Anyone who thinks they will balance Covenants is dreaming.

[Belloc]

The whole system hinges on them balancing them. Something that Ion keeps claiming he will do.


You want to sit there and tell me Ion and his team cares?

The team that brought you Legendaries and refused to fix their RNG acquisition until the expansion was over? The same team that spent 2 years attempting to balance them?

Blizzard is well known for not immediately implementing big changes like this. Not sure why it surprised you that it took them so long to fix the method of acquisition when that's literally how they approach almost every set of major changes. Notice how the method of acquisition in Shadowlands is a fixed version of the version that you're referring to?

This is the same team that released Azerite in it's laughably broken state. With minimal testing? The same team who brought the release of BfA forward a month?

I wasn't there at the start of BFA, but I came back just before the BoD patch and thought the Azerite system was fine. Indeed, I, and many others, enjoyed the options. Your opinion is worth as much as mine (less, actually, since you're terrible at articulating it).

The same team that said they "heard" your feedback on Titanforging and RNG and then added Corruption in as a follow up system?

You mean the team that removed Titanforging AND Corruption for Shadowlands? Or, what, did you forget that Corruption was a test designed to last for a single patch? Again, they do not make major changes like this in the middle of an expansion and complaining about it just shows that you don't pay attention to the game update flow.

This is the same team that has a ZERO PERCENT success rate on balancing these types of systems - Artifacts, Legiondaries, Azerite, Essences and Corruption.

Hyperbole. They have a much better than "ZERO PERCENT" success rate on balancing these systems and you know it.

How long before Ion admits defeat and lets us swap them? 9.2? 9.3? Or shall we just wait for 9.3.5 like Legion and BfA?

Clearly you've missed the point that Covenants aren't supposed to be perfectly balanced. They're supposed to have strengths and weaknesses -- situations where certain Covenants are more useful than others. This design choice is inherently unbalanced... and that's fine. As long as each choice has situations where it is a strong choice, then that's all the balance necessary, outside of extreme outliers.

TL;DR: Your arguments are more broken than Covenants are going to be and you should put more thought into your posts.

[LordVargK]

The questions are not misleading, they are case and point.
What you gave an example of is an apathetic decision.
When multiple people argue about what color should a fence be colored: Red or Blue. Of course you will ask everyone, they will either side red or blue, or they can say they don't care, as per your example. Guess what, the guy who said he doesn't care isn't going to lead to a decision, since the fence is going to be colored red or blue, you either give an answer or you don't matter. So it's the same as voting irl.

The poll isn't an end all be all indicator, but it is an indicator nonetheless. Maybe do a google search to see how samples matter.

Okay, you ask people "how should a fence be colored?". Then give blue, red and green as possibilities and get:

45% red
30% green
25% blue

Now YOU would conclude that red is the most wanted color, while in reality it could be green:

Let's say you have 20 People:

9 of them like red>green>blue. They vote red (20/9=45%)
6 of them like green>blue>red. They vote green (20/6=30%)
5 of them like blue>green>red. They vote blue (20/5=25%)

Now obviously red is most disliked here, still YOU would consider it most preferred.

If you reverse the question and ask "what color don't you want"

55% would vote red
45% would vote blue
0% would vote green

making green the least undesired (and thus optimal) choice. The same can be achieved through a multiple answer question:
"Which 2 colors do you like best":
red: 9
green: 20
blue: 11

This is just a simple case to show you, how polls can be misleading. If you would let them prioritze their answers (which you can't do in MMOC polls), they you would have an even clearer opinion picture.

But I think this example shows, that "I would be fine with changing their conduits without cooldown" is probably not the majority opinion. That is most likely "Less than a week cooldown is fine", because that would be the second choice of both "1 week CD" and "No CD" voters. So the majority is fine with some constraint (about 1 day cooldown).

Also, you did not comment on the qualification of the voters and the fact, that this is probably the same phenomenon as "review bombing", as in that angry players are more likely to vote at all to let out their frustration.

Simple polls are easy to manipulate and are not an adequate tool to get qualitative (as in not-quantitative) feedback!

