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

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Piestro, Feb 4, 2014.

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  1. DangerDan New Member

    First off, if you are going to tag every one for using the skills they earned and then used in a way that you didn't intend then stand back and start nerfing everyone. While there is a need to put in the time there are people that will find a way to get it done faster. To punish a group of people or classes because they got the time in and got the AA to get it done then made it work for them is absurd. Just because people think out of the box than what you all intended is not a reason to nerf them all later on, specially due to server performance. That is one your problem, and maybe it is time for you all to beef up your ability to perform, instead of nerfing the problem beefing up your systems to handle the load would be my first suggestion.
    And the second question is why Bards were not put in this endevour, as a ranger that does headshot and put in the hours and hours to get the AA to get it done, I see a lot of bards out there doing much more mass kiting that I can in some of the places that I hunt. Every class has the ability to find an exploit or a way to get through this game faster than others. And with that it creates a sense of hate and discontent from those that look at MMO's as a game that needs to be grouped in to get anything accomplished. Group players will all ways level slower, and complain about the grind. It's the lone wolf players that find ways to get things done faster, because they like the challenge of running things they are not supposed to be able to do. I for one hate nerfing of any class or any setting because why should the players get punished for finding ways to use their characters and skills to get the advantage to get ahead in this game.
    Lastly, to give away free AA for those gold account members is bs. This is what happens on every mmo when they have been around for a while. The DEVS what to scale it down and make it faster or easier for the masses so that they will stay around and play instead of earning it. Man I would have so many 100th level characters out there if I never had to take the time to get the AA's I needed to get the job done. Thanks SOE for rewarding those that never challenge the game or find new ways to get things done, and punishing those that go out and try to find new and exciting ways to get the same enjoyment in a different type of game play.
    Leeroy Jenkins likes this.
  2. JOATMON Incorporated New Member

    I believe that the auto granting of AAs is an interesting solution to resolving the AA mountain which discourages new players and the use of alts alike. With that said, I still believe there is a better means of handling this idea.

    The current proposal of free AAs grants it based on expansions the player owns with the last 4 excepted. This means that characters acquire the new AAs immediately at the point at which they would normally have been able to purchase them, making it effectively impossible to customize a character through AA development or even viable to earn AA XP until going after AAs from the most recent expansions.

    Instead of simply basing the free AAs on the expansion era, what if the free AAs were granted based on character level instead. For example, grant free AAs to a character but only when the character is 20 levels past the point they could have originally purchased the AA.

    Instead of gaining all the SOL lvl 51 AAs at lvl 51, the character would receive any unpurchased AAs at lvl 71. In order to get all the SOL AAs a character would have to hit lvl 80. By doing it this way, there is still some incentive to purchase AAs along the way to get the "valuable" AAs and the AAs freely granted just help fill in the cracks. People who wish to explore and play around and create a unique character could then freely still do so with a 20 level range of wiggle room. Meanwhile people who wish to rush to "end game" content would just focus on grinding levels as fast as they can to hit level 100, at which point they would have the lvl 80 and lower AAs (barring any residual expansion based exceptions).

    By taking this approach a character who stops and grinds along the way would remain significantly stronger than one just burning through the levels, at least until they both got to lvl 100. Even then the character grinding would likely still have purchased some higher level AAs than the one using all freebies even at that point.
  3. Serriah_Test Augur

    You're thinking of Silent Casting which is activated.
    Spell Casting Subtlety is an original Shadows of Luclin passive AA
    Ardin and Mykaylla like this.
  4. Leigo You come here often?

    I saw a post that annoyed me..
    Basically saying that "New Members" should be disregarded on the forums.
    I have played EQ for 10+ year's myself.. I don't log into the forums to post very often, but I do read them.

    I hope that the Dev's and SOE are taking EVERYONE's remarks seriously and not just folks labeled as Elder or better.

    On a side note, I agree some classes should have this nerf and I see the chance to upgrade those aa's so they work on higher end mobs. Head Shot, Decapitation, Assassinate.

