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

There's a few things I see being left unresponded to, so I'd like to bring them up.

1. New players auto-getting AA's won't have a chance to understand the abilities.

I think a fine solution for this potential issue has already been said: only grant passive AAs, not activated AA lines. Or, as I mentioned earlier, present these catch-up aa's through content and allow them to be assigned by the player. It is true that AA's have become a minimum functional need above level 70 or so, but removing choice from the player seems like a bad go.

2. Piestro has asked many times for details on why removing only Mortal Coil would end SK swarming. Here is my take as a lifelong high-end SK main:

It will effectively remove the SK swarming that negatively affects the server. Our SK epic 1.5/2.0 click (Lich Sting) only lasts between 1 and 2 minutes depending on buff extensions and such. It does not refresh fast enough to chain use (and it shouldn't, it's a powerful buff, it's current recast feels correct for raid and group situations to me). Mortal Coil has the same effect that makes swarming possible - lifetap as a percentage of melee damage. With both the epic and the mortal coil combined, we can almost certainly keep enough lifetap as a percentage of melee damage on us to swarm large amounts of mobs that may take us 5 to 10 minutes to kill. Without Mortal Coil, we would just die after Lich Sting runs out because we'd have no lifetap as a percentage of melee damage left and we don't have the dps to ae kill that number of mobs successfully in less than 2 minutes.

This is why the suggestion for SKs to remove Mortal Coil would effectively end large scale swarming, but leave it possible for an SK to handle a dozen or so easier mobs - because they can actually kill those fast enough to not die before the epic runs out.

As far as how much healing these effects do and how it will affect group/raid tanking, I'll have to pull up logs. I have several hundred GBs of raid logs for the last 2 or 3 years sitting around. I'm sure I can pull some numbers as to how SK self healing works. I'm not sure if I'll have time with a heavy work load right now, but if I do I'll try. My gut reaction would tell me that a probably 20 to 35 percent of our healing while tanking (especially multiple mobs, which it would be higher, and singles would be lower) comes from procs and percentage damage lifetaps when riposting. I riposte pretty often as a knight, it's a good chunk of my defensive ability, surpassed only by dodges. Again, hopefully I'll find time to put some numbers from my logs to it.

3. My comments on opportunities to provide content as opposed to automatically give people things

They were ignored, or missed, or just not responded to. I still feel that this is the better option, even if my examples were poor. This kind of goes hand in hand with #1 in how the AAs are provided to players though. I'm mostly okay with passives being granted for minimum functionality at each level 51+. But, it's still a missed opportunity to provide content.

4. The comments on how this doesn't fix mass pathfinding causing server issues.

It was glossed over that this is a correct statement. Removing incentive to pull that many mobs will stop players from doing it as of course of normal gameplay. But this is now common knowledge, and I've seen people grief using this very method with nothing to gain. This occurrence of this problem will likely be reduced, but it will not be fixed - not by any stretch of the imagination. However, I also feel that being able to aggro any number of mobs and their lack of a deaggro mechanism in most instances was a defining characteristic of EQ that other MMOs did not have.

5. Fix the damn universal chat service

Our guild functions and communicates on raids with this. It is crippling to have it spam me thousands of times over raid night reconnecting and be unable to rely on it for organizational purposes. It's not related to these changes, but it's clear a TON of community, designer, and potentially dev time is being spent on this when you have an immediate and almost omnipresent outage of a critical service of the game. That to me isn't smart allocation of resources. I don't disagree that the swarming lag needs to be fixed, and the appeal for new players needs to be increased, but seriously. Make what you have already in game stable too.

What I'm thinking on the AA descriptions is mostly geared towards active AAs. I'd like to be able to view "spell info" on them like you can with a real spell which gives a pretty exact indication of what it does - how much damage, which damage types are increased, etc. Of course, that's a bit of a pipe dream but something to consider down the line.

