Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Discussion in 'News and Announcements' started by Prathun, Feb 5, 2014.

  1. Songsa Augur

    I once again reiterate my concern. Assassinate proc rate being certainly calculated with rogue in the back (tell me if im wrong) the soloing/moloing rogue will proc very rarely (way less BS from the front and no riposte can proc anymore), so our solo that was a bit less terrible with former assass will be terrible again. You absolutely need to think about that and help us have a solo/molo possibility again in a future update. Thx
  2. sinderkad Augur

    Silly, pretending that hotzone quests are the only way to get AAs is silly. As many others have mentioned at 4k AA you kill faster, can solo and survive better, and are more adaptable with better burst and utility. Life will simply be better. Will you have to work to make up for the less optimal AA choices? Yes. Will the grant outweigh that lack of efficiency? Absolutely.
  3. Harabakc Augur


    Hot zone quests are just a very simple way to illustrate why this isn't actually helping people catch up. There are far more effective ways to do so. Extend the AA bonus by a couple thousand and you've accomplished the exact same thing without giving people a bunch of worthless AAs no one takes until they already have the useful ones.
  4. Dynn New Member

    Why not just lower the cost of these AA instead? If everything up to the latest expansion - 4 is retroactively made to cost 1 AA per level, then the mountain gets much smaller. It seems like everybody wins in this scenario. Returning and new players can earn a few hundred AA under the bonus very quickly, get the abilities that are critical for their class, and then still have plenty of room to earn future AA while still in the bonus sweet spot. It seems that would also help to avoid cliff people would hit when the auto granting love stops at 85. People that have already ground out a significant number of AA would all of a sudden see that number drop, potentially allowing them to take advantage of the bonus again for a little while.
    Caell likes this.
  5. Harabakc Augur

    What's more important to the effectiveness of your character? The AAs available prior to 85, or the ones available after?
  6. SoroxDrinal Elder

    Harabakc is right for these scenarios.
    If you are 92/0 and do the 85, 90, and alternate daily missions, those first 15 kills = 125ish AAs.
    If you are 92/4000 and do the same dailies, you get what 30 AA or less?!

    92/0 toons with full vitality get multiple AAs per kill during lesson. That first lesson is at least 100 AAs even when the toon just sits there while my monk kills. The first hour of 92/0 is at least 250 AAs.
    It might take a week of dailies and lessons to hit 1500 AAs. All for less than 10 hours of play?!

    And you realize that grouping with a high toon that does the daily for you, you get the same AAs from the dailies(just be in the zone)? But please, preach on about "basic math"...

    I agree if you are solo/molo that the grant is amazing, but who the heck does that these days?! Make friends, group, do the dailies, and lesson burns.

    If it's just "basic math", let's make a wager:
    Start a 92/0 toon and group with someone who can solo the dailies.
    Have another 92/4000 toon do the dailies with same person and then lesson burn solo.
    It is absolutely guaranteed, the 92/0 will gain more AAs per hour even when grouped due to the AA xp bonus. Once the bonus wears down, then you claim. How difficult is this "basic math" you keep preaching.

    My guess is that within 30 days, a 92/0 toon will have blown past a 92/4000 toon in total AAs. It takes perhaps 5 hours to hit 1000 AAs when duo... This is just dailies + lesson, nothing else...

    I have a 92/4000 druid who did nothing but port my monk to grounds and valley. His meditate skill is like 210 or something. I'll worry about that later. But if they allowed it, I would reset his AA count to 0 and start all my AAs over again.
    Pirouette likes this.
  7. Ardin Elder

    Your words tell me that you have no idea about helbots nor battleclerics.
    Ward procs when you dodge, it is not a riporte thing.
    Cleric's swarming compared to sk's swarming - ofc that sk is eons ahead.
    Now - grow up (to lvl 100) and try to swarm, or to solo anything. Every other class do this better. Unless you like to beg others for group, then cleric is for you.
  8. Quilix Elder

    Very much agree with this :) - I often help new players a long a bit and one of the first bits of advice is to go download a map pack and get it into the maps directory. But half that advice has to be "don't get an .exe self extractor - it could be a virus, etc. Don't know why maps are not in the game? Especially now that they can trigger a sparkly line to guide them to zones / important NPC's. Or even if it meant paying 10pp to a cartographer in CR and you got maps for all the zones near there - Now that would help new players
    Caell likes this.
  9. Sinzz Augur

    thank you for listening and even making changes in light of the feedback.
    I know you cant please everyone but sometimes just knowing folks are listening is pretty powerful.
  10. Quilix Elder

