Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

What is the standard advice given to players when they enter the game or return after an extended absence?

"Level up and then get your AA's." Following this advice is how a player gets to 91 and not have the AA's they should have.

That's the plan. See Heroic Character.

You are, I hope, aware that given very close to Warrior effective AC return from displayed plus a very nice assortment of extremely Warrior-like burst mitigation abilities (once called Warrior class defining and now called "let's share [Warrior stuff and definately not knight stuff too]") plus the best Epic in the game when Warriors got bukkis...

... one of the two out of the three classes that tank who have combat self-healing (and therefore an I Win button)...

SK's have been the #1 fast experience group tank for a couple of years (Warriors are a distant #3)
can tank all group content
has, it looks to me, the longest range seemingly unbreakable aggro of the three (an SK doesn't let a Warrior tank in raids unless he feels like it)
is at least on par and probably a better tank than Warriors vs. 90% of all raid named
and completely outside of the tank archetype secondary abilities (FD pulling being the best)

and SK's are going even beyond asking for taps on ripos (the biggest reason they outclass Warriors in most 1 on 1 mob battles)

and asking for compensation for their OP Epic MAYBE being broughtto earth and a discontinuation of /general Swarming PL group 50Kpp per pull send /tells.

Really? <- Just my person opinion mind you.

I am all for a more accelerated path to the main crowd of players, we have suggested that it be done in COUNTLESS better ways than what is being proposed, and there are other points that the OPT in/out causes problems with, but I grow tired of repeating myself, you can peruse the threads and you will see what I am talking about. And what returning player with 4k+ aa is going to want to group with the opt out player who really wants to watch his character develop? It is twice the slap in the face to those that are opposed, and they shouldve taken a more recent poll, or been honest about how much the grant was going to give OR compromised and met in the middle, the opt in/out is NOT a compromise as we have said numerous times. We get that you support it, but we do not and we will stand by and defend our opinions.

This is the only comment i've ever posted on a sony forum in 13 years. I registered just to say bravo, excellent decisions.

They're taking 3 classes that already have no effective means of advancing themselves without a group and making our ability to kill level 88 mobs worse than it already is. It's our way to make decent AA when there are no groups. So how about you level the playing field?

How many humanoids are there that even fit this mold? Giants usually don't count, so we might be able to assassinate dwarves and fey in Kael/EW. We might be able to assassinate the amygaldans in EW. Are pigs in grelleth even flagged as humanoid? We already cannot assassinate undead, so chapterhouse is out. We cannot assassinate shissar, chelsith is out. It won't work in breeding grounds. I suppose it will work on the alarans in SL, so maybe a handful there.

It basically boils down to the fact you're gi mping the 1 ability that we have to not depend on someone else for character advancement, and giving it an "upgrade" that will work in maybe 2 zones. Really? Why does it need nerfing in the first place?

Leave it alone. If you want to make a new version that will be relevant to current content, then make an advanced assassinate/decap/headshot, set the level cap to 99, lower the proc rate, and make it not work on ripostes.

All this talk about working so hard for AA's. I haven't been a player day one; but I have been a player
(3 accounts) for 11 years. I have seen an awful lot of power leveling. I used one account character to help level another many times. Power Leveling has been there since day one. If you went and paid someone; too bad, and hard cheese. It was your choice. My level 90 Rogue has 2256 AA's. Didn't pay anything but game time for them. There are essential and non essential AA's. I only went for Offense and Defense. I don't see that I'm getting that much. For example, I don't need 8 different "Cunning Disguise <class>" AA"s, or a an "Advanced Trap Negotiation" AA. I could go on with these, but I won't.
I see maybe 500 that I think are useful. I say Thank You Sony.

It makes perfect sense, this is still a feedback thread and every time someone who disagrees with your opinions leaves any feedback, they are attacked and called ragequitters/whiners which is wrong.

Hm, who are the ones who are saying, 'Don't do this or I will quit', 'People are given handouts', 'I am so much better because i spent the last 10 years playing.' That's not feedback.

I will admit right now that I've only gone through about 15-ish pages of posts, so if someone already mentioned these options/ideas, great minds think alike

I feel like giving away so many AAs that make each class What it is, will increase the number of players who have no idea whatsoever how to play their class, but have money. As a service/product provider, that seems great for SOE, right? But, SOE doesn't play your character for you. I think when you increase the ease of getting a high-end character without any effort, two things happen. One, it completely annoys the people who do know what they're doing, when the players who are clueless join up with them, try to raid with them, etc. Making the knowledgeable players get fed up with the increase of the clueless hindering their game play.

Two, those players who get the easy way to a high-end character will quickly hit the "ceiling." They got a cool character so quickly and during the process it was fun, sure. However, once that's all done, they'll realize all the sudden they don't know what's going on and the players that do know how to play properly are prejudiced against them because they are already sick of dealing with the "easy-street" players all the time. Meaning, all the sudden the game is hard for different reasons. What do players who are use to "easy" mode do when all the sudden it's not easy anymore? They look for the cheat codes. They paid some money to get Gold and get some easy AAs and whatnot, why not pay a little more money for a program that knows how to play all those special abilities they got and don't understand. That way they can win again without figuring it all out themselves.

Anyway, I have several alternate ideas for AAs, since the SOE team seems so dead set on giving something away. Each idea can stand separate or it can be combined with one of the others.

