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

If you want to get rid of the swarmers, then give them a warning...once...if they do it again ban them from the game, but stay away from others people fun, stay clear of our aa's, Rogues and zerkers are about assassinate and decap.

Take care of the swarmers, thats one of the jobs GM's do isnt it? Well go do it, and leave normal players alone!

Also thought I'd add about the AA auto-grant:

Along the path of leveling up, there are decisions to be made about AA choices. Some people may choose to build their character differently than others. In the end, at 7500, 8000, or however many AA, you end up in the same place roughly, but the journey to get there can be different based upon your AA. My SHM maxed out all my DoT and offensive capabilities before I ever took more than a very few basic healing AAs, for example. Now that I have 6600 AA (how many will new SHM get?), I have most of the "important" ones and can fill any role a SHM would be able to. But along the way, I played a different game than many other SHM. I've had my chanter since 1999, and my AA choices were geared toward crowd control. These days, chanters focus more on DPS. It's nice that they have that choice, but it's still a choice. By granting several thousand AA, you are effectively removing that game play experience/choice. That may be your goal, but just thought I'd point it out.

we all seen the mage beam spell getting nerfed, no surprise there. I have been in zones where mages were beaming and it was extremely laggy and my pc doesn't lag. not only was the lag an issue for the server but it also ruined the game for other people who went to the zone to play because literaly every mob was being beamed. I never had that happen with rogues, sk, zerkers, or rangers so I don't understand why they are being punished for the creativity of some clever mages. I have a ranger, rogue and sk and I have all the aa under fire as well as the support aa that makes them more useful and I personally don't find it fun to swarm, headshot or assassinate for long periods of time. and with the nerf of rangers and rogues not being able to use their skills against mobs higher than voa t1 the aa are all but useless, especially since rangers were nerfed years ago with the aoe arrow spells only hs'ing 1 mob not multiples like it originally did. to further nerf them would be ridiculous. so I am glad to be getting my aa refunded. as far as sk go. taking away their ability to tap on riposte only makes them inferior in normal soloing, grouping or raiding situations when they are not swarming. making the sk more likely to die in non swarming situations. fix the beams but leave the rest alone or there are going to be some empty servers to be sure. if any changes were to be made, I would've expected the hs and anatomy to be un nerfed as to work on all voa or even rof t1. make it usable again not worse, rogues and rangers are dps after all, they are supposed to kill fast, that is what they do. its not like it works on dark blue or higher mobs. its not going to work on anything worth fighting. but what do I know, just been grinding since early 2001 nonstop. to all the cry babies that whine over different classes being too powerful. make a new character and see how powerful they are. grind out hundreds of aa and dump them into a line that is worthless now see how that works for ya. the way I see it, soe is going to do what they want to do no matter how many people don't like it. which will drive off their customers. which will make it harder for the loyal to group or raid and make the faithful not to want to play anymore. doubt if anyone will want to try eqn after getting totally frustrated with the way things are being handled with eq. if they would do it to a game that has stood the test of time like eq, imagine the trainwreck a brand new game like eqn will be. maybe we will get lucky and they will make a change that the players like, instead of hate. btw as of me writing this there are already 49 pages of disgruntled players posting and its only been posted for like 9 hours

Now you really i mean REALLY need to add something to help rogues solo. Assassinate was limited to humanoids and was very risky for the rogue (need perfect pull and positioning or you die) due to need to be in melee range to trigger assassinate.
Now rogues are just a class with dps from the front, no heal, no tanking. Sorry but we deserve fun like other classes, it's not fair at all to see other classes continue to solo everything including cotf named when you now can't solo a light blue mob.

I appreciate the changes as a returning customer. I'll admit that the thought of grinding out hundreds of AA's just to be able to advance a few more levels on my character without being slaughtered was daunting if not outright discouraging, especially in light of trying to catch up to the grouping level of the game (62 Druid). I visited Wall of Slaughter for the first time on my Druid the other day and was very disappointed that a swarming group was there taking most if not all of the mobs, so much so that I ended up leaving and going back to Undershore to grind yet more of those AA's to make me survivable.

Keep up the good work and don't be afraid to make changes that help the majority of gamers over the few who make the game less appealing with their exploiting. I'm glad to know you still care enough about the game's health to make the hard decisions.

