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

Sorry to say, this feels like SWG all over again. Probably the only difference is Lucas Arts can't pull the rug out.

With all due respect, I do not see how HeadShot is OP when you can only, at best, HS the lowest level light blue mob and lower. I can see changing the proc rate, but only usable on grays?

Well, good luck with the updates. I hope it frees up the server resources you are loosing.

Tolnak

p.s.
I hope Next isn't such a cluster. If so, I predict a flash in the pan...

is everyone getting AA's till hot then stop ?
no more after that
this is unclear ?

why punish all the classes when it was just mages beaming... this was never a problem before... now when mage beaming causes spikes in the processing power, instead of updating your hardware, you nerf all the classes to save ya'll money? wtf is that?

let me start with this thought - a FTP gets to Lvl to 90 / 95 with a max of 250 aa's, goes gold gets his free 4k aa's then lapses to silver with the 1k cap maxed with minimal effort and either spent the $15 or gets a hold of a Krono to get to gold...where someone that has been gold for 12+ years has 7k+ if not max aa's at this point gets trivilized for his effort and made to feel like the backside of a donkey for their effort

admit it SoE you don't know what to do with the content you have created and over the years, let alone willing to put the resources into it to fix it...as your hoping EQN will be the next best thing, are you trying to consolidate an antiquated system to be able to merge say EQ + EQ2 into EQN...I cannot and will not answer that question...a lot of your core player base that still plays EQ has too much time and effort invested into EQ to move to EQN

as for the nerfs to Beam, Decapitate, Assasinate and Headshot AA's I understand the need for it, look at the coding and adjust the % of proc's before you do such a drastic and evasive nerf...sour the milk, not lop off ones arm for this type of change...as I play a Raiding Lvl 100 Ranger, I myself don't care about the nerfs as I don't PL with him...to me it just seems that the devs are looking for an easy way out and quick fix and it's not as simple as you may think

I really don't like the idea of "free" aa's. And I am saying this as someone whose highest level character is 73 with only 360ish aa points. I wouldn't mind increased aa experience gain, but just getting them for free would just feel lame. I really like the sense of earning them as I level up and picking out the new skills I would buy with them. Don't make that change.

As far as the swarming changes, I have no issues with that at all.

Gonna start replying as I read, several long posts inc. Tanks be ready.

It's not a hardware issue. It's an issue we've masked for some time with better hardware and improved resource handling, but that's not a long term solution. Every time we upgrade hardware the new hardware is just pushed to the new capacity by more players engaging in the same activity, and then we have to upgrade again. Hardware will never win this situation, we upgrade our hardware regularly on the backend.

Heroic Characters will happen. It's been announced semi-formally already.

Holding candy in front of a kid and saying "you can't have this and will be punished if you take it" isn't a good solution. Terrible analogy, since EQ players are not little kids, but you get the point. The better solution is to address the source of the problems.

The guide program is all players. Check it out, it's worth considering.

WoW limits the number of mobs you can aggro in a number of ways. That's how they dodge this problem. It's still there in the code, if enough players in WoW aggro enough mobs the servers react the same.

There is no choice for tanks whether or not to get CA/CS. Pretty much every melee needs to (or at least should) have that maxed out. That's not customizing a character, that's fulfilling minimum function.

I want to read 50 pages and pay attention to each reply. So does the Dev team. It's why I do the job I do. As a response though, if granting the essentials is ok, why isn't granting the stuff that is pretty much trivial. Is granting innate CHA to the same characters really going to make you less happy? If so, why? One of the reasons we picked this method over specific lines is that most early stuff is either necessary or of minimum benefit.

We can address people who want to artificially slow progress a number of ways. An easy way would be to remove the requirements on the Glyph of Indeterminate Reward (an AA to get rid of AA). This is a not hard to fix issue.

I'm trying to understand this, how do these changes impact those expansions in any way?
quote="Underbrush, post: 3044575, member: 122"]Honestly you should look at the ability to summon in general. It entered the game as the power of level 50 mobs which was basically Fire Giants and the two dragons (maybe I'm missing something but not many). Truly trivial stuff still has the ability to summon and it is a PITA.

