Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Prathun, Feb 5, 2014.

  1. Goat115 New Member

    I would be all for the aa's and just bringing the game up to you start here at level 85, nothing below it. If they would bring all of the old content up to level 85-100 with it, not really changed so much just make it playable with new 85+ drops give us a lot to do 85+ in all the old world we miss.
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  2. Quilix Elder

    Sad thing is that these are people who could have come back at any time - with having RL friends in game to help them (unless you are quite low level) - it would have taken them no time to catch up with help.
    Funno, Gyurika Godofwar and Goat115 like this.
  3. Zurd Lorekeeper

    I will simply say that over 15 years things like kids, spouses, and professional success make that a bit more complex for many people.

    One thing this thread doesn't do well is address the different demographics of the players who may leave vs the ones who might come back... Yes people can PL each other...yes they can run dailies till they puke...but getting and keeping people in EQ is mostly about perception, not what they could, or should, or would do...but what they see that actually will appeal to them.

    Shrug
    Gyurika Godofwar likes this.
  4. Tharrg Augur

    No time for you.. may be a ton of time for others.... What do you consider no time? If they are at level 60 and 100AA's and they need to be caught up to level 100 and 5000aa's how long would that take in your mind? Now consider What is their play style? Do they have time to play for more than 1 or 2 hours a day? What you consider No time at all.. may be due to your ease of schedule that allows for 5+ hours a day playing or daily playing.

    Now for many who post here I am seeing a trend...

    Just because a player can not log in for 2+hours a day every day.. does that somehow invalidate them as players? Does that make their struggle irrelevant because they are "Lazy" which is a term that many elitist gamers have been posting that if you cant do it like them somehow its because you are Lazy and want hand outs. This Elitist attitude is 1 thing that drives more players away than a simple AA autogrant or a nerf. Elitist taking over the way the game has been directed and refusing to allow others a voice is caused many people to come back and then leave again disheartened that the game they loved is dead. hence the death of the social aspect of the game in many ways compared to what it used to be like. I think this attitude that many players posting here are showing is a disdain for anyone who is not like them getting a chance to reach their levels and or abilities. This hatred for the autogrant or fixing the abilities that many have complained for years about seems to indicate that only a specific crowd is being vocal negatively.

    I say congratulations on a concept well thought out and done. I cant wait to enjoy the game more and with less stress than what I have had to go through... Keep up the good work!
    Zurd, dreama121, Shugz and 1 other person like this.
  5. Funno New Member

    I came back after a seven years absence a little over two months ago. Luckily my guild was still on Drinal with people I actually knew and played with back in the day. I went from lvl 70 with 230 AAs to 99 and 3K AAs in that time. I have also lvled up six other characters from 70 to 91 with between 1500 and 3K AA. All of that in a little over two months of play, WITHOUT buying PLing services.

    Letting people buy premade lvl 85 chars with gear and AAs is just plain idiotic. The argument that it is being done so people can catch up is EZMODE crazy. People can catch up quite easily, if they put forth a modicum of effort. The two 90 and 85 daily will grant almost 90 AAs per day below 4K AA. Factor in GE/NM/REPO, and the two Alaran quest and you could make another 75+ AA every six hours doing those. If you put your mind to it and were determined, you could do 300+ AA a day, and whalah 4K AAs in two weeks of work just from questing. Add more quests like a two 95 and two 100 dailies and it would be even quicker.

    The fundamental changes to the classes to stop "power leveling" while your going to sell lvl 85 HCs smacks of someone not liking competition.

    Word of advice, stop all of this now, the AA grant and the class nerfs, while you still have a sustainable player base.

    Funno HappyKatz
    Drinal
    Velric and Mozzarella like this.
  6. Tharrg Augur

    Again... How many hours a day did you play... and how long would it take for a person to complete all those dailies? Laziness is having the ability to do something and not doing it.... People who do NOT have the ability to play for hours on end are not Lazy..... If they can NOT play then they are not being lazy they are just stuck in a situation that limits what they can do.
  7. storms New Member

    I doubt EQ would be using A* for pathfinding.

    More likely they would be using a node map and Dijkstra's to solve it.
    Unfortunately old pathfinding methods like node maps scale really poorly and have been replaced by many better versions like node areas.

