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

I'm a cleric who swarms. Most of my swarming is done for farming tradeskill items in DodH or SoF zones. My tradeskills are not done for massive profit, but for personal and guild benefit. If you are going to nerf swarming, could you up the drop rate on items used in making AOAAs and other cultural armor needs?

I'm also a raid cleric. Mitigation and triggered heals are a HUGE part of our raid healing strategy. Please stop and consider how changes to Shining Bastion and Bastion of Vie will impact raids.

It's funny how I played a ranger during the bad old days (2000-2001), when the class got nerfed to uselessness and was the butt of jokes throughout Everquest. Remember raids where everyone would yell, "Ranger down! LOL," during Kunark, and that obese dude who leveled up the first ranger to level 65 to illustrate to SOE how broken the class was at that time. After maybe six months and the guy quitting, they finally sort of listened to him.

Now, I come back to the game after hearing how finally rangers have some worthwhile abilities, and lo and behold, they nerf the class 2 months after I re-enter the game. SOE has had like 10 years of headshot data to mull over, and I re-start the game in late 2013, only to have the best ranger ability nerfed before I really ever had a chance to take advantage of it. (Up to now I've found it boring to sit around in an empty zone headshotting, but I was looking forward to doing some in C1 in POF, now that I finally got that high.) I don't know what the solution is. I do know that I've never seen a ranger cause bad lag or swarms with headshot on the Zek server. I've seen sk's, zerkers, and mages cause lag, but not ranger headshot.

Lag though is a problem for the developers to solve, not by nerfing classes, but by actually solving the problem, which sounds to me like an AE problem. Stop mobs in those zones from swarming! It's that simple. So that solving the problem does not involve taking away people's ability which they worked hard for. Finally, compensation for this nerf shouldn't involve giving away 4 k free AA's to every toon. What a ridiculous solution and slap in the face to the loyal customers who have spent hours attaining those AA's. It seems to me that it should be made sure that all classes have skin in the game with their special abilities-- that they face an imminent threat when they use them. However, the lag problems should be solved by reworking the AE of the mobs, etc. In other words, it's a developers' task to make the zones work as intended, and not overload, rather than a problem with class abilities.

Ranger headshot is only useful for mass killing at lower levels. This has already been nerfed to near uselessness. These changes will hurt the ranger class big time.

SK changes on lifetaps will hurt Sks as viable tanks.

Decap will take away the one cool thing about playing a zerker. This does not cause massive cpu spikes. They lack the survivability to do so.

If this is really about server proc spikes, reduce the beam targets as discussed. Leave the other classes alone. It is no secret that beaming is the largest contributor to this.

I have played this game since early 2000. First as a paladin (Dewshine) then as a druid (Clearbrooke) and now as a rogue (Winnowyl). My rogue is very overcap on AA's currently, my druid is almost halfway finished. Both are level 100. Rogue in raid gear, druid in mostly group gear. Paladin has been retired for nearly a decade.

AA Autogranting: I'm very meh about the auto granting of AA's. I don't feel it cheapens any of the work I did, nor does it infringe on my enjoyment of the game. I do think we should be able to spend them in a way of our choosing, or more AA's need to have a toggle put on them. SCS, Salvage, Tradeskill Mastery AA's. I'm sure there's others, but I'm drawing a blank on them right now. Those on bronze or silver accounts should have the unlockers that they've paid for be stacked upon any AA's that are autogranted, however. IE, they've gained 2000 AA's, by unlocking 1000 AA's. You autogrant 4000 AA's, they should now be capped at 5000 AA's.

SK Changes: I do not have an SK, nor have I ever played one. I'll let the experts on the class offer suggestions.

Cleric Changes: See SK response.

Ranger/Rogue/Berserker Changes: Ranger headshot should be left alone. It's fine. Make Assassination and Decapitation not work with our riposte disc running. Leave the proc rate alone. Even in raid gear, without that riposte disc, if I pull more than 3 or 4 light blue mobs at a time, I run a very real risk of needing a rez. When they're green mobs, I can even increase that to 5 or 6. But without the disc, pulling any significant amount of mobs to assassinate just isn't going to happen. Don't reduce the ability of these classes to solo in a meaningful way.

Magician Changes: Well, something has to give, as far as beaming goes. I'm not sure this is the right solution, but since I have no valuable or knowledgeable input on it, I'll refer once again to the SK answer.