I feel most sorry for people who spent $$$ on adventure pots to get AA that are free now. They gotta feel ripped off worse than everyone who's only complaining about wasted time.

The zone lag fixes and hardware related fixes are understandable, but the rest of this is a joke.

Be at the maximum level is often a goal.
Be to the maximum of its potential at each step (level) is another, by the way of AA.
It facilitates the life of the player and it also avoids the partners to bundle with a Cannonball.

Hear you want to offer all existing AA at level 85 is to say to all those who have privileged their daily and regular work to devote their time to this essential path of this game, they were next to one of the strong points of the game.

It wants to also say that all areas and quests before the 85 level will do nothing. You should maybe outright remove them.
This opportunity to survey areas of Everquest, with this difference or not worked the way to the AA, was a good way to not be apper by this infernal race to the maximum level.

Currently, the meetings that you are boxes. You already know that a 100 level could hide a character empty of personal work in AA and empty experience. Character only saved by the fabulous contribution of armor, but quickly disillusioned by their actual performance.

It is clear that all daily quests that allow the booster box the experience of their empty characters (without driver at the wheel, only in mode follow) were already a first step to encourage players to create boxes (at least in free account).

Now, the second step is to encourage these players to fan these accounts at least a month in gold to make a heist in AA. Former players who have privileged their time to spend it on this way to the AA will be collateral victims without compensation.

Now, what we see on the general chat will be of the type:
WTB PL to 85, send tell with price...
Once the characters of the box to level 85, they will pay for a month in gold, and will resume the months free with boxes of characters (still no driver at the wheel, but with lots of AA)
But Sony will be able to extract more dollars to these players, why not. But at the expense of the foundations of the game and the normal players (and perhaps, unfortunately a little candid).
Sorry, I must be a little pissed off. And I feel a bit silly in my way to apprehend the game from my beginning.
I have perhaps done better choose the path of the empty leveling, and be a normal ball or slacker with my partners (without driver).

I am not really loving the cleric changes; while I am slightly outdated I am not under the impression that cleric swarming is a problem at the moment? While I can't speak for everyone else, I do find the "x charges" buffs really annoying. I think you should be able to put a buff on someone and let it work out it's duration while you actually focus on the primary healing spells and should be rewarded there for being fast / reactive, and not having to re cast a mandatory buff all the time... As it also has been stated earlier, it's already hard enough for a cleric to get a group over a mercenary, and now one of the abilities that at least make us stand out a bit is becoming substantially worse, and for sure more annoying for the cleric to use and monitor.

I have never been a huge fan of the audiotriggers, that's on me though I guess. IS there any other way to make it clearer when a buff runs out? Sitting 3 inches from the screen trying to read the chat box saying something wears off kind of sucks :/

I am sure there have been some good feedback and creative ways of fixing this in another way, but I have just shamelessly skimmed through the almost 1000 posts here already...

1) You could make a pile of mobs, say 10-15 / whatever number you want, while being close together get a substantial increase in their damage. Make it so much that a shadow knight most likely wouldn't be able to out leech the damage / at least not pull 20-30+. I am however under the impression that a raid geared / AA'd / Seasoned player should be able to kill a few light blue mobs at a time..

I am thinking this will enable higher levels to still kill a higher ammount of grey cons, which they should be able to, but limit their ability to kill tons of mobs giving decent experience to the player / group - which seems to be the root of the problem / motivation for swarming..

2) As far as mages go you could make some mobs have a much faster run speed than the rest, possibly on par with bard speed/slightly faster. As someone stated earlier, you could also make a pile of mobs (10-15) start summoning as well. Guessing this won't be an issue with the 12 mob limit to beam, which I think sounds fine.

Headshot / assassinate / decapitation changes sounds very good.

Also very positive in regards to the AA grant for newer players, I do think giving you X-ammount of AA's to spend might be a better way to do it though - but in either case I think it's a great change.

In short, I think all your changes are good for the game and hopefully will encourage more grouping and community. I just do not like the idea of nerfing certain class abilities that would greatly impact on the grouping / raiding game as well just because they *can* be used to mass pull and mass kill.

