Good News! No More Infinite AP Grind in 8.3

[bullseyed]

The "endless" AP grind that ended for all but the most casual players many many weeks ago? It may not be a great system, but anything they implement to give purpose to continuing to play your character is lambasted by the forum crowds as an "endless grind".

Yep. Never forget that listening to these same people was what got us WoD expansion.


That being said, the anti-corruption node is gone, but the neck still levels up. This scales your azerite powers as well as giving secondary stats. Each level is worth at least 100 dps for my spec, just based on the additional haste.

- - - Updated - - -

I think there is a certain type of player that just likes to finish stuff.

Players who don't like RPGs are free to play games they do like.

- - - Updated - - -

It is kind of silly this. You would have practically been done with it anyway, just getting some tiny upgrade from each point which would be meaningless, since it would be something that would take some time to get to anyway.

Having some sort of progression is actually an incentive to play. I see it in the patches as well. Whenever people got to 50, 70 they played a lot less, fewer guildies/friends to do mythic+ with etc. If this happened in Legion it would have made more sense, because you had more to do outside getting AP; Mage Tower, Legendaries, Artifact Weapon Skins etc.

I guess the Legendary Cloak change is an okay compromise. And the heart getting upgraded infinitely. The visions better be good.

It sounds like killing N'zoth weekly on any difficulty will give the cloak upgrade item. So that instead of every part of the game you choose to play giving AP that gradually improves your character.

[Lurker1]

Faith have been restored a lil bit.

Didn't really bother me but im happy for the people who hate endless grinds to bad im not a min and max player.

[Accendor]

Thats actually bad news.
It reduces the amount of time players spend in the game in the last tier of the expansion which means many raids will die out faster.
In addition to that we no longer have a possibility to endlessly "nerf" the last bosses of the raid, only a finite method. This makes clearing it also harder.

[bullseyed]

No there's compared to
The new system compared to the old system

IDGAF about the grinding needed for a 2ilvl increase when I would rather spend that time on getting resistance for bigger gains

Compared to

I need to grind the 700k AP before progression so I can equip the corrupted piece that is a 5% increase that's been in my bag because resistance is sooooo trickled down and I need it for the next mythic boss

Old System: if you want to use another corruption piece, you can grind as much as you want to get it. Player agency.
New System: weekly lockout gives item that increases ability to use corrupted gear. Timegated.


Perhaps we can tag all the pro-timegate, anti-playeragency people applauding this change.

[dcc626]

Did they somehow make it endless in the early 8.3 builds? Cause last I checked the AP grind ended effectively at 65.

well, at 75 you get a 3rd minor slot on the ptr, so thats something you probably would want to do. after that, you can forget about it.

- - - Updated - - -

Make weekly and daily AP quests account wide too, then? I don't know.

as reps and essences have shown, they arent going to make things that give player power account wide. transmog and mounts and pets and shit sure. ap and essences? nope.

[owbu]

Players who don't like RPGs are free to play games they do like.

So players who liked World of Wacraft before Legion, where they switched the reward mechanics from one finishable hard capped grind after the next to endless grinding with soft caps, didn't like rpgs (Or, what you probably meant, MMORPGS, which actually are mostly based on grindy game mechanics)?

That's one weird statement.

[Revamp Man]

Old System: if you want to use another corruption piece, you can grind as much as you want to get it. Player agency.
New System: weekly lockout gives item that increases ability to use corrupted gear. Timegated.


Perhaps we can tag all the pro-timegate, anti-playeragency people applauding this change.

700k AP required for the +1 to resistance isn't timegated??

The item that you get from a boss kill and from horrific visions is time gated though???

Come on dude you can't look at the system that would require soooo9oooooooo much freaking grind. The system would be ok if we could grind it multiple ways but fuuuuuuuuuuck islands and fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck islands on alts

Compared to

Do visions for the item and kill the boss for the item

[CrawlFromThePit]

Good. They are finally listening

They always are. They just don't always agree to bend over to everyone's demands.

Remember that when you ask for something in the game, there's high chances you are insanely wrong and selfish.

[MoanaLisa]

We’ve heard a lot of feedback from players, and we agree, that there’s value in being able to reach a point where you’re essentially done with Artifact Power.

They agreed that the endless grind need to stop somewhere.

That's a significant thing for the game design if they follow through on it. It didn't bother me much but I'm one of those self-contradictory players who enjoys a long trip to get somewhere but never grinds it. I mostly just play and it ends when it ends (usually surprising me when the achievement toast pops up). Having an 'end' though seems like a good thing.

[Onikaroshi]

Thats actually bad news.
It reduces the amount of time players spend in the game in the last tier of the expansion which means many raids will die out faster.
In addition to that we no longer have a possibility to endlessly "nerf" the last bosses of the raid, only a finite method. This makes clearing it also harder.

