Would an AP cap each week work?

[Bombercloner]

At first I liked the idea of a cap. But upon thinking about it further I don't like the idea. I would feel obligated to hit the cap every week even as a semi-casual raider. If they made the cap really high like all WQ's and 20~ MoS/week that would probably be okay. That cap is so large I know I wouldn't ever hit it. Top end players would still have to work hard to max out there weapon, but they wouldn't feel obligated to run 50+ MoS/per day.

I like how the ring from WoD naturally nerfed HFC, I want the artifact to do the same thing, but with how AP is gained I am not sure how it could be achieved.

In 7.2 it is my understanding that ak research is increasing as well as new traits unlocking and ToS is coming out. WF guilds will not be able to max weapons before progression which means that they will aim for maybe -40ish traits (I have no idea here) whereas the cap is much higher than that. I don't think this is really going to be an issue moving into 7.2 for high end guilds.

However atm can guilds collect tons of AP and throw it into a level 53 weapon and have those points transfer to 7.2? They could collect lots of AP, store it in the bank, and right before 7.2 hits reset their weapon and throw all the points into it so that they could get 6 or 7 traits on opening day instead of 3-4. Blizzard needs to make sure this isn't possible to hard core people don't feel obligated. ToS should be tuned around ~40ish 7.2 traits.

[Deleted]

I think a cap would be a bad idea. But maybe they should introduce some sort of dimishing return. The more ap you farm in a certain time the lesser u get. Maybe something like "your weapon cant manage even more power" or something.

[Flyinghawk]

At first I liked the idea of a cap. But upon thinking about it further I don't like the idea. I would feel obligated to hit the cap every week even as a semi-casual raider. If they made the cap really high like all WQ's and 20~ MoS/week that would probably be okay. That cap is so large I know I wouldn't ever hit it. Top end players would still have to work hard to max out there weapon, but they wouldn't feel obligated to run 50+ MoS/per day.

I like how the ring from WoD naturally nerfed HFC, I want the artifact to do the same thing, but with how AP is gained I am not sure how it could be achieved.

In 7.2 it is my understanding that ak research is increasing as well as new traits unlocking and ToS is coming out. WF guilds will not be able to max weapons before progression which means that they will aim for maybe -40ish traits (I have no idea here) whereas the cap is much higher than that. I don't think this is really going to be an issue moving into 7.2 for high end guilds.

However atm can guilds collect tons of AP and throw it into a level 53 weapon and have those points transfer to 7.2? They could collect lots of AP, store it in the bank, and right before 7.2 hits reset their weapon and throw all the points into it so that they could get 6 or 7 traits on opening day instead of 3-4. Blizzard needs to make sure this isn't possible to hard core people don't feel obligated. ToS should be tuned around ~40ish 7.2 traits.

concerning the last paragraph: blues have stated that AP items gained before 7.2 won't be usable on an unlocked (that is, the extra traits on the weapon) artifact. Exactly for the reason you stated above, that people would just bank them. They even added a gold value to them, some 25g, so you can just vendor them once you hit 54, the cap before 7.2
don't really have anything to add on-topic, everything's pretty much been covered before me

[Deleted]

how would a cap be good? it makes it that you have to do that cap that week........ And this late it would probably do more damage than good.

[Deleted]

how would a cap be good? it makes it that you have to do that cap that week........ And this late it would probably do more damage than good.

Maybe they could introduce it in a way like the honorpoints back in mop? i think. That you have a global cap increasing every week. And make it per weapon and not per character.

[Bombercloner]

concerning the last paragraph: blues have stated that AP items gained before 7.2 won't be usable on an unlocked (that is, the extra traits on the weapon) artifact. Exactly for the reason you stated above, that people would just bank them. They even added a gold value to them, some 25g, so you can just vendor them once you hit 54, the cap before 7.2
don't really have anything to add on-topic, everything's pretty much been covered before me

I am not sure you understand what I am saying. right now I am sitting on 9k AP on my level 54 weapon. Will this 9k be added to the refunded amount in 7.2?

I won't be using AP earned before 7.2 after 7.2 releases. because it could already be on my weapon if I don't buy the 54th trait.

[Jujudrood]

I had an idea for this a little while back, so I'll throw it here for shits n gigs.

I think a hard cap wouldn't help the situation, but a soft cap with diminishing returns and a roll-over baked in wouldn't be a bad idea.
Of course, the amount of AP rewards, the AK level bumps, and the talent costs in general would need to be completely reworked to accommodate this.
I won't do specific maths on this but rather lay out a system that *could* work with a lot of math people actually making the decisions.

The TL;DR of it: scaling soft caps based on AK level with diminished returns once the soft caps are reached.

