Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

For me the Auto-granting for new players is fine, but on the other side of the coin there needs to be a reward for those of us that actually earned ours. For me that is the biggest upset I have. Having just under 20K AA between the Assigned and Spent not to mention all those I just didn't get while dealing with the "You can no longer gain blah blah blah" spam.

Everything is fine, but the biggest concern is the lack of aa bonus past 4k with this auto granting deal. Have the Devs given any thoughts on extending the AA bonus past 4k?

What do you mean between assigned and spent

./facepalm ..... seriously?

The assigned are the actual AA pools the spent are the ones I have used on "Glyphs past my 12Kish Achievement"

From cutting the cost and refunding, where else would I get them from?

Understand something. I have been maxxed AA for years. I gain no benefit from SOE's plan to hand out AA's. I gained no benefit when SOE put AA's on a curve and people with low AA counts earned them at an accelerated rate. Under the current system, when a toon pings their first 4 AA's, three of them are free. The amount of free AA's decreases until a toon pings 4000 AA's, at which point there are no more free AA's.

Free AA's are just that, free. It doesn't matter how they are handed out or over what time period they are handed out, they are still free. Many of the people who are raising a stink about this have been getting free AA's themselves. It is really hard to take it all seriously.

for 10 years? Really it takes 10 years to grind and catch up on AA now? That is RICH!
You can play for LESS THAN an HOUR A DAY, doing only a few dailies if your only goal in the game is to have a lot of aa, you can also grind in a hotzone and do kill tasks and heroics where exp is GREAT.

You can earn 50-100 aa in less than an hour nowadays WITHOUT SWARMING or doing anything to disrupt anyone, you can do this easily and many people are and have been and is HAS WORKED FINE.

You either do not know what you are talking about or you are unaware of what I have just posted, either way what you are saying is false.

An hour a day for two months can and will ALREADY GENERATE 60-140aa A DAY FOLKS! Add that up and tell me how it takes someone even a year to catch up with the veterans who it has taken years to accumulate the same, we are not mad at how easy it already is, and most wouldnt be mad at all if there was MIDDLE GROUND MET on the matter. I did not even factor in the amount of experience you will get when killing HOTZONE mobs for those daily quests and bringing up other game time is moot, but do you get our drift now?

A nerf patch is a LOT for some people to take in, yeah my rogue will suffer, but it isnt a first, and there is a big issue being tackled, this I understand and accept. Add this massive grant, I mean, this update is just going to be far too much for many people, not just "some small handful of vets" as it has been put.

The bonus up to 4k was a stopgap, this is what they have wanted to do all along. Its just that with the advent of heroic characters on the way, this makes way more sense now (because what good is a level 85 heroic character with 0 AA). I agree with Axxius that it should have been capped at level 80 AAs, and given them some more room to grow at 85...There are a few AAs from HoT that only require level 85 to purchase them, but having recently leveled my paladin from 80 to 85 on Test, I can tell you...its not that many. If the intent is for new players to be the ones buying heroic characters, there should be a reason for them to stay at 85 and learn the game/class a bit before trying to move into HoT zones with no clue what they are doing. Maybe there needs to be a level 85 tutorial specifically for heroic characters...the game *does* change a lot from what you learn in the regular tutorial...outside of / commands like /shout /who and UI components. There needs to be an additional bridge if this is the intent for these heroic characters.

I like the idea of granting AA's to those that have Few aa's due to they was trying to level so they can raid with higher level player's or be able to use the ability that can allow them to solo or help the group. On the topic of lich sting or mortal coil, i would think to leave it the same but have a proc limitation. this would control the extreme swarm,, example : 100+ mobs that con green to the player. with placing a limited number say 30 proc's this would control how many are killed at once and also control the zone issue you mentioned before.
I would also look at extending the (Paladin's /Sk's/ ranger's) weapon shield disciplin. this would still keep these class's able to tank and kill or hold off mobs till the mob's was under control. Since Paladin's / Sk's
don't get the ability to proc and slay any mobs in one hit from full life to dead.

I would like to propose that if you do change the abilitys mentioned early reguarding this post. Allow the player's to still be able to kill in swarm but place a reuse timer limit. this also would still allow them to swarm like they love to do and also allow better control of the server lag spike's. thank you for taking the time to read this. Rocgrim Dirtybeard thanks you .