Eh, there's other ways to nerf content. Applying aura's being just one.

[klaps_05]

It isn't you're right. But you're dealing with a community that has an "It is a 0.01% power increase and i has to do it because there's a 0.000000001% chance that me getting that boost will knock the boss over. If I don't my raid lead will yell at me!" attitude.

This has nothing to do with getting bosses over, its more about improving your favorite character as much as you can because that makes you happy.

Level 70 to 71 (2 ilevels increase) is 0.2% dps increase.
I compared necks levels 85 to 86, 86 to 87, 87 to 88, etc. and each increase is approximately 0.3-0.4% dps increase per rank for a standard patchwerk sim. This is obviously for 1 class and 1 spec with current essences, but it means you get 150-200 dps per neck level or 1000 dps per 5 levels. If the trait is similar to concordance where you can reasonably grind to a level, then adding up those 15-20 levels adds up to a lot of extra dps. Not to forget the extra stamina coming from the neck which helps you get through mechanics easier.

[Zenfoldor]

This was not really a problem, imo.

However, it is GOOD that Blizzard is responding to some things the community wants. I have actually migrated to Destiny 2(and WoW Classic) now though, so while I do hope to see this continue and become a trend, I'm good either way. I've decided they will have to earn my money this time, honestly. I no longer have blind faith I will love their new content.

To say that without giving specifics would be trolling, so I'll say what I'd like to see at a minimum: To get me back, they need to re-emphasize raiding(through rewards that reflect the logistical difficulty of raiding relative to other end game activities). If you say raiding is already fine as it is, I tend to disagree(unless something has changed in the last month or two), and feel it should be more rewarding for the time invested. Also, make sure we have interesting long term rewards(non-cosmetic, that last over multiple raid tiers), earned in a very interactive process, ready to grind day 1 of 9.0.

[Doffen]

It sounds like killing N'zoth weekly on any difficulty will give the cloak upgrade item. So that instead of every part of the game you choose to play giving AP that gradually improves your character.

I think that was already implemented, from the wording of it. The thing they changed seem to be adding an item after you got those upgrades from bosses, visions etc, that will work like the endless Heart grind would provide which they now removed. It seems to be the same thing, just a bit less grind to it. Or do I read it wrong?

[Accendor]

Eh, there's other ways to nerf content. Applying aura's being just one.

Applying Auras actually is a bad way to do it, since you are nerfing the content without player engagement. Nerfing something always feels bad, while getting better gear to overcome the challenges feels good and rewarding.

[Onikaroshi]

Applying Auras actually is a bad way to do it, since you are nerfing the content without player engagement. Nerfing something always feels bad, while getting better gear to overcome the challenges feels good and rewarding.

But nerfing will auras is the best way IMO, it allows you to turn it off if you really want to. I wish they'd go back to that.

[SirCowdog]

as reps and essences have shown, they arent going to make things that give player power account wide. transmog and mounts and pets and shit sure. ap and essences? nope.

Well, there is precedent for it. The Pathfinder achievements can be completed across any character on your account. One character can finish one rep, while another finishes the exploration part, and have it count towards the completion.

I just figured that if sharing AP across characters caused people to feel like they MUST have many characters in order to grind, then take away the mechanic of per-character grinding and make it account wide. It seemed to make sense, but I wanted to see if people could find any flaws with it.

[Magnosh]

The "endless" AP grind that ended for all but the most casual players many many weeks ago? It may not be a great system, but anything they implement to give purpose to continuing to play your character is lambasted by the forum crowds as an "endless grind".

No, that had nothing of endless about it, this was once you would reach 85 neck each subsequent neck level would give you +1 corruption resistance without a cap, so basically the more corrupted items you get the more AP you had to farm to make up for it, so in theory you could be 'forced' to farm 100 neck levels just to make up for your 100 corruption.

[Accendor]

But nerfing will auras is the best way IMO, it allows you to turn it off if you really want to. I wish they'd go back to that.

No, it really is a bad way, because nobody will turn it off. And why would you? There is no incentive of it. I really hope we will never see this again.

[Onikaroshi]

No, it really is a bad way, because nobody will turn it off. And why would you? There is no incentive of it. I really hope we will never see this again.

And I hope we do, I'm sure not many did turn it off, but the option was there if you wanted to challenge yourself /shrug. Just two different people with different thoughts.

[TheCookieGod]

I'm glad infinite grinds are going away. They've never felt satisfying to me, and I think they inspire laziness in expansion and patch content.

What I want: A series of goals with tangible endpoints and a variety of things to do ingame.

What I don't want: WoD.

What I think a lot of people in this thread are mistaking is that people who want endless grinds removed don't want zero content. We want content that we play because it's fun, not content designed to keep us playing regardless of how fun (or not fun) it is.