Covenants, most disliked new xpac feature?

[goldlock]

I mean of course some mythic raiders are going to min-max and play the game in a really unhealthy way, they've done it with literally every system in the game. They ran Maw of Souls into oblivion for artifact power, they grinded island expeditions for their neck and they spent absurd amounts of gold on buying BoE corruption items. Frankly, it doesn't really matter if the system is broken for these people, they're so obsessed with reaching the absolute maximum power level that they'll break any system in the game.

You are correct. Anything and everything that can be leveraged must be. Nothing exists but that ferocious climb.

[Kralljin]

I don't know why Blizz is still trying. What is their success rate with these experiments again? Why do we need to play through an entire content patch worth of unbalanced, unenjoyable crap before they listen to the feedback they got months ago?

I think it shine through in the Preach interview, the stuff below is a bit of speculation in my part, but it's largely pieced together by what has Ion been saying and what has Blizzard been doing over the years.

Ion admitted that Blizzard has streamlined the game over the years and removed aspects through players were able to distinguish from each other.
Originally (as noted by Ion) gear served that purpose.

If you were a Main Tank, you could still maintain a bit of dps gear, but you'd lack the "golden pieces" such as high value trinkets or weapons, those were reserved for people who opt in to play primarily as Dps.
In the same vein, those dps players had to take a backseat when it came to valueable tank loot (Thunderfury for example).

This is the very simple concept of "meaningful choice" that originally existed in the game, the decision of which spec you're going to play affected what sort of loot you're going to get and it automatically excluded you from getting certain high value items and affected your performance outside of your "chosen" role.

There are a lot more examples in Classic / TBC where this sort of choice existed, but i think you'll get the idea.

Those "high value" items no longer exist and Blizzard has taken a dislike how every players is basically "the same", whereas previously, a distinction largely through gear, did exist.
(In similiar fashion, the decision to make PvP gear equal to PvE gear also reflects the "choice" to opt into PvP).

First off, Blizzard tried the way of RNG in Legion, Blizzard didn't want to add a vendor for Legendaries because "everybody would buy the same legendaries" and rather have people adapt to their legendaries.
So that a guy who received a utility / defensive legendary might be better on encounter X or due to an AoE Legendary on Encounter Y (sounds familiar)?
That's also probably the reason why the softcap originally existed, you weren't supposed to get all legendaries in the foreseeable future but deal with the hand you've got.

I think Corruption follows here a similiar philosophy, i'm not sure if the vendor was planned from the beginning or this was just another situation where Blizzard just threw the towel.
The ability to specifically target corruption and its impact on player power might speak to that - similiar to Legendaries, you weren't supposed to have access to all of them in order to create distinction between players.
(One could also speculate whether Blizzard wanted to recreate these random "moments of excitement" like finding a Random Epic in Classic / TBC)

Artifacts followed a similiar fashion (altough not RNG based), someone who solely chose the Fire artifact should set itself apart from Mages who chose to max out all Artifacts, you would be better on Encounter where Fire is good but worse on Encounters where other Mages could switch to Frost or Arcane.

Azerite originally wasn't supposed to be changeable (again, creating a distinction between what Azerite you got and what traits you selected), but Blizzard realized early on that would be a huge problem, so they added a guy that resets pieces but at a cost to somehow "keep" that choice.


Blizzard now realized after Legendaries, Azerite Armor and Corruption (yep, took them no less than three attempts) that trying to enforce this distinction via RNG doesn't work because players don't like their power being that dramatically at the mercy of RNG, now they attempt to do it by "locking" into a certain choice.

Rather than having access to a limited pool of random legendaries or corruption (which is what Blizzard originally intended, i assume), you can now select between four covenants where you know upfront what you'll get but locking yourself out of the three other covenants, thus creating a distinction between players based on their chosen covenant.

Blizzards idea is that whereas in the earlier days of WoW, the decision of choosing to focus on a certain spec (and thus gear) created a distinction, they want to reintroduce this via those systems.
In earlier days, a guy who mainly focuses on Prot is like ~20% less powerful (just making some numbers up for the example) than a full dps due to a lack of Dps specific items, same goes for a Fury who wants to Tank.
(And obviously taking the respec cost into account)

Covenants should represent that to some extent, you choose a covenant, are more powerful in certain situations at the expense of being less powerful in another (where someone else, who choose that covenants shines).


