Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Thank you for posting the details of the changes on page 109. Now that I have seen specifics I can tell you definitively I will be cancelling my multiple subscriptions after having played since launch should they go live. I understand you have to do what you think is best for the game, but your vision has veered significantly from what the game once was, and I personally will no longer fund this sub par direction. I also recognize that there are multiple "rage quit" ultimatums that get spammed in these threads, but I can assure you in sadness that I am simply notifying you of the consequences of the changes you are making.

Specifically I play the game to have fun. You have drastically altered numerous abilities that provided a fun factor with a heavy hand after years and years of having said abilities. I also spent a significant amount of time trying to make my characters more powerful, only to have your misguided notions drastically reduce player effectiveness.

Additionally, numerous changes you are making are going to add additional tedium, such as refreshing buffs with hit counters. This is exactly the opposite direction that should be taken in my opinion.

Additionally, the primary reason given for the changes relates to server performance. The servers had MUCH higher traffic in the past with significantly more mobs engaged due to a higher player populations, more raiding, and more grouping, and this was never a concern until now. Furthermore, I PAY you to provide enough and adequate equipment to successfully host the game. If there are server performance issues as cited, the solution is for your company to use the funds provided by subscriptions to upgrade appropriately, not drastically alter gameplay that has been in effect for many years.

It is my opinion that these changes are simply a short term money grab both in trying to reduce the ability of players to quickly advance other characters, while selling gold memberships and power leveled characters, which I think will ultimately backfire.

Regarding the monumental hurdles new players face, I can agree somewhat. However, the primary hurdle for a new player is not simply levels or AA, it is a lack of a massive amount of knowledge. This does not simply come with a push button. Giving these players levels and AA will not do anything to address that, and will be ineffective in reducing these hurdles.

What?

No point in removing them.

They had said early on that they would only remove AA's that can actually have a detrimental effect. The various Tradeskill Mastery AA's, for example, and Spell Casting Subtlety.

In the lower levels (without enough levels and AA's to boost stat caps high enough) those AA's are useless, yes. They are not useless at high levels. And, useless is not the same as detrimental.

Not much Grey area there. He's just telling it like it is. Regular stats (not heroics) have been sliding expansion by expansion of late.

I max and I only have a handful of pieces of raid gear.

Full raid gear, not maxed without an elemental PS. We were capped for a decade and they decided to change it, if you're still capped then expect to fall under as you upgrade your gear.

Only following Dev Tracker so someone else may have pointed this out. And Piestro already said that was just one graph of many.

In any case Server log graphs are usually in UTC time. Pacific time is 8 hours off from UTC, so depending on the year, a span from 00:00 to 08:00 UTC is really 16:00 PST to 00:00 PST; North American prime time. The secondary spike probably corresponds to when Raids usually wrap up and raider swarmers grab a few swarms before bed.

I don't normally post here but felt compelled to state my support of the changes.

I personally will be opting out of the AA grants but I cannot see the harm in providing an option for those that choose to accept them. Earning AA the hard way doesn't make you more knowledgeable about skills that you don't have. Players will have to learn how to properly use them regardless of how the AA were earned.

I understand many are upset or confused by the class adjustments but I do hope they stick around to see how things go from here. If the strategies these skills created were not intended and "nerfing" them will allow for a new direction in skills and character advancement I am excited to see where it goes.

If the devs are willing to read and respond to the chaos of the two threads on this topic, that is enough of a sign to me that they do care and believe this is the best thing for the future of EQ even if it's not the popular decision on these boards.

To the current creative team -

Knowing your audience would mean that someone should remember EverQuest was originally a "Gamers" game. A place where you strived and Quested for advancement. A game where some long term commitment was required, and on the group and raid level a place where you would be expected to play your class well. This is not going to appeal to all players.
Especially the transitory move-to-the-NEXT thing player who will show no more loyalty here than they will in the NEXT game they play. To cater to them would soil the reputation EverQuest has, doing permanent damage to the game and alienating much of your loyal player base at the same time. Damaging SoE's already shaky reputation with gamers at large as a company that will disregard the most loyal of all online players with rash, ill considered fundamental changes to time proven games.

