Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Sorry stoped reading at page 26 not sure if this was brought up or not as a suggestion.

has some one suggested only defaulting passive AA's except those AA 's that peeps asked not to be defauted.?

my reasone is that Active AA's need a learning curve and when bought they get bought for a reason over other AA's and put on the UI and used. Adding to the learning curve of the Char New actived AA's.

giving out mulit active AA's might confuse the new player to forget to add some of these nessary actived AA to play their char.

Nice only 35 bucks? I need a Shm and Rog I would pay that to get a lvl 85 toon with 4k or 5k aa's easy I can't wait for Heroic toons

umm... that in a way, goes opposite of your long stance to these.
If I may, common knowledge you loath these abilities and stating they would never be improved.
Now you are stating this was teams decision and gives YOU the ability to upgrade them in the future.... But why upgrade them when YOU personally loath them and have stated that will never happen?
Seems odd to me is all, least the wording.

What are your plans for compensation then? There has to be some form of compensation for the time and money invested in the game to get us to the level of AAs we are currently at...

At least tell us that it is being discussed....

It's obviously being discussed. Did you read the first post of this thread?

Really? then I can't count. Seems like a majority to me.
It's ridiculous to say giving away 4k AAs doesn't affect others. It does.
If someone wants to join a guild with, say, 5k AAs we assume they earned them, ie spent x amount of hours playing their toon.
As others have said, if you've been PL'd by a commercial PL-er we hear about it. Ditto other 'exploits'. But this will see 5k AA being the 'norm'. So guilds have to raise the bar - let's call it 10k to get into an endgame raiding guild. Does that help the returning player?

And you can apply the same rationale to the group game. I'm already wary of non-guild LFG-ers. This pretty much means that unless I've seen them around for a long time there is no way they're getting in any of our groups. So, again, counterproductive.

Elitist? Absolutely. If I want to play football, I don't play for an hour a week for a couple of months then whinge and whine that no-one's accepting me into the elite game. If I've played football for 50 hours a week for 5 years, do I want to play with people just starting out? Who don't have the same level of dedication? On occasion, maybe - sure I'll help out and meet new folks. But not day to day, no.
If I want to be an elite footballer I have to put in the hours. There's no substitute for that. Play the game with others; spend some time at the gym on my own; clear my schedule to make time for what's important to me.

EQ is a game, just like football. Just like football there are people who do it pretty much full time and people who have a mess about with some pals at the weekend and a whole host of folk in between.

The Devs seem to be trying to make us the same (hence lack of endgame challenge perhaps?)

And, no, I'm not an endgame player. It's something I aspire to and may or may not ever achieve - just as I may or may not become a top sportsman. Should the tops sports teams be accepting newbies because they see some 'huge experience curve' they can never match? No. And nor should EQ

So here is the model now. Those players still have to level up to 85 and if and only if they pay 15-18 bucks they then have all those AA handed to them. SOE gets there money but in reality nothing changes for the player. They now have to decided whether they want to grind out another 15 levels that take as much time or longer then previous 85 and they get to now grind out 4-6K more AA for their levels without any bonus. They then also must farm an entire set of slot 3 and regular augs as well as various class specific must have clickes be it epics, old robes or other class items. They then get to the realization that the game is much less forgiving at high end and that they must know all the ins and outs of their class or they fail over and over. So they then take to the boards to make it so mobs spawn as fast, die as easy and dont take as much effort as they did from 1-85. People are severely kidding themselves if they believe the people who thought EQ was just to much of a mountain to climb suddenly are like woah this is now the game for me. At best EQ gets some money from these supposed new players that have just been waiting for freebies to catch them up to then jump right back into the grind again. Or just bleeds another few dollars out the severely addicted as they now can have a viable alt of any class in a week for $20. This is paying to win. And this short sighted change will long run cost them money because more people will rage quit, more will finally be bored as most of the real fun grind is gone and quit or others simply will just say ill wait a year and get it for free verse paying and working for a year to get it instead then will ever come from new people or alt accounts.

This game has always been about the journey and chasing the never ending end game. The devs and most of the player base has lost sight of this. By forcing everyone into current content via gear resets, by dumbing down raids, by removing factioning or flagging, by removing locked content. Sure I see tons of returning and a few new faces on the block but I also have seen 8 entire guilds of 6+ years all fold from lost long term members because they refuse to keep paying to watch EQ turned into Farmville for a short sighted dollar. This will generate and help the bottom line or total gold subs in the short term. But you are trading long term faithful to the end EQ addicts for the oh heres a dollar today because I might like this for a week but then are gone forever flash in the pan types. Will see in a year or two how it all works out.

Where can one read such feedback? This seems really hard to believe as most of the people I know quit because they got bored with the content and had nothing left to do, which is exactly the opposite of having more AAs to earn.

I believe with the changes they intend and NPC hitpoints today that these will be increased so that there no longer quick kill sets but more like slight increase in damage based on the RNG (if that makes any sense to you, sorry worded it poorly i think)

Is it not strange that some of the same people who are vehemently opposed to other people being given free stuff are themselves demanding free stuff in compensation?

