Would an AP cap each week work?

[Deleted]

I would prefer an account wide mechanism, maybe something similar as what you have on Diablo.

[Softbottom]

big changes coming hopefully, frontpage just posted:

Artifact Power has been a hot topic lately, both around the community and within the development team. With Patch 7.2 on the horizon, introducing both new artifact traits and additional Knowledge levels, we have been reflecting on the way the system has unfolded during the first months of Legion, and evaluating changes based on the lessons we have learned thus far.

First off, a look back at where we started.

From the outset, Artifact Power was intended to serve two intertwined purposes: First, it offered max-level progression that was not entirely item-driven, along with choices and elements of character customization as players traversed their trait trees; second, it was meant to serve as a universally desired, consistent reward from all types of content.

In crafting the systems that delivered Artifact Power, we weighed the merits of hard caps versus a smoother system of diminishing returns. We had extensive experience with hard caps, through multiple past iterations of currencies like Valor Points and Conquest Points, and wanted to avoid several of the downsides of that approach. For example, a cap inherently feels like more of an expected quota, where missing a week or falling short of the cap puts you clearly, and potentially permanently, behind the curve.

Instead, as everyone knows, we settled on an open-ended system of diminishing returns. Without any hard caps on how quickly players could earn AP, it was essential to have some sort of limiting mechanism on the gap in power between players of different playstyles, and different levels of time investment. We accepted the admittedly complex design of Artifact Knowledge because it solved this problem, effectively reining in the size of this power gap. Players trying to progress past the expected artifact level for their Knowledge would run into those rapidly diminishing returns, while those who played less than that would have Knowledge as an accelerator to help them catch up to the cutting edge. When Emerald Nightmare was new content, while the average raider was at 20 or 21 points, the most dedicated might have been at 24 or 25 – a relatively modest gap.

Now, where things went wrong…

We feel that we made two major missteps with the Artifact Power system that increasingly manifested themselves as we got deeper into Patch 7.1 and 7.1.5. And both of them served to undermine that core goal of ensuring that the gap between players with different levels of time invested into the system could not grow too large.

First, the cost of ranks in the 20-point final trait remained relatively flat, as opposed to the rapid exponential scaling up to that point. This meant that someone who spent twice as much time gathering AP as I did would have roughly twice as many ranks as me. Instead of the 24 vs. 21 gaps we saw in Nightmare, a number of hardcore raiders entered Nighthold with 54 points, while others were just beginning that final progression and found themselves with nearly 10% less health and damage, equivalent to being almost a full tier of gear behind. Players who switched specs or characters along the way found themselves in a similar position. The power gap was larger than ever before, which created a sense of obligation and a number of negative social pressures that the system had previously tried to minimize. In short: We’re not at all happy with how this worked out.

A common suggestion is to simply reduce the amount of Artifact Power required to fully unlock the artifact in 7.2. This would not solve the underlying problem, but would rather reduce its duration while heightening its intensity, as competitive players sprinted to finish their Artifacts in order to be “ready.” But then we would inevitably tune around that completed power level, and other players would simply be playing catch-up the entire time. And in the long run, Artifact Power would not be serving its intended purpose of ongoing parallel progression. A capped-artifact player who goes a week without getting any item upgrades ends the week literally no stronger than before. Part of the value of the artifact, both for personal progression and guild progression, lies in ensuring that everyone is at least a bit stronger next week than they are right now, and a bit closer to overcoming whatever obstacle stands in their path. Our goal is for Artifact Power to always be of some interest as a reward, whether from a World Quest, or as a consolation prize when failing a bonus roll.

Instead, we are focusing on fixing the mistake of flat cost scaling at the end of the progression, and instead keeping the increases exponential throughout, while also strengthening Artifact Knowledge as a core pacing and catch-up mechanism. These changes should be visible in an upcoming PTR build.

This is done with the primary goal of reducing the power gap based on time investment, while preserving Artifact Power as an endgame reward that everyone values. If the leaders in Artifact Power were only a few points ahead of a more typical player, rather than crossing the finish line when most were just leaving the starting blocks, players with less time to commit would not be as disadvantaged in competitive activities. If a Warlock were choosing between having 48 points in a single spec or 44 points in all three specs if they’d split their efforts evenly, the barrier to playing multiple specs would be significantly reduced. We are still tuning the curve for 7.2 trait costs, but we’re currently targeting scaling such that someone who earns twice as much AP as me will have an artifact that’s only ~1.5% stronger; someone who earns four times as much AP as me should only be 3% stronger. On the whole, this should be a massive reduction in the power gaps we see in the live game today.

