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

Gearing up alts to get through missions is the only reason I play them really. Once my alts knockout the minimum required I pretty much stop caring about AAs. That is just me though. Warrior hands down has been the most fun to do and make relevant. And all at the cheap price of about 2.7k AAs (though he going over 4k now). Just my imho.

Proc twice a minute just remove the level cap. Wizards already have arcane fusion which can proc for 750k vs any level mob.

Ask for an option to turn the grant off, if it doesn't exist already.

@ AA Grant for Gold members
HORRIBLE IDEA AND YOU WILL PISS OFF YOUR VETERANS THAT HAVE WORKED HARD FOR THESE AA.
This idea pisses me off and will cause an influx of people who have no idea how to play their class.
The 4k aa bonus curve is good enough and by the way this idea will ruin the reward curve to do free aa count.
May as well sell the a 100th lvl char full of raid loot to when they sign up for gold.....
Also seems to me like it would make playing the game a bore for new people who will then quit

I currently 4 box as it is with 2 mercs. Would love to add a Cleric and maybe an Enc or something like that to my SK/SHM/WIZ/BARD lineup. I have no problem with the 90+ exp. I previous did have a problem thinking "Meh, have to do another month or two of AAs on those 2 before they're any good." That problem is suddenly going away for me.

As for gearing them up to date, that's pretty simple. I have a couple bags full of Rustic ready to go. My guys will have VoA t1 visibles instantly, and I can move them immediately into HA's with my current setup and start earning currency. 100 will come quickly as will COTF T1.

Again, can't wait for this patch day.

What they're saying is, is because they don't want to do REAL updates and fixes for the games. Such as fix mob pathing or even update their own systems. They'll just take out the things that were making players stick around as long as they did and own more than 4 accounts.

Giving away AA's....I don't think I even HAVE to say anything about that.

Been playing a zerker for 7 years. Less than 2 of them I have had the ability to take down mobs green to me at a swarm like ratio. I guess It would be like going back to the old days for me, but why the hell would you do that to us? Why get our hopes up about our class only to crush them with "it was all a mistake"

Instead i see myself going to old zones and pulling trains there just to try and make a few PP. whats the diff. unless you remove reposte then I can always find a level 60 zone and pull the whole thing.

It's pretty obvious what this nerf is about.

Nerf the mages because its entirely too OP. GMs play mages, now they are upset too. Time to nerf the rest of anyone who can POSSIBLY get faster exp than their mages.

Three gold accounts. All cancelled. If you guys wanted to kill the goose with the golden egg, why not just openly do it? SWG anyone?

I don't understand why you guys didn't see these swarming problems as an issue years ago, because its been around for a while and you didn't seem to mind then. I get it, its very taxing on the server. Its very demanding, OK. On top of that, your giving everyone AA's up until a certain expansion. I get the reason, I just read it. But there are Mercenaries now, was that not a significant advantage in making the game easier for people to catch up? I have started characters from level 1 with a mercenary and brought them up too an acceptable level and with some decent AA's, not the best, but with time you will EARN them, like everyone else who poured money into Everquest for all these years. The people who are complaining are clearly the casual players, who are regularly busier then most and don't have a lot of play time and its understandable that you guys want a slice of whats in their wallets, OK.

I hope you guys reconsider about "swarm killing" even though i think this change is full of horse crap. I have never noticed any problems in the game when it comes to people swarming. I have never seen other zones suffer ANY adverse effects due to someone swarming in another zone. But you are the guys with the charts and the data, i'm just telling you what I notice when I play, and I notice no problems.

Thanks for the reply Piestro, you're a good guy. I know my post was long winded, can you get some of that forwarded to the team? I know some are reading and participating in it. I think going over class by class and picking and choosing which AAs is give is such a better system than giving every single AA created up until Underfoot.

Yes, This, everything he just said, read it sony, then read it again, you wont just piss a few people off, you will piss ALOT of us off. VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET PEOPLE!

First time I've posted ever. As a player with 3 gold, 2 silver accounts with 2 dating back to 2002 this AA "solution" takes away the potential for much sense of accomplishment and pride in building a character. Gear can be bought, AAs still have to be earned. Do you plan to reward the people who have invested all of the time in actually plowing through those lower level AAs by giving them the same amount to spend on higher level ones? Or just flat out negating what they've spent all that time on by handing the same amount of AAs to someone who bought a PL and has played a month. I've sat through a lot of lame ideas silently through the years but this makes it seem like you are not in touch at all with what drives people to play this game and stay with this game.

I just got back from the Dev area, this thread is up on a lot of monitors.

Yet another suggestion: Introduce something like Lesson of the Devoted to anyone below a certain level of AA.

So if you have less than 4000 AA or whatever the current target is for that xpac, for 30 min a day, you gain insane AA rate, but only from actually killing stuff and only that 30 min, so the rest of the time you need to play normally, and do whatever, even more AA if you care.

Make it so that it times out to take maybe, say 140 of these a day, so it takes four weeks to get there.

That gives people time to learn their class, time to do stuff other than the amazing AA grind, etc, but still gives them a way to catch up. Then when they hit 4000 AA, they are ready to start actually grouping with people like the old days and playing the game a it was intended.

..Removed CC info and canceled my account.. I wonder how many people did the same? I'm guessing if enough people cancel their gold accounts, they'll start listening. Instead of all this back and forth debate.

this is a TERRIBLE idea. Accumulating AA's is one of the things that keeps players hooked to the game, and their accumulation constitutes an achievement that players can be proud of. To give or sell them to players is detrimental to the integrity of this game. Don't do this.

I find the rogue changes somewhat ridiculous.
Assassinate limitations before this change: Humanoid only, requires a successful Backstab (current refresh on backstab is 6 seconds) or a successful throwing hit from behind(who ever does this? no one that's who!). Assuming 100% rate on tripple backstab (highly unlikely) you'd get about 30 chances for it to proc in a minute? How is that overpowered? I question if you took that in to account when you went with 2 procs per minute considering the other 2 similar abilities, headshot(bow attacks) and decapitation(all melee attacks) are being processed 10x - 100x as often(if not more) in comparison. What is the actual current proc rate on these 3 abilities?
You are removing the ability to proc Assassinate on riposte backstabs, what is the % chance to even get a backstab riposte (requires AAs to even have that ability in first place)? The only time you are going to be mass killing with assassinations is when counterattack discipline is up (40 minute reuse/ 24 minutes with AA), without using counterattack I'll need heals and having no way to get decent aggro my healer will be getting beaten to death by a mass of angry mobs. Seems like overkill and especially harsh on rogues given the already huge limitations compared to the other 2 abilities.

The only change that really needs to be made is the type of mobs the berserker ability Decapitation can be used against, Headshot = Humanoid only, Assassinate = Humanoid only, Decapitation = ALL MOBS! Why decap was ever allowed to go live this way is beyond me. Making Decapitation Humanoid only would solve a lot of problems.

Ironically, decap didn't work for quite awhile. Then they changed it to what it is today. That seems like careful consideration to me. Are there really that many people complaining about it? Why not just make more instanced zones so we don't have this territory problem?

This reminds me:

Lesson of the Devoted needs to be auto granted to every character. Make the other vet rewards come 1 year earlier or whatever, but every character should have lesson. It helps leveling and AA gains, but most importantly it encourages people to log in daily and play. Its also most needed for a new person.