Then the Dev Team’s heavy stress of having to balance Covenants for both PvE and PvP will be lifted.
Given the vision of what Shadowlands should be and the tight deadline, tying each Covenant to a storyline and the char’s identity is warranted. However, the problem is tying them to combat abilities through spells. This is like having to balance classes for both PvE and PvP. History shows that this necessitates constant work for the Developers, while incentivizing players to “reroll” their class when the balance changes.
A simple and clever way is to make Covenants reward only gear and mounts. Imagine a plate class chooses a Covenant based on their fantasy and identity (not min maxing), goes thru the current finished storyline, and eventually earns a reward of 164-190(?) ilevel weapon. Say the Kyrian of Bastion gives a sword, the Venthyr of Revendreth gives an axe, etc. The weapon and its aesthetics (as transmog) most certainly enhances said fantasy and identity, without necessitating the very difficult balance: because as new contents are released, the 9.0 gear will be replaced by more powerful gear pieces.
Ian said:
Rather than add yet another layer to that decision matrix, we’re trying to do something different here, and let players more meaningfully define their character’s identity and set themselves apart from others who play the same class. And that identity entails a blend of aesthetic preference, narrative experience, and mechanical strengths and weaknesses. From the earliest sketched designs of the covenant system, our goal was for the answer to “what do you play?” in Shadowlands to be “Kyrian paladin” or “Venthyr paladin” rather than just “paladin.” And given the central role of combat and power progression to World of Warcraft as a whole, achieving that goal for most players requires that there be player power implications to covenant choice.
Players are clever devils. We will always find out some new broken ways to stack abilities to make them overpowered in PvE or PvP. Why even try to balance that? A quick and lazy way is to put the existing Covenent abilities on a reward weapon (so it will be obsolete for min-maxing in 9.2 or 9.3); a more thorough way is to come up with gear sets (164; upgradable up to 190 ilvl) and weapons as the reward, and maybe even change class ability aesthetics (e.g. a Kyrian UDK summons a bird; a Venthyr UDK summons a gargoyle), but just don’t tie the Covenants to combat abilities.
Covenants are a story choice, and for the vast majority of the population, it’s a no-brainer when it comes to story vs gameplay in WoW.
Which kinda sucks.
Cause imagine you’re a DK player. You’ve loved DK’s since WC3 and Arthas is your favourite character, the scourge your favourite faction. When Wrath came out, you rerolled DK and never looked back.
And then Blizzard tells you about Maldraxxus. It’s the birthplace of both the Scourge AND Necromantic magic, and they value strength above all.
Except then you spend the entire expac hanging with the furries in Ardenweald cause their ability is busted for DK’s and the Necrolord ability is complete garbage outside PvP.
Joining a Covenant is about being a part of a new, specific society with a unique position, duties, values, ect in the greater Shadowlands cosmology and the whole concept is built upon it being a singular choice, just like race and class, that will inform your character’s identity the entire time they are in the Shadowlands. Unhook even one part of that, abilities or cosmetics or whatever, negates that singular choice and therefore the whole concept of Covenants.
Guild: With the new balance of 9.x.x, all tanks are required to switch to the Night Fae of Ardenweald for raid progression.
Player: No! Please! My DK belongs to the Necrolords! Night Fae DK?! WTH!!!
If we consider that the Covenant abilities will likely be disabled and become obsolete in WoW 10.0 expansion anyway, Blizzard may as well make this part of the Covenant choice about a T26-ish or lower ilevel gear pieces. (T26 is the first raid set in SL.)
This way, in 9.0 and 9.1, the Covenant choice will affect both aesthetics and combat capability; but in 9.2 and beyond, as the gear reaches planned obsolescence, it will only affect aesthetics as transmog items.
Abilities stick to an expansion throughout; gear becomes obsolete every time when new Raids (and next PvP season) are released.
Oh no-one expects the Devs to change Covenants. Until they do, of course. Like they’ve changed every garbage system they’ve implemented since the beginning of Legion.
Currently Blizzard is forced to release Shadowlands before the US Thanksgiving shopping season, when a bunch of Xbox and PS games will be out in the market to compete.
This makes it hard to polish Shadowlands adequately thru testing. As long as the Devs have the will, PvP gear, legendaries, and the likes can still be changed after the release with a patch.
However, if Covenants are released as they currently are in Beta, we will inevitably see the type of broken spell stacking in Stoopzz’s video, where, with Covenant ability, Legendary equipment ability, and the likes, the warrior acquires god-like mobility, making any range class completely hopeless in PvP situations.
That will force the Dev team to always implement Covenant ability balance changes in every patch. It will become just like class balance and spec balance: Devs are exhausted; players are unhappy.
Another way is just make the Covenant ability aesthetic-only, you know. Like a Kyrian Ret Paladin has blue wings; a Venthyr ret paladin has red wings (from the Avenging Wrath spell). You know, things like that. It’s stupid, but saves the insane amount of work to reactively balance Covenant abilities because someone discovered a new broken way to play.