The second problem with our initial implementation was that repeatable sources of Artifact Power (Mythic Keystone dungeons in particular) dominated time-limited sources such as Emissary caches and raid bosses. The fact that a large portion of the community evaluates their Artifact Power needs using “Maw runs” as the unit of measurement is ample evidence of this failure. We very recently deployed a hotfix to increase AP earned from Nighthold in order to make raiding, with a weekly-lockout, better compare in efficiency to repeated Mythic Keystone runs. And in 7.2, we’re more thoroughly addressing this issue by adding a significant amount of AP to the weekly Mythic Keystone cache, while somewhat reducing (and normalizing based on instance length) the AP awarded by repeated runs. These changes are being made to narrow the gap in AP earning, and thus power, based on time investment.

All of the above changes are aimed at allowing players the freedom and flexibility to decide how they want to spend their time, and which goals they wish to pursue, while limiting the difference in power between players who arrive at different answers to those questions.

[Deleted]

Caps are always a feelsbadman situation...

[Onikaroshi]

Caps are always a feelsbadman situation...

They're effectively putting in a soft cap, and there's nothing wrong with soft caps, they allow you to keep getting the AP but there's no point in grinding it out.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

The way they implement AK and escalating AP costs per trait is their control mechanism. It slows down the progression of the guys at the front of the pack and speeds up the progression of the guys at the back.

Essentially it creates a reason for people to stop trying to chase infinite AP, because the more of it you get the less return you get for your effort, while at the same time allowing those who put in the extra effort to gain some advantage.

Simply put, if you're in a competitive guild, it's worth putting in 2-4 times the effort of the average casual player towards gathering AP. But it's not worth putting in 10 times the effort. In the end it's exactly as you say: Mature players need to regulate themselves.

Yeah, I just read the blue post. Gotta say, sounds like Blizz is putting some good thought into this. I like pretty much everything they said, and forgive them for not being perfect on the first iteration. 7.2 should be better for all.

- - - Updated - - -

They're effectively putting in a soft cap, and there's nothing wrong with soft caps, they allow you to keep getting the AP but there's no point in grinding it out.

Exactly. Well done Blizz.

[Glorious Leader]

There already is one.

It is called my brain.

Its really that easy guys. Just say no. Im not going to do this.

[Cheze]

I'd have preferred a conquest-style rolling cap (i.e. cap total progression, let the people who're behind farm to catch up), but the system they're implementing doesn't seem too bad.

I worry a little that they're still underestimating people's willingness to farm m+; if the gap in power created by doing 500 maw 9s is now (for example) 5% instead of 10% I'm not sure that really solves the problem.

[Deleted]

You can do this right now, with zero loss. That's the luxury of no cap. You can put in the effort you feel like for the level you're comfortable playing at.

Now if you're trying to say you want to be at the highest level without putting in the associated effort, then the problem is not the system.

The problem IS the system. Unless you want a game just for the unemployed. Will be difficult to find mythic guilds that way.

[Averrix]

A cap to do what? Make things frustrating as it was getting those 80 soul fragments to find out that the end reward was nothing spectacular? No thanks, I hate weekly caps. I suppose they are needed in some aspects of the game, but not for AP.

[grexly75]

Um, the difference between somebody being 54 and being 35 is absolutely massive and a giant fucking barrier to anybody wanting to swap specs based on encounter differences. You realize 9.5% throughput and 14.25% stamina is absolutely massive. Once you start adding legendary items and relics to the equation you have an absolutely gargantuan mountain to overcome when trying to change to a difference spec. So no, it's not just about getting better and changing your fucking talents lol. Yeah personal skill is always part of the equation, but if you're comparing a fire mage to a frost mage and an encounter is AoE, why play a frost mage. Not only are you likely pigeonholed into legendary items, and likely have a higher iLvL weapon via relics because you 'main' fire, you also have a huge advantage trait wise. It begs the question, and this applies to mostly everybody in the game except those who actually play so much they erase the AP advantage.. why even have those other specs?

