Covenants, most disliked new xpac feature?

[Sunslayer]

If it was only flavor the choice wouldn't be meaningful enough. If you need proof that cosmetic rewards are pathetic motivation for people who play this game simply look at the participation numbers of Challenge Mode for the two expansions it existed.

I utterly disagree. In fact I'd add that that statement is absurd. How could your choice NOT be meankngful if there weren't abilities involved? You are choosing...
1) Which faction you will call home
2) Which story you will further and be a part of
3) Which renown quest zone you will play in for 2 years
4) Which mount you will unlock
5) Which armor you unlock

Those aren't meaningful? So, your choice doesn't become "meaningful" until you add some generic abilities that in most cases are about as exciting as watching paint dry?
I don't see your viewpoint at all. I think abilities greatly retract from Covenants because all you hear about are the abilities and Soulbinds while everything else seems to be ignored

[bloodmoth13]

I spent a few hours over on the WoW forums and there are several threads with 700-1k replies arguing for and against Covenants having abilities tied to them.

Is this the most controversial addition to a new xpac to date?
Do you believe Ion, was being honest when he said they would scrap Covenant abilities if people didn't like the idea?
Guess we will find out.

I hate the idea tbh, i will pick one i like the most, it will be the one that isnt broken OP, blizz wont balance them or do any followup tuning, i will reroll and be a week behind and feel bitter.

Also i hate having my core rotation messed with and new buttons being added and taken away. This xpac is the proud return of button bloat and bar space is already pretty restricted (especially if you have any plans to play Spriest, who have like 8 baseline abilities and 1 aoe)

So... i dont like the concept, i think its poorly thought out. Balancing permanent power is a hard enough task, all this optional stuff just adds more edge cases and they will never get around to addressing all of it.

[Soon-TM]

Idk if it's "the most disliked new xpac feature ever", but it sure leaves ample room for Blizzard to !@#$ it up. Which they certainly will, whether it's intentional or not... Only Ion knows.

[Cosmic Janitor]

A lot of non competitive players crave being unique. Its a hard thing for them to do since most of the sought after rewards are all tied to high skill activities. Them cheering for this system is in essence them begging to be recognized.

I even get that to some degree, but a one in four opion is so far off from being unique.. Also as I said, If the abilities had just visual effects to match your selected covenant, while still getting all 4 , you'd still have 4 times the uniqueness, actually 16 times because you could also pick the bad talents and pick the ugly covenant .

[Wildpantz]

As someone who has beta covenant are great. What's a problem is certain abilities are clearly better for certain content like my main prot pally kryrian ability shits on all others for mythic+ content which i focus but i hate the kyrian theme.

They should just make abilities free to pick would solve everything

[Dommie530]

Every convenant should have the same abbilty: just diffrent spell illusions, ( holy bolt, shadow bolt, death bolt etc) its boring but fair, and then the rest could be aesthetics, cosmetics etc. Then people would choose what they like, rather then whats best.

[Doffen]

Lets call a spade a spade - CM were far FAR too tough for the majority of players who focus on cosmetics and collection. If you needed to do a M+20 to unlock a cosmetic reward, it would have very low participation as well. Proof of that is the mage tower early on vs right at the end when it was a free-for-all.

If the covenant system remained in place, but had purely cosmetic rewards, I believe it would have extremely high participation, although less from bleeding edge raiders, and much more from the remaining 99.9% of the playerbase.

Yeah, it's a good example you got here too, Mage Tower were not done by so many in the start, many actually said it was unfair that it was so hard to get those weapon skins from it and just didn't try doing it before way later. And participation was low in the start, then 6 to 9 months later the Mage Tower participation went up significantly.

Choosing a Covenant is easy as in no skill required. CM got low participation because it was too hard for most people, not because it had cosmetic rewards. People bought boosts just to get them as well.

Nowadays cosmetic rewards is the reward you'll see the most in games, all kind of games. It's a reason why. Just look at the reception for the new customizations in SL and the new transmogs you can get, that's some of the main things players look forward to in Covenants.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...DLC-584?page=2
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9U2VSuU0AMdJ-i.jpg:large
Does not tell much but interesting nonetheless.

[Kyux]

I think the justification for those who are concerned about the system is quite founded, especially with Blizzards most recent iterations of borrowed powers being so insanely powerful. The main difference is with those systems, given the right RNG, they could very easily be swapped in and out as the balancing was done. This system will not be as easy to swap in and out, but, it does remove the RNG factor.

I think anyone crying from the rooftops that this system will be the death of wow or using hyperbole and massive assumptions to support their opinion are the real issue. There was even one clown comparing swapping covenants to rerolling an entirely new character, and continually implying the system was "irreversible". These players detract from some of the good conversations going around about legitimate concerns and a hushed nervous excitement that this new system brings.

Personally, i like the idea behind the system, but personally, i wish it was cosmetic / flavor ONLY with no power increase attached to it at all. But i might be in a minority in that i would prefer ALL additional systems were removed from the game that impact player power at all, and focused back to the roots of talents and gear, with the differentiation between players being player skill, rather than how hard they had farmed currencies.

I think that's a really fair answer. You're right, there are some valid concerns, but my greatest concern is that covenants will get scrapped or SL's perception will be warped by the minority who exaggerate the covenant ability issues.

As for your final point, it's not a bad idea although I do think there's a need for end-level progression beyond just gear. I don't know what that happy medium is.

