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

The AA changes screw over classes that need particular AAs to be effective. This would effectively remove the AA bonus and cause players to take longer to do their classes actual job.

Also the decap/HS/assassinate nerfs are a bit harsh, just make it where they cannot trigger on riposte and that will stop the swarming while allowing the classes to effectively kill trivial mobs 1 at a time.

I really hate that you are nerfing Lich Sting and Mortal Coil... that sucks, SOE!

That's pretty accurate.

I enjoyed the game. I enjoyed playing those alts. I won't enjoy playing them in the future if this change isn't an optional thing I can flag a character for. So I will play less and pay for less accounts. I won't cry over past money spent, but I won't throw more money at a product changed in a way that ruins some of the enjoyment. I won't quit, but they will definitely get less from me.

I know its going to happen, if its for a February update, then I bet they don't change anything unless its an easy change. Comment period is ridiculously short. However, I do hope they at least make a command that turns it optional per character (so if I want to make some toy character, or someone needs to catch up quick, whatever, they can, but if I want to play an alt old fashioned way, I can).

That does not help anyone who progressed past Underfoot.

Monk 2 hander or SK 2 hander with double riposte is much better at swarming than pitiful rogue with riposte assasinate.

It takes away all my ability of my rogue to solo. Rogue were already limited to zones with humans for assasinate to work, now the only zones a rogue can solo in are gone.

It's like taking charm away from druid or paladin undead slay away.

This is something we have discussed previously. Currently, with the way the AA bonus works, this will impact the low AA experience bonus. I will bring this feedback back to the team however, and they are also reading this thread.

I wanted to make this point too but failed to do so. One of EQ's few remaining differential advantages is this ultimate advancement system. NO other game even comes close to comparing. AA's in EQ are a means of almost never ending progression. In other games, like EQ2 (and every other MMO) you cap out on alternative advancement basically as soon as you hit the level cap.

At which point you stop advancing in power. The only gain in power is via gear which doesn't take more than a month to obtain. At which point the only way to gain power is raiding which means you're only logging in to raid and that my friends is quite boring.

Capping my Rangers AA's was the worst thing I've ever done when it comes to the longevity of my game play experience.

This aa change gets everyone that much closer to the end and that much closer to losing interest. I hope SOE finds a perfect balance between helping people catch up and not allowing them to finish too quickly.


Personally I like the idea of just gaining AA's much faster up till a point. I thought that was a great way to help close the gap. Because it's entirely more fun to gain AA's quickly than it is to be handed AA's for nothing at all.

Well it seems like the SK class is getting shafted taking away one of there most valuable raid tanking attributes....any better explanation on this?

Is it possible to put out a list of how many aa each class will be granted on this initial push? I know some classes max out at different levels, and don't remember how many aa were granted up to HoT.

I think you guys need to think these changes through. There has to be a better way to curb the unwanted behavior without nerfing classes abilities.

And giving away free AA? Why not just auto lvl everyone to lvl 100 since we are taking away accomplishments? Reduce the cost of AA would be a better solution!

Server issues are serious but i think you guys can get more creative with mob behavior than changing the abilities people have come to love about their toons. Please gives this more thought!

Yes I enjoyed the time I spent playing the game. Yes I will be extremely disheartened when all my time is completely wasted. I will probably move on if the AAs are granted as planned. This isn't a threat, it's just a fact. Sony will be getting my money either way, I'll be playing EQNext and may check out EQ2 again, but this is certainly ruining my desire to play Everquest 1 anymore.

Its hard to think of anything other than "godmode" game shark codes as comparable to this. Just enter a code and max out half the game! Woo woo! Really disheartening.

