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

Rofl.

i rerolled off FV to normal servers , I do not want to spend 50 hours in the Hole grinding aa's , i do not want to spend 50 hours grinding in Pofire grinding aa's I do not want to spend 500 hours just to catch up to people to play with people in an MMO. I do now want to buy Krono and sell For PP to buy Power level to some guy Playing a toon that can swarm a zone and not have to pay a subscription due to mass amounts of PP.

I think this is one of the best changes to Everquest has made in long time.

I have a level 100 sk near 7,000 AA on test so i have done the grind before.

Hysterical!

Talk about a bummer!!!! Nerf always seems to be the answer to a Dev's mistake.

A few things: Nerfing beam,headshot and the like...okay, but don't nerf it so much that there is no difference bewtween a mage's, ranger's, wiz's, cleric's class-specific way earn earn exp/AA's solo that the only difference between them is a pet, DS, nuke and heal. Nerf'em if ya want, but sure as hell don't take HS away from a ranger so that there IS no point to play a ranger.
Think about how many people rely on their class specific specialty to earn AA's for themselves. Your philosphy of punishing everyone for a few people's exploits is utterly STUPID!!!!!

If you have to nerf something so bad that it impacts the "way" a class has adapt to play, then you should have given it more thought before is was made "LIVE"!!!!! Your lack of research or implement shouldn't be our downfall.
Another annoying point to make is the "free" AA's? WTF! Really?....I mean c'mon. I've been playing well over 12+ years to "EARN" my reg exp and ALL of my AA's...now you just wanna give everyone 5k worth? Then what....I have 5k AA's, (or capped out thru UF exp), what's left to do? ---> PL to where you actually have to start earning your own AA's again. Now we'll have 80% of the server 85+ (because there IS no point in stopping at a given level since you already have all your AA's)...so now the server is jammed with 80%being 85+....and now your beam/HS bogging the server down will now in fact be 150 people in every 85+ zone in the game....and now your "bogging" has shifted to a non-stop server wide problem..../claps hands (well done)!

If EQ Dev's are trying to find a way to give a free handout to EQ players so they can focus on the "new and improved" EQN....all your doing is pissing a huge player base off. Good Luck in your new botched EQN. You will have managed to Headshot the original EQ and have already Beamed EQN to doom. If you can't keep yopur player base happy now...do you really think we'll just magically flock to a new version? I sure won't...and if EQ insists on mass nerfing class specific AA's and spells meant to be used as they are intended, then I'll find another game to play. I will not be wasting my hard earned money on a dumbed-down version of EQ...go play WoW if you want that!
I'm not going to watch all my thousands of hours playing chars go down the drain like this....

Who knows if anyone will actually read this or not, but with the outpouring of posts to the original...I'd say the Dev's better well listen to what the consumer wants. Or you'll be standing in the unemployment line the day after your big patch in Feb.

The problem isn't the exploitation of skills to reduce the grind.
The problem isn't that people WANT to be max level today.
Right now, you're fixing symptoms but not looking at the root problem.

The problem is that this game was never properly maintained
The grind floated back in 1999 when content was limited and you had to artificially make it last longer, but Everquest has more available lore, content, EVERYTHING, than any MMO out there. And yet, none of it is being used.

1.) Start by re-tuning the old world so players can experience all content as a 6 man group.
2.) Remove all defiant gear from the loot tables. Players will now be earning old raid gear as a 6 man group which is defiant equivalent. I mean really? Kill a moss snake and get end-game kunark gear you'd get from Trakanon? No, scrap that - BETTER than gear from Trakanon?
3.) Change the spawn timers of old world mobs from the ridiculous 3 - 7 days to ONE HOUR.

You want to see people not think about the grind and only the next great adventure in the next great zone? Retune the GOOD ZONES in those 3 steps and watch them enjoy the content and level up in the process.

If the population grows, GOOD. 1 hour respawn timers will make sure that everyone will get a chance to enjoy it. We used to have meaningful factions, meaningful travel, a world that seemed like an actual world.

Since Planes of Power (arguably Luclin to a lesser extent) we've had the grind. Each new expansion from PoP onward was a pocket of something that was not related to the world of Norrath. Character race, religion, class - actually had an effect on how you played the game... and then in an instant it didn't.

So, your solution, just like defiant gear, is to give away 4000AAs and nerf the few ways we had of moving onward to a level range where grouping was viable, where the population is healthy enough for grouping.

