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

Well said my friend!

This is just too much, no threats here whatsoever, but I already know I will lose interest in EQ if this grant takes place. I have played since pre-Kunark and raided in that era and I know the game I have came back to over and over can't be what it was then, but you are making it far, far, far too easy. Many of us enjoy the grind, and let's ALL BE HONEST the grind is nothing compared to what it was, it is very easy to level and has NEVER BEEN EASIER to accumulate quick aa. You can do dailies and play less than an hour a day and fill your aa bank on these if well below 4k aa! I still get 16aa at about 5k for doing two dailies, it takes about 20 MINUTES! And the heroics provide a very solid steady pace of aa as well. I'm seeing people be told they should focus on leveling now? The dedicated players, the ones here whom the majority of are very upset, are what has kept this game alive, and this is a slap in the face. Even giving 2k aa for absolutely no effort is outright absurd, this is not world of Warcraft and that has always been why I play EQ, the edge, a little challenge, a game that could wake me up while sitting at a desk! I don't mean to get worked up, but this just irks me and tugs at all the wrong cords. Played a rogue in EQ since pre PoP, VT key camps and all that crazy stuff that was implemented that we do, isn't it for the love of the game? I see this as a big ups to the people who are PLing up and an utter killing blow to the dedicated masses, the die-hards. I have never used assassinate in any way that harms anyone's game play whatsoever, and it's pretty much being rendered obsolete. I can't believe you propose to do all of this at once. This isn't for the good of EQ, not by any means.

I don't know why I'm posting under Oldplayer. Granted I haven't posted on here in years but I still had a forum account and logged into it. Lol.

My question is simple and i'm not sure if it has already been answered. if i have already spent these AAs in underfoot or below will those AA's just get tossed in the trash or will they be refunded to me to spend on higher end AA. It only seems fair that if i have already earned these AA's that they shuld not be just thrown away.

I agree tho, one of the ways we still have actual real people tanking is the fact that many SK get strong enough to swarm and get decent xp solo until they are ready to tank in a group. Not great xp or anything like that, just an option for a class that got merced out of business.

Well thanks for letting me know, I've been back playing for a couple weeks now, and I was about to go gold... I'll not be doing that now. I want to explore the old zones, I've been in chardokB the last couple days on my now 61 shammy. I don't care when I get to "end game" - I want to enjoy ALL the zones, not the 5 or 10 percent that are at level cap.

This change will be great for WoW type players who say the game starts at end game, gimme everything now and for free, but I am not one of those people.

I started a new shammy to enjoy the entire game when I came back. It appears staying silver forever is the only way for me to do that.

Doing a straight or pro-rated AA refund isn't likely. We talked about it in planning and it seemed to create as many problems as it solved. It will be passed along to the devs as feedback however.

why play eq if I'm given all the aa's? ohs nos

Even with the aa grant, it would take roughly 4000 more aa's grinding to hit the cap. There will still be plenty of "options" to choose from. If you still needed those aa's to begin with, you'll still have meaningful choices to make for a long time.

all that time spent grinding is now worthless!

Ridiculous. I've killed soo many things thats to being max aa and gotten soo much extra loot as a result.

players won't know how to play their class with these new aa

You mean they know how to play their classes now?

This will totally ruin my server's economy!

By stopping certain people from farming vast amounts of exp/aa/platinum that contributed to price inflation?

I forgot about the AA granting..

Honestly, I think this is a good move by the EQ Team. Sure it has Pro's and Con's, but this helps with 2 real issues in the game:
1) Under AAed and unable to grp.
2) Swarming/AA PLing.

By doing this both of those will drop by over half easy. At the current rate of Lvl PLing, you will find a lvl 100 toon with no AA and no skill at all. So what happens? They go get a AA PL, this change will bring them closer to where they should be in AA and making playing the class and learning its abilities more likely.

On the other side, most folks see a lvl 100 toon and think oh there we go, someone to grp with.. Yet odds are they were PLed and have no AA.
Again most folks see a lvl 85 toon and think.. eh their lvl is too low and they probably dont have any aa.
If the AA grant is pushed forward then everyone will know that you have at least minimum aa's and wont be totally useless in grp.

