Are Covenents Another mistake?

Community General Discussion
102

That’s the problem. A lot more customization. Which also is a multi layered thing too.

Covenant ability on top of soulbind on top of legendary on top of normal stats and such.

What it ends up being, is that even if there’s a 1% advantage for a particular covenant and then 1% for legendary and 1% for soulbinds and so on, the combined difference of picking a wrong path would be significant. So it’ll be a GIANT MESS.

Even if we ignore the balance part and assume that blizzard won’t make it be worse than what corruptions are right now, to put player power behind a covenant, would make most players automatically go for the best one. Not the one they like more or the ability they enjoy more. They’ll go for the most powerful one dps wise. Imagine being a fairy death knight, when obviously venthyr or maldraxxes theme fits your character best.

And then, even if we ignore this, there’s the issue of this system being a talent tree that you get to choose once and not able to change again, without a significant waste of time.

And even if we ignore that, There’s the issue that arrives when that inevitable balancing patch comes around. You picking something for power and now suddenly option B is stronger and you’re now stuck with the weaker one unless you want to farm all that renown and everything again.

And even if we ignore all of those things, imagine the mess it’ll be in group finders and pugs. People not inviting certain classes for joining the wrong covenants and so on.

There’s just so much that can go wrong with this system and based on blizzard’s history, it most likely will go wrong.

103

I apologize if I sound rude, but you don’t seem to have played in Legion, have you?

The combination of legendary items, sets and proper artifact traits was present in there and it did not blow up nearly as bad unless we are talking mythic raiding and m15/20+

We (as a player base) were there. It was bad, but it was not nearly as bad as fear mongering made it out to be. I was never declined an invite for a raid/m+ because I had wrong legos/traits/sets. Nor were "please link lego’ groups common behavior.

Again, i do not like the covenant set up currently, I just want to make things as clear as possible based on what has happened so far.

Edit : I am a lot more likely to inspect someone corruptions in BFA over I was someone’s gear in Legion =.=

104

and like i said, even if you ignore one or two issues, there’s a lot more that comes.

And the random drop legendary system of legion wasn’t as aimed as the current shadowland’s system. you got random stuff. Some got lucky and got good gear, others didn’t get it. Even if the difference in power was significant, it was something that couldn’t have been helped. A lot of players weren’t in their BIS legendary anyways and things were fine.

But in this one, we have the option to choose everything. And when there’s a choice ahead of you, most people automatically go for the best.

I’m gonna give you an example. At this point in time in bfa, everyone already has all the corruptions they need and are fully geared too. And it’s proven that mastery stat corruption on mage is the way to go.

If you end up seeing someone having avoidance, twilight devastation or some other trait stacked for a mage at a high item level, wouldn’t you think it’s best to bring up another player who has the proper gear instead? This is because if it was early on, you would think that this guy doesn’t have a choice. the gear’s fine, so we’ll just get him. But if you do it later on, you knew he had a different choice and still chose this instead.

There’s a responsibility that automatically comes with a choice. you don’t have that with RNG. And by the time people got everything in legion, it was far passed its early days and balancing kicked in to make things better.

So while you’re right to think that based on what happened in legion, it’s safe to feel ok about the covenants, it’s really not. The situation is different.

That choice will make a difference, and it’s no longer out of your control like it used to. And when you choose poorly, people react to it in this game. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t have constant complaints about raider IO or stuff like that.

105

It does not matter. As long as the buff exist people will want someone on that can use it, no matter the balance.
Those buff are too powerful.

Yes but not like this. Advantages and disadvantages should be on your choices, not arbitrarly assigned by poor design.
We are already limited in covenant choices by the fact that some powers are utter crap, and if you multi spec, the choice is generally even narrower.
Adding another discrimination point on choices that we are kinda forced to make, is poor design.

106

Yeah we already have advantages and disadvantages from our regular talent choices. There is no reason to have more choices that are both harder to change and also affect other things like which cosmetics and story you can progress with.

The whole “chose your team” when all the 4 covenants are on the same side against the maw, makes no sense from a story perspective too.
The player practically each of these 4 from destruction if I heard right. That is the point of them acting like employers after that

107

Covenants are borrowed powers hence why they are a mistake.

2 Likes
108

First BFA killed alts, then SL will kill another aspects of the game by main class. Coz in M+ you need 1 covenant bonus and 1 spec, in PvP another spec and another covenant, in raid another covenant + differnet relics thats you need to grind, change and so on. This system looks terrible and punished when you have not right covenant.

2 Likes
109

Basically the only people who will not feel affected at those who will play this like a single player game and then quit when they are done with the story and the LFR raid.
Because the covenant choices are a single player game design…

2 Likes
110

I said it on Blizzcon when they accounce covenants. They will be crap like Aldor and Scrayers was in TBC. I never like games where I must chose something and I cannot see second side.

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111

Yeah, a lot of us called it as soon as they talked about permanent and semi permanent choices with the covenant system in that Blizzcon.

Even in single player games like Dragon Age inquisition, I hate that I cannot save both the Templars and the Mages :frowning:
At least in Skyrim you can be in the “To hell with both of The Empire and The Stormcloaks” side on the civil war.

112

And this is best way always for a “hero” or “champion”. Leave politics away! I never want be a hero, I jsut want be a adventurer and take my gold from adventurer guild.

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113

I do think covenants are do or die and can have quite some harmful effects…

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114

Aldor and Scryers were nowhere near as bad as the covenant as a concept.
Minor benefit in picking either one of those two, massive difference in power, progression and content with the covenants, with the addition of being locked out from playing world content with friends since wq and campaign are different from covenant to covenant.

It’s bread and butter of a proper rpg making defining choices.

115

But in rpg I can save, or start new sesion. But here when I mess up I lost more. I ofter give really low ratings to rpg games where is no neutral option. Because I don’t like politic and doing something for other without benefit. You want hire me? Pay well of duck off.

116

True, but it’s no different in wow. You can start a new toon and explore different stuff and stories.

People are only scared of not being able to catch up in a reasonable time, and i can’t blame them for that, so much nonsense timegating is cutting off people from really exploring the game.

I’ve been playing for years, and i still can’t find the time to do much of the old content i missed, or to roll a horde toon and explore the ugly side of wow.

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117

I cannot start new toon, How I will get all my challange mode rewards, my titles or artifact apperances? There is no way in mmo to do this because Blizzard removing content from game.

118

This is another problem with wow and another conversation but I agree too much content gets removed.

119

Thats why I stick to one character.

120

I apologize, I fell asleep.

There is a logical leap you are performing here - you assume everyone would pick the “Bis” or make others to pick “Bis”, even though neither of those are true.

Yes, forum users and other more engaged players would aim for “Bis” and would try to perform under the scenarios needed to milk the most performance out. However, we are not the majority. Let me pick a simple example from a simple spec - BM hunter and Binding Shot. Even though this talent has close to no functionality for most raid encounters, there is a sizable portion in Warcraft logs that uses it. There are even players that use Barrage. (this is ofcourse outside of the fact that not every run is logged, hell it is possible that logged are minority).

Well this was a lot of word vomit, but what is my end point - Even with BiS present trough Legion and BFA, even with all the information being easy to gather, not everyone will follow the meta and even fewer people will enforce it. Yes, there will be the so called “try hards” that will inspect you and kick you from the party if you run sub optimal build, but those people are usually a minority.

121

That’s the problem here. this silent majority as you call them, won’t care. They’ll be fine either way. because they don’t go for mythic+. They don’t do raids. They don’t socialise and they don’t care about high end content.

The rest of the playerbase, from semi casual, to casual to hardcore to super hardcore players, will all suffer.