Apologies for the messy and long post -.-

Giving grants of AA away without playing isn't the right way. There are so many ways to get em Achievments, Mission Rewards etc.
Adjust the Midgame rewards and u are fine.(See Sorox's Post for Example)

Playing for AA makes always more sense than just give em away.

Fixing or nerf ability's that cause technical issues sounds ok.But beaming or swarming aren't the problem, people who want lag the server by big pulls to get not hit are the problem.
Your planned nerfs are radical, most of the listed classes use the ability's to kill light blues without lag zones or the whole server. Start fixing where the major problem is and don't make package deal.


Eildain_AB

Couldnt agree with you more. Everquest was always my favorite experience in a video game. I would talk about it with friends, family, customers. The level of nostalgia i had returning to this game was greeted with open arms saying hey we missed you, and i was sucked back in. Now sure games need to change. Where i have a problem is this mentality that developers across all platforms have done in the past years. You create a game we play it , we explore it, we delve into its deepest reaches and come up with ways to make our own experience out of it. Its why so many have fond memories of the old days, their terrible corpse runs in chardok that just accumulated more corpses and more frustration, but thats what made it eq for us. Don't get me wrong i hated corpse runs, going ld while quad kiting in timorous deep on your epic 56k modem, only to log back in naked at your bind point. Anyways ive gotten off point, what im trying to say is stop telling me how to play your video game, if you want to beam then beam, you want to swarm swarm, you want to ae headshot(oh wait this was nerfed too my mistake) headshot, go for it decap yup. honestly whatever it is it doesnt matter, because your gonna play the game the way you like to play it not the way a dev tells you to or pigeon holes you into a certain way because of nerfs, its unnatractive to me the consumer when u do this because not only do you defeat the time weve invested in characters, you defeat our sense of accomplishment. Because honestly what will we have to show for it in the end if you nerf the things that made it enjoyable to us. Nothing because our nostalgia will then morph into something completely different; resentment. Maybe not for all. I was looking forward to next, but honestly at this point, regardless of the team working on it, your level of incompetence in this matter and its effect on the community is a self portrait of your company and its values as well as your views of your devout following shows that you really don't care about how we want to play the game. I second genked in that i will no longer siphon my money to a company that obviously doesn't deserve it, thank you for the 15 years and good luck to everyone on your journeys.

This, Devs, think about it, quit making hasty decisions and think about a fix. Here I will hand one to you.

From now on players that mass kite/kill/drag mobs around in an open zone with other players will be susceptible to a suspension or ban (on further offenses) BUT if a player creates their own instance they can do what they want. This will push the kiters/swarmers ect. to a zone of their own and not affect the rest of the server.

This solution will work, because it will be policed by players, if you see someone doing it just report them, and the swarmers/beamers wont continue doing it.

Why not just remove those AAs and grant the bonusses those AA provide internally. That way you could clean up silly inflated AA numbers and the already in place AA bonus (0 - 4k ?) would apply from 4k to 8k which would close the cap between starters and vets.

The only interest of these abilities was to use them on multiple mobs as the mobs were light blues max. Don't forget rogues and bers need to be in melee range to use them, and we can't heal and can't tank well (in case you forgot it) so nerfing them to proc 2 per min and never on riposte will make these useless to use because in solo the mobs we pull will kill us before we can kill them. I remind you that we never kill green mobs in group so it is before everything solo abilities for us to have fun without group or when we have just like 1 hour to play.
Unless we can use them against other mobs than humanoids (to have more use) and on current level mobs (at least dark blues) for us to use these abilities in group, don't lose your time.

EQ Team,

I have the OP from the team and will respond to the specific areas which I am familiar.

AA Grant for Gold Members

I have made several posts regarding how to help people get back into the game. The current path way includes increased AA exp based on current values, journey book giving exp and armor, daily quests, and current in game missions/quests for the appropriate levels.

This auto grant for gold membership is just wrong. The current path is not easy but is in my opinion a better option that auto grant everything in the last four expansions. I am all for helping people return with bonuses but not giving away. I have played EQ for years and, this just pushes the "not happy button" until it breaks.

Ability and Spell Changes

The abilities section covers a lot of classes. Will try to broadly address the changes then follow to specific examples/classes that I am familiar with playing.

