Much in the way as soon as azerite armour hit alpha and people said “what the heck, this system is awful, we have to re-earn abilities we already have everytime we get new gear that’s not fun”, Covenant bound abilities and soul binds are going to be just as unfun and disastrous.
I can guarantee you that the various abilities you get from the covenants will not be balanced. There will be some that are so clearly better than others that people will feel required to pick them even if they don’t like the thematics.
Don’t worry, Blizzard will balance them to be close! I think we all know this is unlikely to happen. The first talent row for affliction is a good example: it has 3 talents.
For the whole expansion, the first talent caused you to do about 7% less damage than if you just didn’t pick a talent at all. The second one was a wash, 1-2% damage at most. The third one was by far the most powerful, and everyone picked it.
It is finally being changed in 8.3, when the expansion is virtually over. If Blizzard choose to ignore such an easily fixed balance issue for nearly the whole expansion, what makes you think that Covenant abilities will be any better?
My second prediction is that 1 or 2 covenant abilities are going to be so game breaking OP that they will be nerfed. But they won’t be nerfed straight away; no, Blizzard will wait until 9.1 or 9.1.5, until people have chosen their covenant due to the OP ability. They’ll then overnerf it to be clearly worse than everything else, making everyone who picked their covenant due to that ability upset and angry.
My third prediction is a dev post around 9.3 stating something along the lines of “yeah we realise binding so much borrowed power into covenants and key abilities was a mistake. We should have done a better job listening to feedback in alpha/beta. We’re going to address this in 10.0 though with the new legendary trinket talent trees and the new pancreas of azeroth system, we’ve learnt a lot.”
Blizz didn’t like tier sets because it limited choice but it seems to me covenants for sure will limit player choice.
There is a reason why talent system talent row is better for the health of the game than adding more rental abilities that pigeonholes your choices and don’t last beyond the expansion. Maybe Blizz should embrace the idea that making the talent system interesting again is in their interest.
This thread had some great ideas on how to still create meaning behind covenant commitment while opening up the ability to switch covenants freely, without charge:
Switching defeats the purpose of investing in a Covenant. I don’t have an issue with the core concept of Covenants and them being a semi-permanent choice; my issue is that they are tying what are sure to be game breaking abilities to this choice.
So nothing important tied to them then? No reason for most people other than collectors to bother? Then you’d just make a thread how there is nothing to do <3
It was just another way to get around the gameplay issues you discuss while still offering an incentive to stick with one covenant.
Your idea works too - and I’m ok with it as well.
There really isn’t a purpose for investing in a Covenant in the long-term anyways - once the next expansion rolls around, your covenant choice won’t matter.
As a matter of practicality - it shouldn’t matter if people want to switch covenants since they’re all on the same side and trying to help defeat the Jailer.
Similar to how the U.S. military forces allowed people to change branches of the military when the need arose - because the goal of defeating the enemy was more important than keeping the “commitment” to a branch. ]
Streamers who are buddy-buddy with Blizzard Devs (Take it for what you figure its worth) have said that Shadowlands is still in the early stages and that they are eager for player feedback on the design of the coven system.
*Note - the Streamers have said that ‘this sucks’ or worse, ‘this is great’ is not feed back. Take the devs at their word. pile drive into Alpha - like that will happen for only 1% of the twitter streamers - and (SURPRISE) don’t play the dam game - rip it apart and try to break it. Try to find the flaws in the balancing or the abilities. And most important, give them a clear, concise breakdown of the skills, talents, game mechanics that are broken.
JUST DO NOT HARP THAT ‘MY CLASS ISN’T OP NOW!!!’
*Disclaimer - I am not a wow fanboi, nor a blizz shill. My posting record includes posts stating my reasons why I believed WoD was blizzard jumping the shark, and why Legion was (SHOCKING!) what happens when you fail to jump the shark and it eats you. And BfA was the after dinner result of that same shark….
Which is the opposite of what Ion said at Blizzcon, where he said even feedback of “this isn’t fun” is useful.
Having participated in every WOW alpha and beta since the beginning, I am not confident that they will listen to feedback, unless they do a complete reversal of their attitude in the last 2 (Legion and BFA).
It’s frustrating, because most of the issues of these (and even prior) expansions are picked up pretty quickly in alpha and beta - alpha more because the SNR really rises in beta due to many more people joining. Most of the “contrite, we’ve learnt lessons about why didn’t work out etc” posts made by Blizzard over the past few expansions were over things that were clearly predicted and communicated in the alpha phase.
I guess what i’m saying is I REALLY hope this time they will listen more closely and save themselves a whole lot of grief.