[Rayzen17]

Okay, you ask people "how should a fence be colored?". Then give blue, red and green as possibilities and get:

45% red
30% green
25% blue

Now YOU would conclude that red is the most wanted color, while in reality it could be green:

Let's say you have 20 People:

9 of them like red>green>blue. They vote red (20/9=45%)
6 of them like green>blue>red. They vote green (20/6=30%)
5 of them like blue>green>red. They vote blue (20/5=25%)

Now obviously red is most disliked here, still YOU would consider it most preferred.

If you reverse the question and ask "what color don't you want"

55% would vote red
45% would vote blue
0% would vote green

making green the least undesired (and thus optimal) choice. The same can be achieved through a multiple answer question:
"Which 2 colors do you like best":
red: 9
green: 20
blue: 11

This is just a simple case to show you, how polls can be misleading. If you would let them prioritze their answers (which you can't do in MMOC polls), they you would have an even clearer opinion picture.

But I think this example shows, that "I would be fine with changing their conduits without cooldown" is probably not the majority opinion. That is most likely "Less than a week cooldown is fine", because that would be the second choice of both "1 week CD" and "No CD" voters. So the majority is fine with some constraint (about 1 day cooldown).

Also, you did not comment on the qualification of the voters and the fact, that this is probably the same phenomenon as "review bombing", as in that angry players are more likely to vote at all to let out their frustration.

Simple polls are easy to manipulate and are not an adequate tool to get qualitative (as in not-quantitative) feedback!

You're example is pure nonsense, Green can't be an answer, because it means whatever, whatever is not an answer. Why? Because there is no implementation that covers 1 week cooldown and no cooldown. So stop being disingenuous or use some common sense...

The poll isn't manipulated, if you think it is, just ignore it. Just watch what happens when this system hits live servers.

[Heartbreaker23]

The whole system hinges on them balancing them. Something that Ion keeps claiming he will do.


You want to sit there and tell me Ion and his team cares?

The team that brought you Legendaries and refused to fix their RNG acquisition until the expansion was over? The same team that spent 2 years attempting to balance them?

This is the same team that released Azerite in it's laughably broken state. With minimal testing? The same team who brought the release of BfA forward a month?

The same team that said they "heard" your feedback on Titanforging and RNG and then added Corruption in as a follow up system?



This is the same team that has a ZERO PERCENT success rate on balancing these types of systems - Artifacts, Legiondaries, Azerite, Essences and Corruption.


How long before Ion admits defeat and lets us swap them? 9.2? 9.3? Or shall we just wait for 9.3.5 like Legion and BfA?

Even if they do, it would only make it more pointless.

[Swnem]

There are only these possibilities:

1) The covenants are locked
a) Player that doesn't care to switch >>> gets what he wants
b) Player that cares to switch >>> doesn't get what he wants

2) The covenants are unlocked
a) Player that doesn't care to switch >>> gets what he wants
b) Player that cares to switch >>> gets what he wants

As can be clearly seen, the best design is for the covenants to be unlocked.
If someone doesn't care or doesn't want to switch they have that option even if the covenants are unlocked, the same can't be said for the covenants being locked design for players that care to switch.

You know that if it's completely unlocked you will be expected to keep 4 covenants up to date rather than one? 4 times the grind.

[Rayzen17]

You know that if it's completely unlocked you will be expected to keep 4 covenants up to date rather than one? 4 times the grind.

Which is different than grinding gear(for different specs - so you have a clear image).. how?
Or rep for essences?

You grind it what you play, you get what it's worth.
https://www.wowhead.com/guides/shado...lities-rewards

Higher Renown will:

deepen connections with Soulbinds
raise maximum potential of the features within your Sanctum
increase item levels of items acquired from World Quests
unlock a wide variety of features, including rewards, quests, followers, cosmetics, etc.
give access to recipes, including Legendary Runeforging recipes for the Runecrafter in Torghast
allow you to acquire Covenant-specific items such as mounts, pets, a title, back attachment transmogs, and transmog armor

From what i see, only thing related to power is soulbinds, and you'll want to grind those anyway.
So everything is as usual, you want to unlock a piece of gear from a rep faction? You grind that rep, you want another piece from another faction? You grind that too.

I don't see an issue here. It's like keeping your cloak up to date for a more recent example.
And for alts there will be a catchup system as well.

- - - Updated - - -

That was a nice look at how to manipulate polls..thank you

EDIT: I see already ppl shitting on it though

Tell me how you make a decision when the 3rd/4th type of player says whatever?

