Will Blizzard nerf your "meaningful choice"?

[Wuusah]

No one was saying that those specific things were going to kill the game. No one was discussing those things in the extremes like they are now.

Because Legion came after WoD, the expansion where there was nothing to do. People were just glad to finally have content again. We also never had AP and such stuff before in the game, so it was all new and exciting.

[Kaver]

Seems blizzard disagrees with you and your opinion and somehow "people like you still don't understand this."

I understand it very well. Of course they disagree. It pretty obvious since they are going to implement it that way.

But it is still a bad idea in my opinion. It is going to negatively impact a lot if people and it is not going to be positive for anyone. People are saying that they don’t care about performance but at the same time they suddenly want permanent performance based choices.. that is complete BS. They just want to put a stick in the wheels of the “elitists”. Either you care about performance or you don’t. And nobody was asking for this before Blizzard presented the covenants and now suddenly people are trying to act like they care about permanent performance choices. It’s BS.

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Again, this will do nothing to what they are trying to achieve: create bigger diversity in character builds.
You may not agree with the way they are trying to do it, you might even not agree with the entire premise, but if you listen to Ion talk with Preach, this is their goal. So your solution is irrelevant to the whole problem. From Blizzard's POV, your solutions solves nothing - it just makes things exactly as they were in the past.

Yes, I understand this very well. But I disagree with Blizzard (like many other people do) and I hope they change their minds. Because what they are trying to achieve is an idealistic scenario. It has no base in reality. They are trying to impact player behavior but they can’t because it is out of their power. We don’t need build diversity. Nobody was asking for that before they presented the covenants. In their crusade of combating player behavior they will end up making the game worse for a lot of players. This is my prediction.

[Rageonit]

We don’t need build diversity. Nobody was asking for that before they presented the covenants. In their crusade of combating player behavior they will end up making the game worse for a lot of players. This is my prediction.

Are you serious? Then lets just throw talents out of the window, and gear too if we're at it, enchants, gems, everything. Then you'll have your game with no build diversity, and baddies won't be able to make mistakes, because there will be zero choice. Happy times, everyone using the same build, so easy to balance! No more lazy guys in PUGs ruining your runs with sub-optimal choices.

[Kaver]

Without abilities and conduits, covenants are literally just reps with armor sets. It was my biggest gripe with them when they were announced and while it still kinda is now. The problem with your argument though is that you either care about performance, or don't. Everyone cares, to a degree, some to the degree of changing races just to get that DoT reduction, while others may change talents, but nothing else. So uncoupling abilities will still affect non-high end players, just as much. Not to mention there is no choice after that.

For example, playing my Demon Hunter i was going to join Necrolords. Then i got to play with their ability, realized it felt just -bad- for me to use (don't know how good it is, but it just did not feel good to me). So now i am going Venthyr, and while that isn't terrible, it was still a choice i had to make. Otherwise, i would just go Necrolord with Venthyr ability. That is no choice, that is just clear cut for me.

I don’t see how this is positive at all. I don’t see how this improves our gaming experience. A lot of people in here say don’t care about performance at all and that they will choose their covenants purely based on aesthetics and lore. So there would be no negative impact for those people if you allowed us to switch just the 4 class based abilities.

I also want to point out that Blizzard have often been wrong in aspects of new systems since WoD. They were wrong about a lot of things which the later admitted, and there is a good chance that they are also wrong about this. Covenants look to be very cool so I think it is unfortunate if 4 abilities end up giving people a bad perception of them.

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Are you serious? Then lets just throw talents out of the window, and gear too if we're at it, enchants, gems, everything. Then you'll have your game with no build diversity, and baddies won't be able to make mistakes, because there will be zero choice. Happy times, everyone using the same build, so easy to balance! No more lazy guys in PUGs ruining your runs with sub-optimal choices.

Ok, that’s not what I meant. But I do see how it could be misunderstood

Let me clarify, we don’t need incentivized build diversity. It’s good that people have different choices but the players should freely be able to choose their build without it having consequences for the aesthetics of their character. And it’s okay that most people end up choosing the same things. We don’t need to combat that. Having most Hunters with the same build is not making the game worse. It’s an imaginary issue. Build diversity was not a problem in Legion and BFA. There is no need for Blizzard to solve a problem which doesn’t exist. Blizzard have often been very wrong throughout the last 3 expansions when it comes to knowing what people want. As long as the game has good solid fun gameplay the people will enjoy it. We dont need to have extreme diversity between players.

