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

Next thing ya know they'll be blaming the swarm kiters for the chat instability. I blame the night crew whom seem responsible for working on it. How about the day crew work on it so raids can go on with little issue.

But back to reality....Just make the amount of mobs you can agro the same amount of mobs that you can have on your extended target.

So are the aa's that you are tossing out for free going to be reimbursed to the players that have worked for them? If so, then make glyphs stackable and lower the reuse time. Or how about everyone that is gold and already has them be reimbursed in SC and given free access to Hero's Forge.

What? Nice abilities to escape combat? You mean we can push escape once every 2 minutes and 30 seconds? We have the same fade timer as almost all the other classes, that's nothing special. Rangers get the same thing, the only slight advantage is we can stand in melee combat range with undead mobs and other see invis mobs(so long as they don't see SoS) and use it successfully, so long as we haven't dotted something.

We're forced to trigger assassinate off backstabs, when I'm out assassinating things the vast majority of the time it's ripostes I get assassinates from. They're talking about doing away with that. My ranger buddies are headshotting now for what I can assassinate for since they fixed the bugged crit issue. In fact we got capped below where we used to be able to assassinate for. And no, it doesn't 1 shot much of anything practical unless we're using one of our damage multiplying abilities.

Assassinate is the red headed step child of the kill abilities, gimping it further is ridiculous. If the ability is so hated by the devs then flat out remove it.

What do the people get who have stayed and paid the last 14 years? Why dont I get any special benefits for actually staying with EQ for all these years?

Pardon me while I take this dagger out of my back.

These seem to be some pretty drastic changes. However, will the people who've already bought these AA you are giving out for free be refunded? I know this method would be useless for the people who are maxed out already. Why not just raise the AA limit bonus past 4k? Anyone below that amount already get AA faster than normal people above that mark do. You will hurt this game by doing this. My reasoning for me saying that is simple. You are handing out for free, what "normal actual playing" people have gained on their own. This i feel is a slap in the face to the people who have earned their AA from grinding endless hours. This will now make the Plvl'ed people even more useless. Now they have a 100 toon who can't cast, and have AA that are useless to them.

That isn't quite true. As you earn AA slowly you get to learn those skills slowly, when you get 20 new skills at once you don't learn them as well. I still think there has to be an element of choice involved, I don't care about free AA, it doesn't hurt me, I don't feel diminished, but allow people a choice too.

Okay, here's a suggestion regarding the AA auto-grant madness. It's not quite an opt-out (a suggestion I don't really like), but it's very similar:
Segregate.
Designate some servers as the get-giant-piles-of-AAs-without-earning-them servers. Designate other servers the leave-things-the-hell-ALONE servers.
The more I think about this, the more I love it. Of course, both types of server will end up with the full gamut of player (its inevitable). Yet, I think, the first type of server will end up heavy with lazy players and unskilled players who just want to have as much as they can get with minimal effort. And on a humorous side-note, I predict that the /general chat will be like watching Jerry Springer.
The second type of server will attract good players, serious players, skilled players; players who take pride in their characters. Ah, it sounds like a dream. I hear sweet music just thinking about it.
Give us all a one-time-only free character transfer so we can vote with our feet, and we're off and running.
Better yet, just don't change the way AAs work at ALL. But if you really feel like you have to... consider the above.

This. One thousand times over: This.

Nerf swarming (aka powerleveling) + Free AAs for Gold = Powerleveling by Sony for $14.99

It can not be any more transparent than that, folks.

Personally, I can understand both sides of this argument. I returned to the game in August of last year. In that time, I have managed only to reach level 92 with about 4500 aa on my main. I've worked hard for that, but I had to molo nearly all of it due to lack of a player base. Had I not been a returning player, I'd of left to find something else. I love the aa grind, BUT so many folks speak as though it will be completely gone. We still have a lot of work to be done for max return in a character. Making things easier on newbies isn't a bad thing. TBH, I see very little difference in just auto granting and the current system that lets anyone with decent solo ability farm 2-300 aa per day.Besides, many new folks just pay for a pl to get their aa.



I've seen many complain that they will lose what they have earned... well, good for you. You did it the hard way, you should be proud. BUT, you most likely did it as the game changed and not facing hundreds of hours played time before you can play with friends. The game has changed a lot since I was last here.And not always for the better.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I have a full time job and a family. I simply CANNOT dedicate the insane amount of time needed to grind so many aa to make my toons useful.. EQ no longer has the player base to support grinding everything the old fashioned way. My only real concern about this is peeps are going to have trouble learning what all of those aa do. It seems that 5000+ aa may be a tad *dripping with sarcasm* overwhelming to learn all at once.

its nice to see its more important to take things away and make spells/skills and AA's useless other than fixing things that need to be fixed.

No comments about class ability/spell changes. I agree it is necessary and I hope it will be done the way it does not break or nerf any non-swarming situations.

However I dislike AA changes a lot. Can you do it on a few select servers? Maybe open a new server and allow free transfers to it? From what I see in this thread, one server with rules like this should be more than enough, I doubt many veterans would want to play on a server like this. We already had a server with similar rules some time ago (Mayong) and it was not too popular from what I remember.

In my opinion you could never make Headshot, Decapitate, and Assassinate in to a useful AA (in up to date current content) that is fair to other classes. I guess Wizards have that super nuke chance AA and Monks have "crane stance", both of which I see as unfair high damage abilities.

I kind of see your response as an excuse to nerf.....if you want to make them viable in current content then leave the current AAs alone and make a NEW AA that pertains to the abilities in today's content not nerf then improve in a different way

I have played for over 13 years, and don't post anything because it falls on deaf ears, but this time I have to state my displeasure in these decisions.