None of these additions will guarantee you will get a grp, but nothing does.
I have toons at lvl 100 with under 2k aa, I have toons at 85 with over 3k aa and that doesn't mean they get grps when they want.

But at the very least, this will cut down on AA PL's.

Short-sighted SOE. Short-term and quick profits will hurt you in the long run.

The more you give things away for free, the less likely they are to continue playing and paying. But hey, maybe that's the goal. Maybe this is in preparation for EQN. I just don't see it working out well for SOE down the road. Pay $15 for 1 month, reap the benefits, and cancel.

Well, you won't be soloing long on a shaman to begin with, so it's just speeding up the inevitable for you.

Having said that, instead of auto granting all AAs below 85, devs ought to just offer one heroic character upgrade to all existing subscribers, and have the player decide when / who to use it on.

Make AA exp extremely easy for aa 10 levels lower then your current level. Extremely easy as in 1 red con 2 aa per kill, 1 yellow con 1.5aa per kill,1 white con kill =1.25 aa,1 blue con kill you get an 1 aa, 2 light blue con for 1 aa, 4 greens per aa. For nerfs how about letting green and grey cons not be effect by swarm, beam, etc. Let Light blue swarm,beam mass pulls can only effect 15 or 20 npc atm. Blue swarm/beam mass pulls 10.... etc hope you get the idea on both fronts this is a quick idea here.... Either way just make exp easier... instead of free aa makes everyone happy then... Small nerfs, not complete changes.. but no need for mass pulls if exp is easier....... Make more hidden areas..... Make more races and classes.....!!! Let more races play more classes.. Brownie class when will that happen?? Slowing melee class as good as shammy/chanter... shammy merc!!! come on tons of ideas... Make a new fungi with 1k regen fun stuff... No more same type of gear for everyone.... My 5 min soap box is over... Hope you read this..

piestro I know your currently reading these, I would like to know why you cant just punish the players that do decap or beam swarming instead?

How many AAs are the level 85 Heroic characters going to have?

There''s literally soo much lore and content in game, 99.99% of the people complaining will never finish it. Try working through achievements as you level. If you don't want things to come fast, focus on the lore and quests instead of grinding levels(and thus aa). There are so many more interesting things to do than log on to kill 50 murkgliders every day for 20aa's.

Change the AA's and I leave E.Q.forever, it's that simple.
I have spent years amassing my AA's on multiple toons and multiple accounts. You may screw up a few expansions here and there, Nerf a few spells and AA's then I may take a break while things sort themselves out, but taking AA's I spent thousands of hours (no swarming) getting and I'm gone.
The game has been made way too easy as it is in the last few expansions. Now you want to make it easier still for transitory players while insulting and demeaning your loyal players. Hate to tell you but you won't have any kind of player base with this AA change.
I have never considered any of your ill conceived ideas worth logging into the forums to comment on until now. I love this game but if your proposed changes to the AA system go through then Everquest is officially dead to me and I very much doubt any of the people have played with for all my years will stay either.
Changing my account to non-recurring.

Piestro, any thoughts on my 2 posts? thought at least the second would get a small chuckle

"My question is simple and i'm not sure if it has already been answered. if i have already spent these AAs in underfoot or below will those AA's just get tossed in the trash or will they be refunded to me to spend on higher end AA. It only seems fair that if i have already earned these AA's that they shuld not be just thrown away."

Oh so is it fair for you to even get free AA's? Just be happy that you are getting something for free. It was never something that you were entitled to.

I still think that reevaluating the AA exp curve is the best suggestion. Make people play to get their AAs instead of auto granting.

hey follicle I agree completely. how ever you have to remember with the new rewards for being a recurring account, wait that's right its for people that play for plat and kronos now and card people too, hmmm they don't care if we are recurring anymore

Rogue thoughts.. I'd really like a developer to reply to this as it is VERY important to me. I've even got an active petition in hoping it's addressed as it's a huge impact to my ability to play this game.

There are several huge issues that Rogues have in this game, while DPS is a primary concern of most people it's not the most important thing to me. From everything I've heard.. DPS is at a pretty decent place for Rogues right now when properly buffed and they know what they're doing. At least when they're in raids.

