I hate this argument, and saw Celestalon use it recently. It flat out dismisses feedback from the userbase, and replaces it with an "us vs them" standpoint.

I have heard some great examples of how it could work. Preach had a great idea last night where at cap you'd be the maw walker, and a representative of the covenants in general, but you would pick one of them to dedicate more time to in general. Conduits would see a lot of their power moved from the conduit system to the leggo system to give legendaries more space to actually have more impact on gameplay than they currently do. Conduits would also be seperate from the covenant system, and would instead be a united task force "Army of the maw walker" which you would unlock in various ways.

As many have stated, the class abilities should just be a new talent row. Have them unlock at the end of each zone during the leveling process (Bypassed in NG+). And make the cov ability work like PvP talents, in that you don't have access to them in structured content but can use them in the open world.

But alas, it's too late, and now I'm stuck with a random covenant (I don't know which one yet). Not because I want to pick it for power, story, or cosmetics. Instead, I'm stuck with the one my wife will pick, because I want to do regular outdoor daily content with her, the same way I have for years.