Elidroth, Can you answer this question, please?

If I save, for example, 100 (or more) AA before the patch that grants the AA, will I be granted the full amount of AA and then be able to spend those 100 that I saved how I want to or will those 100 AA be deducted from the total amount granted?

So the team decided melee shouldn't have a viable solo option to advance their characters? With the current hostility of the game towards melee in general it was at least a small bone we had to keep up.

It seems to me to have been very clear that autogranting/Heroic toons are not open to discussion.
Only the details of the roll out are acceptable input.

The reason given is to get the silver to go gold thus increasing revenue.

Why do we have silver at all ? They are not paying to support the game and what would be a better way to get people to go gold then to eliminate silver all together.

A great deal of the boxing issues that reduce grouping is fueled by the free silver accounts.

Autogranting is nothing more than a short term incentive to increase revenue and one that will fail to produce long term results in particular for new players. However it is obviously going to reduce revenue you are already receiving from veteran players who will quit over this.

So you get your level 85 heroic toon with 4000 AA ...now what ?
$$$
Oh and who is equipping these toons ? are they born with raid gear ?

If not you will have to buy a krono to sell for plat to buy decent gear because a naked toon gathers no gear. Or perhaps they will just stand in the guild lobby and beg for gear ?
$$$
The new AA structure is such that you will level instead or grind any AA because as soon as the next expansion comes out you will be awarded all the AA from the next expansion up.

Incoming backlash from the new players efforts getting washed away.

So instead you level to 100 with your 4000 AA up to underfoot ?

Ok so you bite the bullet knowing many of the AA you are working on will be given out for free because you need certain skills to be viable.

Oh wait getting those AA past 4000 is more difficult and it is still tough to find a group and PLing is now in the hands of the station cash store in the form of exp pots.
$$$
Yes I see the increase in your revenue but how is this making the game better for new players or increasing the health and longevity of the game ?

Please feel free to shoot this all full of holes but Im just not seeing it.

Eliminate the freeloaders and reward the paying players I say.

Thank you for your attention

Why?
What if SoE decides to abandon the PC game market next month?
Think they 'owe' you something for your invested time and money for all the AAs you earned over the years?

Piestro asked for suggestions for rewards, as I see it there will be varying amounts of players who have done things the hard way to a certain degree. I'd suggest multi rewards or can pick only one if you have unlocked it by completing AA in that expansion.

For completing the following AAs in the expansion you unlock the reward associated with it, I've tried to pick things associated with that expansion, apologies if LoN or the marketplace has already do it, a few I have seen asked for elsewhere. I'm pretty sure these are the only expansions with AAs.

Shadows of Luclin - A composed Cheetah Mount - from Scarlet Desert
Plane of Power - Nettle wrath pet illusion
Gates of Discord - Kyv illusion
Omens of War - Urkin Mount
Depths of Darkhollow - Corathys pet/familiar illusion
The Serpent's Spine - Shadow Priest of Zek merc skin
Secrets of Faydwer - Big Bynn pet illusion
Seeds of Destruction - Lord Brekt Illusion
Underfoot - Badger illusion

If you don't like those suggestion, throw them in the pot for ideas for the loyalty merchant and maybe give us a title

"the AA Lord"
"the AA Lady"
"the one who has them all"
"got to get them all"

I can swallow the change to Shining Bastion as an anti-swarming measure, although it puts a real crimp in my personal game. What concerns me is the effect on the raid game. I reviewed my log of a January 21 Grelleth raid. The proposed limit of 40 stun/heal procs was hit in 3 min 59 seconds by one tank being hit only by Her Majesty. That's less than half the time of the current version of the spell with max buff extension. Mine lasts 10 min and some seconds, which I believe is max. Another thing to consider is that many raid events have waves of adds that are likely to attack the main tank while he is tanking the main target, so raid tanks actually need the procs you want to eliminate.

My concern with how you implement these changes is how the clerics will know when the stun/heal portion wears off. I believe I saw somewhere that the plan was for one portion to be shown in the song window. Clerics cannot see the tank's song window.

I think I'm going to quit everquest. So many days learning how to swarm and I fill I just waste my time learning how to swarm and now SoE taking away this part of my shadow knight I enjoy soo much. I also hate to see how a magician's pet can tank better than a Shadow Knight. I have been looking the answer why is that the Magician's pet can tank better than my Shadow Knight that is full Callen of the Forsaken geared and has all the alternate abilities. Piestro can you answer my why is that magician's pet and necro 's pet tank better that a Shadow Knight that is supposed to be a tank? Is this game is turning to pets ? To make things worst , now Shadow Knight tanking abilities are further nerfed. Is this game heading to a game Everpetquest?

A lot of people feel there should be some way of knowing that aa has been earned prior to the change, something that makes them stand out from people who opted to claim 4k aa, Blink. I think that is what the poster meant.