Changes with the February Update: Developer Updates

Most of the "whining" about the AA grant is coming from you "heroes" who either never left the game or have the opportunity to live life playing this game for countless hours a day. You all who ALREADY have what they're about to give. Think outside the box. It makes me so angry that there are so many "whining" posts about how it's not "fair". lol.......Step outside of Norrath and walk through a ghetto.

I am not a casual player....I play much more than casually while being in the military, attending college, and being a husband/father to three. I took a 6 year break to play WoW (I know better now...so cool it) and I came back almost exactly a year ago today. I started fresh characters on my old accounts....and grinding for a few hours a day and many more hours on the weekends I've leveled a few 100s and my top character has about 6500 hard earned (no power leveled crap) AAs.

With all that said, I whole heartedly ENDORSE the AA grant. I earn a living, I'm not on welfare, but this is a fricking game. The AA mountain IS huge and I haven't had the benefit of being able to sit AFK in someone else's group and mooch exp. I've earned what I've got and with this update, hell yeah, all those BS AA like CA/CS are going to be granted for the most part. A lot of the time I've pushed into my characters will have been for nothing...but oh well. I'll be able to focus on the stuff that matters without spending a year to get to where I am now. I'm just now able to even fine tune those AA that are essential and costly.

The argument that players won't know how to play their class is also a joke. To play any classes doesn't require that much. This game's not full of PHDs. I understand there are players with some mad skills. But even before this stuff, I could damage shield PL a character from 1-80 in a few hours.....In a weekend you can PL a character to easily 90 with a few thousand AA. I've done just that with a bard recently. Do I know how to play him? Hell no, but I'm learning...and learning just as well and twice as fast as that "gungo" moron who has the bragging rights of "I leveled myself and earned all my stuff the old fashion way.".

I'll see you all in Norrath! If you wear your feelings on your sleeves, let me know. I love to push your buttons. This is my opinion against many of yours....enjoy! I've got a raid to go face-smash my keyboard on.

Why would there be compensation for AA already earned? Did you buy those AA, yet never used them to better your character? Were you stocking up on purchased AA to sell during the Zombie apocalypse, but realized zombies aren't real? Did the AA bubble crash due to sneaky bastard politicians?

I have 2 max AA characters, and granting others 4K AA doesn't make my AA any less useful, it doesn't make one AA I've bought on my own work differently because a new player, or alt got AA for free. People are just whiny, and butt hurt because they don't think they'll get something for free. That's life folks, just because you think others owe you something doesn't make it true... even in a video game.

This has probably been suggested already, but why don't you figure out how much experience is actually going to be granted to someone with 0 AA to get them where the grant will get them. And then just award that same amount of experience across the board.

SOE Dev;s
I have now spent the last few days reading all of the posted comments on the this forum and the original thread.
First I have to give you all props for at least communicating with the players before any changes are made, but in doing so you have opened the door to what should have been controlled when the abilities were originally implemented in the game. Now SOE wants to take away a slight advantage that the players might have and I think it is unfair.
I have questions, and im not here to put anyone down or cast judgement on your actions,
How is it fair to take anything away from players when the balance between the Mobs and classes are so uneven?
In almost all cases, the damage to hit ratio is not to the players advantage but to that of the mob., and not a 50/50 type scenario but more like 90/10 in favor of the mobs
.Is it the intention of SOE to completely make this game dependent on mercs, boxing toon's and Station Cash Purchases?
I mean its a joke to even believe that in the current conditions that any one toon can take the dropped gear and kill a mob at a(n) even level,
as a mater of fact --- from HOT on, it is this case. Mobs OP to most classes....

Now that is problematic as it is, as in some cases the zones are all KOS so just getting to your destination is more than a chore, especially if your using any type of invis potion, not reliable at all -----but working as intended

So while you may think that taking swarm killing or any kiting away from the game is necessary ,
I would have to disagree, ----------- it is these people who Can kill these mobs solo, that affords the lower level classes the opportunity to progress. So in taking away these few abilities does more than affect our game play it literally disrupts players ability to move on to the next zone without fear of being killed in 2 seconds from a mob that in pre--nerf days would potentially be already engaged and not chasing.

Now onto the post I read earlier about grouping, I have to tell you, GROUPING is NON- EXISTENT - ever since the implementation of Merc's, grouping is not in the EQ plan, this is more than apparent in the fact that General Chat does not center around people looking for groups but as a means to chat up the newest and hottest topics, Back in the Time days when there were no mercs groups were abundant and regardless of your play style - almost required.
Now the Merc's have taken the place of the tank, the healer and the dps. So what is left for those classes, a long road of only being able to level at all in pre- HOT zones, or only going to zones where the mobs wont quad hit you for 21k,

What I am getting at , is there are more than enough issues with the game that the focus should not be on taking away anything but - balancing a survivable world where players have the same chance at leveling and enjoying the game in its present form. If the intent is only to allow the raiding community this content then so be it, but there is changes that SOE should look at to draw in new players other than Using the NERF BAT every-time a class gains a slight advantage over the mobs.
I retired my Bard over this exact thing, because we were able to kite a group of mobs, SOE used there NERF bat to take that away, whats next....

