As the title says, I think the players are all outraged by the Covenant system because it means that you will be locked into what you choose. This is just what player agency is. Because YOU chose this covenant, it was YOUR choice to not go with the others, whether it be for gameplay reasons, power level reasons, or aesthetic reasons. No matter what the reason, it was your choice to choose that covenant. When I look at all the “outrage”, I see people saying that it reduces the choice just because maybe on covenant ability is going to be 5% better than the others in a specific situation. I don’t think players realize that with player agency comes player sacrifice. You give something to get something else. Consequences make it so that your choice truly feels like it matters. In my opinion, I think as long as all the abilities have an 8% or less difference in power level in general but in some situations that specific ability is going to shine, the Covenant system will achieve it’s goal in giving players agency. Add a way to repick your covenant of course. So that if you made a mistake, you can go back and choose the covenant you actually like. But other than that, keep it rather restrictive, don’t make it easy to swap in and out of because if you do, the choice no longer matters and it just becomes another button to press and swap out of every other hour.
Player Agency =/= punishing players for choosing the Covenant with the worst abilities, despite the player liking the lore and aesthetic.
If the player decides that the lore or aesthetic is more important than their player power, that is on them.
If the player decides that player power is more important than their aesthetic preference, that is also on them and they are welcome to do so.
Also, I did say that the abilities should be within a certain power level so that one isn’t absolutely worthless compared to the others unless you are a Mythic Plus raider that’s looking at the numbers with a microscope.
They dare not “punishing the player” because they picked a covenant. The Player has the agency, the choice, and the knowledge (Because you get to play with each covenant’s abilities as you reach class level), to make the decision of wether to choose player power over aesthetic and vice versa.
It shouldn’t have to be this way, and that’s the point. You shouldn’t have to put up with less DPS just because you really like creepy skeletons.
There’s no need to have a positive and a negative rather than just two positives.
You can’t get unique lore and aesthetics and 100% optimal performance. Disparate abilities are never going to be perfectly balanced no matter how close the numbers are, there is always going to be something that performs at least .01% better than any other available option and if you aren’t taking it then it is sub optimal.
The only solution to this would be making every ability identical and effectively reducing the faction differences to purely cosmetic.
And what happens when you chose because you like the ability and they nerf it into the ground? Is that still not punishing the players for picking the covenant?
And there’s nothing wrong with that. The movement/flavor abilities can stay though imo.
In my opinion, what you’re asking for is not player agency or significant choices. You’re asking for inconsequential choices that don’t hinder basically at all. If you really like creepy skeletons, you have the choice to stay with the skeletons and take the, incredibly likely to be very minor, DPS hit. If you don’t want to suffer that hit, they you will have to swap to the best covenant, then go to your transmog vendor, then pick out a transmog set that looks best for what you wanted aesthetically for your character. That is again, player agency at work. There should be consequences. No t 50% damage penalties because you picked x, but there should be minor consequences for your choices if you truly want player agency.
there’s a line we gotta strattle
weighty choices and accessibility
both of them are agency, the agency to define your character by their choices and the agency to specialize based on the situation at hand
shadowlands is gonna be amazing for casuals who dont care about min maxing and top tier elitism
Locking in the covenant abilities honestly removes hard choice for me, im just going to pick whichever has the best performance for the content I want to do and then cry on the forums after it gets nerfed.
Would much rather I pick a covenant based on something other than in game performance as I think they’re all cool but when it comes down to it, me and many other players want to be as powerful as possible for the content we do and that’s not really something you can change.
On one hand… I agree completely. On the other… Can the choice not be choosing which gameplay mode I can be optimal in? Oh can it also not be flipped repeatedly throughout the expansion while bliz deems one covenant too powerful… then the next… and the next…
In other words… I don’t like that the choice is: Do I want to be as strong as I can be or… do I want to pick what I think looks cool and I’m more personally aligned with.
To me… that’s the wrong type of player agency. If I have to choose M+ or Raids (or arena for others, I don’t PvP)… That just feels like you’re asking to have upset players.
The choice you’re making is which Covenant you’ll stick with. It’s no different than Horde vs. Alliance. Again, there’s no reason to hinder anybody for liking what they like. Just let people like their Covenant and play that Covenant.
If Azerite is anything to go off of, it’s not going to be minor. Not at all.
That’s not player agency. That’s the exact opposite. Are you listening to yourself?
Consequences =/= Player Agency. That’s punishment.
Exactly, which turns this into a non-issue. People get to make and be locked into their choice of covenant, people get to use the ability that the situation calls for and don’t feel punished by being locked into the wrong choice and the kicker, blizzard can balance abilities as needed without stepping on people’s toes.
Because the only thing worse than being locked into a covenant you don’t care about is being locked into a covenant you don’t care about with a covenant ability that blizzard rolled through and buried 2 months into the expansion.
That would be awesome.
You assume that the ability is firstly, broken as heck, and secondly, is going to be nerfed to a state of unplayability. I honestly doubt such a thing will happen if they do it right and keep the power level of them all, generally close to one another. These abilities aren’t just passives like Corruptions are. These are active abilities that you as a player need to play with and try to maximize your value out of them. So it’s probably going to be way harder to get absolutely broken numbers. And it’ll be way less likely that the nerf with be completely destroy the ability, rather than a small step down in power level if they choose to nerf it.
It isn’t even really about identical numbers, it’s about certain specs being limited to one play-style because of the covenant they chose.
I like the abilities though
they could give all the abilities to every faction and give them the cosmetic of their faction
Just to make sure we’re on the same page, your answer to “would nerfing a covenant ability into the ground be punishing players for their choices” is “don’t worry, it won’t happen”?
People will always feel punished dependent on what they want. Unfortunately this has never been a one way street… you don’t get everything to just feel pleasure. There are things people do that they don’t want or feel bad because they want to be the best, or compete with the best.
While ignoring the feed back is bad… we will never reach a a unanimous decision on these decisions like Covenants.