The concept of covenants is great. The implementation where they affect gameplay is terrible.
Blizzard is terrible at implementation. For instance, legion was great, the one main problem area as far as power progression was legendaries. They decided for their next expac progression system they would double down on the legendary concept from legion. Why? Why would they double down on the worst part of the expac? For shadowlands they are trying to make new order halls, except instead of them going by class they are a choice. That is an inherently worse system than legion order halls, because instead of doubling down on your class identity and getting set abilities from it you are forced to choose between fun gameplay and fun lore/aesthetic/story.
Blizzard needs to stop and think about what they did right in legion before they make new expac progression systems.
Story choices and aesthetics matter. People desire them.
Wasn’t the issue with legendaries in Legion that they was RNG and you couldn’t target them? I thought the ones in shadowlands are crafted so pretty targetable?
That doesn’t explain why it’d be worse to split them.
To use your friend example, instead of just having one circle of friends, you now have two circles of friends. One they’re pretty much all the same except for a superficial level. In the other, they each have distinct and significant traits. You now have one group that it’s pretty much interchangeable and still have the one where you have a favorite for a reason.
Probably because it wouldnt achieve much and would cost too much?
If both choices are as restrictive splitting them achieves nothing other than the rare case where you like one ability yet like a different covenant, and the money spend on remaking these abilities visually to fit all covenants isnt worth the small advantage like that.
Well, while I agree with you on premise. We do have refuting evidence in that the cost would actually be rather low because they pay their employees in Peanuts.
I think a lot of the issue here is that a large portion of the player base can identify the issue, give good reason as to why it’s going to be an issue and then give feedback then blizzard fixes it way after its already had an impact
For instance in legion we worked out pretty fast that getting hard locked into a spec wasn’t exactly a good thing then later on they just pretty much removed all the work so we could boost through our weapons to unlock everything
In bfa we had the azerite armour issue of getting upgrade that we couldn’t use for ages because we didn’t have enough AP and then blizzard made us explode through AP like no tomorrow effectively rendering another system null
Now we face the covenant swapping issue where we are saying it’s going to impact players in a similar way and just want to get that growing pains period dealt with before it goes live
Imagine if Cadillac decided to make trucks instead and only trucks.
Imagine Coca Cola decided to make fruit punch instead of Coke.
Imagine the next Souls game were a card game.
Even less impactful I remember when Cadillac rolled out its new XTS design to replace the DTS and it had a sporty feel and touch panel design. Cadillac fans HATED the car.
I think you see where I’m going here. There are things in retail that only the devs wanted. Things like the GCD change. Things like the AoE cap. Things like taking away our rep tabards.
Then the things only a part of the community wanted the devs forced on all the rest of us.
“Degenerate play” is codeword for mudwhimping. You know what that is, right?
That’s why BFA is unpopular and why the game has been losing popularity over the years.
I feel like they likely start collecting data the moment they hear about the issue then start problem solving the moment they can confirm it’s an issue. I don’t have a ton of experience in development beyond simple RPG maker projects, and making Mods for conan exiles. But with my limited experience I know that development of anything can take considerable amount of time. How much time can vary depending on how complex the issue is, and of course the engine and code itself. Given that we always see them eventually react to the feedback, I can only conclude that their engine is crap or the issues are complex. Because we rarely see an actual full on fix unless it’s in the following expansion. We just see bandaids. Which to me suggests it takes a considerable amount of development time. Which means they really need to start trying harder on measuring twice and cutting once. Because they need to get it right the first time.
While it’d be the best way to do it you wouldn’t have to remake everything. You could do something like have an NPC from each faction that you pick your power from and then have a blurb about how all your soulbinds/etc from the covenants are channeled through them. It wouldn’t be ideal but it’s be a significant improvement over the present “sucks to be you, nerd” setup.
It’s age is why. More competition is why. Or can you name other games in the genre that has lasted over 15 years without losing a considerable amount of it’s playerbase? Entropy effects everything.
I think you’re trying to say that players asked for change, however, the changes and updates delivered were dissatisfactory to said players? That doesn’t follow that players asked for what was delivered and that which they’re disappointed with. Does it?