Was in a zone recently and realized I not only didn't have the faction to quest there but I was KoS, I agroed a group and was unable to cover tracks, not wanting to kill them and further damage my faction I made for the zone line and it took probably 10-15 minutes since I kept being summoned. Now I wasn't in any danger in this case. And then there was the time I was trained (unintentionally I suspect) last week in a zone where I was fighting light blues (Argath), with 15 on my agro list I ran but since the one I was fighting was in summon mode I had no real chance to escape.

Seriously, the ability to summon should be a far less common ability, if that means some encounters need to be tuned, good.

Speaking to the potential changes to Headshot, right now it is single target limited to certain types of creatures below level 88 and since it is based on a range attack is is basically useless against summoning creatures, I can't see any value in making it fire less and increasing the level cap.

Are you planning on changing the Vinelash line of root spells?[/quote]

Making these changes makes summon a lot less necessary.

If these changes negatively impact SK Tanking then of course we'll look at them and make the appropriate changes. There are a number of ways to handle something like this.

Code has been optimized over and over, hardware has been upgraded over and over. These are actually the bandaid solutions. Some types of behavior, such as pathing, are just inherently more taxing on servers. You can do plenty of things to make it easier for the servers, and we do lots of them. That isn't the ultimate solution. Rewarding behavior which negatively impacts server performance, and therefore reduces others enjoyment of the game, is a bad path to keep going down.

I addressed this a little earlier in this post, but constantly punishing people for things we give them the ability to do is not a good long term solution. Instead remove the problem.

Having played a mage as my main since The Ruins of Kunark I have experienced the ups and downs the class has gone through. I do agree though that beaming has, in certian situations, created zone/server lagg and needs some kind of treatment. I myself have never gone and beamed down and entire a zone or 100's of mobs at once as a way to xp or aa my character. I have at times done many mobs, usually grey con, in older zones when trying to acquire low drop rate items (i.e. trade skill items, quest drops), and feel that limiting the beam line to 12 mobs is a little extreme, I think the servers can handle 30 to 50 mobs without a problem since I have done it for years with no ill side effects. I am not upset about this nerf to the beam line, I feel though, that you need to rethink the limit you are imposing to it. That is all I will say with reguards to the beaming subject.

As for giving away thousands of aa's, though, well that is nothing more than an insult, a slap in the face, to those of us that have played for so long and earned every one of those aa's the good old fashion way. Is it not bad enough that we have to pay full price for the enitire game, that we already own, everytime a new expansion comes out. It is not hard to earn aa in the current system. I started boxing an enchanter a couple of years ago and he already has 8500aa now, mind you I do have a life outside of EQ and am not playing 24/7 to earn those aa. I feel insulted and greatly disrespected for all the time and thousands of dollars I have invested in this game over the years, and am sure that I do not stand alone in these feelings. If we wanted to play some lame easy game were eveything is giving to you we would not be here playing EQ. It is for these very reeasons that we play EQ, and probably one of the main reasons why the game has withstood the test of time. I truely hope that this is not the stone that breaks the camels back.

On a side note, the headaches this will create for guilds is crazy. Now anyone that has played for a few months will be able to try to recruit with endgame raid guilds. This flood of people who have not learned how to play their class, because everything was giving to them, will most definitly waste many a nights raiding as the guild realizes these folks have no place in an endgame raid guild due to their lack of understanding of their class, and the game if they are new players. I understand trying to bring in new players, and returning players, to ensure the future of the game, BUT this one might hurt more then help, especially to those that have be so devoted to the game for so many years.

Each Year, each Player spends about $180.00 on subs, and about another $40.00 on expansions.

That's $220.00 / year per account.

I've had 6 accounts ($1320.00) for at least 10 years and 3 for 14+.

All that time (and money) put into my accounts is totally trivialized by the AA release.

