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

Yes, rangers can still headshot effectively without rooting the mobs. Or could

right now my guild is struggling to find clerics. Are you saying now we arent even allowed to level new ones to help with progression? If we cant beam or swarm up classes to fill needed roles we should have to wait a month for them to level naturally?

Pretty much summed up here.

Whatever changes are brought to bare, keep in mind - we have more players than ever that are PL'd and have little in the way of class knowledge. It seems to be at an epidemic level. Changes that encourage players to actually learn their classes would be hugely welcomed.

how is this going to effect your plans for heroic characters?
this has to cut into the plans for them or is that partly hope to be a boon to make it so see pay $15 a month get the aas once you get the level or pay $5 and $15 a month and be the level out of the box

Fair enough. I should have said "Let's make headshot require melee range." Ranged attacks give much more freedom than melee requirements.

Piestro either answer people who have posted legit concerns or please stop pretending to care, it's an insult that reeks of condescension. And I for one think yalls cash grabbing tactics have gotten more pathetic over the last 4 months.

No Free AA's Unless older members are gonna received Refunded AA's or bonus's for having them

As for auto aa.... reduce timer of expansion flag raid mobs.
grant the entire expansion aa (not the last 4) if and when one the flag arcs is complete!

kill expansion end game boss, or end zone key quest/task arcs and /ach <reward expansion aa >


make them work for it at least somewhat - give people / guilds /groups more of a reason to do old content content

or could just get people to type /exit to be end game raid geared and aa'ed ?

Cant you stop swarming by making assassinate, decap and lifetap procs not work on ripost only? whats the need to reduce their proc rate?

I am in total agreement with those players that do not want free AA granted. Firstly the ability to "personalize" my char with the AA "she" chooses to acquire is pretty much taken away. A recognized healer class can choose to go in a different direction with aa and do more the CS-CA and like lines to give them some ability to stand up to mobs solo, or take a few hit in battle without the group healer going down. Many of the available AA I don't even want. They serve me no purpose for the way I play my char. "I" want to choose that for all my char I play. Then we get to the issue of longevity and those of us who have put in hours and hours and even years ( I have played since 1999) developing and grinding AA. All for nothing if you give free AA. If you want a level 100 char with 5k AA............ go earn em. I have seen this game nerfed and nerfed and nerfed.......... this proposal is the worst one yet. Newer players have access to zones they didn't have to spend time getting flagged for, armor that has ridiculous stats, summoners that bring their dead bodies TO THEM, stones to get them any where, or close to, that they want to go, and much, much more. Don't slap the long time players in the face by now giving players free AA.......... if so i'm outta here.

My life is not affected in one little bit by anything anyone has. In rw scenarios or otherwise. Has nothing to do with pride either. Energy in = energy out, plain and simple. I have no problem with certain lump sums of aa's being granted for rewards of mini epic quests available at certain intervals. Say 52, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90 and 100. Maybe testing them on class specific tasks, all solable. Then they are 100% capable of picking the aa's they want and don't want. Not just a "here ya go lump sum" and "have fun, hope you know what your doing"
I just don't think this is that well thought out...

Don't worry, soon you can spend 30 bucks or whatever for a level 85 "heroic" character and by fiat it will have like 7k aa, then just need to PL the rest of the levels!

(no, I don't think thats the devs plan, just thought it was a funny response =P)

Mages get a spell that causes lag and other in game issues, most complaints are with mage beaming so your going to nerf everyone, just change the spell damage and range on the spell. Rogues assisnate rarely goes off now its going to go off even less and this is fair how? Rangers get nerfed every update I feel bad for them. I say fix the beam spell and leave the rest alone 99% of the complaints in game are with beaming 90% of the lag in zones is from beaming so you decide to nerf all classes ? how does this make sense nerf the mage spell and see what happens from there I bet lag lessens a lot, leave the other classes be and see what happens when mages can not beam, that's the issues not rogues or zerkers or sk's or rangers none of these classes have people complaining about them all day like people do about beaming.