    So ok I must have dodge maxxed out then cause it procs a lot :)

    Ward of Requital Rk. II
    Description

    verb: parry;
    1. 1.
      ward off (a weapon or attack) with a countermove.
      "he parried the blow by holding his sword vertically"
      synonyms: ward off, fend off, stave off, turn aside;More
      deflect, hold off, block, avert, counter, rebuff, repel, repulse, hold/keep at bay
      "Sharpe parried the blow"
    I will forward your new data to Lucy for consideration informing them that this is now linked to dodging - they like to keep their info up to date

    And sorry wasn't sure what riporte is - is that a skill you get later in game ?
    Fenthen likes this.
  11. Pirouette Augur


    A well-rounded level 85 will have something like 2500 AA, and really, that number is still pretty high. My alt 88 SK is actually tanking HA's with just 900 AAs. I don't know the solution, but the more and more I think about it this flat 4k AA grant isn't going to work and not because I don't want returning players to have that kind of power but because returning players are going to be faced with a gigantic hurdle post 85...I honestly think I'm better off just cherrypicking HoT and up AAs until the bonus wears off to take my grant. And that's not at all the way this should be intended to work.

    All the innate/planars, mystical attuning, and HP/mana/end pool increases need to be removed from the grant. That should be a good chunk of AAs. If I had an AA builder or something (if anyone knows one) I can allocate all the useless AAs to better portray what I'm talking about. Furthermore by leaving them IN a lot of players such as myself (sitting at 5300 AAs on my main) are going to be nearly capped when they opt-in. Almost all of the AAs I'm missing are pre-UF. That's just widening the gap that much more...

    There's also a matter of build specing for every route that clogs up AAs. For example Monks have Crippling Strike, Stunning Kick, Eye Gouge all on the same CD; Stunning Kick is the highest dps, I don't even use the other 2. Another example is DoT crit AAs on an enchanter or druid...which is going to be taken long after ench/druid fills out DD and utility AAs.
    Caell likes this.
  12. cadres Augur

    There are some very fundamental, big issues, at what EQ is and where it is in the market here.

    I've read as much of the 115 pages of this thread as I can and it seems that these over-arching concepts are not what is being talked about; and should be.

    I have not, I don't think, felt the impulse to post outside guild and server forums before; but this potentially game-killing issue has dragged me out from under my rock. Hopefully being a forum newbie won't render my take on this less important.

    I've had what is now called a 'gold account' for about a decade. Before that I used to mess about on a friend's account, that's what got me into the game. Not since chanters were nerfed have I seen a proposal that has drawn such angry responses from so many people. So IMHO someone really needs to look again at this.

    As others have said and I would wish to reiterate...EQ is a mature game mostly full of mature people. It attracts people who are, in the main, aged 20+. The people I play with are 30+ and 40+. They are not the 'instant gratification' brigade. So they don't want the 4 thousand AAs thrown at them. Many of them have no desire to be raiding many nights a week any more. The end game isn't what they are after. They want a long-term challenge.

    That's the important bit: Long term.

    This is the audience. Not someone who wants to play for a few months from start to finish and move on to the next big thing. Giving someone 4 thousand AAs is pandering to just the wrong market. Now, if the changes didn't bother anyone else, that would not matter. But it does bother them - massively. Rightly or wrongly. It bothers me. You may not agree with my opinion, it may not bother you. Fair enough. It bothers me a tremendous amount.

    Any number of alternatives have been suggested. A friend had a post removed for suggesting (very politely!) some alternatives on the grounds that it was off topic. So I won't go there.

    In a similar vein: Swarming. In all these pages I have not seen anyone from SoE explain what *they* consider to be swarming. I have seen SKs in particular do what *I* call swarming for as many years as I can remember. It's involved pulling a group of mobs, I don't know how many, say 8-20, wedging themselves in a corner and beating them up. I have never ever been lagged by that practice. Trains of that many mobs and many more are a fact of EQ life. No-one has talked about them lagging out the servers. I didn't hear of that until mages got their RoF beam spell (I think it was RoF) and lagged out some RoF zones. I was in a zone a couple of times when that happened.