In other words, Blizzard is trying to artificially recreate something they've streamlined themselves out of the game with a rather convoluted system that's one massive balance nightmare and does locks people out of things like the game never has (such as walling off certain class abilities beyond an additional barrier other than respeccing).
To me, it just further supports that Ion in particular wants to design a modern version of Classic, which just doesn't work because a large portion of the game no longer resembles Classic in the slightest.

And seemingly, they're that deadset on that idea that they ignore their track record on these things and want to bruteforce it into the game somehow.

The cynical approach here is:
Maybe those systems need to crash and burn until Blizzard moves away from it.
After all, one could speculate whether it took the failures of the corruption system until Blizzard finally relented in this whole War / Titanforging business.

Mind you, that was a fight that started over 7 years ago and only now ends after the removal of Corruption (or any subsequent system) in SL.

[Notshauna]

Yes they are.

https://www.wowhead.com/guide=10597/...or-shadowlands

Light's Reach (Potency Conduit) Blade of Justice's range is increased by 2 yds and deals 20% more damage.

The max rank of it gives 50%.

Yeah that's a conduit so it can be slotted into any soulbind like gems.

[Kithelle]

I don't think they are going to listen... they see this as something new but for those more experienced well... we all arrive by the old road.

Victory over the min maxers....?

What a hollow and insane notion.

Yeah because lets listen to them! The people who basically turn the game into one big numbers simulator...who take all the fun out of the game because they get off on seeing bigger numbers.

[Relapses]

I mean of course some mythic raiders are going to min-max and play the game in a really unhealthy way, they've done it with literally every system in the game. They ran Maw of Souls into oblivion for artifact power, they grinded island expeditions for their neck and they spent absurd amounts of gold on buying BoE corruption items. Frankly, it doesn't really matter if the system is broken for these people, they're so obsessed with reaching the absolute maximum power level that they'll break any system in the game.

Is this a good thing, though? Should we just accept that players are going to play the game unhealthily and allow it to be like this? Further constricting the Mythic raiding playerbase will have ripple effects on the rest of the game and gives credence to the argument that the game simply shouldn't have a "hardest difficulty" if there are so few people able to participate in it.

[Sunslayer]

Covenants are great. Unswappable player power tied to them is rotten.
I hope they just make them talents that go away next expac.

I agree. I think Covenants could've been amazing. In fact I was really excited when they were announced. Then, I saw that our borrowed power for Shadowlands was tied to them. How did Ion and his team know instantly this was a bad idea?
The worst part is how poorly designed so many Covenant abilities are compared to some Covenant abilities that are insane good.
It's going to be an unfixable mess.

[LilSaihah]

I would say most polarizing. I think people either really really like it or really really dislike it.

I think the most disliked new xpac feature is probably going to end up being the mission table - again. Because why the fuck did Blizzard think it was a good idea to have another mission table?

[Nerovar]

Dont forget the longest existing version of borrowed power that people have been campaigning against since its inception... tier sets.
Wait people are asking for that back JK. Borrowed power systems are healthier than needing to prune abilities every 3rd expac. Imagine getting a new 30s-2min cd every expac, what a fuckin mess that would be.

Azerite gear is the smallest of borrowed power systems to be mad at, they are passive effects that generally improve performance. Just like how getting more secondary stats makes most specs play smoother.

Corruption is a risk reward system that kept gearing this tier interesting with removal of titanforging. Playing with how much corruption you want to use on a prog fight is an interesting choice. I like the system once they increased the rates at which you could actually get the gear.

AP grind is a player/community/social pressure problem and isnt borrowed power more than regular gear ilvl. The "grind" is self imposed and I don't think its blizzard job to put a leash on its players and say "no no thats enough for you". If players choose to go ham and grind AP until they quit from burn out thats an impulse control issue. I sure did my share of world quests and weekly islands for AP like any other raider but I did them to obtain a goal I wanted not because I felt I needed to get it done. When I wanted to be done farming AP because I reached the levels/goals I wanted.... I stopped *GASP*

Legiondaries issue was control of how you obtained them and the comparative swing in power between you and the next guy because you got 2 utility ones and he/she got the BiS throughput ones.

