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

Is it possible to look at auto-granting skill ups if we are planning on granting aa?

Auto-granting aa's is a bad idea. It really takes the purpose out of the game for me (and I have a lot of alts that would benefit from the practice). If I care about my character, I invest the time in developing them. Period. There are a multitude of easy ways to get the needed aa's, from daily tasks to collections, etc. My 95 bard alt gets about 30 aa's PER daily task at the moment (she's got about 570 aa's). Giving me a bunch of aa's now will feel like cheating. Please don't.

I definitely agree. Auto-granting prohibits flexibility in how they are spent and diminishes individuality. Granting AA points that can then be spent as we wish solves both that and the issues with AAs we specifically don't want and may be detrimental such as tradeskill mastery. I'd much rather see AAs granted (at specific level points ) into a separate pool from the normal AA bank and allowed to remain there until spent.

These changes seem like waaaay too big to be merged into one, the AA change is a huge thing alone. Fixing the mass kill without upsetting anyone is hard enough, but giving away a bunch of AAs that have been hard earned too? I'll get my flak jacket!

For my playstyle I'll pretty much never have to get another AA, it's a shame because it's one of my most enjoyable EQ things to see a character dramatically gain in power at the same level. This change almost removes AA entirely as a factor in gameplay and that's not going to be anything like EQ as I knew and enjoyed.

At the same time I am getting rather bored of earning spell casting mastery and combat agility to rank whatever for the umpteenth time...

Well, I have not spoke my peace on one of these before. But this one has certainly grabbed my full attention. I want to start off by saying that some of these changes are nice, and allow people to grab a little grasp of self accomplishment again since people were offering Power Leveling for platz and such. But the first thing I would like to cover is the change to the AA's. Granting AA's to people is not fair to the people who have IN FACT grinded for them. I feel that there is in fact a large gap between returning players and current ones. But that gap is created because of time and lack of player base, not because of the people who currently play. I feel that there should be an AA award system put in place, but way under the extent in which you are speaking of.

The AA system should allow players to earn the AA's by earning AA's. Now, reading that statement alone doesn't make much sense so let me elaborate a bit . If a returning or new player earns a 500 AA achievement, it will grant him 500 bonus AA's. And this can teir down as his/her AA count increases. Simply putting an incentive behind working for something gives purpose to work at something. Currently the only reason to get AA's is so you can stay alive longer, which if im a melee and dying a lot, (and lazy), ill just re roll a caster and be a suck caster, which is slightly better then a suck dps. (I am the king of run-on-sentences). The people who have stuck to this game have a large appreciation, and strange addiction to dry humping a zone till you have banged out enough AA's to call it a day. This being said I am all in favor of making a resolution to this issue that does not affect current player's status and mindset of Everquest. Perhaps allowing new players to start out at level 65 would be better then pre-granting AA's. This would allow people to be closer to the level curve, and since most new players come to play with existing one, would allow them to play with those people much quicker, preventing the chance of the new player getting burned out, or quiting due to frustration that they don't have real life time to allot of EQ.

The next thing that I want to talk about is my unhappiness and happiness with the change to mass killing. (incoming inserted quote from an earlier post), "They are humanoid only abilities, so they are only really able to do it in a small corner of most zones. I could see changing Decapitate to a more specific mob type, instead of proccing on just any mob. But to complain about headshot and assassinate is just silly. They dont lag a zone like beaming, and they dont claim an entire zone like beaming in City of Bronze or large areas of a zone like decapitating berserkers sometimes do.

Beaming needs the nerf, decapitating could use a small tweak, assassinate and headshot are fine. If it aint broke, dont fix it.
And reading that made me think, and it is very true, zerker's (not hate intended, im a twice removed zerker) have the only skill that is not limited to XYZ type restrictions. Ever since ferrotte was removed as a Hotzone the zone is dry and empty, and people can enter and get some AA's if they need them with ease. Me being one of those people is the reason I am very split about this change. I don't see how this change to ranger's and rogue's is really fare, or will change things other then angering them since the AA that allows it is so restricted that using it is something that we can only do in zones no one else is using for personal xp. Sometimes killing a small hoard of creatures is adrenaline fueling, and places a nice cherry topping start to my day. At the same time this will force people to play with other people again and help to bring back the appreciation and warm tummy feeling with you have achieved something on your own. This problem directly relates back to the AA granting, and its that people in this day and age, especially from the newer generations, such as myself , do not have the patience to invest forever into leveling to play with friend and create them. I have met many people in Everquest that are amazing people, and are the reason I continue to play. This was my short cover on the whole swarm nerfing, because regardless people's butt's will be sore, but either they will quit, or use there clever minds to reinvent the wheel again.

