Once developers decided to sell AA's and they put cap in place at the upper end you new it was about the money. If you purchased the AA's that were auto granted you might assume that you would be assume that you would be able to earn AA's on free account. Wrong--taking off auto grant and trying to earn AA's is when I found out there is a cap put in place. I purchased Full Access and earned AA's and it added them to over all number but since cap was smaller you figure. I then purchased 200 more AA's and now it looks like this 6200/6200 so now I know I purchased AA's I already earned because you can only purchase AA's when you are not Full Access. Are you better off spending $15 and earning AA's or purchasing 600 AA's for $15 and spending time on leveling instead?
Your best bet is to make your heroic character, pay for a month/buy a krono, do the autogrant, get as many AA as you can/want, then farm non-prestige gear is how I understand it.
When came back, I started all new heroic characters. I didn't even know about auto-grant and just had it on the whole time. I recently started two new accounts and left auto-grant off. I was thinking I was going to get them to lvl105 and then a few thousand AA's while I still get some bonus (??) that are not auto-granted and then turn auto-grant on and BAM!!! max AA or close. However they started off with 4259aa as heroic characters. Is there really no bonus at all after 4000aa and I might as well turn auto-grant on now?
This is a for profit game. I don't know why anyone would think any different. The free to play initiative is all about bringing in potential customers on a try before you buy basis. The very existence of heroic characters is all about money. Management saw that there was a market in powerleveling characters, so they nerfed all the most effective PLing techniques to kill the market and then filled the void with characters for sale. The kronos are the same thing. They recognized that there was a market for plat selling, so they got in on it. Everything they do is for profit. If you play the game, best you recognize their motives early on. This isn't a charity game.
Completely agree with you.....except for this part. Yes, they nerfed several of the more eye-popping PLing techniques but not all of 'em. Even scaled back, an SK swarming far fewer mobs is more efficient than being 75 leeching XP in a 105 group. There are still ways to get the job done. Just because it's not as outstanding as it was, doesn't mean it's not possible. I still haven't seen XP flow as well as prenerf Highkeep monster missions. 1-60 in what, 25 minutes? So now it takes a bit longer. I think where heroic characters beat straight PL is gear more than anything else. I'd pay $25-35 just to avoid having to camp all those augs (or buy them in bazaar since I'm on FV).
I wish they would add something to the cash shop to allow the purchase of the augments on a regular character. Maybe just let people buy access to redo the quests for the aug rewards.
Strange occurrence. Played a Ranger to 77 with auto-grant enabled. Then used a marketplace bought heroic upgrade. Voila -- Level 85 and 5,950 AAs. Not complaining, mind you, but an explanation would be helpful. I have other characters 75-78.
The AA bonus ends at 4000, so yes, turn on autogrant. Purchasing AA blocks from the marketplace has never been efficient if you ever spent a month on gold/all access earning AA's or autogranting - main reason is the unlocker only added the 100 to your existing cap and NOT the actual amount you had. So for example if you were only granted 1000 AA's, then went all access and autogranted so you have 7800 now then dropped back free again - when you purchase +100 AA unlocker, it would show 7800/1100 (meaning 1100 is your cap; not that you can go to 7900).
