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

People are slowly starting to catch on to what's really going on here.

Post some valid data about server hardware issues caused by swarm-killing....

Then proceed to NERF every class that has the ability to powerlevel. This enhances the motivation to buy heroic level 85 characters with 4,000 aa. Who will buy these characters if they can just powerlevel to the same point within a few week/months?

The strategy itself isn't nearly as disgraceful as lying to the entire player base regarding the true nature of the motive for the changes, but I can't say that I blame you.

Looks to me like the server lag caused by swarming/beaming is a red herring used to hide the fact that they want to remove any aspects of powerlevelling in order to make their "Heroic Characters" more attractive, effectively making heroic characters the only viable quick solution to grouping with friends or guildmates.

While I do think that nerfs are needed to remedy the issue of mass pulls causing server lag, the options presented is over the top, heavy handed and too far reaching to the point of game changing.

I had subscribed two accounts to level a couple of powerlevelling characters. When this ability to power level is removed, what reason do I have to keep them subscribed?

If the reason for these changes is to increase subscriber-ship, I'm willing to bet that SOE will have zero net gain (if not a net loss) as a result of those cancelling current subs as a result of the neutered classes.

To add insult to injury, granting 6 thousand AA's to every new character to diminish the achievement of AA's gained by those who have invested the time and effort into obtaining them. This will completely trivialize the effort put in by everyone who has gained them through paying months to years in order to gain them.

Why is increasing xp/aaxp gained at lower levels not an option?

Why are the overreaching changes to class skills and abilities so heavy handed and drastic?

These last two posters get what all this is really about.

/agree

I am in favor of these changes. Legalize it and the seedy underworld of powerleveling is reduced. But what am I going to do with my zerker now???

Been playing for hmmm must be around 13 years, I agree on stopping the multi-mob people, not sure on the giving away AAs thou, that does not sound good.

What happens to people like me with 11K AAs do we keep those what we have?

I am maxed AA , so when get rewards the thing I dont like is if over 10 pending to claim I have to claim and waste some AA rewards. I like the Glyph of Experience ones so can claim and save.

It wants to stay as it is the AAs, but add more maybe tradeskill related ones or more for Magic protection etc, or have AAs for armour for a certain amount, alot of AAs for good armour, or AAs to get a certain amount a PP or another EQ currency if you dont want more "spell ones" do it for armour or items.

Delusion: Believing that free AAs will bring new players to EQ.

Anyone has friends who have been waiting for a decade for AAs to be free so that they could finally join the game? No? Any reason to choose EQ over other MMOs if you haven't grown along with it? Don't think so.

I get that some people are happy because they will be able to box armies with thousands of AAs without having to earn them the hard way, but please, don't disguise your reasons

I think it's likely easier to find an in game solution than to add umpteen berdillion CSR to be able to quickly catch and respond to all reports. THAT would be a hellish full time 9 to 5 job. I just don't think they could ever have enough people to cover all those cases.

I am on the fence on this one.

On one hand, I sure spent a lot of time maxxing my main's aa's. For anyone who is max level and max AA, EQ gets VERY boring. It's almost like a GM coming in and giving you god like powers. How long until you are bored? A day at most? If that is your deal, why are you even playing a challenging game like EQ. Go play WoW or something that won't tax your tender fingertips to get max EVERYTHING. So, why be in a rush to get to that point where the game seems to be "over" until a new level cap and AA's show up. I love to take my time and enjoy the challenges.

On the other hand, I have a lot of alts that I shudder to think of all the AA I need to grind through. And I HATE being PL'ed. I like to feel like I am actually responsible for the great things I achieve in EQ. I'd feel awful about my toon if I needed someone to hold my hand to get me through the "rough times".

The only option I can think of is to make it an actual option. If you want the free AA's, fiar enough, click this button. If you don't, then don't click the button. I expect most people are going to click the button at some point no matter how butch you are in game.

With an option though, I expect some people would complain there is even an option for it at all.

My toon is maxed out on Casting Subtlety and i still get unwanted aggro on almost every encounter. That AA is overrated in what it does. I wouldn't worry about it.

If people helped newbees more instead of boxing, looking out for themselves, trying to nerf OMM, not allowing new players access to better gear........etc etc etc.......they wouldn't need free AA. But now these people have no one to group wtih and a mountain of AA that they can not overcome on their own.