Another idea is to officially sponsor some class guides made by players which go over essential game play tactics and AAs and post them on this site in the class forums. I think the guides themselves could stop at the current max level of autogranted AAs and/or heroic characters in order to give those players an easy place to get themselves up to speed and would be updated once per expansion as the autogrant increases. Some sort of contest might motivate us to put in the work!

As far as Shadowknights go, increasing the %age of the lifetap against your current target enough to offset riposte damage that's usually coming in as healing should keep the impact minimal in the group/raid game.

For the killshot abilities, I do not feel losing these has a negative impact on current-content game play. It will surely slow down grinding in lower level zones, but that's the point.

As far as the other classes and abilities affected, I don't think that I have the level of experience with them required to make examples here.

Just as an example of how I'd try to gather this information for each class: My question to mages - what situations in a current content group or raid strategy do you need to hit more than 12 targets? Are there raids that require AOEing down that many at a time as part of the strategy and will PBAOE spells not fill that role well enough?

No more soloing in any zone in the last 2 expansions for my 100sk then:O(

Why is it necessary to nerf the chain classes? We're already having to trigger 2-3 specials to kill a mob as it is now(non-disc/buff). Leave it alone and add a separate higher level ability. Make an enhanced assassinate/decap that works on higher level mobs, that doesn't work on riposte. Nerfing the current version so that we can retain limited solo play and can still improve our characters when we aren't grouping is not asking too much. We're obviously not contributing to the "swarm" issues.

I can't find it now, but a month or 2 ago, SoE confirmed at Heroic characters are in the works for EQ. As someone beat me to the punch, it is in the producer's letter. Coming soon.

Honestly, riposte assasinate is so far and few between for rogues that you have to assume it's not there. It's that bad. Any worse, you might as well consider you don't have the ability. I'm not joking. The abilty to kill at a distance like headshot is much better.

Not to sidetrack the discussion, but since ppl are using the argument that this change is only to accommodate selling lvl 85 characters in Everquest 1.

I'm in favor of the AA changes only if it's being done for the right reasons, to help newbs.

They let ppl jump to lvl 51 in Tera Online and even the people who jumped to lvl 51, like me, were upset, because they were dumped in a game they did not understand. I didn't like it, I didn't understand basic things like the UI and got killed on every other mob.

There isn't going to be one. All the bad feelings about the AA autogrant comes from the belief that others getting something lowers your own past accomplishments in acquiring those things.

I'll be happy to see new players get to the point of being useful in groups a lot faster to fill in group and guild rosters instead of quitting when they realize the size of the AA wall waiting for them. That's worth more to me than feeling special cause I've ground out 12k AA points in the snow, uphill both ways, with rabid dogs attacking me the whole way.

I've been playing this game since right after Luclin came out. Took a break for a few years, and when I came back picked right back up. Was I behind when I came back? Of course I was a bit behind, but I leveled up, and got the AA's I needed.

I have multiple accounts, and max level toons on each acct. None have less than 4000aa's. The AA's are not hard to come by, and are an integral part of learning how to be good at your character.

I am strongly against the idea of giving en-mass a large number of aa's. If anything, give some of the essentials like ca/cs/delayed death, etc for a tank as a character levels up to a certain point. I know that I will very likely not be renewing any of my accounts if the changes you are presenting here are implemented as described.

As for the swarming issues. I agree with what at least one person described earlier in these many pages of responses. While it may require some significant changes in coding, make it work similar to WoW in that mobs will only chase you so far then will lose aggro and return to their spawn point. I would expect this would resolve the entire swarming issue or at least decrease it significantly.

Keeping it simple...

I have a level 91 Ranger with max HS for my level. I solo content more often then not due to my play style. As it stands now, I have difficulty finding a zone that HS is useful in for AA experience at my level. When I do, I can usually only handle a few mobs at a time due to Zone type (CQ) or NPC level issues.

How is this change in HS going to impact me? From what I've read, you are going to give AAs spent towards HS back to me. You are going to make HS better for me and then ask me to repurchase. At the same cost for the same benefit? How are you going to change this future HS?