[Rageonit]

Okay, let me ask you this then:

It’s good that people have different choices

Why is it good to have different choices?

And it’s okay that most people end up choosing the same things.

Then what's the point of the choice?
EDIT: Also, one could argue that 2 active CDs and 2 passives is hardly an "extreme diversity".

[Redroniksre]

I don’t see how this is positive at all. I don’t see how this improves our gaming experience. A lot of people in here say don’t care about performance at all and that they will choose their covenants purely based on aesthetics and lore. So there would be no negative impact for those people if you allowed us to switch just the 4 class based abilities.

I also want to point out that Blizzard have often been wrong in aspects of new systems since WoD. They were wrong about a lot of things which the later admitted, and there is a good chance that they are also wrong about this. Covenants look to be very cool so I think it is unfortunate if 4 abilities end up giving people a bad perception of them.

Because if you make it "just another talent row" then that is all it becomes. Soulbinds would have to be massively reworked, or thrown out entirely, and covenants themselves would cease to be a worthwhile feature. The ability and soulbinds (and an armor set) is the only thing that keeps them from being glorified reputations. I have had this criticism of them since they were announced, i overall would of rather had some different feature. As it stands however, the way they are now is the only way to make them worth a damn to do. Not to mention the cooldown is only what, 2 weeks technically? I would of rather they make you do it before you can change again, so you can be more reactive, but it is not like the time to change is obscene.

[Kaver]

Okay, let me ask you this then:

Why is it good to have different choices?

Then what's the point of the choice?
EDIT: Also, one could argue that 2 active CDs and 2 passives is hardly an "extreme diversity".

They still have the choice. Even if they pick the same. Trying to get people to pick different abilities from each other by locking them to cool transmog is a very lazy way to do it. It doesn’t improve the game for anyone and it makes it worse for a lot of people.

If the diversity is so minor that people don’t even notice it then what is the point of it having massive impact on performance and aesthetics. It’s out of proportion. They create more issues than they fix.

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Because if you make it "just another talent row" then that is all it becomes. Soulbinds would have to be massively reworked, or thrown out entirely, and covenants themselves would cease to be a worthwhile feature. The ability and soulbinds (and an armor set) is the only thing that keeps them from being glorified reputations. I have had this criticism of them since they were announced, i overall would of rather had some different feature. As it stands however, the way they are now is the only way to make them worth a damn to do. Not to mention the cooldown is only what, 2 weeks technically? I would of rather they make you do it before you can change again, so you can be more reactive, but it is not like the time to change is obscene.

If you read the threads in here, a lot of people say they pick covenants based purely on the aesthetics and cosmetics. So no, it would not make the covenants less worthwhile if they removed the restrictions on only the 4 class based covenant abilities. The non-class based abilities could still be locked. I think that would be a good compromise.

[Rageonit]

Shame you didn't answer any of the two questions.

[Sondrelk]

They still have the choice. Even if they pick the same. Trying to get people to pick different abilities from each other by locking them to cool transmog is a very lazy way to do it. It doesn’t improve the game for anyone and it makes it worse for a lot of people.

If the diversity is so minor that people don’t even notice it then what is the point of it having massive impact on performance and aesthetics. It’s out of proportion. They create more issues than they fix.

This is something that makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Blizzard has for years now been trying to regain a bit of the class diversity that they lost when they made specs, talents and even classes easily swappable. They tried to do this by lowering the requirements for swapping so that people would play what they want instead of mindlessly following the meta, this didnt really work, so now Blizzard is forcing some diversity to at least make players comfortable with the idea that they don't need to be optimal in all cases.

Hardcore players will just acclimatize to the new reality and casuals will just go on like they always have. It is the pseudo-hardcore players with dreams of world first mythic raiding that will have to struggle the most to accept that they can no longer easily chase the latest FotM build.