Let's say all of the above occurred and you were rewarded as:
- 100 AP for common things (normal dungeons, WQs), last "tier" LFR raid
- 150 AP for heroic dungeons/elite WQs LFR raid, last "tier" normal raid
- 200 AP for mythic dungeons, normal raid, suramar elite WQs, world bosses, last "tier" heroic raid
- 250 for heroic raids, M+ (whatever level appropriate), last "tier" mythic raid
- 300 for mythic raids, M+ (whatever level appropriate)
Throw in PVP in whichever category it fits best, I don't do it so I wouldn't know, but rated bgs and high end arena would find itself in the 200sish maybe?

Anyway, so we have set levels for AK 0, then for each AK level you get, you get +5 AP per activity above (or any I missed that get bucketed into the appropriate one), so at AK 25, you get +125 on top of the base.
Each weapon talent would need to be adjusted in whichever way works best to fit the model, but I didn't really work that out since right now, it's erratic as hell.

From here, at AK 25 you could have a weekly soft cap of 5000, so if you have a mythic raid full clear of current content (NH), you get 3000 (base) + 1250 from AK for a total of 4250, then you can get 750 more from somewhere else.
Once you hit that 5000 soft cap, you now only gain AP at 75% rate above (and 75% AK rate as well), so the numbers above are cut down until you reach the next soft cap, let's say 10000.
Hit 10000, then you receive AP at 50% rate. Hit 15000 and you receive AP at 25% rate until weekly reset. (it's like the diminishing effect from your first daily heroic to the second heroic in the same day; the first token is larger than the subsequent ones).
The 25% rate would be the endless one for those who still wish to grind out that little bit extra.

Now let's say you don't hit the "soft" cap, well, no worries because if you only gained 4000 of your AK 25 5000 cap, then next week, your soft cap threshold will be 6000 as the remainder 1000 rolled over, so if you have more time next week, you can play catch up on 100% AP gains.
This would probably need a hard cap on the rollover, maybe to 10000 in this example, so if you miss an entire week, you now have 2 weeks worth of 100% gains to catch up on, with maybe a "200%" cap to this roll over, so the 100% gains would never pass 10000 in this example (anything past that is lost, just like how rested XP works). Gain a little in a week but have leftover? Well, whatever you have left will apply to the 10000 soft cap and the rest will be thrown out.

What this will do is allow people to do the things they want without the pressure of "I have X amount until hard cap, gotta grind!" while those who want to incessantly grind can do so, with diminished returns that will still leave them ahead of the pack at the end of the day, while maybe dis-incentivizing people to run Maw until their eyes bleed because it's the best AP/hour rate (even though it looks like that is being addressed in 7.2 PTR soon).

[Deleted]

Maybe they could introduce it in a way like the honorpoints back in mop? i think. That you have a global cap increasing every week. And make it per weapon and not per character.

its still to late for that, the amount of backlash would be much greater. i don't think the majority of players are against not having a cap, not sure though.

[kamuimac]

no need for cap - if ocd idiots want to go full retard mode let them - nobody will care if they burn out.

[BrioWoW]

Rolling cap would be best.

[xero5141]

It would and i wish there was one, like valor cap of older days.

If you need a cap to control your playing, you need a fucking hobby that involves sunlight. If you think that a few artifact ranks will suddenly make you better than someone else at the game, you're mistaken.

- - - Updated - - -

I will never understand people who play this game to maximize every single thing for imaginary rewards. Doing well in raid is great, having fun... even better!

If you're playing a game and not having fun what in the FFFFFFUUUUUCCCCCKKKK are you doing?

[BananaHandsB]

No, it would just feel mandatory to hit the cap.

And having an artifact weapon cap at 54 makes it feel mandatory to cap as well, which imo is much worse and less healthy for the players/game. Causes burnout and apathy for the game for people who play competitively. Look at all the top guilds quitting left and right. The burnout is real.

If you need a cap to control your playing, you need a fucking hobby that involves sunlight.

It's more to cap the other people you are competing with so that grinding isn't valued so highly relative to skill. It only feels mandatory when everyone else's weapon is higher than yours and you're competing with said people.

[Dilbon]

If you're competing you're playing the game wrong.

[Supercool]

If you're competing you're playing the game wrong.

Obviously the only correct way to play the game is to fish and do nothing else.

This is true because I just said it is.

[Tojara]

Keep in mind that capping AP does far more than just level the playing field for top end raiders. There are other reasons that a cap would effectively solve. Like I mentioned, a cap would probably produce better balance as Blizzard has direct control over how peoples power increases from that source. In the past they knew, within a week or two when people would get the legendary gem, the legendary meta gem, the cape, or the ring upgrades at certain periods. There was some flexibility in that system, but it fell between certain values for the most part.