I have spent the long hours trying to get to 3600AA. Now you are saying that someone who starts the game today will have the same abilities that I have worked so hard to achieve over the years.

How is my Ranger going to be more viable in group situation than Mr. Joe Boughtmyranger? If the game has progressed to the point you have to do this for new arrivals, then why can you not allow my hard earned 3600AA to be reinvested in my character above the 4k AA you are saying I should already have? Why is the patronage of the Veterans not being considered? For me a title will not cut it.

You are trying to discourage/prevent swarming, but your prospective changes to Mage/SK look to me (unfamiliar of classes) to be marginal. It also appears that you have increased the Wiz ability to swarm. Perplexing. Are these changes more substantial than they appear? Will this really discourage farming levels/AA/tradeskills? Bards have been swarming since the dawn of it all. What realistic benefit do you expect to gain from these changes?

I appreciate that Jonathan “Prathun” Caraker (Lead Designer) could not foresee the abuse of his beam spells. I can even appreciate that the game has developed to the point that a beginning player has a huge hill to climb to get to the same point as a person who has played since 2002. However, I thought that was the game. Always trying to catch that guildmate. "Never rest"ing until you have gotten that next level higher or that neat little AA that no one else has. Those are the things that makes paying that $14/mo worth it to me.

So one last question... To include new recruits and make them feel like they have a chance of obtaining these levels, have you thought about a mentor system where a more experienced player could share experience with a new player? A quest where both the new recruit and the old vet could both gain experience and in turn the Vet could share knowledge of the game with the recruit through trials and tasks. It could be class based and reuse old world content. It could provide huge raw experience for the recruit and pure AA and title rewards for the Mentor.

Couldn't be anymore lame than the conspiracy cat picture...

Sounds reasonable to me. Agreed that its awesome that players continually find new and clever ways to use spells and abilities and this is commendable.

The fact that the spells were never meant to be used in this fashion is important to consider and I think SOE devs have been patient in allowing folks who wanted to play in this style a chance to capitalise. The servers are taking a huge hit because of this and we all now agree this is not cool. I have huge respect for the folks that can kite and live and kudus to the folks that found this little caveat but its now time to put it to rest.

I like the fact that SOE Dev's admitted the mistake and totally support their decision to fix this.

As a wizard of 15 years I think the changes to my class are fair and still allow the PBAE spells unlimited targets which is nice to know although agreed its not going to be abused too often with even 4 blue mobs quad hitting the toon, life is going to be short. This also allows the good old PBAE groups with a decent tank, enc and healer to have some good exp reward for the risk and its obviously fun but crucially the risk factor is still there which means that this sort of gameplay is not common anymore.

Unlimited Beam kiting has had its day. It will still be possible at 12 mobs a run but its much more balanced so I think the fix is perfect.

As to the AA changes, of course the first thought is omg how much time have I wasted on my seven accounts alts! The other thought is hmmm now I only have to focus on the top 40 percent. I think that these changes will ultimately breath a fresh influx of old players but how long it lasts will still be out with the jury. There is no doubt that the huge outlay of AA way contributing to folks not wanting to even start - unless their best mate was a beam kiting mage

All in all, I think both these main changes are good and I support them both.

If this makes population greater im all for it , however other than upset people leaving id imagine many people would try out gold for a month for lvl 85 and the aas that comes along with it , go try out new things for a while , get bored and leave the game of boredom since 90% of content being easy/grey which nothing to gain from killing em , and new alternate abilities providing nothing except more of the ranks they already have , and not found out how important those where when people leveled up the old way.
You will need to create a new starting zone for these lvl 85 / high aa chars and content to make people interested and directions on where to go get gear etc

The worst part is nerfing headshot,not all rangas pull trains,some kill 1/2 at a time.If you were really concerned with mass pulls then you would nerf Vinelash cascade.With VL we will still mass pull just take abit longer now & more casts of VL.Lets not 4get why so many can mass kill,its the at SOE that allowed all to use the AA's that normally took 70+alaran for free just by zoning into argath.Then they gave 100 alaran in ROF by doin a 2min quest,well done boys pat yourselves on the back.