I give you my solution. Yeah, it's a little more work than just using the ol' sling shot, but try and remember why people play games, MMOs in particular. You can get use out of your mountains of existing content if you'd just maintain it and not obliterate it every new expansion.
Geeze... I'm level 96 and have no idea what any expansion beyond Planes of Power was about. Right now I'm doing Heroic Adventures like a job so I can pay for gear so I can play in other areas of the game. By the time I get done that, a new expansion is out and everyone moves on to it.


My final remarks

Take a good look at the content generated for this game in the early years. Now really objectively hold the new stuff against it. Yes, the new content is crap in comparison. MMOs were fun and popular because they were a persistent world with many fun things to do in them. Without the persistence and adventure, you have a slot machine.

I don't care about your impending nerfs. I care that you do not maintain YOUR persistent world. I care that people are forced to level up and gear up as fast as possible to experience that world. You're throwing the baby out with the bath water and you are not encouraging returning, or new players, to stick with this game. They log in, are instantly reminded of the grind and then seek ways to reduce the grind so that maybe they might have some fun at level 100.

So, what am I trying to say? It's not the player's fault your server loading is so high.
It's not the player's fault that they resort to speeding up the grind. If your game was involving and fun, people wouldn't grind. And those who did grind / swarm / headshot / beam kite, would be few and far between.

lol, I think the bottom line here is that people find ways to get mass xp because it really does take to long to get to lvl 100, even from lvl 90 - 100 takes a while if you're not mass killing, they don't need to make getting levels so daunting, yes it should be a challenge, but it shouldn't be OMG gouge my eyes out slow, it takes way to much xp/kills to get a level now, so I can't really blame people for wanting to get max level, it's where most people play and a lot of the good gear Is req lvl 100.

I recently leveled my beastlord up again, levels were fine till I hit 90, then they were going pretty slow, despite me doing partisan quests, merc quests etc.

It's a double edged sword, you make it to easy, people don't know what they're doing at lvl 100, make it to hard, people don't play EQ.. so balance is key in this situation.

One other point about SK swarming vs other forms of swarming. There is no "instant kill" of any kind with SK swarming. It can take in upwards of 5 minutes to kill off a 20-30 light blue mob swarm by nibbling away with ripostes, damage shield (scourge skin helps somewhat), pet, main weapon hits, and procs. At any point during that time we can be killed by lag, mobs pushing past / behind us, mortal coil failing to proc, being stunned to many times in a row, not killing enough mobs off before lich sting runs out, etc.

In comparison i have seen a ranger head shot the same number of mobs in half the time without even pulling them more than one at a time. I have seen a Monk hit their riposte disc with a high damage low delay two handed weapon and burn through that many mobs in under a minute.

Sks tend to only plevel themselves because no one else has the patience to wait for how long it takes us to actually kill a swarm we pull.

I think what you are doing overall is not good for the longevity of the game. I for one have been playing the game for a very long time and I busted my A$$ to get my toons to where they are, purchased AA's according to how I wanted to develop my toons...not the game makers choice. You have nerfed so many things in this game and brought things to this game that have lost us players who are just fed up with the changes. You already nerfed the Ranger headshot to the point the could not pull massive amounts of mobs and use barrage of arrows or higher to mass kill. Now you want to nerf the Headshot ability even more? Why would you nerf the Zerker and Rogue abilities at all. Zerkers and Rogues do not pull 50-100 mobs at a time and then sit there and hope their assassinate and decap goes off before they die. So, why bother them at all. You create a game play with spells and abilities and as soon as the players figure out unique ways of using those abilities you say, "Oh, wait...we can't have those classes doing that...it's not fair to everyone else playing the game!" Seriously!

Why don't you just take all the fun out of the game and cut the classes down to those that can't do anything special and completely destroy what's left of it altogether. I am sure that I am not alone in my thoughts that it is a slap in the face to those of us that busted our grinding for years to get where we are and now you are just going to give it away without a player having to do anything but pay their $15 per month to play the game...which is what it is all about anyway...isn't it? Keep the masses happy and screw the real players that hone their abilities and figure out unique and innovative ways to do things in game.

In my humble opinion, you are making a big mistake here. Why don't you just offer tokens in the marketplace to buy levels, AA's, and the best gear in the game so people don't have to do a damn thing but buy a powerful toon instead of working for it.

I pay for 5 accounts, my son pays for 3, and my brother pays for 4 and we have been doing this for many many years or grinding it out and having fun together earning our way through the game. I saw one post about the detriment of giving away AA's and that is the bonus cap on earning extra exp. I think that if you are going to give away something to the new players coming into the game and to the lazy bums that don't want to work for what they get...then something needs to be done for the loyal players like my family that have stuck it out through all the good times and bad but, nonetheless, busted our to get everything we have and now we get to sit back and watch people who have no clue just get handed 4000+ aa's on a silver platter. WoW...is all I have to say!