You're just presenting this as a false dichotomy "borrowed power vs. pruning" which is nonsensical in and of itself (also borrowed power effectively means that you get pruning with every expansion only instead of losing interesting class abilities you lose mediocre expansion specific abilities). Apart from that you're just giving me your opinion on why you think those weren't bad even though I already said that I strongly disagree with that so I don't really care. Blizzard themselves admitted that things like corruption and legiondaries weren't really successful systems. This is just silly.

I mean, you're basically describing the problem without noticing it. It's either "not an issue because" it's just passive effects which nobody cares about anyway or the effects are interesting and it's only an issue of how you obtain them (which would be circumvented by making them baseline abilities/talents).

[goldlock]

I think it shine through in the Preach interview, the stuff below is a bit of speculation in my part, but it's largely pieced together by what has Ion been saying and what has Blizzard been doing over the years.

Ion admitted that Blizzard has streamlined the game over the years and removed aspects through players were able to distinguish from each other.
Originally (as noted by Ion) gear served that purpose.

If you were a Main Tank, you could still maintain a bit of dps gear, but you'd lack the "golden pieces" such as high value trinkets or weapons, those were reserved for people who opt in to play primarily as Dps.
In the same vein, those dps players had to take a backseat when it came to valueable tank loot (Thunderfury for example).

This is the very simple concept of "meaningful choice" that originally existed in the game, the decision of which spec you're going to play affected what sort of loot you're going to get and it automatically excluded you from getting certain high value items and affected your performance outside of your "chosen" role.

There are a lot more examples in Classic / TBC where this sort of choice existed, but i think you'll get the idea.

Those "high value" items no longer exist and Blizzard has taken a dislike how every players is basically "the same", whereas previously, a distinction largely through gear, did exist.
(In similiar fashion, the decision to make PvP gear equal to PvE gear also reflects the "choice" to opt into PvP).

First off, Blizzard tried the way of RNG in Legion, Blizzard didn't want to add a vendor for Legendaries because "everybody would buy the same legendaries" and rather have people adapt to their legendaries.
So that a guy who received a utility / dps legendary might be better on encounter X or due to an AoE Legendary on Encounter Y (sounds familiar)?
That's also probably the reason why the softcap originally existed, you weren't supposed to get all legendaries in the foreseeable future but deal with the hand you've got.

I think Corruption follows here a similiar philosophy, i'm not sure if the vendor was planned from the beginning or this was just another situation where Blizzard just threw the towel.
The ability to specifically target corruption and its impact on player power might speak to that - similiar to Legendaries, you weren't supposed to have access to all of them in order to create distinction between players.
(One could also speculate whether Blizzard wanted to recreate these random "moments of excitement" like finding a Random Epic in Classic / TBC)

Artifacts followed a similiar fashion (altough not RNG based), someone who solely chose the Fire artifact should set itself apart from Mages who chose to max out all Artifacts, you would be better on Encounter where Fire is good but worse on Encounters where other Mages could switch to Frost or Arcane.

Azerite originally wasn't supposed to be changeable (again, creating a distinction between what Azerite you got and what traits you selected), but Blizzard realized early on that would be a huge problem, so they added a guy that resets pieces but at a cost to somehow "keep" that choice.


Blizzard now realized after Legendaries, Azerite Armor and Corruption (yep, took them no less than three attempts) that trying to enforce this distinction via RNG doesn't work because players don't like their power being that dramatically at the mercy of RNG, now they attempt to do it by "locking" into a certain choice.

Rather than having access to a limited pool of random legendaries or corruption (which is what Blizzard originally intended, i assume), you can now select between four covenants where you know upfront what you'll get but locking yourself out of the three other covenants, thus creating a distinction between players based on their chosen covenant.