You don't, their apathy does not influence the outcome because they don't participate in a clear decision.


What are we going to eat tonight?

A) Japanese - 17%

B) Chinese - 21%

C) Italian - 39%

D) Whatever - 23%

Tell me, which one is the winner?
C is the winner, D is a decision that matters less than the 17% of option A, because D means whatever man, i don't care. As such they don't influence a decision.

Let me put it this way to make it simpler for you

A) Japanese - 17%

B) Chinese - 21%

C) Italian - 23%

D) Whatever - 39%

See now? D - whatever is the highest, does it mean you know what you're getting? NO, it means you go to the others which actually decided on something, the winner is C even though it was less than D.

[LordVargK]

You're example is pure nonsense, Green can't be an answer, because it means whatever, whatever is not an answer. Why? Because there is no implementation that covers 1 week cooldown and no cooldown. So stop being disingenuous or use some common sense...

The poll isn't manipulated, if you think it is, just ignore it. Just watch what happens when this system hits live servers.

Yet your quoted poll has 3 different answers, where less than 1 week is the middle ground.

[Rayzen17]

Yet your quoted poll has 3 different answers, where less than 1 week is the middle ground.

Then that is the answer to his "whatever" category that he wanted, right?

You guys don't even know what you want. Quite funny that you make demands but don't understand what you're demanding.

- - - Updated - - -

You conveniently ignore the weighting inbetween...so..whatever...you can fight over this shit with the originator of the post which I agree more with his reasoning than with yours.

Meanwhile I will chose my covenants based on what fits my classes...mostly cosmetically and look forward to the bitching about it for the next two years. And then for the two years after that for whatever system Blizzard implements and will the new "worst system ever"

Highest one wins, democracy ftw?

If in your party of 10 people 5 people want to get Italian versus 2 Japanese and 3 Chinese.

Guess which place you're going to visit? An Italian restaurant.

Enjoy your meal.

[Neversage]

I think covenants are cool, but they could do well without the power-adding aspects. I'd be fine with ditching soulbinds and conduits altogether. Choose a covenant for your story campaign and the main ability. Then al;l the trouble spent on the class abilities, soulbinds, and conduits can go to better class design. Legendaries sound okay to me.

That said, I think it won't bother me much. I think the power systems are gratuitous, but I can find general enough options for my gameplay habits as a druid who plays all 4 specs. I don't envy mythic raiders or gladiators.

[Bigbazz]

I don't have strong feelings about covenants, but Blizz will eventually need to give in and make this more convenient. When people are annoyed enough that the subs start to drop, they won't do it before, it's like every other version of these things players dislike immediately and Blizzard finally fixes after months.

Blizz can't balance the game though, their idea of balance is often one of two methods "1. This spec/item/trait is overtuned so we will make it useless for the rest of the entire expansion" or "this spec/item/trait is overtuned but we're going to look the other way for the rest of the entire expansion".

[Mirishka]

Jesus I'm so tired of the whole 'balance' debate.

This game has never - I repeat, NEVER - been balanced in any regard. Not in PvE, not in PvP, not in Arena, not even the fucking pet battles are balanced. Vanilla/Classic, the shiny holy grail of WoW that it will never live up to ever again, was the most unbalanced clusterfuck of class/spec design in the history of a Blizzard game. If vanilla had been any less balanced, your computers would have tipped over and fallen off your desks.

There is always a best dps, always a best tank, always a best healer or a best spec or a best talent or a best legendary or a best trinket or whatever.

Always. Always, always, always.

So this relentless droning on and on by players and 'content creators' about how this spells doom for Shadowlands is utterly stupid. If anything covenants will be consistent with the game's history in that empirically there will be a 'best' option for the 'omg mus minmax everyt1ng' crowd, and everything else for people who wanna just log on and actually enjoy themselves without the mental torture of feeling obligated to squeeze 0.02% more deeps out of their character.

There is no chance, literally none, that this game will ever be balanced to the extent that the 'REEEEEEEE BLIZZ HATES <name of type of player>' crowd expects. ZERO chance. And the sooner those people get that through their thick fucking skulls, the better.

[glowpipe]

ofcourse they can never balance the covens, considering the playerbase cry like babies when a class is doing 2% worse than another.

