My experience was very different, I was getting 1/2 an AA per kill at 115 without lessons, and 27 AAs for finishing. That's with over 37K AAs already, so no bonus there.
I did get the 20 something AAs upon completion, but all 3 of my characters were only getting an AA after several kills. I want to say it was closer to 1 AA per 10 kills. Two of my guys have 35k-ish AA, and the other one has 27K-ish AA. All 3 are 115, and I wasn't running any lesson/xp potion. Full group of real characters...no mercs. I do have xp split on all three, 90 AA/10 regular, but that shouldn't make the AA rate so much lower than what you were getting. And we did have to literally clear the entire freaking zone to get the drops...got the last one on the last mob that was available to be killed.
The Formal Dinner Party task is set up to scale coin / xp / point rewards. And the higher level NPCs should give more experience.
The only task that scales but didn't stop scaling at what the maximum PC level was at the time the content released was A Formal Dinner Party. These tasks reference dynamic zones that scale to PC level: A Fateful Arrival A Formal Dinner Party A Helping Hand A Posthumous Proposition A Ranger's Tale Anashti Sul, Damsel of Decay Anashti Sul, Enslaver of Souls Anashti Sul, Lady of Life Artifacts of Great Importance Bane of Decay Brendaleen's Scheme Castle Relic Chetari Tunnel Adventure Cleansing the Ground Clearing a Path Dead Dragons Deadline Death Peace Decay Decreased Defenders of the Faith Defending Knowledge Delving into Frostcrypt Disrupting the Ritual Excavating an Answer Fate Rewards the Bold Fippy's Further Revenge Force the Forceful Goblins and Fools Grannus of the Cleansing Steam Grummus! Hate Hath No Fury In Defense of Health Infiltration of Kor-Sha Into the Hills Into the Temple Ironing out the Legion Kedge Counterblow Korucust's Royal Pain Late Checkout Legendary Giants Life After Death Liquid Courage Lost but Not Forgotten Lxanvom Labors Mysteries of Kor-Sha On Behest of the Emperor Others' Things Pirates of Timorous Deep Plane of Fear: Revisited Plane of Hate: Revisited Protected Passage Remember the Dead Royal Access Scouting Ahead Seductive Subterfuge Seeking Refuge Shake the Citadel Sprucing Up Shakey Storm of Sorts The Bokon High Council The Darkness Howls The Descending Tower The Handmaiden The Head of the Snake The Hills Are Alive The King's Court The Other Brother The Sealed Gate The Toll Road To the Brave, Go the Spoils! Undead Underground Under the Robe War Games We Make Our Own Rewards What Happens In Neriak...
Scaling generally makes it hard for groups that are spread over several levels. Example: one is 115, the rest in the group is 110 or lower, they are still getting a instance for level 115, where they will have to make do with limited cc or a squishier tank, compared to what the instance was tuned for.
I boxed this mission last year, level 110 to get enough coin to buy the Firiona Vie Mount, so a lot. On average with the RNG being what it is for drops, it would take approximately 1 hour, that was with crowd controlling big pulls etc. I did it this year, without CC, no deaths, 5 more levels, far increased raid gear, AA, etc, it took an additional 30 min, so 1.5 hours to complete, boxed. I'm a main paladin, most mobs are slayable and I did about 50% of the dps on the paladin. The experience is not scaled as well as you think it is and the moving of the goal posts isn't appreciated. #stopscaling Missions should never become more difficult with additional AAs, gear, levels. If the goal is to make them continue to give experience and marginal difficulty to when it was released, then we've missed that mark. The experience is too low and the mission takes longer than with lesser gear and levels, AA...
I tried this twice this year, with lvl 111 toons (WAR, WIZ, RNG box with 2 healers and a melee DPS merc). With no crowd control, there were some rooms that were really hard for me (library and ballroom, in particular), as I couldn't get less than 5+ mobs on pulls. I died a few times, so it took me 3 hours to complete. It might be a little easier at 112 now that my ranger can harmony indoors up to lvl 115, I'm not sure. Side note: on the commemorative coins, with quests giving, what, up to 10 coins per? How is anyone building up enough for the bags or mounts while doing anything but anniversary quests all day, every day?
Last year I would do them as soon as I logged on, basically an hour time sink, then go do the quicker missions that you can solo for 5 coin etc and when done, in 6 hours return and do it again. But yes, basically all I did for anniversary last year, was this mission on repeat, when the 6 hour timer was up.
I think scaling based on some kind of average for the group would be better that simply the highest lvl character. Perhaps only do the average based on those within 10 levels of the top character in order to make it so that one person 20+ levels below isn't making it too easy? That would be a big change from how it currently works, so I wouldn't expect the devs to jump on it. It certainly would have little to no effect on people that are already very close to the same level, but would be a benefit to people trying to catch up to their higher level friends. Alternatively, there could be a 'mentoring' system like in EQ2 That was something I always liked about that game. I think the limitation on that had to do with scaling character gear, though. Something about the way gear stats worked there made that easier in that game than in EQ.
