TL;DR - ease of Covenant swapping restrictions arguments at the end.
Disclaimer: I CAPSED and THICKENED key words in the post to ease navigation.
Dear Blizzard Development and Balance Team(s),
first of all - thank you for all your hard work. The results are impressive, WoW is an amazingly complex game. I sometimes get the feeling you don’t get enough acknowledgement and recognition for your work, especially the work done behind the scenes.
Now, to the point:
Based on live game, informations from 9.0.5 and what we know about 9.1 I state that current iteration of Covenant system, when SWAPPING a Covenant, is:
(A) GATEKEEPING PREVIOUSLY UNLOCKED FEATURES by demanding the player to replay another whole Covenant Campaign in order to UNLOCK PREVIOUSLY UNLOCKED CONTENT in form of:
- 3rd Soulbind option,
- Covenant Sanctum Features outside of Covenant-specific building (Path of Ascension, Abomination Factory, Queen’s Conservatory and Court Parties).
- Covenant Renown - Renown as progress measurement and gating feature makes sense. In current game iteration it is a chore for the player to regain renown - this cannot be justified through neither gameplay (player has had those powers earlier and through covenant switch the player became weaker until renown is regained) or lore reasons since achievements and the way characters mention Renown suggest it’s the renown player character holds across ALL REALMS OF SHADOWLANDS - which begs the question: how can the player character LOSE Renown through Covenant switching? - the player character STILL remains just as famous as the Maw Walker across ALL REALMS OF SHADOWLANDS.
(B) COVENANT SWITCHING is TIME GATED when a player wants to switch back to a Covenant the player has previously belonged to. This TIME GATE requires the player to do 2 weekly quests - this can take from 14 to 2 days based on how the player plans the Covenant switch.
This leads to conclusion: the rationale to (B) is to discourage the Player to switch the Covenant - understandable, since some covenants can possibly offer advantages in certain competitive activities.
HOWEVER, (B) is made obsolete by (A), since switching Covenants is already heavily penalized in ways that make it impossible to benefit from full array of Covenant advantages for some time after the switch.
Final point:
© Blizzard Management and WoW Executive Team (for clarification - the decision makers) push to market WoW less as an MMO focused on ADVENTURE WITH FRIENDS and more as a COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT TO TEST YOUR METTLE AGAINST OTHERS.
© fundamentally changes the optics through which players experience the game. WoW community wants to optimize their performance - stats presented by raider io, and Preach in his video about people Covenant choices confirm that clearly.
(D) Blizzard decides on their game balance and the balance changes over time, thus affecting the meta. When the meta changes, optimal Covenant choices will in some cases change as well. FOR NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN players will become comparitively weaker to other specs/classes - this is unavoidable in larger extent, but in smaller extent Covenant choice does affect player power.
The Conclusion:
WoW is ©
(B) is obsolete because (A) does it already - simplification of systems is good game design practice.
Because (D), players, ON NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN will be compelled to (A).
(A) PUNISHES PLAYER TIME INVESTMENT INTO THE GAME THAT THRIVES ON TIME INVESTMENT AND CONTINUOUS PROGRESSION
Dear Blizzard Development Team - due to presented arguments please remove or reduce (A) severity and remove completely (B) since it is counterproductive to game health and actively punishes your subscribers for enjoying what they paid for.
Your trully,
Gryfman Grifman Griefman
TL;DR - WoW Covenant switch design actively punishes the players, especially those who might have to switch because game balance changes over time. Players will have to switch since the game is played as a competitive game in the overwhelming majority.
