Spent quite a bit of time chatting with friends about this over the past week and It’s becoming more and more clear the current system is causing all of us a great deal of unnecessary frustration in the game. What should be a complete nonissue is actually leaving almost angry at times. Before this expansion continues any further, this whole system needs to be dealt with.
Abilities between covenants are massively unbalanced. Everything form PvE to PvP… to even Torghast. I am absolutely floored how amazing some covenant abilities are in Torghast versus other. Venythr for hunters is so incredibly bad. Does almost no damage and has terrible buffs. Meanwhile my boomkins convoke clears rooms of 20+ mobs in 4 seconds.
Swapping is a nightmare. The fact you lose nearly 100% of your progress is almost abusive of the players time. How is this going to work when we are at renown level 40?
Renown should have NEVER been linked to gear beyond the covenant specific gear. I understand why they wanted to gate PvP gear so it wouldn’t compete with PvE, but this should have been solved in a different manner. As is, leveling new toons means you still have to focus on renown first before you can even consider grinding out gear that is already behind current gear.
Forced story experience. I enjoyed playing through Venthyr and I honestly hated the NF story. I’m not the type of player that likes fairies. It’s not the aesthetic I enjoy. Not hating on anyone that likes it, but it’s not for me… Well, I do like the covenant abilities though. So I’m stuck. I end up hating one aspect of the game to enjoy another. UNLINK the abilities from the covenants. Let us enjoy the story of the covenant that fits us as players…
Absurd catching up on new toons. There is just so much we have to do now to have a few alts. Playing through the kyrian story again is such a huge time waste. I already did this. Why do I need to do it again? For that matter, why do we have todo the maw opening quest again as well?
Covenants had so much potential and they have become nothing more than a road block to actually enjoying the game. Why has development doubled down on this system? It’s a failure. It’s obvious players are only taking what is strong/good. This has NOTHING to do with min/max. The degree of difference is so incredibly large that not having the right covenant for the right content means you’re doing 10-30% less damage or more. Torghast makes this so incredibly obvious.
Beyond that, I want to try the other covenants out. I don’t want to level multiples of every toon just to experience how something might play. Why are you making this so difficult? I just don’t get it.
Honestly all they had to do with Covenants is just tie them with the MOG that’s it and let you choose which ability you would want… Mix and match but no…
That said, all of that stuff should have been eventually unlocked as well. Choosing a covenants should have been like any other faction we have had to earn rep with. They should be encouraging players to play through the story. I think I would have even enjoyed the NF story had I been able to just enjoy it at my own pace. I just want to get to end game stuff so I can play with my friends again. Instead, I’m doing some theater play that is cringy and I couldn’t skip through fast enough.
It just blows my mind that they linked the strongest abilities in the game to an aesthetic. I hate the quests in Ardenwield. It’s just not my thing. Players should be able to enjoy that experience though and that content shouldn’t be misjudged just because players like me don’t enjoy the look and feel. I’m sure there are LOTS of players who like the NF zone and rightfully so.
All of the issues with covenants were mentioned continuously through Beta. Daily even. Blizzard dug in their heels and this is what we got. On this toon, I have done literally NONE of the covenant activities on venthyr. I have activated the mission table, but havent bothered with the party. The anima investment to unlock doesnt seem worth it to me.
On my shaman, I was unlocking the abom factory, but thats been shelved. Its a lot of anima investment, and Im not grinding it aside from 1k a week.
Yep. Want to be able to change up my ability depending on the content I do - can’t do that, so the game is less fun as a result. Also, the unbelievably imbalanced mission table is extremely obnoxious.
Yea, the perks aren’t worth it. The amount of anima you need for some of the upgrades is just staggering. I can’t even imagine farming all of that out and trying to get the mogs. It’s an insane amount of time.
Yea, I lost all my progress on my hunter when I swapped to Kyrian. My follower are getting back to the 30 range and I still can’t complete any soul ash missions. Every leveling mission I can send them on I do… Pointless.
Except that people are also complaining that they can’t mix and match armor mogs from different Covenants. I don’t anyone is going to be happy with Covenants
Sounds like some people are angry about having to choose between the story they like and the gameplay elements they like. Dare I call it… ludonarrative dissonance?
I dont recall a lot of chatter on the forums about wanting meaningful choices.
A lot of chatter about better talents and more balanced talents. Class reworks and improvements. More interesting gear options. Not meaningful choices.
I dont recall any posts asking for this either. I could be wrong, but mix match covenant sets, isnt something I recall seeing topics about.
Well, this person created a thread that then prompted many people to agree (and disagree) with their request. But one or many - my point is that there is no set-up for the Covenants that is going to please everyone.
I’d be happy if I didn’t lose my progress for swapping and if key abilities weren’t linked to them. Problem solved. It’s really that simple.
Sure. I enjoyed the Venthyr zone and story. One of my friends hates that place. We both had two very different experiences. Now I’m Kyrian and hate it… and He’s Venthyr and hates it. Such an easy problem to avoid.
That was a very small segment of very out spoken players. Also, those same people said the degree of difference would be fractions of a percent. So many times people said it would only be 1-3% or less. If it had actually been that little, it would be less of a problem.
I just wish they’d actually be transparent on how this garbage renown catchup works. Because swapping covenants and then doing heroics with a friend on an alt. Getting 1 renown in a dozen heroics while he gets one from almost every dungeon is by far one of the absolute dumbest things I’ve experienced in this game.
I’ve gone back to my original Covenant now because I’d rather not sacrifice performance as I have absolutely no idea how long it’d take me to get current because of the complete garbage RNG system.
I agree with you. I have seen this multiple times on the forums but what I think ends up happening is there is a serious disconnect between the constrictive criticism the devs pull off the forums and what they implement, which usually results in the devs thinking they are doing what the community wants when its way off base.
Until the community stops using the forums purely for troll/unconstructive complain fests AND the devs learn to actually communicate back to the community again this will forever happen.
Should probably edit that or it will get flagged. Just an fyi. silly thing to get banned over.
The latter part is the issue. The devs don’t openly talk with us. There used to be a lot of blue posts and even if they didn’t act on what players said, it still felt like there was an active conversation.