[Alkizon]

No one was saying that those specific things were going to kill the game. No one was discussing those things in the extremes like they are now.

Also, in case you forgot, Legion is generally regarded by the community as one of the best WoW expansions of all time.

Nope.

People discussed this even before Legion launch and very substantively, many of them literally left... and didn't return since. Problem is that most of discussions are stuck in history of old forum, as well as links to external resources with relevant discussions. Changes in classes, artifacts, unintelligible plot (especially idiocy of starting events, plot strings), class halls and so on were discussed. And no, in my list Legion is at very bottom (for reference, if you're too lazy to follow the links, I don't even consider BfA as complete expansion at all, just big content patch for Legion).

This is something that makes perfect sense if you think about it.

Since they "want" this, then changes in approach should be carried out in original system, and not through attempt to duplicate, which will cause conflicts, both in system as a whole and in general logic of the process. System must fit into hierarchy/have its own level of influence, and it falls out of it by being private/lower element of original (any momentary choice, private progress in expansion) still provide&require such amount of attention and significance, which it has no right to claim.

[Sondrelk]

Nope.

People discussed this even before Legion launch and very substantively, many of them literally left... and didn't return since. Problem is that most of discussions are stuck in history of old forum, as well as links to external resources with relevant discussions. Changes in classes, artifacts, unintelligible plot (especially idiocy of starting events, plot strings), class halls and so on were discussed. And no, in my list Legion is at very bottom (for reference, if you're too lazy to follow the links, I don't even consider BfA as complete expansion at all, just big content patch for Legion).
Since they "want" this, then changes in approach should be carried out in original system, and not through attempt to duplicate, which will cause conflicts, both in system as a whole and in general logic of the process. System must fit into hierarchy/have its own level of influence, and it falls out of it by being private/lower element of original (any momentary choice, private progress in expansion) and require such amount of attention and significance, which it has no right to claim.

They tried to do this within the old system, it didnt work no matter how much they tried, so now they are going for a different approach.

[Alkizon]

They tried to do this within the old system, it didnt work no matter how much they tried, so now they are going for a different approach.

Could you clarify which system you consider "old", and also moment that "did not work" for them

Here one of previous discussions with answer on almost similar statement:

They really try, but they try in wrong way, both within framework of current game model and old one. That is, gear really should be mainly responsible for role, but also not for performance (we discussed this separately, even somewhat violently), at the same time it has certain limitations in sphere of control (in fact, same as "reputations" part, they are on the same hierarchy level) if it wants to be in "old way". Only now, within framework of "current way", this role is played by specs (that is, third "cut off" part (abilities and passive effects imposed by devs as being available mainly only to this spec) of class and its talents (the same story, only on optional basis))... and covenants are trying to wedge themselves into this system for "both ways" as a third leg, which naturally interferes with its functioning, causing many conflicts. In fact, this is same set of "progress" systems that was introduced in Legion. Yes, they renamed them, kind of slightly redistributed, but this is same (the lowest level in hierarchy tries to take place of "leading" to which, by definition, it has neither rights nor aptitude) misplaced rubbish.

So, within framework of current system, borrowed powers perform function of specs, and old control through characteristics (= gear) is bring down to "appendix organ" functioning and significance. Conclusion: Ion is lying, if not to himself, then at least to players.

The only benefit from all this, as has already been said many times, is that devs can simply forget about adequate organization of content+progress (story+gear = open-world<dungeons<raids), organization of integral system of characteristics (which long interfered them, like "balls" for bad dancer) and functionality of classes, additional cherry is to control process of their own indulgences and depriving players of them at "right time".

[Sondrelk]

Could you clarify which system you consider "old", and also moment that "did not work" for them

Here one of previous discussions with answer on almost similar statement:

By old system I mean everything since the MoP talent revamp.

Blizzard and the playerbase always wants diversity, the problem is that each time Blizzard tried to foster diverse classes and builds by making changing to whatever easier it just ended up homogenizing teh playerbase further, each time making it more and more difficult to revert back to a style of play where there is a healthy diversity in the playerbase with only a small percentage of the playerbase caring excessively about optimization, specifically so much so that sims are commonplace and a build that is slightly less optimal in a few situations is usually considered dead if there is a build that is slightly more optimal.

