Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

the problem isnt that it takes too long to get caught up its the fact there are way too many AAs to begin with. Completely gut the AA system and redo it. AAs have gotten so bloated with each new expansion its time to do this. Just cut them in half. We dont need 50 ranks of stuff. Cut them in half and make people earn them. That way people wont need 4000 AAs just to be viable. You would only need 500 or so.

EQ is a grinding game... why would you give out AA to make the game any shorter?

unlike other MMO, the game DOES NOT start at 100...

if you have high lvl friend you want to catch up with, they can PL you, they can feed you XP trough fellowships, they can TA you to various XP stuff, they can run you partisan-mercenaries-mission who give massive XP...

it's not even about those ''hard earned AAs''... it's just... why make the game shorter? the content in CoTF is already pretty damn thin, why rush people there even faster?

Hi Valazure,

There are paths to get aa's, hot zones, and daily quests per level(s) from that yellow robed guy in POK right outside the guild hall. There are also quests in the game you can do that have rewards (sometimes even in the hot zone or adjacent). Like I said, I got almost 3k aa's inside of 3 months.

V/R

Barnwyr
85 Paladin on Bristlebane
98 Paladin on Tunare.
(too many other characters to mention.)

Those final 15 levels and 5000's+ AA's aren't exactly "short", not even counting the 85 levels.

Don't ignore that the first 85 levels take time. Think about new players, not yourself.

so what if they get the free aa's and drop to silver? what good will those aa's do to anyone 90+? you are gonna need a heck of alot more than the freebies to ...well...not suck

Nerfing their epic is awful, it would need so many counters that it would be ridiculous to even have counters in the first place.

If you want to help newbees and returnees, one of the best things you could do besides letting them catch up, is add...........maps.

I am sure you parse. Bring your ranger to a guild hall parser and see if you can land 800 melee attacks / kicks in 1 minute 45 seconds. I bet you won't come close. The only way an SK could get their epics to fade with even 800 hits is if they are swarming, which is exactly what the change is designed for.

An idea just popped in my head...

The purpose of the AA grant is to make it easier for new/returning players to catch up to the current game, to help them get over the proverbial AA mountain. At the same time, just giving them all this AA for free, without any work on their part, feels wrong.

The previously tried solution was the bonus AA rate until reaching 4k. However, it didn't scale with different classes. 4k AA for a wizard and 4k AA for a shadowknight mean totally different power levels. And increasing the threshold would only increase the disparity.

What if we take the good parts from both solutions without the bad parts? Something like this:

• Create a CASHBACK value for each expansion, ranging from 0 to 100%, with 0 for the recent expansions and increasing with age.
• Buying an ability automatically gives you back the expansion-based CASHBACK % of the AA points you've just spent, rounded to the nearest integer.

Advantages:

• No freebies. Catching up sill requires some effort. But you decide how much effort.
• No class disbalance.
• Much more flexibility than your current idea. Instead of 'everything up to UF and nothing after', you can set up a 25% discount for VoA AA, 50% for HoT, 75% for SoD and UF, and 100% for SoF and older. Or whatever other curve you think fits the best.
• No need to auto-grant anything.
• No need to worry about undesirable granted lines (e.g. SCS) and their derivatives.
• No need for the Easy Button in the AA window, or the 'opt out' alternatives.
• The players still decide what they want to get and in what order instead of getting a bucket of AA dumped on them whether they want it or not.

Disadvantages:

• Expansion values require adjustment every year. So does your current solution.
• Requires code support. So does your current solution.
• Cannot be done in time for the February patch. But what's the rush? You said EQ is doing just fine. So it's not a do or die situation.

What do you think, guys?

Thanks for the tips. I've been trying a lot this time to focus on those. Still though, doing them alone is a pretty empty feeling after a dozen hours or so.

Agree with Edrick. The friends you met are still your friends are they not? The adventures you had are still yours. I guess I am not getting why you feel your time spent playing is for naught.
Why are you worried about what that guy has, you played the way you wanted and (I assume) you had fun. Grats you win.

Please stop trying to comment on something you don't understand. It's EXTREMELY easy to land that many hits in a very short period of time against just a couple of mobs. SKs have a lot of AAs geared toward riposting, and as such we riposte like fiends. A few mobs will eat up that hit counter in a heartbeat just from ripostes.

To the Devs: I would perfer a system that scales AA more than the current curve and maybe a few hundred AAs givens slowly as one levels vs a single upfront gift of AAs.

