This might be an issue even then, but if Covenants end up providing nothing more than a 5% boost over other covenant choices then I 100% agree with you.
But… assuming Blizzard breaks the tuning as they often do (and will since there’s covenant traits and covenant legendaries on top of the covenant abilities) then the choice in Covenant will affect everyone more than enough that player agency doesn’t apply.
If you’re a regular player then you’re going to want the (hypothetical) broken Venthyr class ability that doubles your dps when you choose X traits and X legendaries… because otherwise you’ll be kicked out of content for screwing over the team with your cosmetic choices.
The problem is not even on the dps difference part, the utility of some spells could just make relevant a covenant and make the others useless depending of the situation, but some of them are definitly broken in the right situations or more reliable often. It’s not a good feeling when they should be as powerful as racials basicly if they want to make them work all the time. Even racials have balance issue some of the time, and they aren’t that powerful.
You’ve had to choose certain talents to do certain group content since day 1. We’ve never been able to freely choose any talent or gear in this game without certain consequences in group play.
Difference is that talents have been around long enough for Blizzard to realise restricting changing them is directly anti-player due to how the social side of the game works.
Covenants have not, and this is a bigger problem since they will surely fluctuate in power quite a bit every patch, unlike most talents.
I just wish they would move away from borrowed power mechanics already. I miss the days when they would directly add to my class and I wouldn’t lose those things next xpac.
Cookie cutter builds have been a thing since Classic, and any guild with a smallest amount of focus on raiding will steer you towards one. If you do not perform and or refuse they will directly or indirectly replace you.
I don’t blame them, I don’t know what it means either lol. I never heard/read “agency” used in the context of it being something that people have until this year, think it was a few months ago
As a fellow player that also has some things not being tailored toward them in Shadowlands causing me to lose some of my more favorite game features such as Titanforging. I sympathize with you having things you don’t like in the expansion as well. While neither one of us likely agrees with eachothers perceived losses. As a player I respect you feel you have lost something.
That the choices the player makes have consequences.
That the player is given information to anticipate what those consequences might be.
So right now, with only what we know from the alpha, Shadowlands has a lot of player agency, as you have a lot of decisions to make, there are consequences for those decisions, and plenty of information is given to the player letting them know what the consequences of making those decisions are.
Blizzard has been going that road since TBC, making it easier and easier to play offspecs and min/max till Legion legendaries that were hated in their acquisition form, and BFA that doubled on this with azerith gear needing to be respeced.
I want real player agency, not theme park agency. Make the zones and story change depending of my choices, kill some characters depending of my choices. Not locking arbitrary powers behind rep that we know can be changed from one to another, with not other cost than something we will have to pay or wait for again arbitrary reason, not rp reasons.
The gameplay is really horrible for most people but the rp value of the game is way higher than wow will ever be. With also one of my favorite feature, VO questlines.
It’s not Blizzards fault it’s the players. Just look at the pushback the covenant system receives. Can’t have any choices, can’t have any RPG elements because the terbo nerds will sperg out if every choice doesn’t do the exact same DPS to the last decimal.
Having the choices between 4 perspectives without having any effect on the story is not that much rpg element, it’s more story but it’s not much more a rpg or player agency.
