Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Prathun, Feb 5, 2014.

  1. Jaime New Member

    I never even heard of Vindictus until now but it sounds like.. with that system the people who dont play dont get left behind, and the people who do play have something to do that others will have by not doing a damn thing and... that sounds terrible. And thats whats going on here. And that just makes me think why have AAs at all at this point. Buff players and nerf mobs to something like how we have it now with max AAs and then we will go back to pre-Luclin where levels mattered and you can get right to raiding at a certain level.
  2. Pullatross New Member

    Kaenneth said
    It isn't hard if you worry about your own game and what you are doing. Spend more time playing the game and less time comparing yourself to other players.

    You will never escape the fact this game has a monetary side. Some players can afford to spend lots of real cash on marketplace items and other goodies. Others can barely afford to pay the subscription. Is that fair? Probably not, but does it stop you from enjoying the game to whatever level you can afford?

    The game is definitely a way to escape the sucky reality of life, but not if you are too busy comparing yourself to others. How many adventures have you missed out on today while you were busy worrying about what other players are getting?
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  3. Arimos New Member

    Currently headshot procs probably 30-50 times per minute (conservatively) for my level 100 ranger. If you are nerfing it down to 2 times per minute that is a massive nerf. To put it into perspective, it would take between 5-10 minutes to kill 5 low blue mobs in order to complete the lvl 85 daily. That being said, I accept your changes as long as you understand the possible impacts beyond simply eliminating "mass killing" but in return for loosing many of the aspects of this ability could you guys maybe toss us rangers a bone and fix Harmonius arrow which has been broken for years. If you fixed that aa it would probably help to calm peoples fears regarding getting a headshot while pulling a summoning mob.
  4. Oranges Augur

    It allows friends and communities to stick together and not fall really behind.

    People argue that players will get something they didn't "earn". Well, is it any worse than the constant PL spam we have now?

    Right now it's the haves and have nots...............the people who CAN afford a PL by buying a Krono.....and the people who CAN'T......and have to climb a huge AA mountain to progress.

    Is that any more fair than allowing everyone to jump that AA hurdle? I actually think autogranting it to everyone (except the ppl opting out, which is their choice and just fine)...is more fair.
    Gyurika Godofwar and Otzberger like this.
  5. Harabakc Augur

    Find it odd there aren't a lot of rogue's and berserker's responding? The cleric "nerf" was pretty small but there were a crap ton of posts about it. There's only a handful of rogue and berserker mains on any given server, people have quit playing them because of all the normal stuff we deal with, now you want to make it more difficult for us?
  6. Halifax New Member

    So you're still autogranting 15 expansions worth of AAs? Absolutely ridiculous. Unsubscribing.
    Morningdew likes this.
  7. Angry Tacos New Member

    never thought I would ever feel so vested in a game where as I posting multiple please don't ruin my class post 2 procs per min and for those that are worried about raid mobs ever see that message on a raid where decapitation doesn't work of raid level mobs I have it works on trash but not on named hot and up so yes agro is an issue that we always face cause our ability to drop agro is no where near the same as other class but we raid rise are not effected by this change we just can enjoy our class any more mass kill on zerker pssh more like pull more than 4 mobs cant ae taunt so merc dies and then without heals zerker dies making it more relevant to current lvl mobs just say thanks for playing here is your consolation prize.

    as I stated if your going to do this than please up the 2 procs per minute to at the least 4 procs per minute an all associated classes
  8. Angry Tacos New Member

    oh and on the note for mass kill welcome to monk class being the new mass kill class and monk out number zerkers and rouges 2 to 1
  9. Hatsee Augur


    HA works exactly as it's supposed to, and no you aren't procing nearly that many times a minute.
    Gyurika Godofwar, Deloehne and Tarvas like this.
  10. Iila Augur

    From some quick tests with my SK alt, the hit counters on the SK epic should be at least 1,500, possibly up to 2,000. I don't have bard or shm buffs and most importantly, my HDex is 150-200 points below a fully geared SK running tribute. Meaning my riposte rate is 6-8% lower than what can expected in current gear.

    5 mobs vs 1h
    Combined: A lizardman patroller: Attempts: 891 -- Hits: 760 - Outgoing hits
    Combined: Attempts: 891 -- Hits: 760 Riposted: 178 (23.6%) Incoming hits

    7 mobs vs 2h
    Combined: A lizardman patroller: -- Attempts: 1245 -- Hits: 1072 -- Outgoing hits
    Tanking summary | Swings: 1358 | Riposted: 211 (19.4%)- Incoming hits

    Rough math is about 200 swings per a mob during epic duration, at the high end, riposte rate is going to be around 30%. Plus 500-800 hits from the SK using auto-atk, and special abilities. Each riposte attempts to hit twice, once with the melee weapon, and once with a bash (Knight's Return Strike).