    That seems to be like an abuse. I remember many years ago as a newbie killing ice giants through a wall. A GM turned up and told me off for exploiting (I'd never heard of an exploit). I never did it again. So if people are doing something they shouldn't then surely they are the people who should be dealt with? Not penalising everyone for doing something their class can do. Personally I love to see people who are great at their class doing impressive things. I'm not jealous or demand that they be nerfed or whatever. Every class should have something impressive that, if they are maxed on gear/AAs etc they can do something pretty spectacular with. That's fun. Fun is what this is supposed to be about and which really isn't coming through in these hundreds of posts.

    So. I have a long-term relationship with EQ. Will I quit if the 4 thousand AA dumbing down thing goes ahead? No. But it damages that relationship. I enjoy it a bit less. I will be less keen to try and get my old friends who've left to come back. Damaged relationships can recover, of course. But there are many things wrong. I am more concerned about the lack of progression for me as a maxed AA player, as are all the people I play with.

    So this is a plea. Don't hand over 4 thousand AA for nothing. Don't damage our game. Our relationship can only take so much before I am so disillusioned that it has to end.
    Melanippe, Elendieal, Velric and 2 others like this.
  13. SoroxDrinal Elder

    I use eye gouge on raids when we are short on healers. I also switched to ATK debuff weapons which stack with eye gouge.
  14. dreadlord Augur


    No. You have to be 100 to raid in an endgame guild. That's part of the problem - the demise of all the 'family' guilds who raid an expansion or three below the current one.
    Gear inflation has been a massive part of killing off that traditional part of EQ. It's a massive shame that it's gone because that's where people learned such a massive part of their integral skills.

    If the Powers That Be really want to help those mid range people then activities/events that would cater for the level circa 80 player who wants to start raiding would help.
    tanith likes this.
  15. dreadlord Augur

    I'm posting from work; a University (in the english sense of the word). There are many thousands of people here with the same IP address. I don't know of any other EQ players, but there may well be - that doesn't make any of us cheats. I have a bunch of guildies who play from work - so that would be about 6 of them on one IP. That doesn't make them cheats. We have people who have openly said they are members of the same family posting. That doesn't make them cheats either.

    There are so many new accounts because so many people have been so upset about this they have joined, or in my case re-joined (you can find plenty of my old posts on the old forums) for the first time to talk about this. That doesn't make our opinion any less important
    Velric and Quilix like this.
  16. Gendor Journeyman

    Assassinate on Riposte was one of the way's I survived when I got myself into a little trouble when soloing. It's why I have invested in my 5500 aa's at level 96. Why not cap it at the number of mobs engaged?

    In order to avoid somebody pulling a whole zone and burning down all the mobs make the ability only work if you have less than 24 mobs on your hate list. pull 25 and the ability does not process.

    This will accomplish your goal, and not nerf the ability for those of us that play a little every day and mostly have to solo.

    Lowering the number of times it will process does not seem fair either. But limiting the process from happening based on the number of mobs engaged does. Find a way to make the AA inactive when your hate list exceeds a number of mobs.

    And thank you for taking the time to discuss with us the issues and options before. It's nice to get a chance to voice our concerns. And thank you for helping make the game more stable and reduce the lag :)
  17. Coruth Augur

    Actually, the whole anti-bot brigade would like to think 1 person = 1 opinion like a democracry
    Except for the fact that EQ isn't a democracy (I don't think these changes would vote pass)

    It is a business, and the bottom line is $. So if a botter posts from all 4 accounts and quits, then yes, sony could and should listen to losing of 4 accounts of money over 1 account who cheers.
    dreadlord likes this.
  18. Coruth Augur

    I have to say the change that really sticks out as the most problematic is SK Change.

    Bar none, class defining, potentially breaking the class.

    I remember when they nerfed Harmonois Arrow, but imo my ranger came out ahead with Fluster/Bluster. There is some potential here for Rangers/Zerkers/Rogues of the world.

    But for SKs?

    Let's just put it in pure number sense: You limited Beam Spells to 12.
    Suggesting a Kiting of 12 Mobs as a reasonable Maxmium

    Then why did you limit SK procs to a theoretical 4-6 mobs?

    That's a very important, # difference.
  19. Stiku New Member

    Autogrant AA's? Worst idea ever. Gathering AA's and deciding where to put them is so much fun. At least it was to me.Second part of this imho bad change is it makes me feel like a fool. I started last year and put lot of effort in gathering the aa's and now they give them away free.

    From what i have been reading some ppl like the idea but the majority is against this change. So i hope they reconsider giving a huge amount of AA's free and listen to the players.
    Velric and dreadlord like this.
  20. Sneaksta Journeyman

    But hey, If she likes it who am I to judge? I got a Pyrilen whip in a bank somewhere lol