Each time Blizzard tries to create more diverstiy it doesnt work, so this time I assume Blizzard decided to bite the bullet and straight up force some diversity to try and get some of that charm back in the game. Afterall, the playerbase clearly isnt going to spin on a dime anytime soon, so either we go further down the route of homogenization, or Blizzard takes a sharp left turn somewhere to try and wean us off the old style of thinking.

It isnt even like this is the most invasive thing to do either, it is a single ability that for the most part barely interracts with the rest of your toolkit, most of the changes to your class is still fully changeable.

[Alkizon]

Sondrelk
By old system I mean everything since the MoP talent revamp.

Blizzard and the playerbase always wants diversity, the problem is that each time Blizzard tried to foster diverse classes and builds by making changing to whatever easier it just ended up homogenizing teh playerbase further, each time making it more and more difficult to revert back to a style of play where there is a healthy diversity in the playerbase with only a small percentage of the playerbase caring excessively about optimization, specifically so much so that sims are commonplace and a build that is slightly less optimal in a few situations is usually considered dead if there is a build that is slightly more optimal.

Each time Blizzard tries to create more diverstiy it doesnt work, so this time I assume Blizzard decided to bite the bullet and straight up force some diversity to try and get some of that charm back in the game. Afterall, the playerbase clearly isnt going to spin on a dime anytime soon, so either we go further down the route of homogenization, or Blizzard takes a sharp left turn somewhere to try and wean us off the old style of thinking.

It isnt even like this is the most invasive thing to do either, it is a single ability that for the most part barely interracts with the rest of your toolkit, most of the changes to your class is still fully changeable.

I hate to disappoint you, but this is "new" system and due to its design features, it simply has no reason to demand anything. It's done this way, you now have exactly system that was laid down in MoP, only now you are being fed with "borrowed powers", which is tied to expansion, and in such way that it could seems in any sense "noticeable/influential/progressive", so basic part of your stuff is cut-off/returned/then-cut-off-more/returned-in-a-different-form cyclically... but basic system is the same = spec and its role exceeds everything
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spec is equated to class, and class ceases to exist, the only difference is that MoP had talents mainly "for the whole class", but passive part and some of abilities were given/already tied to spec; boundaries between classes "in thickness" didn't differ much from boundaries between specs, so their roles began to come to fore
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It simply doesn’t offer such "meaningful" choice (players could already conditionally change "classes" here, well, or whatever replaced them), nor depth of customization (it's not able to function in such conditions, specs were deprived of opportunities for the sake of their "greater separation"). Current system, which they are inserting, is simply trying to challenge leading role
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in perspective - remove it completely, imagine complete loss of entire toolkit/power except for couple of basic skills after each expansion and you will see right picture here specs (already as classes) have already lost everything for the sake of their roles, gameplay between roles in PvE differs rather conditionally, but now they will lose in favor of progress in expansion
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to replace it, and this causes a conflict (it won't replace one, since the whole system will fall apart then, but it wants).

So, current system of hierarchy and design in general (look at least at your talents) is organized in exactly this way (you said it). But covenants, as people already noted on first page, strangely contradict this principle, still they also don't fulfill conditions of their design/location/attachment to what they're trying to "imitate"/trying to be. It follows from this, that this system doesn't obey either their current design philosophy, or is one of from "good old days", which means that all their talk in recent interview doesn't really carry anything meaningful in itself

But old system that existed before MoP (before cataclysm, since cata made first cut, you have already been offered to choose spec and were given several "special" abilities, it was transitional period between old and new, albeit not so boldly expressed)... here it came more from completely different organization:

racial part goes cross-classes (bonuses, base animations), class' (abilities and mechanics) part goes cross-specs (build = talents), talents' part goes cross-roles, since last one is mostly controlled by “momentary choice”: priority of abilities, used gear and other temporary "progress" stuff

---

Here some conditions for lowest level implementation:

General requirement| they won't need to be unlocked or part of class' talents/mechanics (key part of build, only reinforce/strengthen it, even less significant, more general non-specific), but can be stackable/replaced and be part of professions/RPG-customization system (can exist/functioning outside of any items/locations/reputations), mathematical part of engine, otherwise they will spoil progress/balance system, class' fantasy and provoke more and more "unrecorded results".

