You don't get it blizzard do you?

[Otrew]

The most fun thing is probably you dont even need 52, with like 45 gonna be enough to normal and heroic, las traits are crap and at least your guild is wiping every single time at 1% with every single member dont diying and doing perfect executions, probably 52 is also useless. And hitting 45 is just a few hour getting gear to normal TOS without being carried requiered more hours

[MatadorMedia]

If your main goal in this game is to grind .01% increases in your weapon or whatever bullcrap, then I feel bad for you.

[SirCowdog]

Always with the negativity.

I think the only error Blizzard made was to underestimate how willing people are to power through the ranks of the 'infinity-trait'. So they made it less possible to achieve the max number of ranks, in hope that even fewer people would try it and start an endless grind they are not supposed to end.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they had just ended it after Concordance rank 1, most people now would be complaining that their AP goes to waste.

There isn't an ideal solution to this. One can of course argue that the whole system is flawed to begin with, and I might agree to that. If you make a realistic goal to reach with a grind, people will power through it, and high end raiders will be required to power through it. But if you are not willing to commit to the grind, you might be considered weak.

I think this solution is okay-ish.

They should have just made it work exactly like Diablo 3's paragon levels. That system works just fine.

The problem is that Blizzard tried to use AK/AP to control and promote people staying logged in longer, and it backfired on them. GG Blizz, stop being so god damn greedy, and next time focus on making a good game instead of good profit.

[Shakou]

they never gave us anything higher than AK 37 (i think thats where we are at now). So no they didnt give you candy and take it away. 40 is the highest you can go and they never removed anything above 40 because you never had it in the first place.

hahahahahahahahahaha thread winner right here

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how does it fix the grind? if anything this just prolongs it

Also this 100%. It appears someone at Blizz realized that people were gonna just grind lvl 50 condorance NP so they had to nerf that.

[Deleted]

Not to sound stupid but maybe you can help me. I keep hearing this talk of AK 50 and how that affecting reaching Concordance and I don't get it. I'm 1 level shy of reaching Condranance and I'm only at AK35. So what's the relationship here? is it because you would be getting more AP if your AK was above 40?

Yeah, that's the way AK works.
You're at 35, so you get 1080100% bonus to all AP. At AK40 it's 4000100% at AK50, had it gone that far, it would have been 55200100%

The person I was replying to wanted all 3 specs to 52 before ToS opens. His job will get considerably easier once he hits AK40.

[Heladys]

The only solution would be to nix AP and AK now. But we both know they won't do that. So I'd settle for AP made irrelevant by everyone easily capping it. But now they've taken away that too.

It's already irrelevant even without capping it, if you have some very basic understanding of math and cost/benefit analysis.

Or you could complain.

[SirCowdog]

Also this 100%. It appears someone at Blizz realized that people were gonna just grind lvl 50 condorance NP so they had to nerf that.

BLIZZ: "We can't have players doing something we didn't intend! We must control how they play!!!! "

[Deleted]

They should have just made it work exactly like Diablo 3's paragon levels. That system works just fine.

The problem is that Blizzard tried to use AK/AP to control and promote people staying logged in longer, and it backfired on them. GG Blizz, stop being so god damn greedy, and next time focus on making a good game instead of good profit.

People complained that in WoD there was nothing to do outside of 2 or 3 hours a week of raiding. AP is a system designed specifically to address that, now, in the absolutely classic mould of Wo w players they are whining and bitching about getting exactly the thing they were asking for.

[xcess]

People complained that in WoD there was nothing to do outside of 2 or 3 hours a week of raiding. AP is a system designed specifically to address that, now, in the absolutely classic mould of Wo w players they are whining and bitching about getting exactly the thing they were asking for.

na its different group of people complaining bout different things, they went too far the other way like they always do

[Moshots]

You say you nerfed AK down to 40 levels to lower the amount of time people feel like they are horribly inefficient. Nicely thought out, but completly ineffectual. It's much easier to never give a kid candy then to give candy to the kid, make it wait for 2 months to get said candy, and then call backsies after a month. Regardless of if the kid ever deserved candy, that kid is going to be angry with you.

That's what you have done. Instead of feeling like their AP farming again means something at 40, you've essentially ensured that players will now feel that their AP farming is useless for the entire rest of the patch cycle. Congrats, you extended the problem you sought to fix indefinitely.

So you mean the retarded kids who can't do math and are wining? and don't realize that grinding a point of concordance is only worth 200 dps when people do 1,000,000.... and that each point of concordance after the first was a total of like 0.2% dps gain.... so who cares if now we softcap at 60 instead of 70...... Most of the people crying are ones with less than 100 mythic+ just looking for something to SJW about.....

[SirCowdog]

People complained that in WoD there was nothing to do outside of 2 or 3 hours a week of raiding. AP is a system designed specifically to address that, now, in the absolutely classic mould of Wo w players they are whining and bitching about getting exactly the thing they were asking for.

Seems like you, just like Blizzard, just don't get it:

On the one hand you have WoD, which had such a dearth of interesting things to do. This resulted in players feeling like there wasn't anything worth doing.

