Changes with the February Update: Alternate Ability Grants for Gold Members and Ability Changes

i wouldn't have much of an issue with that at all.
or, even redesigning Mortal Coil entirely would be fine with me.

I play a Ranger. I am a returning player off a 6 year break. I quit in large reason because I could not find groups and couldn't play solo. It's one of the things I really disliked about EQ. Loved the people, enjoyed the lore, hated the gameplay. I want to be able to play on my own because groups are still ridiculously hard to find. My HS skill allows me to limp along for xp with 1% gained for every 20-40 kills depending on where I can use it. I'm still not overpowered because I can kill a small portion(humanoid) of light blue/green mobs with my AA. At 91 the places I can use this skill are limited and the mobs hit like a truck.

If pathing is bad and my vinelash doesn't land I'm looking at about 25% chance of dieing regularly. I Have directional root snare and a chance to land HS on a humanoid. I can't AE pull, snare, dot, nuke an entire zone. If I hit a summoning mob or something that's just not low enough to be considered trivial I'm probably a dead player.

The mass server lag pulls merit serious action, but HS has already been nerfed as it relates to the spell lines only having a single chance to proc, not with every single arrow spell having its own chance. This makes me seriously reconsider coming back as I will have the one ability that's useful to me as a soloing ability severely limited.I may have not purchased my gold status last night had I known this was in the cards.

The actions should be against those classes that cause these issues. You can't blame everyone in a room when one person in that room abuses the system. This is a very broad solution to a very narrow problem in my opinion.

bandail - 15 year veteran here, can you guys neuter the ******* game anymore? How about when gold members zone into raid zone, a chest spawns. Then you won't have to inconvenience gold members/returning members with pesky raid events. I'm sure that would make your jobs even easier right?

I play the armpit class of EQ "aka warrior" I have max aa raid gear etc and i don't complain about how bad the warrior community has been treated since day one. In my spare time i like to play alts and level up the "hard way" as intended. I don't want AA handed to me EVER! That is like going to take a test and having all the answers on a piece of paper next to you.

Also, these returning members you guys think are going to come around won't be showing up, first reason, they left the game because they got sick of the direction the game was going. Secondly, why would someone who use to play EQ 15,10 or, even 5 years ago want to return to a game where you literally showered with rewards for accomplishing nothing but paying 15 dollars a month?

Just my 2 cents



THIS GUY COULD NOT BE MROE CORRECT

I registered just to say this. I agree with the suggested changes. Please don't always listen to the squeakiest wheel. These people are saying they want others to go through the same long arduous process that they did because it will make them better players and then in the same breath complain about the fact that they had to go through that process. Let them opt out if they want. Heck, Give them a special name color or title for being "hardcore".

I for one would love to have all of the aa's out of the way to a certain point so i can focus on leveling my character and getting to a point where i can group with my friends. Sure I might not be the best at my character, but that's what my friends and guildmembers are there for. To teach me to be better. This game needs to be more inclusive and the people that think that there should be a massive amount of work done before getting to their level are living in the past.

I appreciate you forwarding Tears comment along Piestro. I am a level 100 SK, raid geared with around 9400 aa's. I can solo (not molo) anything in the Valley hotzone by just hitting auto attack. My aa and spell life-tap procs will keep me alive. The SK epic 2.0 took me months to get, I know that I did it back in 2008 or so and I am not sure about the difficulty to get it now but, to make it effective against only one mob seems to destroy my class's ability to be effective in raids and groups.

Shadowknights do not have the damage mitigation of warriors or the healing abilities of Paladins. Our one saving grace is the fact that we can leech our damage off of mobs, and the time frame is rather limited even with max extension aa's. More importantly, it's use is invaluable in the raid and group game. In my opinion, if you want to nerf our ability to constantly mass swarm monsters, then get rid of or turn down the Mortal Coil AA. That is the reason toons are able to fight non-stop for so long, (not our Epic Weapons which are by far the hardest of any class to obtain), and should be nerfed as well as the instant and mass-kill ability of other classes.

Thanks for reading.

Regarding the auto AAs you will get. If anything I would still like is to have the opportunity to put those AAs where I want them put not automatically where you think my class should have them. That part was not clear.

Why dont you guys respond to US who have actually posted CONCERN to this RIDICULOUS FREE AA GRANT.

I have worked SO HARD over 13 years, of grinding, dedication, and now you GIVE IT TO PEOPLE FOR FREE?! FREE AA?! Seriously....

Alot of people in my home server are already talking about leaving the game, and I might actually consider it too! I can understand some of the other stuff, but FREE aa GRANT?!?!?! RIDICULOUS.

Practically you are saying "Sorry to all of you whom have worked so hard to get your aa, but screw you, We need to try and get returning players to play cause we think this will make us money when in actuality it will lose us ALOT more players than we gain"

Case and Point. This will ruin everquest, and it is completely unfair. all these BIND WOUND aa and other AA crap we dont even need willl be granted for free....FREE.....oh but we need gold. This is crazy.

I don't know about you, but there's literally 2-3 places that I could "swarm" with my rogue for ANY benefit to me. We're limited to humanoids, I can't just pick some area in grounds and grab it. I can grab 3 or so with a hearler merc and once every 26 minutes I can grab a few more than that. But all in all I agree with your point.

My only request is that people stop attempting to speak for anyone but themselves. The "all the capped players will do X" and "those of us that had to do Y ourselves" type of business is frustrating.

I am capped. I have an alt starting to approach capped. I've recently taken an alt up and am approaching the 5,000 AA that will be granted. I like these changes and it's not going to make me quit.