Blizzards idea is that whereas in the earlier days of WoW, the decision of choosing to focus on a certain spec (and thus gear) created a distinction, they want to reintroduce this via those systems.
In earlier days, a guy who mainly focuses on Prot is like ~20% less powerful (just making some numbers up for the example) than a full dps due to a lack of Dps specific items, same goes for a Fury who wants to Tank.
(And obviously taking the respec cost into account)

Covenants should represent that to some extent, you choose a covenant, are more powerful in certain situations at the expense of being less powerful in another (where someone else, who choose that covenants shines).


In other words, Blizzard is trying to artificially recreate something they've streamlined themselves out of the game with a rather convoluted system that's one massive balance nightmare and does locks people out of things like the game never has (such as walling off certain class abilities beyond an additional barrier other than respeccing).
To me, it just further supports that Ion in particular wants to design a modern version of Classic, which just doesn't work because a large portion of the game no longer resembles Classic in the slightest.

And seemingly, they're that deadset on that idea that they ignore their track record on these things and want to bruteforce it into the game somehow.

The cynical approach here is:
Maybe those systems need to crash and burn until Blizzard moves away from it.
After all, one could speculate whether it took the failures of the corruption system until Blizzard finally relented in this whole War / Titanforging business.

Mind you, that was a fight that started over 7 years ago and only now ends after the removal of Corruption (or any subsequent system) in SL.

It seems odd to me that a company is trying so desperately to force their playerbase to like a system rather then trying to develop a system the player base wants...

Covenants are going to end up nasty especially if they go forward with their idea of covenant based faction pvp....

I've interacted with quite a bit of the wow community and even in content like lfr you have people berating others for being the "wrong" spec. Mark my words this system is going to go over badly. I give it two weeks before we see a mod that shows you everyones covenant.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah because lets listen to them! The people who basically turn the game into one big numbers simulator...who take all the fun out of the game because they get off on seeing bigger numbers.

Why not?

Worse case you get a balanced game where you know your success or failure is based on your own ability not rng.

- - - Updated - - -

I would say most polarizing. I think people either really really like it or really really dislike it.

I think the most disliked new xpac feature is probably going to end up being the mission table - again. Because why the fuck did Blizzard think it was a good idea to have another mission table?

They need a phone app to show investors... I wish i was joking.

[Nerovar]

The covenant "controversy" is all sizzle and no meat. Literally no one has even played with it yet to see how it works out in practice yet we're still subjected to thread after thread about how awful it is. And what the whiners are asking for is basically a new talent row, yippee how exciting.

Oh no, no, no it's the "it's just alpha/beta/x.1/x.2/x.3/next expansion will fix it" meme.

[facefist]

Most people like them just fine.

Source: trust me bro

For all we know based on the discussion here, they really seem to be extremely controversial.

[Notshauna]

Is this a good thing, though? Should we just accept that players are going to play the game unhealthily and allow it to be like this? Further constricting the Mythic raiding playerbase will have ripple effects on the rest of the game and gives credence to the argument that the game simply shouldn't have a "hardest difficulty" if there are so few people able to participate in it.

I mean trying to make top tier mythic raiders not play the game in an unhealthy way is a Sisyphean task, even before they started introducing borrowed power systems these players already abused the system via extreme class stacking. It's always something else. This is inevitable, as long as spending time will lead to an advantage the most hardcore players will do so, even with the time to result ratio is terrible. It doesn't even have anything to do with how difficult the raids are people still do this in Classic despite the raids being very easy, it's about being the best.

Not all mythic raiders have this mindset, someone who's progressing on Mythic N'zoth right now has a massively different experience with regards to corruption and difficulty than Complexity-Limit did when they were progressing on the boss, nearly 6 months earlier. The top end might require people spending a lot of effort fighting with covenants but, gear and balancing will limit this for later players. I am certain there will be mythic guilds that don't require or even encourage players to spend a lot of time switching covenants or levelling multiple characters of each class.

[Good ol Stroggylos]

There are few players that pick race for the racial and its synergy with the class or role but the majority just goes by feeling. I don't see why covenants have become such a big deal

[Nurasu]

It's not arbitrary. As a player you are making the choice and you are making the choice that has most value to you. If you choose power as the most important choice then that is a meaningful choice. You might sacrifice fun or looks for this power but this is the priority and you have chosen this.

