Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Also in the Plane of Shadow the named: Shakra Za. Same situation.

I do, or did when I didn't have every class 85+. Old school dungeons were my groove.

The difference between this and SWG is that they are not fundamentally changing the way the game works. It's still the same (despite all the feature creep) basic system that was around since 1999. That's not changing (at least not now). What changes is putting systems in place to allow players to catch up on the 15 years of content without playing for 15 years and never actually being able to catch up (yes, a hyperbole). The players they didn't listen to in SWG were an actual majority, not just a very vocal minority. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the two, but I'm willing to bet that in this case you have the latter.

Hehe From a communication standpoint months is too long - From a player poll standpoint years ago is ok though

I don't get how people either don't seem to understand this or care about. I usually box 3-4 characters, but i really wasn't feeling like boxing last night so i took a level 90 through 4 different zones and proactively tried to find a group and then did the same thing with a level 95 through 3 more with no luck. Yes, I know i could have gone through the effort of creating a group from LFG players, but the point is that the grouping game is in bad shape. While i know my experience last night isn't always the norm, I know this happens more often than not. I hope that this will change with all of the forthcoming changes to AA and eventual heroic characters.

It was not temporary, infact it was increased at one point.

If you wanted a more hardcore game where everything revolves around accomplishments you would not have picked EQ to begin with. You would have picked another SoE game like Wizardy Online, or play Demon Soul, or whatever.

Most people who play EQ have jobs now or kids or a partner or are in college / university.

Telling them they should gring out 10,000 AA on their own if they want to get back to playing with friends again is ridiculous.

I still say integrating the whole "free" bunch of AAs thing into Hero's Journey would be a reasonable alternative; we were specifically asked to provide such alternatives, right? I'm no coding expert or whatever, but at least from my perspective the context of my proposed alternative doesn't sound like it would be all THAT complicated to implement. But again, I'm no expert.

My original post about this was #995 on page 50 I think it was, Dunno if that's still exactly where it is, but it'd at least be nearby if not right there.

As a side note, Piestro I hope you're getting paid well for all this time and effort you're putting into keeping up with all this madness. If nothing else, you deserve like, a company-gifted basket of fine gourmet meats or something, lol.

The only people this really sucks for is the people who just recently got to 4k AA. The rest have been sitting on it for a very long time. I would perfer an updated exp curve with maybe a small grant of AAs as you lvl, but in the end Something needs to be done for people that want to get caught up.

Not sure how you get that 1 person be it a ranger/rogue/beserker pulling several mobs at ones to kill solo is the same as a group pulling several mobs at once. The extra they pull every 26 min or whatever when they can use a disc is like a bad pull for a group + a couple mobs. Either way a large number of the 3 classes soloing with their abilities or a large number of groups should then be causing the exact same problem.

my question is why are they nerfing ranger again when we kill we don't lag the zone we shoot kill the mobs and wait on repops and a lot of the time I am helping someone get items for lower lvl toons so why don't you guys leave it alone we are hunting in zone 4 expansion behind some of us ranger liked help out lower lvl toons and making new friends so in my opinion EVERNERF is going to kill this game and people will move to game that are fun to play because unhappy player don't spend real money on games that are no fun to play I have stayed out of loyalty to eq but these changes are going to far

But we still go on a 2+ year old poll as justification for the players wanting this and ignore any call for a new poll which would stop speculation from both sides and settle the issue once and for all. And ignore simple requests for a system login MOTD to draw peoples attention to the issue and get their opinion ?

In that case it was coincidence in that one graph. We have plenty of graphs showing it occurring at all sorts of times.

Look, the main thrust of Jazya's post is to force rangers into melee distance of the mob being headshot, but the real result would be to make headshot waaaaaay more powerful than SOE currenly plans.

Here is how this works. Rangers only get double damage on an archery attack if the target is not moving and is not rooted. Except for a handful of raid bosses that means in order for a ranger to get double damage on an archery attack, the mob must be tanked, either by the ranger or someone else.

Rangers cannot use a bow on a mob they are tanking because of the minimum distance requirements. So when a ranger tanks they will only be able to get archery attacks with their two archery spells. This actually works out to fewer qualifying attacks than either a rogue or berserker are capable of. Which essentially means that the chance to proc on each attack would have to be greater than either a rogue's chance to proc on each attack or a berserker's chance to proc on each attack in order to reach the 2 procs per minute target.

Now, put that ranger in a raid or group during a burn where they are using their bow and instead of getting 2 procs per minute they are averaging 10 to 16 procs per minute, while the berserkers and rogues are still getting only two procs per minute.

No one has to grind out 10,000 AA. That is a ridiculous statement. By 5,000 AA most every class is almost done with any practically useful AA. By 7,000 you're picking up junk until you're done. The mountain isn't nearly as high as people try to make it out to be. On top of the fact you've got dailys that up until 4k+ AA reward 20+ AA x2 and the OBF daily will reward another solid 6-15. Since when is EQ requiring time to accomplish things new?

Why weren't the forums blowing up like this with the mention of auto granting leader AA's? People put a lot of time, and exp into getting those points maxxed, me included on different toons, yet there's no whining about that... why not? I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's because the people sniveling about other getting something for free probably need group, and raid leader AA's..am I right, or what?

Elidroth is looking at the aggro related issues. Other devs have replied about the beams, so I'll defer to them. Shining is hard, agreed. We're gonna tweak it some more; the solution you suggest has different stacking issues that would be exploitable. Thanks for the post!

If it comes to the point that there are so many groups in the game that 50+ mobs are being pulled to the groups at any given time, on the same zone box, then you don't have to worry about it being a problem because EQ will have server splits for the first time in a very long time.

This is not entirely accurate for all players, just veterans or people who have veteran friends who tell them how and what to spend their AA on. New players won't necessarily know which AA lines are worth a damn and which aren't.

Do you have to be a new account (or silver switching to gold) to be granted the AAs up to four expansions behind the current expansion; or does this apply to current gold accounts as well?
The reason for the "granting" is the massive amount of AAs.
If I am correct, you only have the AA ability at 51? So new players still have to level from one to 51? Then the first "set" of AAs is available. When the player levels to 52, then the next set of AAs will be available, or whatever the level cap is needed for that line of AAs? Is this close to correct? thanks in advance.