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

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Piestro, Feb 4, 2014.

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  1. Zirk New Member

    You are talking about granting thousands of AAs. What if I wanted to go to Silver for awhile? It is currently 250 Station Cash (~$2.50) for every one hundred AA over the 1,000 base. How much will it cost to raise the AA limit to earn my FIRST AA after going Silver???
  2. Otzberger New Member

    I understand people's gripes about the AA deal, for the most part. For me, at least with my "main", it will be a blessing. My Ranger is level 80 and had about 575 AAs when I stopped playing 6 years ago. Now, coming back, I'm looking at grinding out 12,400 AAs to get him to max out. That is A LOT of AA grinding and very steep cliff to look up as a returning player. This isn't EQ2 with max 270 AAs (or is it 320 AA now? whatever)... we're talking about TWELVE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AAs.

    On another note, I was sad to come back and find that the HoA/AoA line now only headshots the current target. Ok, that's fine. Now the information put out is that Headshot is being nerfed to proc "about 2 times per minute". Yeah, I've heard that before and I fully expect Headshot to be a worthless AA once the nerf bat hits it.

    I was really looking forward to "coming back to my roots" (where my online gaming started) and enjoying the not-so-fast rush to the top. In EQ2 (as well as WoW, but that game is for idiots and children), you can level to max level, max AA, AND finish the final expansion solo & group content in 2 weeks on one character. I never liked that and was always nostalgic about how the grind was here (but the lack of grouping drove me away... I hated having to quad-box just to get stuff done).

    My $0.02.

    Otz
  3. Cheb New Member

    These changes will render the game meaningless to non-raiders and suggests that Sony decision-makers are focused only on short-term customer engagement. Or is it really just about money for exp?

    I used to raid, like it was a religion. Good stuff. Cannot do that any more, without a "Save Raid" button. Wife, kids and all that, dictate otherwise.

    Anti-social abilities
    When it comes to the proposed changes to some class abilities, perhaps instead playgrounds could be provided for those that wish to beam/swarm/headshot.. whatever the distraction may be. These are all fun activities with demanding skill sets. Yes... fun! A real adrenaline rush... Unless you are someone trying to share the same game space... So provide instances to keep players separate, maybe even add quests that require it.

    AAs
    The game appears to be flattening to a point where we will soon all be the same level, wearing the same gear (which we can paint!?) and doing the same thing in the same zones (or instances thereof). Shame really, it used to be a game with such a diverse range of players, classes and abilities.

    I would argue that the bond that keeps vets returning to the game (or lock-in) was one formed mainly through the hardship of playing and partly by other switching costs.

    It was insanely difficult to level to kill, level, find corpses while naked, trade-skill... to do anything! Having to move a slider with mouse to pick up one component to make an arrow... sheesh! A bonding in the face of a common adversity is what formed between the players at that time. I think that's why there are still so many old faces around.

    Players are also retained partly by the effects of lock-in through investment of time and money. The lock-in to the game is through the switching cost of moving to a new game and needing to reinvest to build characters there. The more time you invest in improving a toon, your skills in controlling it and general knowledge of the game, the greater the switching cost. Let us also not forget the community and reputation costs - something any marketing team for a product like this would try to enhance and expand beyond the one game... well aren't we all nicely station networked now...

    So, as one that has already paid the price, I would argue against removing the need to earn early level AAs. The danger to the eq community is that if this switching cost is removed, then people will move on.

    There will be no Next for eq for me... It seems that I too (3 accounts, 30 toons, member since Sep 1999) will be moving on, if these changes come in. I mean... what would be the point of staying? - I could be a pirate!

    Please do reconsider this proposal.
  4. Treesong Elder

    I like the changes!

    I do hope that you guys can solve the problem of "unwanted AA's" though. My Beastlord main is the tank for my boxed group so keeping aggro is important for him. So "Spellcasting Subtlety" is certainly an unwanted AA.