[facefist]

If it was only flavor the choice wouldn't be meaningful enough. If you need proof that cosmetic rewards are pathetic motivation for people who play this game simply look at the participation numbers of Challenge Mode for the two expansions it existed.

If you need proof that choices that affect player power are pathetic motivation for people to play this game, simply look at the expansions with highest subscription amounts. Those expansions didn't have major player power altering semi-permanent choices, yet had ATH subscription amounts. (Yeah I know, but your example is just as dumb as mine is).

This game didn't need that many "meaningful choices" before, and I don't need more of those. It's already meaningful enough for me to choose a class.

I think the feature is, while probably most disliked, also one of the most liked. One of those features that seems to divide the player base.

[Sunslayer]

I think that's a really fair answer. You're right, there are some valid concerns, but my greatest concern is that covenants will get scrapped or SL's perception will be warped by the minority who exaggerate the covenant ability issues.

As for your final point, it's not a bad idea although I do think there's a need for end-level progression beyond just gear. I don't know what that happy medium is.

Another, I'm the "majority" your view point is the "minority". The fact is you don't know, you can't possibly know which is which. So, is it a mental state of delusion so many sseem to suffer?
Do you not feel your opinion holds enough weight without it being the "majority" view? I never understood why people can't just say what they want to say without adding "all my friends agree" or "everyone in my guild agrees" or "everyone I speak to in game agrees with me".

[Kalador]

You just described race, class, and spec choices lol.

I don't really get how that breaks my argument.

You can change race easly and seriously the impact of race choice is no were near the impact of covenant choice, there is almost nothing locked behind race choice.

Spec is absolutely not permanent in this game. Swapping spec is basically as hard as clicking a button. I've played rogue in legion and even there I could play all 3 spec without to much trouble. I mean you can argue that it's more work getting gear for more than one spec but then again if you do that work you are now able to swap spec without any trouble for the rest of the patch.

Yes i agree that Class choice is a "meaningful choice" that is not swapable but I don't really buy the argument that covenant choice is basically like choosing a class. And even if you argue it is. There is problem in class representation in wow. Class balance is not very good in some area of the game (like 5 man content) and that it is bad for the game in general. And that covenant are probably going to be hard to balance well.

Like i said before I don't think covenant should be ez to swap or even that they should remove all player power from them. I think they are a great idea. I just think the community is right to be worried about potential flaws of the system and that it's not as simple as saying people are dumb and don't know what they want or it's just a 1% of the player base problem.

[Voidwielder]

I haven't seriously raided since Nighthold but I do care about M+.

I am not going to circumcise the tip of my dick in a game which is all about the player power. I am not.

[Adoxe]

Covenants are not disliked, it's the aspect of locking power behind the covenant choice that is disliked. Take away the power aspect of the choice and Covenants are an incredible and a very welcome addition to the game, just like class halls were.

[Kyux]

Another, I'm the "majority" your view point is the "minority". The fact is you don't know, you can't possibly know which is which. So, is it a mental state of delusion so many sseem to suffer?
Do you not feel your opinion holds enough weight without it being the "majority" view? I never understood why people can't just say what they want to say without adding "all my friends agree" or "everyone in my guild agrees" or "everyone I speak to in game agrees with me".

You're right, I don't know for sure whether I'm the majority view or not. But I believe, without being able to back it up, that MMO-C does not reflect the majority of the playerbase. I also believe, without being able to back it up, that the theorycrafted difference in the power of covenant abilities will be insignificant to the vast majority of players. Say an ability is 10-20% more powerful than another. For how many people is that an issue? That power difference is only relevant if you are otherwise perfectly executing your rotation and an extra 10-20% more damage on one ability every [whatever the cooldown period is] will make or break the situation (boss fight or whatever). For all other people that difference will be made up for properly gemming, enchanting, not missing GCDs, stepping out of fire, switching to adds immediately.

[SirBeef]

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

Nothing is unswapable or permanent. Please stop spreading this misinformation. And if you "feel" it is because it may take some time to change back, that's o you and doesn't change the fact that Covenants are not permanent choices.

[cuafpr]

vocal minority ... time will tell though.

[Ezyah]

vocal minority ... time will tell though.

Even if it s the vocal minority, the amount if bad press it is doing atm is as i ve never seen before for a not yet launchzd feature so it somehowv impact a lot of people who are reading up before considering buying

[Daedius]

The balancing is going to be an absolute shitshow.

[cuafpr]

Even if it s the vocal minority, the amount if bad press it is doing atm is as i ve never seen before for a not yet launchzd feature so it somehowv impact a lot of people who are reading up before considering buying

outside of forums, I haven't seen much bad press about them, maybe some bad facebook comments? I remember A TON more outrage before WoD when the capital cities were changed/scrapped, an entire zone scrapped, and garrison's totally changed to be forced into one zone vs choosing your zone. Then there was the never going to fly in WoD debacle

[Sunslayer]

Nothing is unswapable or permanent. Please stop spreading this misinformation. And if you "feel" it is because it may take some time to change back, that's o you and doesn't change the fact that Covenants are not permanent choices.

Ok, then how moronic is it that I will feel that I need to swap? And yes, I will need to swap more than likely because unfortunately the content I like is M+ and the Covenant I want to join and stay with and be a part of has a single target DPS ability that is near worthless in the content I run and I'm not talking about +9-15 I'm talking about pushing as far as is possible +22 or higher if I can.

I don't want to swap and I don't want to want to swap. Attaching player power to something this crucial is the dumbest thing theyve ever tried and they've laid some pretty rotten eggs lately.

Covenants take the cake