Will Blizzard nerf your "meaningful choice"?

[GoKs]

Every single player will swap covenants based on meta. Everyone will demand and exepect you to have right covenant for different situations. Why? Becouse if you can swap them with press of the button its reasonable to ask it. They will turn into talents and as we know everybody runs exact same talents for exact same situtions.

Look they will still ask it even if it goes live as is, if you cant swap they will just get some one else to join that can swap or have what they are looking for. So where you could join that group now, you will have to keep looking for some one to accept what you have, rather then quickly swapping and afterwards swapping back to what you prefer....

That is your problem to figure, growing up ability to actually understand another person point of view is really valuable.
I had this exercise in classes, try to be split your personality in two, like two polar opposite opinions. Then argue with yourself presenting arguments pro and against for each sides.

Like I am doing it whole time. You know that I would love for covenants to be like talent row right? Cause it would give me much less of a headache as m raider.
But that would be absolute garbo for people that actually care about RPG aspects. So I don't promote my point of view as it is bad for overall game.

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Yes because it won't be feasible, so people won't expect you to swap covenants because it's not easy.

People who play different content on really high level (lets be honest, nobody from mmoc is even near that level) will have 2 alts for that, or even 3 if pvp, raids and M+.

Everyone else will have to pick the one they care about most and have a bit of disadvantage in other content. Nothing that gitting gud wouldn't solve.

Hmmm see here is the thing, you tell me gameplay will differ vastly between the 2 scenarios, but it wont. As I pointed out to the above quote in my reply, you will still be asked to swap, or they just wont take you if you cant, or they might even flat out not even ask you, so you wont even be considered. You tell me I must try and understand other peoples point of view as well, but yet you fail to do so, you think it would not be feasible for them to ask you to swap, yet we keep telling you that people will still do it, or just ignore you, we understand that this is the way that the wow community is, they are just unfortunately that toxic (majority is at least, not all), we understand that they sometimes want to be carried through the PUG, or just dont want to struggle to complete the run, and we accept it, it wont change no matter what you do, especially not limiting possible choices that could help people join a quick group run.

You also clearly did not read through my whole first post where you only took the last sentence as a quote to reply to. I specifically wrote there about how Timmy might like the min max game, and how I feel bad for him, so yes I am taking other peoples point of view into consideration. Will I min max? Again, go read my whole first post.

You never play the game how you like to play it, every game has a set of rules that are forced upon you. Just because you enjoyed some of the rules as they were up till now, doesn't mean you could choose the way you play the game.
Why do raids have a week long lockout? Because that's a rule the designers force upon you.
Why does pet battle rez have a cooldown? Because that's a rule forced upon you.
Why can't I have 7 talent points and pick any talents I enjoy, and instead I have to pick one talent out of each row? Because that's a rule forced upon you.
Why can't I freely swap covenant abilities? Because that's a rule forced upon you. Just like any other rule in the game.
So I want to be able to pick any talents I want, without the restriction of picking only one talent out of each row. Just give me a fixed pool of talent points and allow me to do anything I want with them. Should the designers change the rules just because that's how I choose to play? It would allow people to min-max even more, so it has to be good for the game, right? Blizzard, give us more flexibility with talent choices! Pull the ripcord already, everyone knows you can't balance shit!
Yet, people learnt to live with the fact that you can choose only one talent out of each row.

As far as Covenants go, the game already has different set of abilities that follow different rules. Class abilities follow different rules than talent abilities, which follow different rules than racial abilities, which follow different rules than, for example, essence abilities in BfA. Not much as changed in terms of existing rules, and Covenant abilities are a new set of abilities that follow new set of rules. That's all.

EDIT: BTW, I find the recent Preach video - where he complains the designers tell him how to play the game - quite amusing. A big boy like him should know that it's true in terms of any facet of the game. You raid how the designers tell you to, you do pet battles how the designers tell you to, you PvP how the designers tell you to. The only difference is that this time around, he doesn't enjoy the rules. The fact that you can min-max as much as you can in WoW, is also because the designers allow you to. It was theirs choice, not Preach's. Preach can only do as much as play within the set of rules forced upon him by the game, and make use of those rules to his advantage.

I play the game exactly the way I want, within the rules and limits of the game. If I want to raid, I raid, if I want to do a dungeon, I do a dungeon, when I want to make a alt, I do so, it is my choice to do so, and no one forced me to do so, and I am happy to do it abiding by all the rules Blizz set for me, heck if I want to cheat I can do that as well since it is my choice to do so, Blizz might choose to ban me, and that will be fair, since I knew the rules and limits of the game and and chose to ignore them. You will be a fool to think there is no rules or limits to ANYTHING in life, never the less a game. I live life the way I WANT to live it, still within the rules and limitations of it.