    Making the shift from one model to the other would solve a lot of pathing problems, however such a major modification is highly impractical even after 1 year of development, let alone about 16 years of code later. Just.... no, not going to happen. Far, far easier to nerf mages (and other swarmers).
  8. Angahran Augur

    Just because you call code 'legacy' does not mean it's carved in stone tablets. It can be changed, you simply have to be careful.
    (Ive worked on systems where 12 year old code was nothing, some parts were approaching 20+ years.)

    One way to do it is isolate a section of code, map out all inputs and outputs (and any shared data access), then recode it as a black box unit. Drop out the old section, drop in the new and test the heck out of it.
  9. Gragas Augur

    Daily task's take about as long as it took you to reply to this thread. Gratz on your post count exceeding your aa's?
    Funno likes this.
  10. Ryneis Elder

    Actually, I will not call it lazy but all three task can be completed in roughly an hour give or take 15 - 20 minutes. This is a median as some classes can get it done faster than others. This is also referring to a player and his merc which is not always this case. A lot of groups actually exist in the daily 85 and 90 zones.

    Have you done these task?

    Ryneis
  11. Quatr Augur

    Well, anything is possible given enough resources. The problem is that you don't always have "enough resources" :)
  12. Kurayami Augur


    Agreed, adding a summoner every 20th mob or so to the pile would put a stop to that in a hurry. Wouldn't stop SK swarming though...

    However, I don't know if I agree with the idea that SK swarming causes as many problems than say beam swarming for a few reasons:

    1.) To do this with any real efficiency, anyone who wants to get a lot of kills in a hurry will not pull more than about 100 mobs due to the fact the lag it causes it to take forever to get to you. A mage beam on the other hand wants as much lag as possible, it is essential to making the pull easier for them.
    2.) Once we have our pile of mobs, ideally we will find some nice corner, or at least a wall, to tank everything at. No re-pathing needed, and I personally just like to visage everything down then afk 10 mins rather than trying to sneak a MC proc in. So the mob count doesn't stay high long at all, compared to mages beaming, who may take 10-20 minutes to get a crowd down, depending on their skill/discs.
    3.) SK swarming doesn't really work so great past HoT nowadays, and I honestly don't even find it to be worth doing unless I really want mechanotablets or innovative gears or (TS item here). I rarely, rarely do it for an hour or two to help a friend out. Is no real incentive for us to chain do it. Mage beaming on the other hand, can sell those pulls to any level char 70 + for 20k or more a head per a pull. It works on high level mobs who don't summon of any kind.
    4.) Mortal Coil is not at all the amazingness that people seem to think it is. It isn't even enough to keep me healthy against 1 stupid mob in Alaris or higher content without me chain lifetapping as well. It is a nice little boost that helps give me a bit more time to lifetap, but it doesn't proc and the heavens open up and I can now tank everything in the game at once. No, it can't even keep me healed against 1 mob Alaris or higher. If mortal coil is enough to tank the mobs, you honestly don't even need it to tank them at that point. I have chain-lifetapped through swarms in FM/Zeka, no epic/MC/bp click, that Insidious Deflection can work rather well too, although can be a bit flakey to make cast.

    On a side-note, I would personally prefer Mortal Coil be an activated AA, give it a 10 or 15 min recast or something. It is far too flakey to be practical at high levels. Kill shotting on an SK does not happen often if your group has any form of real dps, and can just forget about it on raids. That would remove a lot of its chain-swarm capacity, and make it more useful for current content.

    Really I can live with the idea of never having to swarm again just fine, but I fear these incoming changes are going to make us less effective tanks at the high end. Whatever the counter numbers end up being, I do hope they try to make it effective for 20 mobs or less. This is reasonable, considering we might have to tank a bunch of Oashim for grelleth's things, the Xorbb missions overall have a chance for a high volume of mobs, WK. Remove the swarming fine, but don't make me worthless against current content. That would be a game-breaker for me.
  13. Nightmares Augur

