In the recent test server patch, several AAs were removed, and the AA points were refunded. In the live patch, the removed AAs were not refunded. I just wanted to check if that change from Test to Live was intentional or an oversight.
Yes. i track every single toon's exact AAs every morning. I am now missing hundreds from all classes with GoM. 223-335 missing AAs each.
You still have those abilities and they still work. They were just consolidated to make things easier for everyone. There's no reason to refund AAs.
They did in the test patch notes /shrug Not like they're great about posting Live patch notes before they actually patch. Ya know, to let us know.
Sure, but that is Test, not Live servers, Test notes get changed vs Live notes pretty much every patch The Live patch notes Removed, no Refund in the note, so it is intended to not have a Refund
Two players grinded the same number of AAs. One purchased their AAs prior to the patch, the other after. They do not have the same abilities because one of those players now has a lot more free AAs to spend on other abilities that the other cannot because they're locked behind removed AAs. Historically, when AAs were removed, they're also usually refunded, so I think there is reason to believe this is an oversight that should be corrected.
I literally bought those aas in the last week on the toons in question. Some may or may not have been autogranted at some point, idk, but I know I bought several ranks on several toons JUST recently. I stopped as soon as i saw the test notes but that was only a few days ago. I mean I get not being refunded when something becomes autogrant(lol i bought the 13th spell gem on a couple the DAY before they became autogranted few years ago) but theres a reason they were being REFUNDED in this case. Sure, only refund the ranks above autogrant cutoff, that's logical. Sounds to me more like max-AA-types were complaining about having MORE aas they cant spend.
It is interesting that they "reworded" the patch notes to be more clear but also remove the part about refunding the spent AAs on what was removed. I had read the test notes and only skimmed today's notes, expecting to log in and have some AAs to spend. I was disappointed but figured it is a bug. I am now further disappointed if this was on purpose.
typically AA refund = you must respend them. Baking an ability in that was based on a flag, still requires the flag and what it took to get so no sum loss or gain.
I'm also a bit confused if someone could break it down for me, eli5 style. From what I can tell, say you and a friend both spend 6 hours grinding last weekend on March 11, getting them sweet AAs and acquired around 100. You decide that night to go ahead and spend all 100 on getting Gift of Mana maxed and now have 20 ranks of GoM. Your friend had to log and isn't able to get back online until next weekend. Skip ahead to March 18, friend logs back on and, lo and behold it only takes 12 AA's to max Gift of Mana now so they spend the 12 and have 88 AAs left to spend. You logon.. you also have Gift of Mana maxed at 3/3, but you have 0 AAs. Why is that not an issue? Shouldn't you get an 88 AA refund?
You summed it up perfectly, and that's exactly why it is an issue. One slight complication might come into whether someone actually grinded and spent those AAs, or if they got them autogranted a long time ago. Also depending on where you are on the TLP life cycle would mean those AAs cost a lot more time to grind, while also being less likely you got them autogranted. This is a broader theme I've noticed where devs make changes based on live, not fully realizing how it affects TLP players. Losing out on 100 AAs when everyone has ~15,000 isn't a big deal. Losing out on 100 AAs when you're at 700 is a big deal.
It depends on what they did. If you have an AA with rank 1-6, and remove 2 and 4, but make new rank 2 cost old rank 2 + 3, and make new rank 3 cost old rank 4 + 5. Old rank 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6, has the same net cost as new rank 1 + 2 + 3 + 4. There has been some precident in the past when they combined AAs, they made the new ranks the cost of rank of AA 1 + cost of rank of AA 2. Prior method is to just refund all 6 ranks at the cost of old rank 1-6, and have players rebuy the new ranks 1-4 at the "new" cost making it a wash. It is likely easier than trying to figure out the algorithm of what old ranks 2-6 you want to equal in the new ranks, and having to develop the script to live change all the player data (which would probably take a while to run on each server also). It's less risky to just nuke the AA and send the cost back to players pool to have them buy. I cannot confirm about this time because I haven't looked at the maths and the results, but it sounds like they went with the "just script the AA rank reduction" this time around...maybe, instead of just stripping the AA and making players re-buy.
I noticed that my Silver account which had maxed AAs (1000) is now under the cap by 9 AAs: Notice that the assigned is 953 but the spent is 962. I'm pretty sure that they were both 962 before this patch, as I have been maxed in AAs for a long time (962+38 = 1000). So I guess I have 9 more AAs to spend due to this change.
For actual numbers: The new Gift of Mana has 3 ranks, and it seems it is 3/6/9 - 18 AAs total. Aradune unlocked SoD two weeks ago and Gift of Mana had 6 available ranks, for 9 AA each. So for me personally it was 45 AAs vs now the 18 needed. However, IlllIllIllIlll brings up a very valid point that depending on where a server is, some of those may have been autogranted and that makes the math super tricky. Would have been nice to get a refund of the difference, so if ranks 1 and 2 are autogranted on my server, and I had 6/6 ranks, then refund me 4 ranks worth. But maybe thats not possible with how their system is setup.
As many ranks of some of these as they got rid of, I do not think that they consolidate the costs. The AAs which were removed were simply ranks that increased the level cap it worked on.
One of the reasons I update all my characters on Megelo just before a patch. It contains the AAs for each at the time. I lost an average of 200+ AAs on each with the March 15 patch. Note that my 2 melee characters did not loose any though.