If I couldnt play the game the way I wanted to play it, I would quit, and that would be my choice. Now do my choice affect you in any way? NO. So why put back artificial limits to the game that was removed a long time ago to give the people more freedom of choice? I get it yea, it is Blizzards game and they can do as they see fit, which is true, but we are concerned that it MIGHT hurt the game we want to play, hence we voice our concern. Now I wont quit due to covenants, I will just learn to live with it, but again, poor Timmy now cant do what he loves to do ANYMORE.

[Rageonit]

If I couldnt play the game the way I wanted to play it, I would quit, and that would be my choice. Now do my choice affect you in any way? NO. So why put back artificial limits to the game that was removed a long time ago to give the people more freedom of choice? I get it yea, it is Blizzards game and they can do as they see fit, which is true, but we are concerned that it MIGHT hurt the game we want to play, hence we voice our concern. Now I wont quit due to covenants, I will just learn to live with it, but again, poor Timmy now cant do what he loves to do ANYMORE.

Timmy can still do what he loved to do, every knob that was there to turn prior to SL is still in the game. Covenants is a new addition, and this addition comes without a knob, but old knobs work as fine as they always did. So saying Timmy lost his beloved toys is just not true. This is a new toy and it works a bit differently than the ones he maybe loves. If Timmy doesn't enjoy it, he can have fun with the old toys instead of throwing them out of the window in a fit of anger.

On a side note, you seem to assume that giving players more freedom will inevitably result in a better game. I don't share that assumption.

[GoKs]

Timmy can still do what he loved to do, every knob that was there to turn prior to SL is still in the game. Covenants is a new addition, and this addition comes without a knob, but old knobs work as fine as they always did. So saying Timmy lost his beloved toys is just not true. This is a new toy and it works a bit differently than the ones he maybe loves. If Timmy doesn't enjoy it, he can have fun with the old toys instead of throwing them out of the window in a fit of anger.

On a side note, you seem to assume that giving players more freedom will inevitably result in a better game. I don't share that assumption.

I simply do not agree with you, but hey lets just agree to disagree.

[Hadriker]

Do you believe people won't run meta regardless?

I actually believe people will be more inclined to pick what they believe will be the most fun, rather than what the meta tells them to pick. I don't think the average person will want to go through the trouble of changing covenants unless they truly do not like the covenant they picked or just feel like a change.With one exception possibly being the difference in power is far too large to ignore.

The barrier to changing covenants isn't hard but i bet it will be enough to dissuade a lot of players from constantly changing.

[Baconeggcheese]

I actually believe people will be more inclined to pick what they believe will be the most fun, rather than what the meta tells them to pick. I don't think the average person will want to go through the trouble of changing covenants unless they truly do not like the covenant they picked or just feel like a change.With one exception possibly being the difference in power is far too large to ignore.

The barrier to changing covenants isn't hard but i bet it will be enough to dissuade a lot of players from constantly changing.

I believe people will behave as they always have, people will run whatever meta means to them since it varies wildly depending on class / spec / content. People will expect other players to be running meta when they join a specific bit of content, and ostracize those that don't. They'll still be able to get into groups, its just going to be the same kind of tedious and frustrating process as it is for people playing off meta class / specs now. Just further compounded with yet another point of failure.

I don't see anything about this system that would change the way people currently react to these kinds of things. If someone is making a group and they see that a person made a bad choice, it'll just be another thing they can use to judge that player. "Clearly this guy doesn't care about his performance since he went with X, so I'm not going to take him".

Doesn't really matter that that person might not be able to swap on a dime, as that doesn't affect the person creating the group at all. They've got a list of applicants to pick from.

[Rageonit]

So to sum up, noone knows anything any we all believe what we want to believe.

[scelero]

if you're asking, you already know the answer. you just dont want to admit it.

im not convincing you otherwise.

[Rageonit]

if you're asking, you already know the answer. you just dont want to admit it.
im not convincing you otherwise.

You're 37 pages too late with this comment, we already know that.

[oblakoff]

The normal compromise of one week changing covenant is there for the PUG scrubs, which are thinking they are mythic raiders and which would eventually require everyone to change covenant ability between every boss fight, because they've read an article on icy-veins.