Dear devs:
The list of changes here is a bit overwhelming to try to stomach. I've played since early 2000, my main is a max-AA ranger...lately I have dabbled in several other classes (warrior, cleric, rogue, beastlord, zerker).
I have a couple of questions. First, with the proposed AA changes, will the cost of these AAs be set to 0, effectively making it so that they do not interfere with the scaling AA bonus? And at that point, why not just make all of them unbought with a cost of 0 so the people that don't want certain AAs can just not purchase them? The idea of them costing 0 and not affecting the bonus is so that players can still earn the GOOD AAs at an accelerated pace. Without that, they will gain the AAs they want at a much slower rate, and essentially, they aren't gaining any ground on where they would be without the auto granting of the meager to useless AAs.

I understand the frustration of people that don't want newer / returning players to be given handouts. I can relate, I've grinded 12k AAs just on my ranger and none of those were handed to me. I like the idea of giving something to the players that have already earned all those AAs (possibly just reward this to toons that have earned the 5,000 AA achievement PRIOR to the auto grant date?). My personal idea would be give us a rank of the latest vet reward Blessing of the Devoted (so true vets will have two ranks of it that stack and decrease vet rewards appropriately - I reckon some coding would need to be done to add this second rank). After all, that's what a veteran reward is right? A reward for someone that has been through the trenches of this game for years. It seems fitting to me.

The changes to beam spells are appropriate. No class should be able to pull that many mobs at once. But as others have said, its not solely the spell's fault. There should be some sort of restriction (like in Halls of Honor but not nearly so severe) on how many mobs you can pull at one time. Limit it to something like 30, because people do mass pull lower level zones for farming. Still add the restriction to beam spells - that should have been implemented years ago when you put a limit on everyone else. If you are going to add a 12 target limit to beams, I would implore you to consider bumping the ranger (and whatever other classes' ) AEs to the same target limit. Currently ranger AEs max out at 8 targets.

I haven't really seen SKs swarm in such mass quantities as mages, but I've heard about it. There are plenty of SKs in this thread that know what they are talking about when they say your changes will hurt the class beyond swarming...listen to them, and find a proper fix.

Rogue assassinate lol...I can't believe that its hurting anything. I think you just want to blanket nerf all of the similar abilities, and that's not a fair answer to the pure melee classes. Rogues and Berserkers have no good solo options outside of these abilities. Consider that.

Ranger headshot has been through the ringer already, you still want to downgrade it some more? Honestly at 2 procs per minute...unless you bump the level limit to even cons or higher, this will just kill the ability. Any ranger capable of effectively headshot killing at 95+ can molo for xp faster than 2 headshots / minute (read: two headshots at 180k dmg each/minute is about 6k dps - and generally need 2 headshots to kill a single light blue mob at 95+).

I saw one or two posts saying don't nerf headshot, nerf Vinelash...Please do not nerf Vinelash Cascade. It has uses well beyond headshotting and many of us real rangers would rather keep a tool like Vinelash than a means to gain faster solo xp like headshot.

Tread lightly, and please listen to your subscribers. We all want the same thing here...for the game to be fun and to continue for as many years as possible.

Maribel said: ↑

“The SK nerf will affect their ability to tank, period. It affects named tanking, normal mob tanking, ae aggro tanking. I don't really think swarming in low level zones is really an issue for others playability but understand the load it would put on the server.

Compromise:- perhaps only ripostes to your current target should be able to proc lifetaps? That at least doesn't nerf the SK from every role they have.”

If these changes negatively impact SK Tanking then of course we'll look at them and make the appropriate changes. There are a number of ways to handle something like this.

The problem is Piestro, This will get forgotten, and not done.

Just like the review of the SK function as a character, and other things that were supposed to be done, that got mothballed.

Sure you guys want to nerf this stuff, Give the playerbase solutions, that remove the problem with the serverload, and playability but give them something back instead.

Headshot - if your going to remove it, tweak it so individually its powerful.
Same with assassinate, Give them something else they can use that prevents it from being used.
SK epic, leave, and change Mortal Coil to a DPS proc or mana proc or something.

If you have problems, give solutions, interact with players.