Granting all the AAs in the manner described absolutely ruins EQ. I have put a great deal of time in building up my mage who currently has 9,171 AAs spent. I EARNED these AAs thru long hours of gameplay. I had to decide where to spend my hard earned AAs. This is part of the gameplay. Deciding what skills should be pursued at what time. It also made me to have to learn what the pros and cons were for each ability I was pursuing and how to use that skill once required. Over the years, I learned to use the same ability in different ways for different situations, again a major part of the gameplay. Some of the AA abilities didn't seem very useful at first, but as I became more experienced in the game, I would discover why that ability should be developed and where and when to use it. After 14 years of playing EQ, I am still in this discovery process. Its part of why I keep playing.
I take pride in telling other players how many AA I have when asked. Taking pride in your accomplishments is part of the gaming experience. Working towards a goal and achieving that goal develops character in the player. Simply handing out All the AAs in the proposed method simply encourages then lazy player to just sit back and be handed the abilities. Why spend time, and therefore my money, on a game designed for slackers?? EQ in the first few years WAS an exciting, challenging game that was addictive to play. The threat of losing all your hard earned gear and levels made for far more cautious decision making and team work. Now charging full blast into battle deep inside a cave or dungeon has no consequences to it. I can just get my corpse summoned in the guild hall.
Most of the changes over the years were good, but EQ is losing what made it great.
We are fast becoming a society of slackers and why not when all you have to do is wait for someone to handout the professed rewards that should be given to players who put in the time and work required to become 'Legends of Norrath'.

Thats just the problem though, there is no way to fix mass swarming without a complete overhaul of the game. To fix swarming, sony will need to eliminate all kinds of AoEs, all AAs that produce damage with a reuse timer of 60 seconds or less, all damage shields, all ripostes, all forms of mass agro/hate, all zones in which something valuable drops, be it tradeskill item or gear/aug etc etc....
The bottom line is swarm kiting will never be eliminated. Its a problem thats here to stay until sony shuts down the servers. So, nerfing the mentioned classes will only temporary relieve the problem. In time, someone will figure out another way to do mass swarming and we will be back to square one again.
So what should sony/EQ do? The only truly long term fix is to dumb down the spells / abilities that are causing server issues AND to invest the time and fix the pathing issues. Dont eliminate the spells / abilities, thats just going to piss off the user base and EQ will lose more paying accounts then they will bring in, and lets face it, sadly, EQ is nearing its swan song. 2 more years, maybe 3 and the end will be in sight.
Another option would be to break up a zone into segments so that people trying to mass swarm would need to travel some distance to get to another spawn area. Install summoning mobs upon agro (100% summons instead of the standard 96%) and let the mobs move at a slow rate so that said player is unable to pull several spawn sites at once and will be forced to engage the 6 or 7 mobs that spawn in a general area before moving to another area. The developers have long enjoyed cramming zones full of mobs to discourage solo kiting, but in doing so they have created the current monster of mass swarming. I will point to North Karana as an example. There is no general cluster of mobs that can be pulled all at once, everything roams freely and has no camp site.
In short, there are ways around the problems currently facing EQ, but it has ever been sony and the developers solutions to take the shortest way possible to fix the problem and that usually involves upsetting the players.
Oh, and giving away thousands of AA's??? Whoever came up with that idea at EQ's round table needs to be fired out-right. People like that have no business being involved in game development. If sony is looking for a solution to the mountain of AAs facing new players or alts, then try this...
Create an achievement known as Advanced Learning or some such. In this achievement will be a series of 30 quests or what have you that will yeild thousands of AAs. Say 250 AAs per quest. The quests should be designed to improve a users understanding of their specific class, its abilities, its AA's, what the class can do and cant do and the classes main fuction in both group settings and raids. Make these quests solo instance zones where mercs are not allowed so its only the player and whatever NPCs are installed in the zone (i.e if you are playing a cleric, then 5 non-healing classes such as tank, melee damage and spell damage, if your playing a tank, then 1 healer, 1 back-up healer, 2 spell damage casters and a dps melee).
Is this more work for the developers? Yes. Are the problems currently afflicting EQ solved? 75% yes. Does the quality of game play increase? Yes. Does this reward players? Yes. Does this address the issues of people not knowing their classes? Yes..... Thats the best it possibly can get. Will these changes be implemented? No. Sadly its just much easier to annoy the players and take the easy way out.... again.

I noticed the Necromancer pet-ae line wasn't mentioned.

Hopefully this will stop all the OOC and General SPAM, every 2 minutes.

WILLING TO POWERLEVEL, 1-70, PST

Drove me up the wall.

oops, 'skill once required'... should be Skills once ACQUIRED... sorry

It was just an example; I'm sure there are other AAs that are unwanted by other classes.

what was asked?

yea I can editing the whole statement and make look misleading too.

Auto granting AAs is wrong

So maybe this question got lost for me somewhere in the 72 pages of post but.
If your giving Auto AA's( lets say up to 4k) whats to be giving to the people that have played for years and lets say only have like 5k AA. Are you going to let us keep the AA's we have work hard for on top of the Auto AA's, or are we going to basically lose all those hours of play,hard work and time. Because that would mean a person with 5k AA(10years+) would basically have 1k AA over a person that just started there account. Is that Fair?

To the conspiracy theorists, have you really not had lag problems? Because I sure have, and lots of them, and most of the people I know have had lag problems.

Sure, perhaps there's an element of truth to the money aspect, but I dare say it's not the genesis of this change. I like to think of it as killing two birds with one stone.

But, as my previous post basically said, haters gonna hate.