Now on to the changes with the life proc's, and how removing ripostes does not make sense to me. When your are fighting a mob, you are being healed for your X hits, and what makes it great, is that those hits help heal you too. When I think of the SK 2.0, I think of something I saw and see a bunch of newb SK's use to help tackle regular content. Maybe this is just on Povar, but I do not ever have problems with SK's ruining this or that for me, and have always looked at them as a very positive class in this game. So my opinion on this matter is leave that alone, and, this is simply because it just feel's like an unnecessary change/alteration to the game. I think that, if we can get some more positive or well thought out/fact backed info from SK's and other player's regarding this matter, it can remain as is .

The difference between Everquest and other game's is that other games hold a lot of instantaneous rewards to them. Call of duty for example allows you to start utilizing real aspects of the game almost instantly. That is the reason I think 65 is a good starting ground. Leveling from 1 anymore is useless because there is not a whole lot of learning to do in the lower levels anymore. Playing a class used to be a lot more player skill and less abilities, and now it is more of a balance which allows experienced players to help coach people how to play properly. You can imagine a level 65 tutorial that introduces new players into the game, like the current one, teaches basic talking skills, how to move, kill a dragon, and Bam, your awesome and drawn in. I am 20 years old, and have had this awful addiction to this game since I was 7. I used to watch my dad raid on his shaman and it drew me in. I could see his concentration and his drive to want to beat each mob, but what made it so amazing, was that he was not doing it alone. And that is what people enjoy about Everquest, (and will grow to love again since they can not be loner's anymore ) is that it takes more then one to do things, and with more people looking, there will be real groups again. The progressive build of the game to be able to progress alone is nice, but at the same time group's faded into the distance. I loved coming home from school and throwing up LFG, and getting tells to run somewhere where I would die 7 times getting to lol.

I can tell many stories, and complain about this and that and say that my character's name is Efrog, but im a cat, its all good, it all started this one time at band camp...

I appreciate you taking the time to read this and pretending to laugh at my dry humor. But I have a lot of respect and interest in what goes into this game, and feel that steps are being made, but not in the right direction. If you comment back, please be gentle and nice to me, catfrogs are skiddish

Thanks again

Efrog FrogCat of povar

and an awesome rogue, thing

Oy. I firmly and wholeheartedly agree with nerfing beaming if it is causing server disruptions. However. As someone who somehow managed to get full AA without beaming, I don't agree with this notion that you need to offer 1,ooo's of free AA's to mollify lazy peeps. It is rather disrespectful to all of us that worked our asterisks off for many months/years to get them. In addition, people need to learn as they go what these aa's do, and learn how to play their toons - which will be much harder if they are handed thousands all at once.

In addition - I don't see how lumping in rogue's anatomy, ranger's HS and zerker's decap in with mage beam is fair. There are usually many, many less mobs involved from what I have seen. I have been in zones that were slowed to a halt from beam, and I have not seen that from anatomy, HS or decap.

Just my 2 pence. I really hope you nerf beaming and forget the rest.

Two thoughts: One thanks for the changes that will end swarming/mass kiting. Trying to play in a zone where some jerk is mass kiting and causing insane lag was frustrating to say the least.

Secondly on auto-granting all the AA: I would agree with others that granting a number of aa at each break point might be a better way to go. Perhaps something like 50 at 51, 75 at 55, 100 at 60, 200 at 65, 400 at 70, 600 at 75, 800 at 80, and finally 1000 at 85. That's a bit over 3000 total and lets us pick and choose a bit still. (Might I also suggest auto-granting CA and CS as people level? Those 2 aa are basically required for everyone, and as someone who just finished grinding them up recently, they are the least fun I've ever had in EQ.)

Beyond that the changes seem well thought out and I appreciate your sharing the thought process behind them. Thanks much for all the info!

I would like an opt out button available for the free AA's please. I happen to ENJOY having to work to level up a toon. I also happen to ENJOY having to earn AA's. I earn them at a rate that I can then spend them and LEARN the abilities that I am buying. This way I find out what is IMPORTANT for my class. I am extremely disappointed that this is happening and feel that those of us that do not want the AA's granted automatically should have the option to opt out. Isn't there some way you can offer a choice when a new toon is made to have them granted or not?

The wife and I have been playing for 13 years and we both have classes that will be affected but I can understand a couple of the changes pretaining to swarming. Some people exploit the ability and make it tough for people just trying to level. The free AA however, I disagree completely. Working for AA is a big portion of the game and they will loose many people if it becomes that easy.

Lol if SK nerfing is swarmed i will not touch another soe game as long as i live. have gave thousands to these people for something u have worked for forever to achieve and they take it away from u. word to the wise do not do it more like me and will do nothing but lose $ by doing this. it would make me so mad i would not even try eqnext. . . arg

AA granted and earned will both be permanent. If you go silver the granted AA will stay. I would personally focus more on leveling at this point.