What happens when these transitory players with no commitment start to complain about the next "mountain"- actually playing the game. Will you further simplify and dumb it down? Provide more free giveaways until there is nothing left to give and no challenge at all?

A selling point for CoTF was "less complex raids" and you have kept your promise. The raids are stripped down and simple, not engaging and epic- like past expansions. A serverwide first is no longer determined by skill, but by who can log on quickest when the game goes live after an update. It would seem rushing people to the end game, where there is very little game at the moment, might be a bad strategy. How many will want to "grind" the same few Heroic
Adventures over and over? Not that there aren't any bright spots in CoTF ( The Neriak 4 HA's come to mind) but after ten times....20..

My solution between updates and expansions was to revisit (with alts) the amazing, well crafted expansions and zones from the past. The first 3 to 4 expansions, Crescent Reach and Blightfire - which is still a rewarding gaming experince and the current suggested starting point for the game.

With the updated Hero's Journey armor rewards more than adequate, add increased AA experience rewards to the achievment completion rewards that you receive along with the Hero's Journey Achievments already in place. At least true new players will get to see Some of the great content of years past, have a chance to learn their class and the game and hopefully grow to appreciate the rich world of Norrath.

Don't SELL the new players short. The purpose of playing a game is to PLAY the game. Sell quality content with an epic feel, great story lines and skill based combat for solo/group/raid play. Always maintain class specific abilities that are powerful in their respective areas but don't infringe on the uniqueness of other classes abilities. If you do these things and actually let gamers know (advertise) you will bring more here and keep them.

If you resort to the quick fix /pay to win formula, you could do irreparable harm. No other MMORPG has EverQuest's legacy - Capitalize on that.

in my opinion granting free thousands of AA to new players is an unfair move to players who have worked very hard gaining those.
most of my characters i spent years on and im sure many others will be in effect only equal in AA to a new player who gets those for free for doing nothing.

the problem is people will go gold for 1 month get the granted AA's and go back to silver and still have the aa's as a silver member
now that is not fair, they should not have the aa's a silver member

Well that's my question, forgive me if its been answered. Theres 110 pages of replies and im too lazy to scan through it. In the original post, it was said only gold accounts would get it. i have 5 accounts and generally 2 are paid for al the time, occassionally the others get paid for, but not always. Will the silver accounts receive this as well as silver status, or will i have to go gold with them all for it to work and keep them all gold to keep it?

As I understand it you need to be Gold to qualify but the AAs don't vanish if you drop back to Silver.

Can go gold to get it, and go back to silver and retain it. Just like if you bought them yourself.

Can i go gold later and get them or is this a one time deal?

"As I understand it you need to be Gold to qualify but the AAs don't vanish if you drop back to Silver"
that is not right ....

Elidroth,

On Headshot procs and pulling:

Does HS proc off of a non-magic arrow? (I'm thinking it does, but can't test it now)

Is there a way to restrict it to require a magic arrow? If so, this would be a fairly easy way for a player to safely pull still (I often use non-magic for the reason that it won't damage the mob anyways).

Everquest has always been my favorite game. The reason it was and is my favorite game is it is timeless. I compare every MMO to everquest and none of them have kept my attention as long as EQ. Yes I have taken breaks from the game but I always find myself returning.

What I liked most is that I have been able to make my character different from others by earning AA etc. I have never capped out on AA on any of my characters but I have seen my character progress. Eventually, my characters will be capped etc but everything I currently do makes my character unique to my satisfaction. I used to be a hard-core raider back in the day but that just isn't possible today.