    So for the 1:45 duration of Lich Sting, with 800+ hits coming from the SK themselves, plus 120 via ripostes for each mob being tanked at current stats, I'd recommend 2,000 hit counters for Lich Sting. Or a rough guide of 20 hits per a second of duration on the buff, including buff extensions.

    In theory, it allows for tanking of 10 mobs, and/or some growth from hit rate via HDex, flurries, buffs, AAs, etc. In practice it prevents the kind of 80-150 mob swarming that these nerfs are aimed at stopping, while allowing SKs to tank 3-5 current mobs with a nice safe buffer, and lets them kill about twice as many nearly-trivial mobs by risking epic running out.

    Giving Mortal Coil the same 20hit/s would keep it a cool buff to get in exp groups or while tearing up trash. But not allow anything close to current swarming.
    Soulrheever, Khat_Nip and juggalo like this.
  11. juggalo New Member

    to all the haters out there who keep squaking about the decap, hs, assassinate to 99. remember! they will only proc like 2 times a minute! so not as good as you think. it does take aa line that cost hundreds of aa to max out relevant again. may rarely proc but don't have to go to t1 voa or earlier to use it after paying so much for it. I do hope the sk nerf does in fact work for soloing / grouping / raiding still so they don't become ineffective tanks. I understand they don't want sk to swarm anymore and that's fine. I only swarmed 1 time with my sk. too boring imo. as long as they can continue to tank at same level using their 2.0 and mortal coil. as far as the thousands of free aa they are giving to part time players. I still feel the core group of players that keep their accounts paid up month after month, year after year, buy sc, lon etc. are losing out. we pay soe the most and are getting the least. unless you count some new players who don't know how to play their new class very well as something. if you have around 4k aa already, there should be an option to get free merc aa. or some percentage of you total aa. or even some glyphs. something since newbs and bots will be getting thousands of aa for free.
  12. Pullatross New Member

    tanith said
    Actually the point was if you are only concerned with yourself and whether you are happy with your own lot, then you would not know about somebody else getting more money for less effort so you would not feel cheated.
    Obviously in real life we have bigger issues with race and gender equality. The analogy doesn't take that into account. I accept that in real life it is more complicated so it was only an analogy to make the point.
    That's why this game should be a no-brainer. It's not complicated like real life. Enjoy yourself playing your own way doing your own thing. Stop worrying about other players who 99% are going to be on different servers or in different zones and you will never see or interact with them.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  13. Jaime New Member

    If thats the case, why even have AAs in the first place? And I ask that knowing it would be alot of effort on the devs to either boost players abilities/stats to how they were if they removed all AAs, or nerf all content down to a manageable level. or a mix of both.
  14. Byakugan New Member

    The animosity is hilarious.

    People who already leveled their characters want MORE because they dont feel like they are being given enough compared to newer players. Having been a member entitles us to NOTHING, except for veteran bonuses. If you worked hard and lived through spellbook medding and 72 man no chat channel raids and naked day-long corpse-runs then your reward is the memory that you did it. Nobody can take that away from you, and YOU are the only one that controls how valuable those memories are to you. Imagine an employer puts a cake in the breakroom to thank people for their hard work, but one guy decides he doesn't like the new guy eating the cake cuz he hasn't worked hard enough for it. That guy isn't a victim, he's a .

    Lets be clear here, buying a membership entitles you to nothing other than the use of SOEs servers. The aas you earned already are what you earned, and the only difference between you and another toon with just as many aas as you is your relative skill levels. Nothing about that is changing. Unless you were that guy that assumes someone is ungroupable if under a certain aa threshhold....Look what happened to WoW with gearscore. Now you'll be cursed with actually communicating with people and interacting with them to see if they are any good.

    I say good job SOE for making the game better for everyone(ie reducing server-wide lag) and helping returnees get back in the game.

    I still think u should just delete the 50% of the aa list that isn't relevant anymore...Innate XXX, packrat, potion bars, crafting masteries, mystical attuneing, mental clarity, regen, Spell casting mastery etc, there are a few thousand of them. They might as well be invisible and just folded into character stats on level up now. Then the whiners can't about what they really want(which is more than whatever u give the other guy...as long as its MORE).
  15. playful0 Journeyman

