unstoppable force vs immovable object: the interview
Removed
that was the longest answer to one question ever....i mean we got stuff from it but wish we had more than one question.i wish we had legion style interviews with each designer and everyone asks questions and they hit all the questions they want to hit as long as its not redundant. i feel like i got a lot out of the legion interviews.
There've been lots of interviews, but this is by far the worst. The same questions that were asked a dozen times already. Preach sighing and at a point literally laughing at Ion' answer. I liked Preach and his interviews in the past, but damn, this one was really painful to watch.
I hope the Devs stick to their guns on certain things. Preach doesn't speak for all of us. It's an RPG. Choices should matter.
The reason that this one question was so prominent was because its literally the biggest thing wrong with shadowlands right now and the most important topic to discuss. Preach literally even said that this was going to be more like a conversation and less like an interview before starting. Nobody was going to watch this expecting to see a bunch of different questions on small things that don't matter and occur 90% more of the time in regular interviews. This was a very concrete discussion on a big problem that many people are worried about. It we can get this fixed, shadowlands can turn out great and we were trying to get this information out of blizzard.
So, if Blizzard is looking for ways around destructible conduits but also not letting you swap from fight to fight, how would people feel about a charge system, where removing a conduit from a soulbind meant you couldn't use that same conduit again for, say, two hours?
I will say that part of the covenant system that is trying to be sold to us is that we should be choosing one that adheres to our character, which is an RP element and the designers absolutely should make game systems around the premise of RP, even though the RP aspect of WoW is not what the majority is here for. To that end, it is also worth reminding people that the min/maxers, whilst no longer being limited to top end guilds, are also a minority of the playerbase. Easy to argue that the are a larger minority than the RP group, but still part of it.The only real question about covenant abilities that should be getting asked is why are they designed for distinct aspects of the game? Why is there one that is intentionally designed to perform better in PvP? Why is there one that is designed to be "best" for speed-running Mythic+ dungeons? Why is there one that outperforms the others in AoE raid encounters? To be less obtuse, the true question should be, "why aren't we being given a way to build the base cov abilities towards the content we prefer?" Which players assumed was going to be the case with conduits.I will say though, Covenants, as they stand, are only designed for 9.0 endgame. We do not know if they plan to allow us to do in 9.1 and beyond. They probably already intend for us to be able to have multiple covenants later on and allow us to freely (rested area) switch between active cov abilities. We also don't have the full details of how "hard" rejoining a covenant will be. My money is on the escalating gold/resource cost of the original talent resetting system (current Azerite respecing system), but if the different is just that, and no limitations of how many times per week, then honestly, min-maxers aren't really in a bad place with it.Heck, even if the difference is that the first join is a single "let me join" and the rejoin involves 5 "I'm sorry, lemme back in" it wouldn't be a big deal. If it takes a full day to rejoin, or there's a cooldown in switching, then min-maxers will complain, and I would support them then, because feeling like you can't play your best in PvP, Mythic Dungeons and Raid progressing in a single week, then we have bad design.
Ion Role Playing Rogue
I'm worried about Ion's mindset... Preach has made several videos outlining the fundamental issues with the Covenant-restrictions.The Covenant system is NOT just 'X is good for A, Y is good for B' for different situations. Currently:
Let see how much % you agree when your covenant ability inst up to par with the others.