    So, Necro, from lv 90 to 92 and 1.7kaa to almost 4kaa(3.9 and change) in about 3 weeks. No PL, just did Daily quests for 85, 90, and alternative (all 3 require about 45 min combined if you run from zone to zone) that nets about 90AA a day(at 91+), pre 3k amount, not including the Kill xp).Figure about 100aa a day in 1 hour, that's quest xp and kills combined( 2 weeks, every day, that's 1400 AA). Now I did have longer play times, as I do enjoy grinding on my necro (least that's my excuse because I was trying to get a Tablet for my Alaris Stone Tear). Now i said 2 weeks for the AA grind, because I did go from 90 to 92, there was time for regular leveling in there. Now figure a person with 2-3 hours every other day, you can still do this as the dailies can be carried over and you do previous days, then grab current days (ok, so you have to log in for about 5 min on a day off to get the quests). Even at 1-2 hours a day this can be done. Now imagine the extra time they will have here or there, doing other tasks and quests, getting those Massive XP reward achievements for RoF (maybe they have friends from the old days, maybe they made new friends, maybe there are players that love to group and willing to give some a shot. It still happens, I do it all the time).
    My point is, it is certainly doable. I CAN see your side, where new players and returning players are unaware of certain things, or need to get re-acquainted with the newer system and all the changes; or being a new player, need to get familiar with the system in general. Isn't that technically what the lower levels are for?( I WILL NOT get into heroic characters in this, it's unnecessary and at current not going to be implemented ( as they have stated) at this time) Do new and returning players have a rather large hurdle ahead of them? yes. Are there ways around it already built into the game? definitely.
    You also forget, that the hurdles, that "mountain" of AA's, also plays into the fact that some players have, or are willing to make, more time for the game, and that is something that has always been a part of ANY game out there. Sure the auto-grant be great for the casual player that has your 1-2 hours a day, maybe every other day or something like that. They could use the help to gain some of these. It would make things less daunting. That's a given.
    How about all those that have worked hard, spending astronomical amounts of time to earn everything? They too have rights. Most will not be benefiting from this, at least not on their main characters, which will more than likely be close to the auto-grant amount, or way over it. All the time they have spent will in essence be taken away, at least from a character aaxp sense. Do these players know more? of course. Did these players earn that? you better believe they earned that. Is that elitist, that years and hundreds or thousands of dollars spent have gotten them where they are? Is it Elitist that they are the ones that found and figured out the quests, tasks, progression, spells, items, effects, agro, etc.?
    The Answer is NO. It was all well earned. Now due to a change in how things work, some of that value: that not seeing the sun for days on end, for 7 day camps, for all the sub money through all the years, the headache making quests that we had to figure out HOW to ask certain lines for the proper npcs to respond, for figuring out which npcs they even were, for event and raid scripting, for grinding literally countless hours. That's what those AA mean to people.
    Funno, Velric and Leeanni like this.
  14. Dre. Altoholic

    I honestly don't even know why we need autogrant with super ezmode experience like this available in the game.

    Since I've always been beyond the AA bonus threshold, I'm actually looking forward to all the garbage AA's I never wanted getting filled in. Less crap I have to sort through when buying AA's.
    Leeroy Jenkins likes this.
  15. Coldmouth Elder



    You benefited from what you earned throughout ALL these years... remember? You were able to raid all this time, us "newbs" weren't. What seems to be the problem?

    What is it YOU want from us?

    How long - how many months or years should I be behind you in something that took you 15 years to acquire? Do tell... lmao
    Ardin, Zurd, dreama121 and 1 other person like this.
  16. Nightmares Augur

    That's the point lol!
  17. Janakin Augur

    Not sure if this was read among the thousands of other posts but is this something you would consider? I want to see this game around for a long time and making the AA grant tied to a member not only being gold but having the latest expansion should be more of an incentive for the player to continue their gold status. I am saying this as someone who has many silver accounts that I would only make them gold for a month to get the AA and then drop them back to silver. :cool:
    Zurd, TEMPNAME0189247 and Mozzarella like this.
  18. Coldmouth Elder

    Gee maybe they have empirical data that shows your argument is invalid and that people do not like exping in empty zones and seem to quit, just to return again and play catch up again and again despite how easy "90 AA a day!" you seem to make it sound.

    How can you possibly say that something you achieved in the past is useless now? I grinded 12+ hours a day for 3 months farming Grand Marshal in WoW.. you know what they did less than 1 month later? they made that gear buyable to everybody with honor points... who cares, games evolve, almost everything you did in the past means jack. These are pixels we're crying over. Saying you have "rights" blows my mind.
    Zurd, dreama121 and Gyurika Godofwar like this.
  19. Dre. Altoholic

    It's a valid argument. Both produce terrible players regardless of how many AA's they have.
  20. storms New Member

    Yes, it's possible to change the code with enough resources but... change a single number on mage beaming spells to 12 or... spend months on a new pathing algorithm. Practicality is almost never dictated purely by how well something works but rather how people use it.