There's one anniversary quest that gives out more coin than several of the longer, harder missions combined. Can be done in about half an hour (quicker if you have a porter in the group). The only thing is the prep work...you have to do a lot...especially for multiple attempts...espeically if you're doing it for multiple toons. I did it 2 years in a row for 2 of my characters for both of the bags. It was mind-numbingly boring, and I'm pretty sure I went insane at one point running it over and over...but it was really the only way to get enough coins. Doing a bunch of long quests for only 5 coins each, considering the cost of the items, is poor design.
If your talking Jimothy Junior then you don't need a porter. The librarian ports both ways and use anniversary stein to get back to Jimmy/POK instead of him on the last one you do. The final in Surefall Glade is easily gotten to thru Magus, or Ring of Jaggedpine port or just run it from Qyenos. Yes lots of combines for the cookies, drink and flowers - which is a pain But its 20 coins at the end and the little Jimothy familiar cuts food consumption by 50%
Jimmy (Magically Delicious) is 20 coins per run (15ish mins). Fippy (Fippy's Further Revenge) is 10 coins per run (10 mins). Then Neriak (What Happens in Neriak) is 5 coins (under 5 mins), Bjerg (Defending Knowledge) is 5 coins in 10ish mins, Ankra (Dead Dragons) is 5 coins in 10ish mins, PoWar (Wargames) is 5 coins in 10ish mins. Just a few I run through to farm coins during anniversary. Jimmy and Fippy for under 30 mins 2x a day is bread and butter, rest I'll do if I have time (weekends). Conq
If they scaled on an average the high level toon in the group would likely steamroll things unless the min max level of group member range was pretty tight.
There were two new player-designed missions added for the 21st Anniversary. The NPCs in Fancy Feast were lower level to open up the content to more players and I Guess This Is Growing Up is largely traveling and talking.
It sounds like we should review the Commemorative Coin rewards on tasks relative to their difficulty and the time it takes to complete them. Not sure if we could get changes in for the April update.
Off topic: I think they should do an anniversary quest, where you shrouded into a commoner-npc in a selection of zones, and had to clean up the mess after all the adventuring types that always overrun the place. Examples: Guard of kaladim: chase away drunk adventures from the mushroom fields. Traveling salesman: kill ten lions in karana, and deliver the meat to halas. Librarian in pok: travel to the library in house of thule, and capture/subdue 15 aggressive books, and return them to pok. Mob in an ldon: figure out which traps those pesky adventures disarmed and "rearm" them, pick up the bones of all the skeleton remains, and place them back in their proper crypts/coffins. etc... you guys can probably come up with something more entertaining. Us adventures never notice what it takes to keep norrath running...
Scaling to PC level is bad and was always. I am still not done with TBM and the end missions suck so much because of the difficulty (honestly I gave it up last year). Simply completing an expansion after some level upgrades was a nice way for casuals to keep up some steps behind. Since TBM this is not the case anymore. Because of the scaling, the Challenger Achievement with the real nice stuff which would still has benefits is completely out of reach and nobody plays these things anymore except for boosting alts. Think about all players who are not top-notch! A 5 year old expansion where heroics are part of the progression/achievements should be solo/moloable at level 115, ransack fun for a 115 group or at least there should be a possibility to choose a hard or soft way and appropriate xp and gear. The drops are meanwhile nearly non-relevant compared with todays gear and it makes sense that they at least should be on some use for alts or casuals who are not so eager to have the latest stuff but want to simply complete old content out of fun too. Or the idea of a scaling system for gear AND mission (connected) would be one. If the mission scales so does the gear which drops. Then at least it would be an incentive for people playing the old stuff.
It's a graphic skin. It takes 170 runs of a formal dinner party to get the new mount. I got great drops one time and it took 45 minutes putting out 600k DPS, no splitting and just down right plowing, after the scaling fix. Over 1 hour is more normal. It takes 100 runs to get the old mounts. I don't know at what point this amount of grinding was deemed fun, but it is not. If you need something for the uber elite players who are doing these missions 150 times in a year (2-3 months), add some power sources or something to the vendor. This is an anniversary reward. Not some hardcore uber prestigious loot like the zek earring. Lower the cost and increase the number of mounts. A black horse with purple. A white horse with purple. etc. Sure, we can do do more than one 10 coin mission in a day, but lets be honest, the level of repetition is feasible, not fun. Sure, this years mount should be a bit more expensive and then reduced to a baseline cost the following year, so the current year has more prestige. But when it takes 100 1-hour missions to get the old mounts, that is lame. The mission doesn't even drop loot or plat. 3-box with 3 mercs at 3k per hour puts the cost per mount between 300-600k with no earnings to offset it and XP lower than new zone and no XP on our evolvers. I love the graphic of the new horse. I wont have it, which is a shame because I love it (wish it she came in white though). Not because I'm lazy. Because I don't have 170 hours to invest into an anniversary celebration. "Celebration"