If being permanent, they should end with being in class; if being difficult to change, they should not give significant abilities, but only passive and be in the field of talents (that is, they should remain outside choice of reputation of local races, for both from above); if they're “external” then shouldn't go beyond “influence” of characteristics (= gear) and be quick and easy to switch.

Here about choice:

Technically, what you argue about as part of content is 1. "situational" every second choice + 2. choice that is made within system's work for a fairly long time together (both are parts of one system): 2. is "permanent" not for 1 fight, but for a while before meeting with class trainer together with loosing time and money for "re-qualifies" you (it's class “umbrella”, which consists of full set of class' abilities (mostly permanent completely) and, being overwhelming majority of them passively, talents of build (not spec)) - choice, and 1. consists of equipped items (= characteristics) + particular using spells during encounter - flexible options.

Choice may be wrong for a particular set, but at the same time be very useful for another. What is important in this case (when discussing customization) is overall picture, but not problems of right/wrong private choices
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You may be mistaken in choosing a strategy, but this won't necessarily mean fallacy of one/each of its individual elements. Is it clear? They can all be correct, but interfere with each other in this "sequence" ...be incompatible.

No, RPG is presence of set/constructor for formation "something", subject to certain rules of interaction of its parts. Something may be permanent and something may not, but this isn't its fundamental characteristic.

[Kaver]

This is something that makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Blizzard has for years now been trying to regain a bit of the class diversity that they lost when they made specs, talents and even classes easily swappable. They tried to do this by lowering the requirements for swapping so that people would play what they want instead of mindlessly following the meta, this didnt really work, so now Blizzard is forcing some diversity to at least make players comfortable with the idea that they don't need to be optimal in all cases.

Hardcore players will just acclimatize to the new reality and casuals will just go on like they always have. It is the pseudo-hardcore players with dreams of world first mythic raiding that will have to struggle the most to accept that they can no longer easily chase the latest FotM build.

This sound good in an idealistic world but it is not going to play out this way once the system gets into the hands of the players.

It is still going to be relatively easy to swap covenants so players will still chase the last FotM build. The downsides are that you will possibly have ugly transmog. But the players who are going to hurt the most are the players that do different content. And I don't think this was Blizzards intention. Players who mainly raid will pick the best covenant for raiding and player who mainly do M+ will pick the best covenant for M+. Pretty simple. They will possibly have ugly transmog which sucks, but that's it. The players who are put in a disadvantage are player who enjoy both raiding and M+. They now have to choose between the content which makes no sense to me. Why would Blizzard put players who play the most content in an disadvantage. I would think that Blizzard wanted to reward those players instead.

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the playerbase always wants diversity

Nope, not true. We just want fun content.

[Redroniksre]

They still have the choice. Even if they pick the same. Trying to get people to pick different abilities from each other by locking them to cool transmog is a very lazy way to do it. It doesn’t improve the game for anyone and it makes it worse for a lot of people.

If the diversity is so minor that people don’t even notice it then what is the point of it having massive impact on performance and aesthetics. It’s out of proportion. They create more issues than they fix.

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If you read the threads in here, a lot of people say they pick covenants based purely on the aesthetics and cosmetics. So no, it would not make the covenants less worthwhile if they removed the restrictions on only the 4 class based covenant abilities. The non-class based abilities could still be locked. I think that would be a good compromise.

Right, but without those, they are just reputations, not something worth being considered an expansion feature. Not to mention then you would have to get rid of soulbinds as well, making the abilities drab as well. The non-class abilities would be picked apart as well, given you got ones that give you a shield, or get rid of debuffs. Again, the only thing making Covenants actually useful is the whole package, once you start taking it apart the feature loses all uniqueness and we are left with only Torghast, which will be finished in the first month or so.

