From what I understand, a lot of poeple adored artifact weapons and even to an extent the HoA but people just really hated ‘the grind’. becuase there was no cap on how much you could get each week, you were just expected (in high end content) to grind as much as humanly possible to get as many traits as possible.
If they just added something like a conquest cap on how much you could get per week, reducing the amount needed as you got higher, and added catch up mechanics from day 1 would Artifact Weapons been ‘perfect’? It could’ve been a high or soft cap, but a cap of some sort nonetheless.
I say this because I honestly loved AW and HoA but I just despised how much you needed to grind, and the FOMO you got if you didn’t do everything humanly possible to get artifact power.
The piecemeal amounts it was doled out and the amount you needed to be viable over time that it took was demoralizing. Many guilds made have x rank a priority to be considered for raid slots.
Which also meant people would eventually burn out be left behind playing catch up.
The entire borrowed power system is dumb because even now there is a grind needed for the 226 conduits so unless you have hours per day to just grind out currency, it’s basically:
A never ending grind or
You get to a point you just think is enough and stop
Unlike in expansion in the past where you could hit a maximum, most players now are just on infinite grind and no one wants that. And capping it each week is just super lazy design because you know than there is a limit, but you are stuck not getting to that limit which just shows bad design.
Not interested in grinding stuff like that out. It was cool on the weapon at first when we were unlocking traits but it should have ceased to exist when all traits were unlocked. I didn’t enjoy the HoA at all
People didn’t like the grind, and a lot of people were too dumb to realize that the gains past the cap weren’t particularly significant. In both Legion and BFA you could pretty easily get about 10 points past the basic soft cap while just passively playing the game. The boosts from cranking out more were essentially diminishing returns vs time expenditure.
The problem is, people actually really do get in a head space where they believe they need to do that grind. It’s not healthy, but it’s a real thing, because human brains can be really dumb sometimes.
This is it for me. It felt like I was progressing at an absolute snail’s pace, to the point where I didn’t really want to bother.
Thankfully, it was sort of something you could have going in the background and not pay attention to - but at that point, why have it at all…? It was just sort of a pointless system for the sake of having a system.
The artifact weapons. Nothing. The abilities that came with the weapons. Nothing. Artifact power was a tiring grind that was REQUIRED for player power.
And as it progressed, it got ridiculously out of hand. Like 45 to 46 took an entire week of grinding. Not just playing. But actually grinding and going out of your way to hit every AP source you could find.
Back in legion there was a cap of like level 32 for the weapons. After what felt like months of getting AP I finally FINALLY finish my main weapon and get to start working on my second.
and then BAM the following week or so there was a patch that added more levels to the weapons, i never did get to work on my second or third weapons. I never was done at that point. It was the worst feeling I ever had playing the game. I felt “done” only for them to pull the rug out from under me. Ever since then i hated AP ever since then.
Then there’s the fact that once the “catch up” mechanic stops every week it stops being a catch up mechanic
The catch up for the heart was nice when they finally added it. The essences being swappable was very nice. The essences swapping with each spec was great.
Some of the essences were not great to get. The one tied to nazjatar daily crap I hated to get but it was bis. The mechagon ones i hated to get but it was bis. The pvp one I hated to get but it was bis.
Getting alot of them was extremely frustrating and annoying. Forget about wanting to do it all over again for alts. Like, seriously, it was awful. Even by the time they gave us echoes to buy them, I was already burnt out on the whole thing.
For me, the HOA ap grind wasnt bad and the essence grind wasnt terrible to the point I didnt do them for 4 specs worth. It’s just like everything else in the game, blizz makes the systems annoying enough to just piss you off so by the time you’re done, you feel like it was terrible and want to be done with it
I dunno about that. I was a casual who got all 4 druid and all 3 priest weapons, though I was a little behind the high rollers. The complaints were from raiders who felt forced to grind, grind for AP, grind for legendaries.
A lot of the early issues with Artifact Power came from lack of self-control from players. Once people figured out that Maw of Souls gave a lot for a short amount of time, they started to mindlessly grind it. This was, of course, not fun at all, but Blizzard was ‘forcing’ them to do so. Unless you were doing the cutting edge of content, the difference wouldn’t matter to you at all, but many players like to think the content they do is more advanced than it actually it.
All that grinding and meanwhile I was just playing the game normally and hit the same milestones at most a few weeks later.
These got smoothed over later in the expansion, but that was the early issue. The other issue is that they just flat out weren’t around long enough. It seemed to be a system and a method that was supposed to last at least two expansions, and it only got one. The dev that designed the system left the company soon after Legion launch and I suspect it was because they were told their baby was going to be nothing more than a single expansion gimmick.
I seem to remember maxing at least one weapon, it’s a real shame that doesn’t mean a damned thing anymore. Legion was, kind of like BfA, only really good near the end with all catchups in place. BfA was worse because horrific visions and azerite, but it was more enjoyable at the very end than at the very beginning. I sat out the first half of legion but as it went to a close I only found myself enjoying it more as progression became more fluid.
Pretty much and also they have a general mentality that if they miss one day they are behind thus must make up for it, and eventually burn out while still being behind.