    Thanks for all the hard work on this!
  5. juggalo New Member

    I don't see the point in giving away thousands of aa for free. to me it seems like a slap in the face to players like me who keep their accounts current and play month after month year after year, earning thousands of aa. now a casual player who plays a few months every 4 years or so gets to catch up to the rest of us without earning it. you are catering to the wrong people. cater to the people who buy every expansion, buy sc, and never let their accounts go. not someone who hasn't paid their dues. if you really really want to give away thousands of aa to all gold accounts then drop he cap and let everyone get thousands of aa. the veterans can use them for glyphs. that way they are being rewarded for their loyalty. fair for everyone. seems to me that you are just ruining a legendary game to push them toward eqn. I believe over 90 percent of eq players would rather play eq then eqn. with a very small percent that would probably try eqn. but ultimately go back to eq, with maybe 1 or 2 percent continuing to play eqn. if eq is ruined by all these changes there will be no where for us to go back to and you lose all your faithful customers. I may be wrong, but I doubt it.
    Brittney likes this.
  6. Lighteningrod Augur

    Give or take, 1 month of Gold at $15 will cost you $125 in unlockers if you drop back to Silver. FTP is essentially ruined.
  7. Boun New Member

    Wow. Ok.
    1. Yes mage beaming needs to be nerfed. It was lagging up many zones for people who were just grouping (Plane of Shadow especially) I do not see ANY reason assassinate, decap, or headshot should be changed at all. I play a 100 Rogue and we are horrible at soloing. I enjoyed being able to solo using assassinate to gain AA and exp while I was looking for group as this was the only way I could really solo. Now I'm back to sitting in PoK looking for group all day thanks Sony. Have you not screwed over the Rogue class enough?

    2. Giving away 4k AAs? Are you out of your mind? I have been playing this game for over 10 YEARS and I have just got my 100 Rogue to 6k AAs with a ton of time and hard work. Now your just going to give them away to everyone? Every group I am in me and my friends have to coach someone who has no clue how to play their class already! Your going to kill this game Sony.

    100 Rogue - Boun the Black <Order of the Ancient Dragon>
    Puligimist likes this.
  8. Hanun New Member

    I think I have to agree with Slasher on this one. I would prefer, at certain level increments, to be given AA points to put where I feel they are best served versus being auto given. I do appreciate the offer but not the idea of them being put where I may not want them/slowing down my own AA gain. But I also agree, nerfs aren't great, I will be sad (playing a berserker as a main) with some of them, but they're well thought out and I do agree with the idea.
  9. Puligimist New Member

    AMEN to that!! Well said I could not agree more ... 14 -15 years ago it was rough and hard to play .. lol I remember the CR's into Plane of Fear ( old school) ... things are SO much easier now since you don't need to go look for your corpse.. just summon it to the lobby or get a necro or a sk to do it for ya. Plus there is NO need to go shopping around for a rez, just pop a healer merc (T5) and your gtg. Nowa day its like so easy a 5 year old/ cave man could do it, and now making things so easy a baby in the whom can play eq ... lol dang .. I crack myself up some times but seriously that is the truth. used to be hard back in the day.
    Brittney likes this.
  10. jackrich New Member

    1st of all I've never seen a berserker pull 23 mobs to decap, if you look at the ratio compared to ranger they are the slowest most inefficient melee classes there is and have enough problems keeping themselves alive. I understand removing the riposte proc but reducing an ability that doesn't work most of the time anyway is kind of a waste of time. The Pling isn't the berserkers its mages that are always offering Beam pulls and Shadow Knights swarming. It is going to go the way of no berserkers at all kind of like you don't see many rogues. This is the one thing this has and you will kill it. This will cause EQ to just dry up.
    Sinsu and Puligimist like this.
  11. Endymion New Member

    I, for one, think this is a great step forward for the game. The AA requirement to be useful in late game was more than enough to dissuade several friends of mine from playing and this will only increase the population.

