To begin: I’m a 12/12 Mythic Raid Leader who already has a second shaman geared, active and ready to go in case the below system doesn’t get changed.
There seems to be a lot of support for Blizzard keeping covenants the way they are currently without listening to the deafening feedback from the mythic raiding community, streamers and content creators.
However, it seems like all the feedback that is positive is poised in a way where non mythic raiders are sticking it to the min maxers.
Is this a healthy way to support a system that if changed would not impact and just make it a easier to use system? Nobody will need to worry about their faction getting a giant nerf because you can just choose a covenant based on what you like visually, or the lore behind it.
Well, restrictions make choice more “meaningful” or better said, more impactful.
The devs want your choice of covenant to be weighty and I think they certainly can achieve that by tying player power to your choice.
I am not really opposed to that, but at the same time I don’t think Blizzard can get the balance good enough for it to work. If it feels more punishing than beneficial the system will be disappointing.
I can’t think of anything more impactful than having a title associated with being in a covenant, or having a cosmetic set you can only using while aligned with them.
How does me being weaker in raid compared to a different shaman with a different covenant feel meaningful? It’s certainly impactful because now he will straight up do more healing/dps than i will.
Blizzard is straight up atrocious at balancing. Anyone who played BFA should be well and truly aware of that.
This expansion has been defined by nerfs because Blizzard push through a system, people use what is the best option to them then Blizzard deploy a hamfisted hotfix (Corruptions, Azerite powers, class stacking)
Positives would mean its more like an rpg with permanent consequences.
The top players will have too many characters anyways to be effected by this . Its mostly the ones who think they are top that will have a problem with this
Which is hilarious, I remember when the forums were laughing that guilds wouldn’t do splits anymore because of how little azerite powder you got. Instead guilds ended up doing twice as many splits to funnel gear.
“If you don’t like it, the Kyrian are waiting for you.”
Covenants should be a weighty and meaningful choice. But it’s an RP choice, and has always been intended as an RP choice. Tying power progression to non-progression content is poor design. This is why they took perks off professions and why they keep nerfing and downplaying the impact of racials.
Can you imagine if they tied a BiS for some classes to being a Sylvanas loyalist or a Horde loyalist? What an awful design choice!
Story choices are GREAT things to put into the game (which is part of why Diplomat is a bad requirement for Pathfinder, because it forces you to be a goody-two-shoes “I love ALL our allies!” suck-up to every faction) but they shouldn’t have large effects on power progression.
The worst part of BfA is that EVERYTHING was required for progression. Tying power to every feature just makes every feature mandatory.
Make Covenants permanent, or difficult to change, and make covenant abilities fun and impactful, but let people pick them for lore or aesthetic reasons. Let people unlock their choice of Covenant abilities in instanced content. If Covenant loyalty is more important for you as a player to change them, then don’t. You’re not running high enough content for it to matter. If that’s too much to ask for you to do, then it’s too much to ask for hardcore raiders to accept.
They ignored feedback about azerite in BFA and look how it turned out. It was so terrible they had to come up with a system like Essences mid way through to not lose the remaining players they had.
I feel this is an extremely dangerous idea they are playing with. It’s going to cause huge problems for people who enjoy all the content Blizzard has to offer. Just let me have fun, let me experiment.
Personally the meaningful argument has never struck me as strong. Most likely I am going to choose my covenant based on the ability I want as that is what matters most. What if I don’t like the aesthetic of that covenant? I am planning to make this guy Venthyr or Night fae (cool customizable forms) but I want to choose the power that will work well in Mythic+ and PvP.
Basically, tying my power to a covenant makes me choose either cosmetics or power and if they don’t match that feels bad.
I can say with 100% confidence. Fewer people will change covenants with a system that doesn’t tie power to them. Isn’t that meaningful choice?
It should 100% be cosmetic only, give a title for people to show. Hell let me be able to queue a dungeon with Horde people of the same covenant, or join a BG with them. Make covenant pride a thing.
The main positive for me is getting some feeling of nostalgia and to feel like a unique run.
To feel like those oldschool games made you do.
Which we all know in modern gaming wouldn’t work.
Because no matter what they do, if they build bigger walls people can just use bigger ladders. People use saves to undo choices, people can just make more than one character in wow to choose different covenants.
Modern choices nowadays are only meaningful if you let them be. If you make people care about their faction, if you make people care about their race with the story.
The danger here is the buzzword of “meaningful choices”
Meaningful to whom? And if we’re making a choice, we should gain something and lose something of equal value. It should be a fair tradeoff.
If its not a fair trade off … well who in their right mind wants to give up $20 and only get $17 back. And they didn’t get anything worth $3.
If its purely a loss, is it meaningful? Well, yeah, that can be true. But who in their right mind wants to have to choose “in what way will I suffer?”
If the decision boils down to “which transmogs, titles and story will I see?” then its a meaningful choice. Because its a personal decision with the only thing lost is “I didn’t get to see the other story or get the other swag.”