This thread has grown so much, so fast, that I wonder if anyone from SOE is even reading it anymore?
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After a days thought, I see the old "two sides of a mouth" speaking again.
We got a lot of talk and a good graph about swarming and server lag - but the reality is that the Chain Classes (Rang, Rogue, Zerker) don't "swarm kill" to any degree that would even cause server lag. And if they try to get more than 8-12 mobs in a "swarm" they are as likely to wind up dead as not.
ie The Risk vs reward (tm) is there.... already - as is.
And if SK abilities to employ swarming need a nerf - it's surely not the method proposed. (And I don't see level 100 SK 's offering swarm PL's services on general.)
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What I'm seeing here is a (long coming?) nerf to a class or two being able to swarm kill and actually cause server lag - and that nerf is being sugar coated with more nerfs to other classes to "make them feel better"??. After a little thought and reading, it's quite transparent. (Ya? Like clerics needed any kind of nerf as it is?)
And the AA thing? (sigh)
Plenty of ways to make AA easier than "auto-granting" for Gold.
Real players want to earn and spend them as they see fit. Increase the curve, please make AA faster in general, - and limit AA caps and the "big boost" on the curve to Gold - absolutely.
I like the intent - but the implementation is terrible as proposed!
-Rat

I have never in my 15 years of everquest come to these forums and threatened to cancel because of some change I did not agree with.

But this Autogranting and Level 85 toon selling is so far beyond a simple change and so unacceptable to me that I am here doing just that.

Im not angry but rather sick to my stomach as I watch the game I love transformed into a bad joke.

I play a max level, max AA high end SK. Yes I'm guilty of swarming, but I have only ever done this in instances, i.e. respecting other players. I found it exceptionally boring and couldn't stand more than an hour doing it. However, SK are limited to OLD zones - like Seeds content (2008?) and I was pretty disgusted that mages gained the ability to earn more xp in CURRENT zones.

Regardless, I am glad that swarming is to be nerfed. The tells begging for a PL are annoying!

However what I am fearful of is my tanking ability to be nerfed. In short it will force me to stop playing (and that's all my box accounts as well). I will not play a character whose only input to a group/raid is some crappy dps or kiting. Someone said "a monk in plate" - yes but without the dps!

Piestro - can you please save SK's tanking ability? - there are plenty of suggestions (remove mortal coil?) Please don't destroy our class and our continued enjoyment of the world of Norrath and of course SOE's subs!

Btw, I've never understood why they don't use vitality as rest XP like in WoW if they think ppl need to gain faster XP. Just enable vitality XP under lvl 95.

Everyone who played WoW knows what I'm talking about with "rest XP" I think. It basically fills up "potential XP" when you're in a non-combat zone.

Being able to kill from a distance is the problem, just nerf it against rooted mobs. Very few people at this point root/kite mobs to HS anymore, because it is just not worth it. But I do tank and HS mobs, which is the same thing you do with assasinate. So another solution is to make HS not work when you have agro on more than 2 mobs or something. This would allow people to still use HS, hell they could even extwend the line again with this solution. This would not cause server issues, as no one would pull large amounts of mobs, they would do small pulls, but this would still allow users to HS mobs in zones with light blue mobs. Which is the only place this is happening at this point anyway.

That may be true in the specific case of "griefing" but swarming for XP is not the only swarm scenario. I can still pull a zone of grey cons for faction, slayer achievements, and PLing using damage shields. I understand the issue, but the solution you guys are trying to implement doesn't even touch the problem.

Regardless, the point remains jamming everyone into the newest expansion is going to be problematic if they aren't equipped to deal with it. And each exp they're getting progressively smaller.

Letting people get up to speed faster.....fine
Giving those people now up to speed little/nothing to do.....not so much

I realize I'm in the minority but this'll be a problem down the road, no?