Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

What do you have that died and is no longer able to be used?

Not sure I understand what your asking. If you are asking what I think should happen, then I think you deserve everything you've earned. Unfortunately I'm coming to the conclusion that is not going to happen for us. From what I understand now..

If you are gold status, you will receive all AA up to Underfoot and whatever you have purchased above that. Seems to me that about ~3k (ballpark) of the 8kAA you worked so hard to achieve, will be null. You will not be able to have those ~3kAA to place in the above Underfoot to better yourself.

Just seems like you as a vet deserve something for your patronage.

Seriously, that's all you got out of the whole post???

I am trying to understand your view point. You apparently believe something you have no longer works/died. If this is so, I want to know what it is. Maybe I am unaware.

Since that is a major difference in our thinking, I felt it was important to clear that up before proceeding.

Being able to have access to those AAs for some time now, is a great reward.

Limit exp gained on light blues, mod mages to limit of 12 mobs as discussed, bring Wiz beam on par with mages and be done with it.
Why not limit mass killing on light blues by lower the exp yield on trivial killing. Seems like your putting in a ton of changes in for no reason good reason.

People should be allowed to play they game they want based on rules that have been in place for a long time. Wide sweeping nerfs are just pissing everyone off, its play our way!!! period. Never has anything been discussed about improving server performance other ways. Most people are playing these classes with mass kill abilities because its fun, not much fun about playing a druid that can only kite one mob at time.... Yawn. Your balance plan to make everyone in to boring classes is a epic fail! You should be coming up with more ways to make all classes more exciting to play.

Dev stance on this is pigheaded in believing that your making the game better. Its a 15 year game with a player base that has come accustomed to many aspects of the game. None of the things your doing are going to make it better for all. Nerf classes, giving away AA's, giving away gear and selling characters. Not one of these ideas is going to make things better or make more people migrate to Everquest!. Spend time making content for those of us who pay every month to play, seems like the whole month has been about changing game vs. finishing the crappy expansion you have never finished. Cry after cry about making or upgrading epics, and fixing old quests that fall on deft ears and truly making the game better. Pick the low hanging fruit and service your existing customers better and retain them.

Sometimes in a relationship letting go of the little problems will help you to go the distance...But forcing change sounds more like a ultimatum. I personally will give you guys the chance to see these changes made and in place but I believe this will be the Coup De Gras of Everquest. I sincerely hope I am wrong!

The dogs will stop coming when the bell stops ringing.

Solfege FV Server

Thats the thing though I don't think I should get ALL my AAs, if I get them how do I progress my char?

You're a ranger if your sig is right, copy yourself to test with /testcopy and look for yourself as to what AA's you will get, trust me you will have more than 4K AA when you do, you should have over 7K total.

SOE want to help those who need help with AA without taking away a reason for playing.

They included HoT ones which should not be in Live.

No they don't this was done after they fixed the grant on 14th Feb.

I still have some HoT AAs to earn, namely innate & planar lines and a couple of AA lines I didn't think were beneficial.

Why would they punish ALL players by lowering the XP on light blues because some people were swarm kiting? That seems a bit unfair. Some of us actually use our skills the way they were meant to be used.

Let's not forget, swarm kiting was something players came up with on their own. The devs had no idea that the skills would be used in the way they were being used. The players found a way to use the skills that happened to effect the servers in an adverse way.

Anyone who thinks that the devs gave a way for a particular class to pull an entire zone, needs to give their head a shake. Come on. Seriously.

Who is to say that if the servers were not effected, the devs would have just shrugged it off? Actually, they likely wouldn't have let it go because it is pretty much giving the middle finger to anyone else in the zone who wants to actually use their skills the way they should be and get a little XP.

I remember a long time ago seeing on the old forums that when FD went in for monks, the devs had no idea it would be used for splitting mobs and pulling. They certainly didn't nerf it. They left it alone because it was in interesting way of using that skill, and it did no harm.

In this same message, the dev was saying he had an idea to "fix" that by making it so whenever a FD was done, there was a chance one of the mobs would kick the player to see if he was faking. If the kick was a success, the player would be discovered as faking it, and FD would not fool the mobs in the zone anymore until the player zoned and came back. Obviously, that change never went in.

Except with the television, there's a reasonable expectation of depreciation. I don't think there was or is such an expectation with AAs. I know buying a TV that it's going to devalue over time whereas with buying AAs, I expect them to stay the same price indefinitely (I bought an AA a year ago, my guess is it's the same cost now as it was then). Also, at least with the television you can sell it and get SOME of your money back. With the AA auto-grant, no such refund is available.