    I still don't see the problem with nerfing beaming how ever I still think the nerf should be about 30 mobs max, no mage I know can out run 30 mobs long enough to take advantage of it. 30 level even 80 mobs would eat 99 percent of them in 1 bite. even 20 mobs would be enough to get rid of us mages that don't beam to stop fussing about it, let the wizzys have the same amount too. you cant tell me 20 or 30 would lag a zone, and with out that lag to keep the mobs stuck in 1 place anyone trying to beam like that would be eaten.... even that I might could accept, though barely, the aa is my biggest issue still. yes it can help a new player catch up, but why not put the time into making the lower levels more groupable and more rewarding to acctuly play. its not all about the end game for most of us old timers, I truly enjoy switching to a lower level alt and grinding sometimes. most of my high end friends and I acctuly keep lower level toons just to group together on on days we want to relax. we enjoy it and we enjoy things like grinding out a low level toon to max aa per level, example I have a 78 or 79 zerker (hate you destroyed decap before he could use it) he has max aa for his level, that took me forever to do, and again wasted time. he will get no benifet from this at all, as I maxed him from 52 on every single level I would not level until aa was maxed. so the few months ive spent on him are wasted time, again most of us older players like the grind, and also we don't enjoy the feeling of days or weeks or months or years wasted on a toon to suddenly see it given to someone that has not earned it. we feel like the time we have spent in eq working so hard is just been for absolutely nothing. can you explain to me how my zerker is going to benifet from these changes? with all the effort and time I put into him to get him aa's per level? now you will just give them to next zerker that's made with no effort into them at all.
  16. Angry Tacos New Member

    so glad that head shot procs that much wish decap proced like that then zerker could pull 30+ mobs which is ridiculous lv1 100 zerker raid geared at most with riposte and only reckless and furious rampage at the most 10 mobs the reckless fades if 5 or more are up merc is in trouble and zerker could possibly die I mean zerker and rouge cant just run away cycle target auto fire on rouge and zerker have to be up in its face and we are the problem psssh how about real data on each class period effect this sever instability instead of data that show your failure to properly maintain your servers please real data on each class before u mass kill our class
  17. Pirouette Augur

    Here is a list of suggestions for rewarding the players who earned AA's the hard way. You could choose any 1 to grant as a reward or make an optional reward granting a set of these. None of these suggestions will work as a 1-shoe-fits-all, there should be options: A Novelty Set (Illusion, Pet Illusion, Mercenary, Mount) and a Functionality Set (Familiar, Adventure Potions, Veteran AA + 1 Year)

    Illusion: OLD WORLD Spectre; OLD WORLD Sarnak; OLD WORLD Gnoll
    Metamorph Pet Illusion: OLD WORLD Basilisk; OLD WORLD Spectre
    Mercenary: OLD WORLD White Kobold; OLD WORLD Splitpaw
    Mount: The first mounts were introduced in Luclin, so probably a creature *from* Luclin. Sonic Wolves would probably be the most adaptable, but Scarlet Cheetahs, (Luclin-era) Tigers would be interesting too.
    All novelty items given as a reward would come with a separate Figurine counterpart placeable in our homes and guild halls. Pleases the housing crowd without alienating a large portion of players who don't use housing at all.
    /Claimable: Making them account wide x999 would do a long way of making these more appealing, without making them more tantalizing. I know you could just put Heirloom tag, but when I get an illusion/mount I really like it's nice to have it on a brand-new level 1 alt without moving the item back and forth in shared bank. Since it's a bundle of optional choices just make it a click-able back Choose-a-Reward just like Sebilisian Ornamentation Crate. But only allows 1 claim per character.
    Adventure Potion: I know you might not want to give XP potions out on top of the AA grants, so there are a couple things you can do if this is problematic. A) The option can be "Gift of Legacies Lost" x999, for accounts (like my old one from 2002 that went inactive for 8 years) that don't have this in /claim. Characters that have already claimed one cannot claim another. You already offer this to brand new accounts anyway. B) Adventure Potion x 5 Package is not as good as Gift of Legacies Lost, but it can be claimed by characters who have already gotten their Gift.
    Emerald Jungle Familiar: This is an item a lot of people have been upset over not getting on their accounts. In my case I claimed all of mine on an old server I don't play on any more, but even if I did the familiars aren't Heirloom so I couldn't server x-fer to get it even if I wanted.
    Old Beta Rewards: I am an old time beta tester and I would not at all be offended to have these given out instead, if my other suggestions are too much time to implement. Stuff like the Beholder illusion and the Siren mercenary are highly desirable items that are borderline nonexistent to be seen in game. Even for the Beta Testers ourselves, this reward option would still be desirable since most of the old Rewards could only be claimed on 1 character...
    Veteran AA + 1 Year: Self explanatory. This would satisfy people who want functionality, not novelty, without further stressing the entry curve for new players. Plus it already exists in the game.

    For a lot of people, this is an incredibly tiny reward. The novelty of them will be using models that are almost never seen any more, which both makes them more worthwhile to old players than some generic CoTF monster and less tantalizing for new players. The Spectre, Basilisk, and Kobold have old counterparts that have been totally phased out making them the most unique. I'm not expecting every model to be listed to be granted or optional: they are just suggestions.