[deenman]

If Shadowland sells a bucketload of copies (at least in the range of Legion and BfA..I guess they will again announce the first day / week sales) then I guess it is rather the people who haven't learned

Or the problem is not as big to most players as the guys who constantly post these threads make it.



Yeah..that would truly be unacceptably unbalanced. A 2% difference? ...well..I guess people would still complain.

Anyhow..what covenant currently makes you 50% stronger than other players of the same specc?

its not just the covenant pick,its also the conduits and the soulbind picks,its one huge snowball effect

[Omedon]

For the record, the “I don’t mind that they’ll be intrinsically imbalanced and locked down, and don’t care if they waste zero time in attempting balance” demographic does exist. Good enough is good enough, and that threshold is in a different place depending on who you ask.

[Swnem]

Which is different than grinding gear(for different specs - so you have a clear image).. how?
Or rep for essences?

You grind it what you play, you get what it's worth.
https://www.wowhead.com/guides/shado...lities-rewards

Higher Renown will:

deepen connections with Soulbinds
raise maximum potential of the features within your Sanctum
increase item levels of items acquired from World Quests
unlock a wide variety of features, including rewards, quests, followers, cosmetics, etc.
give access to recipes, including Legendary Runeforging recipes for the Runecrafter in Torghast
allow you to acquire Covenant-specific items such as mounts, pets, a title, back attachment transmogs, and transmog armor

From what i see, only thing related to power is soulbinds, and you'll want to grind those anyway.
So everything is as usual, you want to unlock a piece of gear from a rep faction? You grind that rep, you want another piece from another faction? You grind that too.

I don't see an issue here. It's like keeping your cloak up to date for a more recent example.
And for alts there will be a catchup system as well.

- - - Updated - - -



Tell me how you make a decision when the 3rd/4th type of player says whatever?

You don't, their apathy does not influence the outcome because they don't participate in a clear decision.


What are we going to eat tonight?

A) Japanese - 17%

B) Chinese - 21%

C) Italian - 39%

D) Whatever - 23%

Tell me, which one is the winner?
C is the winner, D is a decision that matters less than the 17% of option A, because D means whatever man, i don't care. As such they don't influence a decision.

Let me put it this way to make it simpler for you

A) Japanese - 17%

B) Chinese - 21%

C) Italian - 23%

D) Whatever - 39%

See now? D - whatever is the highest, does it mean you know what you're getting? NO, it means you go to the others which actually decided on something, the winner is C even though it was less than D.

What? It's different cause it's 4 times more work. Did you miss that part on the post or something?
It's nothing like gearing alt specs. You can do those just changing your loot spec and you can reuse gear you already got.
Like, wth? It's nowhere even comparable. Nor is it comparable to reputations. They are not exclusive, they are finite and they don't affect player power.

So, you are ok with 4 infinite grinds? Well... we know where you stand. In your chair, playing WoW all day, i guess. So much for alt friendly if that was the case.

Thankfully i'm sure the quest will reign that back.

[AlmightyGerkin]

The whole system hinges on them balancing them. Something that Ion keeps claiming he will do.


You want to sit there and tell me Ion and his team cares?

The team that brought you Legendaries and refused to fix their RNG acquisition until the expansion was over? The same team that spent 2 years attempting to balance them?

This is the same team that released Azerite in it's laughably broken state. With minimal testing? The same team who brought the release of BfA forward a month?

The same team that said they "heard" your feedback on Titanforging and RNG and then added Corruption in as a follow up system?



This is the same team that has a ZERO PERCENT success rate on balancing these types of systems - Artifacts, Legiondaries, Azerite, Essences and Corruption.


How long before Ion admits defeat and lets us swap them? 9.2? 9.3? Or shall we just wait for 9.3.5 like Legion and BfA?

Better time getting blood from stone before Balancing and Blizzard will co exist peacefully.

[Rayzen17]

What? It's different cause it's 4 times more work. Did you miss that part on the post or something?
It's nothing like gearing alt specs. You can do those just changing your loot spec and you can reuse gear you already got.
Like, wth? It's nowhere even comparable. Nor is it comparable to reputations. They are not exclusive, they are finite and they don't affect player power.