I think these can work well with some fine tuning from some of the constructive feedback given here (such as the fact that the auto-grant will kill the bonus curve for people working towards some of the lines after reaching 85, some of the unintended effects to SK play, or the request for an opt-out).

Regardless of what ends up being modified, scrapped, or pushed forward, I appreciate the efforts to improve the game, even the ones that negatively affect me.

You take away my ability of my high lvl rogue to solo.

But getting 10 AA per pull on my baby monk is ok right?

Assasinate is not even close to what a monk can do.

I actually like the aa granting idea, it's the implementation that is poor, it needs to be something similar to what slasher suggested earl in this thread.

In other words 500 aa per 5 levels that can be assigned by the player.

If you really wanted to help new players maybe an aa reset button so they don't have to worry about using aa unwisely while they are learning their class

Again since you claim to play an sk what good are they in group you yourself just said they are not wanted tanks. we cant tank for anything. im sitting on 6k aa have good gear and my necros pet out tanks me like im some lvl 1 noob. if they fix our dmg def mitigation fine take away my epic all together I don't care at least I don have to hit the delete key on the sk at the char select screen cause hes utterly worthless in any group content.

I guess I need to renew my Netflix account.....

Want to help groupers? Make "easy" versions of HA missions. Where the mobs hit for half as much, share a lockout with the normal version, give the same exp but lesser loot (put all the loot from the vendors for the 5 level tier below it on the chest loot table, and drop 2 loots), and give 1/2 the currency.

Then at least random people can group up without needing 1) a mage for its pet or 2) a well-geared tank (for some missions more than others).

I've played this game since 01 never felt the need to come post but this current line of changes has forced me to consider finding a new game to play. i'm not a mass puller or pp farmer or kroon buyer I have 5 subs that I pay for. with that being said I will not be renewing my subs after these changes take place. nor will I be returning to play eq in the future. like when bards got nerfed for their soloing ability and the druids this is unwarranted. you say server lag an so forth, here's a clue soe reduced the servers needed to maintain population and now that more and more players are returning to the game they aren't ready for it. Well first off Fix merc's they don't heal half the time they path messed up. Second Fix your Chat Service. it seem's to have been designed by someone with less than avg capability. you have so many things that need to be fixed in this game yet you come after classes for what they were meant to do. stop catering to these whiney lazy people. you want to improve game quality get those servers back up that you took away years ago fix the chatr service and the merc system. Decap doesn't proc often enough to be taken away. only a handful of people with a zerker can actually pull 20+ mobs an in most cases die before all are decapped. rangers have already been nerfed on hs stop making them a useless class. next your goin to tell us your coming after warriors ability to mitigate damage an drop that or monks riptose disc. every character in eq can be used to pl one way or another. so just shut up an play the game. side note I hate people for a reason you guys just make it easier.

any of you wise Devs ever consider what nerfing Decap and HS would do to the sale of your krono? some mid range players do make a lot of plat from HS and decap (and yes even assassinate). if said players were not making as much per day/hour whatever to support the krono sellers.... would the krono sellers in turn think its even worth it to purchase kronos knowing they werent going to receive as much for thier RL money?

Everything you grind in MMORPGs becomes obsolete, its part of the game.

You raid in WoW and all your gear is useless 1 week into the next expansion. Thats the nature of MMOs. I worked my tail off to get a Thunderfury in WoW... an expansion came, and suddenly it wasnt so legendary. Does that mean I should get a new version because I put in the work? heck no it doesn't.

We all put work in, whether it was this game or another. Times change and there must always be a "grind" to keep our interest.

You say you worked so hard over 13 years, but where is the enjoyment you got out of that? It's not about work it is about advancing your character and having fun doing so. If you really played 13 years you'd be maxed AAs and this wouldnt effect you anyways.

AA exp is like 1000% more easy to get now adays anyways. I don't see you complaining about that.

Simply put, Sony brought it on themselves when they made hotzones able to be targeted by these abilities.

HS was ridiculously Overpowered when feerrott2 was a HZ. Now that its not, people dont fight over temples, I often find people not even in zone. (On Cazic Thule)

Now that Grounds is a Hotzone, and berserkers can decap the vast majority of it, it's heavily targeted by berserkers. Don't want them there? Move the HZ and suit will follow the same as Rangers.

Beaming however is completely out of hand. An unlimited number of targets in any zone, that requires you to disrupt gameplay for the effect, is absurd. This needs to be nerfed. I'm tired to trying to complete a daily that should take me 5 minutes, and takes me an hour because some mage is beaming in open world.
Those mages who used instances, thank you for your consideration.

Rogues..... I can't remember the last time I saw a rogue even USE assassinate...

In short, Beaming is highly OP and needs to be limited the same as wizard beaming was. (I don't know why this wasn't done in the first place.) But Headshotting, Anotomy, and Decapitate, are not nearly as overpowered as most seem to think. The amount of people who swarm the entire zone is pretty low by comparrison, and requires pretty hefty gear to do. The majority of Berserkers kill 2-3 at a time, usually leveling themselves or themselves and alts.

Why not just up the XP bonus to 2000% from 0 AA and make it flow up towards 6000 AA before deflating?

Most of the "necessary" AA's should be covered by then. And all the rest is something to strive for.

Also, change the banked AA amount to 50 starting at 51 and allow up to 100 at level 100.

As far as the SK's nerf, welcome to Warrior club.

I GOT IT. I know what to ask for! Give me Vitality for all the AA's I put the time into getting. Give me 3000 AA's of Vitality!