AAs
1. The only AAs granted should be passive General and passive Archetype. Stuff that bulks up your character's innate defenses and stats.

2. Let the players choose where to spend their AAs, award bonus AAs for each level obtained. For example, 10AAs for every level starting at level 50, with maybe a bonus 10AAs for each level in multiple of 5 (55, 60, 65, etc.) Increase the AAs awarded to 15 or 20 at level 80. This gives players a chance to decide where the AAs go, making them read the informative text (thus understanding their character a bit better) on those special abilities that you guys at SOE spent time on.

3. The game is called EverQuest. Add some simple quests OR use some current quest lines OR kill quantity achievements from each expansion and Add a one time reward of 30-50 AAs to them. If you use current quest lines from old and current expansions, it will make players (new and veteran alike) go and experience zones and quests that are still great. This way, players who don't want easy AAs can simply decline to claim these rewards and now empty zones of expansions past get the play time deserved. (I mean, SOE Team, doesn't it stink that most of the time, the only way to get players to experience a previous expansion is to toss in a "Hot" zone?)

Personally, I like option 3 the best. It gets players to experience the whole of the EQ world, rather than just 10 to 20 zones. It keeps in the theme of Questing for EverQuest and it makes for some fun. I know I would have A LOT of fun rolling up a new character, maybe go to Underfoot or Serpent's Spine and re-visit quest lines I barely remember and experience them anew.

These are just my thoughts. Thanks for listening.

Carnitor C. Carnisaur

You arent reading anything constructive from us then, and there are several posts, you are choosing to focus on the negative, and there will always be some negative when people are upset. We have listed numerous other ways this can be fixed, not trying to argue with you Dreama

What do you consider a reasponable hit limit if I may ask?

Side note...

Any SK pissing and moaning "we are losing our swarm ability" really needs to step back and look at the big picture here. SKs have missed out on the possibility of new AA stuff for fear it would impact our swarm capability. Stop and think about what this could open up for SKs now that swarming is gone - from both the group and raid utility side. Theres a LOT more SKs are capable of besides swarming and PLing other players...

My suggestion is to offer some sort of reward to those who have AAd up the hard way not as a "I am so much better" reward but to give an alternative to those who would take the free AAs. They could either do it the hard way and get such and such achiev/ reward or they could just auto accept the AA rewards and not get the achiev/ reward for doing it the hard way. That isnt an "elitist" view because if some people opt to do it the hard way (not that getting AA is in any way hard) then they spend more time in game playing or grouping hence Sony makes more money.

That being said, some kind of reward for doing it the hard way would have to be pretty cool to make people think twice about not doing the free 4k AA.

I also like someone's idea about tying the AA's to the oncoming explore achievs or even better to the Hero's Journey achievs. Those were fun.

My suggestion is to offer some sort of reward to those who have AAd up the hard way not as a "I am so much better" reward but to give an alternative to those who would take the free AAs. They could either do it the hard way and get such and such achiev/ reward or they could just auto accept the AA rewards and not get the achiev/ reward for doing it the hard way. That isnt an "elitist" view because if some people opt to do it the hard way (not that getting AA is in any way hard) then they spend more time in game playing or grouping hence Sony makes more money.

That being said, some kind of reward for doing it the hard way would have to be pretty cool to make people think twice about not doing the free 4k AA.

I also like someone's idea about tying the AA's to the oncoming explore achievs or even better to the Hero's Journey achievs. Those were fun.

I vote that we have a higher exp curve for lower AA amounts instead of auto granting. Make players work for the AA instead of handing it over. You may see it as the same end result but at least there is some sense of accomplishment. When you auto grant and sell players pre-built 85s you are demolishing 1-85 content. You want to help players track to the higher levels but you doing it destructively.

I agree. There is no reason for the bonus to be extended past 4k now, everyone will have a sizeable chunk of AAs (33 ranks of CS/CA for example). Instead of climbing a mountain from the base, its like they are being dropped off halfway up (its not even halfway for some classes...rangers max out at near 13k AAs). By not continuing the bonus past 4k, players will still have to invest time and effort to their toon if they want to be 100 and get all the rest of the "good" AAs they want. 4,000+ freebies is enough.

Just so you know, I am not arguing for or against the granting of AA's. I said my piece two/three years ago when we were told it was going to happen and they were just waiting for some code changes. I am just here enjoying the show.

I personally hate the idea of auto granting aa's.

Why don't you just sell potions of aa's in your store, so the majority of us can pass and enjoy slowly getting tougher, some of us crawl though the content getting aa's before stepping up to the next zone. If I want to skip content I can then pay to do so. For that matter sell level 90 potions too. I like the game sub 90 and want to play my alts in it. People will buy the potions and will buy level potions if you really think it is important to get them to the end game so fast.

People have been buying and selling toons since the game started, ya'll can make money on it now.

For the rest of us we can enjoy the game it was designed to be, with out swarming, earning our aa's and gear as we choose.

I mean really the way this sounds ya'll should just give us all level 100's with max aa's take out all of the leveling in the game make it all gear based. O wait, that would not be ever quest anymore.

Agree with above posts too, we play ever quest because it is harder then any other game out. Simply if we wanted easy we would leave.

I hope they go forward with the current plan on AAs. If there are serious verifiable issues then they can be addressed, but no attention should be paid to anyone who is complaining about how it will ruin the game because they did it the hard way.