Blizzard trying to dictate what is "meaningful".

[Doffen]

When did you last run out of conduit energy and were actually impacted by the restrictions?

Never. I am too confident in my skills to minmax from 1 WQ to the next. The choice and meaningful argument was never about that.

So, now you are moving goalpost. The energy thing was never the thing why you made this thread. Just a way to finish with a gotcha? Fuck sake, you have lost a lot of credibility. The Kaver that always discussed so nicely are now minimized to "your opinion is invalid since you dont agree with me"

Besides, if you indeed have gone out of energy several times, you using all the energy is just proving one thing: You can't decide for shit, so your choices made an impact.

[Kaver]

Swapping everything on the fly makes no choice matter.

But the choice also don't matter if the answer is obvious. If one option is the best on 9/10 bosses then you're simply going to choose that one. Restrictions doesn't change that. If Blizzard want to make choice matter then they have to put us in a situation where it's hard to pick what's right. But they don't. There's always an obvious solution and that's what removes the meaning of the choices. At least for me.

[Stickiler]

I'm okay with them wanting to reinject rpg elements into the game.

I'm also okay with making my covenant choice based on power because frankly I don't care about the covenants.

But I'm not okay with Blizzard trying to tell my choice is meaningful because it's not meaningful to me.

To be meaningful is to have meaning. The meaning, to you, is power and nothing else. Your meaningful choice was choosing power over everything, and that made the rest of the choices for you. There was still a meaningful choice made.

[Loveliest]

Always remember that if you want x there is always a person who does not want x. The "meaningful choice" bs started from other players too.
This game is played at both competitive level and more casual levels. You cannot have "meaningful choices" at competitive level and that is super hard to understand for most people. Absolute same discussion with people wanting balance but not wanting the classses to be too "samey".

Yeah, I liked being able to switch gear in M+ and that choice was taken away for some reason. You could even change specs in CMs. There is probably some reason for that; as far as I have seen it, blizzard's choices usually lie in making things seem more accessible to the less hardcore.

[ippollite]

I'm okay with them wanting to reinject rpg elements into the game.

I'm also okay with making my covenant choice based on power because frankly I don't care about the covenants.

But I'm not okay with Blizzard trying to tell my choice is meaningful because it's not meaningful to me.

Youve kinda missed the point. Let me give you an illustrative example:

There was once a super powerful addon called decursive. Anyone who could decurse would have a list of players in a menu affected by a curse. Curses were super important mid vanilla. This addon meant that those curses could be easily cheesed by anyone with the addon. Initially, blizzards response was to then throw massive waves of curses to force players to counter the addon (through basically sidelining druids on mages on curse duty). This forced groups to demand groups HAD the addon and classes who would use it. They eventually realised that the only sensible thing to do was break the addon for the sanctity of the game (otherwise we'd have had eventually half the raid on decurse duty like a kind of mini healing game). It was an arms race. The arms race would have led to a really crappy experience with formulaic raids and composition. It was made so they didnt have to design around this one addon, and so they could make curses and decursing an important mechanic for encounters again.

Now perhaps they really just want you all to be able to RP again, but nothing in the game has ever suggested such a thing. So my sneaking suspicion is that they realised that had they left the covenants as a free for all, (and especially with covenant utility having such potential power), they'd have players cheesing their way through encounters. If you can all door of shadows on one boss to avoid a very important mechanic, and then immediately switch to necro for the shield on another to soak, then using your pot from bastion to subvert x-mechanic on y-boss, balance would be very hard to maintain. So thats why they put the cost where they did: At least one lockout. Its also likely why theyre sticking to their guns for the time being. Now imagine full ripcord being pulled on top of that? You get to pick your utility, your class power, your conduit chain... its a balance nightmare. "meaningful choice" is a meme and should be treat as such.

[Kaver]

Never. I am too confident in my skills to minmax from 1 WQ to the next. The choice and meaningful argument was never about that.

So, now you are moving goalpost. The energy thing was never the thing why you made this thread. Just a way to finish with a gotcha? Fuck sake, you have lost a lot of credibility. The Kaver that always discussed so nicely are now minimized to "your opinion is invalid since you dont agree with me"

Besides, if you indeed have gone out of energy several times, you using all the energy is just proving one thing: You can't decide for shit, so your choices made an impact.