As far as I see, it is taking 15 years to try to fix a few things, but it seems more that the direction it's taking is to make Everquest more unpleasant to play so it can be shut down for Everquest Next. The refusal to fix issues by nerfing the characters is the lazy mans way out. Giving out AA's and flagging for the cry babies is for the birds. Many of us have gone thru all the expansions, raids, etc... and worked for what we got. We are not GM's here where we can get all the AA's we want and gear at a whim. It's obvious that none of you really play the game anymore, and BETA doesn't count. I play a warrior now because you nerfed the heck out of druids, now your nerfing everything else just to satisfy the complainers that show up to your so called Fan Fair. How much more can you screw up Everquest? It was more of an adult game, now it's more of a kiddy game.

To put it all in a nut shell, your decisions sucks. Stop making things more screwed up and stick to some original decisions. Changing things your able to do for like 5 years goes over as well as farting in a church during prayer.

If you're going to ruin what's fun about new EQ, can you just make a classic server that contains vanilla, Kunark and Velious?

Thanks.

I couldn't agree more with this comment

Upset customers do not pay for unpopular games. Just sayin'

As a returning player I welcome this change. Defiant removed one obstacle to returning, and now not having to grind 4k AAs mostly by myself will actually give me a chance to get to content people are doing.

Wayyyy back when, I remember hitting level 40 right when the requirement to stare at the spell book to med was removed. At first I felt cheated, and then I realized I would never, ever have to stare at the spell book on an alt again.

I think making EQ more accessible will really help this game.

This ^

After having heard of this through the EQ rumor mill, then looking to see if it was in fact true, my group of players have something to say:
WHY are the melee's single most powerful abilities for each heavy melee class being nerfed??Let's start with the rogue here, the rogue DOES NOT use their ability to mass pull for xping or power leveling ( in my experience) it is more of a last resort to avoid an imminent death, the same could be said of some of the other things. Instead of nerfing it, adjust the timer. Make it only doable once an hour , if its really that big of a problem.Ranger headshot.... well thats a 2 pronged sword. I have not power leveled my ranger and power leveled aa's to reach max points in head shot to go mass pull mobs. BUT i do know of many rangers that have, and they do. What is the point in that if your combat fury isn't maxed, your crits aren't maxed, archery isn't maxed etc??? SK.... seriously? Your going to take out their one, one shot deal???I play an sk to only have lifetap and harm touch like" abilities" is a real kick in the pants, sure they are good tanks, take that away and they will not be as good.
On autogranting aa's ..... NO! There is actually a smarter way to do it. STOP MAKING IT SO FLIPPIN TIME CONSUMING! The tradeskill ones should be auto granted when your tradeskill - yes an actual player used SKILL- reaches a certain level.My shaman at 51 with her 200 points in alchemy should get some points for being skilled. I worked to get her skill, i worked to get her trophy. That would be like when a player reaches, say 150 in say, baking, that an AA point or whatever gets granted as a reward, and again at 150, 175, 200 , 250, 300 so that by the time you've maxed your tradeskill out you have all of the recovery/ skill aa's rewarded to you, not something after all that skill, you have to go buy it too. AND as a reward the silver memeber get it too. YES i said that.Also this block grant of aa's would make too many cookie cutter charachters- just like guild wars- i would not be a special ranger in any way. I would be a female clone of all other rangers out there.So not to talk down about that game, i liked it, i played it, but thats a reason we are back to EQ. Not to be told we have to be a certain way, there will be no other way, and in group we must use skills 1, 2,3,4, 5, 6,7 in lockstep or else. Yes and o yay i went and got a cool new set of armor so i could at least look different thatn the other rangers.
NOT a fan of mass granting AA's to gold only players. That leaves silver/free literally out in the cold they are already outclassed by an aa cap, that would just double whammy and make it pointless for any of them to take a toon above 50. I guarantee people would not be happy about their Veteran Silver accounts, and wait? how is that fair to returning previous GOLD members??Welcome back to EQ, give me your credit card. ( my household has already experienced that joy, lets not spread it around).
Several people in posts have suggested , and i agree 100% auto grant full use of the potion belt, packrat,and all the stuff most of us never have the spare 10 aa's for anyway. currently in a need scenario it hasn't been on many needs lists, but its nice to have.
Anyway, it would be nice to see beams stopped, power leveling corralled. However its EQ, it won't stop, those who play that way will find another way.

ez fix too much more so than messing w riposte

The problem for SK swarming is Mortal Coil. When levels get increased to 105 with mob power going exponintailly higher, without mortal coil a sk could not kill a swarm of light blue mobs even with epic + visage + deflection + leechcurse, we dont have enough time. This is where mortal coil comes into effect, it allows us to keep the life leech going. Please remove Mortal coil as it does not proc often on raids, or even in group. At 100 we have kaesora that is possible with raid gear with just epic. After that swarming is gone if you remove MC next time the level cap goes into place. To remove it quicker please implement a 999 trigger on epic. That will never effect us during normal game play, but will make swarming impossible.

I see the change as a great thing because the SK class has been told for years NO to many upgrades because of our epic and swarming. I hope this will make Eli go back and look at the things we have asked for and maybe reconsider them.

As for tanking, speeding up our lifetaps both in cooldown and in cast time would go a long way to help.

Yeah except now you are a less desirable tank as your survivability for group tanking has been nerfed by the sledgehammer reaction to a screwdriver fix. Put charges on lich sting and mortal coil similiar to what is already in place for scourge skin!