The AA change does not bother me. I would rather be grouped with people that have more AA than less because even if they are not very good players at least they can survive a bit longer. In a group situation I do not mind thinking for myself and my group and anticipate what they will do to try to kill me. In a raid situation I can understand people being frustrated. But then again do not invite those to raid with you that you do not want to raid with you. If you are short on numbers then either take the handicap of their play style or the handicap of having one less person raid with you.

What does bother me though is the changes to hs,assassinate because although I do not use these abilities as much anymore I did enjoy the unique feel of being able to kill particular mobs faster. It also allowed me to solo where I can't really solo other areas that effectively. Being able to HS something 2 times per minute is a much bigger nerf than a mage being able to beam 12 (level 100) mobs at the same time. Am I asking for the mage to be nerfed more? No

However, I am advocating for the nerf to the rangers/rogues to be reduced a bit. Someone posted a log of being able to get 27 hs off in 2 minutes.The proposed nerf reduces it to 2 times per minute or 4 times in two minutes. That seems pretty severe.

Basically, that reduces the ability for a ranger to solo. Either reduce the nerf to maybe allow us to kill 10 or so per minute or allow us to be able to target any type of mob so in a group situation we feel more useful. However, that alone does not help us soloing. It should not take us a substantially longer period of time to kill one mob as a pure dps class as it does other pure dps classes. Increase our damage in other areas so we can be more efficient. Make it so we can solo using another ability. I do not care if I am killing one mob at a time but it should be just as efficient as other classes can.

I want the ability to solo and be viable but I also want to be able to bring something unique to a group situation.

I really, really, REALLY think that such a large AA gift is detrimental to EQ over-all. Not only are many old veterans feeling abandoned because there's no reward for the years of loyalty but, with the horrendous cost of higher level AA's, there's still a huge AA wall to climb. Plus, you're creating a complete mess with folks not knowing what the AA's actually DO since they didn't have to figure out the best way to use thier AA's for thier play style or class.

Yes, you may generate some new short-term gold memberships however, once they see the cost of the remaining AA's, most will do as they did before and simply walk away.

I offer a compromise. Decrease the amount of the AA grant and lower the over-all cost of AA lines.

I know that, for myself at least, seeing a high level AA line that requires 18 - 21 AA's PER LEVEL just makes me shudder and cringe. Cut the AA "gift" down to 6 - 8 expansions below current max and cut the over-all cost of AA's by at least 1/3. This helps new, returning AND veteran players as well as lowering the cost of future AA's to a less daunting amount.

Now for the nerfs... again.

Rogues assassinate ability affects an extremely small percentage of the current mob types because it's limited to humanoid only. It sure as heck won't come anywhere near balancing the class as far as dps goes unless you open it to more mob types.

Rangers are currently geared more towards melee dps. Head shot is limited to humanoid only. Open up some mob types on head shot and bring it back in line with decapitate.

Zerkers, again, how can you decapitate something that doesn't even have a head??? Agro was already addressed. Limiting them to just humanoid mobs is, in my opinion, an abuse of the nerf bat.

SK's have responded to the proposed nerfs and been answered. They can answer about whether it's acceptable or not.

Mages beaming ability DEFINITELY needed to be nerfed. Exploiting game mechanics and deliberately causing zones, and therefore servers, to lag so that they could line thier RL and/or Virtual pockets was wrong on so many levels. I still don't understand why the beam lesson wasn't learned after wizzy beams.

Make it clear that anyone caught deliberately lagging zones/servers will be banned.

Mage and Necro pets can tank better than SK's, Pally's and Warriors. I remember an exploit not long ago (expansion-wise) that allowed pets to tank a raid mob. That's just wrong.

Please, please, PLEASE fix chat channels.

the hard work you had to grind into gaining all your AA and making your character stronger was one of the best parts of the game if you ask me.
satisfaction of making your character more powerful
and now all this hard work lots of people have put into there characters is going to be negated by one day a new character logs in and gets all the same aa they have spent months or years earning in some cases.
surely there is a better way of going about this?
and like i saw someone else just say all you have to do to get this is buy 1 krono and go gold for a month is that true?