In my opinion, EQ has always been and continues to remain the very best mmo on the market. I love this game. What keeps me coming back year after year is the challenge, the vast variety of zones, quests, dungeons, and raids to explore, and the impressive list of aa's that can enhance one's character. I agree wholeheartedly that mage beaming needs to be nerfed. This is a necessary fix, it should never have been allowed to become what it is today. As for the other classes that are also being nerfed, I'm not sure they are as much of a problem/exploit as the mage beaming is, but I have never played any of those classes to the level where they could mass kill anyway so I really have a very uninformed opinion on that matter. I defer to the experts.
What I really want to talk about is the granting of free aa's. I think that is a very bad idea. A lot of the fun and enjoyment I get from everquest comes from playing characters at the lower levels. The higher content is much more dangerous, the exp comes a whole lot slower, and personal character strength vs the mobs is significantly diminished by that point. That is why I play alt after alt after alt, just enjoying the low levels of fast exp and increased strength vs opponents. Earning aa's in those lower levels is one thing that keeps the game interesting to me. If you grant all aa's from underfoot and before, there is no longer any reason to earn aa's at all in the lower levels. You might as well turn aa exp off completely and just grind out levels. This will have devastating consequences to the level of fun and interest in playing lower level chars. Essentially, this will force people to get into the higher levels of the game, where the game gets much harder and their personal power vs enemies is significantly diminished in order for aa's to even become a factor. I realize that you are trying to make it easier for people who want to get to end game content faster to be able to do just that. But not everyone who plays this game necessarily wants to race to the upper levels. I have heard many people suggest making the granted aa's optional rather than forced. I think this sounds like a reasonable and easily implemented fix. I do not want to be forced to grind levels straight up into the harder content just so I can begin earning aa's. Please consider this drastic and fundamentally game changing decision very carefully. I love playing eq, and if this turns out ruining the lower levels of the game, I'm not sure it will be able to hold my interest any longer. It would be a shame, because I really do enjoy playing, just not necessarily playing at the top levels.

Yeah. To be truthful not quite sure why a rogue can't throw a dagger or a zerker a axe to get the same effect. Or why a ranger can't shot an arrow at pointblank range and kill get a headshot off (arrow spells not withstanding).

I can understand your frustration Jakle and we knew that this would tick some people off. Decisions were made years ago and it allowed players to use some abilities in ways we did not intend originally. To be honest, we had some missteps over the years and there were opportunities to make changes even before most of us were on the team. Unfortunately it has progressed into larger problems that has become discouraging us as well as your fellow players. Our ability to make future changes to the game has also become adversely affected in some ways and we had to make some difficult decisions that we know will improve the game.

We needed to make a change to these abilities and you may question why specific ones. So please know that in most cases it was due to game balance across all the classes.

We understand why this would not be popular. We believe this is the best step forward on correcting some past missteps.

Can we get an option to toggle chat channels off from autojoining? its lagging me now

Been playing since March 2001. We have 3 accounts and over 20 characters between L90 and L100 with AAs ranging from 1k to over 10k per character. There is absolutely no reason to auto grant 4k AA to anyone. If you want to let people buy some for a new low AA character, let them spend sony cash on it, up to a certain limit.

As for headshot, it was already nerfed. It does not adversely affect server performance and does not really kill mobs that quickly as it is (since it only works on one mob at a time) and they are light blue level or lower. Limiting the proc rate to two per minute would render the ability useless. If that is what you are trying to do, just remove it and refund the AA.

These changes really don't make much sense and I wonder what could drive you guys to even consider some of them as professional game developers. Nerf the beam/swarm thing if you must, but for all that is still good about this game, please leave the other stuff alone. It's fine.

because if the entire point of this change is to help people who have trouble getting AAs get the AAs they need to be able to play their class effectively, increasing the rate at which you get AAs won't help anyone who can't get AAs in the first place.

let's say... let's just say for the sake of argument that you're trying to play a warrior, or a cleric, or an enchanter. let's say for the sake of argument that you're a new player, or a returning player, and don't have the plat or the social connections to get pleveled.
if you require X number AAs to be able to even play your class well enough to solo or molo the daily quests to grind xp and AAs (and you do require them, by the way) and you don't yet have the AA count or gear needed to be able to do it... how do you then get it?

adding a 10,000,000,000% xp modifier to someone who is getting 0 XP because they don't have the AAs needed to get more xp is like saying "well if you have millions of unemployed, why not give tax cuts to anyone making over 100,000 dollars a year? that will fix the problem for everyone".

No SK that knows anything about the class gives a single about swarming.