Exactly, if its sooo difficult for players to bridge the gap starting out in EQ, why not start them at level 90, with 4500 aa's and full raid gear? They would sure love that experience a lot more. As for the rest of us loyal, paying for 4 accounts suckers who have worked our a**es off for the last 10-12 years to make these characters what they are...your basically saying eat it and too bad cause we want equality for all! What if I don't want the auto granted aa's? Are you going to refund all the thousands of aa's I've spent on all 4 accounts that are now auto granted?
Also, there's not a thing wrong with rips granting procs on aa and class abilities, after all, a rip is a melee attack that is granted by your skill, just like a successful 2HB/2HS or any melee attack. Makes absolutely no sense. There was nothing wrong with assassinate, decap or headshot.
Sounds like a case of too many devs, not enough work to me. I'll reduce some cash flow for you and take my 4 monthlies and 4 x's station cash cards a month somewhere else. Maybe that $120 a month will help to increase productivity and reduce work force.
Ever heard the old saying "if its not broke don't fix it"?
But nice work on nerfing beem, the one thing that truly needed to be fixed.

If you want to grind aa's believe me grinding the next 6 thousand will still take you awhile, but to be able to level up alts now and know its not going to be months or years before they're anywhere close to being viable and helpful in a group is a fantastic change. Some of us only get to play a couple hours a day to those that spend all there free time it may not be a daunting task to level up new alts but for those of us who basically concentrate on our mains other than in "goof off time" this is a much appreciated change.

also what happens if someone already has 70 banked aa's when you refund back the aa's you are intending on nerfing?

I can appreciate that a lot of players wanted the mass swarming nerfed and theyre happy that maybe there will be more grouping with the nerf, but lets face it, the game is a boxers game and the only thing SOE is promoting here is the need for more accounts. Grouping won't rise much, but boxing will and that line's SOE's pocket, which is their primary aim here - they can keep blowing smoke up our butts and say its about the players, but really, it's about how much money they can get from the players.

Since people crying "waaaa cancel sub!" seems to work for people, even though i hate to just proclaim that. I will add as a statement of fact that if i log into my character sometime this month to thousands of free AAs, meaning less progression and actual accomplishment that I can earn myself. I will more than likely be cancelling my subscription.

You already earn AAs significantly faster when you have fewer of them, there is no need to just give most of them for free. Again, I say this as someone who doesn't have tons of AAs on any character, nor do I care about the "OMG, i grinded all these AAs and you're giving them to other people for free!" crying. I don't want them given to ME, because I want to EARN them MYSELF.

Not that I particularly give a flying over this update since it doesn't apply to me in any form.

But wasn't the point of Alternate Advancement points to make people work for them?

How about instead of giving everything on a silver platter and collectively pissing everyone in the game off, you can at least up the rate a mercenary gets an AA? A lot of us were at high levels when cotf came out so gaining mercenary aa's is almost akin to getting several root canals, not to mention it's VERY easy to cap 1000 aa's on silver accounts these days when it comes to class-specific advancement, why not at least raise the cap even a little?

But I'm glad we're doing a massive nerf on caster classes. It's really hard to do quests when you've got a 100 wizard/chanter coming in to a low-level zone and just annihilating it for slayer achievements. I can get the server impact because that means everyone spawns all at once.

And speaking of spawns, can we at least change the way some of these named spawn for hunter achievements? I get nameds for hunter achievements are rare spawns - but there's such thing as rare spawns and a lot of these nameds are teetering towards impossible spawns.

You literally are making assassinate worthless. At best you can "swarm" every 26 minutes. Anything worth swarming that is light blue and would make any amount of AA hit so hard that if you screw up in the slightest you get floored quite easily. Making the instagib abilities of berserkers, rogues, and rangers more worthless than they already are is obviously just to help alleviate caster and SK whining. Is your AA giveaway supposed to make up for taking away rogue's semi effective soloing means?

When do you plan on addressing the utter beating melee take in any recent content and inability to solo beyond light blues?

Personally I'm for making them work through the AAs with adjustments to the AA exp curve. I just hate the whole "I worked for them in the past so you owe me something" crowd.