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

This thread has grown 5 pages since I started reading it, lol.

Let me preface this post by saying I completely understand and agree with the two overall themes of these changes. One being the need to curtail certain mass-killing abilities and the other to make the game more accessible to newcomers and casual types.

AA auto-granting
There are two major issues I see with the proposed solution.

• Players who prefer to keep characters within a certain level range are no longer able to do so.

AA's (ALTERNATE advancement) allow us to stick around at certain level ranges for awhile to enjoy older content as it was intended, or to be a helpful groupmate for friends and new players in lower level ranges. Without the ability to shift experience to the AA pool, this creates a situation where players are funneled into the max-level game. This is actually detrimental to the target audience because grouping opportunities at lower levels will be reduced.

• Racing through levels without the need to earn AA's produces unprepared characters.

There are 4 things you need to succeed at the higher end of EverQuest. 1. Levels. 2. Knowledge. 3. Gear. 4. AA's. We've already started to see that the quality of character drops significantly when you make leveling too easy. When players are forced (not just allowed) to skip a majority of the opportunity to earn gear and improve their knowledge, we will see this problem compounded. Again, this will be detrimental to the target audience because new players will quickly find they are not prepared for the challenges that face them and will quit, and established players will be all the more apprehensive toward new faces.

Both of these issues above can be addressed with the following adjustments:

1. Restrict autogrant to passive abilities only. Let players earn their activated abilities.
2. Restrict autogrant to 10 levels below the player's level.

Changes to mass-killing abilities
For starters, the root problem suggested (server load) is not directly affected by the changes. Players can still make large pulls that lag out the servers. There are plenty of suggestions in this thread to address this without affecting intended use of abilities. I would start with those before applying heavy-handed nerfs to multiple classes to prevent "collateral damage"

If this still does not address the issue and nerfs are still required, consider restricting the abilities in ways that do not cause "collateral damage". For example:

• Berserker/Rogue- The issue with mass-killing is not specifically assassinate/decap, but rather Counterattack and Reckless pulls triggering these abilities. Riposte pulls only impact <1% of the time because discs only last 12 seconds of 24+mins. Collateral damage to the other >99% of riposte-killing during general grinding is very high and changing the mechanics of these abilities will drastically impact the ability for these classes to solo/molo. 'Blocking' Assassinate/Decap while these discs are active should address the issues without nerfing their normal use.

• Cleric- Clerics are already poor choices for this type of activity and a poor soloing class to begin with. As indicated above, use of multitarget melee-range abilities requires the character to be in danger for the abilities to be of use. On a more subjective note, healing is a high-stress job that is now in low demand in the group game thanks to mercenaries. Further crippling the class's soloability adds insult to injury. These changes are simply not needed.

• ShadowKnight- Lifetap from weapon damage is employed via multiple methods but Mortal Coil is the key ingredient that enables swarming. Changing the mechanics of Mortal Coil will address swarming without impacting normal SK capacity. I encourage the SK community to start a thread regarding what they'd like to have in its place.

Totally agree. If you want to give away more AA there are better ways to do it.
Auto-granting eliminates all the work and all the choice in building your character.
However...........
If you must do it (eye-roll) Those of us that are over the 4000AA curve cap wouldn't mind a free 1000AA or so to spend as a "carrot" for all the work we put into getting our AA the proper way.
-Rat

Why? Most rangers I know about in lore use their swords more than their bows.

Roxxanna said: ↑

“Im just sitting here, staring at my monitor, my cleric I love so much just standing there, I have no will to go out and hunt, Im not even talking to my guildies, I feel like I want to cry, make fun if you want, but everything Ive worked so hard for you just trashed. We love our characters Sony.”

I know you've posted at other points in this thread, but please explain a little more why. This is important to help us take your feelings into account.

First, you need to leave us clerics alone, nobody wants to play one as it is, because with the merc system we arent needed except for raiding, which I dont do. I worked long and hard at reaching 89 to get shining rampart, and after having it for a few days, you've gone and trashed it, 80 procs of heal is not enough.

Second, through much, much personal experience, I can tell you that watching someone get handed that which you worked so hard at earning is disheartening. Dont you dare give away aa's for free, increase the rate if you must, but people must earn them.

Third, I am silver and have bought aa cap increase to 2000, its not fair that a new player will be given much more than this for free, unless I am missing something?