For me my primary concern is preventing people who play DPS classes from tearing their hair out when balance shifts from one spec they play to another spec they play, but are unable to follow suit to another spec because of the massive barrier to entry that prevents them from changing so quickly. High AP is one of those barriers, as are legendary items and artifact weapon iLvL. In the past weapon iLvL was mostly transferable to another spec, legendary items that were class specific didn't exist, and you certainly weren't less effective in the other role baseline because you haven't 'leveled' that one up.

I don't think anybody wants a cap like they had in the past, because like many of you have pointed out, it makes it feel necessary. But to play on the other side, not having 54 traits (which is effectively a cap as well) also feels necessary to a lot of people. Should they put in a cap to appease people who burn out on the game and complain their is too much to do? Absolutely not. If they were to have a cap it would have to be a rolling cap like they had with conquest, such that if you don't get all of your AP per week it rolls over into another week. For example if you can only get 1 million AP a week and you only get 500k that week, under such a system the next week would allow you to get 1.5 million AP and so forth. This still places a cap on the system, but also allows you to put your playtime whenever you want without feeling like you missed out.

Obviously such a system would be artifact weapon specific.

For me I don't really like cap systems either and I think it's a decent feature in the game. My overall reasoning for bringing it up is that I feel it, combined with other power gaining systems in the game make the game feel more grindy and less fun as a result. I don't play a DPS spec, but I would feel really demotivated as a DPS spec if the spec I'm playing falls out of favor and I'm way too far behind to swap to say frost mage when fire mage takes a giant dump.

Personally, and I've stated this multiple times, I think the best solution is to make AP gained universal for the ENTIRE class and every time you swap artifacts it simply refunds all of your AP so you can just put it freely into another spec. My gripe with AP and asking for caps is that it sucks for DPS specs with multiple specs, it's fine if you play the only DPS spec within your class, a tank, or a healer. Right now there are just far too many barriers for a warrior, DK, rogue, mage, warlock, or hunter (in some regards druid and shaman) to change to different DPS spec. If AP wasn't a concern it would just be legendary items and relic iLvL. Those things suck as well and make you feel behind (but that's an entirely different issue) but it would solve a lot of issues.

TLDR; I'd prefer a universal AP pool so people can just freely play any spec within their class they want. If not a rolling cap that is artifact weapon specific would be nice, but I can see reasons as to why this isn't a good idea. Personally I just think there are far too many barriers to effectively playing other roles within your class. AP being grindy is fine for 1 role, it's not as fun if you are swapping between multiple roles.

[TOM_RUS]

Yes, there's needs to be a AP cap, either daily or weekly.

[Ealyssa]

Cap are horrible. It makes fullfilling them mandatory. And block any chance to catch up for the one who have the time to do so.

The only cap needed is called self control. Do what you want, stop when I have done enough to your liking. Really simple as that.

[ComputerNerd]

Caps become an expectation, that you are pressured to meet.
And if you don't you are then looked down upon as not doing everything you can.

So no, they aren't a good thing in the current community, for the same reason of the expectation some have for a maxed out artifact.
Player-created expectations and requirements above the actual requirements for content.

If you are having issues playing multiple specs because of an expectation to keep them all up, then a cap is not fixing the root cause.
It simply leads to another expectation.
In that if the cap is easy to reach within the given time period for one spec, then why not do it for two.

As long as there is any number that someone can attribute as the most you can do, then that is what becomes the standard.

[Violetti]

I'd rather want paragons to be opened 1 at a week. This way you also allow ppl to keep their 2nd spec on par, also to farm beforehand or to refarm the missed traits from last week

[Supercool]

Caps become an expectation, that you are pressured to meet.
And if you don't you are then looked down upon as not doing everything you can.

So no, they aren't a good thing in the current community, for the same reason of the expectation some have for a maxed out artifact.
Player-created expectations and requirements above the actual requirements for content.

If you are having issues playing multiple specs because of an expectation to keep them all up, then a cap is not fixing the root cause.
It simply leads to another expectation.
In that if the cap is easy to reach within the given time period for one spec, then why not do it for two.

As long as there is any number that someone can attribute as the most you can do, then that is what becomes the standard.

This doesn't make any sense. A cap is bad for the same reasons that an uncapped system that we currently have is bad?

Except it should be obvious that the uncapped system is worse because the ceiling is so much higher.

What I fail to understand is how little Blizzard or players have learned from history. The AP grind is Vanilla PVP all over again. Something that the old dev team acknowledged as a huge mistake and got rid of permanently, moving to a system with weekly caps (eventually to the superior rolling cap, where taking a week off could easily be made up the following week). However, in this current dev team's pursuit of progress even where it's not needed, perfectly good solutions that worked in the past are off the table because they might be mildly unfun (while we persist with systems that are massively unfun). It's like people saying we can't afford to repair a bridge until it's collapsed and ends up costing ten times as much as it would have to just fix it in the first place.