So...AP system made obsolete?

[Twdft]

The problem with this line of thinking is simpy that it just shifts all the blame on the community.

If some kid gets a brain freeze from eating too much icecream you don't blame the ice cream parlour for selling so much deliciousness but the kid itself or maybe the parent for letting it eat more than it can tolerate.

There is something called personal responsibility. WoW has very diverse players, everything from playing 2 hours a week to 8 hours a day. Blizzard wants to provide all of them with something to do and if you play too much it's totally your own fault. There is even some tipps at the loading screen about it.

Outside of about a thousand players in the world who compete for world first raids there is literally no reason to no-life AP more than what comes from natural play. Emerald Nightmare was beatable without maxing it and considered way to easy because so many players no-lifed AP. Cue the next raid... overtuned to a fault, IMO because how we players farmed AP.

[Kralljin]

If some kid gets a brain freeze from eating too much icecream you don't blame the ice cream parlour for selling so much deliciousness but the kid itself or maybe the parent for letting it eat more than it can tolerate.

If you start a soccer tournament within a desert, it's obviously the players fault when they get a heat stroke.

Emerald Nightmare was beatable without maxing it and considered way to easy because so many players no-lifed AP.

That is a gross simplification.

EM was easy because it was the first raid, which usually tends to be less difficult, next to that, Blizzard admitted that they fucked up the difficulty in EM, at least on Xavius.

[Kazuchika]

It really feels like they just gave up on it tbh. The fact that when you hit AK 40 they were just like "aight whatever every alt you have the resources for can go straight to the end" was a hint and then the change for new players to where it's like 3 1/2 hours a work order after boosting all the way to 25 was pretty much the nail in the coffin.

AP is such an afterthought to me after I got concordance to the point where I basically am back to raid logging again which to be honest I'm pretty okay with.

[RaZz0r]

I mean Blizzard never intended for AP being something you grind all day everyday beyond the initial traits.
It was suppose to be a side reward instead of just getting something like 20g from a boss kill or dungeon/raid completion.
Granted they kinda messed up with the original paragon trait being as strong as it was.

And they still don't get how dedicated there player base can be when it comes to even the smallest amount of dps/hps gain.
Even though the game has been out for over 11 years and they should have figured it out by now.
Hell even with the shitty paragon trait we have now there are people with 60+ traits.

In short AP is not really obsolete but its not something you should really bother with farming.
Cause it was never meant too its just a bonus item that's there that slowly grows your character.
even tho the growth is really really minor.

[huth]

If you start a soccer tournament within a desert, it's obviously the players fault when they get a heat stroke.

Well, yes. They should have taken precautions or refused to play there. It's not solely their fault, sure, but they still have responsibility for it.

[thilicen]

AK and AP was fine until they decided to expand upon it. Should have just let it run out at 20/20 of the final trait and then have done something else.

[Kralljin]

Well, yes. They should have taken precautions or refused to play there. It's not solely their fault, sure, but they still have responsibility for it.

What kind of precaution can the player take if you're up playing at 45°C upwards (113 F)?

Aside from that, you do know what the equivalent to "refusing to play" is? Not playing WoW.

[huth]

Aside from that, you do know what the equivalent to "refusing to play" is? Not playing WoW.

Do you know what the difference between "refusing to play in the desert" and "refusing to play" is?

[Emerald Archer]

Yes, it is!
5 points in concordance and its just not worth puttin any more in cause the cause/reward is totally off.

Except that isn't true, 5 points is still a dmg upgrade. That's like saying "no point in equipping this 5ilvl upgrade, it's only 5ilvls, i'm going to vendor it now"

[Kralljin]

Do you know what the difference between "refusing to play in the desert" and "refusing to play" is?

The Desert in this analogy is Legion, which features heat (AP), how do you want to avoid that?

[kamuimac]

Max AK reduced
AK research made to take a couple days instead of months
Farming past concordance is pretty pointless as things are now

So yeah I'm not really whining but AP is taken off the shelf or what? Unless Argus introduced new AK and/or traits, what is there to do?

dont worry it will be back in 7.3 again with AK 50

[Sylvaeres]

Ap is a symptom of blizzard not being able to pick a type of player they want to cater to and instead making everyone annoyed.

