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

Is there something wrong with me for not feeling threatened by this patch?

I am trying to care, but I just don't.

I returned to Everquest and have played off an on for three years. In this time I have payed good money and enjoyed the game very much. I have multiple characters and have really enjoyed playing the different classes and earning AA's for them. What I am getting at is that I have enjoyed earning my AA's and figuring out which AA's i want before others. If this AA giveaway happens it will be a sad day for Everquest. I will cancel my accounts and will encourage my friends to do so as well. Giving away all those AA's is just so lame and if it goes through I simply wasted a lot of time and money. Please as a huge Everquest fan i beg you to not implement the AA giveaway.

I'm assuming that if you have aa over the Underfoot rank, you get nothing. However, on my shaman I have general tab aa that are still under the Underfoot rank and that she'd get those automatically granted even though she has 5500 aa. You're not losing anything, but any aa that aren't caught up to UF rank would be boosted to UF rank.

Auto granting AAs is just crappy.
Nerfing swarms is a little less crappy, but crappy nonetheless. This is not a desired solution for the aforementioned server resource problem.

One question though is, why is HS included in that? HS was nerfed into oblivion a long time ago and rangers do not swarm anything. They kill 1 mob at a time.

I've read enough to get the gist of what people are complaining about. So here's my 2cp:

1) The whole "this is a slap in the face to people who earned these AAs" is stupid. You could also say that about defiant gear, the AA curve, Plane of Knowledge, guild portals, spell vendors for in PoK with spells you had to go hunt or pray would show up in bazaar, etc., etc. The higher the ladder gets the more elevators they have to add to keep people joining EQ. The stuff you can take on now at level 20 with defiant gear (even without a merc) compared to what we could back in 2000 . . . . I enjoyed playing back then but I would NOT want the same path for a brand new alt. I would give up on the alt.

2) DO NOT GRANT Tradeskill AAs or any others that NOT having can be a benefit. People don't want some of the tradeskill AAs until their skill is maxed. There may be others out there where AA level 1 is more beneficial at certain levels than the UF level would be. Other than that, I don't want to have to grind AAs on EVERY alt. There are simply too many. Let me start at 4 expansions back. I like that.

3) Headshot did not need nerfing. Rangers can pull entire zones, spend a whole lotta time rooting, and then go to town, but that's inefficient. The most efficient is 6 to 12 mobs, add 3 to 9 more when down to a handful if you can. Keep the current proc rate, increase max killed in the spell versions of archery to 12. If you want to do anything to force us to work with fewer mobs at a time, add a 100 point magic DD to the hail of arrows line so that it has a chance to break root. If proc rate stays the same as now, it will work as intended when just shooting a bow, the only real issue here is our spell proccing the headshot. Like I said, keep the proc rate, increase number of targets spells can HS, but also add a DD to spells to make it riskier.

Hello Devs & Fellow EQers!

I wanted to jump in here on this discussion. I have played off and on since launch back in 99, and I am sure plenty of you have also. While I can understand how this possible announcement can make each of us feel like we wasted time and money, but changes are part of the game. Older content has been changed to allow players the ability to get through quests faster, or just skip them completely.

The granting AA’s can be an issue for some of the useless abilities, but allowing a player the choice of the spending the granted AA’s I feel is the best way to go. I can see this allowing player to skip into higher tiers and possibly find groups. Now we discuss how players will not know their classes. I have to say, I have grouped with people over the years that have 5k + more AA’s than I do, and have played just as long. These players still have not learned anything!

So, how does this hurt us veteran players? It really does not affect us; think back to 99, if people didn’t know how to play you would not invite them again. Pretty simple fix to that issue.

The elephant in the room are the abilities we’ve all loved used and enjoyed, even if people say “they’ve never used them.” I am okay with these nerfs that affect my ability to play or even simply log into a zone. Swarming in instances doesn’t bother me at all, but it does lag the serves out! I know there will be a ton of negativity because of my comments, but let’s focus on the ability to play the game, and not lag the game to where we cannot play at all.

If these abilities are removed it does hinder a lot of individual’s ways to grind AA’s, and I understand that completely. I do have all but Rogue class, so these nerfs will change my ability to grind AA’s, but I can still manage regardless.

I accept these possible changes, but I am all about allowing the players the choice of where to spend these granted AA’s! If I log in on my 86 pallie I’ve been working on, and his AA’s are spent into places I dislike, I will complain for sure. I would also like to suggest that the AA bonus is increased to at least 5k.

Thanks for hearing me out!

So you think that the coming introduction of Sony's own paid for PLed toon and how long swarming tactics have long been left alone(not to mention these are really only good for PLing and AAs) is not far more than just "coincidental"?????
It's an extremely obvious bait and switch. The masses are just being bluffed into thinking it's for some "good of the game" theme.

No. DS PL will still work, though it's slower after 65ish. As long as the various individuals spamming "wtb beam pl" in public channels, motivated by lack of personal ability or perhaps lack of available time in this rather time consuming game, stop spamming and go away, I'm happy.

Idea: to reward those of us who grinded those aa's and/or have max aa, you could "award" us with X amount of free merc aa's.

Just spit balling since y'all are looking for ideas. Personally I'd like it better if the only thing that changes is taking away beaming.