Piestro... i implore you...please reconsider the change you propose for the ranger class. I will try to keep my argument as technically accurate as possible to explain why i feel your going the wrong way on the ranger headshot ability. The MAIN thing that even MAKES swarm pulling/killing doable for the ranger class is our ability to vinelash cascade an unlimited amount of mobs. Why not nerf the SPELL vinelash cascade to affect a maximum of 6 mobs or so therefore reducing the number of mobs pulled at once THEREFORE reducing the amount of lag created in any given zone a ranger happens to be headshotting in.Technically speaking we are already limited by the levels of mobs we can headshot, reducing the percentages of the mobs we have to choose from. We can ONLY headshot HUMANOID mobs, FURTHER reducing the percentages of the mobs we have to choose from. Headshot is not a "guaranteed" one shot its dead deal either. Take the Ferrott Temple camp for instance, a popular place for us rangers. With all archery aa's done I still go thru "dry spells where my headshot wont fire for over a minute where im looking over at my wife in rl saying honey is this mob ever gonna die? That coupled with the fact that a majority of those mobs in the temple camp dont die on the first headshot it takes a second headshot to finish them off. Iunderstand you dont want to "lean" on any ONE specific class but please consider the reality of it is that the ranger headshot ability is ALREADY limitd in several ways that those "other" classes are not. My understanding is that "beamkiting" and "decapping" works on mobs up to lvl 100 AND is not limited to any one specific TYPE of mob? Well we rangers NEVER had those options to work with in the first place so i could SEE the need to find some balance there, but reducing the number of times headshot fires to once or twice per minute doesnt seem like the solution and my next point i want to make is probably THE most valid point one CAN make with respect to nerfing headshot. to start with, and i hope you take my honest word on this but i never really understood what headshot was for the longest time until i actually saw another ranger doing it at the temples camp in ferrott so my experience with headshot locations is somewhat limited in that respect and so after trying it in that camp for awhile i got bored with it and moved on to more fun things but im one of those very "patient" rangers... i tradeskill anything and EVERYTHING i can on my own cause i like to provide for myself but realistically if you DO nerf the HS to firing twice a minute BECAUSE your trying to "ease" up on zone lag me being the patient ranger I am couldnt I STILL just mass pull the entire temples camp and just SPAM vinelash cascade to keep the mobs locked down and patiently wait for my headshot to fire twice per minute? Yes i could and you HAVE to accept the validity of my point cause its true and like I previously mentioned its the VINELASH CASCADE that makes the ranger mass pulls possible and NOT so much the headshot ability itself so please reconsider your desiscion to nerf my ability like you propose because realistically you would still be leaving a ranger open to mass pulling mobs and causing the zone spikes that you claim you are trying to reduce albiet it might take a little longer for "said" ranger to get them killed they would still be mass pulling...

/agree

Please don't nerf sk riposte, it will make sks utterly useless during raids.

If this is really about server load, what prevents disgruntled players from all creating level 1 characters and each pull 100 mobs in the noob zones?

You need to treat the cause, not the symptom.
the cause being weak server side hardware in combination with slow code.
This is like cutting off your head to cure headache.

As a reverse engineer, I suggest you upgrade your hardware, and on the software side there is a lot that can be done to improve client-server communication as well. So many packets that are sent to and from the client per second, that are completely useless, anyone with the means to block packets, can do so on a few that continuously spam the client and the playability goes through the roof. I don't need to name opcodes here, you guys can attach a debugger on your side, and see for yourself.

nerfing SK makes no sense, we only swarm in 2 year old content. were people are not exping, and should not lag out zones that people are exping in, im sure paladin , rogue , ranger are useless fixes also , sounds like the bigest issue is with mages / wiz beaming in current content . just nerf that line of spells and be done with this , and as far as the AA thing, just make the AA gain way faster at lower teirs, make people earn them, its not hard to grind AA

(valid message)

So what we haven't looked at is how this will effect certain quests, like ALOT of them that required a certain class with certain abilities?
J5 merc quest , specific quests that you need a quick kill class or an enchanter ( oh wait, people even play those?) to get your quest done. Making all these changes will mess up certain achievements cause they were based on these abilities, All Tasks or Quests are going to take us 5 times as long to complete now, even if we bother to do them.
BTW most rangers/berserkers/rogue kill trivial things cause they cant find a group to kill real mobs,meaning people will just stop playing them. Thus when the game becomes a pain we will stop playing EQ all together.

being a Rogue and a Enchanter { the only 2 I like playing anymore}
sk finally being nerfed
maybe less I'm greater than you will be heard
Sorry ..
and this is not all about sk anyway is it now
sk are not the only ones being nerfed

what that saying calling the kettle black >?

Was that an attempt at composing a Haiku, Duo13? If so, it's not a very good one.

