Artifact Knowledge is a big problem

[Daffan]

No, realistically every patch since wotlk had at least one way to easily catch up gear from the previous tier. Be it a daily hub, honor farming, badge farming, timewalking or added dungeons.
But this is also highly irrelevant to my point, replace one raid tier with two and you get the same result. Heck even currently we are still in the same first tier as emerald nightmare, and it is already made completely obsolete by dungeons and cracking nuts.
The point is just everything we do is futile in a mmo. You can always come back later and wonder why people spent so much time doing the same stuff when it was current while later it is just blindly running through.
So are people dumb for farming current content when they could vastly more efficiently farm previous content?

I don't even get your last point,

My point was that it was never futile in the past but extremely relevant to character progression, not like it is now or has been since DS/MOP. Especially for the casual player, once you get your 880 welfare from Nethershards everything becomes obsolete/trivial (You don't do mythic schedules as a casual 99/100 people) - that's the problem with gearing I was originally talking about 2-3 replies ago. Nothing your saying about first tier EN, dungeons and all this other stuff has anything to do with countering my point - that was my point exactly, how Blizzard sucks at rewarding their players to keep retention.

[Puri]

I don't even get your last point,

My point was that it was never futile in the past but extremely relevant to character progression, not like it is now or has been since DS/MOP. Especially for the casual player, once you get your 880 welfare from Nethershards everything becomes obsolete/trivial (You don't do mythic schedules as a casual 99/100 people) - that's the problem with gearing I was originally talking about 2-3 replies ago. Nothing your saying about first tier EN, dungeons and all this other stuff has anything to do with countering my point - that was my point exactly, how Blizzard sucks at rewarding their players to keep retention.

And I don't get yours as you contradict yourself. You said:

It never used to be like that.

And now you agree it's been like that at least since DS/MOP:

My point was that it was never futile in the past but extremely relevant to character progression, not like it is now or has been since DS/MOP.

You even agreed that it happened much earlier with ICC 5 men dungeons:

Not really, only realistically when they introduced ICC 5 mans did new patches completely wipe out old patches in terms of relevancy.

You do realize those are the past? Almost 8 years to be exact? And I don't even disagree that you are right that this was not the case in vanilla/BC and maybe even in later patches. But that's not my point. I am answering to the OP that AP just completely follows the same pattern as loot as it does for the majority of the game's life, it's nothing new and it has nothing to do with AK.

[Deleted]

I really don't get this whole thing.

If you're having fun doing things that award AP, why not do it? I have 3 weapons on the 52nd trait by now simply by doing things I like and things I want to do anyway.

As an example: I'm generally a rather unlucky person, so I can't rely on luck to get the good legendaries. Combined with Blizzard's ever-changing idea of which warlock spec comes out on top, I wanted to be prepared for the raid, so I needed 2 main things:

- BIS legendaries for each spec
- Raid-ready weapons for each spec (i.e. 52nd trait)

And to hedge for Blizzard's usual "Oh, let's put in a new BIS leggy just to be sure", I also wanted to have as many if not all leggies there are.

Hence, I played for it. LFR, Nightmare raids, mythics, World Quests, etc. And besides the LFR, none of those feel like a chore. I LIKE doing this and wouldn't if I didn't.

Does this make me stupid now and not understand AK? No it doesn't, it just makes me prepared for anything that can come my way. And - who knows - maybe because I'm finished with it earlier than I thought, I can not push a couple more paragon points into the weapon. It's not much, but every little bit counts when your part of a guild that wants to do challenging content.

Legion is actually one of the very first expansions where I had the feeling "Damn, there is still so much to do, but so little time to do it". And yet, I see so many people here complain that there is no content....

[FAILoZOFF]

TBH in my eyes whole idea and systems associated with artifact weps are kinda rubbish, boring, wrong and in the long run pointless.
For instance whole AK system could be just a server side thing, but it isn't and punishes people that felt like leave the game for some time, alts and even people that for some reason couldn't click damn thing and keep it running ASAP. If it was server side it would serve the exact same purpose it does now.

[Daffan]

And I don't get yours as you contradict yourself. You said:



And now you agree it's been like that at least since DS/MOP:



You even agreed that it happened much earlier with ICC 5 men dungeons:



You do realize those are the past? Almost 8 years to be exact? And I don't even disagree that you are right that this was not the case in vanilla/BC and maybe even in later patches. But that's not my point. I am answering to the OP that AP just completely follows the same pattern as loot as it does for the majority of the game's life, it's nothing new and it has nothing to do with AK.

