They were told the problems the Covenant system would create in the lead up to release and they blithely assured us it would be ok as they would be able to balance it.
Everyone laughed at that. Blizzard may enjoy recreating the game’s systems anew with each expansion but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have forgotten their failed attempts in the past.
Blizzard is addicted to introducing pointless player power systems into this game. Either it’s because they want to put a major new feature as a bullet point on the expansion front page, regardless of whether or not that feature is a good idea, or they are convinced that players actually care about this nonsensical division of player power when all the evidence is that they do not or it’s a combo of both.
Blizzard should never have attached player power to Covenants. That their playerbase, people who play the game but the vast majority of whom are not game designers were able to correctly identify the problems with the system before it was launched means Blizzard knew of the issues as well.
Which means one of two things.
The first is that they hubristically believed they genuinely could balance it, when even non game designers can see that there were too many variables at play (12 classes each with a unique ability, 36 specs interacting with 12 abilities in different ways, multiple legendaries per spec and each spec interacting with 12 distinct soulbinds) for that to ever happen. That they were incapable of balancing previous systems of smaller scope is damning, because if they felt they could tackle an even more intricate system where they had failed previously, then that is where hubris crosses the line into incompetence.
The other possibility is that they understood they couldn’t balance it, understood people would be compelled to pick covenants by virtue of what the spreadsheets decreed was best for them rather than what they would have enjoyed on an aesthetic/cosmetic level and that they decided to implement it anyway. That demonstrates contempt of their playerbase.
I will say it again. Stop adding these systems. The only system that has been proven to work is that power derives from gear. If you want to give us a cool new ability, you make that a permanent part of the class as a new passive or a new talent. If you don’t want to give us a new ability forever, DON’T GIVE IT TO US. We won’t miss what we never had, and no matter how cool you think it is spending development time on creating 48 new abilities with a shelf life of two years is, it’s far less cool to have those abilities ripped away from you and then replaced with the new shiny.
No more Artifact weapons. No more Netherlight Crucible. No more Artifact power. No more Azerite Armor. No more Azerite powers. No more corruptions. No more Azerite power. No more Covenants. No more Renown. No more soulbinds. No more conduits. No more Anima. Just stop wasting time building systems nobody else wants.
Gear from mobs. That’s it. Announce that and you’ll get a huge cheer, might cheer you up.
But when you hear that huge cheer, remember it represents a repudiation of six years of time wasted on those horrible systems. Remember all the hours you slaved over one aspect or another of one them and know that that cheer means you were wasting your time. Remember how you’ll feel knowing that the community has rejected that effort, remember it so that the next time one of you has an itch to have metriced progression and a spreadsheet for tracking player power, that you can shut them down then and there.
And yes. Pull the ripcord. What are you doing in resisting but protecting the integrity of a system nobody beyond yourselves cares about. Pull the ripcord and people can actually use Covenants for what they should have been, an aesthetic choice to grind armor and mounts that appeals to you.