    SK's should be looked at, yes i know it was mentioned here a few times, but I have many sk friends and I have an sk myself. From the play time i get with him (non-swarming) the life tap ability from reposte is something that is a huge part of their ability to tank in raid/grp content.
    I would say scaling the % on reposte or limiting it to say.. 4 mobs at a time would do both nerf the swarming side and still allow the sk to play his class as a tank without loss of ability.
    Nocto of Xev, Shyann and menown like this.
  5. CaRnon Augur

    I have to disagree with you again. I might be. /shrug ya never know... if you can make claims that mages are not one biggest offenders of swarming then I can also make stupid claims like I am the center of the world...

    every post I have seen from you has been blaming clerics for this... While I know you were not talking about me personally.. you were talking about my class... trying to take the blame from Mages and push it to the clerics...
  6. Koveras Elder

    I'm afraid giving out freebies will only do a lot more harm then good because newbies that come to EverQuest may not even learn on HOW to play their classes!

    Personally I think they can do better then this.
    Melanippe, Leeroy Jenkins and Shyann like this.
  7. Graybeard New Member

    I am a gold member and have been for years. None of my characters have much in the way of AA's , mainly cause I have a zillion alts spread across multiple servers .My highest level toon is a level 92 sk main,(though if they go ahead and nerf his tanking and soloing viability to zero I may have to stop playing him and level up my paladin), and I would truly love to have more AA's on all my characters that are of a level to earn them. That being said I think the free gifting to gold members of AA's is indeed a very bad idea. If you do this , you might as well change the name of the game from Everquest to "Whybotherquest " . I assume you are going to go ahead and do this anyway no matter what feedback and response you get in these forums. Never the less I will throw out my suggestions anyway . For those level 100s who have maxxed out their AA let them have the options of titles, items, etc.... as mentioned by others earlier or let that 4000 AA's be banked and used as more AA spending options are made available in future expansions or convert that AA to future level exp.For lower level characters let them have the option of of whatever pre-gift AA they have earned be banked and used as they level up and and more AA spending options are available or convert the pre-gift AA exp to level exp.(If they had 373 AA ,post gift they now have 4373 AA ) . . That way people who spent the game time grinding AA will one way or the other will still have something to show for all their time and effort and not feel ripped-off. In fact if you do it that way they will have lost nothing and still be ahead of those new players gifted with the 4000 AA's.
    Carcass and Shyann like this.
  8. Harabakc Augur

    So do you plan on INCREASING the procs on assassinate? Because from the sounds of it you don't understand how it works. We get 14 attempts per minute without ripostes, and it commonly won't go off for long periods of time. So do you plan on INCREASING the procs so that we can do it twice per minute?
    Lonewolff likes this.
  9. Mehitum of Bristol New Member

    I've got 11 years invested in this game. This is the first time I've cared about posting in this forum..

    I do NOT want to see new players get AAs for free and not earn them. They will not know how to play their class.

    I DO think making extra toons gain them faster is just fine.

    If you want to allow returning players access to these AAs, then tie it into Veteran reward 1... most returning players accounts should be WAY past level 1 anyway.
    or...
    After an account has been active for a year, let any new toons gain these AAs incrementally as they level as stated by others... IE 50 at lv 51, 100 at 55, 150 at 60 ect.. make them available, but EARNED.
    or...
    I also liked making them an extra reward at certain AA achievements. IE 500 EARNED AAs gets you 200.. 1000 EARNED get's you 500... that'll still make it worth the grind, and also speed up the acquisition of AAs as a whole.