To Players: Maybe this isnt the most optimal way to do it but something needs to be done.
1. This grant will not make any character anywhere near Max power, claiming other wise is silly.
2. While you can do it all on your own, its darn slow and requires a lot of knowledge to do well. Starting off with core AAs makes the whole process more satisfying and faster.
3. "I earned my AAs noone should have them unless they do it the same way" is silly. Imagine if raiders all cried about people being able to solo/group old raids. "But i spent months of my life farming those mobs, its not FAIR! They shouldn't be able to!" Isn't that a silly notion? Most of you have enjoyed those AAs for years, that is the benefit you got from earning them, stop crying. They wont be current with AAs, they will still be expansions behind. I only feel bad for those forced to grind recently and just broke the AA cap that will be given. That sucks but better it happen now so others wont suffer the same later.
4. The vast majority of players who enjoy old content are those that already have near maxed toons and just want to play new things in the past or are old vets who just want to play old content for nostalgia. There's nothing wrong with that, enjoy it. You will still have that option. And any new players will have that option later when they establish themselves ....If i were new i would look at EQ and walk away, as it is now and im a long time player.
Each expansion adds content, each expansion makes it harder and harder for un-established players.

still have to be 100 to raid so the game doesnt start till 100.

I actually box and about a third of the time use a merc cleric. Why? They won't AFK on myself. =)
Also, I can focus on pulling / rebuffing / DD / etc and not have to be so on top of healing. I let my Rogue dish the real damage. Plus when I feel like dropping a Turn Undead on something that should be able to kill me, it's nice to know I have backup heals. I can only tank mobs that hit for 14-16k, any more and I need backup patch healing.

Raiding is only part of the game. The game starts at level 1, not level 100. But, 100 levels and upwards of 8-13 thousand AA's is a bit daunting for some.

I like this idea. It's not terribly complicated and everything's already arranged per-expansion. Quite viable in my opinion, and a better solution in my opinion. It's been posted earlier that people are concerned UF and under AAs are going to eat up a LOT of the experience bonus. I didn't quite believe that it would be as detrimental as suggested (Getting 4k AAs for free and working for the rest can't be so bad?! Right?...), but the more I looked at just WHAT is included in this grant, the more I realize what a large bulk of them are the very last things we purchase.

Yes, the innates are useful, but they're the LAST things we purchase. Same with discordant defiance, enhanced aggression, regeneration and mana/hp/end pool increases. If anyone can provide me with some sort of "AA builder" I'll be glad to get some numbers on exactly how detrimental (if at all) the current solution will be, which will make suggestions like these more viable. Someone earlier suggested a bonus experience curve increase from 2-6k AA and Piestro asked for specifics on why it's necessary, so if given an AA builder of some sort I'll do that.

Btw, I could do that without 3rd party software if the devs wanted to open up Beta for me for 30 minutes or so. I'll stay in PoK, I promise! (Edit: Obviously I know that won't happen lol).

They aren't particularly fun to do with others either. My friend actually quit because he was tired of logging on, only having enough time to finish those, and logging out. I would suggest not getting burnt out on them like he did: Request them on Day 1, finish them on Day 2 (the lockout timer starts ticking from time requested not time completed, allowing you to immediately request again). Spend Day 3 on progression. Mix it up a little with whatever kind of variety is preferable to you. That's just how I do things, you might want to do it differently: just a suggestion.

Vlerg said: ↑

“EQ is a grinding game... why would you give out AA to make the game any shorter?

unlike other MMO, the game DOES NOT start at 100...

if you have high lvl friend you want to catch up with, they can PL you, they can feed you XP trough fellowships, they can TA you to various XP stuff, they can run you partisan-mercenaries-mission who give massive XP...

it's not even about those ''hard earned AAs''... it's just... why make the game shorter? the content in CoTF is already pretty damn thin, why rush people there even faster?”

Those final 15 levels and 5000's+ AA's aren't exactly "short", not even counting the 85 levels.

Don't ignore that the first 85 levels take time. Think about new players, not yourself.


ok... and what you gonna do once you have those last 15 level and 5000 AAs?

from the perspective of a lvl 100 and maxed AA, 3 things happen, usually in that order

1- open up the achievement tab and start doing old achievement.
2- realize those old achievement hold no meaning anymore, become more about running around all over the place one-shotting everything in sight until wathever you need to do is done and that's quite boring... so you start an alt.
3a- realize said alt gonna go through the same exact process again, so you just stop playing
3b- if you are in a raiding guild, you log in once a week for 2 hours, raid, and log off until next week.

Think about it. If you don't like grinding at 85, you won't like grinding at 100. if you don't like camping aug at 85, you won't like camping aug at 100. if you think you don't get group at 85, i'll be sorry to inform you that group arn't more common at 100!

This is a grinding game. giving out more AA, more XP, just means the game get shorter and shorter

Piestro, Elidroth - This is just an idea, but how hard would it be to set AE spells to have a level value for how many mobs it can effect. The problem seems to be that people are using it to power level and swarming in high level zones. You want to discourage that, so what if you were to do this:

Lets take mage beam for an example. Set mage beam to have a max level of 800. That means that it can hit < 800 levels worth of mobs. Mob 1 = level 100, Mob 2 = level 99 Mob 3 = level 98 Mob 4 = level 100 etc. So mage beam then can hit 8 level 100 mobs. 16 level 50 mobs. 32 level 25 mobs etc. That way farming grey level 5 mobs won't be hindered as severely, while high level mobs will be limited to 8 or less.