On the other hand you have the AP grind, which created a feeling that players MUST do it(remember the complaints from MoP dailies stacked behind dailies?) in order to stay on par.


The problem is that Blizzard has based far too much of the game on linear progression. The AP grind compounds this. The titanforge grind exacerbates it. Earlier in the expansion the Legendary drop system further aggravated it. You either have the stuff you need by grinding endlessly, or you don't.

What Blizzard needs to do is create a way to bypass some of the grind with skillful play. That way players who can't muster the skill can still progress through time-sunk. While players who are sick of the grind and complaining that they feel like they're forced to grind can use the alternative of just playing well to bypass part of it. But it would need to be a hard enough challenge that it actually presented a legitimate barrier to just skipping everything easily.

But they'll never do that because Blizzard has to bend every piece of the design and content release process to fuel the subscription business model.

[Deleted]

how does it fix the grind? if anything this just prolongs it

The grind which was never able to cap out anyway?

[Mafic]

I don't get it. If they don't want us grinding AP why is it in the game?

They want people to grind 2-3 months before raid so they want people to sub to the game 9 months out of the year instead of the usual 3 months of raiding then /quit. These changes don't hurt players that are consistently subbed but it makes it harder on those to walk away or return for sure.

[Elbob]

Seems like you, just like Blizzard, just don't get it:

On the one hand you have WoD, which had such a dearth of interesting things to do. This resulted in players feeling like there wasn't anything worth doing.

On the other hand you have the AP grind, which created a feeling that players MUST do it(remember the complaints from MoP dailies stacked behind dailies?) in order to stay on par.


The problem is that Blizzard has based far too much of the game on linear progression. The AP grind compounds this. The titanforge grind exacerbates it. Earlier in the expansion the Legendary drop system further aggravated it. You either have the stuff you need by grinding endlessly, or you don't.

What Blizzard needs to do is create a way to bypass some of the grind with skillful play. That way players who can't muster the skill can still progress through time-sunk. While players who are sick of the grind and complaining that they feel like they're forced to grind can use the alternative of just playing well to bypass part of it. But it would need to be a hard enough challenge that it actually presented a legitimate barrier to just skipping everything easily.

But they'll never do that because Blizzard has to bend every piece of the design and content release process to fuel the subscription business model.

AP is a reward for doing an activity not an activity in itself. The "AP grind" as you call it is actually the reward for doing content.

AP is not linear, everything about is exponential. The cost per artifact level and the increase you gain per AK. I won't disagree that that titanforging is bad... its awful. AP is a system that is designed to benefit the casual more then the hardcore player. You get more artifact exp (levels) per AK the further behind you are in AP (I know this statement is confusing to read). This rewards people casually playing characters and reaping the benefits of higher AK. Players that spend tons of time are only going to have 5-6 more artifact levels then a casual played character and those 5-6 points represent VERY little power in relation to the amount of time invested to get it. Past expansions hardcore raiders had MUCH larger advantages over casuals, no one but Mythic raiders really had access to gear of that ilvl but now with titanforging and M+ chests everyone does.

You say there should be a bypass to the AP grind, and there is Mythic raids grant higher base gear still and more AP. Higher M+'s also grant more AP and higher Ilvl gear (gear ilvl caps I know).

AP is DESIGNED to give you a way to progress your characters no matter how much or how little you play and it fits that role damn near perfectly. If you play 1 character a ton you still get rewarded but it DR's, while if you play only a little its easy to stay within arms reach of players that spend much more time playing then you. AP is a MOTIVATOR to do content. Any need you have to stay as high as some one playing 12 hours a day is purely an issue with you. Blizzard is giving you the chance to play how you want this expansion and lots of people are choosing to play the QQ model because they have never had a model as rewarding for various player types.

[SirCowdog]

AP is a reward for doing an activity not an activity in itself. The "AP grind" as you call it is actually the reward for doing content.

AP is not linear, everything about is exponential. The cost per artifact level and the increase you gain per AK. I won't disagree that that titanforging is bad... its awful. AP is a system that is designed to benefit the casual more then the hardcore player. You get more artifact exp (levels) per AK the further behind you are in AP (I know this statement is confusing to read). This rewards people casually playing characters and reaping the benefits of higher AK. Players that spend tons of time are only going to have 5-6 more artifact levels then a casual played character and those 5-6 points represent VERY little power in relation to the amount of time invested to get it. Past expansions hardcore raiders had MUCH larger advantages over casuals, no one but Mythic raiders really had access to gear of that ilvl but now with titanforging and M+ chests everyone does.

You say there should be a bypass to the AP grind, and there is Mythic raids grant higher base gear still and more AP. Higher M+'s also grant more AP and higher Ilvl gear (gear ilvl caps I know).

AP is DESIGNED to give you a way to progress your characters no matter how much or how little you play and it fits that role damn near perfectly. If you play 1 character a ton you still get rewarded but it DR's, while if you play only a little its easy to stay within arms reach of players that spend much more time playing then you. AP is a MOTIVATOR to do content. Any need you have to stay as high as some one playing 12 hours a day is purely an issue with you. Blizzard is giving you the chance to play how you want this expansion and lots of people are choosing to play the QQ model because they have never had a model as rewarding for various player types.