Gold members are the long time players that support this game. I mainly solo/malo and have played since 11-2000, my main is lvl 85 and was going to hit 3k aa's this weekend, was kind of exited about this. Thanks to this great change all these years of building and becoming attached to this character feel cheap and meaningless. Many may not agree with me but my ranger has earned these things, his power, his style and I guess you could call it his pride, (holy crap that sounds nerdy). Now I really have no interest in him at all, right or wrong this ends EQ for me. I always thought when EQ ended I would be sad, look for the perfect place to camp etc. Amazing how a day can change things, I just don't even want him anymore.

I don't agreed with the AA grant. It trivializes a great deal of effort many people have placed into their characters. My feedback would be to bump up the aa's exp rate (its uncreative I know but I think it causes the least angst).

As for swarming while it personally doesn't affect me I have to disagree with the changes. Some folks are going to look for easy ways to advance and I would rather have the players control that flow of xp rather than getting a welfare style handout from the devs. Again this just being my opinion.

Even though I have strayed from time to time EQ has been a fantastic game to return to. For all its warts its still my favorite all time MMO. To the EQ devs, please reconsider your plans for changes to the AA system. I feel that this is going to damage the game more than help balance it out.

I feel like Redstingray

Well, this planned changes are just so shocking that I just signed up on forums to give my feedback.

About giving away free AAs to everyone.
I don't like the idea. As other players say Everquest is about working your characters hard in a way you can't do in other games and that's why we always end by coming back to this game.

I think there are better solutions to this, make it easier for returning players to find groups. Maybe you could implement an easy adventure/task/dungeon finder? something that automatically assigns you a group and a set of goals and grants a big amount of exp and/or AAs for players in the 51-90 range? (something better and funnier than the daily hotzone quests of course). You could even make this accessible to gold accounts only.

About nerfing "swarming":
I agree swarming in a way that bothers other players is just wrong (training or stealing mobs) but there is already a solution to this problem: Report to customer service + ban... Boom! This is againist the EULA.

I'm not saying pulling groups of 100 mobs is fine and it's something everyone should do but nerfing players because your game can't handle it, because of the way it's programmed, I'm sorry but... What the hell??? For god's sake... you are SONY! There are thousands of websites, games and apps out there that handle much more processing than this without trembling. It's unbeliavable you can't do something to solve the root of the problem, like others have pointed before.

The way the game is right now makes it impossible to most classes at level 100, more than 4k well spent AA and group/bazaar gear to solo (or molo) level 90 or higher mobs efficiently. This, right now, includes the last three expansions. And this is not only the case of returning players... This includes anyone that is not super "AAed" and raid geared which is most of the people that play everquest.

It's not only that you can't work on "current content" on your own, you are not even able to work out the content of the last three expansions... And don't tell me "find a group, that's the key". I like groups. I LOVE groups and prefer them over soloing. I actually would love to find a group everytime I want. But as you know everquest it's not exactly in its golden age. There aren't enough players around looking to group and if you try it takes more than the time you have available to play a day (which is the case of most people I think).

So what do these most classes do?
A) Try to do daily quest every day. The experience is good but focusing on this only is just boring. This is not playing everquest.
B) Wait forever for a group, and find one 1 out of 5 times they play.
C) Be valiant enough to try to kill something from the last 3 expansions on their own... resulting in wipes or ultra-slow killing and in an extreme feeling of weakness and disapointment.
D) Ahhhh... the solution! Try to enjoy playing while getting some experience and plat... try to kill big groups of low-con mobs or kill them very fast.

If you are eliminating D from the list of options of these most classes (basically all that aren't some of the super and uber casters around there...) you are actually crippling them and their joy to play this game which will result in a lot of people that will quit everquest, probably for good.

So, please, don't do it unless you plan to seriously improve the other options which means:

• Massively promoting groups (improved/interactive party finders and much more)
• And/or give the classes that can't the possibility to do something on their own on current or even only on previous 2 (RoF / VoA).

And don't tell me "doing everything on your own on current content would ruin everquest, that's not everquest" because:
1) I'm not asking to be able to do everything, just to be able to do something more than I can do right now (which is nearly nothing).
2) Don't be blind because you know well there are classes that can do it already!

** TAKE THE TIME TO READ **

I don't think the problem is being addressed.

The problem is currently players can Grab a bunch of mobs and run circles lag the server out and cause resource slowness, causing problems for players in other zones, and just making certain zones unplayable.


My opinion is this. Change the AI of the mobs so either
1. When there is 7 or more mobs they all lose agro and move back to spawn points.
2. When there is 7 or more they Surround a person.
3. When there is 7 or more they Hit harder or something.

For Me personally the change to my leech curse / LS epic click decreases my ability to tank during raids events. The riposte damage helps shadow knights Fill in the Gap between them and warriors with tanking. It also helps us in EXP groups when things get out of control to augment our healing.