Plainly explain the problem, with full transparency, open a dialogue and try and get some ideas on the least damaging solutions, with the best LONG term benefits.

There is a TON of talent in your playerbase, Use it.

Agreed.

What you are suggesting has been seen so many times and it is always an epic fail! Why must the reaction always be one of epic proportions instead of just working on the problem. I mean seriously you will nerf rogue and zerkers of an ability that only affects light blues? You have to kill a thousand of those to get 1% regular xp and you may get a few dozen AAs. The poor cleric, LEAVE THEM ALONE!!! they have been abused and destroyed enough already. It has become even harder to get a real cleric not a merc than it was before mercs were introduced, people don't play them because so many would rather just use a merc than risk losing loot to another player. Yes some of the problem was the fault of a percentage of the class pre mercs that tried to rule where and what was done if you actually wanted them to deign to join your group. It wasn't all of them though and they have been hurt enough as a class don't take away one of the few things that adds some fun to the class please!

I appreciate the fact you are looking into a clear abuse of the game mechanics in the form of beam kiting. I just don't see why it can't be dealt with in the same fashion as the wizard and bard kiting problems.

I play a paladin as a main so really hurting the shads shouldn't bother me as they are our evil counter parts I don't like it though. Major changes that alter the way a class can be utilized should only be done as a last resort. This would in a lot of ways affect not only the shads but the guilds who count on those abilities in raids and the groups who count on those abilities to9 be able to get through some rather difficult missions or namers or whatever.
Please reconsider this massive multiple class nerf batting.
The AA thing is problematic, needs to be a way of getting rid of AAs that actually hurt your classes ability to perform certain tasks. The most glaring one being silent casting and the affect thios will have on getting and maintaining agro for everything from tanking to pulling and kiting.
There are people in my guild (D'Pikeys, the best dang guild there is) who have max AAs. I look at these players and what they can do that I can not and it makes me strive to get where they are. They have worked really hard to get what they have and this major change will kill a lot of the reward they got from doing the AA grind. Maybe just ramp up the AA xp bonus and make it good up to 10k before any changes and make it normal (100%) at 15 k AAs?

First of all... this period of public feedback is a PR move. You guys already have your mind made up, but want to make us feel like we had some say. If I am wrong then listen up:

You are attempting to treat the symptom, not the cause!

Instead of making all these negative class changes, fix the real problem! The AI/MOB aggro and pathing system. Here are a couple suggestions!

1. Limit the range a MOB will pursue before it resets. i.e. tether mobs to an "area" and when they get too far they snap back.

2. Limit the amount of mobs that can be on a player's hate list.

Both of these options will seriously reduce these monster trains and will serve to help the server load and training in general without disrupting class abilities! You can slowly institute this on a zone by zone basis beginning with the most problematic zones.

Even if you nerf all said classes, the swarming that plagues the server load may not be solved. Instead of people swarming for XP, perhaps an organized group of upset players will do it to protest these poorly thought out changes or probably find a new exploit. You said it yourselves that you didn't forsee these swarming tactics. Instead of continual nerfs, just fix the real problem.

And the AA thing? Really? If giving free AA away does anything it takes away from player accomplishment and does nothing to solve server lag or ease these nerfs in.

Thanks for listening!

Good thing or a bad thing, I just don't know! Server stability is great, and if server stability is affected by a few doing PL, then surely the nerf is best for all?

I personally, never like Headshot, Decapitation and Beam kiting as I felt it gave a few classes too much of a bonus in AA grinding over other classes. In a solo LoD burn I was happy in getting 8-10 AAs, but when I hear of other classes getting 30-40 AA (excluding the low AA bonus) it is rather frustrating.

However. if I played a class that was being nerfed, then yes I would possible be annoyed.

I'm however not planning on cancelling accounts/quitting yet - mainly because I don't see anything else worth moving to at the moment. I really don't want to start afresh on another MMO which already has maxed players on. I really did like the early days on EQ in grouping and xping on an even foot with other players.

No doubt I will move one day move on from EQ, most probably when it shuts down, and see what new MMOs are about (EQ Next, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen, etc.) If I have to start again, I want it to be on a fresh "virgin" server, with fresh players all starting at the same stage.