I never once said that having a cap is great and then changed my mind, I just outlined reasons why it might not be so bad, and reasons why it might be positive direction for the game. All I stated is that if AP was universal, and not limited to a different artifact weapons that this discussion likely wouldn't be needed. My main goal with that argument is to get people to understand how crippling AP can be to people with multiple DPS specs, especially combined with other ways you individualize what you decide to be with your character. In this world, unless you play a metric shitload, you aren't a mage anymore, you're either a frost, fire or arcane mage. Assuming you have 35 traits in 2 specs and 54 in the other, but have only one particular theme of legendary items (which is common for basically 99% of the community), you can probably be anywhere from 30-40% more effective than your other roles depending on your artifact ilvL as well.

I wasn't aware that you can't make a thread about a topic you might not necessarily agree with, but give points as to why it might be a good idea. I guess the world is so black and white that you're only allowed to be in one camp or the other?

And if you read the front page or the shortcut too it http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...9#post44618159 they give a good explanation as to why they did not want to hard cap AP.. But it also goes into where they went wrong with it.. And what steps they are taking to try and solve the problem..

[Nahela]

The problem IS the system. Unless you want a game just for the unemployed. Will be difficult to find mythic guilds that way.

That's not a problem with the system, that's a problem with the community. For example, guilds struggling through Heroic or 1/10M that are requiring 900ilvl 54traits are kidding themselves.

[BrioWoW]

That's not a problem with the system, that's a problem with the community. For example, guilds struggling through Heroic or 1/10M that are requiring 900ilvl 54traits are kidding themselves.

My guild is a more casual mythic guild, ie we have people that want to raid but don't want to put in a ton of time on grinding (I'm more hardcore having gotten 54 as soon as I reasonably could by joining carry groups). Before this wasn't really a problem. Now we are 3/10 and really need people to be getting higher level artifacts but they don't want to do a boring grind. Part of it for sure is them being babies as anyone doing mythic should expect to have to put in some kind of extra effort, but the AP system fucking sucks. You could do mythic (in WoD)/heroic before without having to constantly grind or play every day as long as you put in some initial effort. Not so much in Legion.

[DisposableHero]

I'd be happier if AP were character wide rather than per spec. I'd be happiest if artifact power were account wide.

[dakalro]

AP cap, no, Paragon trait limitation (1/week or similar, like AK catch-up, sure).

As a warlock my biggest problem is you just can't keep up the specs at close levels. After 35, because of the linear scaling it's just not worth to invest (almost) equally in all weapons. Add relics that only drop per spec making a 2nd/3rd artifact about 1 tier lower when it matters, since you get leftovers. Add legendaries that are keyed to spec and the incentives of playing a pure dps (choice of best fitting spec each fight) are gone.

Blizzard seems to have simply ignored that there are players that play more than 1 spec of the same class at the same level of progression, so not an off-spec but multiple main specs.

[Deleted]

nope people shouldnt be capped if they play the game more

[Deleted]

That's not a problem with the system, that's a problem with the community. For example, guilds struggling through Heroic or 1/10M that are requiring 900ilvl 54traits are kidding themselves.

They are not kidding themselves. You haven't done chronomatic mythic if you think they are exagerating.

[Nahela]

They are not kidding themselves. You haven't done chronomatic mythic if you think they are exagerating.

Actually, I have, have you? This week with someone's 890 sub-35 traits alt on top of that. Chronomatic isn't even a difficult numbers check. So many in this community have this awful mentality that it's raw numbers above all else when their execution and situational awareness is garbage.

Does it help? Sure, but so does playing well.

[ComputerNerd]

I do not understand the hate for a weekly AP cap. You know, there IS a hard AP cap at level 54?

What's the difference between "I don't have to do anything this week anymore." and "I don't have to do anything until next patch anymore."?

Many people in this thread seem to wish Blizzard would open allow paragon levels to go into infinity.

If you miss a hard cap you are permanently behind some number someone can comprehend.
You can never over come that, you are always going to be that.
That is what a hard cap does.

A hard cap is an expectation, that you either meet or you fail to do everything that you "should" be doing.
The simply unrealistic approach of doing every AP world quest every time there is one is offering a soft-cap, one that doesn't simply stop the player at an arbitrary point, but one that a player can find unattractive to keep up.

[iky43210]

If you miss a cap you are permanently behind some number someone can comprehend.
You can never over come that, you are always going to be that.
That is what a cap does.

Use a rolling cap? like arena during mop.

Any week you missed the cap gets rolled over to next week, and this applies to even characters not at max level.

[ComputerNerd]

Use a rolling cap? like arena during mop.

Any week you missed the cap gets rolled over to next week, and this applies to even characters not at max level.

But then you still get the expectation, which comes with any hard cap.

It might as well be a requirement by that point.