I rarely respond or comment to things but this one had me thinking hard about things. I am casual player, I enjoy leveling, alts and transmog farming i enjoy mount farming and hanging with friends. I do my weekly content, my daily content. I did all the 8.3 stuff, i dont strive for the highest ilvl and i dont commit to a raid schedule. I have done maybe a +5 key like once or twice ever. I dont pvp. haven't been to a battlegrounds all of bfa, and I've done like maybe 1 or 2 arena matches...EVER. So for me, and there's probably a lot like me, who just play the game, take what gear you get, strive some and maybe do some light raiding, will never care to do heroic or mythic, could care less about mythic+ (i personally think its a dumb system..outside of the gear you get from it) and we are content. I hated Azerite gear from the start, i hated the AP neck grind. I hate that you have so so many systems, to slog through to even get into "end game". the gap of gear is crazy. Yes you get a lot of gear per week, the game throws it at you, but it doesn't give you MEANINGFUL gear, like scraps. 1 item here, 1 item there. Going from 410 to 445 was an absolute uphill battle without mythic+ and raiding..and to only be "ok" gear, not even great....pretty disheartening. Let alone want to to do the same grind on alts. So for me, this shadowlands stuff about how "everyone" swaps gear, trinkets, talents, etc for every boss encounter? i have never, and probably will never..there just isn't enough interest or reason for me to ever be that optimal. I think i am part of the majority of players who probably are in the same boat...sure there are plenty of raiders, and people who min/max. But for me...the "systems" never really felt like i HAD to swap talents between every boss encounter. I cant even remember last time i swapped talents, gear, anything at all for any encounter. It boggles my mind that there's this much discussion and concern on something that I literally have absolutely no interest/concern with..and never have. My main is a hunter, i specced beastmaster, the only thing i ever make sure I have right is my azerite powers, and essences. I hit up icy veins once in awhile, after patches especially and adjust if things have changed. Other than that...I haven't touched nothing. Do i care if i do more/less single target dps or aoe for 1 boss, then swap to something else? no? should I? hard to say...its as much as my choice, as a raiders choice to do it.Is my not choosing a different talent/trinket/something affecting anyone else? If i was mythic raiding..yes...but I'm not..so..no. Why do people care what others have chosen/how they play, outside of high end content. Am i judged because I am doing it wrong? But am I doing it wrong? This video brought up many good points, but I cant believe people/preach/Ion seem to think that this covenant system the main issue is that people will want to swap or change so can be 1% optimal or between each boss fight...If i didn't know it DOES happen I'd almost ask if it does, it seems extremely silly to me. literally the 5% maybe of player base who would even/or do such things is making them re-think a game-wide system....just doesn't make sense at all to me...probably never will.
It seems to me that when you are trying to keep everybody happy, you end up doing exactly the opposite. Too much talk about the skill systems and no real talk for content. Leveling alts and going through Legion expansion many times, made me see what made it so succesful: the content immersion and diversity. Instead of spending so much time to create systems that cater to a small percentage of high end game players, spend time giving us more things to do, like better and immersive quest lines, more story, more locations, etc. WOTLK didn't have all this class crap systems, and it is considered as the most succesful expansion. It was the quality of the content that made it worth playing.Changing class skills in every expansion, doesn't make the game more fun. Has anybody in Blizzard ever wondered why in other succesful mmorpg's, they don't fool around with classes all the time? Adding systems on top of systems, on top of changes, for the shake of change, is not gonna make me wanna play more, personally, but having interesting contet to do, it will. Just my two cents.
Another thing to consider. Preach -and many other people tackling covenants issue- is a far better player than virtually any Johnny McTrollend commenting on wowhead. Both as skill, and knowledge about game. Yet Johnny feels the need to be decisive about stuff that will never encounter, or will encounter at a very low level. I'm pretty sure many of these...glorified praising bots with "omg Ion ty, keep going Ion, make wow great again, Ion" were also cheering when azerite system was announced. System that took basically a whole expansion to be fixed, being patched like a Werk. Meanwhile, BFA alienated - arguably- more long time players from game than WoD, and only with few pairs of blinders on one could tell it was a good expansion. But, hey, another failed core game system after BfA would be desired, after all two wrongs make a right or something like that, eh?
Simply put covenant feels like if you had to make choice between the type of gun in Call of Duty, type of car in some race game and a hero in League of Legends baked into one option.So while you may be fine with it, people will generally choose what's best for what they enjoy (let's say I mainly enjoy CoD, so I choose what's the best there). However, unfortunately, LoL hero and a race car with it are garbage for the other two games, so I'll never play it, because even if I played well, I am still at massive disadvantage and for what? For wanting to play Call of Duty?Do you think people would be okay saying "well, I'll play League of Legends, but I know I'll have power disadvantage because of my CoD choice, but it doesn't matter, at least I can win against players who chose wrong too"? They won't. It'd make them not play the game. It's not fun to have to invest more effort to do same result. And there are players that don't care about results, its fine. But those really shouldn't speak about how things should be balanced, since they don't care about balancing in first place. They do it at the expense of people who do care about balancing.That's basically what covenants are. CoD is Arenas, the race car game is Mythic + and LoL is raiding.And yes, there will be straightforward better covenants. All might have disadvantages and advantages, but some are relevant and some are not, based on the content. So the covenant with relevant advantages for PvP and irrelevant disadvantages for PvP will be the best for PvP and the covenant with irrelevant advantages for PvP and relevant disadvantages for PvP will be the worst for PvP.
it's crazy how those defending Ion/want covenant abilities to be locked keep saying "making it free choice will destroy the RPG/choice".... like wat?1) wow is not and has never been a traditional RPG cause it's an MMO. Being multiplayer means that there will always be the "best choice", guides, min-maxers and so on. There is also PvP, balance, BiS, simming and so on which are all part of the game. 2) how exactly does making 4 abilities freely changeable completely "destroy" ur RPG? or fantasy? or w.e the hell it is you think it would do? Covenants already have a lot of differences for your choice: zone, sanctum, story, mounts, movement abilities, flair, armor, theme, rep rewards, covenant mini-quest thing and so onnone of that is going to go away just cause the 4 abilities are made changeable, stop overreacting. There is literally no downside to making them changeable as the abilities are not the only factor of the covenant choice, as I mentioned above. Meanwhile, keeping them locked to covenant and hard to change does not change anything for you, but it does make things worse for those who do care about: from pvp'ers to min-maxers to raiders to just those who want to be the strongest version of their char they can be, even if they don't do the highest content (like me).So why is the neutral-negative option being taken when there is a literal neutral-positive option easily available? -_-
Many of the people that are constantly arguing against Ion, probably never played D&D.In D&D, every single choice you make matters and is hard to reverse...the class you pick, the race, how you develop your skills, your gear, how you act, etc...that's a true RPG, because you are roleplaying, and even if one character might be stronger than the one, the goal is to enjoy the "adventure".The problem with WoW is that you have a group of people that want to min-max. While that seems normal for Method and other top guilds that fight for WorldFirst, the vast majority of playerbase will get nothing from it, they'll just be copying builds and rotations from somewhere, and stop having a connection with their character, because they're just copying someone else's.I rather have a stronger connection to my character and all the choices that I take to build it as I want, instead of having to be forced down a specific optimal path.