    The swarming nerfs - about time. My main is a 100 SK, closing in on 6k aa's and I've used it to PL alts and friends, but grouping with them would have been far preferable and more enjoyable. My only reservation is, as mentioned, the nerf to tanking multiple enemies - will we be compensated with more mitigation options since our epic and mortal coil is almost useless now for that purpose? I hope so, that was kind of our class-defining thing. Maybe increase the number of mobs we can receive healing from ripostes' to 4 or 5 from just one.

    As for all these people complaining about auto-granting AA's simply because they had to spend more time getting them; you seem to be under the impression that your accomplishments are cheapened by a handicap put in place designed to bring in new or returning players. You're not losing anything! And stop acting like this game is only playable by suffering through rote and repetition ad nauseum so you can master some arcane/esoteric knowledge of a class. Anyone with a firm grasp of the English language and google can learn to play anything sufficiently.

    I spent months grinding through hell-levels back in Kunark: hours and hours spent staring at a spell book, health bars and listening for foot steps when I sat. I begrudge no one that it takes a matter of hours to get the same amount of experience now, all without having to crack a spell book. Get over yourselves.
    Smallpox likes this.
  12. Rathi New Member

    What the...I finally get my berserker very near to level 93 and i can start decapping higher level mobs, and you are going to nerve my abilities, because some people cant show respect to others...sheesh thannks alot, another broken character, bah
    Brittney likes this.
  13. Drafty New Member

    As a returning player I have no yay or nay view on the Underfoot AA being given IF we would be allowed to assign said AA as we see fit for our characters. I'm not sure nerfing skills like decap and headshot are neccessary since it's a random roll on the skill i believe (?). I've seen many mobs never go down with HS or decap while some go down faster. Instead of moving forward maybe the dev's could think about moving backwards. Remove all hotzones AND mercs. I have met way too many people who use a merc and fly up the levels, yet don't know how to group or play an effective character. Maybe removing the mercs would garner more active grouping, then again maybe not. I've also talked to many people in different guilds that when raiding they wont allow any mercs because they want real live people making the plays. So maybe this Could washover to regular game play. Hotzones are a waste IMHP. Why would you assigne special exp to certain zones yet penalize people who still like to go to the "other" zones? My acct is reduced to a free acct, as it should be since I quit paying; yet I have seen far too many times folks (me included) going to do their daily's with apprentice mercs (which we all know are useless) and not being able to do anything. Asking for a grp is turned down way too many times as folks are only interested in their 5 mobs. So again what use is a hotzone? I will go gold as my lifestyle has changed and i really do like playing EQ but i just get so frustrated lately that its maddening. EQ has always tried to balance the classes and I have never had any problem with that but it seems like moving forward is sometimes just wrong. So many people have different views and I'm sure I'll get flamed but be easy on me please :), this is just my 2 cents worth. Oh and before you flame.................take a few minutes and just THINK!
  14. LizEriadoc New Member

    Piestro and/or other devs, I don't know if you're still reading this thread, paying it much mind, or if you just have thread fatigue at this point, but I figured I'd throw in the POV from a long timer that mostly lurks.

    I have no problem with the beam changes. I really don't have a big problem with the AA changes, though I think you're being rather cavalier about the thousands of AA that many of us don't even currently have. I think the SK and headshot changes are ridiculous overreactions. But mostly what I continue to be irritated by is the apparent complete lack of foresight and reactive nature of your thinking. These changes are going to result in some very big problems, and I predict you'll be reporting that you didn't anticipate them. Why don't you anticipate them? And why would I suspect you'll say that? Well, from the first page of this thread:

    So these spells were created in your era and you didn't think players would use them to their fullest extent? Here's a hint: If a spell will affect 100 mobs, players will figure out how to pull 100 mobs.