I can appreciate something needs to be done about the lag-kiting, however breaking all mass-killing abilities is not the answer. As a Shadowknight I know Lich Sting and other melee lifetaps are only effective against a swarm when the mobs being fought are of trivial difficulty. By removing melee lifetaps on riposte you are forcing me to fight higher level mobs but not making the experience return from those higher mobs scale appropriately. Right now I can mass-kill for an hour in MG and get around 20% real exp, or I can regular-kill mobs in House of Thule for around 2% an hour - no wonder people want to mass kill!

As a predominantly solo player you are taking my limited availability of decent exp and removing it in an attempt to force me to group, however instead you'll simply succeed in forcing me from the game completely after 14 years playing. Either remove leeching completely (players must participate in kill in order to get exp) or find some other way to address your server issues without killing solo play!

-Speedi

I am a zerker in an end-game raiding guild. I have worked hard to get the aa's i have and would not appreciate being trivialized. Everquest's alternate advancement system has been one of the main reasons to keep people busy. For those people that have their aa's completely maxed out there is nothing more to do for their character progression other than spend massive amounts of aa's on damage glyphs etc. One long term appeal for me to everquest was that there was essentially a near endless character progression.

I disagree with granting free aa's to gold subscribers. I understand you are trying to make more money and decreased silver members and make more gold members, however, there has to be a better way to go about it.

I have a very hard time believing Decapitation/Headshot/Assassinate are part of the problem causing server performance issues. I believe you have investigated the true cause and have found it to be sk swarming/mage beam kiting. Not everyone does these things. You are proposing to make serious changes to the one skill i use predominantly for my class in working on aa/exp. I do not swarm, i kill fast enough without having to, however, in changing how my decap works you are going to create different ways of getting experience that are just as bad for server performance and or will lead to decreased customer satisfaction overall.

Instead of punishing normal users punish the people who are abusing them. Give them a certain amount of warnings and then 3 day ban, then perma-ban. I guarantee you will affect a lot fewer players by these targetted actions rather than a general change in how skills/aa's work. Those abusers will find a way to get around your changes eventually and we will be back in the same boat. Make it known that affecting other players' performance won't be tolerated and if the person chooses to do these acts that do that there will be consequences for them by doing so. Most of the people I have seen doing it have characters that are raid-geared and max level with many aa's if not max aa's.

Please strongly consider what I have said before making the broad sweeping changes you have proposed. It will please some but displease a lot of others.

Sincerely,

Berrs
level 100 berserker

Wow this is a huge change. I have a little input.

On the topic of granting AA's; I like that newer players can catch up and if this improves the health of the community at large then it's probably a pretty positive change. My initial reaction was "wtf, that is lame, I worked hard for those AA". Mostly because this doesn't benefit my main in anyway. Unless it improves the community by getting more plays to come back and stick around.

On the topic of no more swarming; THANK YOU! Also, it's about time.

How do you balance SK no healing on ripos to anti-swarm to the fact that basic SK tanking is based on self-healing and that when basic mob tanking is happening won't be healing as much

Is this a confirmation that anyone who started in the recent past has wasted a bunch of time?

All I have to say is thanks for not putting the hammer on the Necros again.

When I first started playing EQ, it took HOURS to go from 3-4, 4-5, 5-6.....fire beatles, wolves, bears, etc.

I would like that exp reimbursed to present day exp for my 95 please. (so, give me hours of beam exp now!)

i left DCUO cause Soe kept changing/messing with spells and skills ... you just did it again ! . i dont know what is your real goals and intentions with all this , is it to push us toward EQ next ? Well im not gonna buy it , especially cause youre gonna $%^& it up again . Well you stole the fatalities abilities and used it on me real bad , i just canceled my gold subscriptions on both accounts .

Free AAs lol ... you stabbed loyal players to lure new ones . patheticly doomed this game !

I was, I felt like it was going somewhere, I felt like if I kept at it even in small doses I would eventually work my way up.. but, all that playing I did was for nothing when I read these changes. It was a sick feeling in my stomach knowing all the playing, grinding and everything else was going to mean so little in February.

The only way I can describe it is when City of Heroes got shut down. yeah I had a blast with it, but when it was gone I felt sad, knowing everything I did ment nothing. And thats how I feel about the last year of playing. Giving people automatically just for being a Gold member when I had to solo molo and even a few times, grouped for what I fought for... its like why play anymore? Because in a few months they may grant even more AAs and levels.

This is not a threat that I will quit because you folks do listen to feedback, but as a plea to not just give people all those AAs at once, or automatically log in with them already spent.

If they gave you a handful of AAs for reaching certain levels to help you get some basic survival or damage AAs, thats kinda cool. (someone elses idea from this thread)

If they lowered AA costs for abilities, and refund back the points to players who already have them.. thats cool (another idea someone had here)

EverQuest has always been about the grinding, the killing and slaughtering (I guess some people would use the word "journey") and I dont want that to go away, but lessening the load a little bit wont be terrible.