I can remember similar comments about new players not earning their gear from veteran players when Defiant armor was introduced. I'll be willing to bet many players stuck with the game because of the boost that change made. Used to be you had to put in significant time with a raiding guild to get gear like that.

And even many max level characters found Defiant to be a general increase in gear.

Gear 3 or 4 expansions behind, essentially free, when it was introduced.... AA's 4 expansions behind....

I'm thinking this is the same.

I'd be more concerned over the changes to abilities and spells than I would the AA grant.

That's like saying merely because someone paid their tuition but didn't bother to show up for a class they deserve that PhD anyway. Chanting the word elitist to disparage those people who actually think one should actually put in some effort to earn a reward is just downright silly.

/em claps hands - /em salute - /em kneel - /em thank - /em "tell it on the mountain"..../agreed

Piestrocare - The Nerf

If you're happy with your current AA grind uphill both ways in the snow...barefoot....with no weapons or armor, you can keep it!

/sarcasm off

I'm starting to wonder if those that are complaining the loudest about the AA auto-granting and changes to swarming were some of the "players" selling PL's all over...including hot zones where other players were trying to do quests and such only to find that their mobs were no longer up, or being pulled away from them as they were bringing them back to their group.

Bring on the changes, Devs!

Not exactly. I wish I had that time back to do something more meaningful. I posted the info to show that the opinion comes from a veteran player that did things the hard way, and I stand by the above statements.

But the 4-6k as you have to grind out are the useful ones and willbnoe take longer because your bonus as xp is being eaten up by all if the AAs you wouldn't buy until you had 8k or so


My main has 8k AA and u have yet to buy the innate stuff do to each their own

I'll ptolly not play much until they decide what they are truly nerfing and what they are giving us. As I'm not super motivated

Yes! How many are involved with the illegal side of the game. Let's put them out of business!

Someone in-game said AAs were no longer Opt-in auto-grant, but rather quested. Read through 20 pages, didn't see that. Anyone able to confirm or deny? Can't read all 70 pages right now....

Axeion I posted a solution for this back on page 58 of this thread.... it really is a simple fix ... people that are silver (i.e. new accounts) that want to go gold just for the aa then back to silver wont be able to if they use it. They have a block on aa now for silver of 1k so they keep it unless the account is paid gold for 1 year or more. It is a simple code not hard at all. they put in a check that is something like /played = 1 year or aa re worthless. This means you cant just hit it get it and dump it.

Very well aware. It was an innate ability for Rogues at level 60. Worked on dark blue mobs at the lower end of the xp scale. For example kor's and jin's in Sebillis. There weren't yet "Light Blue" mobs in the game yet. The new /con scale wasn't introduced yet. It wasn't even an AA. So.. question is, are you aware how it originally worked?

How about Lady Vox mount or Lord Nagifine mount wouldnt that be worth it

Ok you're conflicting yourself. You talk about making them useful in one post and then make it clear they won't be useful at all now. I'm not sure if you're playing RoF or higher content, but there are a minuscule number of humanoid mobs as is. At least before we could molo for AAs at a decent rate. Just do away with them entirely like you've wanted to do for years. If you really want to help chain classes give us a tool for decent mitigation that doesn't completely trash our dps.

I'm really glad S.O.E is doing this In my opinion 15 years of work is hard to catch up too. I'm a returning player and I'm having a very hard time trying to grind out aa's as is, not to mention no one wants a class that does not have aa's past 6k now a days and I'm feeling depresst due to this. I thank god SOE has realized we would love to see the new content but cant raid it due to the lack of aa that guilds need ppl to have. Doing this would benefit us in so many ways. I know everyone is upset but we are so far behind that not even guilds want us (Raid Guilds). I am all for this for so many reasons and I hope that it go's live next patch I realy do. It would give us a sense of some sort of accomplishment to actually get in to a really cool raiding guild. Just remember guys the game is realy old and for us to see this new content would be cool before the game folds and closes its doors at least let us raid once again new stuff...

Elidroth,
When the auto-granted AA's come out, Will the players who already spent time maxing those out get a refund on them so they can respend them elswhere? Otherwise it feels as if they are being cheated out of the work they put in due to people getting those AA's for free now.

I didn't like the defiant gear, but I could live with it. There's massive difference between the two changes. Gear is a temporary boost. However uber the piece you've just picked up it will become obsolete. You won't be wearing it in 5 years' time. Even if you hardly ever play. (gear stat inflation is another issue, but let's not go there...)
If you give me a bunch of AAs I have them forever. For the rest of my EQ life. I am still 'using' the very first CS/CA AAs I ever did. So that's an advantage that toon has forever.

If you want to 'lend' players AAs I have no problem with that. Let them 'go overdrawn' on an AA account. But sooner or later they have to pay it back. They have to actually earn the AAs sooner or later.

I have no big issue in a temporary boost to help lower level players. Want to give them discount xp pots? Absolutely fine. They still have to do something to get the AAs (commercial PL notwithstanding - but again that's another issue).
That would also bring some cash in - and this seems to be about cash.

Elidroth,

The idea i posted back on page 58 of this thread about tying the gifted aa to time played how hard would this be. As it is only 1k aa can be earned by a silver account and I can see people exploiting this going gold for a month and then back to silver. Are those aa still going to be good for this toon or are they going to be locked behind the 1k aa like all silver accounts are currently ?