Its saved me hundreds of times.

I can't comment on the headshoting issues.

Beam Kiting, Inverse Logic Internally Handles this. We don't permit Swarming, Beam kiting or AE killing in zones where there are other people. We don't even allow macroquesting and automated botting.

So, Could you guys please put a little more consideration on the SK Riposte damage thing. Its a really big deal. I'm not going to quit or something but it is something else that I wouldn't be happy about in the game.

I'd rather LOSE MortalCoil and Get something else instead. Keeping the epic (Which isn't long enough of a click to do a full swarm)

As for the AA thing, I'm against this completely. Allow more indepth monster missions, or shifting forms so players can do stuff with lower level players.

EQ is the ability to immerse yourselves in the content of Everquest. Its a game, not a Fast pass. Sure, Adjust the band so they get A LOT more exp per kill when newer players exp up. I have no problem with 85+4000ish aas but whats the point? Congestion, players that don't understand their characters, and don't understand the lore & such in the game.

All that development time can still be utilized and useful for everquest.

Anyways,
Phyros
Inverse Logic Guild Leader.
Damn you CT, I want my 11 Seconds back!

I find this very acceptable. If you can't be serious with something like this. I don't know what to say.
But I do hope riposite is kept in, but tweaked.
Can it be tweaked to at least greater than 1 enemy?
I hope you guys consider this.
I would much rather you did none of these changes at all. I havent complained about any other changes you guys have done in the past, but this is just the biggest kick in the balls.

I have been playing this game on an off for MANY years and i'm sure every player who fought hard and spent hard earned cash investing into this game to reach where they are today, and be remind that crap was NOT easy, and its not suppose to be easy.

Your essentially telling people who have been loyal for years, that "They do not matter" and that all the time they fairly contributed is just a waste of time. You guys can go right ahead and attempt this like most of us know you probably will, regardless of how we feel about it.

Watch the complainers not even play the game even with the changes. Honestly this is one of many MMO's I find fun and easy to return too because the system is kept the same. If your gonna give freebies to people who don't put in time. I will just go back to playing the MMO I have been neglecting. I'm fairly certain I will consider not returning to EQ if these changes are put in place.

Oh and one more thing, The server performance issue even with that chart I feel is a load of poop.

As far as server lag, I have seen the Mage beam go to work, The rest> No!

Rangers typically take on 5-7 mobs or so at a time, slow, snare, and mow them down at that rate. rinse and repeat. Good yes, great, sometimes with someone who is practiced..... Server affecting?? I doubt it that much.

Zerker decap? well, same goes, except that they can decap any type mob. Limit it to humanoid like the rest, and I am happy.

As for rogues and assassinate, the most limited of the abilities out of them all! Yes we have an assassinate chance on riposte. Normally this doesn't amount to much overall. With rogues fury and counterattack, It is a very good , very drastic ability with huge success rates. BUT it already has a nerf built in. We Rogues can only pull this off every 24? 26? minutes or so and it lasts what, 2, 3 ticks?
Leave it the hell alone!

As for mass killing for long periods, we rogues have been nerfed from the get go. Humanoid only, and if not a riposte, from behind only, and only on backstab attempts or thrown weapons from behind!! As any rogue who has learned to mow down mobs, we have realized, to be effective, we REQUIRE a tank to hold aggro so we can snipe them from behind. Which then also requires a healer to keep the tank alive long enough to be any good.

On top of that, the only zones they work in for ranger, zerker, and rogue are LB mobs or under, at level 100, max AA in said abilities, no more advancement after that, and generally hoT and lower in expac.. although some very few mobs in Argath and upper Valley of lunanyn.., but that is it. We are already NERFED, leave it be!

Take care of, modify the beaming if you have to, but dont go saying " all mass killing detriments servers" Because it is a load! take care of the actual problem, dont just say, well Beaming sucks server resources, but if we change/take it away, we better screw all classes equally or worse.....

Also, for a game who's popularity has flagged, has had several "server merges" due to lack of server population, SoE and Everquest Literally Live off the loyal playerbase! And looking at that, also seeing that the subscription price hasn't gone down in years and years!! Huh?

The proposed changes are a kick in the teeth for EQ loyalists! I would almost like to start accepting bets as to the odds/percentage of paying subscriber loss that you will have if you follow through on these proposed insults. I will be one of them!

My 2 coppers, not that sony ever cared! :/

Sony-
leave the AA's alone and stop some nerfes
why wont you listen to us { the players}
we don't want to go another game
but will if have to...
I know I know
there is always someone else to replace us
but how many paying customers can you afford to lose?