    Basically ANY option would be better than the blanketed Ding *POOF 4k AAs given.
    Shyann, Lonewolff and Lighteningrod like this.
  10. Lonewolff New Member



    I totally agree with this thinking! Clerics in the game took a massive hit when the Mercenaries came to the game! Why were they brought in the first place. They were brought in for the minority of players that couldn't find groups and so the Mercenaries were born. Now, you can be a weak player, higher a T5 Cleric and go and and solo...where as before...you needed to find a Cleric that wanted to join you to help heal your group so as to be able to play. I never, pre-mercenary, saw a Cleric not be able to find a group and in fact people were begging in general for a Cleric available to heal for them. Now, not so much. Now, as this person so eloquently has put it, you are blaming the cleric for other classes to be able to swarm. I have seen many SK's swarm 100+ mobs without using a cleric but I guess now...it's not going to matter is it. Take the ability for an SK to swarm and the Cleric's ability to cast rampart on the tank to help keep him alive and that will really fix the problems we are having in the game. Truthfully, I am on a well populated server and rarely do I see Mages, Rogues, Zerkers, Rangers, or SK's being complained about and feel that this is a total knee jerk reaction to the lower class players that rolled other classes and just want to whine and complain about things to mess it up for everyone else. Giving away AA's automatically up to 4 expansions from endgame!!!!! Are you joking? Why don't you just all your loyal EQ fans and players that grinded their way through expansions, earned every single AA and Level they have....Oh Sorry, we want to make it easier for the new players to catch up with you so we are going to just give them the ability to do that! Seriously! What are you going to do for us? Oh wait, you are going to nerf every ability in the game that gives us the pride in learning how to hone our skills and develop out toons our way. Nice job Sony....you have out done yourself this time.
    Htaeda and CaRnon like this.
  11. AlmarsGuides Augur


    To repeat what I said for extra emphasis since it got a lot of likes and was lost in the sky is falling era of this post.
  12. playful0 Journeyman

    yes i am sure you will monitor the feedback closely then ignore it. ive been with yall since launch week I own 6 accounts between my wife and I. I mainly play a high end mage. so because 2 percent of the people screw up you hurt us all. you could give us a decent limit say 30 mobs max, that's to few to lag out a zone and it would eat most mage's if they tried. but there are times 12 don't cut it. say in a bixie mission there is a named that spawns 4 or 5 mobs very close together and can easy get over 12 mobs before you have them dead. so all this is doing is punishing us proper playing people when you could easy see whos in the zone when it lags out and punish them. easier to screw everone I guess. I also have a sk friend that pulls and tanks for my group for the past few years, he cant pull more than a single mob now and if a named spawns adds he is going to auto die. great work there too. ya know I know at least 15 people that own multible accounts that thanks to your "improvements" are all gonna cancel their subs to all soe things. and im on the edge of canceling all 6 of our accounts aswell. I know you don't care if a handful of people leave but even at 120 a year for yearly subs even more for the month to month's your going to lose at least 51 or so accounts that im aware of, that's only a extra 6 thousand dollars a year you will not get, not to mention the loss in station cash spent. so yea keep screwing good players over because of a few bad one you could catch and get rid of. you only want run of the mill 12 year olds playing? your already half way there and getting closer fast. good luck have fun and perhaps you should think before you do stupid things.
  13. Tiki New Member

    I returned to EQ after a 5 year hiatus due to drastic changes in game play. Having been back for a year and customizing my character through AAs I see it is going to be done again. Being force fed autogranted AAs and losing the AAs that I worked so hard for is terrible. I feel like the devs have wasted my year back.

    Rethink what you are doing with the AAs and nerfing rogues and rangers. These classes clearly are not the problem.
    Shyann likes this.
  14. Cyantune Journeyman

    Some of these possibly... others anyone could have seen the outcome. Head shot was introduced literally a decade ago? Since that day you guys have fought against it being used for swarming. Then you added decapitation? You gave another class a one shot kill and you didn't imagine it would be utilized to kill massive amounts of mobs?

    The instant kill hs, decap, assassinate has been a mistake you guys have continued to replicated for years. How you are choosing to fix them is the issue not the fact they need fixed. You should have stopped adding levels to HS years ago... like when you nerfed the aoe arrows from working.

    Let move on to more productive:
    Lifetap riposte: This ability is HEAVILY used by SKs for legit purposes. SOE has decide to spawn swarms of mobs into raids. SKs use their epic to help them and other tanks survive these events. There are ways you can reduce its value for swarming zone while leaving its functionality.
    The key is using two buffs. One buff controls the duration of the total effect. The second buff limits the ability to swarm large number of mobs but consuming a counter for every melee hit/ riposte. Every sever tic the primary buff restores to the secondary buff.