People rarely come out of the woodwork en masse in a show of support, it mainly happens when people are angry or have a gripe, regardless of whether it is legitimate or not.

Conservatively headshot for me procs around 5.35 times per minute (321 instances of headshot firing in the sample of 32 minutes and 184 mobs). Even given your math about it procing 8 times straight off of Called shots and focused just doesn't add up given spell refresh times (even with forceful rejuv up) and how fast bow of the destroy fires with 225% haste + Prescient. Even if you managed to get every mob you wanted to kill in the instance to you before you started it still wouldn't proc that much.

I am also of the opinion that raising decap/headshot/assassinate to lvl 99 at 100 even with a reduced proc-rate is plain asinine. It would throw overall dps balancing out the window. you are talking about dark blue conned raid trash being able to be hit by these abilities.

Read what I wrote. I will be sitting there with ALL MY AA"S PURCHASED AND 4000 BANKED. That is if they cut the cost of AA's by 25% to 50% and refunded the difference. I wouldn't have to earn any more for the next 10 years.

While i wish they would of tied large bonus AA rewards to Quests and Achievements to get caught up rather than just hand them out (the game is called EverQuest if i am not mistaken), i don't have a problem with the current plan.

For those of us who have worked them all and will not benefit from the AA "flood", the one think i would like as a reward for the work is a way to increase my merc's aa xp gain. (Merc AA's started when i was only 85, now i am 97 and merc only has like 4 aa's.)

Developers - Feedback
Gold members get access to three non-repeatable kill 30 missions for every level from 51 to 85
Each mission rewards 50 AA (up AA cap for under 92)
That is a total of 5250 AAs for this set of missions...

Benefits:
* Requires potential cooperation in older zones
* Forces navigating to potentially 100 zones
* Can be performed whenever you want, so preserve AAs or spend them as you want
* Gives current members the same benefit (so you don't tick off your current revenue stream)
* Grant level appropriate defiant loot item

Have you guys thought of exp modified armor? Allows people for a rate increase up for 4kAA.

I'm surprised no one seems to have thought of this...

In regards to the fuss about granting free AAs to people, and how it's making a bunch of oldschool players mad;

Remember that little Hero's Journey thing? Yeah, that thing that most people ignore for this or that reason. Here's an idea; Directly associate these granted AAs with the line of cumulative Hero's Journey achievements. Said achievements are already more or less divided by level brackets, so it would just be a matter of bunching up all the AAs applicable for those brackets and turning them into a reward for completing an arc/zone/whatever you want to call it, of the Hero's Journey.

What this does is keep all those AAs from being a simple handout, without the same level of :"Grind" necessary to "catch up". It also provides an environment for new players to actually learn stuff while simultaneously achieving competitive character development levels in reasonable amounts of time.

Make the achievements sub-achievements of already existing ones, available to only Gold members.

This wouldn't take away TOO much from your whole wanting to draw new players to the game quickly, and make a lump of money doing it (cause please, its obvious money is a factor in all this, but SOE is a business so there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that) using the combo of fast, easy AA boosters and these lv85 Heroic characters, because said purchased 85 characters can go back and do HJ all the same still, except have fun blowing through the trivialized early quests and whatever. Who doesn't like a bit of a power trip right out the gate, being able to use something you paid extra money for to wreck weak things quickly and get reward for it?

Unfortunately I don't have the time at this moment to go into as much clarifying detail as I would like about this idea of mine, but hopefully this is a good baseline for anyone reading this thread closely to understand.

And as a side note, I'm not really for or against any of these changes in general. This is just simply me throwing out an idea that popped in my head while skimming through all the hoopla. I love this game and fully intend to continue playing one way or the other.

if your want to grant 4000 AA to all how about upping the exp bonus for AA to say 6-7k AA mark.

To clarify I and many others have earned our" 20K total" + aa's 1 by 1 ..... I just tossed my opinion on how I personally am feeling robbed for earning them myself

My personal opinion on SKs was that they ought to be given higher weapon % life tap on their main target to compensate for swarming nerf. A passive main target life steal that's permanently on, ie 10-15%, is not out of balance. Paladin healing disparity vs. SKs is getting to be a bit too high and they just lost one of the main draws of the class.