Changes with the February Update: Alternate Ability Grants for Gold Members and Ability Changes

I've been playing EQ on and off since 1999. It's the only game I play and have 9 accounts. I've seen many things come and go in this game, including countless nerfs and fixes. I agree with working fixes in to keep the balance of the classes. But awarding aa's up to 85 for free is completely insulting. Those of us who play regularly and work hard on leveling and aaing normally are the core that makes up the long term subscriptions that keep this game alive. Pushing free aa's to anyone who comes along is ABSOLUTELY the wrong direction. It's a slap in the face to the thousands of dollars and countless hours we have invested in this game. Sony will lose the core of its subscribers pushing this into effect and in turn will see the end of what was once the best online game ever created. Thank you for your service in years past, as I'm fully expecting the player base to disappear shortly after this change and therefore will force me to move on as well.

Stedy - FV

Things that disrupt zones? The server? Yeah, need a fix. Thanks.

I'm a returning player. I doubt I'll ever spend much time raiding, because I don't have the time commitment. I understand wanting to get people to "catch up" to where most of the player base is. Leveling now, is easy. I'm in the "it's too easy" camp. I also miss the days of needing a druid or wizard to get around quickly.

Instead of auto-granting AA's, how about making it so I'm always earning 100% exp, and 100% AA's? that way, AA's will come quickly, as I level, and I'll learn to use them as I earn them. This is a quick-thought, I'm sure there are other ways to do this. Maybe change it so you normally get 100% exp. and 200% AA's, and can change the slider to go to 0% exp and 300% towards AAs? Reward, for Effort.

I'll say that again: reward for effort. Nothing wrong with making it easier to get something so people can catch up, but Jimminy Christmas. Just want people to play the end game and ignore all the pre-90 content? I'm LOVING playing some of the now-empty zones that I never got back-in-the-day when level 60 was the highest level.

I'm not sure the reasons for changes to Assassinate, Decapitation, and Headshot. Is this to prevent power-leveling? Are there some zones that are being disrupted due to these? I know I was looking forward to getting my Ranger a bit higher to be able to Headshot in more places, and looking forward to my 'zerker getting up to use Decapitate.

Yes I don't see how BER can be a problem. Wouldn't removing the proc on riposte be enough? And if they are AE abilities, just limit the number of targets?

Also, I can't seem to find the answer to what happens to people who have already gotten the free AA. Do they get AA refunded to spend on higher AA?

As an SK for many years, I do not have a problem with the nerf bat. However, the removal of Lich Sting (our epic) effect on ripostes will seriously affect the ability to tank harder mobs. Is there a way to make it just affect a limited amount of mobs? Or maybe just the mob targeted? Or maybe a set number of ripostes? I do not use it for swarming, but it has saved my life many times when I get ambushed by 2 or 3 high level mobs. Those few seconds to get control of the situation are crucial and Lich Sting allows that without being over powered. It is also crucial in tanking Named and other tough mobs when going one-on-one.

Get rid of swarming, but don't take away one of our most effective tanking tools.

X

I am not sure I understand the logic here.

Fatigue has a base buff time of 4.5 minutes.
I would not consider that long duration as a slow or a buff.
Maybe as a hot it could be considered long duration as it usually procs again before it fades.
But the heal amount is not huge when you consider the dps of npcs in modern content.
It is also only a 25% mitigated slow.
So I really think its power is overestimated some.

I am confused how you are health limiting it?
At any rank with the HoT running 100% of the time that would be a duration of 6.3 minutes.
So your balancing it based on its focused state? Changing the heal amounts?

It also seems a bit backward to add a proc limit AND a mana increase.
A proc limit of 160 with a 1 npc hitting you 2-7 times every 6 seconds with a 400 proc rate...
I am not sure what that is going to parse out too in game but I am guessing less than 1 minute.
And the more mobs you have the faster it goes away. Have we forgotten that the heal is a heal over time and it only resets the duration or something?

So we are going to have to cast the spell 6 times more often and have a higher mana cost to boot?

At the very least you would need to adjust the duration of the heal proc to 6.3 minutes if your assigning that heal amount to an increased mana cost or something, because we are getting a shorter duration due to proc limits now and the effect of a hot is not cumulative.

Honestly the proc limit isn't required since your already balancing the mana for the full focused duration of the HoT staying on for the buff duration. Which of course it will not.

I am really not sure this change was thought all the way through.... Could you possibly explain the thought process on this?

Big time this, and how about dependable voice chat?

so what are we getting in return? Do we all get free level 100 characters with 5000 AAs to compensate for not being able to PL up alts anymore? Im on FV. There are no groups at all ever while leveling because everyone just PLs up via SK swarming or Mage beaming. Nerfing that means it will now be impossible to level up alts. If I want to try raiding with a new class why shouldnt I be allowed to power level them?

Can you please focus on fixing the universal chat service first?

All of the SKs crying, realize something (I'm an SK and have played the class for many years.)

The entire advantage of swarming in the first place was to catch up in AAs or to stay ahead of that AA curve while being the undesirable group tank for so many years.

Now with Auto-grant of these AAs, you don't NEED to swarm anymore. Get over it. This change is amazing. Go play the game now instead of pulling 100s in kaesora.

The free AA will be good for returning players so they can group and level faster instead of solo grinding AA. People who earned them will be mad and rightly so but no changes are easy (especially to a 15 year old game). Nerfing all PLing is going to piss people off and cause them to quit but the intent is to reduce server load and have more grouping for returning players. As a mage I beam and made one before I knew about it, and yes…I beamed 4 level 100 toons after getting my druid to 100 the hard way. Nerfing PLing is effecting all classes which I am glad to see! I like PLing but not singling out mages was a good move.

The result will be pissed off people; quitting because they don’t want to grind the slow way. Perhaps that will be me after 15 years it because it gets old but the remaining players will treat EQ as it used to be. Personally, I am looking at EQ next and playing new games anyway EQ has run it’s course L.

/sigh

Nerfing abilities that only effect mobs 12 levels below the cap is absurd.

We can all blame Mages for this as they were swarming 100s.

Some people log on and don't have time to do the harder stuff so they go and decap/head shot/ and its fun to them.

You want them to not effect people in the normal zones doing quest ? Start by adding instances with respawns.

Frankly you're throwing in the decap nerf just to say you did it to everyone when the only classes that needed it were mages/wizards. Zerkers do not swarm current level mobs that should be the concern not decaping stuff 12 levels below you.

has a single SK "cried" about the removal of swarming? i haven't seen one.
those of us posting about this change are concerned about the reduction in tanking power in normal group or solo situations, we don't care about the swarming angle.

seriously standing up for your ranger only???? what if your main was a zerker would u then be standing up for zerkers

How about upgrading the servers cpu and hardware over nerfing

In terms of investigation and initial decision making there has been some work; that work needed to be completed before we could present this to you however.

Thank you for communicating with the community.

I like the changes, as they will both help new/returning players and hopefully make the servers more stable.

They might even fix the chat channels with this!

Giving away free AA's = bad.
Fixing the issues with people swarming zones to be unplayable by others = good.

Make AA Auto Grant optional.... And Those That Don't Use It Including Those Who Already Have The AA Already can get Some Stupid tittle Like "Soandso The AA Nerd" Or Better Yet "Soandso The Crybaby Cause Someone Else Got What They Have" (I Guess Second Tittle Might Be Too Long).

World Is Not Ending Your Jboots Are The Same Speed.

To be fair your name is deliberately ambiguous. I had to look at the url.

Edit: Well not necessarily deliberate, but at least predictably ambiguous.