There is a huge difference in physical objects and virtual ones in how they're valued and devalue. Televisions and AAs are like apples and oranges and your comparison of the two seems iffy at best.

Actually, the TV analogy works pretty well in my case. I've always given away my old TV's when I've upgraded, while they were still new enough to be upgrades for the people getting them. I even helped move and hook them up for those who weren't good at such things.

AAs have been depreciating steadily over time. They have become a TON easier to get (as far as AAs per hour, or whatever time metric you want to use). Then there was the AAxp bonus added in. Then the AAxp bonus was increased.

Cost isn't merely the number of AAs it takes to purchase a rank of something. It is also a time investment.

Since CotF was released I have accrued about nine thousand AAs. That in merely a few months. None of it was under the AAxp cap. I state this merely to give an example of how the time investment needed to get AAs has depreciated. An auto-grant of low level AAs only continues this process.

Sunday we were doing the Other Brother HA, and had at one point at least 12 adds, so I guess we were being evil and deserved to be made PVP just for doing the stupid HA? I am pretty sure that mage at the top of HoT Library will be glad to make 12+ adds in a heartbeat too. Some missions just try to drown you, so don't call it swarming.

Not sure if killing light blue or trivial mobs is using skills so I will contest you on this one for sure.

I don't see regular groups out there mass killing light blues. I see level 100's out there doing the lifting to PL people. Killing the PL game is just dumb for SOE, people are buying kronos to trade for PL or Plat to pay for PL. you take away gosh like 40 hours of PL time with auto grant aa your taking away 5-8 Kronos sales per toon that buys in. Just short sided and bad for business. I know that sounds shallow buts its the truth. Indirectly SOE has been making $$ of character sales since kronos have game in the game its been even more. This happens on all servers everyday. People will still be buying PL post 85 but with all the nerfs in bound for mass killing its going to push that off the little guy and back to the elite PL people.

They are seeming to want to force higher end gaming and grouping with the idea of catching people up.

Honestly most of these nerfs are not going to stop swarm killing for the elite gamer at all. I play most of the classes effected by these nerfs and I will still be able to swarm kill, mass kill pretty well. Most of the higher level fatal blow kills will only help me kill higher level stuff faster. They are just going to widen the game gap again for the average player who decided to give one these super fun classes a go and loved it a reason to quit.


The dogs will stop coming when the bell stops ringing.

Solfege FV Server

Well, when you think of it anyway, the term "light blues" means nothing. Every mob in the game up to level 96 or something is light blue to someone right? So mass XP nerf on all mobs in the game because some people decided to swarm kite? Seems a bit underhanded.

People wouldn't be able to plvl with my idea you would have to be alone for the skills to be active in instances (I think that was the way it was intended when SoE put that into the game) like swarming,headshot,decap,assassinate, for the individual char receiving the exp, but it is SoE's game and I think they would know what is more of a reward for the chars playing the game, im not trying to stir up anything just an idea for SoE to receive or regect, I like the game so I will play my SK no matter what they do it will just take longer to get completed but the MC was very nice while it lasted

If the swarm kiting continues after the patch, and things are as effected they were before, just think of the next set of nerfs. They are not going to be pretty.

And anyone in the thread that is crying that giving the auto grant is making the game easier and creating people that have no idea how to play their toons, you better not be getting all your XP by being PL'ed. If so, you are a huge hypocrites. Sitting there AFK for hours on end while someone else is getting you XP is what creates people that don't have a clue how to play their characters. And THAT is what I call easy mode. Or even worse, giving out your login details so you can log in any old time and see new levels. I have much more respect for people that actually played their characters on their own up to this point, and really learned how to play their class without handouts to get by.

The thing is, it's been mentioned many times in here by players and devs, it doesn't matter if you are swarm killing in an instance or non instance. All these zones, whether instanced or not, live on a server. When you swarm kite, the server slows down because of the path finding. Therefore, anyone in any of the zones sharing your server is going to be effected by what you are doing.

In fact, the only way you could make swarm killing in instances work would be to give you not only your own instance, but your very own server as well. Somehow, I don't think SoE has that many servers just sitting around.

New SC item, receive access to your own server and the title Server Lord. 10000 SC, expires after 3 months and must be re-purchased.