    For those who are saying we should get nothing: Why? We don't need to get anything astronomical. Most of you saying that have been AA capped for a while, you've gotten years of use on your AAs. There are some people who literally just spent their last 3 months AA farming and aug farming, two very things that will be and just got granted (augs on HA merchants). It's a real slap in the face for players who just returned recently that older players haven't felt the fresh sting of. It's like making payments on a car you can't drive until you're done paying it off...and then on your last payment they deliver brand new cars to everyone's doorstep for free. All I'm asking for is a friggin' air freshener in mine!
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  18. Tour Augur

    The Ward of the Divine line: 80 procs added.
    The Shining Rampart line of spells has changed in function. 40 procs heal/stun component . No damage cap, but will fade after its bearer takes 2000 hits.

    Admittedly, to get any real useful data you would need a vast sample size and hour upon hours of data that is just not practical for us, but this is what we could get quickly.

    Lvl 100 raid geared warrior, lvl 100 raid geared cleric
    We went to Ethermere Tainted West Karana and tanked an unslowed blue con, solo, orafik alerter for 4 minutes and 44 seconds (intentionally drawn out to get a better sample size). During that time, the mob attempted to hit the tank in some form 462 times and hit them 228 times. I don't have any data for how often the heal / stun proced.

    One mob seems to be fine, but as I mentioned previously I'm not worried about these changes adversely effecting single mob encounters. I'm concerned about it affecting multi-mob, non-swarm, everyday kind of encounters.

    Same setup, this time with 7 mobs. Not a swarm by any means. We didn't round up any mobs, we just intentionally made a bad pull. 3,644 attempted hits on the tank, of which 1,676 landed. I don't have any data for how often the heal / stun proced. The fight lasted 8 minutes and 48 seconds, nearly the length of SB. This one got a little more complicated because Guard Roth felt like he needed to lend a hand and stepped in (we'll be sure to kill him extra hard next raid), but we DA'ed him so he didn't do much.

    This is what a swarm looks like, 100 raid geared cleric with 50 overcon (they hit for 225 dmg on average) nibbling moles (who give horrible exp, so wouldn't be swarmed anyway). Took 6 minutes and 14 seconds, in which time the moles tried to hit the cleric 28,913 times and landed 6, 740 times (yeah, the moles aren't the greatest, but as others have pointed out, clerics can't swarm real mobs, this was all I could find). The heal / stun proced 1,885 times. The ward of indictment proced 1,876 times (ward and SB have same proc rate, so makes sense).

    So, for one single mob, yeah you're not going to get to close to the cap of either the heal proc or the hit limit. But again, not worried about that. That 7 mob pull comes close to the 2,000 hit limit. It didn't reach it in this case, but one can easily see that if the tank didn't dodge/block /etc as much that one could potentially surpass that 2,000 hit limit. And, as an aside, it's not SB keeping the tank up, it was the cleric healing.

    The swarm numbers, the ones you are trying to prevent, are much much greater. And was only a 50 mob swarm, the really "bad ones" can easily double that in size. Nearly 3.5 times your hit cap, > 45 times your SB proc cap, and > 23 times your ward proc cap.

    If you absolutely must have this spell nerfed, despite it not being as useful as one might think for swarming current, normal mobs (mob damage output needs to be very very low for SB to break even), I think some changes can be made to the caps that still make it prevent swarming but remove the chance of it failing in normal content.

    -Keep the spell mana cost the same as it is currently (nerfing a spell effectiveness and also increasing it's mana cost just doesn't seem right)
    -Increase the number of hits the damage mitigation can absorb before fading by ~50%, or remove entirely. That 10% dmg mitgation isn't what people are supposedly getting this buff for when they swarm, it is the heal.
    -Increase the number of healing / stun procs you can cast before fading by ~50% or more. A swarm will chew up hundreds to thousands of these, normal content won't. You can increase the cap and still discourage swarming without affecting normal gameplay.
    -Keep the proc rate for SB and the ward the same, and what it is at currently. Again, decreasing it nerfs regular usage of the spell, not just the swarming.
    SteveTheDreamer likes this.
  19. Augmentation New Member

    Its all about entitilement and that is the era we are in. Best they disband the AA system and incorporate it into the heroic characters that shall be "ready made" at 85 with all the abilities and skills that many worked diligently for years to build.

    Why log in and grind (part of the heritage) if it can be bought or given out like welfare now.
    Caell and Morningdew like this.
  20. Melanippe Augur

    Funny, but that isn't the experience the truly new players I know have had. But then, again, the new players that I know actually enjoy earning their way. Then again, the sort of player you have described wouldn't have made it in this game under any circumstances.

    The EverQuest of today already allows a truly new player a HUGE leg up in every aspect so it's not a matter of walking uphill through the snow etc.

    You know that old saying don't you? Winners never quit and quitters never win. SoE is simply trying to entice the quitters. Silly of course, since quitters will never pay the bills.
    Augmentation, Caell and Morningdew like this.