This is a great Idea. Thanks Sony.
Now playing an alt can be fun, not a chore

I've been playing my sk since 2003 and recently in the past year or two made boxes and alts. You can bet I am canceling all my accounts. I don't care about power leveling either just the blatant disregard you have shown this class over the years because of "Swarming" but now that your taking it out you have nothing to show us.

Auto granted AAs shouldn't count against aa spent since the player is not spending them and players should be reimbursed those AAs to spend elsewhere since they worked for those AAs

Silly thing is when you take evidence like the server monitor graph and say that calculating mob pathing is very intensive and therefore creates lag when 1 player pulls x number of mobs (be it 100 or 500). If they want more players to join game then all those players will be pulling mobs so all it is going to take is 250 players who dare to pull 2 mobs each = 500 mob routes to be calculated and it "should" provide the same amount of server load. In reality it should provide more server load, if coding for swarms was optimized then once a mob has joined the swarm then it could run from a base calculation for the swarm with a small offset for different run speeds etc - I mean they are all heading for one person who's position is known, not calculated. The 250 new players pulling 2 each will require minimum 250 separate calculations which under the logic being put forward here is going to equal massive server lag - something here is not making much sense to this retired programmer .

Sweet! I wont have to spend those 3 AA for Act of Valor! /sarcasm

I love this game and have been playing for 14 years.

I am happy you are fixing swarming and power leveling.

But selling AA and Level 85 toons is one step to far and unacceptable to me.

I understand you need to make money and this is a business.

For 14 years I have been giving you money every month and have even bought SC as a way to support the game I love so much.

I would have easily paid 50 dollars a month to play Everquest.

But what you are about to do is NOT a game anymore it is you simply selling the achievements that so
many have worked for over the years.

You should have worked on making a great game people wanted to play instead of working on a business model to milk more cash out of a Legendary game.

The easier you make the game the less it succeeds, perhaps you should go back to Everquest's roots and make it more challenging and more difficult with a great sense of accomplishment.

I consider this a final act of betrayal to a game concept once known as Everquest.

You no longer have my business or my loyalty and hell will be frozen 6 feet thick in ice before I play EQ Next.

Account cancelled.

I've had loads of fun through the years grinding my AA's. People getting free AA's doesnt bother me at all, I know how I got mine, and all the awesome people i met during.

At this point in time, is it really that bad? I still play EQ alot but not with near the same passion as I did back in 03, it's not new anymore, with all this time passed and all the games played, online gaming isnt really exciting anymore.

On a final note, come one SoE, its obvious, you're trying to make heroic characters even more attractive to buy with this new AA gift. You want the $$ for the PLing to go to you, not the players.

I still lubs you though!

I read many posts where they call for instanced zones to alleviate server lag. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think instanced zones run on the same machine as regular zones?? It would not reduce the load on the physical server. So that's not a viable alternative.

After some thought. I think the gifting of AA is not a bad idea. I think they let the system get out of hand. Sure it was designed as a time sink and now.. it's dragging too many people down. Time to trim back on the time sink aspect of it.

Nerfs to so many classes?
I have a Ranger, Zerker, SK and Mage who could use those skills (most are 100 with 10K+ AA) but I don't.. It's just not fun for me and I don't need the plat.
Face it.. some people are making real, hard cash doing this and it should stop. Now.. the fact that SOE is going to step in and offer Heroic lvl 85 toons for sale doesn't appeal to me either. However I see the logic behind it.
I just joined and I don't want to spend months getting my toon up to the level where I can play with the majority of the population on the server. I either get a PL for plat or I buy a pre-made from SOE. Now I get to choose my race/class combo and I get it NOW.. Not next week. I also get 4K AA. Nice ))

Lighten up on the Nerfs, keep the 4K AA to gold members. Social inequality? sure but that's life.. the people with the money reap the benefits of their hard work. Get over it or get a better job/education!

where

AlmmoK, that is completely untrue. We're removing it strictly because it is a disruption to other players when pulling all/most mobs in a zone or by making the ability to play the game in that zone and all zones on that same box impossible due to the server performance. This is a health of the server change that needs to happen.

[[To Everyone]] We are still reading comments and we have had discussions earlier today on your feedback. I can say that we are already planning to make changes to our initial plan but we're not done with all the details quite yet. So please keep your fresh feedback coming if you haven't already commented in the last 24 hours. We want to make sure we do things the right way and still meet the requirements we set out for ourselves with this project. We appreciate all our comments about this subject.

Thank you,
-Thom

Personally I like the changes expect for the rog, bez and ranger. These are fun non swarming abilities that I don't take advantage of currently and I have one of each of the classes. The only one I have tried once is HS but it wasn't swarming by any stretch (like 15 mobs, lb or green) and lost interest instantly.

I like the idea of granting aa's and lvl 85. I do prefer to lock them behind some mechanism so the player can select what they want. Auto granting necessity types is fine but nothing more than those though.

I feel the same way as others here that are chapped at the "gift" of getting 4 to 6K aa's. I earned many toons to that level or more already. The current customer base should get something as a "thank you" for being a grinder all these years sort of thing (raid item, title and SC pots or bags for example).
In all honesty, I like to PL my own toons to get the satisfaction of the gained level. If you're granting the mass aa's, again I'm ok with it, but keep the aa exp bonus modifier in place from the granted lvl for another 5 or 6K aa's. Getting those DINGS!! are what make this game fun for a lot of us and especially me.

Now fix deathbloom to it's original state! Then I'll buy the newest expansion!