Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Thank you Minoc. I also want to earn them myself. Even now that I have had the AA Curve explained. And it is the passive AA's that I did not consider. Thanks again for taking the time to answer.

if you are level 91 and cant kill a level 70 mob its not the aa's bud , its you .

I personally reckon this is something to do with the coding for these "Heroic" characters they have been talking about i.e. although they are dressing it up as doing us a favour it is more to do with it being required for some reason to implement HCs.

I sincerely hope they don't go ahead with this. The swarming nerfs - no problem with that. Autogranted AAs - I have been happily sat at level 85 for the last 2 months with my chars getting my little AA-based power increases so basically I've wasted all of that time and what I enjoy doing will now become completely pointless

If AA is auto granted and old AA is not refunded to spend AFTER the auto grant..... your idea is even worse than it all ready is


/ooc WTS 4k AA PL pst

I just came back a few days ago and now I'm glad I saw this post before resubbing my three accounts.

er no not the ones you sell at level 85 - which is the whole point behind this AA auto grant

buy a toon , pay for gold, boom 4kaa.

why not just delete all lv 1-85 content? that will also push sales of your 85's and gold for a month...

How about you give more aa's for completing tasks in the Hero's Journey line? This way a player can learn how their character is played while EARNING aa's.

As per the ranger HS, I like the advancement of HS into the higher levels, but I still think the proc should be based on the target level, thus making HS proc more at lower levels (greys and greens) and less at higher level, (Dark blue, white, yellow) etc..

It should be easy to pick off small things and harder to take equal level opponents, same as any other skill.

okay so i just Wonder what you Guys have chanced sk can still swarm bawaha they gonna have set number of procs so waaa you just hit epic and leechcurse and your back to were ya started

serker can still swarm uhh and wait yes we can swarm with out decap
ohh mabye shut leave Things like they were and upgrades servers since they lag when 35 45 peope
xping in hotzones

ranger can do what they have always done cept now they get to do it on blue con mobs yes we nerf proc rate but you get to do it on mobs WHO are xp instead of a ton of lightblues

ohh and a quick fix for all this the other day i tryd to round up a bunch of mobs in old HOH for a low lvl toon but mobs would not follow they just reset when get to far away from there spawn point
mabye do that instead of making a nerf that leaves peopel more powerfull then they were before

This is another issue. BOXED Groups. If your going to "give" away Heroic characters, then SONY should put some serious thought into BANNING boxes. That way the NEW players MIGHT have a chanch to group with other players as well as existing players. If this game was intended to be a "GROUP" play setting, then MAKE it a group play. remove the ability to BOX multiple characters. I realize that wont stop people from boxing via multiple computers/isp accounts However it will reduce those that do to just a few. Another Suggestion, allow players to "buy" a npc bazzar trader, or buyer. That way they can have those running, but not count as an active player. It would count as a character slot for that account though. You already have a shared bank, all you would need to do is expand it, and link the buyer/trader windows into that account. Limit that to gold members, as you already need to have a gold acount to do this anyway. Just my two cents here.

Here is my response to the origional announcement.

I still have concerns about the blanket method of trying to remove swarming from the game. Rogues are not rangers, and neither of them are berserkers. In my first post I explain my reasoning for these following statements.

This fix does not adress how dangerous tanking a high con dark blue mob can be for us.

It *further* increases the unreliability of actually assassinating a mob that we can tank before we've melee'd it to death... slowly.

It does not adress the possibility that assassination may not even be neccessary for us to really really swarm.

This *might* make us more desirable in some groups, although irrelivant in current content ones. And this presumes that there will be groups out there to find.

I still feel that the devs implimenting this need to be willing to listen to the people who are trying to tell them what the root problems of their concerns are. Remove counterattack. Remove mortal coil for SK's; leave everything else as is. I'm unsure of wether they've recieved similar feedback from other classes; but turning assassinate into something latterally (at best) usefull, that might catch the eye of other dps classes in group settings may really start giving us a much better rap than we deserve for all other DPS capabilities...

Hmmm, i'm a long time player and I wanted all the mass killing abilities nerfed. It's not fun, it's stupid and boring and ruins the game...unless you're trying to make plat or PL alts. But then again I've only been playing since 2002 and not the full 15 years. Mass killing helped kill the group game...more than boxed toons did.