Shadowknights have SUCK DPS but now with this nerf not only will our DPS go down tremendously your not going to give us anything to replace it with? I understand yes some up and coming SK's go to far in mech and other places Swarming. Well take those places out then if you guys are to cheap to update your CPU's or whatever you can to resolve this problem without totally destroying a class. Split up servers again if your computers cant seem to hang with the load. We didn't introduce Stone tears, burden of truths, and BloodStained Shoulders, you guys did. and if I wanted to play WOW with this give away of AA's I'd be playing WOW. EverQuest has been a major and fulfilling part of my life. But this is a deal breaker. I'm not a Pally or a Warrior I'm an SK and the difference is about to be ruined.

I agree, but they are doing these nerfs to all the above classes based on server health issues and these classes don't really contribute to it

As a recently returned player who just ground out 10 levels and 4k AA on my main and has an alt I will need to grind both levels and AA, I have to say I hate the freebie AA.

I would much rather have modifiers that let me very easily earn AA up to 4k, then slightly less easily earn up to 8k, than receive charity AA with the attendant complete lack of a sense of accomplishment.

That said, I also think raising the level limit from 50 is a bad idea but was never asked.

This! On both counts.
-Rat

It's very rare that I ever comment on the forums but as a long timer player I feel that I must speak my mind. I am outraged at your choice to just give away free AA. I feel that you are doing this because your player base has gone down because you have released poor expansions and the quality of the game has gone down. Some of us have worked very hard to spend hundreds of AA on things such as combat stability and Agility and now you just want to give that away for free. How is that remotely fair to those of us who spent many long days working hard towards that achievement. Now you want to undermine all that we have done by just handing it out? I also enjoy raiding will you start giving away raid gear hoping a few more players will stay around? Work hard to deliver a more quality product ( and no releasing 4 new raids and some new quests are hardly to be considered a part of an expansion, I feel you let a great many of us down on that one) and the people will stay or come back. Keep churning out sludge and do not be surprised when you lose people. Giving away AA will result in a large backlash of those of us who have above 6k I would estimate while those below will be happy. Those people with high AA are the people who have been around for some time and make it so you get a paycheck and have stuck around. I will continue to play the game but am very unhappy with what I view as a blatant undermining of hard work. If you start giving away levels next I will quit the game just on principle.

Mage beam kiting does not even need to lag the server to be effective.

The problem is more than just lagging of servers. Killing 50+ mobs at a time that give experience is beyond what a class should be able to do. I like the idea of being creative and doing things beyond the intent of an ability that you are given but don't be stupid and say killing 50+ experience mobs at a time is realistic.

These changes are ok. I'm happy about the instance level requirement spread being increased. I'm also pleased at how good the xp is in the CotF Heroic Adventures for a level 85, (about 25% per Heroic Adventure.)

The point of beaming IMO was to get PAST the bull AAs so you could enjoy whatever class you choose.


Sony is making some good changes.

Having said that, please pay careful attention to the next release of Call of the Forsaken (past Tier 1.) Many classes are unsatisfied with not only their spells, but lack of AAs as well.

I can only pretend to understand the difficulty of creating new AAs and their mechanics, however please consider improving existed "abandoned" AAs such as Abundant Healing.

I just don't understand your spoiling this Game I've been playing 14 years , and u get newbies coming now wanting everything handed to them on a plate INSTANT its just not fair my main is a shaman I've got a lvl 100 ranger to which I've worked hard on to level up do all the quest and tasks to have things like HS ,its not as if we can HS passed HOT anyway ,we worked hard to get where were are I've just pinged 7k aas which I worked hard in getting with groups here there doing new quests and that ...and now your handing like 4k in aas to people it just don't make any sense at all. your going to end up loosing the old EQ people who will be nerfed off by what you are doing ... why not up grade EQ drivers and graphics and Lang speed to cope with people who swarm or beam I've watched them and they only seem to do it if zone is empty and it looks hard and looks skill full ......so please don't take things off us people who worked hard and paid cash every month only to be slapped in the face once again ..I love doing old tasks in HOT and lower its great fun and when you opened the flagging I cried, the challenge was taken away... so so sad...
love you guys though keep up the good work....