The mass killing npc item which certain classes can do. Prior to this change, there were only a few classes which really could do or have been doing the killing: mages, paladins, and shadow knights. There are other classes that I have heard can mass kill but I rarely ever see it like rogues. Rangers Hsing has been really reduced since the one target cap was imposed even though they do gather up mobs to line them up. Druids also gather up animals and reverse kite them for experience.

The changes do not affect all classes the same:

Mages & Wizards . By limiting the beam targets, this removes the mages from the zone disruption like it did for wizards back in TSS. Giving the 12 mob limit, still allows the beam spells some pretty good use. I play a wizard alt and like the increase to match at 12.

Cleric Shining armor change seems to be more centered on the paladin swarming. As a raiding cleric, I find this change only annoying. I do not like it but not enough to really say anything more.

Paladin Shining change pretty much kills paladin swarming. I do not play a paladin so can not really make any more comments.

Rogues/rangers/ berserkers only play a ranger so can not comment on the other classes. I as a ranger would prefer a target limit on the fine lash line than a proc limit to HS. This limit would effectively do the same thing as beam limit did to mages and wizards. The proc limit to one to two times a minute would be a worst case option..do not like it.

Shadow knights Mob damage has effectively ended swarming in anything but ancient content. The mass killing does happen there but removing life taps from riposte is a bigger change to SKs than just swarming. It also removes a lot of the SK self healing during tanking from named and adds. Huge change with nothing in return. Would prefer a life tap riposte target limit to match mages and wizards than the death penalty. This would keep what is really used in current game play in tact and still remove zone disruption.

Shadow knights Life tap from weapon damage not affecting riposte makes a rather huge change to how SKs function in tanking. It is one of our class abilities which if the change stands is a major change with nothing to fill that gap. Our life taps and self healing abilities would need major revamps increasing proc rates of spells and AA lines to account for the change. This does not even mention the loss of a "wow" ability SKs would loose. The current change means my SK would be retired because of the self healing changes not the swarming. I have not swarmed in a year or two. Risk versus reward is just not there.

Druids Reverse charm kiting wa not changed. I am glad. The charm kiting is fun. The way it is performed does cause some zone disruption based on examples here but, this does not occur very much. Once again a target limit on vine lash would limit it if desired to do so without killing the tactic. Key is keeping the fun.

A topic not listed in the OP was purchasable items from the last four expansions placed on HA merchants. This goes along with the giving away items and basically makes my playing the last four expansions meaningless. Please remove this from game ASAP. I can not articulate in enough words the disdain that I have for this change. If I made this particular comment out of error, please disregard as I do not have COTF.

To expand the on item give away, I believe it is intended to get more people into playing in the current expansion but accomplishes something else. It makes my last four expansions meaningless making the four years I have played meaningless. Please remove this ASAP. The specific reason why myself and some of my friends are not purchasing the expansion is not based on gear. It is based on expansion content and tuning, So please remove it ASAP.

General comments about the changes. Games are meant to be fun. These abilities have been in game for years and years. Let's not completely remove them after the years and years of fun even if they are being used in ways that we're not designed and causing some server/zone lag. Let's try and adjust to remove/ reduce the zone disruption through target limits keeping the "fun" factor intact. A game that is not fun is a game that is not played. These changes to remove zone disruption can be good but let's reduce the lag and still keep the "fun" in the game through target limits...vinelash....beaming....life tap riposte.

Rykear

PS: I appreciate the communication on the changes but some classes will be made very different from them without more adjustments( SKs, rangers, clerics,...etc). In the end, the removing of those "fun" skills just push players away to other games. Let's adjust to reduce the zone disruption through target limits vice killing them all together.

Additionally, there is a lot more work associated with the changes. Revamps of many expansions and several classes. Are there really enough working on the changes to accomplish this mountain of work?

Could you fix the chat channels please (it's been what 3 weeks now...)

Could you simply just tell the beaming Mages that their conduct is detrimental to the game instead of ruining Shadowknight raid tanking, Rangers, Rogues, and Zerker's fun oh my.

Boo on the trying to force 4k of AA down our throats. No thank you.

Oh yeah. One last thing: if your nerfs go live and manage to kill off my raid guild--you can bet your bottom dollar I'm not going to try Everquest Next or any of your other efforts.