If they want to introduce a pay for lvl 85 toon w/ 4k aa's for money...let them. It's an option. They need to make money somehow and I wouldn't care about this in the slightest.

Granting gold (or silver to gold back to silver again) accounts a ton of AA's for free....dumbest idea in such a long time that I'm speechless. Well, I'm not speechless, they just keep removing my posts due to the words I choose.

I don't care for the auto-granting of mass amounts of AA. I personally enjoy gaining AA points and feeling my characters get stronger as I get more AAs, it is just something that has always made the game fun for my friends and I. Instead of a mass grant of AAs, what about reducing the costs of ranks of previous expansion AA and extending the exp curve? Seeing that ranks cost 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 AA points per rank is a daunting thing for me. Reduce the rank costs by ~50% and extend the exp curve a little. Seems like a good option to me.

EQ3? I will never trust sony again , i will not invest my time and money for them to do the same thing to a different game a couple years down the line.

My own parses give similar numbers. A 2,000 hit counter on Lich Sting would be more than sufficient to ensure that it won't drop early against a reasonable number of mobs, and the same line of thinking applied to Mortal Coil would do well to keep things in line with the Mage's beam-nerf of 12 mobs. More than that, it will start to drop fast. Any numbers that would be needed for power-leveling or causing any sort of server instability would tank it immediately and kill anyone trying to do so. In fact, it would probably be wise to adjust all hit-counter abilities (like NTTB, for the Warriors) to this 12-mob-standard. We can use our extended target to know when we're about to be in trouble if it fills up.

If these abilities are getting upped to usable on level 99 mobs, then I agree and disagree with this post. The idea of the post is good, make it fair. But instead of making assassinate and headshot usable on all mob types, make decapitate usable on humanoid only. If decap stays usable on any mob type, people will run 4 berserker, 1 tank, 1 cleric groups in HA's and farm Marks of Valor in easy mode, among plenty of other examples of ways they will abuse that. If you make the others usable on all types, the same thing happens on a greater scale. The best fix would be to make Decap humanoid only.

Also, changing the Decap AA so that it has 22 ranks like HS/Assassinate is a good idea if they are going to be equal abilities end game. (Not that they are in any way equal with assassinate having to proc off of backstab.)

Hi all,

This is my 1st response here. I'm really curious as to why Sony Developer's display a graph that show all the huge amount of problems that are going on due to the supposed Swarming Issue. The graph shows 90% of all the Spikes occurring between the hours of 00:00 and 07:30 and 10% between 9 to 10 a.m. Most of us in the USA are probably asleep between those hours.
This leads me to infer that this probably is being caused in European or Hawaii time zones. If I remember right we have seen a huge number of outages on the AB server. AS an SK I have never swarmed more than 10 to 15 mobs at time and have in fact seen monks bring down huge numbers of mobs thru their procs, but see no penalties being placed on their breed.

It would behoove Sony to show a few more graphs that show different times that are affected.

As far as AA's Soe should let the individual toons choose what the AA's should go into. Like they do on test and beta were you request AA's from person and are rewarded with them, but you have the ability to assign which you chose to use.

Even with all these changes I still love this game for the fun and challenges and the goals it lets me achieve. Even as in RL this is what we all try to achieve. Wooooooooot to EQ

Talar

Piestro:

I realize there will be a lot of tuning in the future to get the proposed extensions for Assassination / Decapitation / Headshot working happily and balanced reasonably in current content... Many people have suggested that the aggro generated by these procs needs attention, and I agree. Furthermore, it's been brought up that the danger of pulling summoning mobs with a proc can get the player killed, etc. I think much of this can be addressed by adding a reasonable maximum hp % check before allowing these abilities to trigger. Whether you want to tune down the aggro, and make it 90%, or 80%, or leave the aggro, and make the limit more like 20-40%, is up to you.
If the ppm is firmly set at 2, I don't think it's unreasonable for a tank to taunt aggro back from 1 or maybe 2 chain dps in group.... but on a raid, that aggro could quickly become an unmanageable mess for everyone involved.
As far as people complaining about the damage values... They're clearly ignorant of things already happening, such as Arcane Fusion and Thunderfoot. These procs are nice spikes, and Thunderfoot in particular, has helped to fix what has long been less than appropriate DPS for the monk class. However, they do not trivialize raid content, or even most group content. The existing damage amounts are a good starting point, and I confidently leave future adjustments up to you -- and... well, the future.