However, I do not like the idea of giving away free AA's (previous expansion AAs), as put forward. The whole point of the game is to progress, and if you just giving that away - why bother anymore? If need be, increase the "low AA bonus" so they get them quicker, and increase the Banked AA limited, but just giving them away seems like an unfair move and a bit of an insult to the loyal customer base who have played EQ for many years (including years spent playing via /played!!!).

Haz!

Awesome--nearly 8,000 replies already. Who says everyone left EQ to go play WoW or some other lesser MMORPG?!?

Obviously I can't read all the replies, so I don't know if anyone came up with this suggestion yet. But it seems like there's a simple solution to the AA question. Instead of just giving thousands of AAs to Gold members as a gift, why not allow them to purchase AAs if they wish? You could set up trainers in the game that allow people to quickly train to get AAs if they're willing to pay and would rather do that than grind. Or you could make AAs available in the Marketplace, and it could be an additional income source for SOE.

Players should also be able to decide how to allot the AAs rather than having them automatically allotted according to expansions.

Doesn't this make more sense?

Massive thread and I am sure I have missed some great points from many other players.
I don't have an opinion about the nerfs I'll leave that to people who are more invested in those classes to weigh in.
As far as the autogrant AA issue. I think it's not a bad idea, that AA wall is huge for new/returning players and something more needs to be done but the implementation is horrible. Instead of just granting all those AAs willy nilly How about a more moderated approach that gives a set amount of AAs at 55/60/65 ect that would be enough to cover the basic CS/CA mental clarity and the like and let us put them where we want. (Or even not claim them at all if we choose) I don't want all the aa's some things I don't like getting until later and I like having the option of slowing down my leveling through aas. In fact this is one of EQ's biggest feature for me. Talk with our class reps and see if we can come up with an amount of given AA every 5 levels that does what you need without giving the whole cow away.
.

If you step back a bit and see the forest for the trees ....

If you look at EQ from a design and progression standpoint, people really shouldn't be putting off leveling because leveling up leaves them too weak to fight the tougher content.

That's actually a very broken design.

That so many people have "fought through" that broken design is admirable.

But the change opens the door to more people playing, leveling, and adding to the game.

Right now, player attitudes seem to center on I did it the hard way, everyone should do it the hard way, even if it means populations continue to stagnate and shrink, I'll win because I'll be the last guy on the mountain.

I don't feel that level of stubbornness helps. The abilities gained by getting AA's as you level are just that, abilities. Some of which have been balanced around for many years now. Providing these "required" abilities as people level opens the game up to more people leveling regularly, and puts a better emphasis on leveling in general. This is a good thing for the health of the game.

Maybe better to ask the question: If you were a dev, looking at all of the features that were built into EQ over the years, wouldn't this be a reasonable approach to smoothing out progression in game? Or do you really think it's a healthy situation to leave things as is?

Finally I can have those 3 ranks of acrobat that I have never before been able to justify!

Just getting back to EQ1 from EQ2. I missed the challenge. Just to find out youre handing out AAs!? Not happy with this. Give us a choice if we want them or not, one time deal. Do you wish to be grated 4000 AA for doing absolutely nothing on this character? Yes/No. Let us decide! I suppose if you want to just hand rewards out you WILL appeal to the masses. Thats what its all about these days. What about the the few people left that want to work for what they have and take pride in their accomplishments. Do this and youll be one step closer to destroying this game! I suppose its no big deal. Youre making another game to destroy at the moment, and you will. When that group of people come to you crying " Its toooo haaarrd!" LMAO!!! Dont fail SoE! Its not your style.

Right now I'm imagining shooting a light blue for 30 seconds waiting for a headshot to do 50% damage... and LOL...

Well a possible solution to those who do not want auto-grant of AA is to have a NPC that you hail and either do a small quest or just say the secret code word and then said person would get the AA available to them. That way you have those that want the AA getting it, while those that do not want it the option to opt out. Just my 2 copper pieces worth. :>