The issues I'm talking about are glaring for either most melee or at the very least a select few.

Lack of Survival while soloing or grouping is a HUGE one. Lack of valid Range options is another. Overcomplexity of existing utility, and lack of further utility is another. And finally.. lack of overall DPS while soloing is especially difficult for a Rogue.. and it's even worse when combined with all of the previous issues.

With the removal of Assassination on Riposte via Knaves Return Strike we lose one of the very few soloing mechanics we had to work with.. Here are the issues broken out and a suggestion I have that might help address it. Keep in mind, my suggestions are just that.. suggestions. The problem is still there and if you decide that you don't like my suggestions please come up with something that addresses the problem.

1] Survival - This is an issue when soloing, grouping, or raiding especially as a Rogue.

Soloing/Grouping - It can be very difficult to take sustained damage from an enemy, recently it's seemed as if things started hitting for much more damage than they used to. I'm currently level 91 and can hardly solo my level 85 daily mission in Old Blood Field. And when I say I can hardly solo it.. with even level gear, decent mastery of my character, and a J5 Healer on Reactive I can barely kill light blue enemies 1 v 1. If a second one joins it means I'm going to die.. My experiences with grouping are much worse usually resulting in death in under 5 seconds when fighting even content such as enemies in Grounds or Lunanyn. Suggestions for addressing this.

Riposte, Parry, and Dodge are my three favorite skills for a Rogue and I feel like they hardly ever rely on them. They seem to want to face tank like a fighter does. The closest thing I have to making me different is my Lithe Discipline. With Lithe I have issues with my endurance and cannot use other Disciplines that could be useful for damage. My suggestion for this is to enhance these defenses through AA's.

1) A Parry/Riposte Rogue Passive AA that increases frequency of Parries and Ripostes heavily.
2) A Dodge Passive Rogue AA that could 'hopefully' take the place of Lithe and the other dodge combat abilities. I'd be perfectly fine if those abilities were removed in favor of a static AA.
3) Extension of Knaves Return Strike to increase damage off of Ripostes via Backstabs.
4) A New Riposte Rogue Passive AA that debuffs the damage done by enemies hit by your Riposte for a very short time. Not enough to cause you to aggro juggle to debuff.. but enough to make it so that when you do get hit by sustained damage while soloing you won't die from burst damage every time.

Raiding - When raiding the biggest issue I ever ran into was Rampage damage. It was just something that you had to deal with. It was never fun. It always kept the healers much more taxed than they ought to be. I usually got passed over for ANY ranged character as they would simply not be near the rampage. I feel that this mechanic is directly detrimental to Rogues.. and that we should be able to reduce it through AA's. It would allow Rogues to much more easily enter into raids and have fun with the late end of the game.

2] Lack of Range Options - This is a very short one.. but Rogues have pretty much no range options available to them. There are times where it's pretty much needed in order to do DPS without instantly killing yourself.

1) I'd really like to see an Endless Quiver style AA.
2) This is somewhat of a continuation of the first suggestion.. I'd really like to see itemization for Thrown Weapons as opposed to Bows for Rogues. Something on par with existing high end bows. If this happens I'm entirely happy with making the Endless Quiver option function only for Thrown Weapons.

3] Complex Utility Mechanics - This is primarily referring to Poisons.

1) I'd really like to see poisons become duration based and not Duration + Charge based. With the amount of utility/damage that Poisons provide to us and the amount we rely on them to be on par with other classes.. It's amazing that they're as expensive as they are to make (at the high end) yet only have a couple dozen charges.

2) Utility Rogue Poisons and High End Damage Poisons should be easier to make. Merchants should either sell the materials to make them directly or farming the materials should be much easier to do.

4] Finally Lack of DPS while soloing. - Frontal Arc DPS is pretty pathetic for a Rogue.. It can be very difficult to achieve positioning as a Rogue and not always as rewarding as it would be to simply play a class without that restriction. I suggest upping Chaotic Stab damage to be much more on par with the amount of damage we can pull from the rear arc. Probably closer to 80% of full damage. When soloing however, that combined with Ripostes should bring a Rogue closer to 120-125% of the damage they can do normally as there is much more risk.

I hope it wasn't too hard to read.