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

I didn't read every post in the thread, so I apologize if this was already answered. My question is this. Will those of us that have already invested years of time gaining these soon to be free aa be refunded the aa we have already invested in those particular lines?

I really appreciate how much information you have given us in order to explain the changes. I say do whatever is needed to stop people from exploiting the game and your resources. I would welcome catching up somewhat on the AAs but I am concerned whether I would still receive an experience bonus on the later AAs that I would still need to earn in order to develop my character. I'm not being greedy (am I?) Just wondering!

Clerics are now up to 3 buffs we have to actively watch on raids to see if they wear off before the timer is up. Not liking that.

While I don't know enough about the specific changes (I don't play the classes that had the major changes made), I would like to praise everyone at SOE who decided to give us a good explanation of the changes.

Agree or disagree with the changes, it is nice to see the Devs explaining why they feel these changes needed to be made. Going forward, as people give their opinions, we can see if any further modifications are desired.

One thing i don't understand is why change everything about the shinning armor spell why not limit the number of mobs that can hit you while its in place to 6 ta 12 mobs period an just leave the spell as it is. By completely reworking the spell its made worthless an you may as well just toss regen on you get the same effect with what your talking about.

And with zerkers , rangers, and rogues why do all that just make it so you can only proc off actual attacks, as i am sorry lotta folks use those ability's for lvling not just for aa's, hell i raised a zerker just for decap so i could work my lower toons up from 70 on with out wasting 10 minutes a mob using my warrior only ta have the stupid mob ignore call of challenge an run off an bring back twenty friends. just my 2 cents. But basicly mega nerf the abilities like your talking about an you make the game a caster only game.

I would like to say that as an SK if you want to nerf the life tap from riposting limit it to the number of mobs in the extended target window numbered to 10 for the ability to riposte limits it to a small number of mobs that can be hit and still lets an SK say Quad in grounds or tank 2 safer in valley

BAHAHA... i love people that threaten to quit... these are good changes that will hopefully bring more grouping, and people actually playing their classes.. just getting pl'd to 100 and 5k aa isn't playing a game. And makes for less groups for real players...

Grouping made this game great.. boxing and pl is killing it...

I would rather see some substantial number of AA granted with each major level achievement (50-55-60-65 etc) totaling around 2500 "free" AA at 85. Enough to buy the bulk of necessary AA, but not enough to render ALL sub-85 AAXP pointless.

Any real reason that the Ranger Hail of Arrows spell (that was nerfed with wizzies) isn't getting RAISED up to 12 also??
I mean - fair is fair?
-Rat

Yes nerf the SK's lifetaps from riposted attacks. The only thing the class has going for it that even makes getting the 2.0 worthwhile. You can't PvP as an SK as none of their spells work on PC's. The few mobs you can swarm as an SK with lich sting is really limited since the buff only lasts a minute with 6 min recast. The mobs also have to be directly in front of you to riposte anyhow. If you swarm trying to keep them all in front of you is nearly impossible. If you get two or three equal level mobs with lich sting changed the sk will be dead before the cleric ever gets a heal off. If there is a problem with people swarming, deal with them. I guarantee the ones I see doing it are using programs to help them. When you see 4 mages sitting there all casting at exactly the same time it doesn't take a genius to figure out what they are doing. Nerfing everyone for the few is really a pathetic way to deal with a problem. I will never pay another cent if these changes go through. As for ranger Headshot you already nerfed it. Even if you use the swarm of arrow line it can only headshot your targeted Mob. Just how I feel!

Did you enjoy the last year of playing the game?

I play an SK and I'd just like to thank you for these changes. They were a long time coming.

I would think that auto granting the aa's would probably cause me to end my long love for the game and probably destroy any motivation to continue.

What does that matter? You're attempting to set up a strawman and I don't think I'm going to get roped in on that.

I disagree with the changes made to headshot/decap. These abilities were working just fine. So these sudden changes to them leads me to belive that your intentions were to make this nerf as horrible as possible, wait for the out cry from the players, back track slightly and just nerf mage beam in order to make it feel like you compromised with the players.
Which leads me to my second point, Lets face it no one really xp's in groups from level 1-95, there for why nerf the fastest ways to get up to grouping level? are you going to add a /level 90 or /level 95 feature into the game along with the granted AA's? Doubtful, but we will see.
#EQPopulationDrop

This whole, give all these free AAs to people thing, sounds absolutely terrible, IMO. And I say this as someone who has recently came back to the game after quitting 9-10 years ago. Who only has a couple hundred AAs on my higher level toons.