Nerf Beams, and throw away everything else you had in this list of changes. We dont want free AA's and we dont want all those classes being nerfed. Mages are the real issue.

Rogues need to be in melee range to kill mobs, with 2 proc per minute we will have no chance to kill mob before it kill us, not evry class can kill mobs without taking damage you know.
You need to consider letting the proc rate as it is atm for us AT LEAST to be able to use it on 1 mob.

After reading 50 pages of comments...

As a recently returned player, I have to say the free 4000 AA rubs me the wrong way. Think it is especially emotional in that I'm in the sweet spot where it negates everything I have done since returning. I returned last August after quiting shortly after SOL released and having started in 1999. Logged in to my level 60s with about 12-20 very hard earned AA (it was painfully slow when SOL launched even with the very best raid gear from SOV). In the past 4-5 months of playing about 2-3 hours a night, I have progressed to 88 with about 2800 AA. I have taken great pride in building my characters the right way. The granting of 4000 AA will for the most part cover the useful ones I have just earned and then leave me with all the ones I looked at and found useless. It will negate every effort I made to evolve with a strong base.

That said, I understand the need to evolve the game. I know that the ~2800 I have earned have come much easier than those that have been around for years. They also needed those AA grinds to entertain them between expansions and level cap increases. There's a lot of content for returning players to cover without having a good supply of people to play that content with. Need to get people to where the sweet spot in the server population is and to where SOE can sell expansions and gold memberships to keep the lights on. I do think that the mass give away is too extreme. Increase the xp curve, lower the individual cost, give quest bonuses, etc. Find a way to not drastically cheapen what others have accomplished while still speeding up the no-man's land of progression.

I say this as someone that does not even like AAs! My impression of them is that the producers took what used to be abilities earned for reaching a certain level as well as skill increases and turned them in to an alternate experience pool. This allowed them to decrease experience needed for levels and hide it in the AA curve. These are all things we used to get like double attack, meditate, etc after enduring our hell levels and trekking across the world to find our class's guild master to train.

Returning after being away for so long as shown just how changed this game is. Getting from 1-60 is so trivial now (yes I have done it recently to break from grinding). Trash mobs drop godly gear compared to the named spawns in the same camp. There has been so much inflation of gear and abilities it's insane. There really is little reason to take a new character and play the old world other than for memories. Rewards for older raid content, quests and progressions are not worth the time. With progressions, chances are you will out level the expansion before you can even complete the arc (I've gone 800AA and 3 levels in HoT without having enough time to finish the T1 progression quests, let alone the T2 and above). Progressing to the higher levels is the only real option if you want challenges and rewards. The challenge for the EQ team is how to balance that with not cheapening what everyone else has done and not dumping clueless players on the high level population.

As a rogue, I would like to comment on the assassinate nerf. Honestly, I think I have seen it go off about 3 times in the past 28 levels. I used to see it much more frequently back in ROK while recapping exp after raids when most of Seb was greening out to a 60. My play style is to find the most challenging zones I can handle and push limits rather than volume of light blues. If this change is truly to eventually make the ability more useful at higher levels, I am all for it. It was something that was always fun to see go off.

The Ripo life tap change is going to crush SK's in normal group / raid settings. You will have effectively ruined the class.

It's a shame that you cannot have the wisdom to know the impact of your changes.

There should be a better way to resolve these issues. I think there could be a way to monitor how many kills someone has gotten over a period of time and if it's a ridiculous amount punt them to the zone in. Make it similar to what you did when someone got to close to Naggy that was didn't meet the requirements. That would stop the exploits and make someone learn how to use their skills in a different way. This game is pretty much ruined now. I really find it kind of fishy that you are doing this so close to the launch date of EQ Next, just makes me wonder what's really behind this. I appreciate change when it's needed, but this overhaul is going to make EverQuest a new game and that won't be good enough for some....I have a request while you're at it......Get rid of Soul Stones and Corpse Summoning. That ruined the game. Make it to where we need to remember where we died, and also get help getting our corpses back so we don't lose everything. That would make the game a challenge again and people would be more careful in the way they played. Anyway that was just my rant you're going to do whatever you want with our money, so it doesn't matter.