When I said it never used to be like that, it was responding to your part where you said it was always like that in MMOS. Which is not true.

Either way, this model sucks and always will. Exactly why I wrote my sigggggg years ago

[Kokolums]

I hate artifact power and refuse to seek it out. If I get some AP while I do other things, great. Otherwise, I don't care. AP is cancer to this game.

[Deleted]

AK is just a mechanic made to make you feel shitty for taking a break from the game. If they really wanted it to be a catch up mechanic while ap still being progression for everyone, they would just make the first level "rested exp ap" after a week, on second week it 1st level would be "double rested" while 2nd is "rested" or retroactively making first levels cost less ap. Their reasoning behind having AK instead of rewards staying the same are very clear bullshit for anyone ever having to have worked with numbers in a video game.

[FAILoZOFF]

AK is just a mechanic made to make you feel shitty for taking a break from the game.

That's exactly what its purpose is- to punish people that would like to take a break. Funny thing is; I know few people that took some break before 7.2 regardless and would like to even return, but when they think about how much they are lagging behind, not in terms of gear, legendaries or w/e but AK specifically, they just don't feel like it.
So this system backfires at Blizzard greed like crazy.

[Vaerys]

That's exactly what its purpose is- to punish people that would like to take a break. Funny thing is; I know few people that took some break before 7.2 regardless and would like to even return, but when they think about how much they are lagging behind, not in terms of gear, legendaries or w/e but AK specifically, they just don't feel like it.
So this system backfires at Blizzard greed like crazy.

There is a perception problem, then, because Artifact Knowledge research is accelerated for people returning from a break relative to people who have stayed current, and lower ranks can even be purchased with Order Hall resources, which is now very easily farmed in large quantities.

Catching up on missing legendaries is much more daunting.

[FAILoZOFF]

There is a perception problem, then, because Artifact Knowledge research is accelerated for people returning from a break relative to people who have stayed current, and lower ranks can even be purchased with Order Hall resources, which is now very easily farmed in large quantities.

Catching up on missing legendaries is much more daunting.

Yah ok, but question is: why even have such bizarre system in the first place? Most people I spoke with do not find whole artifact and legendary stuff appealing at all.
quite a lot of such things in this expansion tries to stretch out content far beyond of what is acceptable by most.

[Vaerys]

Yah ok, but question is: why even have such bizarre system in the first place? Most people I spoke with do not find whole artifact and legendary stuff appealing at all.
quite a lot of such things in this expansion tries to stretch out content far beyond of what is acceptable by most.

I think the Artifact Power concept accomplishes the goals it was created for.
1) Provides a resource that you can earn in a multitude of ways.
2) Catchup. Previous AP earned is greatly devalued by the magnitude of future AP earned.
3) Diminishing returns due to trait cost scaling discourages poop sock grinding of AP. You can work your ass off if you want to, but it's for a very marginal gain.

Legendaries on the other hand, work completely differently. While incredibly rewarding, they are highly subject to RNG, and if you have the misfortune to play a spec that is gimped without the best in slot legendary that just won't drop for you, then it sucks to be you. The drop rate isn't unbearably low, however, so it is generally possible to get a serviceable combo if you just play consistently. And they are also making an effort to normalize legendary power. I know in the case of BM hunters, the shoulders that felt 'mandatory' are having their amazing effect turned into a baseline spec feature, and coming up with a new thing to put on the shoulders.

Having the availability of legendary equipment and trinkets affect your talent selection and playstyle is interesting to a lot of people.

[Evangeliste]

I sometimes wish Blizzard didn't bother with Artifacts simply because the community are constantly bickering on the pros and cons. Fuck me it's a live game and humans made it, you can't expect perfection, their balls are made of skin not crystal. Nor expect after the 6th expansion not to try to do something different and out of the box. You do realise that the game directors do change and so have the teams hence changes altogether.

Bottom line: Blizzard wanted to make an item that could constantly give a player a power-up so if RNG on loot was being an asshole you got an level-up on traits. Sadly they underestimated the playerbase losing their shit over min/maxing.

I'll be glad when the Artifacts go just so we don't have 100+ threads on the same dribble.