    Shining Rampart: Take a similar approach as what I just suggested for SK epic. The primary buff is the dmg absorb. The secondary buff is the defensive proc and healing.
    Bloodfrost and Ramson like this.
  15. Ranadil New Member

    Fine, whatever, but give me a chance as a gold member to opt out of the auto AA grant.

    I have no desire to be max level with maxed AAs. I have no desire to raid; I got that out of the way when EQ was younger. And I certainly have no desire to be handed the only meaningful thing left to a casual player. Grinding AAs is how you learn to play and grow as a character.

    I do enjoy the perks of gold membership, but if I am not able to opt out of the auto AA grant, I don't see the point of EQ anymore. I will choose not be go gold, rather than be complicit in the next step in the WOW-ification of EQ.
    Shyann, Lonewolff and Numzan like this.
  16. Legend New Member

    Well Devs,

    I have been playing EQ since 99. The game has meant many things to me over the years. One constant it has always meant to me was that I felt I had the ability to invest my time and gain perceived reward. I felt that I gained a return on my investment of that time. In EQ it was that I would have higher levels, more AA, unique items etc relative to the new guy. It also meant I gained the ability to do things the new guy wouldn't be able to do until he put in the time I did. (like swarming after working my off to get the gear/AA's required to do so)

    In the later, more recent days of EQ there have been two things keeping me going. The fact that I felt proud of my AA achievement's across my characters and I could swarm with my SK to still push the envelope and gain AA's at what I felt was a good group speed without having to be in a group.

    I can honestly say you giving everyone mass amounts of AA and taking away mass killing abilities are going to make this game completely unappealing for me and my EverQuest days are over.

    Check my accouts, I have multiple and have been playing for as long as I say.

    Also in all the years I have been playing EQ this is the first time I have ever felt the need to post on your boards. LOL 15 years and first time I ever felt compelled to need to post.

    These changes will kill the game for me...... I also believe there are many more folks out there that fall into my way of thinking and they will also finally be done with EQ from these changes.

    Do yourselves a favor and find another way to accomplish the things you are trying to accomplish without doing this. I'm sure it's possible.
    Zalamack and Lonewolff like this.
  17. Lonewolff New Member


    This is the most ridiculous thing I have seen so far. Seriously, you are going to nerf life-taps to single attacking mobs only and not on a riposte. Congrats on making the SK the worst tank in the game. I would rather Tank with a high level Monk...at least they can do some DPS.

    This entire line of thinking needs more thinking.

    Take care and God bless,
    Dwayne (aka. Lonewolff - 100 - Monk - Cazic Thule)
    Leeroy Jenkins and Ramson like this.
  18. Langya Augur

    Honestly as a rogue I can't remember the last time that Assassinate was really a serious pursuit. It is more of a fun thing to use in Plane of Time assassinating Gods and what have you but I am not going to OMGZ I QUIT since you nerfed something I hardly use other than select situations at best. My berserker probably takes more of a hit but then again, I am sick of Grounds. Most of the crap being effected just don't mean the much to my usual game play which is grouping or pick up raids and killing stuff that assassination and decap doesn't even work on.

    As for the autogranting....I don't see any major slight. There was more associated with the activity that earned the AA than the AA themselves, such as the fun and the memories. I did a quest, got some flags and some AA came along for the ride. At some point, there needs to be a helping hand for returnees or new people. My big concern is content being available for all those being pushed into it. I am not going to get upset over someone achieving something faster than me. If it takes me a month to read a book while it takes someone else a day to read the same book, I am not going to be angered and think that the story was any less than it was. I am also not going to get angry over someone binge watching an entire run of a TV show in a few days that took me X number of years to watch. Its the same thing really. I got my gratification out of it, and have no expectations of everyone else having to experience it the same way.

