are just subtle and insidious enough to get away with.

"Titanforging is gone, so now players don't need to run multiple difficulties anymore. The Great Vault expands loot, so RNG is less of an issue, despite less drops. AP grinds are gone, so we don't have long-tails on progression. But we can't JUST keep them hooked with time-gated Renown, so we need some kind of new hurdle. Better hide it behind the illusion of meaningful choice!"

The reality is that if this is accepted, it sets a fucked precedent.

Hmmmm......

This is literally a slippery slope fallacy.

[Popokolara]

?
I answered your question perfectly fine.
I already did so multiple times even before that. You just don't seem to accept the reason.
Really, I don't want to bother with you anymore when you are that dense... So how about we just...ignore each other?

I mean, you basically write incoherent nonsense in my eyes. So it's hard for me to follow anyway. I'm not talking about grammar or anything like that (my grammar is horrible too)
You seem to fly from one topic/train of thought to the next in an instant.

Like

where does that even come from? At no point in time has it been mentioned that they are trying to balance classes by limiting their covenant choice. Ever. I don't even know the mental split you have to do to even think about it. Where is the connection to that?

Like


Psychologically filling? Do you mean - like...what?
Do you mean that it doesn't change anything if you can or can't swap on the fly? It doesn't do anything to you when you can't swap it out just like that? Are you making the same decisions if you could? Huh?

What even makes you think it's restricted for the sake of being restricted, did you even read the interview? That's just your biased opinion.
So what are you trying to tell me? That my biased opinion is wrong because it's different?

Seriously... what's wrong?

What is that talk about shit deals even about? I'm currently not playing WoW in BFA, I stopped after the first raid because I didn't like how Hunters played out. BM is really boring for me and MM is a strict downgrade from it's Legion counterpart, which I've loved to play as.

I'm getting a deal that I like, so it's not a shit deal I have to downplay.
It has been clear since day one that covenants aren't changeable just like that since they have been introduced. That's what got me interested. So I'm not defending from a position of "it's not so bad, I don't care either way". I'm defending that postion because I actually back it and it's what I want.
That much should've been obvious since forever by now.


You don't get anything out of it, I get that.
You don't understand however, that some people do - I don't know how many (I don't care either, because it doesn't change my view on this), but it certainly isn't a case of 1 in a million as I can see clearly from these threads that have been created.
I explained to you how and what exactly feels different from doing a quest do redeem yourself is different from just swapping talents around.
I already explained that I'd like to see both version. Swappable talents, but fixed Covenants. Some things to use for the situation at hand, some to dedicate your character further into the direction you want...

Pretend you are confused whatever nice choice.
but you still answer the end. let me explain again then:

1.Blizzard design purpose? Nope because we all know people wont stop asking for resto druid in 15 just cause covenants
Ion said by limiting covenant selection the players that previously made assumptions about a person based on how meta they played, while now they wont do it that easily due to the locks in place.That is what is being examined. It has been a central point of discussion and if you dont realise it you arent paying attention.

2. Restricting for the sake of being restricting is the FINAL case of many different possibilities. As there are several cases listed and you picked the last one pretending its the only one. While i gave a criticism as to why each one would not make sense.But your reaction is:

Do you mean that it doesn't change anything if you can or can't swap on the fly? It doesn't do anything to you when you can't swap it out just like that? Are you making the same decisions if you could? Huh?

What the actual? How is asking if something is psychologically filling translated by you as "Do you mean that it doesn't change anything if you can or can't swap on the fly". Do you understand what you did?


Btw i never said i dont understand some people like it now or how many they are. You mention a LOOOT of things i didnt or object to. HOW INTERESTING?

I am saying repeating a brain dead 0 effort quest at world questing level of danger is not immersive, and asked for you to help me understand why it feels better or epic or whatever.

you know what yea dont talk. If you just gonna pretend you dont see things and cut little snipets and comment on them with ridiculous leaps of logic but cba to give me an answer you might have given to someone else, oh apart from: i like it. Thats all you give: i like it, its meaningful choice. Just not how exactly.

[razorpax]

Thank you blizzard

“People are worried about the really unlikely scenario that they will get invited to a group and asked what covenant they are and then get kicked for being the wrong covenant”

Well the tryhards would create that problem because it’s not like that would happen because there’s no big buffs that dungeons have that you can get if you are a certain covenant....wait a minute

[Tronski]

Because we all know what's going to happen. The optimal covenant is going to be nerfed 3 weeks in exactly like how corruption has been this entire patch. So again, enlighten me on why we have to cater to casuals, when they don't care about the game.

OP explained that. Because it trickles down. Not raiding mythic is not the same as not caring. You want to be able to join a group for anything without having the correct/FotM/BiS X.

And since you're thinking it already: "if you don't get accepted to a group because you have the wrong covenant, then make your own group."

[Rayzen17]

OP explained that. Because it trickles down. Not raiding mythic is not the same as not caring. You want to be able to join a group for anything without having the correct/FotM/BiS X.

And since you're thinking it already: "if you don't get accepted to a group because you have the wrong covenant, then make your own group."

Nah there will still be a meta, if you(generally speaking ofc) freely chose something else, you're going to find it harder to find groups.

[Zenfoldor]

It really isn't about balancing covenants. Their balance is irrelevant, largely. It's about the community perception of balance of the covenants. Will the community at large believe that there are "wrong" covenants for mythic dungeons? If so, the complaints about covenants will be valid. If not, they won't be.

Actual balance and community perception are barely correlated. Actual balance doesn't form your group, the community does. Actual balance is not an achievable goal, and is never known to the community or the developers.

Is community perception the problem? Well it's A problem because it is uncontrolled and can(and often does) directly influence the game. I can't help but think a system like this might exacerbate it though. We'll see.

[Flantini]

OP explained that. Because it trickles down. Not raiding mythic is not the same as not caring. You want to be able to join a group for anything without having the correct/FotM/BiS X.

And since you're thinking it already: "if you don't get accepted to a group because you have the wrong covenant, then make your own group."

What it boils down to is, with the system the way it is, you DONT want to switch/grind multiple covenants, and you CANT so win win for you. I WANT to switch and I CANT. So you get your option but I dont get mine. If Blizzard gives lets us switch it then becomes, I WANT to switch and I CAN. you DONT want to switch and you CAN. See how that's the best option for everybody to be able to play how they see fit.

The main argument against this would be the "casuals" would be or feel forced to constantly min/max. Well heres the thing, If you want to push the highest difficulty content (where Blizzard balances around min/maxing) then you should be min/maxing. If you don't want to do the highest difficulty content then you dont have to min/max at all. I've even see suggestions in this thread to "Maybe they need to loosen how tightly tuned these bosses are then." They do, its called heroic raids. Seems like a lot of "Mythic" raiders are trying to get Mythic to be tuned easier so everyone can enjoy it stress free, without min/maxing and steamroll the bosses. You here things like, "I'm an ultra-skilled, probably like 3rd in the world CE player but I dont like how I have to farm corruptions/essences. Id like to be able to just log on, raid, then peace till next week. Let the bads try to min/max instead of being good like me." Which is basically saying, "I dont want to put in the work to raid mythic, but I still want the prestige and Epeen inflators from Mythic gear." Well guess what, looks like you dont really want to raid Mythic anymore do you? Like I said, there's a difficulty already in place for you so... I dont understand where you are coming from.

[Echocho]

I WANT to switch and I CANT. .

Good news, you can switch covenants, even back and forth

[peggers69]

Oh for pete's sake, go play Minecraft and shut up about hardcore / casual. The game is the game play it or not.