I really think that you should rethink this whole issue about nerfing the abilities of those classes that earned the right and talent to do what they do. Maybe limit those abilities to instance zones or more mobs (say 30-40) instead of cutting the throats of those people that earned their way up through the ranks.

Thanks for everything that you do, the hard work that all the developers do in this game to keep in flowing and alive...EQ is the best MMO on the planet...and I want to see it stay around. I truly believe you will see a super major decline in the number of players in the game if you go through with this and it will hurt the game tremendously. That is my humble opinion and hope some of what I said will be considered.

Take care and God Bless,
Dwayne (aka. Lonewolff - 100 - Monk - Cazic Thule)

not true, we zerkers don't swarm well. not to say we cant but decap doesn't proc like you would think. I can go a whole fight with no proc and when KB should take place decap hits. congrats I decapped at 5% go soe.

Here is an idea, since your taking away the Swarm/Beam kiting

How a about giving Mages a snare ability like the rest of them out there. If you want to reduce all these so called swarmer's and blame it all on the mage line of spells... why not give them the same tools as a wizard, sk, druid etc... I don't think you seem to realize there are only so many zones for beam kiters to go and there are only so many beam kiters out there.

But a snare utility? for 12 max mobs, AOE line of spells so that we have a chance to fight back instead of pulling the whole zone. Like fair is fair here too...

Not enough gold subs? You can forget mine then as well if this is your fix.

Lich Sting and Mortal Coil having a hit limit would definitely fix it, but what about everything we've had to give up because of being balanced around our ability to swarm for so many years?

Our lifetaps take 1.0 second to cast, which is long for a heal and especially when incoming damage can interrupt it, not to mention a 12s recast. The amount of damage and health healed is far lower compared to what it used to be able to do years ago as well.

Mostly I just want to put it out there that this should also be taken into consideration when discussing what to do with Shadowknights, there's a lot more you can do with the class now and I'm looking forward to the changes. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

What frustrates me, is that what is the purpose of me playing an alt account now? Or paying for my box anymore? I will have one character max AA, another almost max AA, in the top gear you can get for raid/group content. What is the purpose to log on when I don't have to raid?

This is like a slap to the face to me. I worked hard, grouped with a ton of great/poor players and learned how to play the class to what I think is the best ability it can be played. Your basically saying "Your hard work was for nothing, we are just gonna hand everything out!".

Content fades way to fast in this game anyways! Why are you trying to force us through even more of it? I like killing in the older zones I didn't get to experience. This is a joke and an insult to those of us who worked hard to achieve what we had. STOP KILLING THE GAME!

Jealous? I couldn't care less about what you have, in game or anywhere else.

Let's use your 5k number. Go ahead and give that to every character as long as the next time I log on each of my characters, that 5k AA is sitting there waiting for them to spend on whatever they want. If each of my characters ends up with the amount of AA I've spent time grinding out already, plus the "5k" AAs everyone's going to get for no effort whatsoever, then bring it.

For those characters that need less than 5k to max AA (or have already maxed AAs), whatever is left over (AAxp wise) should be given to them in the form of a potion or item that can be used when the next expansion launches (or potentially next several expansions) to be used to create these magical, no-effort AAs until used up.

You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts. You want to trivialize the time, effort, and money I've sunk in to this game already, then I'm out.

If the goal is to rush everyone into current level and content...well:

Provide some current content. Seriously!

You can't rush everyone to the most recent content and then provide not much in the way of anything.

Also..all these nerfs at once is a bit rough. Yes, people get the reasoning, but it is still sandpaper on the cat's but with salt water poured in the wound.

P.S to my original statement ; **whispers to devs*** if something is going to generate debate in future, never combine multiple controversial issues in 1 thread all at the same time, trust me, as a guild leader you never spring multiple things on people at once....don't tell anyone that I told you the secret to herding cats.

limiting the mass kills is way past due. It has had a very negative impact on the game. I applaud the changes to limit the mindless swarm killing styles. Good changes SOE!!

You do realize that Spell Casting Subtlety is an activated ability right? If you don't want to use it, don't make a hotkey for it.

Problem solved.

Clearly you don't understand that chasing away 10 loyal paying customers to gain 8 constant ship jumping players isn't revenue.

If you are going to nerf head-shot, then give rangers what they've deserved for the last 15 years: Full bow damage on rooted mobs.

I bet most of the player base doesn't even realize it is reduced by 50%.

That is all.

-Embittered Ranger