    Life goes on. There are bigger things to get worked up about. This patch is definitely more change than anyone wants to digest in one sitting, but for a decent majority, obviously not all, its not going to be a negative event that will cause cancellations over. I could be wrong, but this is your game to take chances with and your careers.
  19. Nightmares Augur

    I've actually been in favor of original / old content overhaul, revamp, whatever you wanna call it. This Posting is seriously good and brings about a VERY good point. You NEED to maintain your persistent world. You keep talk about EQN like its the next best thing. I tell you it will be Garbage. Oh sure, it'll be all fancy and new and whoa!, but If you work on it like you've kept up the Original, it'll die. From players reactions here and how many people are actively leaving Sony games, it already has. Add in the fact you are Axing half your PC games as is and that's a HUGE player base that's pissed off. We're talking probably millions, and that's from ages (realistically knowing families these days) 4 through 60. That's what? 3 generations?
    Here's a guideline to help EQ without pissing off the majority of players, ready? are you ready??
    1.) Update and recode all the old content(over time), almost no one uses these anymore, should be NO PROBLEM to actively work on them. Some of it can be merged, like you did with the commonlands, that will free up system resources (some of the issue is the coding, lets face it, OLD coding and new coding don't really mesh, plus newer coding is more efficient for the cpu). Doing this also adds the ability to make these areas viable once again.
    2.) Update gear across the board to make things appropriate for current game. Old Sebilis was originally one of Kunark's end zones. Make the mobs on par with other mobs of the same level. the area was for groups of 50's, ok, rebalance the mobs so it takes a current group of 50's to do it, same with all the other areas and zones. Now you have tons of areas for people to explore, getting same xp and having same type of difficulty(and maybe new, up-to-date versions of gear from these areas).
    3.) make a permanent differential in the system for AAxp at certain levels. Make it so it would reward you more to stay in an area and grind those AA vs just leveling up and grinding later.
    4.) Bring back Flagging and Keys. I can't stress this enough. It locks out a lot of zones that are being used for this swarm kiting / killing. Even make some current zones now require keying. I don't mean like House of Thule Tier progression flagging, I mean actual key quests. Like it would be epic to be able to go to such and such zone to hunt. Not only does it limit who can get into certain zones, but limits how many players are affected in a zone with swarming going on ( cause you know, if someone is swarming, and others are doing things too, that itself adds to the problems).
    5.) establish limits to amount of mobs that can be agro'd by a person or grp, or raid at one time ( max of 40 should do for all, can't think of ANY event where there are more active engagements at once (though NPC interaction might be a part, IE. Coldain Ring wars). This will limit the calculations the system has to make for mob pathing. (lets face it, 1 mage doing 120 at once or 10 mages doing 120 at once, it will still bog the system down the same, or maybe even more cause now there are 9 other players having movements the system has to account for. AND you KNOW this will happen).
    6.) Bring back actual content. This does not mean more: Levels, AAs, Raids, instances, or gear.. per say. What this means is storyline, quest arcs that actually have lore within the game. Like how the original Epic quests had stories. Bring back how Faction worked in the old days to make it more interesting. We have races, classes, dietys; if you are gonna have them, make sure they are an integral part of the system for interactions. You will need rewards for doing these sorts of things. Some can be achievements, others xp or AA, maybe golden tickets for the casino or bags of plat. Have on occasion an item that actually is worthwhile, but limited to an extent, to be in line with whats involved. (To much crap quests are around now, like the mercenary tasks, just kill these mobs and hail... Derp.)
    These guidelines, you can pick 2 or more of them, any of them, and a lot will be fixed, do all of them and Holy Crap!!!
    Graybeard likes this.
  20. Chesmuffin1 New Member

    I am newly back to Everquest with two of my friends after a many year break since kunark. I beleive we are in the target group this AA buff is supposed to address. This is the reason I am posting. I am in my 60's on my main and was seriously enjoying the numerous AA options for my character. I really feel deflated by the post that these 4000 AAs will be simply granted to everyone. In addition, both of my friends feel the exact same way. I feel a huge part of the fun was exploring the many options, Why not just massively decrease the AA cost for these old AAs? In addition, early game AAs were a great way to let your friends catch up in level or to get in some solo time and still be able to play with everyone. ~ A great deal of sadness from us three at least.
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