    And:

    Really? I mean ... REALLY?!?! Have you paid attention to these sorts of games? At all? Every single exploit y'all patch has something to do with a player standing on his head in the light of a full moon in the middle of Stonehenge while druids sing Metallica a capella or some crap. Players will figure out ways to break stuff. 95% of us don't, but the 5% that do make sure that you penalize the rest of us.

    So all this isn't really intended to chastise as much as plead -- PLEASE give some thought, not only to how this affects players and game play now, but to what players will do to break this. Try to imagine how your changes will be use against you. Try to imagine how players will use these newfound AAs to do stuff at lower levels than ever before. Try to imagine any and every way that players will "exploit" game mechanics to do stuff you don't want us to do.

    You won't catch them all. But hopefully you'll never again utter a phrase so monumentally shortsighted as "we never could have imagined" or "we never intended". Because your intentions actually do not matter. What matters is what you do, not what you intend. People adjust to what you do, not what you intend. If you break the game, we adjust. If you make something a certain way, we adjust. And frankly, the adjustment is better than the change.

    Hope no one takes this too harshly. It's not really intended to be mean. All in all, you have a 15 year old game that we still love and play, so this should be considered in that context.
    LostBoy32 and Puligimist like this.
  15. Puligimist New Member

    That's just it .. most of us have mastered our class toon(s). that's why MOST of us here complaining are Veteran's of the game .. We know what we are doing in most situations.. N00b's getting a break .. unheard of around these parts ..earn it ..
    Brittney and LostBoy32 like this.
  16. Smallpox Augur


    Well said and true.
  17. Gretian Uurn New Member

    I have been playing since around the time that Luclin was released. I worked through hell levels and everything. Quit in 07 ish because the game became boring. Came back a few months ago and have really got the itch again. One of the things that drew me back to the came was the sense of accomplishment with gaining aa's and levels. I really think awarding free aa's for purchasing the game will take away the sense of accomplishment that most players get from working towards a goal. You may as well just sell characters that are level 100 with max aa's for station cash. That's the main reason why EQ has been my favorite game. Stuff wasn't just handed to you. I know that I have just returned but will cancel my gold membership should that change go through. On a second note. should swarming abilities be nerfed as much as stated then something needs to change with the aspect of the game. It is really centered around plat and that is how some characters earn their plat. for spells/mercs etc. Some of these changes will really make it hard to keep up with that end.
    Brittney likes this.
  18. Lighteningrod Augur

    Personally, this isn't about Kunark achievements. This is about current achievements. I returned to the game with the release of the Hero's Journey and abandoned 4 end game UF characters in order to re-roll and re-experience EQ. I've spent the last 13 months working my way through the Hero's Journey, piddling around flagging in Kunark, PoP and GoD. I've had a blast doing it.

    Auto-granting AAs doesn't negate past achievements, including my own. It negates CURRENT achievements. It's hard enough to experience the content I would like to without blowing it out due to defiant and the existing XP modifiers.

    I'm only one person in a sea of many, but this change would negate the entire reason I'm playing.
  19. EQtroll Journeyman

    I 100% support all the changes to curb the swarm kiting zone disruptions. Its a shame it took so long for the dev team to finally do something about it since SK's have been doing this for years.

    I like the idea of auto granting AA's, but like others have mentioned I would like it implemented in a different fashion. In my opinion we should have the choice of which AA's we can purchase. Maybe giving players a bulk sum of AA's at certain levels? Starting at level 55 then continuously raise that sum every 5-10 levels until we reach level 85. Although it its not perfect since certain classes need more AA's at different levels, I think this system would be a bit more flexible for the player base.

    I know the EQ dev team are making these changes for the betterment and the future of EQ and wish people would look past their personal feelings and see that these changes will help EQ in the long run.
  20. Lighteningrod Augur

    and to quote myself. Freebie bonus XP pots from lame achievements are fine. I don't have to use them. Lesson of the Devoted is fine. I don't have to use it. Dailies with insane XP awards are fine. I don't have to use them. Dinging a level and having SOE tell me here's your new character ... frankly, pisses me off.
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