[Kaver]

Right, but without those, they are just reputations, not something worth being considered an expansion feature. Not to mention then you would have to get rid of soulbinds as well, making the abilities drab as well. The non-class abilities would be picked apart as well, given you got ones that give you a shield, or get rid of debuffs. Again, the only thing making Covenants actually useful is the whole package, once you start taking it apart the feature loses all uniqueness and we are left with only Torghast, which will be finished in the first month or so.

This is BS.

You could easily just change the 4 class based abilities and leave the rest. The thing people is excited about is not the abilities. You're just straight up lying now.

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not something worth being considered an expansion feature.

What expansion features like this did we have in BC, Wrath, Cata and MOP? None. And those were much better expansions than BFA. Shadowlands doesn't need "expansion features" in terms of borrowed power systems. We just need good fun solid content. That's it. Make Classes fun to play. Make good dungeons. Make good raids. Make good open world content. Make good solo content. That's all we need. We don't need borrowed power systems.

[Araxie]

Covenants mean more to me than just dps output, so I don't care

Hey! Same! I love this attitude towards the covenants. We need more of this.

[Araxie]

I understand people want their characters to be the best they can be numerically, but I think you have to accept you can't have everything

I literally just posted in another thread on this. I think people have this weird idea that their character should be the absolute best at everything, when in reality, that's simply not the case. Already by picking classes and specs, you're saying I want to be better in this area but not do so well in this area, which is good. Classes SHOULD have strengths and weaknesses. A Resto shaman is better at AoE healing than a Holy paladin, that doesn't mean the holy paladin is useless. People need to understand that weaknesses are a good thing in an MMO, and that doesn't make you or your class worthless.

Also, I just like the flavor, lore, design and aesthetic of the covenants and I'm excited to pledge all my alts to different forms of the afterlife. Shadowlands, I am ready.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

What expansion features like this did we have in BC, Wrath, Cata and MOP? None. And those were much better expansions than BFA. Shadowlands doesn't need "expansion features" in terms of borrowed power systems. We just need good fun solid content. That's it. Make Classes fun to play. Make good dungeons. Make good raids. Make good open world content. Make good solo content. That's all we need. We don't need borrowed power systems.

Hell, borrowed power isn't even that big of an issue for most players. The problem is where it comes from; in most expansions it came from tier set bonuses and specific trinkets, with the occasional special or legendary weapon. The expansions that WoW had the most players relied primarily on the simple RNG of did the item drop or not (TBC, WotLK, Cataclysm, MoP). WotLK and Cata did remove a fair amount of RNG from legendary weapons by turning them into questlines and grinds, and MoP followed suit and expanded it to all roles, instead of a specific class or role type, ie. healers in Ulduar, strength melee in ICC, casters in Firelands, rogues in Dragonsoul.

WoD came along and copied MoP, but they made it visually boring as hell. The ring was aesthetically non-existent and very boring as being just another CD to use.

Then Legion comes along and says "Okay, we'll bring back cool legendaries that are 100% RNG dependent on which one you get, because what could possibly go wrong when one of your class legendaries is a 30% boost to your output and the other provide 0-10% output increase? Oh yeah, and we'll make sure that your chance of getting one drops below 0.5% after you get your first one, so if you get the wrong one you're better off just deleting your character and leveling a new one of the same class."


I think MoP had the best handle on legendaries, they all had good use, acquisition wasn't difficult, you could actually carry them all around and swap them with the rest of your gear, and there wasn't some asinine grind tacked on to them at a later date to encourage people to spend more time grinding out power.


Borrowed powers are fine to an extent, endless grinding for borrowed power is not. Renown is setting up to be a repeat of Legion AP grinding, and Soulbinds are going to be a repeat of grinding for Relics; Shadowlands is setting itself up to follow some of the major system failures of Legion. At least they aren't repeating the RNG shit-show for the legendary powers, those being made into crafted items in which you control what secondary stats are on the item in addition to choosing the legendary power are probably the single best system design feature of Shadowlands.

The lack of an end-point to a grind for player power is inherently poor design, having a fixed goal and stopping there is a much healthier system to design around. At the end of the day you should want your players to have fun playing your game, rather than being fixated on meeting a quota of MAUs. Covenant systems seem primarily designed to drive MAUs, rather than providing a fun experience for the players.