If we want to hypothesise, then the best thing is to design an expansion without these ‘features’ full stop. I think most of the playerbase just want the pre cata wow. Maybe you can chuck in things from the modern game (mythic plus, rbgs, lfg, emissaries, world quests). Then just chuck out 5 solid content patches over the course of the expansion. Throw in a few new zones, multiple raids and raid styles (10 man, 20 man, 2 boss, 10 boss, etc), a new bg here and there, and a new class now and again. Maybe some compelling leveling and extra storylines like suramar… oh, and tier sets. Ideally across raid tiers so we dont always need a new ilvl reset/catch up with every content patch and emptying out the raids that came before it.
Thats basically the formula, right? The interesting question why they dont just deliver this game? They obviously know thats what their hardcore audience want. They dont need flashy new ‘features’ that over-complicate the game. The formula is fine, was fine. Has always been fine. So why not just make that game?
Is it that it doesnt trend? It doesnt create hype? It doesnt bring in new players or appeal to them?
Is it that its simply too expensive compared to a fire and forget constantly ticking over, repetitive model of accruing power steadily throughout an expansion?
Is it that this model is set up to counter a problem of cyclical subs which no doubt began around the tail of LK and really bloomed in wod (when we coincidentally saw this dramatic change to the game?).
Is it that legion artifact weapons WORKED and they’re simply trying to hone down and tighten the formula? (its only been 2 attempts after all).
Theres a reason theyre so heavily invested in these meta-systems. Id genuinely love to know why. But its also why they cant or wont break it down into components. It only works as a meta system if its well, meta. If it affects all the game. Breaking it into cosmetics and powers wont deliver a meta system. It’ll deliver two new buttons for players to press (which they could have just designed for each class individually if we’re going back to the drawing board), and then given this transmog collection game that lets be honest, very few would really care about. How many people did the faction rep grinds exclusively for the cosmetics? And how many did them because a shoulder enchant was stuck behind them? It only works as a meta system in its entirety. It only compels engagement because its the grand source of power to the player character.
So there lies the problem. Blizzard have hitched themselves to this particular wagon (despite the playerbase not entirely loving it - and i dont just mean covenants, i mean meta-system gameplay). Whether its through budget reductions, a total belief in its efficacy once they streamline it, or a way to keep players engaged through the course of the expansion. Its solving a problem for them that we, the playerbase arent privy to.
Best part, Abomb limb will never be good I bet. If they buff it to the levels of Death’s Due or even the Venthyr ability it’ll just break pvp completely. So I’ll never get to play Necrolord. So. Much. Choice.
My guess is that the reason of these faults is committee decision making.
Blizzard clearly does not give players what they want, but the conspiracy theory (that even many buy-side investment analysts believe) that ATVI only cares about short-term profit is also false. If that conspiracy theory is the case, then Blizzard can just make heavily complained flying available thru in-game shop, generating an obscene amount of profit.
I think Blizzard actually wants to make the game more immersive and more addictive. However, their decisions are biased from rationalism – using clever theories and intellectual tricks, rather than learning from history, past experience, and applying empiricism.
Do humans learn from history? Of course. If we are individually responsible for a project, a failure can be painful and forces us to learn and remember.
The only time we feel we can ignore lessons from the past is with committee decision making. When we are making decisions as a part of a committee, we don’t have to keep a track record of past decisions and outcomes, and often don’t even have to be individually responsible. With the committee, we can make repeated mistakes without suffering from the full consequences.
Wrath of the Lich King clearly works and works very well. We all know that. But that’s because we are looking at WoW as individuals, respecting lessons of the past. It’s all different when you sit in a committee, you know. Committees don’t learn from the past.
Then your raid leader isn’t going to care about your covenant the situation we are talking about is for mythic raiders not the stuff that is alt puggable by the end of the first month.
It very well could be this. Of course my naturally inquisitive nature wants to know why the game is being designed by committee in the first place? Where is the George Lucas of this? (say what you want about the guy, but he was fiercely protective over the vision and lore of star wars).
Perhaps (snark incoming), the covenant system is simply a cry for help from the game designers. Since they have to design a game around a bunch of restrictions based on an accountant’s balance sheet, maybe they want you to feel their pain by artificially restricting you through covenants so you too have to play the game built on curtailed opportunity. I dunno.
I had a thought on another positive though: Perhaps they love meta systems because they can completely scrap them at the end of each expansion and create an artificial reset where players are back to normal haste/crit/vers levels which they can then build on. Not to mention pure borrowed power like essences and corruption which magically disappear and we’re all happy to accept.
(compare this to a staggered system like vanilla-tbc-wotlk-cata-panda, where things keep piling up and creating design roadblocks).
Never let others force you to do something you would rather not do. Covenants should be a personal choice and not a requirement for play. Quit anything that forces you to conform.