AAs are probably the primary thing about EQ that made me want to play it again, and are going to be my primary way of having some real feel of character progression, personally. I really don't want a bunch of them just handed to me for free. This just isn't a good idea, AT ALL.

I never post on these forums, but this takes the cake.

I understand the beam kite issue well and understand your reasoning for not changing PBAE spells since the caster is in "danger".

I've played a zerker and killing muti mobs at a time puts the zerker at risk of death. I've died more times than I can count. Is this really a pathing CPU issue that your fixing? Because last time I played a zerker I had to be pretty darn close to get a decap to work against more than one mob.

The auto AA is pretty lame, you are going to create even more people that have no clue how to play their class. If this is what your intending than by all means...

I returned to eq a month ago tomorrow along with a friend. I run 2 gold accounts and she has 1 gold and just purchased the expansion yesterday. We have been sitting in our 60's for the last couple weeks spending our free time grinding out aa's. While I agree with some of the changes, the free aa's are just ridiculous. By granting aa's for nothing completely takes away any sense of accomplishment, not to mention it means a lot of people have wasted a large amount of their time. Perhaps consider making the aa's obtainable at a faster rate. Free things like this are NEVER good. I played eq2 up to the point of the free lvl 85 and aa's, It absolutely ruined that game for me. The free AA's will ruin this one.

1. Mage beam needs to be nerfed (and if other abilities are causing similar server issues they also need to be adjusted)
2. Rogue / Ranger no change needed
3. Zerker needs a little adjustment
4. The AA gifting needs to be rethought - especially since the more aa you have the more exp that is required to gain additional aa's - to me aa progression is perhaps my favorite part of Everquest and the daily quests (as boring as they are) makes gaining AAs trivial. If anything I think the game has become too easy for returning players (I've been back for only a year).

Appreciate the transparency.

Additionally shouldn't the dev team consider resolving the root cause (pathing calculations) - it appears that no one has attempted to use this to intentionally crash production EQ game servers, but now that this information is out it's only a matter of time.

Ultimately the single most important rule for EQ devs to remember is to balance the risk vs reward ratio (clearly in cases where it is grossly imbalanced towards the reward side, nerfs are needed)

I am completely opposed to giving away thousands of aa as some bizarre encouragement to eek another $15 out of people taking advantage of your free to play system.

At the very least this needs to be an OPTIONAL thing that requires you to flag your character for it.

Some of us find it FUN to level our alts and get AA. Do you really think everyone wants to roll an alt, level it up and BAM be maxed aa from level 51 through 85?

So that's point one, if this goes live it needs to be optional. I do NOT want many of my alts to max out those AA for nothing. It eliminates one of the most satisfying things about playing a character. I will have pretty much no reason to play any alt under 85 if this goes live.

Point two is this is really not taking into account the long term effects on the game. Gear is already easy to obtain (do some HA and buy it). Flags are pretty much meaningless or non-existent. So now AA are going to be given out (this is what? like 7000 aa?) for nothing. So why bother playing for many people? To get rank 25 of some ability that is a fraction of a percent an increase (since those "fun" and "meaningful" levels at rank 1-6 gave noticeable impacts and now its auto granted)? There are going to be a few meaningful lines people will want to max still and then they won't care (do you think people really care about things like innate stats or more bind wound aa? they buy them because they are there, not because they care).

This method seems really heavy handed and too much. Why not more reasonable alternatives that still give people the enjoyment of BUYING the AA they EARNED (even if the amount of effort it took is less?)?

How about auto granting meaningless aa to everyone by making them innate (stat caps, resist caps for example) that take up a couple thousand aa on the "mountain" that don't impact gameplay in any meaningful form?

How about auto granting a certain number of AA every level from 51 to 90 (and add more every time the level increase happens) so people can spend them on whatever they want?

Up the low AA modifier too?

Just making it so that when I log in my 90 cleric alt project and it goes from 1200 to 7000 aa, is just disheartening and takes away reasons to play this game.

So please, please make it optional. If its not optional I'm definitely dropping two accounts because there isn't any point, I'll just stick to my three main ones.

- - -

The nerfs, I don't see anything that greatly effects paladins. No more shining rampart buff to allow us to swarm better on light blues stinks (since few did it anyway as paladins because its a pain due to respawn times and places to do it), but I hope it opens up making some abilities better than they are so they are meaningful (looking at you Healing Light, its time you healed for a lot more). Its especially irrelevant to us due to content meaning from level 101-105 Chapterhouse was probably our next stop and we would only be "swarming" 10 or so mobs at a time anyway.