The players that would choose power can't even do that except for one type of content. There is no choice at all for such players except which two types of content they want to gimp themselves in out of raiding, M+, and pvp. Dedicated players get screwed in every way possible, and people that don't care about power wouldn't care about power regardless of whether Blizzard actually corrected this or not.

[Relapses]

I am certain there will be mythic guilds that don't require or even encourage players to spend a lot of time switching covenants or levelling multiple characters of each class.

I'm just afraid that certain strategies for bosses may require you to be a certain Covenant and this is just something you cannot easily overcome if you're in a "casual Mythic" guild.

[Harbour]

Covenants are shit. Conceptually they are cool, but there are problems from both Power side AND RPG side.

Power side is obvious and discussed alot.

RPG side? Man, i like Vampire theme. I want to go Venthyr. But do i want to sign under requirement to weekly do retarded PARTIES for NPCS?
Hell no, i dont want to be vampire like that! Its a "NO" feature from the get go, its boring and tedious since the week one.

Same comes to other Covenants. Some of them has shitty looking sets, some of them have shitty Sanctums, some of them has meh execution of other cosmetics and so on.

Blizzard cant execute RPG aspect properly too. Concept is cool, execution is lame.

[Hadriker]

Source: trust me bro

For all we know based on the discussion here, they really seem to be extremely controversial.

Its definitely controversial with a certain segment of the player base, namely the hardcore high tier players since it has the capacity to change how they currently play the game in a big way.

I don't know if its that controversial as a whole though. WoW's player base is pretty casual by and large. I could easily see the majority of the player base going "oh sweet a vampire covenant? i'm gonna pick that!" rather than fussing over numbers and sims.

[Kralljin]

I'm just afraid that certain strategies for bosses may require you to be a certain Covenant and this is just something you cannot easily overcome if you're in a "casual Mythic" guild.

Look at BfA mythic Encounters, i can tell you as someone who has progressed every Final Boss (besides Uu'nat) that on every final Boss you'd be Venthyr.

G'huun? Teleport yourself to the "Orb carrier area" ; to easily soak Pustules, dodge shit on the ground in P3.
Jaina? Teleport yourself over some shit in P2 / P3.
Uu'nat? Teleport yourself onto the Artifact of your resonance.
Azshara? Teleport yourself over the beams.
N'zoth? Teleport yourself onto your linked Partner.

Meanwhile, Kyrian can heal themselves for 15% of their hp.
Unless they basically shoehorn abilities into rather difficult encounters that favor Necrolord / Kyrian racials, Venthyr / Night Fae will be the to go choice, especially for classes without decent mobility.

[Notshauna]

I'm just afraid that certain strategies for bosses may require you to be a certain Covenant and this is just something you cannot easily overcome if you're in a "casual Mythic" guild.

They won't there aren't even bosses that require a specific talent, there is no way that there will be any that require a specific covenant.

[facefist]

Its definitely controversial with a certain segment of the player base, namely the hardcore high tier players since it has the capacity to change how they currently play the game in a big way.

I don't know if its that controversial as a whole though. WoW's player base is pretty casual by and large. I could easily see the majority of the player base going "oh sweet a vampire covenant? i'm gonna pick that!" rather than fussing over numbers and sims.

It's very difficult to say how people feel about tbh, even though I agree that it only affects the high-end players. In my opinion however, the argument that since it factually only affects the high-end players, others are happy with it/do not care about the power aspect is simply wrong.

People who play other games probably have met this phenomenon that seems to be present in every single modern game: tryharding. Go play other popular games such as CSGO or LoL. Whatever is the rank you are in, people will be flaming you if you make non-optimal choices. People will be reading guides which items to buy in LoL. And the same argument that it is meaningless to buy the best item/gun in the low rank would apply in those CSGO/LoL games too: but those people still want to make the optimal choice. I suppose WoW community is slightly different from this, but I doubt that it is only a small minority that cares about min-maxing in this game.

In short, it's not about whether it is required or not, but some people, no matter the level of content they do, just have the mindset that they want to be optimized. This affects all those people, not just the ones who *should* care about it. And I am not sure how the community divides on this matter, which makes me think it is very controversial as a whole.