When I said "linear gameplay" I simply meant that as your character progresses in power, all previous challenges become irrelevant. In WOW you generally don't get better as a player, because so much of your progress through the game is based on how good your gear is. AP/AK is part of this problem. Players as individuals feel like they can just push their progress through massive grinding in order to stay on the cutting edge. Players as a community come to expect that others do the same. This isn't much different than previous expansions, but the AP grind makes it an open-ended problem.

Now I get that setting the cap on AP/AK sort of solves the problem by giving players a light at the end of the tunnel. But the problem still exists where players feel like they're required to grind in order to keep up, and the community expects players to be there, even when they aren't playing at a level that needs it. This is why I say there should be an alternate way to progress through the AP grind. Simply playing at the mythic level isn't a solution, because it also requires that you grind the AP and gear to get there in the first place. Skill has very little to do with it. The same goes for higher-end M+ runs: If you don't already have the gear/AP, you simply can't perform at a high enough level to pass.

But if players could basically "Test out" of some of the grind, I feel that it would alleviate the part where players feel like they MUST grind. By creating a skill-based system of progression along side the time-based system of grinding, I think it would help quite a bit. It would need to be something done solo, and also scaled to a locked level of gear, so that the challenge presented was actually skill-based instead of being cheesed with a group carry, or overpowered with equipment. I'm thinking something along the lines of the old proving grounds challenges, or maybe the old challenge modes.

Granted, players balked at those too, so it might not be a perfect solution, but again, as long as there are alternatives to just grinding until you collapse at your keyboard, I think it would work.

[Polarthief]

Everyone seems to be ignoring the fact you can buy AK40 as soon as you have one character at AK40, effectively making alts much more accessible.

As someone raiding semi-hardcore, anything past the 52nd trait even with AK40 is not something you should be worrying about.

Definitely this. Saving 15 days for alts is quite nice. AK 40 is honestly enough. Hell I almost have Concordance on a second artifact and I barely farm AP to begin with. The proc itself is so weak that it doesn't really matter. 2k main stat (or Vers for tanks) for 10s with a ~20% uptime =~ 200 main stat/vers. Do you know how small that is? That's the equivalent of a cheap neck enchant/strong cloak enchant; much, MUCH weaker than the base 5% Damage/Healing/10% Armor of 1 point of the old trait. Even at 50 points it's still stupidly weaker in comparison.

If you think 50/50 is mandatory by any means, you're even crazier than the world first race players.

[Alydael]

Always with the negativity.

I think the only error Blizzard made was to underestimate how willing people are to power through the ranks of the 'infinity-trait'. So they made it less possible to achieve the max number of ranks, in hope that even fewer people would try it and start an endless grind they are not supposed to end.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they had just ended it after Concordance rank 1, most people now would be complaining that their AP goes to waste.

There isn't an ideal solution to this. One can of course argue that the whole system is flawed to begin with, and I might agree to that. If you make a realistic goal to reach with a grind, people will power through it, and high end raiders will be required to power through it. But if you are not willing to commit to the grind, you might be considered weak.

I think this solution is okay-ish.

I think Blizzard should have stopped it at rank 1. They should know by now that as long as you can do it (such as farm ap to reach a ridiculous amount for the next rank) that players will do it and then complain about it.

They also have an easy fix for all the extra resources going to waste (whatever that currency maybe). The "trade market." The "trade market" sells various items from WOW (greens for mog, old items players may still want, etc) for all types of different currency. Your currency never has to go to waste again.

[Polarthief]

I think Blizzard should have stopped it at rank 1. They should know by now that as long as you can do it (such as farm ap to reach a ridiculous amount for the next rank) that players will do it and then complain about it.

They also have an easy fix for all the extra resources going to waste (whatever that currency maybe). The "trade market." The "trade market" sells various items from WOW (greens for mog, old items players may still want, etc) for all types of different currency. Your currency never has to go to waste again.

The resources is definitely a problem since you get way more than you ever need by turnins and world quests. The AP issue is a double-edged sword for sure. IMO they should have made the base proc of Concordance be like 3-4k or so and have each trait only add 50-100 to the proc. If people are going to complain it's "too hard to farm" then let them because it's MINISCULE upgrades (we're talking like 0.01% upgrades here compared to the 1% upgrades of the old paragon trait). The old trait was way too powerful and people had a right to complain. Way less are complaining about this much weaker one, though tbh AP doesn't feel as important so... yeah.

Something needs to be done with AP because we're two major patches in and they've proven that AP doesn't ever feel rewarding unless you get large heaps of it, and even then, if it's just for concordance upgrades, it doesn't feel great.

[Xargoth6634]

So it only stacks to 40 and now I can easily max it on my alts since my main is almost 38? I'm not seeing the problem here.

[Magistrate]

The only solution would be to nix AP and AK now. But we both know they won't do that. So I'd settle for AP made irrelevant by everyone easily capping it. But now they've taken away that too.

That isn't a good solution at all. Then you have the entire player base that spent hours of gameplay grinding for a system they just erase spontaneously. I think everyone just needs to breathe and put this in perspective before jumping on the hate train.