I was only asking you that question because I agree that it's stupid to make assumptions about people like you said. I don't know you. I wasn't trying to move the goal post.

Running out of conduit energy is very common if you like to play around with multiple specs. And it was a part of my argument from the beginning. It was point 2) of my OP. A lot of the people who are saying conduit energy is a good thing have never been impacted by it.

- - - Updated - - -

To be meaningful is to have meaning. The meaning, to you, is power and nothing else. Your meaningful choice was choosing power over everything, and that made the rest of the choices for you. There was still a meaningful choice made.

No it's not meaningful choice to me because it's not even a choice for me.

Choosing power for me is not a meaningful choice... it's the only choice.

- - - Updated - - -

Youve kinda missed the point.

No I get your point. And I agree with you. It's just a very different point from the one I was trying to make in this thread.

[Warning]

But the choice also don't matter if the answer is obvious. If one option is the best on 9/10 bosses then you're simply going to choose that one. Restrictions doesn't change that. If Blizzard want to make choice matter then they have to put us in a situation where it's hard to pick what's right. But they don't. There's always an obvious solution and that's what removes the meaning of the choices. At least for me.

I get your point, even though a degree of permanence wouldn't necessarily imply a choice being best on 9/10 fights. That aside, honestly I don't feel that having an "obvious" solution for 9/10 bosses is that bad. Particularly when you consider what it would take to achieve the opposite of what is "obvious" nowadays: a choice so complex or obscure that the entire theorycrafting community of wow would not be able to figure out the right answer to present to the rest of the community on a silver platter. In which case no regular player can be expected to make meaningful decision in the first place.

I think you have to accept that the choice is always either an illusion OR a choice between preferred playstyle and optimal output (with blizzard tuning the differences to be as small as they can). Given those two options I prefer the second, and to make it meaningful I think a degree of permanence and not swapping too easily is better than the alternative, because otherwise why ask us to choose to begin with.

That said, I also feel like Blizzard right now is offering choices more than necessary. The talent system and gearing should be enough when it comes to character power choices and all these other systems make the game needlessly complex.

[Crimson Spears]

Blizzard admitted in the interview the systems are a blazing dumpster fire they won't ever do again.

You gotta learn blizz talk. Them saying that it will only stay in the shadow lands is them saying it failed utterly.

[Kaver]

a choice so complex or obscure that the entire theorycrafting community of wow would not be able to figure out the right answer to present to the rest of the community on a silver platter. In which case no regular player can be expected to make meaningful decision in the first place.

Let me give you a good example of a talent choice which is not obvious:

In Legion I mained a DK. On the first talent row of Unholy you had the choice between Unholy Frenzy and Clawing Shadows (Unholy Frenzy was a maintenance buff back then). Unholy Frenzy was the best choice in terms of numerical value but Clawing Shadows made the spec more forgiving by giving you 30 yard range on one of your main abilities. So here you had the choice between the best numerical talent or the more forgiving talent. And I LOVED this choice. THIS is to me a meaningful choice which is not obvious. And for progression raiding I often had a hard time choosing between those 2 talents.

So the talent that has the highest performance capacity is not almost the obvious choice if it has a huge impact on gameplay. Blizzard sometimes get this right. But with conduits right now they only really impact the numerical part so the choice between Performance and Forgiveness is not really there.

[Doffen]

I was only asking you that question because I agree that it's stupid to make assumptions about people like you said. I don't know you. I wasn't trying to move the goal post.

Running out of conduit energy is very common if you like to play around with multiple specs. And it was a part of my argument from the beginning. It was point 2) of my OP. A lot of the people who are saying conduit energy is a good thing have never been impacted by it.

Right. So if they removed that restriction, it would become more meaningful? It would be the opposite. But for all it is worth, they could just remove that restriction. That to me is just a minor thing in all this. Even in your (2. Because you wrote about that people would just pick whatever is best. Thats the point. People might just pick whatever is best. Some do not. I also pick whats best often. But if I dont feel changing or felt that the conduit change was bad, I would swap back.

To me it sounded like you were trying to get me at something just to say my opinion isnt worth anything because you just kept pushing, when it had no relevance to what we were discussing.

Its best to just take peoples opinion at face value. I think the first few posts we had was good and healthy. I think your opinion is understandable. When I tell you what I think, why just not accept it?

