Here’s why I’m not so keen on covenants being strictly cosmetic…
It just makes the whole system a lot harder to care about. Cool, I get to choose where I quest and which zone is my base and get some transmog appearances that everyone will have shoved under their beds in two weeks’ time. Great, it’s almost exactly like leveling in Legion except without even the class flavor element. How is that even remotely interesting? That kind of “choice” is on par with being given the choice between four almost identically colored socks.
If someone can come up with a way to make cosmetic covenants compelling I’d be much more open to not tying abilities to them.
Well then, you’re not dealing with a complicated system at that point. Now you are dealing with tryhards who wanna pretend they are suddenly on the level of World First guilds and they are so so close to killing the first boss on Mythic ever.The majority of people who play this game are just gonna, not join those groups, or even start their own. Cuz, not everyone is aiming for World First mythic Kill on N’zoth while they are level 98.
What’s wrong with some choices not being as powerful as others in specific situations? As long as, generally across the board, they are fine abilities on their own, why does it matter that much? Unless you are, of course, a high level PvPer or Mythic+ Dungeoneer, but you would’ve picked that covenant from the get go anyways.
No that’s not player agency. Player agency is giving me a different choice on how to progress towards the same/similar goal.
If I want to level my character without going through questing zones and be a pure pvp character then that is my agency. If I want to be a pet battle master then allow me to fight my battles with pets instead. If I want to stab a quest giver in the face and not waste my time with his collect 10 wolf heads quest then allow me to do so. If I want to focus my character build on single target instead of AoE damage, then my agency is deciding that with talents or glyphs.
Player agency is not being forced to pick one out of four covenants and having the rewards for joining a covenant be some awkward mishmash of multiple different types of rewards for different playstyles, lore, and aesthetics that will never fully match your character.
Why do cosmetic choices need to be compelling? Why not split the two and worry about making the ability path compelling and let the cosmetic path just be fun?
People want their character strength to come from their class not a quest that locks them out of other paths. Why is this so hard to comprehend? Gear, enchants, gems, talents, etc all this can also change how you play but you know the difference between them and a covenant? You don’t have to change your entire story and faction to swap between them.
We already did this experiment with limitations and we got racials out of them. A horribly balanced piece of garbage that ruined the two faction dynamic of the game. Remember when priests got new abilities just for being a different race? Yeah not a thing anymore. All of the great racials have been nerfed and are shadows of their former selves.
At one point horde had the best racials for both PvP and PvE and before Blizzard fixed that it was too late. The communities who actually wanted a chance at progression all knew to go horde. There was no reason to ever go back. Now enjoy watching the Alliance faction slowly dwindle to nothing.
Where exactly is the player agency in being told what covenant to pick because your pvp or pve guild demands you to get X ability to be invited to their groups? People should join whatever faction they want and progress with whoever they want. Cosmetic rewards and lore should be the only things you get locked out of.