So, you are ok with 4 infinite grinds? Well... we know where you stand. In your chair, playing WoW all day, i guess. So much for alt friendly if that was the case.

Thankfully i'm sure the quest will reign that back.

They are capped weekly dude. And from the news of it, it doesn't look like it takes much to actually gain Renown.
Look here: https://www.wowhead.com/news=316846....we-know-so-far

>> There will be a weekly cap on how much Renown you can gain.
>> Renown is earned through playing the Covenant Campaign and by completing two weekly quests.

Playing the Campaign makes sense (and who doesn't want to play the Campaign) and completing 2 quests doesn't say much, but it's definitely not something that should take a long time.

As such, it doesn't seem like there's much grinding involved to keep up your Renown.
And if you don't want to... then don't? xD

P.S. There is also a catchup for alts, so it seems like good design at this part.
Also: If you are behind, or you switch Covenants, or you are playing an alt, there is a catch-up system already in place. << this here shows that even if you switch the catchup is activated on your main. I got to give props to Blizzard for this design at least.

[Sunslayer]

I honestly wish they would stop adding all these stupid systems. Look at class balance ever since they started this new "systems on top of systems, systems, systems". Class balance has been atrocious. Even Legion had absolutely garbage class balance so bad that we haven't such terrible balance since TBC.
BfA, same crap. Nothing but garbage balance.
I have a novel idea. Stop trying to balance all these stupid systems and instead...balance classes.

Not gonna happen. Shadowlands will be the same crap.

[Shinrael]

It comes down to what balance means, and when I tend to harp on Blizz for balancing issues... it's probably a lot different than what most people probably think I mean.

First step is defining what balance means, everyone has a different idea. For example, the person you quoted stated their idea of balance when it came to class abilities was that they do the same damage. It's rather akin to a popular view that to balance classes they all have to have the same damage output and potential, which not only would be nigh impossible to do... I don't think that's balanced (and neither do the devs, I'm fairly certain).

I'll stick to abilities available to a class across the covenants as an example to keep it simplified. According to the person you quoted, they define balanced as the abilities all doing the same damage. As you stated, the abilities do different things in different, and if they all had the same damage that doesn't mean they're necessarily balanced. Taking it a step further, knowing that each of the abilities will do different things and have different results in varying scenarios, how would one define the system as balanced?

Let's say that one ability is ST, one is AoE, one is cleave, and one is utility/movement. Four abilities that do four different things. How can you balance this? In most of my posts, I tend to reference that Blizz either has to nerf them into uselessness or make them strong in niche scenarios. To expand upon this example, each of these abilities should shine in scenarios that fit the ability and less so in other areas (the ST ability shines in ST compared to all the others, the AoE ability in AoE scenarios, etc.). Even if you want to assign DPS numbers to the abilities, even the utility/movement ability has DPS gains, although that can be hard to quantify exactly... but in the case of many casters, except BM hunters, unassisted movement is a large DPS loss, and having abilities to speed up or make you able to get back to DPSing faster are a DPS gain. So in the end, all the abilities have different DPS values of some kind, but the system as a whole is balanced to where the abilities shine above the others when you get the right scenario.

So where do I think Blizz gets this wrong? Typically, when Blizz heavily favors certain scenarios or making abilities/specs/classes/etc. universally good at everything. If there are no trade-offs or downsides to making a choice, then Blizz has failed at making a meaningful choice. This can either come down to the ability/class design for the game content design and systems themselves. When I view things like the covenant signature abilities, the reason I'm skeptical concerning balance isn't because they all do different things (I actually like that!), it's that one or two are almost universally better in every scenario considering how Blizz tends to balance and design content. Now they're trying to shift the balance of power to other systems, but as of late Blizz tends to cling stubbornly to certain ideas when it may just be easier to scrap it or come at it from a different angle. Basically, my concern isn't that all the abilities won't have niche applications, it's that a handful of outliers (in the sense of almost or always better than everything else in every scenario) won't be addressed. If Blizz can allow all these new abilities to shine at certain moments while being inferior to others at some point, that's probably as balanced as we can hope to get.