If you were just asking, then I am sorry for being so harsh.

[Accendor]

Tell me about it. I hate having to choose a name for characters, their class and which spec to play. Why can't I swap all of it on the fly? If my current priest wants to suddenly be dual dagger stabby stabby rogue, why can't she? Mid combat too, preferably. Down with the restrictions!

You make jokes about it, but that is exactly how FF14 works.
You may not like it, which is fair enough, but there is no basis to joke about it, if exactly this system already exists and is very successful.

[Arainie]

I'm okay with them wanting to reinject rpg elements into the game.

I'm also okay with making my covenant choice based on power because frankly I don't care about the covenants.

But I'm not okay with Blizzard trying to tell my choice is meaningful because it's not meaningful to me.

So we can essentially sum up these 5 pages as arguing semantics. Replace it with something else than meaningful that doesn't offend you and we can probably cut 4 of the 5 pages out.

[Kaver]

Right. So if they removed that restriction, it would become more meaningful?

It wouldn't be more meaningful and it wouldn't be less meaningful. To me it's just a meaningless restriction that adds no positive value but only a lot of negative value to a certain group of people. And it frustrates me to see a lot of people who are not affected by it at all telling other people that it gives them meaningful choice.

When I tell you what I think, why just not accept it?

To be honest I never really truly understood what your opinion was. I was answering so many people at the same time that I just ended up throwing out generic answers. That's my bad.

My main point in this thread is that Blizzard cannot tell me what I find meaningful. And they shouldn't design based on the idea that something is universally meaningful. Because it depends who you ask.

- - - Updated - - -

So we can essentially sum up these 5 pages as arguing semantics. Replace it with something else than meaningful that doesn't offend you and we can probably cut 4 of the 5 pages out.

If you think it's only about semantics then you're wrong.

[Azadina]

You make jokes about it, but that is exactly how FF14 works.
You may not like it, which is fair enough, but there is no basis to joke about it, if exactly this system already exists and is very successful.

On the contrary, I'd love to mess around with having access to all skills at any given time, and see what kind of crazy setups I could make if it's like "here's all of them, pick 20 at a time". I can also realize however, that it'd effectively end the game.

[Orwell7]

Actually, Blizzard trying to dictate what is meaningful in their game is totally legitimate as it is, you know, their game. And they're the one shaping the rules of this game.

Is this peak capitalism?
When a freakin ENTERTAINMENT company tells you what to enjoy! It used the be the other way around, when companies served users to get their money.
And this shows why the gaming industry is gone to the way it is, because designers of games are butthurt children who get offended if someone does not like their products. So they insist until the sales go down and then cry about being misunderstood and "too progressive" or whatever.

I'll grab my popcorn tho

[Crimson Spears]

Kind of feels like the rest of the community has caught up with what the raider community spoke out about on alpha finally. I find it perplexing that the raider community apparently also loves this system now but with the wow community you take a "I told you so" where you can find it.

[czarek]

Ion is obsessed with exclusive systems that matter for a short term called major patch/expansion. Once we got shit azerite that u got to farm and now we got convenants that we dont have to farm but cant reroll freerly. I dont know which one is more frustrating ><

[Crimson Spears]

Ion is obsessed with exclusive systems that matter for a short term called major patch/expansion. Once we got shit azerite that u got to farm and now we got convenants that we dont have to farm but cant reroll freerly. I dont know which one is more frustrating ><

My guess is whatever comes next. The player base screamed "I wanna be the snowflake" So now we are cursed to a half decade of terrible systems all desperately trying to make snowflake builds viable.

This is why I highly support shaming and mocking terrible players making outrageous demands only by ruthlessly mocking them into silence can the tide be steamed.

[Stickiler]

No it's not meaningful choice to me because it's not even a choice for me.

Choosing power for me is not a meaningful choice... it's the only choice.

It literally is a choice for you. You said it yourself, "It's the only choice" <- Key word choice, it's right there. You have CHOSEN to pursue power above all else, which means as long as you're given 2 options, you'll chose the option which MEANs the most to you, ie the most meaningful choice. In your case, whatever has simmed/guides say is the best.

[Kaver]

you'll chose the option which MEANs the most to you, ie the most meaningful choice.

That's not what defines a meaningful choice xD