People who didn't like a steady progression curve seemed to enjoy gaining power slowly from doing any content (I think it was any? I can't think of anything you can do in broken shores that in some way wont give you ap)

People who enjoyed the old system of progressing slowly at your own skill cap hated the system along with titanforge as they saw it as unneeded rng that shortened and made their experiences more dull.

The result?

We now have a rather bland system that doesn't offer enough for people who don't like a steady difficulty curve to feel rewarded while at the same time annoying those who min max everything by giving them either something they don't really want to do to work at or by making them noncompetitive because others in their community took the time to grind out a edge though nothing more then hours spent.

Everyone more or less got screwed ;<

Nobody got screwed. It's 6+ months since release, people needed the system redone, it was, and now it's where it should be for the time being

[Alvito]

Now grants 4,000 Strength, Agility, Intellect, or Versatility at rank 1 (was 2,000).
Additional ranks now increase this value by 300 per rank (was 200).

again, unless i missed something...it seems like some people are saying shit that i have no idea what they're talking about.

Due to the way it procs it isn't great. Even less so for specs that have their core stat as one of their weaker stats. I have had plenty of fights were it doesn't proc for the first 90 seconds, the worst being a Chronomatic fight it didn't proc at all. Only being up for 10 seconds isn't great either. The upside if you are looking for one is it can proc rapidly at times too I have also had a fight were it was up for 50 seconds straight, that is a nice buff then. It is solid for tanks, okay for most dps and lack luster for healers.

[huth]

The Desert in this analogy is Legion, which features heat (AP), how do you want to avoid that?

Answer the question. Don't try to distract.

[Gemini Soul]

I imagine with 7.3 or Argus raid they will up lets us go up to AK50 with the standard 5 day per wait.

[Kralljin]

Answer the question. Don't try to distract.

The problem is that the difference is irrelevant, there is no option to play without AP.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Yeah I do have to say maxing out a weapon isn't rough at all anymore. Only part that sucks is getting relics for it.

[Dizzeeyooo]

Max AK reduced
AK research made to take a couple days instead of months
Farming past concordance is pretty pointless as things are now

making AP worthless but leaving it endlessly farmable was obviously preferable for them vs introducing an AP cap that grows weekly based on how much you completed the previous week + keeping traits interesting and powerful

presumably because they have talked so much about the "problems with capped currency systems" (most of which had already been fixed over wow's lifetime with capped currencies) and we all know blizzard would rather try absolutely anything else then go back on something they previously said was a bad idea

[Orangetai420]

I think you guys have it wrong. The AP system did exactly what it was supposed to - it encouraged the "hardcore" players to stay subbed, grinding out AP and keeping up with AK. Then, after time had passed Blizz turned their sights to the casual/returning player and lowered the barrier. It accomplished two things - it kept the dedicated players in the game and when it was time it catered to the casuals by lowering barrier of entry and giving a feeling of quick progression (gaining all that AP and traits quickly is a good feeling).

The AP system was not made obsolete - they simply tweaked the system when necessary to keep player engagement high. The key word here is player engagement; this is the main reason for the AP system.

I would be willing to bet they had planned this from the start - I'm sure some feeback was taken into consideration but I doubt that they are "caving in" or "realizing they made a mistake". They aren't going to come out and say "Oh, yea - we had this planned all along. We wanted you guys to play a bunch at launch and then we figured we would just let other players shortcut to your progress when player engagement dropped/with the new raid", but this is probably exactly what they were saying in internal discussions.

[Schizoide]

Artifact power is an alternate advancement mechanism, intended to retain players at max level when you no longer gain leveling experience. Tons of other games have something similar, the most notable being Everquest's AAs and Elder Scrolls Online's Champion Points. The difference there is they're character-wide and aren't tied to clicking on item rewards, they are literally XP you get for doing normal stuff that grants XP like quests and killing monsters.

Most of these other games have soft-caps much like WoW 7.2, where there's a reasonably achievable point total any serious active players can be expected to hit, and it gets extremely grindy after that. Personally I feel that's a bad idea and it should be a hard cap, but a soft cap is much better than no real cap at all, which is how Everquest 1 does it.

The OP is at the soft cap. No need to grind further. That's a good thing.