Thank you for the detailed explanation... though I believe that to be common sense :3

Blizzard has explicitly been saying this BFA that they want to make the niche strenghts of classes, etc shine in niche scenarios, so that last paragraph is wrong. There however is the problem that there are too many scenarios and you cannot predict how all of them will play out with different classes/specs/covenants/talents/etc. In your example it is just AoE, Cleave, ST and utility but reality is that the scenarios are way more varied than that. The covenants might offer just 1 selection of AoE abilities but the AoE scenarios have hundreds of variations. A very simple example: 1 target. 5 targets. 13 targets. 27 targets. 49 targets. Shall I go on? Rogue's AoE ability might be better at 10 targets than Paladin. Paladin's AoE ability might be better at 5 targets. But in M+ players have a choice how to play. You can choose to pull 5 targets or you can choose to pull 10 targets. But if you can pull 10 targets and survive, WHY would you ever pick the 5 target one? On paper they have their unique strengths, but in practice, players can MANIPULATE these strengths and benefit even more than intended - pull 20 targets instead of 5. Now Rogue is absolutely better and Paladin falls down. Pull 30 targets and Rogue is the only playable melee DPS. That is how "universally good" specs are created. Players are too smart and too many, for the developers to predict all the scenarios that the players can create and manipulate. Ofc, the above example is very simplified so no need to try and come up with an arbitrary solution for it. There is no way to balance things.

And the problem of majority of players is not the balance. It is the fact that you cannot change. Because they KNOW that 1 ability will be better at one thing and another at a different thing. And they want to be best at everything. Which directly contradicts Blizzard's philosophy to have different classes and gameplay choices provide different niche strengths and weaknesses. Players are the problem. Players have unrealistic expectations without considering the consequences from them.

But since majority of players are very limited in their perspective, they blame it all on "Balance" when that was never a realistic thing in the first place. And those that properly realize that it's the permanent choice that is a problem are still in the wrong too, imo. In the end, a choice will only matter if you lose something from it. Because to gain one thing means to lose another. If you have everything, you have nothing. It might be a bit too philosophical for most players but... that is not something I can help them with. I will play and enjoy the things I enjoy. I just hope Blizzard sticks to their philosophy and only makes changes after carefully considering the pros and cons.

[LordVargK]

Tell me how you make a decision when the 3rd/4th type of player says whatever?

You don't, their apathy does not influence the outcome because they don't participate in a clear decision.

I did not talk about whatever. I did talk about your posted poll, which does not feature a whatever option.

What are we going to eat tonight?

A) Japanese - 17%

B) Chinese - 21%

C) Italian - 39%

D) Whatever - 23%

Tell me, which one is the winner?

You don't know the winner, because you don't know how much the people voting for A) and B) like Italian food. You can keep whatever out of question, because their preferences are Japanese=Chinese=Italian.

In your example it could be the case that all the people who voted A) and B) hate Italian food and would rather eat nothing at all. Additionally it could be the case, that Italian food is also the most hated food of all (assuming not all Italian food lover have the same hated food). So you would have the logical contradiction that Italian food is the most liked and most hated. Which can't be true for obvious reasons. As long as this possibility even exists your approach to finding the most loved food is wrong.

A poll that actually reflects what the majority want must have the multiple response format, meaning that you can vote on any number of choices, because only then you account for what people don't want.

Let me give you one other example:

You have 3 types of people: 20% have an income of 20,000$, 45% have an income of 50,000$ and 35% have and income of 100,000$. All of them want to maximize their income.
Now you start the following poll:

Vote on a taxing model!
A) people with 20,000 pay no taxes, but all others do.
B) people with 50,000 pay no taxes, but all others do.
C) people with 100,000 pay no taxes, but all others do.
D) Everyone pays taxes, but reduced by half.

Now a simple multiple choice (= only voting for ONE option) would lead to:


A) 20%
B) 45%
C) 35%
D) 0%

You would conclude: "Okay, the majority wants that people with an income of 50,000$ do not have to pay taxes". Which is obviously bullshit, because 55% of all voters are against this outcome (since they would have a comparative disadvantage now). To put it simple: 45% would be very happy, 55% very unhappy.

Instead, if you allow multiple responses you would get

A) 20%
B) 45%
C) 35%
D) 100%

Meaning that all people actually prefer option D), if their preferred option does not win. 100% of all people are satisfied. Noone is super happy but noone is super angry as well.

And not, this does not mean that they don't care.