As a matter of opinion, I'm in favor of leaving the SK epic 'as-is,' but if you are dead-set on imposing a trigger limit, I implore you to lean on the generous side - as AE aggro and tanking is a crucial part of the defining role Shadowknights have held for so many years. Limiting MC, I'm for. Replacing it with an AC boost + improved healing from self procs and spells, would also be fine (removing the melee-based leech component entirely).

On the subject of mage beams... frankly my disappointment lies in your treatment of Wizard beams - and disregard for allowing Magicians to carry on with the same unchecked abilities that were so quickly, and severely, addressed when Wizards were given Beam of Solteris all those years ago. I didn't ever object vocally before, because I understood the rationale behind the change. I'm not the type to call out that another class gets "taken down a peg," simply because mine did, etc. That serves no one.
However, now that you're finally acknowledging the problem - and rightly so - please remember your mistreatment of Wizards on the subject, and maybe reconsider. The recourse effects from Wizard beams are ridiculous, even with a 12-target limit imposed. There is no reason why one class with a very similar spell should take it in the face for casting it, while another has zero penalties for doing an identical process. For heaven's sake, Magicians' pets afford them a dramatically higher survivability in most circumstances, why make Wizards' spells Kamikaze and inferior to boot?
/rant off

Lastly, the Shining line. This one is quite tricky, since it's a real challenge to disable the exploitability of it, without undermining its intended utility. After thinking it over... considering all the ranges of hit counts that are needed when the spell is MOST relied upon for keeping a cleric's tank(s) alive... I feel there is no fair option at all, for retaining this buff.
Instead, I suggest that it be re-tooled as a debuff, somewhat along the lines of Clerics' existing "reverse-DS" spells (possibly even incorporated into them?). This way, you can leave a reasonably high recast time - possibly 30-60seconds, which limits its usefulness in potential swarming. The Cleric is then able to cast this debuff on a target, causing anyone they hit (their target only, if coding allows that limit, to avoid impact on intended AE Rampage hit damage) to be healed for x amount. As for the stun component, I think losing it would be acceptable to most of us. I know Paladins and Clerics enjoy the corresponding AA-proc heals from stuns, but I also know it was easily taken advantage of... and I'm acknowledging your newly adopted anti-mass-killing stance.

If you've taken the time to read my verbose thoughts, I thank you for your time. Thank you for all your responses to the community's many opinions, and your continued efforts to appease and communicate.

it simple you gold lv a toon 85 pl or any tink get 4k aa free yes i am good but i dont freeking no how to play my toon that freeking suck on my war i earn every single aa no free stuff i learn my class i dunno why you give those ability for years and now nerf and give free aa that sucks what the point to play the game way to easy now sad to say insted to have good player we gona have junk player that mean i will never group i prefere do my stuff alone some time freeking sad my 2 cooper you should give few month of free gold acount to gold member just go by the sub so you can do it like that

As a long time high end multi-subscription player, I am reserving my decision on whether I can still accept your vision of the game until the changes go live, and I will evaluate at that time.

Some suggestions:

Although I don't really personally have a problem with a modest autogrant, I believe you are proposing far too much, and I suspect you will see a lot of negative aspects in doing this, including clueless players and account cancellations. You must seem to think it will be worth it, but I seriously question whether it truly will be good for the long term health of the game, or revenue.

With regards to that, some AA lines people may not want include:
Spell casting subtlety as already mentioned
Second rank of Hate Step
Full ranks of Cannibilization
There likely are a lot more specific to classes I am not familiar with.

I have not seen it mentioned in these threads yet, but adding a counter to Shaman Lingering Sloth line of spells is completely unwarranted as it only procs a heal over time, which does not give multiplicative benefits. A modest heal over time does almost nothing when used in a swarming situation, and I don't even understand how this spell made it into the discussion. It will only make it an intense pain to keep recasting. It already only lasts a few minutess, having to recast it more often is simply adding an exercise in frustration.

If you have chosen 12 mobs as a reasonable number (based on beam hit limit, I personally feel this is too low), I suggest you use that when considering other classes. For example, make hit limits on proposed leech ability changes based on 12 unslowed mobs for duration of buff, etc.

Although some of the changes you have initially proposed are less drastic than their original form, the massive mostly negative outcry regarding these proposals should cause you pause from a business standpoint.