The work on the AA trees has been great, please keep it up! Trimming, pruning, refining and combining are all valid tactics to making this aspect of the game more approachable. Any possibility of this philosophy extending into the following areas: -spells -Focus effects -combat abilities
I've been max AAd for a while now so please correct me if I am wrong, but did they not combine ability lines with quickening and hastening lines? Meaning the next rank of 'alternative ability blah' could be either an increase in power -or- reduction in cast time -or- a reduction in reuse time? If that is correct, that's a poor design decision. It would be better to roll the change in timers into the upgrade of the ability on the next purchase and adjust costs accordingly. Otherwise, just leave those lines alone.
I am not really a fan of the AA consolidation. I would much rather in most situations, get the aa to max power before worrying about reducing the reuse timer on the ability. I understand the ones that simply add additional ranks/benefits to the power of the ability being consolidated, but the hastened (and to a lesser extent the quickened) should have been left separate, imo.
I have mixed feelings about the consolidation. In some ways its good, in other ways its sad. Consolidation helps i imagine as far as space goes. It helps where they having 5-10 aa lines for the same thing was kind of out of whack. But on the other hand, it removes the sandbox effect even more. This game originally was very open, and outside some obvious limitations, it was very open and personal driven. The game has become very linear. With aa especially, its a straight line now really. Sure you can choose to get some abilities over others or mix and match, but its almost turning into an ability tree like most other games. It's a long time coming though. Many of the last expansions have been a straight line. This last expansion wasn't quite as restricting, but TBS was nothing but point a to be b. It makes the game a lot easier now in a way, especially for those coming back. But its not really my cup of tea. I won't complain because it means the devs are still developing, but its becoming more like all the other games with every patch. I just hope this consolidation means the devs are planning on using this space created to improve and go forward, now just condense.
I don't mind consolidation as a concept. There are two things about the AA work I would like addressed. One is changes to the AAs break my user interfaces. Hot keys that were set to the old AA numbers now read unavailable. Even on my main, I don't have the hotkeys memorized to spot altered AAs without researching them again. When they change AAs, I wish they would freeze the hotkeys that link to the old AA name, ring the button in red to tell me this needs attention. Just switching it to unusable tells me I first have to figure out what's missing, then figure out the replacement AA. The other thing I wish they would address is the AA power/reuse/cast time purchase options. Players used to be able to select their own priority when buying AA abilities. Now they are shuffled together, and the descriptions often feel like reading a contract. Some AA lines that I put off buying into, I now need 6, 7, or more levels to get the effects up to 105. Used to be I could buy 5 ranks to get the effect working for me, and invest in enhancements to the line when I wanted.
Consolidation is one of those things that's needed, but has no real effect. If you play this game for even a decent amount of time you will be max AA or so close to it that any AA you spend is pointless anyways. This is especially true with the ludicrous amount of AAs that are now given to you for free. For all intents and purposes, AAs add nothing to the game these days IMO. Oh look rank 35 of ability A, now it does 0.0005% more damage! Meh.
I feel bad for the TLP people who now have to spend 7 AA per rank for innate stats instead of 1, (among other things). They got boned.
Good thing those innate stat AAs were useless even when current. Anyone who cares to gear during Velious, will have their primary stat (WIS/INT on caster, STR on Melee DPS, and STA on Tank) maxed out with just gear, perhaps you'd need Stamina buff depending on your race pick for tank. Beyond that you were getting gear for HP/Mana/Resists. I suppose it will hurt the random caster who sunk AAs into Innate Stamina for that sweet sweet 15 hit points. But with how inevitably slow AAing will be on TLPs, wasting AAs on innate stats just won't happen. Especially since they removed the 6/12 General/Archetype AA requirements to buy Archetype/Class AAs. Even then, Innate Run3 / Innate Regen or Metabolism3 FTW.
This may be true, but they could just give 3 ranks, one which is your power, one is your hastened, then the third being quickened. Or maybe its power, hastened, power, or quickened, power, power, or or or. All they have effectively changed, is you can't pick if you want the power, the quickened, or the hastened first.
