haha! Dude im not serious. Im just parroting ‘the sky is falling’ melodrama of the COVENANTS MUST BE OPEN NOW OR THE GAME WILL FAIL!!! crowd. Its funny and hypocritical how swiftly they move the goalposts when you say the same things back at them.
But i will say, they may get what they wish for, and they might just find theyve given themselves a never ending and always escalating arms race. The intention of this design has been to limit the core power grind (AP), with smaller chunks (renown). We dont yet know what this means in terms of full outlay per week. But its supposed to drop the core grind experience down (which is why they make the argument that its not just an AP grind, and its basically the only thing they have to justify it isnt given that it looks and functions an awful lot like AP).
So they NEED this to be cut up into a more manageable time commitment. Otherwise it IS just an AP/rep grind.
This isnt just some esoteric point. This ties into the other systems theyre trying to streamline.
Take the leveling experience. Theres a great reason why this has been streamlined. They want new players in the game, and they want you to play alts.
The first is self evident. You dont do all this just as a boon to your current subs. You do this because you want that opening experience to keep players invested. And right now, that experience is genuinely awful for a new player.
The second is also backed up by expansion defining features like covenants and Torghast. I know very little of the maw right now, so cant really comment on it. But both of these strongly encourage multiple characters. Im even contemplating leveling up classes i swore id never touch in anticipation for it (warlock and dk). Its a real pull.
Second: Now lets go back to that new player following the storyline. They reach end game, they pick a covenant. That covenant activity is then unlocked and they have a streamlined end game experience where they help them build up their anima supplies (and channel it), they build up their soulbinds, they run dailys and events. Everything is self contained and all there in front of them. Sure, the FIRST CHOICE isnt. [And i agree, this is perhaps an issue Blizzard may want to invest a little time into signposting more clearly]. But once youve made that choice, its all very clear whats happening, what youre doing, and how you scale your power.
Coming back to the point of time investment, and tying it together. The CORE end game experience is designed to be reasonably quick (compared to say AP).
Once its done, youre then free to go do whatever you enjoy doing in game with your new powers and soulbinds and not even think about it until the next cap lifts (opening up more of the core gameplay system of the expansion). You can go sit in torghast for 100 hours, level an alt, run mythic dungeons until your eyes bleed, farm all the conduits. Whatever YOU want to do. Not what you HAVE to do. There’s clearly intended to be more time for you to make those personal gameplay decisions.
So we have a core design philosophy at work: Limiting the time required to fully develop the core power feature of the expansion (the bit that opens up the rest of the game - renown and soulbinds and legendaries and conduit powers). Streamlining the information on screen and the gameplay to make it more accessible to understand and deal with for the majority of players, (whilst also retaining the same ‘hard to master’ quality for the meta kids out there). And finally, making it very repeatable in the catch up mechanisms for alts, with the constant changing gameplay experiences in torghast and the covenant lock out encouraging you to try out those experiences on your main and multiple other characters.
The overriding aim is to make this game feel more immersive, more involving and create engagement. Sure, on forums where we love to talk about the in and outs of every possible iteration of every conceivable design decision, maybe its a bit… basic? Restrictive? Constraining? But to your standard player who logs in, picks their covenant because it suits their fantasy or whatever, once they make that choice, that path is clear, simple, and straightforward. They arent met with a wall of stuff to do and having no idea where the most expedient line is. They can just get on with their covenant, then go ahead and whatever else they want to take care of.
Its really the absolute lynch pin of this expansion. And its why opening covenants would blow it all up into a complete mess of meta power, multiple confusing systems and ridiculously repetitive gameplay and grind. All of which combined will very likely drag us back into an experience somewhat similar to the BfA experience.