I have played eq for 10 years+ I love it ( reasons already stated) I watched the server load graphic, why does a full raid in an instance (say 54 people) don t cause any problems and some beam/swarm class with maybe 6 people (for example) in a zone give so much stress on your hardware/software? is that not a problem you as game provider should work on? note: I really hope soe* does take all these comments/opinions in consideration.
I don t see why you should change gameplay due *server lag issues

DISGUSTING!
ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE

Don't care about the swarm nerfs. Fine. Who cares.

This pay to win AA granting is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE
Consolidate the AA's, continue to eliminate the useless ones.
but just GIVING the AA's away is NOT going to do anything but continue to push people
OUT OF THE GAME
You are making the game TOO EASY. You have to WORK for what you get.
IT DOESNT TAKE THAT LONG TO GET AA'S OR LEVELS
All you are doing is trivializing content, and making all the current players work worthless. If I want things HANDED TO ME I WILL GO PLAY WOW OR SOME OTHER BRAIN DEAD PILE OF #%@%^

Working AA's is part of the game, take it away and you have NOTHING to work towards.
Whats next instant epics? Buy a win button to press to beat the raid?

UNACCEPTABLE!
I am PROUD of all the work I have put into my characters to get them to where they are and you are going to TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME. DAMN RIGHT I AM MAD!

If someone is totally new and not getting a group it has NOTHING to do with AA's.
It has to do with them not taking advantage of the social aspects of the game, getting in groups and working with people. If you want to help new players, here are some REAL WAYS TO DO IT!!!!

1. INCREASE THE XP penalty for playing with MERCs and INCREASE the bonus for playing with real players.
2. ELIMINATE THE PENALTIES OF HIGHER LEVEL TOON'S GROUPING WITH LOWER LEVELS to encourage experienced players to actually group with new characters you need to make it worthwhile. If you don't want to grant them xp, grant them alternate currency
3. IMPROVE THE SHROUD SYSTEM. Remove the xp penalties and improve the shrouds so they are actually viable to play in group content. Unlike the trash they are now. Also add an incentive such as ALTERNATE CURRENCY for grouping, or bring back xp.
4. IMPROVE THE LFG TOOLS. - Allow the LFG tool to grant a hearth ability like Fellowships for quick gathering of groups. Eliminate the tired timers. Make the system more robust and easier to use by giving it a better interface

i have been playing since 1999 and i just got 7500 aa's today
i just learned it would have been better to play something else for the last 14 years and start eq next month and i would have been at the same point im at now
you really made me feel like i wasted 14 years on eq
almost like finding out you have been married to the wrong person for 14 years and realized should have been with someone else
depressing
makes you think about boycotting everything sony is involved with (trade in my ps3 for xbox lol)

Sometimes it's not hardware that is causing the performance problem. It can be new (unexpected) amounts of data entering the system. In this case what changed was the ability of multiple classes to attack multiple mobs at once. This rapid increase in the amount of data sometimes scales poorly with the code created to handle it. For each type of code there are masters/gurus that can optimize it. Sometimes when the optimization is complete there really is a need for better hardware. However it sounds like they are not at that point yet. Jumping the gun on such a decision can be costly and time consuming.

People still roll clerics?

hi m8 im not a mage but ive seen them to beaming it takes great skill and 1 pull can take like 20 mins to do ,so is there any difference? u can kill 20 mobs as a war or ranger or monk in 20 mins

Going to re-post this idea again, just because it makes so much sense...

"A number of hit-charges on Lich Sting and Mortal Coil that wouldn't interfere with a normal number of mobs, but wouldn't hold up to the number of mobs used in swarming.

Even 999 hit charges would be fine, you're never going to hit that many times in a normal exp/raid situation in 2.5 minutes, but those charges will evaporate in seconds against 80-160 mobs.

Similar to how the SK discs last for full duration in normal circumstances, but are eaten through almost immediately while swarming."

Another possible solution: as others have brought up, Mortal Coil is pretty much the reason SK swarming is a thing: Make Mortal Residue fire every time and last just as long as the Mortal Coil proc, and all of a sudden it's no longer any good for swarming but any impact outside of that is minimal at best.

I like idea of nerfing the mass pulling. I also like the idea of making the abilites like headshot, decap, and assassinate work on higher conning mobs. It would make groups want those classes.

I like the idea of aa granting. It would bring more people to the game and more returning players back. It will also allow the vets to try a new class out. The more people playing and the more grouping versus solo and PL is what im looking for. I do think there should be an option to recieve the aa's or not.

Rewards like titles and such for maxed toons sounds good.

Thanks for reading.